How Isometric Exercise Can Improve Blood Pressure
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Exercise is a vital component of heart health, but you don’t necessarily need to pour sweat in a high-intensity bootcamp class to reap the benefits. While aerobic, or cardio, exercise like running, cycling, and brisk walking is certainly important for strengthening your heart, another type of movement called isometric exercise is gaining attention for its ability to help reduce blood pressure.
What Is Isometric Exercise?
Isometric exercise is a type of movement that involves static muscle contractions.
“The muscle during an isometric contraction develops tension or force but does not result in shortening or lengthening of that muscle and there is no movement of the joint connected to the muscle,” says Jonathan Whiteson, MD, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation at NYU Langone Health in New York City.
Examples of isometric exercise include planks, wall sits, and glute bridges.
How Does Isometric Exercise Affect Blood Pressure?
Cardio exercise has traditionally been the gold standard for improvements to heart health, but isometric exercise is also being recognized for its heart benefits, as well.
The study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine compared the effects of various exercise models, including aerobic exercise, isometric exercise, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), dynamic resistance training, and a combination of HIIT and isometric exercise. The study authors examined data from 270 randomized controlled trials with more than 15,800 participants that were published between 1990 and 2023.
Their analysis showed that isometric exercises led to the most significant reductions in both systolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in the arteries when the heart beats, and diastolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in the arteries between beats.
The most significant effect was seen with isometric training of large muscle groups, such as the legs, compared with smaller muscle groups, such as the hand.
So what causes this effect on blood pressure with isometric exercises? “Blood pressure rises during isometric muscle contractions as blood vessels in those muscles are constricted and the heart and blood vessels have to ‘work harder’ to maintain blood flow through those muscles,” Dr. Whiteson explains. “When the isometric contraction is released, the heart and blood vessels ‘relax’ and the blood vessels dilate and blood pressure is reduced.”
Is Isometric Exercise Alone Enough to Lower Blood Pressure?
Whiteson notes that managing blood pressure is complex and includes a number of different systems in the body, including the nervous system, the hormonal system, and the vascular system.
“Exercise, including isometric exercise, improves these nerve, hormonal and vascular changes, the combination of which results in an overall sustained lower blood pressure,” he says. “Regular (daily) ongoing exercise optimizes this process. Stopping exercise — being sedentary — reverses this process and blood pressure rises and hypertension can return.”
It’s also important to remember that every person is different and the cause for elevated blood pressure and the amount of blood pressure reduction is highly individualized, says Scott Jerome, DO, director of sports cardiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Westminster.
“Anything that helps control blood pressure will help heart health,” he says. “Isometric exercise is just one arm of a multimodality total approach to managing high blood pressure. High blood pressure management methods include weight control, reduction in salt intake, regular exercise, and medication if needed.”
Is Isometric Exercise Right for You?
Isometric exercises are considered generally safe for most people, but if you want to incorporate this form of movement into your plan to control blood pressure, talk to your doctor first.
“Caution needs to be used when individuals with preexisting poorly controlled hypertension or heart disease perform isometric exercise as there can be an excessive rise in blood pressure and increased strain on the heart resulting in damage to the heart like a myocardial infarction [heart attack],” Whiteson says.
For this reason, it’s important to breathe during isometric exercise, as holding your breath can result in very high spikes of blood pressure.
“At extremes of resistance exercise combined with breath holding, the work the heart has to do to maintain appropriate circulation throughout the body can result in cardiac strain,” Whiteson notes.
How to Incorporate Isometric Exercise Into Your Routine
If you’ve gotten the all clear from your physician, there are easy ways to incorporate isometric exercises into your routine.
“We do isometric exercises in many of our daily activities,” Whiteson says. “Carrying a bag in our hands with fingers gripped around the handle is an isometric exercise to the hand and forearm muscles.”
Other simple isometric movements include standing on your tippy toes and balancing on one leg and maintaining the position.
Planks and wall sits are two very beneficial isometric exercises, as they incorporate a variety of muscle groups, including the arms, legs, and abdominals.
To perform a wall sit, stand with your back against the wall and place your feet firmly on the ground about two feet away. Slide your back down the wall and bend your legs at a 90 degree angle as if you’re sitting in a chair. Keep your abdominal muscles engaged and remember to breathe.
To get into a plank position, lie flat on your stomach and then lift yourself up onto your forearms. Hold this position and then lift your hips off the floor in line with your shoulders. Engage your core and breathe.
Both wall sits and planks should be held for 20 to 30 seconds to start and you can gradually increase this time.
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