Thursday, February 11, 2010
Preview Gym Movement: Immediate Performance Improvement with Real Time, on the spot, Self Assessment Strategies
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Recently i've been looking at biometrics like heart rate variability as a marker of fatigue: to see if today is the right day for that heavy workout or not (scroll down in this post for more). I've been intrigued lately by work folks i trust have been trying to bring that kind of macro daily check to the more micro level: is this the right movement for you to be doing in this workout, right now.
The folks call the approach Gym Movement: Perpetual Progress, and it's key proponents are Adam T Glass and Mike T Nelson, while it's founder as i understand it is Frankie Fairies (no T middle initial).
The premise as i understand it so far is that we can readily test each move we may want to carry out in a workout to see if it, or a variant of it is more appropriate for where our nervous system is at right at that moment. The following is the intro video by Frankie Faires and Craig Keaton.
However you may find that demo vids of the approach in progress by Adam are more illustrative
There's even more by adam at his new site here. I'm definitely intrigued by how this approach may improve within-workout performance.
My current experience has been to use z-health mobility work to address performance weaknesses - when a lift doesn't feel right, or isn't performing right, use appropriate i-phase drills (usually it's i-phase stuff as sport specific mobility/opening work) and go at it again. Usually this produces a good response and immediate change.
What Gym Movement seems to be suggesting is that - and i interpolate here - while you might tune a movement, there may be a more optimal movement for you to do that day. This is where i'm currently unsure. And i suppose the response from anyone in this space - especially in z-health - would be to say, "just test it"
In other words, go ahead and tune the movement, then test myself using these assessments demo'd above in Gym Movement to see if even tuned, they're the optimal ones for me to make progress. These assessments will seem familiar to folks who have done z-health certs or the elite performance workshop. Indeed, i've asked how this is not a repackaging of z-health assessments; here's Master Trainer Mike T Nelson's reply. Faires, a level 4 Z-health instructor, notes in his reply to my query, that he brought these moves to the Z-Health community.
What may be particular about his approach is this location of test everything before you do it to find what's optimal in the moment. That's interesting, don't you think? Though again this does seem to resonate with the R-phase certification in Z-Health. So, the deeper question for me, is what happens when taking a suite of assessments to be combined - as they're presented in Z-Health in anywhere from a 3-6 day workshop/cert context - and factoring out just a couple of them into a self-assessment 40min DVD?
The last move is not always best. One thing watching some of the vids by adam is that ya might think oh well the second or third move will always have a better range of motion because you've been moving more. Not so. Try it for yourself. I definitely found yesterday that my second move of choice consistently tested poorer than the alternate - no matter where in the sequence it was. Relationship to arthrokinetic reflex perhaps?
I still have questions. For instance, i might test better with my toes turned out for a squat than in, but is that what i want? or do i want to get better at toes more neutral? Perhaps the answer is keep practicing the Z-health mobilty drills or FMS movements to enhance better dorsiflexion or whatever, but work with what's optimal that day and see how it improves - or not - over time. And if it doesn't improve, that ought no doubt to be a sign of something.
More To Come. So i have the DVD coming, and Frankie has kindly agreed to have a sit down with me after i've had a chance to digest it and chat here at b2d about it, but i wanted to alert you b2d readers to this seemingly extremely simple approach to get optimal. There's so much available on the web by these guys, i'm really intrigued to see what's left on the DVD. IT seems they're really motivated to let folks test the waters themselves. So that if you want the DVD great, but you can get going without it. That's pretty durn intriguing.
Personally, i'd check out the site, because there are even more free videos there - even if it looks like your typical health marketing site. alas - but push a little beyond that and you'll be happy to have done so.
Please let me know if you've been playing with this approach and what you think, and i'll be back with a deeper review here in the next month or so.
best
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
The folks call the approach Gym Movement: Perpetual Progress, and it's key proponents are Adam T Glass and Mike T Nelson, while it's founder as i understand it is Frankie Fairies (no T middle initial).
