<p>We had some snow flurries yesterday afternoon so we got let out of work early. I made it to the 4:30 hot yoga class. 90 minutes of hard work. Tonight is 6 miles on the dreadmill since I can’t face the cold and dark of outside right now.</p>
<p>interesteddad–You need a blowtorch to melt the Volkswagon sized ice. Just don’t set the deck on fire!</p>
<p>MOfWC, my hat’s off to you! Nowadays, the only time I will get up at 4 am is to make a flight to Maui :)</p>
<p>^^^ It was 4:30pm!!! I am not doing the early morning-thing right now. When it gets warmer and lighter…</p>
<p>LOL, I thought you went to bed early and had a morning class. 
My hat is still off to you for surviving 90 minutes of yoga!</p>
<p>A guy at the office is interested in table tennis so I brought my paddle in. It took me a few days to find it. I haven’t played in about five years so I’m sure that I’m very rusty. This guy is very gung-ho on table tennis. He wants me to join a club in the city to play. I really don’t have time for a sport that involves extra driving.</p>
<p>I also looked around at equipment as was a bit shocked by what equipment costs today.</p>
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<p>I guess I could break out the sledge hammer and go all Crossfit on the things, but I don’t think I’m that desperate! Standing on an icy deck swinging a sledgehammer at blocks of ice sounds like a good way for an ol’ (formerly) fat guy toget hurt.</p>
<p>Well, I got my strength training workout today. They should turn “ice tipping” into one of those weird shows on EPSN 2 in the middle of the night like big ol’ fat guys pulling school buses.</p>
<p>I was able to shovel the deck clear and then slide the blocks of ice by dragging first on one end, then the other, to get each one over to the steps. Slide it half off the steps and then pickup up and tilt one end to send it down into the the snow bank. I moved five blocks, the biggest being 4 foot by 2 foot by 1 foot or about 400 pounds. That one was tough to get sliding!</p>
<p>Wind has picked up like crazy here and I suspect the temperature will be plummeting. This was, realistically, my only shot of moving these things 'til spring. Blocks that big won’t melt anytime soon.</p>
<p>Wow Idad; that’s some work there! I went easy today: 30 minutes on the elliptical. Have I ever told you all how much I hate that piece of equipment? Luckily, one of my co-workers (and my partner in last night’s madness) came and talked for a little bit.</p>
<p>Also got a catalog in the mail today… with my new book, I may need to order a few pieces of equipment…</p>
<p>Hit ping-pong balls for about an hour - the time went by very quickly. Had to be careful as the room is fairly small. Knees feel fine too (table-tennis is murder on the knees and lower back).</p>
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<p>Yeah. I’m thinking about some kind of short, fairly mellow intervals on the Airdyne. I’ve pencilled in a return of Spartacus for tomorrow, so I don’t need to be doing any dumbbell swings or burpees today. I don’t think I have it in me to do crazy intense intervals. Maybe break out the Gymboss timer and some good tunes for something like 60:120 intervals.</p>
<p>I need to get back to some walking.</p>
<p>Got my wee little interval session in. 28 minutes, including warm up and cool down. 12 intervals on the Airdyne. 30 seconds hard with 60 seconds of rest in between. Not too intense. Average heart rate 70%. Max 87%. Kinda like a nice hill walk.</p>
<p>I’m becoming a real believer in keeping these workouts short and sweet if I’m gonna workout 5 or 6 times a week.</p>
<p>At what point does a person need to become mindful of their heart rate? I am so out of shape that just moving is my goal. I get in the pool and swim/stretch for 30-40 minutes and never check my heart rate.</p>
<p>Your heart rate in the pool will be lower than on land. I monitor my heart rate whenever I am doing cardio exercise. I didn’t when I was swimming because I didn’t want to deal with the monitor/strap etc. Exception being tonight on the dreadmill because I didn’t make it out of the locker room with the chest strap/sensor due to the 8 unsupervised toddlers and their young nannies who were ignoring said toddlers as they climbed into lockers. I got distracted- especially by the one hanging on the wobbly 200 pound scale!<br>
6.5 dreadmill miles- done.</p>
<p>^Back when I swam I actually found I got my heart rate up higher in the pool. I think it was partly because I don’t really like sweating and that I don’t get enough air in the pool. I’ve been mindful of heartrate pmk because I’ve been doing my 1/2 hour of cardio at the Y for years (at least 10!) and have never bothered to step it up. I try to keep it up above 130 most of the time and cycle up over 150 max each time it sinks to the 135 or so. I figure my theoretical max is 185 to 190.</p>
