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<p>Wow, I’m impressed. I haven’t been able to raise my heart rate past 140 no matter how hard I work. My resting HR is under 60, so maybe I shouldn’t aim for any higher? I feel like I’d keel over if I got it any higher.</p>
<p>idad, The book I read by Taubes was Good Calories, Bad Calories. I didn’t realize he had a new book out. GCBC is more academic (in spite of the title), less of a how-to book.</p>
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<p>Remember I’m 22. My heart rate is supposed to go higher than that! ;)</p>
<p>mousegray:</p>
<p>Yeah, Taubes newer book is a more accessible version of his theory, targeted at laymen, not as dense to wade through.</p>
<p>On this heart rate stuff, remember that *hops scout *is a young whippersnapper in his early 20s. So his max heart rate is going to be a lot higher than most of us geezers. My max heart rate is right around 165 BPM, so 140 is about 85% of my max. That’s exercising pretty hard, although I can get it up near my max. Now that I’m in better shape, it’s harder to get it up to 90%. A lot of stuff that used to do it, no longer does – a sure sign of better fitness and better cardiovascular capacity.</p>
<p>My the lowest heart rate I’ve seen is 50 BPM, but I’m more typically at around 55 BPM just sitting around. I’ve never checked it first thing in the morning.</p>
<p>If you are really determined to get your heart rate even higher, see if you can find a Schwinn Airdyne to try out. It won’t take many all-out sprint intervals on that thing to get the ol’ ticker pounding. Burpees will do it, too!</p>
<p>hops scout:</p>
<p>I would need a ladder to get up on a 24 inch box!</p>
<p>Air squats I can do. Assisted pullups I can do – although I can only do about 8 with the band I’m using right now (60 pounds of assistance). I don’t know about knees to elbows; never tried that one.</p>
<p>I don’t even want to think about push presses right now. I’m still sore from four sets of 16 yesterday.</p>
<p>Re: maximum heart rate</p>
<p>Note that maximum heart rate has considerable individual variation; the usual age-based approximations are population averages, so your actual maximum heart rate may be quite a bit higher or lower than the age-based approximations.</p>
<p>Also, your maximum heart rate may vary based on type of exercise, as different types of exercise create different demands for blood flow.</p>
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<p>For the pull ups, I was using a machine. For the most part I had it on the 60 pound stack. The knees-to-elbows was the hardest thing for me. I HATE those! My partner said right away how the 24" box would be too high for her, but then we struggled to find a smaller one for her. She kept saying that she was going to try jumping onto the 24" just once, but couldn’t pull herself to do it. She ended up using one of the small flat benches we have which was at 18". In high school, I had a vertical leap of 25" and today I was easily 3-4" above the box for most of my jumps. I can’t believe I’ve improved that much now that I’m out of school!</p>
<p>Worst part of my workout today is my hands HURT! They were so red when we finished…</p>
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<p>This is definitely true. Recently I had my heart rate at 198 during my workout. 198BPM is my “estimated max.” I was working out a few weeks back at around 190BPM and carrying on a conversation…</p>
<p>Didn’t do anything today except sleep a lot. This is the first week with five substantial workouts in several months capping it off with tennis on Friday. Interestingly, there was no joint damage. I usually have some knee pain and a tiny bit of arm pain after tennis and it usually takes about three days to heal everything. That affected my ability to do workouts early the next week.</p>
<p>No workout for me today, either. Busy cleaning out kitchen cabinets in advance of painters, so I got some exercise, just nothing fun like lifting weights and stuff.</p>
<p>Hallelujah! I found my race!!!</p>
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<p>Ahhhh… Love it!!!</p>
<p>Damn plantar fasciitis is back. Happens whenever I do too much on the treadmill. I need aspirin and ice.</p>
<p>I was only able to get one “real” workout in last week, but I did a lot of walking around college campuses, so that will have to do. This week should be better, I just have to get back into a routine.</p>
<p>Part of the battle is figuring how much of something we can do before it causes pain. For example, right now I’m pretty much at my limit of pain with emptying out kitchen drawers and cabinets and scrubbing them with bleach cleaner and so forth!</p>
