Irregular heartbeat after weightlifting

Greetings,

I'm a 22 year old male with high blood pressure, due to having recently been a smoker and poor eating habits, but otherwise am in fit physical condition.

Every time I lift weights, do chinups, and occasionally when I run for extended periods of time my heart begins skipping and beating erratically.I've taken measures to lower my blood pressure (quit smoking, quit caffeine, cut down on sugar and salt) with great success, and my heart rarely skips when I'm not exercising, but I can count on it doing so every single time I lift weights or perform some other type of intense muscular strain.

It will skip around for about a minute or two, then as far as I can tell return to it's normal resting rate of about 68 per minute.
To describe the abnormal rhythm, I would say it begins beating much harder and slower for about three beats, and then double-beats two or three times (half beat-beat, beat half-beat beat) then hard and slow, perhaps skipping once and then double beating again. I hope that makes sense, I imagine the rhythm would looks something like this on an EKG:
^,_^,_,_, ^_^,^_._^,^_,_^,_^,^

Should I be concerned? Is this a sign of an arrythmia? Should I stop exercising?
Thank you for your input.

[Mjolnir07]

Additionally, frequently I have this gurgling type of noise right over my heart without any pain, It sound similar to a rumbling stomach but in more of a concentrated area. I've been told this can be a sign of a heart murmur, but I feel it may be more likely just indigestion.

[donna80]

The only way to tell would be to see a cardio. But don't worry it happens to nearly everone.

[Jerry_NJ]

Congratulations on your work to get "heart healthy" - you are the winner here.

It sounds to me like you need to moderate you exercise, i.e., lighten up a bit and see if you can build up slowly to the level your now working at and find some improvement in hearth rhythm.

Weight lifting, especially "power" lifting puts a lot of stain on the heart, I understand.  If you doing power lifting (the stuff that makes you red in the face) you may want to consider backing down on that a bit in favor of more repetitions.