Heart rate monitor, 66 mile day. MyMaps

I decided to finally break down and get a heart rate monitor. My reasoning was, partly, so as to have some concrete figures to connect with my fitness endeavors when I speak with my physician. As I think I've mentioned, I've had trouble so far getting helpful input from my physician on my fitness program.

Why? Most doctors seem set up to dispense very generic fitness advice: if your health is decent but you're not sufficiently active, they'll tell you to try and do some moderate fitness activities. Take walks, ride your bike, take the stairs rather than the elevator. Most doctors seem set up to dispense this kind of advice.

To top it all off, most doctors I've met with are not overly athletic folks. Ok, maybe they're not fat, and may even be fairly thin. But do they engage in intense athletic activities? Do they have a strong competitive drive when they do fitness? If they don't, I question how capable they will be in dispensing advice to those who are competitive.

I, for example, have yet to find a doctor who can give me meaningful advice about what I'm doing, at my age, for fitness. I can tell them I ride hard when I'm on my bike, but what does that mean? I went up a hill, riding as hard as I could? I submit that, if the doctor has not him/herself done some competitive athletics, they're not going to have much of a clue about what I, as a sometime competitive bicycle racer, mean when I say 'm riding hard.

The heart rate monitor is meant to help me communicate to them better what I'm doing. "You know, doctor, my heart rate on my two-hour ride yesterday was averaging about 135 beats per minute (bpm hereafter). I went up to 165 bpm and sustained that for about five minutes at one point, though." I hope by presenting the matter in those terms I might get some helpful input.

Which brings me to my results so far. I've actually only used the monitor on a couple of rides and on one upper-body workout session so far, and the results are interesting. I got a less expensive model, by the way--the Nike Triax C5 (ca. $49.00, shipping included, ordered through Amazon), a picture of which I'll include below.

I have to say that, preliminarily, I'm happy with this monitor. It's true that I don't have much to compare it with and that I've barely used it. But stay tuned to find out whether I continue to be satisfied with it.

As you can see, it looks like a wristwatch. And, as the photo indicates, it does tell time. But its significant function for my purposes is to read heart rate. It does this by wirelessly transmitting, from a corresponding strap you put around your chest, your heart-beat rate to the watch, which can be set to display that information. I will likely do a more in-depth review of this monitor in a future post.

Results so far. 120 bpm is a pretty comfortable rate for me: I feel like I'm hardly working at that rate, really. 150 bpm is a vigorous work rate, but one I can fairly easily sustain. I hit 160 bpm+ by the top of a long hill. Once I get to 170 bpm or so, I'm reaching the point where I start to go into oxygen deficit. I.e., I can hit that rate and sustain it, but my heart and lungs are just about at the point where they can't keep up with my leg muscles' demand for oxygen. Finally, on a particularly intense, but short chase, hit 190 bpm this past Saturday (and that at about the 55 mile mark of our 66 mile day!). I think my heart rate can go yet higher than that, but so far 190 bpm is the highest I've seen.

Now, contrast that with the heart-rate poster that hangs in our building's exercise room. There it says that the maximum heart rate for a 50 year old is 175 bpm. Well, I can tell you that I've exceeded that by quite a bit and lived to tell about it. Maximum heart-rate calculators found on the internet also tell you that, for a 50 year old, 170-175 bpm is supposed to be the maximum.

But according to my experiences so far, that's hogwash. And it seems there is plenty of information on the internet that calls into question the standard formula for calculating maximum heart rate as well. See the following link, for example: http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/max.htm . There is also a New York Times article, published on April 24th, 2001 in the Health section, entitled "'Maximum' Heart Rate Theory Is Challenged."

So, once again I'll be using myself as a guinea pig. I'll keep track of my own heart rates, discuss these with my doctor, and try to determine whether there are any principles that apply to aging and fitness--one of the main interests of this blog. Now, on to other concerns.

We did a 66 mile day this past weekend, so we continue building up mileage. A little stiffness and soreness developed in my left knee, so I'm a bit concerned about that. I would have guessed, if a knee problem were to crop up, it would be in my right knee, since my left foot is a little differently aligned to the knee than on my right leg (owing to a bad sprain I had in my right ankle as a kid). But it's actually my left knee that's started bothering me. Anyway, something I'll be keeping tabs on as cycling season continues.

As a final topic for this entry, I'll just mention that I've discovered how to use google's MyMaps. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's something with great potential for cyclists. One of the really nice features is that you can draw lines wherever you want (you're not limted to following roads). In combination with Satellite view, this enables cyclists to trace out routes that follow bike paths instead of roads, and to easily calculate mileage. I'm highly pleased with and enthused about this.

I have to say, though, that I've had a few issues. One is that the mileage calculator that follows the cursor as you trace out your map can interfere with your view of the map: couldn't they make this thing more transparent? Someone dropped the ball a bit on this issue. Likewise, I've created two maps which start and end in the same place, but take differing routes to get there (except the last 8 miles or so). Well, it seems that the last 8 miles of one or other route keep getting cut off. I've tried correcting this by re-extending the adumbrated route, but when I did that, the other route got shortened by 8 miles. Go figure.

There are obviously still some bugs that need to be worked out of this system, and some interface improvements are needed. But what I've seen so far looks really promising. Anyway, see below a sample map I made up to demonstrate some preliminary results (the red lines represent bike paths while the blue lines represent city streets):


View plank rd clinic <--> cedarburg in a larger map

60 mile day, preliminary review of modified Power 90

Well, we've now managed to break the 55 mile mark we set in late May--but not by much. We did 60 miles this past weekend, and I was surprised at how much it took out of me. Recalling, however, that although I took it pretty easy for the first 15 miles or so, we got into kind of a rush about 25 miles in and I really pushed it after that--especially between about miles 35 and 45. And even after that there was at least one fairly long hill, and hills are always daunting on a recumbent tandem (you can't use your body weight to help you stomp your way up the hill).

