Tag: fitness

HOW FIT ARE YOU ?

CPR – CONSTANT PULSE RATE –
Constant Pulse Rate

How fit are you? We all want to be fit and healthy, whether we are small, short, tall or large framed.

It helps greatly to know a little about ourselves before we start exercising especially on the inside. For years we have relied on doctors to tell us if we are healthy on the inside, but with a little know how and new technologies we are able to see for ourselves improvements to our cardiovascular system, our muscle mass and our overall endurance capabilities.

There are three basic levels of exercise : anything below 50% does little to nothing to improving our bodies

1. 65/75% effort gives us fat-burning level of exertion – if you are more than 15kg/ 33lbs over your ideal weight, then the fat burning level of exercise is all you need for at least six weeks(longer if you have more weight to lose)

2. 75/85% of effort gives us aerobic level of exertion – this level of exercise begins the heart and lung strength, gives you more endurance so the exercise can last longer and your pulse rate is higher.

3. 85/100% of effort gives us anaerobic level of exertion – at this level of exertion we will be pushing everything, heart , lungs muscles, mind to complete in a given time or achieve a certain level for example (running non stop for half an hour at 8 miles per hour, depending on age of course).

To get information on our heart and lungs before and while we exercise we use a calculation called (CPR) constant pulse rate, this helps determine how fit we are before you begin and after exercising, it will help us see our progress as the weeks pass by.

whilst sitting down and relaxing we have what we call a resting heart rate, you can check yours by placing your middle two fingers over the inside of your wrist and counting the number of pulses in sixty seconds, you can set the stopwatch on your smart phone for 1 minute.

In superfit athletes like Lewis Hamilton his resting heart rate is about 45 beats per minute, where as Joe average is between 60-85 beats per minute, again depending on age.

Why, is knowing your pulse rate at any point during exercise important.

A : it tells you how hard you are working, whether your doing enough or not . Getting a sweat on is fine but if you don’t know what level of exercise you are doing ,you could end up not achieving your goal

In general terms there is a maximum pulse rate per minute in relation to your age. This is achieved by using a laid down formula advised by sports advisors, doctors and therapists it is 220 – your age = so if you are 50, it is 220 -50= 170 is you maximum heart rate.

For example a 55 year old would be : 220 – 55 = 165 we use this information for knowing the maximum pulse rate for anyone of that age, however, when we exercise our body operates at one of three levels depending on the amount of effort we put in.

Technogyms chart shows us the levels, I’m showing just two age groups to give an idea of how fit you are now

ALWAYS REMEMBER : Fitness is achieved over time ,if ever you feel light headed ,dizzy or just not right stop exercising immediately lie on the floor with your feet raised above your head , I.e put your feet up against a wall or on a chair for a few minutes if symptoms persist call your nearest family member or doctor.

When is the best time of day to Exercise

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Many people have asked me in the past when is the best time of day to exercise. I should say first thing in the morning, once you’ve done it you have the rest of the day to do what you want without that guilty feeling of ‘oh I haven’t done it yet ‘ which is one of my own issues, but moreover, the reality is we don’t all have the luxury of being able to choose what time of day to exercise, what I would say is it’s never a good idea to do the same exercises every day, Cardio, Weights & Resistance on different days keeps you interested and your body on its toes, it’s a known fact that some days we are just sluggish, on those days don’t push it ( the reasons vary from not enough energy giving food the day before to menstruation, to depleted vitamins , lack of carbohydrate intake or just your own biorhythms) all of this we will talk about in later posts but for now don’t beat yourself up over it and even take the day off and try again the next day.

It’s important to note that the type of exercise you do has to be relevant to your goals eg : weight loss, overall fitness etc… If you have more than 10lbs or 8 kilos to lose you should always stick to a fat burning exercise regime for at least the first six weeks .

The magic rule is 45 minutes of CONTINUOUS exercise per day is all we ever need, this does not include your 15 minute warm up at the beginning or your 15 minute warm down after your exercise. By 45 minutes continuous we mean exercise without stopping whether it be running, swimming, cycling, aerobics, circuits, basically any cardio vascular workout, weight training or resistance training workout. Training for hours does nothing but wear out our joints & cartridges to name two and you will get bored very quickly with not seeing any results. There is also a reason for this too, there are three levels of exercise :

fat burning where your heart rate remains at a constant level ( I will post a chart that shows the 3 different levels of exercise) Over this number of beats per minute takes you into the next level of aerobic exercising.

Aerobic exercising, this pushes your heart rate up quickly, over this heart rate

Will push you into Anaerobic exercising.

Anaerobic exercise where the heart rate stays fairly high but you will build muscle

a 45 minute workout will push your heart rate to its limit so in the early days you need to learn to pace your self in order to complete the 45 minutes, I would go so far to say you need to build up to the 45 minutes by doing 1 minute without stopping , then 5 minutes without stopping and so on and so for as you feel comfortable, you should never push yourself to feel dizzy, nausea or anything like this .

Yoga Can be an aerobic exercise in a class but doing it at home to your own pace can be fat burning, it raises the heart rate but it also allows time to recover , catch your breath etc before moving on to the next pose, yoga helps your deportment and stretches your skeletal & muscular frame without fear of injury, it also clears your mind.