Exercise/Fitness Log

[jennypenny]

Does anyone use minimalist gloves when lifting like these? https://rawwgear.com/buy/barehand-gloves/

I need gloves but I don't like regular gloves. I tried making them but they fell apart because I cut away too much of the glove and there wasn't enough left to hold it together. I don't want to tape (even though I like it) because it feels wasteful to throw away the tape every day.

[daylen]

I am really excited! Just finished my home gym, and I am very pleased with it. I though I would share with you guys.

Equipment:

• Pull-up + dip station
• Lots of resistance bands (flat and corded with handles)
• Stationary bike (wanted one for a while now since the weather is often bad for running in the mid-west)
• Exercise ball
• Two hand grip exercisers (out grew first one)
• Footbag (hand-foot-eye coordination)

The resistance bands are awesome. I use them to add resistance to my pull-ups, dips, and push-ups mainly. I got the stationary bike a week ago, and I have rode 5 miles nearly everyday. Great workout to wake me up in the morning while watching youtube videos.

[DeanPeacock]

How do you find gymnastics in a swimingpool?

[jennypenny]

What are those mounts for using a bike inside called? My google-fu is failing me.

[jacob]

@jp - Trainer or rollers. Trainers come with different kinds of resistance, friction, magnetic, fluid, ...

[vexed87]

and rollers can DIY'd, out of... rolling pins.

[Ego]

Jenny, no rollers for you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN1cuVRRRzM

[jennypenny]

Jenny, no rollers for you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN1cuVRRRzM

For once, we are in complete agreement.

[jennypenny]

Article on Dara Torres from 2012. It's all interesting, but what jumped out at me was this (emphasis mine) ...

She considers O’Brien her upper-body trainer. Knowles is the lower-body guy. The two have brainstormed to develop odd-looking exercises designed to cater to more than her physique. They say they also want to work out her brain. They believe neurological stimulation will help elevate hormone production. For that reason, she does nothing as simple as a biceps curl; involved, complex exercises, they contend, keep the mind active.

Ted Carrick, a chiropractic neurologist who worked with NHL star Sidney Crosby, videotaped Torres’s eye movements and determined that her eyes responded slowly to moving patterns. Her inability to focus efficiently, she was told, was essentially expending energy and making her tired.

Carrick sent her home with exercises designed to eliminate gaps in her perception. Since then, three times a day, she follows a red dot as it moves in a pattern across a screen.

Does that sound right? That would mean 'old school' exercises might not be doing enough. It also made me think that sports like tennis, or even cycling, were better overall workouts than something like running for the post-fertile crowd, as 7W5 would call us. I like simple and targeted, but maybe that's not enough? I have to look into this a little more. I always knew that brain games were good for keeping the mind fit. I guess I never thought about combining activities for a whole-body workout.

I'm sure you guys already know this. You're always way ahead of me on this kind of stuff.

---------

In other news, I'm running again. I feel GREAT. I'm trying to limit the running to avoid breaking frankenleg again, so I'm doing a 3-day rotation of hills/suicides, run, walk/cycle. I also build walk breaks into the runs so I can check in with myself to see how I'm feeling and watch my heart rate. I'm sticking to the time-restricted eating. I have a coffee pre-workout and one meal at lunchtime. I have tea before 3pm, and then nothing but water until the next day. My lab work hasn't budged much* but I can tell by the smell of my sweat and saliva that I'm detoxing a little. My treatments end next month, and then I have a full work-up scheduled in late September, so I'll know by then if the IF is affecting my blood work.

*My glucose and cholesterol have dropped, but they were pretty low anyway. My blood pressure, which has always been low, shocks every nurse who takes it. Half of them retake it because they can't believe I'm wide awake with pressure that low. OTOH, my anemia isn't improving as hoped, and one meal a day might be contributing to that. The anemia is bad enough that my heart rate is elevated and I have to wear a heart monitor, especially when exercising. It (the anemia) also makes me stupid and forces me to leave notes for myself everywhere which my family finds quite amusing.

[jennypenny]

Interesting short video from VOX that came in this morning's Roll Call The science is in: Exercise isn’t the best way to lose weight

Health is really three parts ... diet, exercise, and avoiding being sedentary. I suppose you could add a fourth to include avoiding destructive and risky behaviors.


I was at the doctor yesterday and the NP came in at the end to give me my new prescriptions. She reminded me to work on hydration and suggested I drink lots of gatorade. Why are health professionals still recommending that junk? I drink water and eat salted melon to combat dehydration. There are lots of healthier and more effective alternatives than gatorade.

[jennypenny]

I have a cycling question. (I tried googling it, but I'm not sure I'm using the right terms.) In running, there is an optimal step count/minute regardless of how fast a person is running. Is there something similar in cycling? Is there a certain pace I should be aiming for on a nice long ride?

[Ego]

I have a cycling question. (I tried googling it, but I'm not sure I'm using the right terms.) In running, there is an optimal step count/minute regardless of how fast a person is running. Is there something similar in cycling? Is there a certain pace I should be aiming for on a nice long ride?

Can of worms.

Revolutions per minute of the pedals is known in cycling as 'cadence'. Everyone has an opinion. I do better with an easier gear and higher cadence.

Here is a pretty good overview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jh-5TYAtJI

[jennypenny]

I thought that guy was just riding his bike on the treadmill until he stopped pedaling.