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the effort. I am building up toward something with these mileage increases: a hoped-for weekend tour later this month. I'm not sure we'll be able to pull that off though. Doing this sort of mileage also takes me back to more youthful days when I would hit the road for long-distance touring of a month or more. I may never be able to do that sort of thing again, but a guy can dream, can't he?

I'll also include in this entry a preliminary review of the modified Power 90 routine we began doing a couple of weeks ago. First, a word on what the phrase "modified Power 90" means.

As was the case with the P90X regime, we've excerpted parts of another regime(s) called Power 90 to create our own upper-body workout routine. I have parenthesis around the "s" on the word "regime" because there is more than one regime called Power 90 and because we've excerpted parts of two different Power 90 regimes.

I'm aware that this probably sounds confusing. And it is, in fact, confusing. But blame the company that puts out these video workouts for that.

I've blogged previously about how the company that puts out P90X and the Power 90 regimes is engaging in a practice I called product/market obfuscation. As I mentioned, I may later post a more philosophical entry about that practice. But suffice for now to observe that this is why my description of our modified Power 90 routine might sound confusing (a look at the wikipedia entry for Tony Horton [under the videography heading] contains a list of exercise videos he's done, which can help allay at least some of the confusion).

Not wanting to make myself a marketing organ for that company, or to support their ethically marginal practices in marketing their products, I will simply observe that one of the routines we've excerpted comes from what seems to be the standard, and older, Power 90 regime. The other comes from a newer one that has the additional label "master's series." The first is called circuit 3-4 sculpt, and the second is called circuit 5-6 sculpt.

I gather from what's said in the videos that we've excerpted some of the most advanced portions of the respective regimes. I presume that each of those regimes is likely a 90 day fitness course that builds to more lengthy and more strenuous exercises toward the end. So we've essentially skipped the introductory and intermediate portions of the two regimes and gone straight to the advanced portions.

The focus in each of the routines we've excerpted is on upper body strengthening. There are just a few leg exercises--which is what we were looking for, i.e., a minimal amount of lower body exercising (we get our lower body exercise primarily from cycling) and an emphasis on strengthening the upper body.

I observed in a previous entry that I was pleasantly surprised by the modified routine we've put together. That opinion remains. This is a nice selection of exercises, alternating between use of weights (dumbbells) and calisthenics. It's not as strenuous as P90X and doesn't take as much time (roughly 40 minutes as opposed to 55 minutes). The icing on the cake for me is that it ends up being pretty aerobic. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I had decided that we needed to switch to something that would involve aerobic upper-body activities, and this looks like a really good answer.

I should mention in that regard that it is aerobic only if you try and keep pace with the video, which we do. If you use the pause button, it won't be as aerobic, and it will also take longer.

I want to mention in closing that, when doing P90X, I was trying to build up some muscle, so I was generally using heavier weight and doing less repetitions--in cases where weights (dumbbells) are being used. Though I've been following pretty much that same practice with our modified Power 90 routines, I will begin experimenting with using less weight and doing more repetitions. This will have the dual effect of making the workout more aerobic, as well as providing me with a little bit of a break from the rigorousness of the P90X workouts I'll be doing during the shorter part of the year.

As a final summary to this entry, an overview of our current annual fitness regime.

- workout 6 times a week, 4 days (Tues., Thurs., Sat., and Sun.) cycling or walking and 2 days (Mon. and Fri.) strength training.

- cycling days see us either riding on the road for between 6 and 70 miles, or riding the stationary bikes indoors for 1/2 hour, depending on weather. we have the option of replacing cycling with walking--which is more likely to happen during the colder months.

- strength training, done on Mondays and Fridays, will involve doing our modified Power 90 routine from about April through November. From December through March we'll be doing our modified P90X.

I should also mention that used copies of both these DVD's can be found on Amazon for between $5.00 and $15.00. eBay is another likely source for cheap copies of these video workouts. Stay tuned for my next entry.

Some considerations for the older exercise enthusiast

I will offer here just a short entry that conveys an important point that came up in one of my physical therapy sessions. It's actually a very commonsensical point that, on later reflection, leaves me wondering why I hadn't thought of it earlier.

On undergoing some physical therapy for a back problem that recently cropped up (I havent blogged yet about this problem or the therapy I got for it, since it seemed a muscular thing that was likely to pass quickly) I described to the therapist my exercise regime. While she thought what I was doing was generally good--meaning I was leading an adequately active lifestyle--she seemed a little put off by the variety of exercises I was doing.

To backtrack a little, during the time I had that appointment we were still doing our modified P90X routines. Taken together, we probably had a repertoire of 30 or 40 different exercises we were doing twice weekly at that time. That's quite a lot of variety and the variety, I think, played some role in keeping that program interesting.

Now, contrast that variety with the exercises the physical therapist gives you. They start out with some really simple "granny exercises" that I'm reluctant even to call exercises. You do those for a week and come back, then they give you some more. And so on until you're doing a larger selection of exercises that are a bit more demanding.

Why do they do things this way? Why start with such easy exercises, gradually building up to something more challenging?

It's pretty simple, actually. They do it this way because they want to find out if there is some exercise that's causing you problems. Only after checking, following a certain period of doing the exercises, whether they are having some detrimental effect, do they add more. Essentially they try to isolate exercises to see if there are any that cause problems.

