Target Heart Rate

Does your gym have a rowing machine? I mean a good one.

Check out the concept2 website. They sell rowing machines to rowing teams for training, gyms, and individuals. They only make this one model, because frankly, it is all you'll ever need.

For my money, rowing is the all time, every inch of your body, aerobic, strength building, muscle lengthening perfect exercise.

You'll learn this on the website, but the speed at which you row (unless you're training for speed) or the level you put it on doesn't have a thing to do with how much good you get out of it. This rower works by air resistance.

I'd see macho guys sit down and crank the resistance lever up to 10, go all out for a minute, and stop. I learned from the site that the further up you put the lever, you get the feeling you're rowing a heavier boat. Since I wanted the feeling of a racing skull, not some old rowboat, I'd keep it at 2 or 3. Funny, people who did actually row skulls who came in to do some foul weather exercise would put it at the same level.

Now THAT exercise IS all about technique. It seems you either take to it right away, or you don't.

Anyway, if you pulled lightly, you would get light resistance, if you pulled hard, within a stroke you would feel the extra resistance. I loved it because you were basically working again yourself, which seemed really natural.

I was going to get a rowing machine as well, and would have been set for life, but, well, I went through a time a while back with rroids, and I'm afraid to row because it seems that might not be too cool….(I should check on that)

Rowing is great for meditating too, you can really loose yourself in the rhythm

Finally, if your gym has one, but it hasn't been kept clean, you won't appreciate how smooth the feel is, not if the chain is dirty and it catches.

Here's a link to the site, they are the only ones who make a decent machine, believe me, I did a lot of research. Indoor Rower

Oh, look at all the fun stuff on there, you can compete on line, track your training....sounds like fun....

sigh....I really need to see if this is something I can get back into....now I'm all wistful....

I can't stand rowing. Not sure why. I've tried it many, many times, and get that it's a good workout, but I just don't like it.

I was a sprinter and that's the only thing I really enjoy (that and basketball, preferably full-court with a lot of fast breaks), seems like it has to be close to sprinting/ running for me to have any patience with it.

I'll give it another go though, who knows.

ah...see...like I said, you either hate it, or love it....doesn't seem to be any inbetween.

For me, if it's not enjoyable, I won't do it.

Yep, bottom line is that if you want to get anywhere, fitness-wise, it has to be fun.

Sozobe, the 135-150 you mention in your initial post sound about right to me, maybe they're a bit on the high side for a beginner. My trainer at my gym recommended 125-140 when I started last year. And as a second opinion, Runners World has a piece on heart rate monitors that outlines how to find your target heart rate. They end up in the same range if you plug in your variables.

One experimental way to figure it out is to work out on some machine that tells you how many watts you are burning during your excercise. As long as your excercise is aerobic, your heart rate will stay constant as you excercise at the same power level. Once you enter the anerobic zone, your heart rate will accelerate at the same level of physical power you put in, because it has to compensate for the lactic acid building up in your muscles. You want a zone that is lower, but not much lower than that anerobic threshold.

Oh thanks, Thomas, I hadn't seen that before.

I'm in a pretty good groove now. I'm not a beginner per se because it's been an approximate 5-year break from steady exercise (with brief interludes of gym-type exercise), but I've been steadily exercising for most of my adult life. So I can usually go with what feels right.

The elliptical trainer is so cool, I can go for 45 minutes straight and keep my heart rate right around 150, steady. A big problem with the treadmill is that I have the hardest time not accelerating -- I have to put a lot of conscious thought into going slowly. But I'm not in good enough shape yet to do the all-out-running my legs want to do, so I do this 170bpm spike that can't be maintained, then walk fast but it still gets down to 120bpm and then run again...

Anyway, I'd planned for the elliptical to be what broke up the default treadmill, but now I just wanna do the elliptical all the time!

The last two times I did a different elliptical machine that is whole-body, with hand grips that move too, I like that one even more.



Now I do! One down, 9 to go. I don't want to get overoptimistic but this is definitely already starting to do what I wanted it to -- I'm starting to establish a routine. Where I park, which machine I use, all those little things that make it all just a bit more automatic and comfortable and likely to happen.

You go, girl!

How'd I miss this thread?

