Conconi Test

I finally tested myself using the Conconi test. I actually did the test in February but I've been a bit busy recently and haven't been blogging.

I found that my lactate threshold is at approximately 157 beats per minute. So that should be a nice baseline to work with.

Last night I got on the exercise bike and pedalled for 42 minutes; I was watching the end of an episode of Nova which I'd recorded on my MythTV. I kept my pulse approximately constant between 154 and 160 except for a single sprint interval at the 35 minute mark where I sprinted up to 171 for a minute just to experiment with the interval effect.

As expected, I found that I could continue almost indefinitely at the 157 bpm pace, although I found that I had to keep adjusting my cadence as my cardio system found its rhythm after so long out of the saddle. Next time I'll keep my cadence constant and adjust the resistance. According to the bike I burned 405 calories, however, I'm not sure how accurate that is. I'm going to try some experiments to gauge the accuracy of the calorific counter as it would be an ideal way to check my progress in lieu of a watt meter.

Have you just restarted an exercise regime? How is it going?

Curling Technique

I was messing around curling a 27lb bucket of cat litter the other day and found that I was getting a better arm workout than when I used my 35lb weights. After being confused for a couple of days when I wasn't able to recreate the effect in subsequent cat litter curling routines I realised what I'd done.

Since the cat litter was 8lbs lighter than my normal weights I did the reps very slowly. When I repeated the exercise and conciously counted a second pause at the point of maximal bicep contraction and followed the normal 12, 10, 8, 6, 12, 12 routine I found that I experienced a very effective curl workout, i.e. my bicep ached for a couple of days.

I've known about the benefits of slow reps, particularly for slow twitch muscle fibres, for years and thought that I was going slow enough. Now I realise that I have just been fooling myself all this time. From now on I'll be reciting "One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand etc." so that I get a proper rep rather than the slight pause cheating which I have been doing for so long.

Do you pause during maximal contration of exercise reps?

I mowed the lawn again

Well, I didn't do any exercise, no excuses, I've just been lazy in that regard. I did mow the lawn, but that's really not the point.

I think that my goals, or rather my motivations, aren't realistic. The problem is that I'm not really all that unfit. Even with the sedantry lifestyle that I've been living for the past few years I'm probably still in the top 25% or less of the population as regards overall fitness.

How can I motivate myselt to increase my fitness level?

So Lazy

I mowed the lawn yesterday... that's all I can say... I'm going to have to get this exercise bike fixed and start the plan again. What a disappointment!

Focus focus focus.

The goals still stand:

1) 100 pushups at 1 per second cadence by December 13th 2005

2) Resting pulse rate of 50 bpm by July 13th 2006

No excuses there. I'm going to blame it all on the exercise bike being broken. :-)

How do you motivate yourself?

Running late

I just finished doing some work, which had to be done before tomorrow morning, and thought I'd make a couple of confessions.

I didn't get around to doing my chest and back workout on Monday. The dog had the runs and my morning exercise time was spent cleaning up dog crap. Yes, fun fun fun.

I did manage to find time to do the chest and back workout on Tuesday, yesterday, however I completely blew off the cardio since the exercise bike is still broken. Today is/was Wednesday and I forgot to do the leg workout. It completely slipped my mind probably because I was busy at work.

Anyway, I'll be doing the leg workout tomorrow, Thursday, and will post a note about how it goes.

I'm also planning on posting images of my Body For Life exercise plans/results. Ii haven't really been following the plan thus far and I think that posting the plans will enforce a little discipline/structure on the routine.

Oh well, excuses excuses...

Arms Three

Yesterday's arm workout was effective, however, I had to do far more reps than I had expected to.

I'm going to make more of an effort to concentrate on my form. I tend to rush the reps rather than isolating the muscle properly. Consequently I ended up having to do many more sets than I should have done. I also really need to get some adjustable dumbells, a single 35lb weight is almost pointless.

In other news, I'm going to take the exercise bike apart, yet again, and see if there's any way that I can add a washer to preven the drive belt from falling off. If not then I'm just going to have to take the plunge and buy a new one.

Cardio... oops

Yes, today is a weights day and instead I did cardio. What is worse is that all I did was a quick sprint mow of the lawn, because it was just starting to rain. Consequently I only did one hour of cardio, at a fairly low heart rate.

Today was supposed to be a leg workout day, however, I couldn't do the cardio yesterday because I didn't have time. I'm going to do the leg workout tomorrow, which should be a cardio day. It's not ideal but that's just the way it is.