PLEASE help me sort my stamina!!!

[Shortofchange]

I have horrendous stamina but nothing is helping it!

I used to dread sports at school- I was skinny, long legged and everyone expected me to be good at it but I hated the feeling of my heart going so fast and feeling like I was going to faint after 1 race:

Today I was walking my dog through the woods and had to walk up a hill, it was probably around 40 metres and around 45 degree slope? Just a normal hill in the woods. It’s only 16 degrees so warm but not particularly hot, it’s also raining. The ground was the normal gravelly mud you get on woodland trails.

I could barely do it. I had to stop at the top because I was so exhausted and I felt weak and faint with it. My heart was pounding and I felt like I had just run a marathon. Obviously I don’t know what my pulse was but I could tell it was fast.

I’ve always been like this and I don’t know why! I’m healthy, active (dancing), young, and my BMI is around 21 so normal. My diet is normal and I’m not iron deficient as I’ve had that tested in the past in s routine appointment as well as oxygen levels, so I think my problems are just fitness related rather than health. I’m really struggling and my lack of stamina has been noticed by my dance coach before and it’s not improving regardless of cardio, training or any types of exercising. The weak feeling eventually passes and my heart slows back down itself if I take a break or sit down, but I come across as being lazy as I have to do this quite a lot.

its also embarrassing when when we are out and I’ve got to try and pretend I’m not dying inside (eg going up stairs in shops).

In case it’s relevant I’m quite an anxious person and even when I’m not worried about something my body still seems to be anxious. I was admitted in hospital for a while after an accident and I wasn’t worried or anxious at all but my pulse was always above 100 and at times went up to 150+, which they said was anxiety from being in hospital which seems likely although I wasn’t aware of being anxious it was probably subconscious. Not sure that’s relevant at all because obviously I wasn’t anxious today when walking up the hill, but just mentioning it just in case!

what the hell is wrong with my fitness? Has anyone else had similar stamina struggles before?

No I’ve never tried it but I’ll give anything a go! I’m just ridiculously unfit haha I need to sort this stamina and I’ll try anything to help it. Thanks so much for the tip x

did they investigate why your periods were so infrequent?

Yeah the GP did a blood test to check my hormones- my thyroid and everything else in my blood was fine, they’re not really sure why I don’t get them very often but they said I’m probably just lucky👍

I’ve only had 3 this year and I don’t get cramps or anything either which I’m really grateful for! I get a little sickness only on the first day but apart from that I wouldn’t know I’m on it. nobody else in my family is like this so I must have just got lucky haha

Sounds like tachycardia to me. Have a look. It's a high resting heart rate and comes with a few other symptoms

you're still v young so it might be worth pushing to get a scan to make sure all is ok with your ovaries etc. Did they test you for diabetes?

Really that sounds odd to me. Surely that will impact your fertility if you want to have children one day. Do you ovulate regularly?

Honestly same I don’t really understand it. When I asked doctors about it as a teenager they said it would regulate when I got older but it’s just never settled in the last 12 or so years since starting. My thyroid is fine and my blood test was normal so that’s a relief and when I recently asked a doctor about it he said if it’s always been like this then it’s fine and it’s normal for me, it’s not like a new change or something sudden. I try not to let it worry me because I know I’m healthy but it does make me a bit worried about why it’s not normal and if it’ll affect if I can have children one day.

how would I know if I’m ovulating regularly? Sorry I know that’s probably an embarrassingly obvious question but I assumed ovulating= period or is that wrong? I’m guessing from experience I’ll get my next period in roughly September and that will likely be the 4th and last this year x

I know you have dismissed the possibility of being hyper mobile, but it's a possibility still. I have no stamina, always useless at PE etc. Wasn't diagnosed until late 20's as had always presented as normal/ not very flexible as far back as I could remember. But I was (unknown to me) more flexible than normal as a very young child, and essentially overworked all my joints leading to "normal" flexibility presentation, and low stamina (as all muscles had to work extra hard to stabilise joints) Do you have any joints that click, or feel like they slip? Did you often sit in frog position (legs bending back at knees) as a child on the floor?

I have had a similar challenge most of my life. I am hypermobile but not diagnosed until my 30s. Struggled SO MUCH with stairs and had zero stamina in general. I echo what @quickbathroombreak says. Get yourself checked for hyper mobility.
My DD is the same and is even more hypermobile than me. The hypermobility causes low muscle tone which means the muscles are weaker than normal. Plus overworked to keep you going. Incidentally as someone mentioned upthread my go to cardio are swimming and recumbent bike. However weight training is what was a game changer for me. Building up those (poor) muscles with weights and loads of protein - now I feel like a whole new human being. I can be on my feet all day and not feel tired, I can run up 2 flights of stairs 3 times for exercise. Seriously - look into it.

I would also get yout heart checked properly. I know two people in the same family who had these symptoms. Turned out they both had a hole in the heart. Sounds dramatic but it's easily fixed these days. You need to get an ECHO scan (not the same as the ECG you've had - that won't pick it up) It's like an ultrasound of your heart.

