I’m getting more accustomed to the new machines at the gym, so I can’t use that as an excuse for blowing off my workouts until recently (Monday). I did play 18 holes of completely humiliating golf last week, and I’ve been on my bicycle some, but I have to say I’m kind of out of my preferred routine.
I hope to be back among the sweaty machines (sweating machines?) tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve been a bit vexed about my seeming inability to quickly ramp up my heart rate on these machines. The other day, I climbed on the Elliptical Death Machine and dialed up the “interval” workout. So, I was shuffling uphill at a pretty good clip. Five minutes passed, and my heart rate was still mired in the 80s. Ten minutes passed, and I was barely hitting triple digits. I had to get a good 20 minutes into my routine before I was in the neighborhood of 120-130, which is where I think I’m supposed to be in order to get the most benefit from all this flailing around.
I’m thinking that it’s a good thing that I’m not out of breath right away, but I’m not sure, so I check in with SW, my fitness guru, who says that, indeed, if it takes awhile to get to that sweet spot, it’s a sign that I’m in pretty good shape. Plus, he adds, it’s a good idea to take my time ramping up the old ticker, because my body and heart need to adjust to the work they’re being called upon to do.
The real value of all this heart-rate stuff, says Fernando Pages Ruiz in this 2005 piece in Experience Life, is to use it to guide you through your workouts and on to your specific fitness goals. If I was trying to lose weight, for instance, (ha ha…) I’d exercise in the range of my aerobic threshold (114 to 124). Above that point, Ruiz explains, my body would stop burning fat and start burning carbs.
I’m really not trying to lose weight (I do seem to be holding steady about 162; maybe I could stand to get a bit leaner. . .), but I am trying to gain muscle mass. (That’s another story.) So, it appears I need to be a little more strategic.
Of course, that would mean I’d have to have some goals.
Pumping Irony
Craig Cox, EL’s managing editor and resident geezer, explores the joys and challenges of aging well.
Recently in heart rate Category
The Heart of the Matter
Pedal Pusher
This is how it feels sometimes. Really.
I rode my bicycle to work this morning, even though I chose to wear the inexplicable sneaker-khakis combo (see “If the Shoe Fits” below) previously designed for walking. So, that means I’m destined for the dreaded treadmill tonight at the gym. Running Walking builds bone density, after all, and if I don’t hoof it to work, I try to do it on the moving rubber mat.
Except on Wednesday, when I bicycled to work and then was mysteriously attracted to the stationary bike downstairs, where I did a sort of interval thing (pedaling at about 80 RPMs for a couple of minutes and then cranking it up to about 110 RPMs for a minute or so), which pumped my heart rate up into the high 130s.
This pretty much knocked me out after about 20 minutes, but it made me think about something I read recently (and you’ll see in the magazine in September) about how adults need to really work their bodies to their maximum RPMs every day for at least a minute or so. It’s good for our vitality (if we don’t keel over from a heart attack in the process).
It does feel pretty good, I have to admit: lungs burning, lactic acid conquering the muscles in your legs, heart thumping through the wall of your chest, etc.
Not the same as pedaling through the park.
Anyway, tonight it’s the treadmill, more ab work (really — I just love that stuff!), some lifting, and a leisurely ride home on my Schwinn.
Superfood?
Maybe Popeye really ate pasta.
Two interesting questions lodged themselves in my pea brain after last night’s workout: 1.) Do certain foods make you stronger? and 2.) How hard should my heart really be beating when I’m busting my butt at the gym?
But, first, a little context. Several weeks ago, a couple of personal trainers walked by as I was laboring futilely on one of the resistance machines.
“Any questions?” one of them asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Why is this so hard?”
I was only partly looking for a laugh to ease my sweat-stained burden, but they didn’t take the bait. Instead, they explained how chowing down on some complex carbohydrates prior to my workout would power me to peak performance.
For some reason, I filed away that bit of information until yesterday afternoon, when I ordered up some creamy pasta dish for a late lunch. I’m not sure if I was really curious about the potential affect on my workout or if I just wanted the pasta, but I enjoyed the meal and about three hours later climbed on the treadmill (!!!!!) and started running (!!!!!).
Do complex carbohydrates go right to the brain? I hate the treadmill (vertigo), and I despise running (calf cramps), and yet I walked right out of the locker room, spied a vacant machine and climbed right on. After a five-minute walking warm-up, I started to jog and didn’t stop until I’d done a mile!!!!! It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t effortless, but it wasn’t that bad, either. My legs felt good, my heart rate soared into the mid-140s (more on that later), and I could almost imagine doing the whole routine again some time.
No, I didn’t stretch.
But I did dive into my strength-training routine with a weird sort of vigor. At each stop, I threw an extra 10 pounds above my normal load and pushed myself to the point of failure. On the chest press, in fact, I kept piling more and more weight on the machine — just to see where I landed — and found myself eventually doing a single five-rep set at 200 pounds!!!
So, later, I’m thinking: It must be the food.
And, sure enough, it turns out that experts, like the folks at Human Kinetics, preach the virtues of complex carbohydrates in the pre-workout meal. I probably should’ve known this, given that the whole “carbo-loading” cliche is so durable (the body turns carbs into the ATP needed to contract your muscles, yada yada yada), but I’ve never actually experienced it the way I did last night. Weird — but in a good way.
I think so, anyway. I was wearing my heart-rate monitor during this whole food-to-energy experiment and was wowed by how it shot up into the mid-140s during my run and stayed in the low-to-mid 130s during much of my lifting routine. This is WAY higher than what I’ve become accustomed to in the past several months, so I’m wondering: Am I going to have a coronary or something if this keeps up?
So, I checked in at WebMD to see what numbers I should be paying attention to, and found that maybe I was over-extending myself a bit. According to their heart-rate calculator, I should be hovering between 84 and 126 beats/minute during exercise and not exceeding 162.
This seems a little wimpy to me, but soaring heart rates aren’t really that productive, I’m told. So, I’ll try to slow down on the pasta in the future.
It’s All Uphill From Here
With the mercury shooting up toward the teens this morning and a piddly southern breeze at my back, I could come out of my turtle-like posture of recent days and really enjoy the landscape. A fellow carrying a couple of bags of groceries in his mittened hands shared my euphoria with a smile and brisk greeting as we passed near the train station. My scarf and cap came off earlier than usual, and I swung my arms smartly as I strode happily along.
On colder days, those articles of clothing often stay put until I’m climbing the two-block hill that leads to the door of our office building. And today it reminded me of the salutary effects that such inclines can have on one’s fitness regimen.
Last night at the gym, I was hoping to nab one of the stationary bikes — having walked to work, I thought it would be soothing for my sometimes creaky knee. But they were all taken (New Year’s resolutions . . .), so I climbed onto one of these sleek new elliptical machines, hit the “quick start” button (don’t bother me with instructions), and started rolling — first backward (oops) then, kind of getting the hang of it, forward. I randomly pushed a few more buttons enroute, as is my habit, before discovering the “incline” mode.
I was wearing my heart-rate monitor, so I could see very quickly how much harder I was working once I began traveling (virtually) uphill — from a heart rate in the 90s to over 110. This, I assume, is a good thing.
Actually, the whole heart rate thing is a bit of a mystery to me. Apparently, I’m supposed to shoot for a target heart rate with this formula:
resting heart rate + [% exercise intensity X heart rate reserve] = target heart rate
So, if I want to exercise midway between 50 percent and 85 percent of my heart rate reserve, that equation would be: 60 bpm + [65% X 104 bpm] = 128 bpm.
Which means I need to tilt the earth a little more.
