How antihypertensive medications may impact your student’s training.
“Help! One of my Indoor Cycling students told me that he is taking meds for his blood pressure, and he’s asking questions about what this means for his training. I have no idea! What should I know about this?”
– K.P., Phoenix, AZ
Melissa Marotta writes:
Since ICI launched its medical research column, we have received dozens of questions from instructors all struggling with the same issue: “How do blood pressure-lowering (“antihypertensive”) medications affect the “bread and butter” of what we do?” Yours is an extremely common predicament, and we congratulate you for empowering yourself to seek out the information you need to best serve your clients.
While many group exercise instructors and personal trainers are certified through programs designed to prepare them to train folks without major medical problems (with perhaps cursory mention of some common medication names on a single page in a manual), it doesn’t take long before they get thrown a curveball. And while we may be very responsible in a) providing information limited to the scope of our expertise and b) securing that a client has received physician approval before engaging in exercise, this doesn’t do much to alleviate the anxiety we feel in that moment where we haven’t a clue how to even begin to answer the question at hand.
This article is not meant to take the place of advanced certification in working with special populations; however, I hope it will be a helpful reference to acquaint you with how to approach a rider who asks you how to make sense of how antihypertensive medications may impact training.
What is Hypertension?