Now, that's something I can relate to well. If you read my blog entries about my shoulder problem you'll know that I couldn't put my finger on exactly what precipitated it. In fact, it would have been very difficult to do that because I was doing about 20 different types of exercises when the problem came up (that was before we started P90X, when I was mainly using the Soloflex for strength training). I found myself wondering at times how I might conduct some experiment to see if I could determine whether one of those exercises was bothering my shoulder more than some other. But I couldn't really think of a good way to do that, so I just kept on with the same set of exercises.

Anyway, back to my more recent physical therapy sessions--the ones related to some back pain I've had recently. The therapist was a bit hesitant to fully endorse our P90X routine. Thinking about why that might be, in concert with reflecting on how the physical therapists I've consulted with introduce exercises in phases, revealed why she was hesitant: they attempt to try and isolate exercises that might cause problems and to stop those that do. They sometimes provide alternate exercises in place of the offending ones. In short, the way physical therapists approach exercise is to build up a routine for you gradually, using only exercises that your body seems to tolerate well.

That sort of approach helps guard against ending up in a situation like mine, where you have developed some problem but can't quite identify what caused it. Or, it helps prevent those sorts of injury to begin with. Granted, this might seem pretty self-evident, but it comes to me as something of a revelation.

Addressing why it comes as a revelation uncovers the difficulties involved in developing an adequate exercise regime. Of course the simple way to develop an exercise regime is just to get a book or DVD like I did and follow along. Ideally, though, what we should probably be doing is getting a book or DVD and working into it gradually: just do a couple of the exercises for the first two or three weeks and see what the effect are, then add a couple more. Continue like that until you've added a sufficient number of exercises to suit your goals.

I did not follow that path, obviously. Whether through impatience or perhaps naivete about how the exercises could affect a body the age of mine, I can't say. Likely a combination of the two.

Which brings me to the moral of this entry. When you start a new exercise routine, and I think this applies especially to those approaching my age, you should think seriously about working into it gradually. Try just a couple of exercises for two or three weeks, then introduce a couple more. And so on, until you've developed your full regime. Doing so may help you to avoid injury and allow you to spend less time in doctors' offices or in physical therapy, and more in actual fitness pursuits.

Farewell (but not good riddance) P90X!

As I've been mentioning for some time now, we've been planning a move away from the modified P90X routine we started doing earlier this spring. As I hinted in my last blog entry, that change was slated to come very soon. Well, it didn't come as soon as I thought it might: I decided to give my back a little extra healing time, so we actually took about 11 days off from our upper-body workouts before doing our final P90X workout for this season. We did the last P90X routine this past Friday, and started today (the subsequent Monday) with one of the new Power 90 routines I found. Before I say more about the new Power 90 routines, though, let me recap a bit about the P90X routines we were doing.

I will miss our modified P90X routines. I usually find a really rigorous workout like that refreshing--though a small percentage of the time I do find it tedious and have to force myself to do the workout. Overall we enjoyed it and got some good health benefits from it. It's definitely not for everyone my age: you have to already be in pretty good condition before you start, or else be ready to take things really slowly. But for us it worked pretty well. I should probably reiterate on that score that, before we started our modified P90X, we had been working out with weights and some calisthenics twice weekly for several months. So we were prepared to step up the effort a bit.

So, though I'll miss our P90X workouts, I can leave them behind without much regret because I know we'll be going back to those routines. As I've previously blogged, those routines do have a place in our annual fitness plan--that place is in the cycling off-season. At the moment, I foresee us going back to our modified P90X perhaps as early as late November--or by Christmas, at the latest. We'll continue using the modified P90X until probably late February or some time in March. Then we'll switch to some less rigorous routine, perhaps back to what we plan on doing for the rest of the summer.

Which brings me to a key topic of the current blog entry: the routine we'll be doing until late November or so, and possibly for most of the year for the foreseeable future.

As I mentioned in my last entry, we are using parts of another fitness regime developed by the same company that does P90X--the regime is called Power 90 (sometimes just P90, sans the letter X). Once again, Tony Horton leads the exercises and, once again, we are excising out portions of the regime that suit well our fitness needs and goals.

The company that puts out these fitness videos/DVD's is engaging in a common capitalist tactic I would call marketing obfuscation. The idea is to put out a whole lot of products very similar in character and name, but to not be very forthcoming with information about what differentiates these products from one another. This same practice plays a huge role as well in computer/tech marketing, but it is found in some degree in many capitalist enterprises. The tactic causes consumer confusion, which results in poorly-informed spending, which, the instigators of the policy understand, will result in more sales of their products and thus greater profits. Maybe I'll write a more philosophical entry at some point expanding further on this matter, but for now I just want to point out that there are a number of products sold by this company that go under the label Power 90 and I'm not entirely sure how they relate to one another.

But, by sleuthing a bit I've managed to find two that I think will suit our off-season fitness needs pretty well. These two focus on upper-body strengthening and have but a very few leg exercises. And both are advanced phases of the regimes from which they're excerpted. Both go under the label "sculpt" as well. One is level 3 and 4 from Power 90 sculpt circuit, and the other is level 5 and 6 from the Power 90 sculpt circuit.*

Though both routines are called Power 90 and they seem to be numbered consecutively, they were obviously produced at different times (don't ask me to explain beyond stating that this is an example of marketing obfuscation). The 3-4 sculpt routine looks to me to date to the 1990's, while I'm pretty sure the 5-6 sculpt routine was produced some time after the turn of the millennium--perhaps as recently as 2003 or so.