If I were you, if doctors fob you off I'd pay for a private ECHO.

Sorry if I missed it, but have you had a stress ECG done?

No I don’t think so, just a routine one in hospital when I was admitted after a fall/accident- I don’t even know what it was exactly but i think it was a routine heart test and it had stickers and wires and so on x

That’s really interesting, I actually was born with either a hole in my heart or a valve that hadn’t closed properly (I can’t remember what it was) but I think my mum said she took me back to get it checked not long after I was born and they were happy it had sorted itself, whatever it was it wasn’t serious it was something they said is quite common I think but my mum said it fixed itself anyway x

Thank you so much for all the info, yeah I was always useless at PE so I just gave up trying and I hated it haha. No I’ve never had any clicks joints and I’ve never popped or dislocated anything thankfully! I actually sometimes do sit in that position even as an adult but I usually sit cross legged or with my legs folded in some way! I don’t know why haha it just feels weird having my legs straight, I presumed something to do with years of dancing!

Thank you so much for the information! Is there a specific type of protein that you use or would recommend? I’ve never tried it before but I’ll give anything a go if it helps!

Sorry I don't have much helpful information like the other posters but if you were walking up a 45 degree slope that is a near vertical wall. Only goats really climb those kind of gradients.

What? I mean, it’s reasonably steep, but vertical would be 90%…
@Shortofchange you said you would go to the doc if you had concerns but you just thought it was being unfit. But you also say it sometimes happens when you aren’t exercising, and that it prevents you doing dance. All that, plus everything people have said here, should make you rethink. Go to the doctor and tell him/her what you have said here.

I would go back to the GP. It sounds like you’ve been fobbed off a lot with assumptions that your anomalous readings and the like are down to something temporary, but never gone back and hassled them when that hasn’t turned out to be the case. If cardio training hasn’t improved your stamina you aren’t going to find advice on improving your stamina here, because the way to improve it is to keep pushing yourself a bit more each time. If that’s not doing it then something’s going on.

I wonder if you’re reliable witness to all this though? You talk about a “normal” hill with a slope of 45 degrees. 45 degrees is in no way a normal hill. It is very, very steep. A 20 degree slope is normally considered steep.

I don’t mean that in a nasty way, I’m trying to point out that there may be an something about this that you aren’t really seeing. And perhaps there’s a psychological aspect to it beyond anxiety possibly affecting your heart rate readings.

I know what you mean! I’m just shit at angles though. That’s why I tried to explain a few times in my OP that it was just a standard normal hill in the woods and i tried to guess roughly the slope and got it completely wrong. Tbh 20 degrees is probably a lot more likely! It was just a normal hill I wasn’t hiking or anything.

I’ve definitely not got the other numbers wrong though, i have a period tracker on my phone because I wanted to see if there was a pattern with my missed periods so I know my dates/numbers for that are right, and the pulse numbers are definitely right too it’s just the angle bit I got wrong.

yeah all my tests are normal so I didn’t want to go back and waste their time because im fine and it’s just anxiety related- I don’t really feel anxious but they said it can be subconscious. I just wasnt sure if there was specific exercises or workouts that would help, I’ve never tried extra protein like someone suggested so I’ll give that a go and try to focus on building more muscle strength in the mean time

thank you for the help! x

I’ve always been shit with angles 🤣 just forget the 45 degree part, it was just a normal boring hill in the woods haha. Definitely wasn’t hiking up a near vertical wall! 🤣

BMI of 21, always been thin and sporadic periods.

It sounds like you need to put weight on. Even at a healthy BMI, If you don't have enough body fat it fucks up your cycle.

I think maybe seeing a doctor would be a good idea. That does sound very high. It might be you just need to build up stamina slowly and and steadily, but it's probably better to check that you're not going to harm yourself trying.

(If it's ballroom/Latin you do (just guessing from the 90 seconds bursts, competitions and sorting your shoes out!) you'll struggle if you have to do a five dance final. The best thing for improving my dance stamina was social dancing — I wasn't dancing nearly as flat out as I would at a competition, but I'd dance pretty much solidly for two or three hours and only sit a couple out.)

If you have a bit of money to spare (or a friend who can lend you one) you could consider getting a heart rate monitor. There are lots designed for fitness that you can wear for an extended time. Then you can see what your resting heart rate actually is, what exercise pushes it up and how long it takes you to recover. That would give you something a bit more concrete to talk about if you gp tells you all your resting rate of 100bpm readings are due to anxiety. Another alternative is to get a few sessions with a fitness trainer who's a qualified physio - they should be able to spot if there's a medical issue and give you more to talk to your doctor about.

Well I'd definitely be going to get your heart checked up again then! Without a doubt.

Sorry I didn’t mean it to be such a drip feed (the heart thing when I was a baby) I just completely forgot about it until someone mentioned it here. My mum took me back to get it checked as a baby and they were happy with it (whatever it was- a hole or a valve or something like that- it had fixed itself and they said it was fine) so I don’t really consider it to be anything actually wrong with my heart because it’s fine now- if that makes sense!