The premise as i understand it so far is that we can readily test each move we may want to carry out in a workout to see if it, or a variant of it is more appropriate for where our nervous system is at right at that moment. The following is the intro video by Frankie Faires and Craig Keaton.
However you may find that demo vids of the approach in progress by Adam are more illustrative
There's even more by adam at his new site here. I'm definitely intrigued by how this approach may improve within-workout performance.
My current experience has been to use z-health mobility work to address performance weaknesses - when a lift doesn't feel right, or isn't performing right, use appropriate i-phase drills (usually it's i-phase stuff as sport specific mobility/opening work) and go at it again. Usually this produces a good response and immediate change.
What Gym Movement seems to be suggesting is that - and i interpolate here - while you might tune a movement, there may be a more optimal movement for you to do that day. This is where i'm currently unsure. And i suppose the response from anyone in this space - especially in z-health - would be to say, "just test it"
In other words, go ahead and tune the movement, then test myself using these assessments demo'd above in Gym Movement to see if even tuned, they're the optimal ones for me to make progress. These assessments will seem familiar to folks who have done z-health certs or the elite performance workshop. Indeed, i've asked how this is not a repackaging of z-health assessments; here's Master Trainer Mike T Nelson's reply. Faires, a level 4 Z-health instructor, notes in his reply to my query, that he brought these moves to the Z-Health community.
What may be particular about his approach is this location of test everything before you do it to find what's optimal in the moment. That's interesting, don't you think? Though again this does seem to resonate with the R-phase certification in Z-Health. So, the deeper question for me, is what happens when taking a suite of assessments to be combined - as they're presented in Z-Health in anywhere from a 3-6 day workshop/cert context - and factoring out just a couple of them into a self-assessment 40min DVD?
The last move is not always best. One thing watching some of the vids by adam is that ya might think oh well the second or third move will always have a better range of motion because you've been moving more. Not so. Try it for yourself. I definitely found yesterday that my second move of choice consistently tested poorer than the alternate - no matter where in the sequence it was. Relationship to arthrokinetic reflex perhaps?
I still have questions. For instance, i might test better with my toes turned out for a squat than in, but is that what i want? or do i want to get better at toes more neutral? Perhaps the answer is keep practicing the Z-health mobilty drills or FMS movements to enhance better dorsiflexion or whatever, but work with what's optimal that day and see how it improves - or not - over time. And if it doesn't improve, that ought no doubt to be a sign of something.
More To Come. So i have the DVD coming, and Frankie has kindly agreed to have a sit down with me after i've had a chance to digest it and chat here at b2d about it, but i wanted to alert you b2d readers to this seemingly extremely simple approach to get optimal. There's so much available on the web by these guys, i'm really intrigued to see what's left on the DVD. IT seems they're really motivated to let folks test the waters themselves. So that if you want the DVD great, but you can get going without it. That's pretty durn intriguing.
Personally, i'd check out the site, because there are even more free videos there - even if it looks like your typical health marketing site. alas - but push a little beyond that and you'll be happy to have done so.
Please let me know if you've been playing with this approach and what you think, and i'll be back with a deeper review here in the next month or so.
best
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Heart Rate Variability: Depression Monitor for Work?
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Following up on the use of heart rate monitors for recovery/fatigue detection, and at the 
horrid role of stress as what can be a chronic factor in mortality, we may be able to use heart rate variability (HRV) to help detect and so address depression - another stressor. A 2009 study has shown promising results in terms of using HRV to detect if someone is still suffering from the effects of depression. The study looked at folks who were returning to work after being off for depression, and having been cleared to come back to work. Here's the abstract:
As the conclusion of the abstract suggests, this approach could be a very cool, easy way to tune work/practices and to check how someone is doing on return to work. I'm thinking personal iphone ap hooked up to HRV measuring sensor for personal monitoring, too. One could potentially self check not only workout fatigue but work fatigue, too.