Though I've viewed both routines in their entirety, we've so far only actually done one of them: the 3-4 sculpt routine. I'll leave a fuller report for later, but preliminarily I can say that I like the routine we've tried and, furthermore, I can observe that this is a lot more cardio-intense than the P90X routines we were doing. I was pretty winded throughout the first two thirds of the workout, which I never experienced doing our modified P90X. We'll do the 5-6 sculpt routine this Friday, so I look forward to seeing how that will go.

I want to observe at this point that I was pleasantly surprised by the Power 90 routine we did today. I had just been thinking to myself that we should find something for upper body exercising that would be more aerobic, like perhaps rowing. Well, this Power 90 routine ended up being pretty intensely aerobic, so it looks like I ended up getting what I'd hoped for.

So, for the next few months we'll be doing only these two routines twice a week (on Mondays and Fridays). As for what the future holds, I can say that, in the longer term, I'm looking forward to the time when I become less reliant on exercise videos. I view myself at the moment as very much in the learning phase regarding this sort of exercise: I need to just try a lot of different routines and techniques and find out what works and what does and doesn't go well together. At that point, I should be able to cobble together my own regimens using bits and pieces from the various things I've tried and using knowledge gained through practice. More on that later.
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* Why do they combine levels like this? If 3 and 4 are essentially the same level, then they should be called just level 3 or level 4. Oh yeah, I just explained why . . . marketing obfuscation!

The costs of fitness

I just want to blog a bit today about the costs of fitness--hidden costs, if you will. The cost/benefit ratio of fitness needs to be taken into account, and the way things change with age need to be addressed. Let me begin by describing what prompts this blog entry.

As will be evident from posts I've made about a shoulder problem that cropped up some months ago and possible connections between that problem and my recent fitness endeavors, exercise, while improving health in some ways, can be degrading to it in other ways. Put another way, I could ask whether the sort of fairly decent upper body conditioning I have at the moment is worth the cost of the physical therapy I've had to undergo for the shoulder problem?

Ok, I only paid $25 (my standard co-pay) to undergo physical therapy, so it's not like I broke the bank or anything by doing that. But I do need to point out that, while physical therapy made an overall improvement in the problem, it didn't go away altogether. My shoulder still bothers me a bit. And I have to admit that now even my left shoulder (previously unaffected) is giving me a bit of discomfort at times.

What raises this cost/benefit question for me more urgently in recent weeks, however, is some back pain I've begun to experience. I'm also now undergoing physical therapy and some chiropractic manipulation for that, which introduces further costs. It leaves me asking myself: would I be having these problems and their associated costs if I were not exercising? Or maybe not exercising as intensely?

Unfortunately, I have no clear answer to that question. I do have to admit that I've had back pain off and on over the years, so that's nothing new. The shoulder pain is nothing new either, as I've stated previously: as long as 20 years ago I had some problems with it. But I could be asking whether the exercise is exacerbating some long-term problems, and thus whether not exercising, or perhaps exercising with far less intensity, would help.

How could it help? Not exercising would give the body a chance to rejuvenate any damage it has sustained from exercise. But long-term abstinence from exercise is bound to have health detriments like heightened cholesterol, perhaps heightened blood pressure, and the like.

It so happens that the timing is good for testing the other option--the option of lowering workout intensity. I have finally found a couple of exercise routines that are slightly shorter than the P90X routines we now use (ca. 40 mins. as compared to ca. 55 mins.). They are also correspondingly less intense. These are from among the Power 90 routines, by the way. And, finally, cycling season is now here in full swing, so we want to cut back a bit on upper-body exercise anyway.

The scenario we now have planned is to do our last session of P90X (DVD 12) for the season this Friday. Then, for the next few months, we will be doing the lighter-duty Power 90 routines on Mondays and Fridays. I plan to stick with those routines until probably late fall, when we'll cut way back on cycling--maybe doing as little as 15 minutes per day on the stationary bikes.

The upshot of all this? I'm the guinea pig. I know now what have been the effects on a 50 year old body of a pretty rigorous exercise regime. It's had both positive and negative effects, both health-wise and cost-wise. Now we'll see what the positive and negative effects of the less rigorous routine will be. In the final analysis, this should give me some reference points from which to better judge the cost/benefit ratio. Look for more on this over the coming weeks.

Future entries? We've begun doing our workouts first thing in the morning rather than in the evening. My wife says it helps her keep alert and awake during her workday. I may well post an entry on the issue of workout scheduling in the coming weeks.

A 55 mile day before June!

Just a quick announcement. I've already blogged about how we're much better conditioned this cycling season than last, owing to a fairly minimal indoor training regime (stationary bikes) over the winter. I also blogged about how it seemed almost easy to ride our first 35 mile day this year. On that note, it turns out the distance is closer to 32 miles--we got a new odometer that indicates that, anyway.

Well, we were looking for a day to up the mileage yet further and that day turned out to be yesterday. Saturday shaped up to be a really beautiful day, though there was a warning about the possibility of thunderstorms. I mapped out what I thought would be about a 50 mile route. We ended up having to take a detour but, when all was said and done, that we did 55 miles. And that before the month of June even started! Had we not taken the detour, the trip would likely have been even a little longer.

I wanted to blog about this since it has some significance and might even provide a sort of benchmark for future years. I also needed to make at least one blog entry during this month!

As far as future entries go, I've begun to think a bit about body fat levels and health. The basic line of reasoning I'm following is that there is an obvious connection between one's level of body fat and one's health--generally, the lower the body fat level, the better one's health will be. But I'm curious about what the threshold is: where is the tipping-point?