I hate the treadmill -- would rather run on the indoor track. But I really like the elliptical trainer and something else called the arctrainer. It's like an elliptical trainer but really easy on the knees. They also have a stationary recumbent bike that I like a lot at the Y. I feel the best at 120 to 140 bpm and I think that's the fat burner range for me. When I'm running, though, I have a hard time keeping it down that low, which is why I've taken to the machines over the track lately.

Good luck with the work out! Sounds like it's going well.

Were you a sprinter, too?

I should try the track. There is one. I usually get even more of the need for speed when there is open space ahead of me, but it would probably be easier to modulate if I don't have to mess with the settings.

I'll give the bikes a go, too, definitely want to mix things up and I feel myself getting over-fond of the elliptical...

Arctrainer, will keep an eye out for that.

Thanks!

And thanks so much for the encouragement, J_B, you've been so helpful as I get back into this.

I was a sprinter many moons ago. I'm slow and old and fat now, but that doesn't seem to make it easier to run at a slow or even a steady pace. When I'm on the track, I get the ipod going and it helps me keep a pace -- not an option for you, I know. I use the machines now, but I'm hoping to start playing indoor soccer again soon. That's the ultimate for me because it's exercise that I'm hardly aware of because the game is so much fun.

The recumbent bike is really good for watching an interesting show because your body doesn't move much, but the heart rate still can get up high enough to burn some fat.

How's the whole weight thing going, if you don't mind me asking? I started working out with the goal of losing 20 pounds and I really haven't lost more than 4 or 5 in 3 months time. I won't stop working out though, because I feel so much better and stronger. Still, I'm wondering if I need to do more aerobics and lay off the weights a bit. Are you doing any weights or just aerobic?

Wow, another commonality... had we established that before? What were your events? I did the 100, 200, and 400 -- I liked all of them, but have the most vivid memories of the 400. Brutal, brutal thing.

Pick-up basketball is the same as what you say about soccer for me, but I don't really know where to go for it. I'm not a team basketball person, not a typical women's basketball person, but I don't think I can hope to keep up with the college guys who play pick-up around here.

I haven't even set a weight goal for precisely that reason, that fat just gets replaced with muscle and the scale doesn't accurately reflect the good stuff that's going on. My immediate goal is to work out 3 days a week for ten weeks. If I get to the gym, I go whole-hog, I just gotta get myself there.

My overriding goal is to feel energetic and fit, without weight being part of the picture per se. I assume I'll lose weight, but I'm trying not to make that a big part of my motivation.

I've got those sprinter's thighs, have always weighed more than I appeared to, have always confounded the "guess your weight" guys at the fair. ;-) When I was 18 and wearing a size 4 I weighed something like 130 pounds. Those thighs were big but they were pure muscle, man. :-)

I've weighed myself at the gym (no scale at home) once since I started this, was 12 pounds down from my weight at the doc's in January I think. Those are the only two measurements I have so far.

Oh and no weights, they just seem like a waste of time to me. I do all aerobic/ cardio type stuff, the more whole-body the better.

Wow, so much of that is familiar. I did the 200, the half mile and mile relays (if I remember that correctly) and dabbled in the 400 but it was too painful for me. Half way around the track and I just wanted to roll off and die. I did the hurdles for a while. I definitely have the thighs. I quit track in 11th grade, though. I played basketball for a while but was never very good at it. I fell in love with soccer in my late teens and that's been my sport of choice ever since. A guy at work recently asked if I wanted to play on his indoor team in the fall and I'm seriously going to try. I miss it so much.

I like doing the weights because I think it helps my overall posture and it definitely helps my lower back. I do the ab crunch and the low back and some other pretty basic ones. But I'm thinking I should only do them once a week instead of twice. When I first started working out again, I was aiming for twice a week and didn't even think I'd be able to do that. Once I got in a good routine, I added one day of just cardio. So now I'm at three days a week and that's going pretty well as long as nothing unexpected happens. I'm thinking I'm going to make it two days of cardio and one day of weights plus cardio and see if that helps. Like you, my biggest challenge is just doing it. The Y is great for that because they have so many things for the kids to do while I work out. The outdoor pool there opens this weekend and we can't wait!

But in general, yeah, I'm not so concerned about the weight as long as I can see the results elsewhere, and I do. It would be nice to drop a pants size though. That hasn't happened but the ones I'm wearing sure fit a hell of a lot better.