citation:
Takada, M., Ebara, T., & Kamijima, M. (2009). Heart rate variability assessment in Japanese workers recovered from depressive disorders resulting from job stress: measurements in the workplace International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health DOI: 10.1007/s00420-009-0499-1
Related:
Following up on the use of heart rate monitors for recovery/fatigue detection, and at the horrid role of stress as what can be a chronic factor in mortality, we may be able to use heart rate variability (HRV) to help detect and so address depression - another stressor. A 2009 study has shown promising results in terms of using HRV to detect if someone is still suffering from the effects of depression. The study looked at folks who were returning to work after being off for depression, and having been cleared to come back to work. Here's the abstract:The paper details the simple set up for HRV monitoring and questionnaire to correlate subjective survey responses about depression and this objective factors.
PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to clarify workers' autonomic nerve balance after long-term sick leave due to depressive disorders resulting from job stress compared with healthy workers. METHODS: The participants were 28 Japanese male workers recovered from depressive disorders and 75 healthy male workers. For each participant, the lifestyle and the fatigue within 1 month were assessed by a checklist. Heart rate variability (HRV) was measured at the workplace by acceleration plethysmography (APG). HRV was assessed by the coefficient of variation of rate intervals (CV), the spectral components in the high- and low-frequency areas represented by the normalized HF and LF (nHF and nLF), and the ratio of LF to HF components (LF/HF). RESULTS: There was no significant difference in individual lifestyle and fatigue symptoms between the recovered and the healthy workers. The former workers showed significantly lower CV, higher nLF and log(10)LF/HF, and lower nHF that represent the predominance of sympathetic activity in comparison with the healthy workers. Moreover, the recovered workers who discontinued medications indicated significantly higher nLF and log(10)LF/HF, and lower nHF compared to the recovered workers who continued their medications. CONCLUSIONS: Recovered workers in the workplace tended to show the depressive HRV feature that is the dominant sympathetic activity compared with the healthy workers. They might still be showing job stress that was not detected by the checklist. HRV analyses by APG in addition to questionnaire has the potential to become an effective approach for assessing workers' job stress to prevent repeated absences.
As the conclusion of the abstract suggests, this approach could be a very cool, easy way to tune work/practices and to check how someone is doing on return to work. I'm thinking personal iphone ap hooked up to HRV measuring sensor for personal monitoring, too. One could potentially self check not only workout fatigue but work fatigue, too.
citation:
Takada, M., Ebara, T., & Kamijima, M. (2009). Heart rate variability assessment in Japanese workers recovered from depressive disorders resulting from job stress: measurements in the workplace International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health DOI: 10.1007/s00420-009-0499-1
Related:
- should i do this next set: self-fatigue testing
- sports training on the other side of the weight room: somatosensory work.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Stress: It's So Physical - a physical response helps - the sooner the better
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We are so physical. Even our emotions have chemical physical effects. i did a post awhile ago about the physchem of stress and how doing physical things to knock off the fight or flight chemicals that are better know as a stress response. These responses are appropriate to deal with immanent threat/stress, like nervousness about a meeting; fear of giving a talk; anger at an exchange. Some simple physical responses from walking to breathing can be all we need to get back to normal. These simple, practical physical approaches let us clear out these chemicals as soon as possible so that we don't end up pretty literally stewing in our own hormonally triggered juices.
There's a super book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers that looks further at stress in terms of what happens when it doesn't get cleared out; when it builds over time - in other words what happens physiologically when we live in a physiologically stressed space.
The consequences, according to Sapolsky, are grim. Here's why. When that hormonal cascade turns on as a stress/threat response, some critical systems are turned off. Energy that goes into bone building, growth, the immune system, digestion, all gets shut down.
Sapolsky points out that this is totally appropriate for the short term shut down of a few minutes to a few hours these responses are designed to support to "get away from the lion." The problem with ongoing stress is that these systems STAY shut down or compromised for far longer periods. And that leads to disease and earlier mortality.
Sapolsky's work shows that there are particular strategies - modelled in the animal kingdom - that demonstrate the consequences of stress, and the effective, consistent, cross mamal species activities that demonstate reducing stress - and not getting ulcers.
