"Time for a fitness test, Jeff..."

Saturday, April 2, 2011

For the second straight year, the Butler Bulldogs are in the NCAA Championship basketball game. Last year, labeled a Cinderella team, they took one of the most storied basketball programs in the history of College basketball, the Duke Blue Devils, to the final buzzer before succumbing. Most folks outside and lots inside the basketball world are saying ‘huh?’, but maybe now its time to recognize that the conference in which they play, the Horizon League, deserves a little more respect. Like the MAC, another underrated conference made up of so-called second tier teams from the mid-West, only one team comes out of the league to make the NCAA basketball championship, and that’s the team that wins their league championship tournament…which was Butler. All others fall to the wayside. Traditional leagues, like the Big Ten, might have 7 teams make the tournament simply because they win close to 20 games for the season…and they’re in the Big Ten. Quality ball clubs like Kent State, Ball State, and Cleveland State are not given much consideration (teams are selected to the NCAA tournament based on their season records and the conferences in which they play) because they play…and lose…to second tier teams like…oh…Butler. I’ll be rooting hard for Butler to put the Horizon League permanently on the college basketball map by winning the National Championship this Monday when they face off against traditional powerhouse, the University of Connecticut.

Jeff and I met in the Metroparks for a little hike before we would be heading back to the house for him to get a fitness assessment. Jeff is an old friend, and it’s his father that got me interested in hunting deer antlers. Jeff wants to lose a bunch of weight and has set a goal of losing a good portion of it in time for a big Elk hunt he has scheduled for the end of August. He’s been reading the blog and is convinced that I can give him the formula that will take it off slowly…and keep it off. “You know what I think, Jeff…can’t know how to get where you’re going if you don’t know where you are…and that means a fitness evaluation,” I told him when he asked for my help.

“I had a BMI (body mass index) reading and they said I could weigh 185 pounds,” he told me, but when I questioned him about how it was done, he replied, “umm…took my height and weight and looked on a chart.” That’s about as useful as…oh…guessing, I told him…maybe a little more, but not much. “They use those useless charts because it takes to much time and skill to access body fat correctly. You’re not going to have that problem, though,” I said.

We hiked off-trail for close to two hours, never finding an antler, but giving me plenty of time to preach the value of goal-setting, Back to Basics, cross-training and other things I profess to know lots about. He mostly listened…good fella. We returned to the house and I took the measurements and designed him a program for the next eight weeks that included hiking, biking, bleacher work and step-ups. I want him to knock off twenty pounds and get his lower body and cardiovascular system in decent shape for step-two. I don’t want to say what that is because he’ll be reading this and I don’t want to scare him away.

Later in the afternoon, I again boarded the bike for a chilly ride. The outfit was the same as yesterday’s, but I put the bandanna on to protect my skull from freezing. It worked well and managed to stay reasonably warm for an 80-minute ride.

Bike duration: 1 hour and 20 minutes. Hike duration: 1 hour and 50 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 130 biking. 80 hiking.
Calories burned during workout: 1200 biking. 350 hiking.