Heart rate and exercise

Prev: Pretty accurate for an innertubewebnets blind assessment - Next: I am still here - Home

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:34:00

This article in the NYT talks about heart rate and exercise. The article makes it seem like you shouldn’t bother monitoring it. I just don’t agree. Seeing heart rate as the goal is a mistake. Obsessing over the number - any numbers unless you are a high-performance athlete - is ridiculous and counter-productive. Watching your heart rate should be, like anything else, just another tool you use in your fitness arsenal.

It’s just one way to measure, in real time, the efficacy of what you are doing. It isn’t meant to replace common sense, or to prevent you from actively monitoring your own condition at all times with the best gadget you own; your own brain. It’s not a goal in and of itself. It’s a tool. It’s something to which you can refer to help you gauge how hard - or SLOWER - you need to go at any given moment.

That’s right, slower. What the NYT article doesn’t mention is using a heart rate monitor to tell you when to rest. By rest I mean slow down and catch your breath, return to your baseline, refresh your energy, drink some water, etc. I know that at my current fitness level, my max is probably around 185. “Ish.” None of these numbers are rock solid without testing by a professional, but they don’t have to be. Your target heart rate is a guideline, not an absolute. So let’s take 185, which after 30 seconds would leave me breathing heavy, and after a minute wishing I was dead, and after three minutes might actually kill me.

If you want to increase overall fitness, a good target is 80% of your max, which for me is 148.8. So I shoot for 150, and if I see it climb over 155, I ease up whatever it is I am doing. Generally I use inclines on a treadmill to push myself, as I cannot jog, or even walk faster than 4 miles an hour due to the punishment it gives my knees. So I go uphill. If I get up to 155-ish, I decrease the angle slightly. I believe in the HIIT concept*, so after a certain amount of 80%-ish work, I back off to 60% and catch my breath, sip some water, etc. In the last two weeks alone, what I have noticed by using these numbers is that A. it takes more effort to get into my target zone, which means that B. I am making progress and I feel fitter overall. I lose my breath far less easily and am able to do more and more all the time.

One more time, for the cheap seats; none of these numbers really mean anything as objective, scientifically precise measurements. They’re just part of the overall assessment you should be doing of how you feel while you are working out. My tiny, one-person-study anecdotal opinion of the matter is, knowing a number helps me. It might help you as well if you use a little common sense and don’t obsess on numbers and targets and competition. It’s just a guide, and ultimately your numbers are SO subjective that comparing them to someone else’s are meaningless. Hell, you can’t even compare your own numbers to your own numbers. Every day is different, depending on everything from stress to how much sleep you got last night to how long it took you to walk to the treadmill/elliptical/running path/grass field/stripper pole.

And that brings me to the single most important aspect of trying to get fitter; STOP OBSESSING. Don’t obsess over the scale, or your BMI, or your heart rate, or trying to go for an hour on the treadmill, how many pounds you can lift on the MegaMaxSuperMuscleBuilder 6000. As long as your overall trends are in whatever direction you want, and for us fatties that means downward in weight and upward in general fitness, then you are succeeding. Be patient.

You didn’t get fat overnight. You aren’t going to get skinny that way either, no matter what the man or woman on the TV promises you.

* I thought I’d take a second and detail what I do for HIIT training. Treadmills only for now, as my knees still aren’t strong (in the right way) enough to do the ellipticals or stairs or even the bike. I like the treadmill anyway. Don’t ask me why. :) Anyway, I do a timed 35 minutes twice a week and 15-20 minutes (depending on energy that day) on the days that I lift weights. The 35 minute workout is much more intense...I try to go as fast as I can without hurting my knees and push the inclines pretty hard. I actually have some workout mixes with a ding that goes off at the appropriate speed-up/slow down times, as well as two Nike+ training mixes with a coach who talks you along and tells you what to do. Those are for runners, but I just pitch all the speeds down to what I’m comfortable doing. When he says “Zone 2 steady run” I do an inclined moderate walk, and when he says “race pace” I push as fast as I can walk without hurting myself and usually put the incline at 25 to 50% of whatever number he gives. His 4 degrees is my 6.

It’s working for me, takes less actual clock time in the gym, and I’m FAR less sore and half-injured than I used to be. My feet hardly ever swell and throb like they were doing when I was going three miles an hour for 90 freaking minutes. Plus, the weightlifting is working better, which I assume is due to a combo of the fact that I am not eating up fast-twitch muscle fiber as fast as I could build it, plus an added intake of protein on workout days.

No, I’m not going crazy with some miracle BS muscle-building powder or HGH. Just a little whey powder in 8 oz of Glucose Control Boost. I picked the Glucose COntrol version because it has significantly lower amounts of...you guessed it, sugar.

Posted by JimK at 02:34 PM on April 20, 2008
Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email to a friend |

Categories: Personal
Tags: weight loss, fitness, exercise, heart rate
Technorati: weight loss fitness heart rate exercise