I've become curious about that after doing some more reading on P90X. They recommend a low-fat diet which, obviously, can help one lose weight. As I've previously written, though, I don't need to lose any weight. I'm right at about 200 lbs. right now and I think that, were I to lose any more weight, I'd start to become skinny. So, to what extent should I consider following a particular diet--whether the P90X diet or any other?

It's true that I have a higher body-fat level now than I've probably had at any other time in my life (evidence the rudimentary love handles I've mentioned in previous blog entries). But is it any unhealthy level? Also, reading on the P90X forums has convinced me that a lot of the folks posting there are trying to lower body fat levels not for health reasons, but for vanity reasons: they want their muscle definition to be more pronounced. But is there any net health gain in getting body fat levels down to that point? I have my doubts, but do need to explore the matter further.

An example from competitive athletics may be helpful to underline the point. We generally have the impression that professional and competitive athletes are in excellent health. And in certain respects this is true. But my years of bicycle racing brought me to the realization that competitive athletics can actually worsen your health. How? One example from bicycle racing is the risk of accident: and cycling accidents run the gamut from minor, to those that result in serious injury, to those that even result in death (professional bicycle racers do occasionally die as a result of their injuries). Then, there are stress injuries incurred by basketball or football players that can result in an early end to a career (think Sandy Coufax or Dick Butkus). And the suffering associated with those injuries surely only increases with age. So, the equation of health with elite athletic pursuits should not be made facilely.

What, then, is the story with body fat? Could, for example, competitive bodybuilders, who attempt to lower their body fat levels to the extreme, actually be harming more than helping their health in the overall? And what about the average joe, who engages in training and fitness activities primarily to improve health? What is the appropriate body fat level in this case?

I hope to blog about this and more soon. Stay tuned.

Fitness revelations: off-season conditioning

This past year I vowed that we would not lapse into inactivity over the winter months. Though our favored form of fitness activity - cycling - would be ruled out due to cold and bad road conditions, we could nonetheless maintain at least some level of - even if only a minimal one - conditioning by using exercise bikes indoors. I have to say I'm a bit shocked at what I've learned from this experience.

Before continuing on that theme, let me explain a bit about last season. We really had done very little cycling over the years leading up to last year's season. Summer of '07 we did very little, though we did manage to get out a bit in summer of '06. '04 and '05 we did a bit as well, though we did not put in any very long days (i.e., not more than 35 miles). So, when my high blood pressure started to become a significant issue in spring of '08, motivating me to establish and stick to an exercise regime, we were fairly out of shape.

Those first few rides late last spring and early summer were trying. I remember how tired I was after the first 25 mile day (please bear in mind that I tend to push myself pretty hard on the bike). I felt similarly drained after the first 35 and first 50 mile days of the year. In other words, I was sore for several days afterward, and the thought of doing any strenuous activity was not at all foremost in my mind. We managed to put in even a 65-70 mile day last year, and the after-effects were similar. Of course, having done quite a lot of cycling and training in my younger years, I had come to expect this sort of "plateauing" effect: each increase in mileage during the course of a season requires an adjustment for your body, and the second 35 mile day of the season is not nearly as hard on your body as the first.

I should also mention as a part of this aside that, even in my younger years when I was racing bicycles, I wasn't terribly disciplined about training. I wouldn't stick to much of a regular training schedule during racing season, but would rather just try and spend time on the bike several times a week: the main goal was to get a certain total mileage under my belt per week (say, a minimum of 150 miles). In the off-season, I was even more undisciplined. During a couple of seasons I did some riding indoors using rollers. But again I didn't have a regular schedule and was very sporadic about it: if I was more liable to train indoors, it would be more likely to be at the very end of the season (say in Nov. or Dec.). The upshot is that I didn't really take off-season training very seriously.

Fast forward to this year. I can therefore honestly say that this year, when we were pretty regular about riding the exercise bikes 4 times a week over the whole off-season, is the first year I ever actually trained with any discipline over the course of the off-season. I also want to stress another important factor: our off-season training consisted in spending mostly about 1/2 hour on the exercise bikes. We started off doing 45 minutes last fall, but reduced that to 1/2 hour since around Christmas time.

Now, this training indoors was not simply a leisurely session on the exercise bike - I should point out that. It wasn't especially strenuous, no, but I'd try to keep my rpm's up around 90 or more and sustain the heart rate at probably 130-140. So, a short but vigorous aerobic workout, one without serious strain on the leg muscles.

So, what are the effects of this, essentially minimalistic - though regular - training in the off-season? It can be best characterized with the following single word: dramatic. In our first on-road session this year we went about 17 miles. We both felt great. We went up the hills we struggled to get up all last season (try riding hills on a recumbent tandem sometime) in the same gear we were riding up them at the end of last season. It was almost as if we never got off the bike at season's end, actually. And perhaps most impressively, I hardly felt any soreness the next day. Perhaps a bit of stiffness in the backs of my legs for a day or two, but that's it. This was nothing like the "plateauing effect" I knew from training in my younger days, where each significant increase in mileage carried a new level of trauma to which the body needed to acclimate. I can honestly say that I didn't feel anything like that at all.

And last weekend we did 35 miles, and a lot of that going at a pretty good clip. I felt almost no soreness at all from that ride the next day. So, I have to say that I'm truly impressed. It really looks as though, by riding for only about a half hour four days a week over the winter, we've essentially preserved all the conditioning we gained by putting in all the miles we did last summer. Excuse me for getting excited about the obvious, but this is a real revelation. Why couldn't I do even this paltry amount of off-season training years ago, when I was racing? What a difference it would have made! I might have won the tour de France! (ha ha) Ah, the foolishness of youth.

