Category: fitness

I was looking up some material on working out and heart rates. Spinners, bless their hearts, aren’t even allowed to work out without a heart rate monitor. Back in the 1980s when aerobics was the thing, most classes would stop every so often to check your heart rate to make sure you’re working out in the target zone. I guess that sort of training rubbed off on me, because I do check my heart rate after a workout from time to time.

And according to some sources, going for the land-based target heart rate means I work too hard in the water. I generally match that ideal target heart rate for aerobic exercise just out of habit when I’m working out. But, the fact that you’re horizontal means your heart is beating 10-15 beats a minute less than for land-based exercise. I generally hit the land numbers and the theory is that this is pushing too hard.

Now this is nonsense. You know what working too hard feels like. It hurts, you’re gasping unpleasantly, and your heart feels like it’s going to pound out of your chest. You do not feel pleasantly mellow after such a workout with slightly elevated breathing and (if you’re fair skinned) a little bit red in the face. If you feel exhilarated and good, you’re probably not pushing too hard.¹

I understand the desire to train by the numbers, and hit specific non-subjective goals. I prefer concrete goals, myself. Training myself out of doing that in favor of putting in that half hour working out is a lot more challenging than I would have believed. I still ask myself if I got in enough yardage swimming, or if I have pushed hard enough. Yes, in a way I’m teaching myself to tolerate being bored by exercise. I don’t tolerate boredom well, and I’m realizing that for some very limited things, it’d be better if I could just a little. I can be frenetically mentally active the other 23 ½ hours a day if I must.

It’s still hard because I want so badly to evaluate each workout beyond, “Did it happen for half an hour?” Even though I’ve gotten away from numbers, I’m still asking myself how I feel. Of course, that’s different every day, and often has less to do with how well I’m performing in terms of speed and heart rate, and more to do with how I feel emotionally about my form and power in the water. If I’m feeling clumsy in the water, I generally don’t feel like it’s been a “good” workout. When I get my Orca on, I feel fantastic, no matter what the numbers say.

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¹ This is the average exerciser we’re talking about here. You adrenaline junkies who get off on extreme sports are another breed entirely.

I have a bad fitness habit. I will get into working out, go hammer and tongs at it, pushing to improve performance till I get tired of it or obsessed with something else (knitting cables, learning to do a French manicure, learning Klingon – it really varies) and quit with working out as my main obsession.

If I were training for a specific event or competition, this pattern would make sense.

That’s not what I’m doing, or what I need to do. What I need to do is just to have a habit of working out on weekdays. That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?

I choose swimming as my activity for several reasons. It’s easy on painful joints, it really is good cardio, and it does provide for a full-body workout in terms of muscle use. ‘Course the major advantage of swimming is the simplest. I’ll do it. There’s a great deal to be said for the exercise that you’ll do for all the cheesy adverts about Ultimate Workout Secrets that Top Athletes Don’t Want You to Know. The real secret is simple.

Do you do it?

Reinhard Engels of Everyday Systems fame has an interesting point of view about habit and self-discipline. Paraphrased, it’s that when you want to develop a long term habit, don’t clutter habit and progress. Track number of days you exercised v. how well you did during the exercises. Days on habit are ultimately more powerful, and oddly enough generate more long term progress, than the training mentality.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with training for a sports event. But if you’re not thinking of yourself in terms of being an athlete, and just want to work out for good body maintenance, being able to be faster and stronger in intervals of less than a year aren’t even all that useful. When you’re going for that life-long habit, high-velocity momentum just isn’t where it’s at.

Engels has a phrase for this. “Let the minimum be the maximum.” Choose a specific amount of time you want to work out. Work out that much¹. Don’t do more when you’re feeling macho and don’t do less when you’re feeling like a slacker. Go for consistency. Think in terms of years. What can you put up with for ten years?

For me, the idea of swimming half an hour a day for ten years doesn’t make me freak out. It even seems a little small. But in ten years’ time, I’ll be in considerably better shape than if I did the stop and go thing of pushing myself to increase my pace, then losing the obsession, rather than just accepting that this isn’t worthy of obsession, but is just something I need to do without throwing in a lot of emotion or intensity.

¹He choose 14 minutes a day for intense work, and then does his best to walk everywhere he can otherwise. His pictures over the long term support his theory that this works.

