Heart Rates and Body Fats
As per my last post, I have started keeping a keener eye on my diet in an effort to see what will happen to my body fat percentage and general exerciseiness. We have one of those fancy scales that, upon entering some information as to your level of activity, height, and the like, the machine sends electrical signals up into your body through the feet and in some magical ceremony spits out your stats, including things like how much of your weight is in fat form, you body fat percentage, and your BMI.
I take all of this with a grain of salt (you know, so that I can be more conductive and such), but at least if the scale stays relatively consistent I'll be able to tell if my body fat percentage is moving up, down, or not at all. When I first stood upon the glass and metal contraption the reading said 10.2% body fat. In the past couple of days I have checked back in with my electronic fitness conscience and now stand at 9.8% body fat. I think this might be good?
The other thing I've been really gearing up for is training according to heart rate. In reading about the Lydiard method of training I realize that what I did throughout 2010, when my injury incidents were almost non-existent, was exactly what Lydiard preached. I ran according to my fitness level and abilities. I was successful in the "train don't strain" mantra that Lydiard espouses.
This year things went off the rails and the results speak for themselves. I did a lot more straining than training and now am paying the price with time off due to bad behaviour. My injuries are not yet fixed so I must placate myself with other activities.
To that end, I've upped the anty in my weight training sessions. No, I didn't suddenly increase the weight on all of my exercises, but I have been spending what would normally be rest time doing crunches. In this way I have been able to keep my heart rate up in the aerobic zone. My workouts have been great.
Also, I have been wearing my Garmin to keep an eye on my heart rate while on the rowing machine and have been successful in maintaining a good aerobic level (almost always between 140bpm and 145bpm) during my 45 minute Tuesday and Thursday sessions.
Lastly, I've started checking my resting heart rate in the mornings. I've been surprised to learn that my results are a bit higher than they used to be. I am now registering 46bpm instead of the 42bpm that I seem to remember. Perhaps the heat of the Summer, and it's been very hot here with today carrying with it the possibility of being the hottest day on record for Toronto. The one positive since I've been forced to stop running is that I've been sleeping through the night on a consistent basis. I guess that was yet another one of those signals that I conveniently chose to ignore back when I was straining and not training.
It's time to break out of the typical No Pain No Gain mentality.
I take all of this with a grain of salt (you know, so that I can be more conductive and such), but at least if the scale stays relatively consistent I'll be able to tell if my body fat percentage is moving up, down, or not at all. When I first stood upon the glass and metal contraption the reading said 10.2% body fat. In the past couple of days I have checked back in with my electronic fitness conscience and now stand at 9.8% body fat. I think this might be good?
The other thing I've been really gearing up for is training according to heart rate. In reading about the Lydiard method of training I realize that what I did throughout 2010, when my injury incidents were almost non-existent, was exactly what Lydiard preached. I ran according to my fitness level and abilities. I was successful in the "train don't strain" mantra that Lydiard espouses.
This year things went off the rails and the results speak for themselves. I did a lot more straining than training and now am paying the price with time off due to bad behaviour. My injuries are not yet fixed so I must placate myself with other activities.
To that end, I've upped the anty in my weight training sessions. No, I didn't suddenly increase the weight on all of my exercises, but I have been spending what would normally be rest time doing crunches. In this way I have been able to keep my heart rate up in the aerobic zone. My workouts have been great.
Also, I have been wearing my Garmin to keep an eye on my heart rate while on the rowing machine and have been successful in maintaining a good aerobic level (almost always between 140bpm and 145bpm) during my 45 minute Tuesday and Thursday sessions.
Lastly, I've started checking my resting heart rate in the mornings. I've been surprised to learn that my results are a bit higher than they used to be. I am now registering 46bpm instead of the 42bpm that I seem to remember. Perhaps the heat of the Summer, and it's been very hot here with today carrying with it the possibility of being the hottest day on record for Toronto. The one positive since I've been forced to stop running is that I've been sleeping through the night on a consistent basis. I guess that was yet another one of those signals that I conveniently chose to ignore back when I was straining and not training.
It's time to break out of the typical No Pain No Gain mentality.
Labels: body fat percentage, heart rate training, injury, rowing
posted by Vava at
2:52 PM
4 Comments:
You know how much I like training based on heartrate, sounds like you have a great plan! I totally agree with you, it seemed like you trained perfectly during 2010, then during the past month or 2 you increased the intensity level of your training too fast. Getting back to the 2010 to early 2011 training level will pay off huge. Because you got a half marathon PR using that training style I think.
Indeed, both a HM and a 10K PR resulted from my training when I ran more on perceived effort. Although I dropped the heart rate monitor sometime in December 2010 I think I managed to mostly stay in the right zones. I say mostly because I did suffer more injuries and got sick a couple of times.
Anyway, just looking forward to running again. Hope to read about how your recovery is going soon!
I hope you recover well and quickly in order to get back on schedule for the October marathon. It is a struggle down here in Texas to train in the heat and humidity but monitoring heart rate is crucial. I simply don't let it get higher than 140bpm (my approx. aerobic threshold) on 'regular' runs. Makes for rather slow long runs but one can always add speed on other days.
I go with "some pain, some gain" seems like a nice compromise. I don't want to do all that pain but I also want a bit of gain too, you know? Good luck.
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