Anyway, this subject seemed important enough to warrant a blog entry. It sure has made an impression on me. But it's also got me wanting to experiment: what's the minimal amount of off-season training we'll have to do to preserve some semblance of fitness from last season? Mind you, I don't pose this question out of laziness: rather, I'm trying to be careful that we don't get burnt out by overdoing it. We will need to take breaks, and sometimes to take it easy, for that reason.

Already I'm scheming up a new plan to test: next winter, we'll cut down to 15 minute sessions 4 times per week on the exercise bikes during deep winter (say, from Christmas to the end of Feb.). We'll pare down to that from 1/2 hour sessions in the fall and increase from 15 minutes to 1/2 hour in early spring.

I'll let you know the results then.

Two weeks with truncated P90X; homemade push-up bars

We started using a modified version of the P90X program close to two weeks ago, so here's a post about how it's going so far. At the end of this entry I'll also include some tips on making homemade push-up bars, which can be used for the P90X program, and will include some photos.

"P90X modified? What does that mean?" you may ask. Well, as I've explained in previous posts, I plan to adapt the P90X program to my own regimen and needs. One thing this means is that I won't be doing any of the leg strengthening exercises they show, or the aerobics--that means over 50% of the program won't be applied in my case. Why? Because I get leg strengthening and aerobic exercise from my preferred form of physical activity--cycling. When weather permits, we ride outdoors--anywhere from 10 to 70 miles. When weather doesn't permit, we ride for 1/2 to 1 hour on stationary bikes indoors.

But using less than 50% of the P90X regimen is not the only modification I've made. We also are not following the diet--though I think our current diet is healthy enough and already fairly close to what the P90X program recommends. Perhaps more importantly, we're not following the P90X schedule. That is to say that we do not do P90X exercise routines 6 days a week--nowhere near that--and we do not intend to do a 90 day cycle of the P90X exercises we are using--the cycle the program is set up for.

No, we have already been doing strength training two days a week--on Mon. and on Fri.--and we plan to continue with that schedule. But instead of the weight-lifting exercises we were doing on Mon. and Fri., we'll do some select P90X routines. To be precise, we're using only 4 of the 12 DVD's, all of which offer exercises aimed at strengthening the upper body (remember, we strengthen the lower body by cycling).

To be even more precise, we use DVD 1 (chest and back), DVD 3 (shoulder and arm), DVD 9 (chest, shoulder, and tricep), and DVD 10 (back and bicep). To date, we've done all but DVD 10, which we'll do tomorrow (tomorrow's Friday, the fourth day we'll have been doing P90X routines).

Below is a table listing all the exercises contained on each of these DVD's. Note that the table does not list such details as number of repetitions or sets.

DVD 1 - Chest & Back	DVD 3 - Shoulders & Arms	DVD 9 - Chest, Shoulders, Triceps	DVD 10 - Back & Biceps
1. Standard Push-ups	1. Alternating Shoulder Presses	1. Slow-motion 3-in-1 Push-ups	1.Wide Front Pull-ups
2. Wide Front Pull-ups	2. In & Out Bicep Curls	2. In & Out Shoulder Flys	2. Lawnmowers
3. Military Push-ups	3. Two-arm Tricep Kickbacks	3. Chair Dips	3. Twenty-ones
4. Reverse Grip Chin-ups	4. Deep Swimmer's Presses	4. Plange Push-ups	4. One-arm Cross-body Curls
5. Wide Fly Push-ups	5. Full Supination Concentration Curls	5. Pike Presses	5. Switch Grip Pull-ups
6. Closed Grip Overhand Pull-ups	6. Chair Dips	6. Side Tri-rises	6. Elbows-out Lawnmowers
7. Decline Push-ups	7. Upright Rows	7. Floor Flys	7. Standing Bicep Curls
8. Heavy Pants	8. Static Arm Curls	8. Scarecrows	8. One-arm Concentration Curls
9. Diamond Push-ups	9. Flip-grip Twist Tricep Kickbacks	9. Overhead Tricep Extensions	9. Corn Cob Pull-ups
10. Lawnmowers	10. Two-angle Shoulder Flys	10. Two-twitch Speed Push-ups	10. Reverse Grip Bent-over Rows
11. Dive-bomber Push-ups	11. Crouching Cohen Curls	11. Y-presses	11. Open Arm Curls
12. Back Flys	12. Lying-downTricep Extension	12. Lying Tricep Extensions	12. Static Arm Curls
	BONUS ROUND	13. Side-to-side Push-ups	13. Towel Pull-ups
	13. In & Out Straight-arm Shoulder Flys	14. Pour Flys	14. Congdon Locomotives
	14. Congdon Curls	15. Side-leaning Tricep Extensions	15. Crouching Cohen Curls
	15. Side Tri-rises	16. One-arm Push-ups	16. One-arm Corkscrew Curls
		17. Weighted Circles	17. Chin-ups
		18. Throw the Bomb	18. Seated Bent-over Back Flys
		19. Clap or Plyo Push-ups	19. Curl-up/Hammer Downs
		20. Slo-mo Throws	20. Hammer Curls
		21. Front-to-back Tricep Extensions	21. Max Rep Pull-ups
		22. One-arm Balance Push-ups	22. Superman
		23. Fly-row Presses	23. In-Out Hammer Curls
		24. Dumbbell Cross-body Blows	24. Strip-set Curls

Now, for a preliminary report on the modified P90X routines we've been doing: man, this is hard! I'm getting dusted by dainty ladies in aerobic dance get-ups! This really is a rigorous regime. In fact, it's too rigorous--more on that later.

