<p>One trick I use when I find myself saying things to myself like “I can’t…” as in " I CAN’T just walk…" or I CAN’T do more than 30 minutes of pool running because it’s too boring" is to say “Could I do it if I were getting paid?” Interesting how many “can’ts” turn into “cans”.</p>
<p>Speaking of heart rates, I saw a max of 99% during today’s iPod nazi workout. I’m not really sure when. Two sets, just 30 seconds on each exercise, so I pushed it pretty hard. 15 good pushups in 30 seconds. I know I started the second set of pushups with a heart rate of 90%, so that might have been the peak.</p>
<p>Hard intervals on the Airdyne between the two sets: 60 seconds at 65 rpms with 120 seconds of rest. After the final interval, I recovered 32 beats per minute in 60 seconds. That’s huge progress. When I began this journey, I could only recover 15 beats per second. That’s one of the key indicators of cardiovascular fitness – recovery time from peak exertion.</p>
<p>Then, I did three extra arm exercises with heavy dumbells: shoulder presses, bench presses on the stability ball, and dumbell rows on both sides.</p>
<p>It’s kind of fun to spend a week doing a workout I can do and push the pace and intensity a little harder rather than just trying to hang on. Next week will be back to ramping it up, either another week or Spartacus or (more likely) start chippin’ away at Phase III of iPod nazi.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>LOL—hysterical!:)</p>
<p>Thank you all for the warm welcome. You’re wonderful! I’ve talked with my primary physician about my heart rate, and other than prescribing the potassium, she doesn’t seem too concerned. Our current insurance policy allows us to consult a specialist without a referral, and I’ve thought about seeing a heart specialist just to see what s/he thinks. But, I also don’t want to be paranoid. When I did this two years ago, I was beginning to see my heart rates lowering, so I’m thinking this is liable to happen again if I persevere—you know, lower weight, less strain on the heart, etc.</p>
<p>Idad, that Spartacus workout looks like a total beast. I watched that video you linked to last week. I bet you’re in terrific shape now, and are quite rightly proud of yourself. That’s especially amazing in light of this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Congratulations. You rock! I’m so inspired:)</p>
<p>poetsheart - sounds like you have a good handle on following up with it, and just for your piece of mind, I’d encourage you to see that specialist. Once you know that your heart is OK, you will feel more confident in pushing yourself.</p>
<p>That being said, several weeks ago I posted that I noticed my heart rate being a tad bit higher (no where like yours was) and feeling a bit more winded. This happens to me sporadically when I am even borderline anemic. If you’re not getting enough iron, your body has to work that much harder to get the oxygen to the cells when you’re exercising. I’ve been on the iron supplements for almost two weeks now, and had one of the best workouts today that I’ve had in a number of weeks.</p>
<p>For all I know, your physician may be ordering CBCs on a regular basis and your iron may be fine, but if you haven’t had a CBC in a while, and you know you’re not getting enough iron through your diet and/or supplements, it’s worth checking out.</p>
<p>Glad to have you on the thread!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s good. Whether it’s exercise or smoking cessation, I don’t like telling people that they should or should not be concerned about a health symptom. You’d hate to say, “Don’t worry about it” and then find out they keeled over with a heart attack.</p>
<p>I will say that, whatever their individual range, I would expect anyone starting from ground zero on fitness to experience higher heart rates during exercise than the fitness magazines and “target heart rate zones” would suggest. I have routinely seen heart rates above 90% of my max during almost every hard workout. If I stuck to the “fat burning zones” the heart rate articles talk about, I’d never break a sweat.</p>
<p>I was kind of cavalier about it. I figured that if I exercised hard, I could keel over, but what was my alternative? If I didn’t start exercising, lose some weight, and get in some kind of physical shape, I was going to keel over anyway.</p>
<p>What would have concerned me was if I had experienced bouts of panting like a dog and NOT being able to recover and catch my breath. I mean, there were times when I stopped halfway up a hill, bent over, panting, but in a minute or so I was fine. That’s OK in my book.</p>
<p>I would make one practical suggestion. Forget about trying to crank out “x” number of calories on the elliptical in “x” number of minutes. The machine is probably giving you a bogus number anyway. If you want to start pushing yourself, try cranking up the speed/resistance for 30 seconds and then bring it back down for 90 seconds. You can do 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, whatever and then take it easy for 3 times as long to let your heart rate recover. As you get comfortable with that, you can step up from a 3 to 1 rest to work interval to a 2 to 1 ratio and eventually to a 1 to 1.</p>
<p>Also, if your ankle will allow it, I found walking to be hugely helpful in gaining a baseline level of cardio fitness. First walking a mile. Then, a mile and a half, then two miles. And so on and so forth. Good way to get outside, get a little fresh air and slowly build a little endurance.</p>
<p>Who’s coming out to walk with me tomorrow morning? :)</p>
<p>If you were on the Perk trail, I’d be there with you. 