I’ve spent the last couple of months being lousy about exercise. You name it, I found excuses not to. But I also learned something about myself.

I’m a morning exerciser. There’s just no way around it. By the end of the day, I’m done and I want to be comfortable, quiet and at home.

Oh, I’ve tried evening workouts. “Sure, honey, when you get home from work, we’ll go work out before dinner.”

It doesn’t happen.

However, if I get up, go work out and don’t give myself time to think or decide about it, I’m up and at ’em at 5:30 in the morning.

I think for me, it’s that my imagination and ability to visualize works against me. At 5:30 in the morning, morning person though I am, my brain isn’t engaged yet. I’m not thinking about cold, or physical effort or anything like that. I’m just following through on what I’d preprogrammed in my brain the night before. I roll out of bed, make it, and throw on my bathing suit and sweats without any real conscious decision because that’s what’s laying on my bedside table for me to put on. I’m at the gym before I’m thinking about the fact that I’d rather be in bed.

For all that many of my readers are intellectuals and value conscious thought, it’s important to remember that we’re learning that conscious thought is expensive in terms of energy – even when we’re really smart. There are things that don’t deserve conscious thought, once you’ve decided you want something in your life to be a habit. If we had to put conscious thought into wiping ourselves and washing our hands every time we went to the bathroom, there would be some subset of the population that would find themselves struggling with these very basic and ingrained habits. But it is habit and we don’t think about it, or decide to do it. We just do it.

I think it is helpful to put the habits you want into these sort of pre-programmed subroutines. I’m not talking about necessarily exercise. I mean any desirable behavior that you want to do, you think would be good for you to do, but you don’t and you struggle with doing it. Placing it in your day where you’ll be more likely to do it without conscious decision means that you can apply the conscious mind to more important things in your life that deserve it more.

I’ve been psycho busy today. Taught a class this morning; had a meeting this afternoon. Fortunately it was at the gym and right before lap swim started for the afternoon. So I wore my bathing suit as my underwear before the meeting at the gym and brought my gym bag. You see, I was feeling grumpy and stressed and achy, so I thought I’d go ahead and work the kinks out in the water. I’ve been trying to get in more exercise and my joints were hurting. Hence, the swim.

Ahh, swimming, why I have neglected thee?

It’s been too long since I’ve gotten my butt into the pool. I’m weak as a cat. It took me half an hour to swim half a mile. That’s really kinda slow for me. My upper body isn’t as strong as once it was. That’ll change soon enough, though I expect I’ll be sore in the morning.

But, oh swimming feels so very good. There’s something almost magical about slicing through the water, concentrating on the breathing rhythm, and feeling the bubbles slide past. I generally get out of the pool after a good swim feeling an enormous sense of satisfaction, bordering on afterglow.

Now why was I not swimming again?

The gym is doing its usual summer 50 Mile Club.  You try to swim 50 miles between May 1 and August 31.  It’s a fairly challenging workout program, but I usually sign up.  (This translates to about a 1,500 yard swim every week day, so is no slouch of a workout)

This year, I need to get ear plugs, though.  I got some serious water in my ear last year that just wasn’t going away and messed with my hearing pretty badly.  I should probably break down and get new goggles, too.  Almost three years on a pair of goggles is not bad at all.  My latex cap and my bathing suit are both just fine, however.   The suit won’t be fine at the end of this summer, but that’s okay.

This is also going to mean I’m going to have to get into the gym a little earlier on days my family comes in with me.  Hopefully they won’t want to strangle me for this *grin*.

I wish I could find some decent waterproof earbuds, though.  60 lengths of the pool every weekday can get a wee bit tedious with no music or books to listen to.  I own a waterproof box for my iPod, but I’ve never found a pair of ear buds that could stand up to a serious swim.  Prolly why I never see such things in the pool.  It’s not like most of the gym patrons can’t afford ’em.

I’m also going to throw in some weights at home just to make sure I’m getting the bone-building stuff.  That’s the one area where swimming is weak.  It’s not a weight bearing exercise in any way, even if it is pretty good for strength.   But if I’m swimming 45 minutes or so every day, damn’f I’ll hit the gym for a weight training session, too!

Do you find the occasional physical challenge fun?  If you like them, what do you like to do?