Tagged Posts: Fitness
As I touched on in my last post, I am currently recuperating from an operation on a toe. The constraints I have are that I have to keep my foot elevated as much as possible, am confined to the house, and when I do stand or walk I have to wear a special shoe to keep me from applying any weight to the fore part of my foot and to protect the protuding K-wire.
Having worked hard before the operation to get my CV system into reasonable shape, I’m frustrated at the feeling that my fitness is slipping back down again. As I feel physically well apart from my foot, I wanted to work out some exercise I could do in the house. A further constraint is that the only weights we have at home are from an old, small set, and the biggest single weight I can assemble is 12kg.
After some experimentation, including using a footstool as a poor substitute for a swiss ball, I’ve come up with the following mini-circuit:
- single arm chest press (both sides)
- single arm bent-over row (both sides)
- sumo squat
- single arm curl to single arm overhead press (both sides)
Where the weight I have available is less than I would normally use, I increase the workload by increasing reps and slowing down the cadence. It seems to work well enough to get my heart rate up, and so far as I can tell does not involve any movements which would be dangerous. It’s a long way from being the equivalent of a full workout in the gym, but I hope this will at least make gym re-entry less painful 
One of the side-effects of being laid up at home after a minor operation on my foot is that I have time to read about fitness, instead of trying to get to the gym and actually do something about it…
Like many people I’m a convert to the power of interval training to give measurable fitness effects whilst minimising the time spent on a boring cardio machine at the gym, and I’ve started to think about what workouts I might need to get back into the fitness habit when my foot is recovered.
I spotted this article in the current edition of Men’s Health, reporting on studies at the University of Oklahoma into the effects of interval training. The results they claim are impressive, after 6 weeks of three 20 minute sessions per week the subjects had an average increase in maximum oxygen uptake of 18%.
The routine is based on a 2 minutes work / 1 minute recovery cycle, with 5 sets per workout (except Wk 5/Day 1 and Wk6/Day 2 which call for 6 sets). With 5 minutes warmup before that comes to 20 mins per session.
The target work heart rate in this plan is very high – from 90% to 115% of calculated Maximum Heart Rate. As various people have pointed out in the comments to the original article, how can you work at > 100%? The answer seems to be (i) calulated MHR is just an estimate, and (ii) for targets >= 100% just go flat out…
When I get back into the gym (which might be three weeks at this rate) I’ll give it a go…
Reference: Cardiovascular Interval Training – Men’s Health.
I’ve started planning this out on this wiki page
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Synesthesia on 2008-02-11:
I’m still going to the gym, although as I mentioned I’m giving organised classes a miss for a while.
I’ve been a few times since my last post, and wanted to capture some of the things I’ve (re-)discovered.
- It’s much easier to focus on aerobic training if you use a Heart Rate Monitor
- When the gym is busy, it’s surprising how long it takes to move between exercises, especially if you are using free weights and need to set the weight on each exercise.
- Making a template with the most common exercises in your routine, and using it to record a workout helps focus and motivation.
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Synesthesia on 2007-09-11
As I mentioned on Saturday, I’m looking for ways to get more engaged with my fitness activities, and as my new gym offers a range of classes within the monthly membership fee, I thought I’d try out a couple.
First exploration was last night, when I tried a class called BodyPump™. This is described in the gym brochure as A non impact resistance class, using barbells and adjustable weights. This class works all major muscles using a variety of exercises including squats, lifts and curls., which sounded like the sort of thing I wanted…
It seems that many of the classes offered in gyms are licensed products, so 5 seconds in Google allowed me to find the website of the company who created this class. There’s an extensive description of what’s involved, and some videos too, so you know what to expect.
The last time I was involved in any king of group fitness activity (about seven years ago) it looked like this – no air-conditioning, no trademarks on the workouts, as far as I could tell no-one was ever wearing lycra, and the instructors definitely didn’t have fake tans!
I felt a little self-conscious lining up for last night’s event, especially when the instructor and most of the other participants appeared to have fake tan and lycra in sufficient quantities to open a shop… Also notable that even though I’d picked what sounded like one of the more “gender-balanced” classes, there were only two of us males to a dozen females…
(more…)
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Synesthesia on 2007-09-10
- weight training worksheet (pdf):
Keywords: exerciselogging, fitness
- TargetWeightCoach Exercise plan/log (pdf):
Keywords: fitness, exerciselogging
- How to Change Up Your Weight Training Routine:
Straightsetting, pre- and post-exhaustion, vary weight/reps/sets, supersets, pyramids and reverse pyramids, tempo and tension, anabolic/anaerobic conditioning, periodisation.
Keywords: weighttraining, fitness
- Cardio Exercises – Good or Bad? How to H.I.I.T. to Burn Fat All Day:
The benefits of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), and a variety of suggested exercises for both gym and outdoors.
Keywords: sportsmedicine
- Heart Rate Training Zones:
Keywords: sportsmedicine
- Exercise and the Immune system:
Although moderate levels of exercise are good for the immune system, intense exercise (such as in athletic training) can cause a temporary reduction in immune function and increased susceptibility to infection. This article suggests that proper carbohydrate nutrition may help mitigate this
Keywords: Immunology, SportsMedicine
- Wikipatterns – Wiki Patterns:
Patterns and anti-patterns for wiki adoption.
Keywords: wiki, patterns
Over the years I’ve been an intermittent visitor to the halls of fitness.
From a peak in my mid-twenties when I did a lot of cycling (including a season of pretending to race!) it’s been something of a long-term decline over the last two decades, punctuated by occasional interludes of pushing back up the hill for a while.
Earlier this year, incentivised by our impending wedding, my partner and I threw ourselves into a six-week gym intensive, complete with personal trainer assistance. It was enough to make a tangible, and visible, difference, and more importantly to re-assure us that we could still do something effective for our fitness.
Enough so that it was high on our agenda to find a new gym when we recently moved house. Today (Saturday) was my first visit to the new gym – a relatively low-key workout because of that “getting back after a month away” feeling, combined with a lack of familiarity with the layout and the specific machines.
The gym seems much better equipped than the one we were using previously, and I’m keen to take advantage of it and make the most of this opportunity. Conscious that without the ready-made goal and deadline we had pre-wedding it will be too easy to drift, I can see that this time I need to make an effort to put some structure around my fitness activities.
Taking a lead from David Seah (and probably a million or so other bloggers) I’m going to explore how I can use this space as a way of encouraging myself through reflection and goal-setting.