The 400 is totally painful. It was at the 3/4 mark -- just before the last 100-yard sprint to the finish line -- that I'd always hit the wall. But everyone else did too, and it felt so good to be able to push through. I didn't win that many races, but my 4 X 4 relay team won at the state level (4-person relay team, each leg is 400 yards).

Awesome news about being able to play soccer in the fall! That should help a lot.

The good news around here is that I've noticed that my shoulders and arms are definitely showing more definition. (Legs too I think, but top half is all I can see in the bathroom mirror.) Bad news is that since things seemed to be looking better, I decided to see what my weight is now (so dumb) and it's all the way back up to initial doc's visit freak-out level. Argh! Death to scales.

Could be something to do with the scales themselves (all three were different), could be something to do with the fact that I ate out a lot when my mom visited last weekend, could have something to do with the whole muscle weighs more than fat thing, or could be a combination of all three. Disheartening, though.

Back to ignoring weight and just keeping to the workout schedule. That part's going well, can't imagine that I won't be seeing results by the time I've done 10 weeks of this.

Soz--

Is there a difference in the way your clothes fit?

The weight thing is so frustrating. I know muscle weighs more than fat and all, but it would be nice to see it go down more than 5 pounds (and sometimes come right back up again). This week I started a new routine of 30 minutes of cardio before I go to work, trying to do it 4 times a week, and then do the weights only on Saturdays. It's way more time than I'd ever intended to spend on it, but I read somewhere that working out in the morning increases your metabolism for the whole day. And I remember that I was the skinniest I'd ever been while taking a 7 am fitness class in college. So I'm hoping this burns more fat and gets me closer to my 20 pound goal. I won't tell you how much I weigh, but I'll just say it's almost up to post-second-child-birth weight, which is a lot. That's what shocked me into joining the Y.

I'm more like Chai Tea in the way that I exercise; I go by how my body feels. I ride my bike for about an hour and fifteen minutes. I start off with a fast cadence to warm up the muscles. It gets strenuous fairly early in my ride, though, because there are so many inclines on my route. On the bike you get to know every little incline and rise on every road that you ride on that you'd never notice in a car. Once I get warmed up I start to do intervals. I'll measure off a few lengths of telephone poles between which I'll shift into a higher gear, and maintain the same pedaling cadence to reach my anaerobic threshold. After riding the distance I'll drop a gear or two to let the lactic acid subside until I do another interval. On some rides, I won't take it so seriously and just ride considerably under my AT. Every now and then I'll just pick up the pace a bit and ride closer to my AT for a while, reaching it sometimes, but not really enduring the burn for as long as I would during interval training. Sometimes I'll see other riders up the road from me on my rides. I make it a goal to reach them, and pass them if they're slow. Sometimes they'll keep up and we'll strike up a conversation. I've met quite a few cyclists that way. Getting back into town and riding in traffic is somewhat similar to doing intervals. I try to keep a pace fast enough to keep up with traffic for a while, 'cause it's actually safer there, or to discourage drivers coming the other way who would try to beat me, and take a left turn right in front of me. What sucks is having to completely stop at stop lights in heavy traffic. When the lights turn green, I sprint to get up to a good pace again and try to keep up with that group of cars for a while. I feel a rush of adrenaline when I go from a complete stop to all out sprint.

In the winter I ride my bike on rollers, but that has got to be the most mind-numbingly boring exercise ever invented. Rollers help improve one's form. It smothes one's pedaling style, reducing wobble, and teaches one to ride a straight line. Heck, if you don't ride a straight line, you'll roll right off. It took me about a week to learn to ride the infernal things. It's been a very long time since I last rolled off of them. It takes a lot of dedication to submit oneself to that kind of routine. Needless to say, I do it very irregularly. I literally count the days until daylight savings time, when there is enough light to go for a ride after work and not worry about getting hit by a car because I can't be seen.

Ages ago, during my early twenties, I used to do duathlons. I was never a really good runner, though, and my strength was always my cycling. I can't run anymore. My knees are shot.

