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Heart Works

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Heart Works

HeartWorks provides personalized cardiac rehabilitation & fitness in Wellington, NZ. We’re here to support your health journey.

Our expert team offers supervised exercise tailored to your cardiac needs, helping you recover with confidence.

02/11/2026

Can you exercise with atrial fibrillation?

For many people, the answer is yes.

Regular exercise can be an important part of managing cardiovascular health with AF, and research suggests it can help improve exercise capacity, symptoms and quality of life.

What can be different is how we interpret the exercise response.

Because AF produces an irregular rhythm, heart rate may fluctuate more than expected and may not always provide the clearest picture of exercise intensity on its own.

That is why things like how hard the exercise feels, workload, breathing, symptoms and recovery can all provide useful additional information.

Some people with AF have very few symptoms. Others may notice palpitations, breathlessness, fatigue or reduced exercise tolerance — and the experience can vary from day to day.

At Heartworks, the aim is not simply to chase a particular heart-rate number. It is to understand the overall response and help find an exercise level that is appropriate for the individual.

If you are new to exercise or returning after a change in your AF, start gradually and discuss your exercise plan with your healthcare team.

AF may change the rhythm — but it doesn’t necessarily mean movement has to stop. ❤️

29/10/2026

Starting cardiac rehabilitation can feel like a big step — particularly if you are not quite sure what to expect.

Some people arrive worried that they won’t be fit enough. Others are nervous about exercising after a cardiac event, unsure how hard they should be working, or simply unfamiliar with the clinic and the people around them. And for some, it is a mixture of all of those things.

That is why your first Heartworks assessment starts with getting to know you.

We will show you around the clinic first, explain how the Heartworks programme works, and talk through things like how we use heart-rate zones and other measures to help guide exercise. From there, we sit down and talk.

We want to understand your cardiac history, current medications, any symptoms you are experiencing, what exercise has looked like for you previously, and what you would like to achieve through rehabilitation.

For one person, the goal might be walking further without feeling breathless. For someone else, it might be getting back to the golf course, returning to the gym, travelling confidently, rebuilding strength, or simply feeling less nervous about exercising again.

We will also take some baseline measurements, including resting heart rate and blood pressure, and complete an appropriate exercise or functional assessment. This gives us useful information about where you are starting from and helps us begin shaping an exercise programme around you.

And importantly, there is time to ask questions.

There is no expectation that you arrive already knowing what you should be doing — that is what the assessment is there for.

Your first appointment is really about helping us understand where you are now, where you want to get to, and how we can help you get there with confidence.❤️

27/10/2026

Pacemaker or ICD — what’s actually the difference?

They can look quite similar, but they are designed to do different things.

A pacemaker primarily supports the heart when it is beating too slowly or needs help maintaining an appropriate rhythm. It monitors the heartbeat and can deliver small electrical impulses when pacing is required.

An ICD — Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator — is designed to detect and treat dangerous abnormal heart rhythms. Depending on the rhythm and device, it may use pacing or deliver a shock to restore a safer rhythm. Many ICDs also include pacemaker functions.

Understanding that difference can also matter when returning to exercise. Device type, settings, heart-rate response, symptoms and the underlying cardiac condition can all help inform how exercise is monitored and progressed.

At Heartworks, the aim isn’t to be afraid of the device — it’s to understand it and build confidence exercising with it.

25/10/2026

There’s a lot that happens behind the scenes of a Heartworks exercise programme.

When you see our team chatting together, we might be discussing how someone responded to their last session, whether their workload is still appropriate, a change in symptoms or recovery, or whether it is time to progress something — or leave it exactly where it is.

Those decisions aren’t based simply on how many weeks someone has been attending.

We consider things like exercise tolerance, symptoms, recovery, heart-rate and blood-pressure response, perceived effort, consistency, confidence and what we’re seeing during the sessions.

Sometimes the right decision is to progress. Sometimes it is to modify. And sometimes it is to hold the programme where it is for a little longer.

That ongoing discussion and clinical reasoning is part of what individualised rehabilitation looks like at Heartworks.

Progression isn’t about changing the programme for the sake of it. It’s about making the right change, at the right time, for the person in front of us. ❤️

21/10/2026

A reminder that we’ll be closed for Labour Day on Monday 26 October.

Catch up on highlights from our final Education Evening of 2026, with recordings now available on Heartworks Live.

Plus, book a Pop-Up Class on Friday 6 November and register your interest in our upcoming FREE Heartbeat CPR training with Wellington Free Ambulance.

https://mailchi.mp/heartworks/labour-day-on-monday-education-evening-highlights

20/10/2026

What does “supervised exercise” actually mean at Heartworks?