</p>
<p>GO PHILLIES!! Ugly game but a win is a win.</p>
<p>I’m planning on sleeping late. Brutal week at work - but that’s good in this economy.</p>
<p>Got in six today for 24 this week. May try for a few more tomorrow. We’ll see how I feel. Body and brain are tired right now.</p>
<p>Because we don’t have any current serious marathon trainers right now on this thread (sorry MOWC… not meaning to rub it in), we can all feel smug that we are not getting ready to run the Chicago Marathon this weekend. Highs are expected to be in the low 80s on Sunday. Stay tuned for reports on how many people suffer heat exhaustion, etc. and have to drop out (but hopefully don’t drop dead). This happened about three years ago, and it is brutal for those running it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks, teriwitt:) My doctor ran a CBC panel, along with several other tests when she ran the potassium test. Apparently, there was no iron deficiency. I’m glad about that as iron would bind me up terribly.:(</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I hear you! I felt the same way. It bored me to tears when I tried to stay within fat burning parameters. It’s actually been impossible to do so, especially during the times when I was supposedly at my max rate before I even stepped on the machine.:rolleyes: And as you said:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It makes total sense.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I did something very similar in my last workout. It worked great, and I felt like a got in a good workout without overtaxing myself.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Staying within the so-called “fat burning range” isn’t even worth a darn for burning fat! It’s only known as the “fat burning range” because a higher percentage of the calories being burned come from stored fat. The problem is that you aren’t burning very many calories in that range. As you crank up the intensity, you may be getting half the calories from stored fat and half from carbs, but you may be burning four times more total calories. Plus, all the carbs you burn can’t be converted to stored fat. For maximum fat loss, intense workouts beat long slow workouts every time.</p>
<p>The reason that the alternating hard/easy intervals work so well is that, say you did ten intervals at 30 seconds hard and 90 seconds easy. That’s 5 minutes of hard work, at a higher intensity than you could maintain for five continuous minutes. </p>
<p>I’ve been doing a variation recommended by trainer Mike Boyle. Instead of fixed amount of time for rest, I go as hard as I can go for 15 seconds, which gets my heart rate up above 90%, and then rest for as long as it takes for my heart rate to fall back down to 75%. That might be a minute at first. After a few intervals, it might be a minute and a half. Whatever it is, I just wait and then go again. With the easy availability of heart rate monitors, I think there’s a lot to be said for that approach. It burns a ton of calories and it’s also training the body to recover from peak exertion. The nice thing is that the level of max exertion and the time needed to recover are automatically and continually adjusting for your particular level of fitness. You are getting the most intense workout you possibly can at any point in time.</p>
<p>On different machines, you might want to go for longer than 15 seconds, but on the Airdyne exercise bike I use, 15 seconds at maximum effort makes you feel like you are going to explode. I’m absolutely gassed after 15 seconds. I do longer intervals, too, but I’ve got to scale back the intensity progressively to go 20 to 60 seconds.</p>
<p>Well, I did it. Walked 4 miles averaging 16:06. (I hear WorkinProgress chuckling.) I didn’t run 1 step. At first I was afraid I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) do it because I had more discomfort in the upper hamstring than I do with elliptical or spinning, but I just kept watching my posture and my gait and it seemed to be OK. It might be better if I did the walks somewhere else besides one of my running routes, but this is a flat (need flat with this injury) and pretty path with other people around. I had my iPod, of course,so I didn’t get too bored.</p>
<p>Good for you MOWC. People watching always helps pass the time. I have such good music on my iPod that I’m never bored walking. On shuffle, it’s like a box of chocolates.</p>
<p>The way my weight bounces around these days, I may have to go back and cross this bridge again, but I officially lost another five pounds this morning. That makes 12 times I’ve done that, 60 pounds. The graph has gone off the bottom of the page, gotta reformat my spreadsheet chart to show the next five pound goal. My rate has started to taper off. I’m losing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 pounds a week lately, down from the 1.8 average for the first six months. That’s inevitable as I have less fat to lose and I’ve stepped up my strength training to build a little muscle.</p>
