Fresh meat...

Monday, March 14, 2011

I have a new project and guinea pig. The friend I mentioned in Thursday’s blog who is looking to lose 70 pounds and begin a program of regular exercise, showed up for her step test and program design. The step test is 3 minutes long and involves continues stepping up and down on a 12” box. At the conclusion of three minutes, the subject sits down and the heart rate is measured for the next 60 seconds. This creates a baseline of fitness against which progress can be measured over the lifetime of the exercise program.

“You just have to try to keep pace with the metronome while stepping. It’s not too fast…92 steps per minute…but if it is too difficult to keep up, just sit down and I’ll note the time and take your pulse,” I said as I stepped up and down, keeping time with the metronome.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep this up,” she commented after about 45 seconds of stepping. “Don’t kill yourself…if you have to stop – stop,” I said. She kept going, but knew her limitations and stopped after 90 seconds and sat down. I found her pulse and counted for the next 60 seconds.

“Well…your heart rate was around 150 beats when you stopped and was 116 for the whole minute,” I said as I finished counting. “Which means what?” she asked. Nothing very good…as conditioning goes. “You’re picking up an extra 70 pounds and putting it on top of a box 12 inches high. Your heart rate shot up quickly and stayed there because it had to work pretty hard to lift that weight. Two things are going to happen to change that…one is you’ll be losing weight and the other is that you’ll be making your heart stronger through the aerobic exercise I’m going to have you doing so it can handle more and harder work in the future,” I said.

We spent the next 30 minutes creating a six-week walking program that gradually increased the time and intensity of the workout. We mixed in some work on an elliptical machine she owns, but isn’t crazy about using and in the fifth week, I added some hills and steps to the training to vary the intensity. I also had her walking on dirt paths and uneven trails to help with the strengthening of her legs, hips and balancing muscles. At the end of the six weeks, she’ll return for another step test and the next six-week program.

I’ve also hooked her up with my partner, Bob Iafelice, to get her nutrition counseling and to begin attending his ‘Lat-In-Shape’ class in Fairport, which I told her she can substitute for whatever walking I had her doing on that day. “…or you could do both and get bonus calories burned off.” We’ll be talking long-term goals too, and she’s planning on doing a 5K road run in September, “which you’ll be running,” I told her.

I hit the road for my run again. I can’t remember when I’ve seen the trails so sloppy…these last two snowfalls have really done them in. I ran for 40 minutes with nothing really hurting…I must be doing something wrong.

Run duration: 40 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 145 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 675.