To get a flavour of Sapolsky's amazing work, there are at least two audiobook lectures at iTunes
U on the work from Zebras on stress. The first is Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers; the second is Stress and Coping: What Baboons can Teach Us. These are both free, and part of Stanford's Healthy Living Series at iTunes U. The take aways from Baboons are perhaps no surprise, but that they are so well underlined with both observation and physiology is well worth exploring.
In future posts, we'll be looking at strategies related to identifying fatiuge, too, to help optimize our own human performance for well being.
Related Posts:
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
There's a super book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers that looks further at stress in terms of what happens when it doesn't get cleared out; when it builds over time - in other words what happens physiologically when we live in a physiologically stressed space.The consequences, according to Sapolsky, are grim. Here's why. When that hormonal cascade turns on as a stress/threat response, some critical systems are turned off. Energy that goes into bone building, growth, the immune system, digestion, all gets shut down.
Sapolsky points out that this is totally appropriate for the short term shut down of a few minutes to a few hours these responses are designed to support to "get away from the lion." The problem with ongoing stress is that these systems STAY shut down or compromised for far longer periods. And that leads to disease and earlier mortality.
Sapolsky's work shows that there are particular strategies - modelled in the animal kingdom - that demonstrate the consequences of stress, and the effective, consistent, cross mamal species activities that demonstate reducing stress - and not getting ulcers.
To get a flavour of Sapolsky's amazing work, there are at least two audiobook lectures at iTunes
U on the work from Zebras on stress. The first is Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers; the second is Stress and Coping: What Baboons can Teach Us. These are both free, and part of Stanford's Healthy Living Series at iTunes U. The take aways from Baboons are perhaps no surprise, but that they are so well underlined with both observation and physiology is well worth exploring.In future posts, we'll be looking at strategies related to identifying fatiuge, too, to help optimize our own human performance for well being.
Related Posts:
- Heart rate monitors for Progress and Recovery
- Getting Rid of Crap Around Goals
- Beats: the automatic way to meditate
- Five months on from using the Sedona Method
- Z-Health - dynamic joint mobility - help process stress
- Top Ten Tips to Destress (at geekfit)
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Saturday, February 6, 2010
Possible role for Heart Rate Monitors in Kettlebell Strength Training or Total Eclipse of the Heart
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Heart rate monitors (HRM) have become a familiar accoutrement of the triathlete/running set 
for some time. Athletes use these devices to tune their endurance efforts for maximal aerobic threshold work and optimal effort to recovery ratios. Sounds like that makes sense.
In the Iron Gym, HRM's are far less regularly seen. After all, lifting weights is lifting weights. Where the heck would a Heart Rate Monitor come into play?
Lately, i've been exploring this question: to see if HRMs might also help tune effort and recovery for optimal training. This post isn't the ultimate finding of that exploration, but a description of how this exploration is being set up, and especially the rationale for it.
Maybe before addressing that one, it would be useful to take a step back and say why/when a heart rate monitor at all? And THEN take a look at an approach for exploring its use in weights work. (if you know all this stuff about R-R distances, how/what HRM's monitor and calculate, just skip scroll to re-enter RTK for the resistance application...)
What do we actually "monitor"?
We are electric plastic people. We pulse. Electrically. And because of that, those pulses - electrical impulses moving through the muscle of the heart in this case, but like any electrical activity, can be detected- in this case via conductors on the skin. Once the pulse is detected, a signal that represents the pulse can be transmitted and communicated to a device that does so much more now that just count the beats, but beat counting is no small thing.
In a way, all we know explicitly from a heart rate monitor is that there is a pulse. The computer in the HRM translates this into a frequency of beats per minute, relatively accurately - close enough for most healthy people's purposes, and especially the higher end models like the Suunto T6C, you'll see used in research papers as the measuring device in studies. These heart rate monitors track the specific measurements between the big peeks in the heart rate pulse - the R to R distance (seen above) - we'll come back to this and why being able to note the differences in distances is so valuable for training.
