workout – Bradical Insights

In this post I will get you up to speed on how I’m doing in this, the second week of my fitness challenge.

Weight:

UPDATE!: I decided that the math just wasn’t working out. How could such a drastic change in my diet and lifestyle not have more dramatic results? So I decided to weigh myself again today. This time I moved the scale a few times to make sure it was sitting flat on our stone tile floor, the result was three measures all at the same 212 pounds- a significant difference from the previous day.

Turns out dropping 500-800 calories of craft beer per day does have an effect!

There you have it. The world’s most boring graph. I don’t see the value in weighing myself everyday, hence the flatline with a drop at the end. I have to admit that I’m surprised at the relatively slow rate that I’m losing weight. Think about it, I dropped all alcohol, all sugar(not something I ate much of anyway) and most all processed food. The loss of alcohol alone should be having a much bigger impact. It is even more surprising when you add in the next piece of evidence.

Exercise:

As you can see on my RunGap Chart, the addition of ice skating has really upped my game. I chose to call it High Intensity Interval Training because that is how I used it. After reacquainting myself with ice skating, I used the 30-40 minutes I typically can endure skating(it is way harder than I remember!) to skate laps in groups of four at my local rink. I’m not sprinting or anything but I don’t have to either. My heart rate jumped from about a 100 to 150 and above in that short time. It’s hard to differentiate the skating from the P90X workouts above, but I always skate in the afternoon so skating is always listed as the second HIIT workout on each day.

Here’s a peek at a typical skating day as seen by a heart rate chart:

I think you can see from the chart why I choose to label it high intensity interval training, lot’s of peaks and valleys. In effect, I’m doing two workouts a day. However, the weather has not cooperated lately, it’s actually raining outside, more like a freezing rain on top of snow. I didn’t think to use the iwatch to gauge it, but in the last three days I’ve probably shoveled for a total of 2 hours. I’m usually bathed in sweat when I’m done, so there’s definitely work being done. Also, when I cycle the iwatch asks when I’m done-it can tell when my heart rate drops. It doesn’t do that when on the HIIT setting. So on January 13th’s morning P90 I forgot to turn it off, to make up for it I only counted a few minutes of the afternoon skate.

Diet, Sleep, and Miscellaneous

Last night we had burgers and fries from a local restaurant. It was an impossible burger, but I’d have to say it was my first real cheat. For two solid weeks I’ve eaten completely vegetarian, non processed, no sugar, heavily fresh fruit and vegetable meals. I have stayed beneath the 2660 calorie ceiling that My Fitness Pal has calculated for me to reach my goal. However, as I stated in an earlier post, I’m not necessarily looking to lose weight. I’d rather gain lean mass, or at my age, not lose anymore.

Sleep has been better than when I was drinking, but I still wake up. I get at least 8 hours every night now, but there is often a one or two hour gap in the very middle of the night that I have chosen to use for writing in my journal. Nobody is better at mentally regurgitating a day or a problem like I can. I have found that rather than worrying about not sleeping I’m in a better place if I accomplish something that I would otherwise need to do when I woke up. This way, if I sleep later than I normally do I’ve merely juggled when things are done rather than fallen behind.

The Home Gym

So, you are welcome to go back and read in depth about how I have set up my home gym, and also the problems I’m having with it. I think I have found some tweaks that work. I’m leaving the attic steps down completely to give the water vapor that accumulates on the windows and doors an “escape hatch.” I’ve also gotten smart about lifting the insulated moving blankets off the floor when I’m not exercising. This has kept them damp at most. Finally, I have become king of the squeegee. I have found that if I vacuum the absorbent mat, and squeegee the bare floor when the cars are out, it stays pretty darn dry. We have had very mild temperatures lately so stay tuned to see if these are truly workable solutions.

Photo Credit

Featured Image: Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay

In this post I will attempt to explain how I use my 2nd generation Apple watch, an ancient Garmin Edge 705 bike computer, equally ancient videos from Sufferfest, and a Star Trac spinning bike to make my garage into a cardio wonderland. This is my way of avoiding the extravagant cost of the new home workout systems that are out there. (This is a work around, and I understand not everyone has this kind of stuff laying around, but covid forces us to think outside the box, and this is old tech-cheaply found used on the web, or freely streamed.)

Before we begin, a commercial came on the other day for some medicine, I don’t remember which, and the list of side effects was at least ten times longer and twice as terrifying as the medical condition itself. However, it did remind me that before I say another thing about health I better put out a disclaimer. So here it is:

Disclaimer: I am just some guy. You are welcome to my advice, but it’s up to you to decide for yourself if I’m full of crap. By acting on any of the suggestions I make here you are accepting responsibility for any and all consequences.