It is more than simply having someone nearby while you exercise.

During a Heartworks session, our Clinical Exercise Physiologists are looking at the whole exercise response — which may include heart rate, blood pressure, workload, perceived effort, symptoms and recovery.

We are also observing how someone is moving, how they are tolerating the session, and whether the exercise needs to be adjusted on the day.

Sometimes that means progressing the workload. Sometimes it means changing an exercise, allowing more recovery, or keeping things where they are.

Supervision also gives us an opportunity to help people understand why we are making those decisions, so that over time they become more confident recognising their own exercise response.

At Heartworks, supervised exercise is about monitoring, interpreting and progressing exercise around the individual in front of us.

19/10/2026

What does “heart failure” actually mean?

It is an understandably confronting term — and one of the biggest misconceptions is that it means the heart has stopped working.

It doesn’t.

Heart failure means the heart is not pumping blood, or relaxing and filling, as effectively as it should. For some people, the heart muscle may be weaker and have difficulty squeezing effectively. For others, the heart may be relatively stiff and have difficulty relaxing and filling normally.

This can contribute to symptoms such as breathlessness, fatigue, reduced exercise tolerance and fluid build-up causing swelling in the legs or difficulty breathing when lying down.

Heart failure is a long-term condition, but there is a lot that can be done to manage it. Medication, symptom monitoring, lifestyle management and appropriately prescribed physical activity can all form part of care.

For people whose heart failure is stable, exercise is also an important part of management. Current international guidance supports personalised exercise training to improve physical function, exercise capacity and quality of life. OUP Academic

At Heartworks, that means understanding the individual first — their diagnosis, symptoms, functional capacity, medications and response to exercise — and prescribing accordingly.

Heart failure doesn’t mean the heart has stopped. And it doesn’t mean movement has to stop either. ❤️

15/10/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our last Heartworks Education Evening for this year ❤️

Our theme for last night was Risk, Prevention & The Long Game — bringing together three different topics with a shared focus on supporting long-term cardiovascular health.

We were very fortunate to hear from three different perspectives:

Jasmine Harding, Clinical Psychologist, presented The Power of Small Habits: Building Sustainable Wellbeing, exploring how habits are formed and how healthy behaviours can become more achievable and sustainable over time.

Dr Steven McAuley, Infectious Diseases Specialist and General Medical Consultant at Wellington Hospital, gave us a practical overview of endocarditis — what it is, why it occurs, who may be at greater risk, and some of the important steps that can help reduce that risk.

Josh Bohmer, Lead Clinical Exercise Physiologist at Heartworks, presented Finding the Right Dose: Weekly Exercise Volume in Cardiac Rehab, looking at how much exercise we accumulate across the week and how we can approach exercise volume safely and practically for long-term cardiovascular health.

Although the topics were different, the common theme was clear: small, informed actions taken consistently over time can make a meaningful difference.

A sincere thank you to Jasmine, Steve and Josh for sharing their knowledge, and to everyone who came along and made it such an enjoyable evening.

These evenings are an important part of what we do at Heartworks — creating a space to keep learning, ask questions and build confidence in managing cardiovascular health for the long term. ❤️

13/10/2026

Why can fatigue linger after a cardiac event?

For some people, one of the more frustrating parts of recovery is feeling more tired than expected — even when everything seems to be moving in the right direction.
Fatigue can have several contributors.

Your body may still be recovering from the event or procedure. A period of reduced activity can affect fitness and strength. Sleep may have changed. Some medications can contribute to tiredness, and the emotional impact of a cardiac event can affect energy too.

That is one reason cardiac rehabilitation is about more than simply telling someone to exercise.

The right amount of activity can help rebuild fitness, strength and confidence, and regular exercise can support better sleep and energy over time. But recovery also requires appropriate rest and progression.

Importantly, not all fatigue should automatically be attributed to recovery.

If tiredness is new, worsening, significantly limiting your usual activities, or occurring alongside symptoms such as increasing breathlessness, dizziness, fainting, swelling, palpitations or chest discomfort, it is worth discussing with your healthcare team.

At Heartworks, part of rehabilitation is helping people understand when to progress, when to recover, and when a change in symptoms needs further review.

Address

202 Thorndon Quay
Wellington
6011

Opening Hours

Monday	9:30am - 5pm
Tuesday	9:30am - 7pm
Wednesday	9:30am - 7pm
Thursday	9:30am - 7pm

Website

https://www.heartworks.nz/

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