I can really feel these P90X workouts for days afterward, and I'm nowhere near keeping up with the folks in the videos in number of reps--even the dainty ladies. I'm glad we didn't go into this with the idea we'd be doing these workouts almost every day--it's just too much, given our goals.

Preliminarily, I see a place for the more full-fledged workout (meaning, our adapted version where we do a full DVD for upper body strengthening twice a week and thus all 4 of our favored DVD's over a two-week cycle). But it's not going to be during most of the year. No, during most of the year when we're able to get out on the bike, I want a less rigorous upper-body workout. Frankly, I put out so hard on some of our rides that I'm feeling the effects for days afterward. And I'm sure as heck not going to want to do a full P90X session the day after one of those rides (maybe not for 3 or 4 days afterward). No thanks: I don't want a routine that interferes with my main fitness activity. So I'm now on the lookout for a calisthenics routine that we can use during late spring, summer, and early fall (cycling season), one that's less rigorous--say a half hour session. For now, we'll continue using our modified P90X, since cycling season is not yet in full swing. But we should be switching to some other, less demanding calisthenics routine sometime in the next month or two.

Ok, given what I've said about our modified P90X having a place in our regimen what, exactly, do I mean? What I mean is that its place, for our purposes, is in the cycling off-season. I can foresee us doing what we've done these last two weeks, i.e., using the 4 upper-body P90X DVD's each Mon. and Fri. in a two-week cycle from, say, late-Nov. through mid-March. That's when we're putting in limited time (about 1/2 hour per session) on stationary bikes indoors. And that's when doing a really rigorous upper body workout is not going to interfere with our cycling. In fact, I could foresee my cravings for a good, hard workout being satisfied during the cycling off-season by twice-weekly P90X routines. The idea during this off-season as far as cycling goes is, after all, just to keep the legs spinning: we're not supposed to go all out. Rather, we elevate the metabolism slightly, maintain it for a short time, and just keep the spin in our legs. In other words, this is a great time for introducing a rigorous upper-body workout like the 4 P90X DVD's provide.

In closing, I'll leave you with some tips on making your own push-up bars using plastic pipe. These push-up bars are recommended for the P90X program, though they're not absolutely necessary. I should point out up front that you won't save much making these for yourself: in fact, if you don't already have some tools (e.g., a PVC cutter), some materials, and some craftmanship abilities, it may cost you more to make your own. The cheapest premade ones I saw were about $10 (that was on the internet, so add shipping cost), and that's not much more than the $7 I spent on the materials I bought to make mine. But if you're a do-it-yourselfer like me, you won't be deterred by any questionable savings: you'll go ahead and do the job yourself. You may well even improve on my plan.

Below is a photo of the parts I bought, after cutting and prior to assembly. I'll later provide a detailed list, a price breakdown, a description of what I did, and a photos of the fully-assembled final product.

Here I'll provide a parts list, cost itemization, and some directions. To make these yourself, you'll need something like the following: some 3/4 inch PVC (you only actually need about a foot, but the shortest length I could buy at the store I went to was 5 feet); 2 three quarter inch PVC T fittings; 4 three quarter inch PVC caps; 2 one inch PVC caps; 2 ninety degree one inch non-metallic rigid conduit elbows; and some glue.

The total cost of these materials--excluding the glue, which I already had--was $7.75. Some of the parts are cheaper at other stores, so I could have saved a little off that by looking around a bit more to see who had the cheapest parts. I could also have saved had I already had some 3/4" PVC laying around. But seven or eight dollars is about what you can expect to pay to make these bars.

Below is a photo of the finished product, all glued up and ready to use. I'll include some directions after the photo.

Directions: these parts all basically just slide together. The 3 inch sections of 3/4 inch PVC pipe slide into the ends of the PVC T fittings, and the 3/4 PVC caps slide onto the ends of the 3 inch sections of 3/4 PVC pipe. I didn't glue those joints, but just pounded them together solidly. The remaining end of the 3/4 inch PVC T fitting slides up into the flared end of the 1 inch 90 degree non-metallic conduit: it's a fairly loose fit that needs to be glued. Since these materials (PVC and non-metallic conduit) are not really meant to be used together, there's no glue made specifically for joining them. I used shoe goo, but construction adhesive or epoxy would work just as well--just make sure it's a thick glue, so it won't just flow out of the fairly loose joint. Finally, the 1 inch PVC caps slide onto the open ends of the 1 inch 90 degree non-metallic conduit elbows. I did not glue this joint either.

Leave the glue to dry overnight and . . . voila! homemade push-up bars! Below you get to see the final product in action.

Maybe I'll tell you in a later post about that wound on my left index finger: I got it constructing the chin-up bar I just finished in our building's exercise room.

Addendum: here's a picture of a commercial product (ca. $10 minus shipping cost) that's constructed from the same materials as mine were:

Post-addendum: here are a few alternate links that offer good overviews of the P90X DVD's we're using and descriptions of the exercises involved (beware of the first two links which, despite containing helpful descriptive information, are high-intensity sales sites that may attempt to thwart use of your browser's "back" button): chest and back, shoulder and arm, and back and biceps.

Shoulder injuries and aging flash!

Here's a great example of how information on exercise and aging is not readily available. Perhaps it can also be an example of how this blog can, to some extent, address that problem.

My wife has used the South Beach Diet over the past couple of years with not very good results. I can't say I saw her lose any significant amount of weight using it. But she decided to give it another try after discovering a new book that augments the diet with an exercise regime. It was while perusing this book that I stumbled across a piece of information that may be germane to my recent shoulder problem, but that is certainly crucial information for those intending to exercise in their later years.