Let’s talk about cardio today. According to the Mayo Clinic:

You can calculate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. For example, if you’re 45 years old, subtract 45 from 220 to get a maximum heart rate of 175. This is the average maximum number of times your heart should beat per minute during exercise.

Admittedly, this is not the most precise way to measure your maximum heart rate, but then I’m not trying out for the olympic bobsled team either. It is important, however, to have at least a ballpark idea of your max heart rate for some key reasons. First of all, in order to know if you are working out with intensity your workouts will need to be based off of this number. Secondly, for safety’s sake you need to keep yourself in your zones. This is especially important for aging farts like myself who like to pretend we still have all the vim and vigor of the young whippersnappers. Thirdly, you need this number to set up your devices if you’re interested in using a modicum of precision in your training. Let me explain.

As I stated in earlier, the Covid pandemic has forced me to find new and interesting ways to challenge my body. No, that’s not exactly right. It has actually forced me to dust off some old technology that was pretty cutting edge a decade or so ago and combine it with some newer tech, like my Apple watch, to get a more complete picture. Speaking of “edge”, one of those pieces of technology is the Garmin Edge 705 bike computer.

(I can’t find a Creative Commons image for this elderly piece of technology. Hopefully, because I’m so positive about it, Garmin will be ok with my using this image!)

Now, you could simply use any heart rate monitor to make sure you are staying in your zones, but that requires thinking, which I don’t know about you, but is not my favorite thing to do while working out. I kind of like my workouts to be the time I don’t have to think!

Let me explain what I mean. You can see from the photo above that a rider can have up to 8 data windows on a single screen. Most of these are irrelevant for a person riding a stationary bike in a garage, especially since many activity trackers have an activity function that will track a bunch of statistics like workout time, intensity, etc. It’s the heart rate window that I use this for. Using the Mayo formula above I can set up zones for intensity.

You can see in the photo above that I have set my max heart rate based on the Mayo formula. I then set five zones, with trial and error, to fit how hard I like to spin(initially, I set them to end at 100% of max, but never felt like I was pushing it- that’s why my zone five goes above 100%). Once your device is set you’re ready for the next step. (Incidentally, there are apps for this that you can put on your phone, but then you would need a different device for the next step, I used to use my laptop set on a table in front of me.)

Sufferfest is a company that I guess was recently acquired by Wahoo, the fitness trainer manufacturer. Back in the day sufferfest made cycling videos with footage from actual tour events. That’s what I have saved in a google drive folder and use for my training. (Sufferfest is currently offering a streaming app. It’s free for 14 days so you can get a taste.)

The older videos look like this(use your imagination-this is a still from streaming video!):

All the work done setting up your zones has been for this! The text in the middle of the screen appears only periodically, but the numbers in the upper right corner are always visible. The newer videos have even more information like watts, or work, or power, but my old spinner bike doesn’t have a way to track those anyway. Besides, I have found that cadence and heart rate are all I need to get destroyed. 8.0 / 10 – that means 80% of my max heart rate. At a cadence of 80 rpm’s I need to peddle at a resistance level that raises my heart rate to 80% of max. It takes a little practice to find those levels, but it’s doable.

To make it more realistic the videos will change the numbers to match terrain, or race conditions. For example, another rider might attack, and you will be instructed to peddle at level 10 for a bit, or to stand. That’s why having your zones planned out ahead and on the computer one the handlebars in front of you makes life so much easier. No trying to determine what 8.25% of 166 is. No having to look at your wrist while peddling from a standing position.

I found a six dollar phone clamp at the hardware store that attaches to my spin bike handle. I use it to watch my Sufferfest videos that are all uploaded to a google drive folder. I use wireless headphones to further streamline the process.

That’s it. There you have it, the poor man’s workaround to the super expensive training hardware/software “solutions” that are out there. Incidentally, there are some free videos on Youtube that use much of the same type of content as Sufferfest. The Vegan Cyclist, and CTXC Videos are two that come to mind, but there are others.

A final benefit to think about is that if you stream the video portion to say a laptop or TV, then multiple people can train at once. My friend Tim and I used to train together, even though he was ten years younger. Because his max heart rate was ten points higher than mine, and he personalized his workouts to his zones on his own device, we could ride at different levels and get workouts tailored to ourselves.