<p>I bought a $40 heart rate monitor early on because, frankly, I was getting so gassed, bent over panting like a dog, sweating buckets, as an ol’ fat guy ex-smoker that I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t about to keel over. Since then, I’ve found that tracking my heart rate during workouts has been a great tool for learning about workout intensity and for tracking my improved fitness. For example, the first time I walked the big hill on my little river walk, I had to stop halfway up, by the side of the road, bent over, literally gasping for a breath, panting like a dog, dripping sweat. Sure enough, I was seeing a heart rate of 95% of my max. That’s when I realized that walking on steep hills was no joke in terms of a workout.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, it probably doesn’t tell you much that you don’t know. I mean, when you are bent over gasping, you already know that you’ve hit your limit. You don’t really need the heart rate monitor to tell you that. It’s more useful for letting you know, over time, when your workouts are no longer intense enough to get your heart rate up or when the average heart rate starts dropping on the same ol’ workout and it’s time to kick it up a notch. Also, it’s been very encouraging to see improvement in how much recovery I see in 60 seconds from peak exertion. I mean…that’s a real measure of fitness in hard cold numbers and one that correlates very well with the likelihood of not keeling over dead of a coronary in the next few years. </p>
<p>If you want to start doing intervals or time-base exercise circuits, it’s also a great way to figure out how much recovery time you need between exercises or intervals. I feel like I’ve learned a lot from wearing one for my workouts.</p>
<p>Actually, the most benefit from a heart rate monitor for cardio exercise is helping you keep your easy days easy enough. With endurance training, the biggest mistake is working too hard day after day. The hard days need to be hard and the easy days need to be easy. The heart rate monitor (if you obey it) enforces that.</p>
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<p>That’s pretty advanced fitness, though. The average ol’ fat guy (or gal) just starting out on a plan to eat less and move more usually isn’t pushing themselves for enough workout intensity. I don’t mean that you have to kill yourself like a Crossfit bootcamp every time out, but every workout should include some moments of panting and sweating like a pig. I think that the biggest mistake people make with exercise programs is taking it too easy. Once you get to that standard, then you can start worrying about whether your workouts are too intense too many times a week. Long distance cardio is a bit a of different challenge because the training can actually wear your body down.</p>
<p>Even though it was just ridiculous how little it took to get me gassed, I am convinced that sweating like a pig and panting like a dog in every workout was a huge factor in my weight loss. I think you have to come to embrace that. Reading a magazine on the elliptical and casually “doing” a few machines won’t cut it.</p>
<p>The problem with working to exhaustion is the higher risk of injury when you get careless in what you are doing.</p>
<p>In playing table tennis today, I did get to a moderate sweat but most of the work was mental - it was in relearning the control of the body, placement, watching the ball, angles and reflexes. We were in a small room so I couldn’t go all out. The four corners of the room are inset so moving too fast or taking too big a swing could mean hitting a wall with your body or your paddle.</p>
<p>A BodyRocker at Zuzana’s site has posted a photo of a new version of plank that I would love to try!</p>
<p>[Dolphin</a> plank](<a href=“http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/themes/nerdery-skeleton-theme-v1/timthumb.php?src=http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Dolphin-featured.jpg&w=594&h=412&c=1&q=100]Dolphin”>http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/themes/nerdery-skeleton-theme-v1/timthumb.php?src=http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Dolphin-featured.jpg&w=594&h=412&c=1&q=100)</p>
![http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/themes/nerdery-skeleton-theme-v1/timthumb.php?src=http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Dolphin-featured.jpg&w=594&h=412&c=1&q=100]Dolphin](http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/themes/nerdery-skeleton-theme-v1/timthumb.php?src=http://www.bodyrock.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Dolphin-featured.jpg&w=594&h=412&c=1&q=100%5DDolphin){kind=link}