<p>Two other little bits of motivation. I’m under 25% body fat. Like chintzy, I started at somewhere north of 40%. I’m also sporting an old pair of 36 inch waist khakis this morning. I’m having my 44 inch jeans bronzed for posterierity. I took back the 38 inch khakis I had just bought last month to Kohl’s and swapped them for the leaner model. I’ve learned to leave tags on everything until I actually have to wear it. Clothes shopping because you are going down in size is a whole lot more fun than the other direction! </p>
<p>I’m now in the last size pants that I kept; I sent all my 34s that I wore in my 20s to Goodwill. I only kept a few pair of 36’s, just in case. I didn’t really think that was in the cards. I’ve probably got another five pounds to go for muffin-free fit with the 36s. Nothing a couple more weeks of Spartacus won’t take care of. I think I guessed about right. The 36’s look like they’ll be my final resting place. Turning back the clock to the size I wore at age 35 would be just dandy with me.</p>
<p>I figured out that my treadmill has a heart rate monitor of sorts (sometimes it does pay to read the instruction manual). When I used it to check my resting heart rate, it was about 75 bpm. I then used an online calculator to find maximum heart rate, which it said is 179 bpm. I am assuming that when you all talk about different percents, what you mean is percent of maximum heart rate.</p>
<p>Please correct any and all of this that is wrong.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes. There are more sophisticated formulas, but the idea of heart rate zones is based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate. For easy math, let’s call your max 180 beats per minute. So:</p>
<p>**60% of your max would be 108
70% of your max would be 126
80% of your max would be 144
90% of your max would be 162 **</p>
<p>That assumes that the age formula calculated max is accurate for you, which may or may not be true. It’s a starting point. If I were walking on a treadmill, I’d want to crank the incline up to a point where steady walking got my heart rate up into the mid 70%. For me, that’s where I’m starting to breath just a little heavy, but could still talk just fine – what iPod nazi calls the Talk Test Pace. That’s the pace that you could keep up more or less indefinitely.</p>
<p>Then, I’d want to crank up the speed to find a harder interval that got me up to at least 85% to work up a good sweat and breath hard for a while. That way I could alternate between the easy and hard pace. I usually see 90% when I’m doing hard intervals, but that’s not a level that can be sustained for very long as you are not able to consume enough oxygen to feed the muscles at that point and you will eventually end up bent over panting like dog! When you see someone bent over, hands on their knees, gasping for air, and dripping buckets of sweat, that’s what 90%+ looks like! It’s not a pleasant feeling, but it’s a great place for losing fat and getting more fit. I’ve come to appreciate the beguiling charms of going there!</p>
<p>Good job on the 5/60 pounds. That is really amazing. So many of you have come SO far since we started this thread.</p>
<p>I spent a lot of today searching for lumbar support pillows and a wedge seat cushion. I found what I needed (cheap) at Bed, Bath. Getting into my car is like climbing into a hospital bed. But- I can drive almost pain free. I’m still tweaking the set-up a little.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ouch. That doesn’t sound good. </p>
<p>Come to think of it, climbing in and out of a car for an hour would probably be great exercise! Back when I was young, I used to be impatient with how hard it was for old people to get in or out of a car. Now, I’m starting to have a bit more empathy. And, when did they make it so hard to turn around and look behind when backing up! Honestly, it’s everyday stuff like this that makes me want to walk the fitness path.</p>
<p>MOWC…nice job on the walk. Hope you start to get some pain relief soon. </p>
<p>And Idad…wow…60 lbs. Amazing. Great work! </p>
<p>Still sore today from a very tough yoga class yesterday. So we did 30 miles on the bike today and now I’m REAL sore. We went at a relatively fast clip (on an asphalt trail followed by some dirt trails). On the asphalt, I got sick and tired getting passed by road bikes while we chugged along on our clunky hybrids. So I’ll try the road bike next time and we’ll stay off the dirt trail (dh has an extra). </p>
<p>Time for a good soak.</p>
<p>Hey, count me in. I walked 4.25 miles over the hill, down by the old mill, and along the river in the state park. Absolutely spectacular fall day. Brilliant blue sky, 60 degrees, 20 mph breeze. I couldn’t quite match the pace of our old crippled lady :). I did manage to average 17:32 per mile, though. Got a nice little stroll after a little too much weight lifting last night (the side arm extensions with 19 pound dumbbells got me).</p>
<p>Had a truly fortuitous iPod shuffle. Just as I started up my half mile 5% grade hill, I got Madonna’s [Ray</a> of Light](<a href=“Madonna Ray of Light live8 - YouTube”>Madonna Ray of Light live8 - YouTube), which powered me all the way to the top. Wow. Hold on you your heart monitors. That’ll get you high stepping.</p>