The rather impressive thing is that, from the miracle of statistics, we can use readily knowable values like age, gender, height, weight and max heart rate to figure out all sorts of things about energy systems being taxed, our capacity to use oxygen, and more recently, based on load and effort, a more clear picture of how long we'll need to recover from the type of work we've done, so that we can specifically focus our training on making the whole of us get stronger. All that from the simple lub dub moving the blood, pushing the o2, saying we're alive.
The first thing to measure from the measure: Max Heart Rate
In order to take best advantage of a heart rate monitor, a key value to get is the Maximum Heart Rate. Max Heart Rate (MaxHR) is pretty much the greatest number of beats one's heart is capable of generating in a minute. It's age, gender and ethnicity effected. But that said, it's also individual as well as being somewhat device-specific. Consequently, Max Heart Rate is a pretty important value to get right because so many other measures take this limit as a critical part of the calculations. There are a bunch of ways to get at that, some more than others.
Statistical Approaches. Max heart rate is often simply calculated based on equations derived from stats of various populations. These equations (many examples here) often provide an ok ball park but LOADS of people have heart rates that are higher or lower than the calculation, so i don't want to give the equation.
Maximal or Near Maximal Tests. I'd like to suggest you get it measured. There are many ways to self test or get a Real Test. If your doc has cleared you to work out, check if you can do a MaxHR test; if not there are ways to do partial max exertion tests to get a good enough approx till you're more fit.
Device Sorta Specific. Also, quick note, besides the fact that there are a bunch of ways to figure out your max heart rate, they vary by device you're using. I can crank out a good five beats more on an evil elliptical than i can on a bike, and the bike's higher than the rower, and the rower is higher than kettlebells. THis is pretty normal based on amount of big muscles used in any given activity.
The First Use of MaxHR: Zones of the Heart
The next thing that comes up in heart rate monitor use is figuring out whether we're staying aerobic or going anaerobic in our efforts - and how long in either zone. The border crossing from aerobic to anaerobic is pretty much 85% max. It is not unusual, howerver, to have multiple "zones" defined in the aerobic area as well to indicate at least a kind of degree of effort.
Load and Recovery. This sense of effort can be important for planning effort levels, effect on the central nervous system (CNS) and recovery. For instance, not every day would one want to work for an hour at the anaerobic threshold, or only do cardio work at 60% of effort if one is a healthy, mobile person. So checking what zone one has been training in may help with understanding if one has been working sufficiently to promote a desired adaptation.
Why Else is this Zoning important? Energy systems.
Before going anaerobic, we're primarily using fat for fuel. Good-o right? And fat is generally converted to fuel in the presence of oxygen. Breath in and out. Cook a calorie. Yodelayheehoo. SO aerobic, which means in the presence of oxygen, is a good thing. Sleeping is aerobic. Running so that you can carry on a conversation is aerobic. Quite a range.
But (a) oxidising a gram of fat gives off a hefty 9kcals of energy and that's grand, because fat oxidation is not what you'd call a fast process. So relatively speaking only a certain amount of muscle can be turned on at once since there's only so much fuel available.
When we pump up the demand - to sprint, or lift heavy - when we have to recruit more muscle to get that extra power, we need a burst of fuel for that. And a burst is about all we'll get from the phosphate system (anaerobic) which can do a good burst but only for a moment (well, 30sec), and then there's sugar in the muscle and bloodstream, if it's there to be had - it can only do so much more - for maybe a minute or so. Imagine a 400 yard dash. And then it's gone.
The goal in most endurance training is to be able to raise the threshold at which we can take advantage of the plentiful fuel resources in the O2/fat equation. So you'll see folks with their heart rate monitors working on Time - being able just to work longer at a given aerobic heart level. So they're watching their heart rate to stay in that "i can still talk while i'm running mode"
And then there's the pushing the envelop - the anaerobic/aerobic envelop. Here, the goal is to tax the upper end of the system - to push into the anaerobic for brief or longer periods with recovery spurts (to rebuild those rarer energy system resources) back in the aerobic world to drive up the aerobic threshold.
