Routines such as wall squats and planks, also called isometric exercises, mean holding your body still and tensing your muscles for long periods of time and experts now believe they could be the key to lowering blood pressure and living a healthier life.
The study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at 270 trials over 13 years, involving 16,000 participants, some of whom had health conditions and others who did not.
To learn which exercises make the most impact, researchers tested exactly how much blood pressure dropped after participants took part in five key programmes: Aerobic exercise such as cycling, walking and jogging, resistance training such as lifting weights, combined training (weights and aerobic exercise), high-intensity interval training such as sprint intervals, isometric exercises such as wall squats. The results were revealing.
All five programmes were overall successful in reducing blood pressure, however isometric exercises were significantly more effective according to the research.
In fact, wall squats, where you prop yourself against a wall with thigh parallel to the ground, were the most effective of all the single exercises tested in the study.
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Jamie O’Driscoll, a reader in cardiovascular physiology at Canterbury Christ Church university and senior author of the report, told the BBC that isometric exercises place a very different stress on the body to aerobic exercise.
He said: “They increase the tension in the muscles when held for two minutes, then cause a sudden rush of blood when you relax. This increases the blood flow, but you must remember to breathe.”
The research used two related methods called systematic review and meta-analysis. In systematic reviews, several studies are selected and evaluated in a structured way, while meta-analysis is the statistical method used to give an ‘average’ of the findings from these studies, which is considered high-quality evidence.
Joanne Whitmore, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the BHF explained how people who take on exercise they enjoy tend to carry on for longer, which she said was key in maintaining lower blood pressure.
She said “Exercise is good for your heart health and health in general. It can reduce the risk of heart and circulatory diseases by up to a third. Aerobic exercise in particular can help the heart and circulatory system work better through lowering blood pressure. Current guidelines also encourage muscle strengthening exercises, like yoga or Pilates.”
Whitmore outlined other lifestyle choices that can benefit your blood pressure: “These include keeping to a healthy weight, eating a balanced diet, cutting down on salt, not drinking too much alcohol and taking any prescribed medication.”