I'm more like Chai Tea in the way that I exercise; I go by how my body feels. I ride my bike for about an hour and fifteen minutes. I start off with a fast cadence to warm up the muscles. It gets strenuous fairly early in my ride, though, because there are so many inclines on my route. On the bike you get to know every little incline and rise on every road that you ride on that you'd never notice in a car. Once I get warmed up I start to do intervals. I'll measure off a few lengths of telephone poles between which I'll shift into a higher gear, and maintain the same pedaling cadence to reach my anaerobic threshold. After riding the distance I'll drop a gear or two to let the lactic acid subside until I do another interval. On some rides, I won't take it so seriously and just ride considerably under my AT. Every now and then I'll just pick up the pace a bit and ride closer to my AT for a while, reaching it sometimes, but not really enduring the burn for as long as I would during interval training. Sometimes I'll see other riders up the road from me on my rides. I make it a goal to reach them, and pass them if they're slow. Sometimes they'll keep up and we'll strike up a conversation. I've met quite a few cyclists that way. Getting back into town and riding in traffic is somewhat similar to doing intervals. I try to keep a pace fast enough to keep up with traffic for a while, 'cause it's actually safer there, or to discourage drivers coming the other way who would try to beat me, and take a left turn right in front of me. What sucks is having to completely stop at stop lights in heavy traffic. When the lights turn green, I sprint to get up to a good pace again and try to keep up with that group of cars for a while. I feel a rush of adrenaline when I go from a complete stop to all out sprint.

In the winter I ride my bike on rollers, but that has got to be the most mind-numbingly boring exercise ever invented. Rollers help improve one's form. It smothes one's pedaling style, reducing wobble, and teaches one to ride a straight line. Heck, if you don't ride a straight line, you'll roll right off. It took me about a week to learn to ride the infernal things. It's been a very long time since I last rolled off of them. It takes a lot of dedication to submit oneself to that kind of routine. Needless to say, I do it very irregularly. I literally count the days until daylight savings time, when there is enough light to go for a ride after work and not worry about getting hit by a car because I can't be seen.

Ages ago, during my early twenties, I used to do duathlons. I was never a really good runner, though, and my strength was always my cycling. I can't run anymore. My knees are shot.

little aside infrablue, not about exercise technique per se, but the rush, and biking.

There's a street right near my house, Robert E. Lee, that is a pretty steep hill part of the way, then at the bottem there's a quick curve where it goes straight out.....total distance is about 1 mile. I think the flat part is maybe .6 miles, I'll have to check.

To give you an idea....When I'm in my car, and I'm at the very peak (there's a stop sign there), I'll just nudge my car forward with a tap of the gas to get past the intersection, then just let gravity take me down. On days there's no cars in front of me, and no one pulls out from this street, Barton Hills, that's at the bottem of the hill, right at the sharp curve, I'm moving forward at a pretty good clip.

By the time the car gets to the bottem of the hill, it'll be going a little over 45 mph, maybe doesn't sound like a lot, but it's just about as high a speed you can go and still be able to take that sharp curve without braking (I only do in in good wheather) The curve goes to the right, so if you slipped in wet wheather you'd have a head on.

OK, so that momentum is enough to take you to the light at the end of the flat part, and you're still going about 25 when you get to the light.

OK sorry for the long description, here comes the biker part.

This is NOT the type of hill some average, pedal around the neighbor hood person would take without braking (duh).

But sometimes someone will be in front of me that knows what they're doing....It's such a vicarious rush to watch them ahead of you getting up to 45, god, maybe even a little more.....

I always stay WAY behind them when they do this....I can't help but picture the wipe-out.

But when they get to the curve, and they lean into it....WHOOSH!....DAMN THAT LOOKS LIKE FUN!!!!

Wooee! That does sound fun.

Noddy, kinda-sorta -- differently, yes, better, no. A bit of redistribution of wealth. Tummy's a little flatter, butt's a little bigger. (If I say "glutes" does it sound more fit?)

I've been exercising in fits and starts for a few months but have only been on this current schedule (minimum of 3 days a week) for two weeks, so I know I have to give it more time. This is my least favorite part of the whole process, I've been through it before, I know I have to keep at it. It's why my goal is 10 weeks, stuff will be happening by then.

InfraBlue, sounds great. I wish I had that kind of freedom, it makes a difference. My husband works insane hours and my daughter is out of school, so I'm limited right now to things I can do with her or the gym (where there is a babysitting service). I'm trying to teach her to ride her bike without training wheels, though, that'll certainly open a new world when we can ride our bikes together.