The more power we can generate with Fat/O2 the better.
Total Eclipse of the Heart Rate Monitor: Cardio. The above more or less explains the fundamental uses (not all, but the basics) of HRM's for endurance work generally. There's a lot more to current heart rate training and high end heart rate monitors than what i've just described. Current approaches calculate EPOC, heart rate variability, vo2 capacity, and something called "training effect" that is very cool to be able to see to what degree one's workout really *is* pushing one's training to cause an adaptation, or just keep one at the same level.
Shifting to Resistance Training
How does this monitoring apply to resistance training? i bet there's lots of ways, but i'm afraid here it gets a bit personal. Indeed, it's rather a challenge to find any papers that have a person using a heart rate monitor throughout a training session, rather at most, before and after the session. Why is this? Maybe it's because using a HRM in resistance training is stupid; or maybe it just hasn't been looked at. So why am i? Where am i?
I'm using an HRM to test
RE-enter the Return of the Kettlebell
I have been following Return of the Kettlebell since the fall - this has light, medium and heavy days in order to allow suitable amounts of volume, recovery and load to promote an hypertrophic adaptation. Part of the protocol is progressive increase in load over time, but the way to progress load is first to get the speed up for a set completion, and time down between (and within) the max number of reps & sets ( 5 ladders of 5 rungs each) before moving onto a new weight.
In doing this work, i became curious as my times were going down, what kind of work i was doing - what kind of effort i was putting in - how much of the work was happening especially on heavy days in the aerobic zone as opposed to pushing into the anaerobic - where power is supposed to take place.
Hypertrophy vs Power. Part of the challenge in this protocol is that it's not a power protocol, per se, but an hypertrophy protocol. That means it's more reps with less recovery than power - much closer to endurance than power (as best we understand hypertrophy). So, really, most work *would* be in the aerobic zone - though perhaps towards the higher end of the MaxHR. At least that's how i've been looking at it.
Ramping Up the Heart: Warm ups for Work, Revisisted
This may be stating the obvious, so forgive me, but even if working quite hard, it can take time to get the heart rate up to working level. By working level, i simply mean where one is working at a level of effort to induce an effect on work capacity (O2 capacity) would take place. This is one reason perhaps to consider doing a warm up on a bike for ten minutes.
Why bother? why care? Well personally, i haven't. I've used my initial sets in RTK to warm up. What that means is that by the time the workout is done 20 or 30 mins later - only half to a third of that effort has been working my heart outside of MAINTAINING my current level of endurance strength, and letting me advance it's training.
Now, there's a caveat here: not EVERY workout ever should be or needs to be in that higher region of the heart. But looking at my heart rate let me know that i was not taking advantage of the training opportunities i could be just by doing some preliminary warming up. I had sauce left for more VOLUME, and volume is king.
This kind of thinking for a warm up is not the norm to me, but it's been revelatory. Indeed, as if to underline this, Coach Hauer the other day, looking at some vid of my snatch work, commented that my second long sets were consistently stronger than the first ones (i didn't warm up before these sets). Second sets are definitely the ones pushing into training effect rather than maintenance when i look at the logs. Hmm. And they seem stronger? Hmm. "So warm up before you do your snatch test?" was the suggestion. Just warm up.
The logs i'm looking at are of my heart rates at points throughout the sets.
The above image for example is RTK medium day, five sets of five ladders, concluding with two sets of double kb squats, then, seeing i had more time/energy, finishing with the 5*20s double swings.
What the lower panel shows is a combined EPOC (the line going up) and calculated cumulative training effect (the colored bands) of the workout. Training effect here - is how long one might need for recovery before doing another workout of this intensity. This one was a TE of 3.1 - meaning that (a) the workout was causing more than a maintenance of current training, but was pushing slightly into the realm of causing an adpatation/improvement. That also means however, that there's a recommended 1-3 days break before doing this kind of workout again. We'll look at how to get more precise below.