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<p>On a different note, I’ve seen my weight loss crank back up 2 months into this NROL4A program. Obviously, it’s not the 1.8 pounds a month I was losing before I became an ol’ (fomerly) fat guy. I just don’t have that much fat to lose any more. But, over the last month, I’ve been losing between half a pound and a pound a week, which is a significant rate, especially because I haven’t been tracking calories and I’ve been eating like a horse – while still following pretty much the same general diet I’ve been on for a year now. There’s no question that I’m building lean muscle mass as I have gotten much stronger over the last few months.</p>
<p>I’m celebrating with a bunch of 34 inch jeans and khakis. I had boxed up and ALL my 34 inch pants to Goodwill last summer when I had already lost 40 pounds but couldn’t get the 34’s over my hips. Zipping them looked llike an impossible dream. Sears of all places had my favorite knock-around Docker Soft Khakis on sale for $15 in some closeout colors. I found a couple pair of fancy dress khakis and some dress slacks in basic blacks and grays at Marshall’s. And, Ive snagged a couple pair of dress khakis and Levis at Kohl’s 20% off sale this weekend. The basic khaki shades probably won’t show up at Marshalls. The discounters tend to get the less popular colors. I took back everything in 36 inch that I hadn’t worn (I’ve learned to never take the tags off). The 36 inch dress khakis are too baggy to even wear. The casual khakis and jeans in 36 are still wearable, but baggy and get cinched up a the waist with a belt. This marks the 5th time that I’ve gone down a pants size: 44 > 42 > 40 > 38 > 36 > 34. Crazy.</p>
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<p>Those are real workouts!</p>
<p>I always thought I was going to die walking up the big hill at Swarthmore’s campus. In fact, being so fat and out of shape that going up the hill felt like a heart attack about to happen was one of the things that made me realize I had to do something – although it took me another year to get going.</p>
<p>I think walking around college campuses is great exercise. I know that I’d love to plot out a nice hilly 5k route at Swarthmore or Williams or UVA or just about any pretty campus I could think of.</p>
<p>I’ve run at Williams (yes-hilly)when I got to go with WildChild on a recruiting trip and I agree that the Swat hill is tough even for someone fit! I fell in love with Rice on an early morning run around the Rice “loop” before my daughter (still in the hotel room and Rice '07) even saw the campus. I ran up a big hill on the Syracuse campus in the dark one evening before being told it wasn’t safe… Colgate- now THERE are some hills.
I love campuses.</p>
<p>You go, idad!</p>
<p>I figure I got double exercise on Friday – I went to the gym AND I unclogged the shower drain in the master bath. This involved a long, hard workout with a plunger. I finally got it cleared, but it’s without a doubt the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever done. And where was H during all this fun? At a boat show in Portland, ME. (He owes me BIG time!)</p>
<p>Maybe we just looked at nice campuses, but it’s hard to even come up with one that wouldn’t offer a really nice 5k walking/jogging route.</p>
<p>Just imagine how I could embarrass a kid on a tour these days. Wear jogging shorts and take off ahead of the group rather than lingering in the shadows in the back of the group where parents belong!</p>
<p>How did you unclog a shower drain with a plunger? I usually just take the drain cap (with a screwdriver) off and then use needle-nose pliers to remove the gunk.</p>
<p>We had a discussion on coconut water a few weeks ago and I just did a little checking on it at an asian grocery and at my local supermarket. The cost of coconut water at the asian grocer was a little lower than it was at the local supermarket ($2 vs $2.50) but it contained sugar and preservatives. The local supermarket product was from Brazil and was pure coconut water (they had flavored variants too).</p>
<p>So next I went over to the produce section to checkout coconuts - they’re a dollar each. I didn’t buy any as I didn’t know what to do with them.</p>
<p>I asked my wife if she bought coconuts and she said that she did from time to time and just cracked them open with my huge socket wrench in a basin. The kids love the coconut water and she used the meat in cooking. It seems like a more natural way to acquire coconut water.</p>
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<p>Oh I see, that explains your preposterous stamina! Good for you, hops scout!
It’s not that I’m trying for any particular heartrate, but when I saw your numbers I thought, gee, should I aim higher? Mostly, I’m just going by the amount of heat I feel in my legs, which seems a pretty reliable gauge of how hard I’m working. Not scientific, but works for me.</p>
<p>Congrats, I-dad – another pants size is a cool metric.</p>