Palpitations/ irregular heartbeat during exercise

[Oneris]

Hi all,

I exercise regularly generally with no issue however today after sit ups I noticed my heartbeat had gone very irregular with skipped beats and irregular rhythm with fast and slow beats for around 30 seconds after it then went back to normal i carried on excersizing and then it happened again this made me really panic, I felt light headed and I then had a full panic attack . I do occasionally suffer ectopic beats, I have GAD but this is the first panic attack I've had in nearly a year and have felt my anxiety creeping up again the last week but I have never felt my heart beat like that before, I now feel very cold and shakey and having odd chest pains but heart rate seems normal. I am now really worried that there could be a problem. Just keep thinking it can't be normal for heart to beat like that after sit ups

[mark220]

i workout 3-4 times per week and most of the time i get an irregular heart beat during my routines. For me i dont tend to get them when im pushing my body on full load (if that makes any sense) but i tend to get them on cool down. Example - doing a heavy chest press set i dont get them during the pushes but the minute i stop, sit up and start to rest i get them.

I had a ton of tests done including a stress test and the same occurred during that - non when i was running on the treadmill then when i sat down i got loads. I was still connecting to the machine when this happened and the technicians said its nothing to worry about (something about the irregular beat all coming from the same focal point).

I do generally get irregular beats most days and on a bad day it can be thousands (i estimate 6-8 thousand) and on good days it can be as little as 10-20. This has been going on for 12+ years now and still non the wiser as to what actually causes them. You can go round and round in circles trying to work it out but what it eventually comes down to is your mind. The only time i dont get them is when my mind is 100% occupied with something else - and that is the only consistent thing i can think of. Your mind is crazy powerful and will often overwhelm all reasoning, hence your panic attack when you noticed the heart beat changes. What i find happens is you associate the irregular beats with something (e.g. exercise) and then whenever you do that thing they will come. It's as if you program your mind to give yourself an irregular heat beat and its annoying as hell !

One doctor i saw once made a good point which did help me a bit and said, when you get these irregular beats - can you still finish your gym routine ? sure its scary to do this, but if your able to continue then it helps back up the fact that the issue is not physical and is actually in your head. If you had a heart condition you would not be able to exercise to the same standard you have done in the past and would have multiple other serious symptoms, like passing out or intense chest pains.

Hope that helps.