Thursday, September 29, 2011
An Honest Workout: Heart Rate Monitors
People in the statin ads often talk about how diet and
exercise didn’t work for them. I wonder
whether these are the same people whose doctors are telling them that moderate
exercise is enough and to “know your limits.”
Some doctors and even some trainers discourage older people from trying
to do strenuous exercise, apparently motivated by fear of injury to the patient/
client or concern about liability for themselves.
Moderate exercise never worked for me. I spent years trying to improve my physical
condition by brisk walking, swimming laps, or working out on an elliptical at a
medium pace. Nothing happened: I didn’t lose weight or become stronger and
my overall condition stayed about the same.
Eventually I concluded that these workouts were not hard enough to make
a real difference.
How can you tell if you’re getting a good cardio
workout? You can’t unless you use a
heart rate monitor. If you work out on a
machine that reads chest straps (and most of the newer ones do), youcan get by
with just a chest strap. If you don’t
use a machine or you want more features you will need a watch to go with
it. Many of these are made by Polar
Electro – USA. I bought one on EBay about
ten years ago and it still works fine.
Periodically I send it to the Polar Service Center for a new battery and
they get it back to me right away. My
watch has some extra features like a log for keeping track of your workouts and
a fitness test but I don’t use them much.
The most commonly used formula for calculating maximum heart
rate is to subtract your age from 220. When I first started doing serious exercise at age 54 I
would go as fast as I could on the elliptical and my heart rate would never get
much above 125 beats per minute or about 75% of my maximum heart rate of 166
bpm. I think part of the problem was
that at that point my muscles weren’t strong enough to do a harder
workout. After I started using a protein
supplement and, later, proteolytic enzymes, the situation improved. These days I do intervals alternating 4
minutes at 132 bpm with 3 minutes at 142 bpm, averaging around 137, just under
90% of my current maximum heart rate of 155.
On a day when I am tired or not feeling well I may not get much above
130; if I get down to 125 I will lose condition and start putting on weight
The thinking about exercise for older people may be starting
to change. The Personal section of the
Wall Street Journal (6/28/2011) had an article about how some doctors are using
intense interval training for patients recovering from a heart attack or
cardiac surgery.
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