[kazinator]

I was so fit in my 30's, I measured a heart rate of like 38 sitting in a work meeting.

I could amuse nurses in an emergency room by clipping my finger into the machine, instead of the patient I was with, to set off the alarms with the low numbers.

One time I came in with some severe stomach flu. I was lying on my back and the nurse said to another, "Come here! Look this guy is so thin, you can see his heart beating in his abodomen. (Due to the aorta passing through there, and the heart behind it being massive.)"

When your HR is low, you can get pretty dizzy if you stand up at the wrong moment between pumps.

[kstrauser]

When I was training to run a leg of a marathon relay a few years ago, my resting heart rate dropped a lot. One time I mentioned my overnight HR of 38 to my wife, a doctor. Next thing you know, I’m in a different doctor’s office being fitted for a Holter monitor. Everything was fine. Turned out my heart was just in great shape.

The doc said that they’re more aware of low HRs now because so many people are wearing 24/7 heart monitors, aka smart watches. Numbers that use to be taken as signs of “holy crap, something bad’s happening” are sometimes more like “huh, guess the normal range is wider than we thought”.

But for anyone reading who has a fast or slow heart rate: let your doctor be the judge of that, OK? Lots of the time it is something wrong, and you don’t want to dawdle on that one.

[throaway2501]

there’s a famous story about Wayne Gretzky’s (170 lb weight, 140 lb max bench) recuperative abilities being so powerful that the Oilers’ trainers thought the testing machine was broken.

[whamlastxmas]

I don’t understand including the bench number. It’s really low and seems unlikely it was that low?

[throaway2501]

that was his max recorded bench with the team.

[cgh]

I strength train two or three times a week and my heart rate last night was 42. I think a low heart rate is at least partly genetic. Definitely agree about the dizziness.

[pharrington]

How often were you going to the emergency room?