Giddy When Lifting Weight In Gym? Training Big Muscle Groups Cause Nausea?

Ask any bodybuilder and everyone will say they will feel lightheaded, nauseous, and even sometimes even puke when they train big muscle groups with exercises such as squats and deadlifts. Some great bodybuilders even take pride that they puke after an intensive bout of weightlifting as an indication that they have had a fantastic workout. But to many, these symptoms are unpleasant, and disruptive, and could even be dangerous and cause injuries. Perhaps, you may also have experienced these symptoms as well.

What happened? Well, there could be several causes.

• First of all, you may have eaten or drunk too much before your gym workout. So your blood is channeled to your digestive organs for your digestive process. But when you begin to exercise intensively, especially on big muscle groups, a lot of blood is channeled away from your digestive organs to the muscles. When that happens, food is now in your digestive system left unattended and therefore undigested and thus causing you to feel nauseous.

• Your blood sugar level may be low. This could happen when you are on a low carbohydrate caloric restriction diet or have not eaten for some time and are now lifting heavy weights. You will feel giddy, and tired and may even develop a headache and suffer muscular weakness. It simply boils down to a decreased energy level for not having enough energy nutrients prior to your workout.

• The most common cause of nausea when weight lifting is low blood pressure. It could be inherent that you have low blood pressure and if not, it is caused by the change of body position. Have you ever felt giddy when you are sitting stationary for some time and then suddenly got up and stretch? Well, if you have had that experience, then the same logic and science apply. The sudden fall of blood pressure happens when you are in a squatting position and then suddenly bursting upwards to a standing position with the blood pooling in your lower body and not sending the blood fast enough to your upper body and your brain.

These are some of the reasons why many of us will experience giddiness, nausea, and even puke when we do exercises like squats and deadlifts with heavy weights and when working on big muscle groups. 

Now that we know the reasons, we can avoid these unpleasant symptoms by taking necessary precautions during our gym workouts on heavy-weight days.