Thanks for the link. I asked because I keep drifting back to my running cadence. and I wondered if that was best or just habit. I guess I'll play around with it.

I had to laugh at 177 bpm. I think my heart rate monitor would automatically dial 911 if my heart rate was that high for more than 30 seconds lol.

[Ego]

Last week one of the old guys at the gym crabbed his legs up the wall started trying to do handstands. He's a spry little guy, probably about seventy years old, but he's tough as an old nut and I was surprised how well he did. Of course, I asked him what he was thinking... a seventy-year-old doing handstands! He said he was a bit of an acrobat in his youth and since he was feeling good he thought he'd give it a go and see if he could still walk around on his hands. I had him give me some pointers and did okay.... not as good as him.... until I flopped over.

Today was round two. We both did better than the first time. He gave me a few more pointers. The plan, he says, is to slowly lay down the neuromuscular wiring as we are both strong enough to support ourselves. Once we get that we're going to walk around the room on our hands.

So, yeah, I am now in an ongoing handstand competition with a seventy-year-old.

[Farm_or]

@jennypenny - like ego says, cadence or rpm should be over 100. There's an art to developing the perfect pedal stroke. The perfect stroke is powered 360'. A lot of cycling coaches recommend concentrating on the pull back part "like scraping dog crap off your shoes". That's a good beginning and learning the flywheel action of the higher cadence. The pros do a couple thousand miles of high cadence before loading their knees with the higher gears. Some use fixed gear bikes so they are not tempted to gear up before the knees can take it. Sorry for the long answer; I was a cycling fanatic

@ego. That's awesome trying to walk on your hands. I tried it for awhile but didn't stay with it long enough to to get past four steps.

[Farm_or]

@ego forgot to add that practicing in a pool could help. Work your way to the shallow end where it's more difficult to walk on your hands

[Ego]

@ego forgot to add that practicing in a pool could help. Work your way to the shallow end where it's more difficult to walk on your hands

Mental image of speedo-clad me walking on my hands through the gaggle of blue haired ladies from the water aerobics class who permanently inhabit the shallow end of the pool....

I'll tell you how it goes.

[FBeyer]

Kettlebell Long Cycle and presses is starting to make me look like someone took a barrel of flesh and painted an outline of a sixpack on it and then thought: Naaah screw it, i'll go paint somewhere else.

In reality I'm supposed to be doing the Enter the Kettlebell program, but the endless ladders of presses are too boring for me to keep up for more than about two months at a time. This time I interspersed my EtK program with Long Cycle, jump rope, and pullups. The well-known whatthehell effect of kettlebells means that my time with long cycle has increased my pressing significantly. Yay!

Current program is thus 8 minute jump rope warmup AMRAP. Then 16 minutes of long cycle. When I rest from long cycle I do pullups instead. Haven't calculated the volume in kilogram-meters yet, but I think it's significant.

I've gone from pressing a 16 Kg bell to 24 Kg for reps in about a year and I've had several breaks where I didn't lift anything for about two months at a time.

I'm starting to look into supplementing the kettlebell program with yoga of some sort. KB for doing work and chopping down trees, yoga to sharpen the axe.

Stood on my head yesterday. Being upside down is surprisingly fun.

[vexed87]

I just used vouchers received for xmas to buy a turbo trainer so I can finally work some HIIT into my cycling. Also, I'm pretty excited to give Zwift a go. It's subscription based, so not very ERE but means I can work on my racing capabilities when it's icy out. My cardio fitness plateaued a long time ago, the commute really isn't the place to do HIIT as you need to keep some energy in reserve to get out of tricky situations as they unfold, so eager to see what a trainer can do to aid performance.

Also, before xmas I bought a KB and one of Pavel's books. I really need to get into gear with that. How long did it take you KB'ers to get into the swing of things? If you can excuse the pun

[FBeyer]

I'm mostly sorry for you that you're buying things to do cardio before giving kettlebells a proper go. Swings done right are so effective that jumping rope, even at high intensity, is something you do for warmup, or to keep warm between sets of swings. Once that gets easy, do Snatches, once those get easy, double kettlebell long cycle has you covered (and by covered I mean winded and miserable).

The beginning of Enter the Kettlebell is very nice. You're doing small concentrated sessions of turkish getups and swings. You're most likely going to start out fine and after a few weeks you'll do just great. For the next long while, you will most likely find a LOT of stuff to get better at regarding swings and form in general. Going to heavier kettlebells reveal a lot of small inaccuracies in your technique that you didn't notice so personally I've had a lot of benefit from doing a few workouts with a heavier bell from time to time, just to go back to my working weight and apply my new biomechanical experiences there.

The unwiedlyness (imadeaword) of non-competetion kettlebells means that, opposed to barbells, the movement mechanics are SLIGHTLY different depending on the bell weight, but it's different enough to make a difference when you're working with them.

I tried doing presses with an 8kg and a 16kg in the same hand to compare how it feels to a single 24 kg bell, it's really something and it means that I can tinker with my exercise for a VERY long time with the bells me and the GF own between us. 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24.

I'm genuinely surprised how much fun I'm having noodling around with kettlebells.
I think I love kettlebells. Sorry barbells...

So time getting into the swing of things: very little. Is there room to grow? Yes, definitely!