In the book, the author (Dr. Arthur Agatston) describes how he took up a sort of cardio-boxing routine, which helped him to discover the virtues of interval training. One exercise his trainer had him do involved lifting a medicine ball overhead and throwing it. He describes how he felt some pain in his shoulder when he did this, though he ignored the pain. The pain increased over the subsequent weeks such that he had to seek a diagnosis and treatment. It turns out that by doing that particular exercise, he had developed a shoulder injury--a rotator cuff tear.

Furthermore, the doctor who diagnosed the problem told him that he always tells patients of Agatston's age to NOT do exercises that involve lifting weight overhead (Agatston was born in 1947, his book came out in 2008, so we could deduce that Agatston was around 60 years old when the doctor gave him that advice). It turns out that, with age, calcium deposits form in the joints causing restricted space for muscles and tendons. This, in turn, leads to greater risk of rotator cuff injury with increasing age. Essentially, the tendons and/or muscles in the affected joints are weaker and subject to tearing more easily under stress (the discussion of the problem Agatston encountered is found on pp 49-50 of his "The South Beach Diet Super Charged")

I read about rotator cuff injuries at the following link: http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/rotatorcuff/a/rotatorcuff.htm . That description does indicate that this sort of injury can be diagnosed as tendinitis--as my shoulder injury was. So, did I really have a rotator cuff injury? I should mention that, although I feel pretty much fully recovered now, I do get a burning sensation in my shoulder while, after exercising, I hold my arm in a certain position. I really do think this age-related restriction of the joint, and thus of tendons and muscles in the joint, may apply to me.

So, where was this information when I needed it? When I told my doctor I planned to start an exercise regime, why did he not warn me about age-related joint restrictions, or about lifting weight over my head? Why didn't the doctors I saw when I went with a shoulder problem point this out? Why didn't the physical therapist who treated me for tendinitis suggest this as a possible problem? Are these medical professionals just as much in the dark as I am when it comes to age and exercise?

Sadly, it seems so. Again, perhaps I can help to offset these inadequacies and shortcomings by making this blog a repository of information on aging and exercise. I'll have to consider now whether I need to stop lifting weight over my head.

Calisthenics or "bodyweight exercises"

I plan on doing a post soon showing the exercises the physical therapist gave me and that seem to have my shoulder pretty much fully mended up by now. There are some technical issues involved, such as how to graphically or pictorially show the exercises: photos, a video uploaded to youtube, some diagrams? Anyway, once I get those resolved I'll publish that post. But in this posting, I just want to make brief note of a little web research I did on calisthenics.

I've already noted in previous posts that I intend to do calisthenics--in place of the weight lifting I now do for strength conditioning--for at least part of the year. Actually, as I write this I even think to myself that I could foresee replacing weight lifting entirely with a good calisthenics program. Since I'm still in the fairly early planning stages of my exercise regime, though, I don't want to make any binding decisions about that now.

Anyway, as I speak of calisthenics what I mean is essentially exercises that use only your body's own weight as resistance--as opposed to using a barbell, dumbbells, or, say, rubber resistance bands. So I have in mind things like push-ups--which are much the same as doing bench presses--chin-ups, sit-ups, dips, and the like. Throughout my life I've always referred to these sorts of exercises as calisthenics.

Some recent web searching revealed to me that such exercises are now sometimes referred to as "bodyweight exercises." That makes some sense since, as I mentioned, when doing them you're using your body's weight as the resistance against which you work to build strength. I have to admit, though, that I'm a little suspicious of the new terminology I've discovered--suspicious that it was invented to turn what has always been common knowledge in fitness circles, i.e., types of calisthenics and what muscles they strengthen, into something that can be marketed. A sort of bait-and-switch maneuver.

There are at least two sites trying to sell books and exercise routines under the "bodyweight exercise" label. One also uses the phrase "combat conditioning," while the other tries to purvey its products as the discovery of "coach so-and-so." I'll let you find those for yourself if you're interested, since I don't wish to make this blog into a promotion of those sites. The bottom line is that they, like the P90X people, are in the business of marketing fitness.

The problem with the main sites I found for those bodyweight exercise or calisthenics sites do a pretty hard sell. They don't want to give you much in the way of information unless you pay them. But I'm sure there are plenty of sites on the net where at least the basic information they're trying to market (e.g., types of exercises and what muscles they strengthen) are freely available. I hope one of the things I can do on this blog is to create something of a repository for that type of information.

So, to begin with, here's a link to a site that explains a fairly simple calisthnics or bodyweight exercise routine: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mahler19.htm . Another similar site can be seen here: http://www.cbass.com/Furey.htm . Be aware that at both sites you're going to find links to one of the sites that tries to sell books and other materials connected with the "combat conditioning" calisthenics marketing ploy. Another similar page the provides a video can be viewed here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Quick-Bodyweight-Exercise-Routines .

Despite the marketing on some of these pages they do have at least one virtue: they provide a really basic set of calisthenics that, practiced for 15 to 30 minutes daily or a few times per week should really help develop one's strength and conditioning--presuming, of course, that one follows a healthy diet in addition.

I hope to be able to provide more such links to sites that, without trying to goad the maximum amount of money out of you, provide good information on bodyweight or calisthenic exercise routines.

UPDATE: here's a link for a page with a lot of links to bodyweight exercising: http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode2/Workouts . There's plenty of advertising there too, but there's enough useful information at the links that it seemed worthwhile to include the link.