Inter-Set Recovery
Another thing i've been checking with an HRM is where the reasonable recovery is between sets. Now on the one hand, one usually "just feels" when it's appropriate to get back, or one takes recommendations of how long to pause based on the type of effort one is performing.
Two things happen in RTK: pavel initially recommends two minutes between ladders, but he also suggests trying to get time between reps in sets down with the goal of seeing how quickly one can get the time down for the workout to use as a gate for moving up to the next weight.
I have recently been using an HRM to see if the way i "feel" about readiness to start the next set is mapped at all to a given heart rate level - if i'm trying to keep my heart working. What i've learned is that i can still perform well without pooping out by the end of the set if i start a little less recovery than i had been wont to give myself. In other words, when i've pushed myself to start say ten beats higher than my normal "feel" it's been ok; it hasn't cost me performance of good reps. In other words, the HRM has let me check where to reset "feel" to start again to push my training adaptation a bit more without pushing too far and too hard.
Record
Right now, using an HRM in resistance is mainly a way for me to keep track of the fact that
a) i did my workout
b) i put some good effort into it
c) give me a visual comparison of the same workouts within a given block or blocks over time
and to use that to see patterns of adaptation or not to see what else i might want to do with my training.
For instance it was checking my total training effect (a measure of heart rate variability to determine fatigue and time needed for recovery) from RTK that let me know i was probably ok to do the snatch practice work i've been doing on the days between RTK (lots of snatching in prep for the snatch re-test at RKC II end of feb). That's been great to have.
Calories and High Heart
I also admit that i like to see how many calories a workout burns - relative to the given accuracy of the calculations on the HRM. For instance, 10 mins of swings at the end of an RTK session burns as many calories as 20+ minutes of pressing. Wow. so that's just another bit of motivation to say ya do the few extra swings - get a few extra calories and a bit more effort on the heart too. I like to see about getting my heart rate up with 15 or 20 heavy swings, 15 sec pause and then more swings with clean reps "can i get it up a few beats higher" mayn't be the smartest thing in the world, but it's brief and fun and well, it's again, something i'll be looking at over time - if there are changes in swing volume to achieve the same thing, measuring fatigue and so on.
Biofeedback again? Heart Rate Varability Fatigue and Recovery
There's some work that suggests monitoring those R-R distances can also be used for very specific training tuning. I'm looking forward to trying this in march - you need ten days of non-training to get a base line - time i don't have to take away from prep work right now. But from this, and some nifty math, one can get a simple number that if one is above it, don't train; below it, go ahead.
I'll come back to this after i've played with it for awhile, but if you go for it, let me know. Fatigue has been desperately challenging to get a handle on. Partially because we tend not to notice it's got us until it's too late - the dreaded overtraining problem.
i'm intrigued by the fact that a phyiscal device far less subtle than ourselves may actually be able to help us learn to re-listen to ourselves - to be able to correlate our own daily experience with what the device is saying is our state. For instance on a day this approach might say "don't do a heavy day" - do i notice that ya, i'm not feeling like i could take on the world? or is there something else at play, that i might begin to learn to be more aware of?
This kind of biofeedback is reminiscent to me of another way that folks like Mike T Nelson, Adam Glass and Frankie Fairies are looking at immediate ways to test readiness for a particular move in any workout.
This kind of training - of finding ways to see and listen to our bodies - learn what the data is giving us - who knows? may just help us to move better, stronger, easier for longer.
For me, this heart rate tracking is new, so i don't have enough data yet to draw conclusions, but so far it's opened up more possibilities to get more volume safely into my workouts, and that seems to be good so far.
Related Posts
for some time. Athletes use these devices to tune their endurance efforts for maximal aerobic threshold work and optimal effort to recovery ratios. Sounds like that makes sense.In the Iron Gym, HRM's are far less regularly seen. After all, lifting weights is lifting weights. Where the heck would a Heart Rate Monitor come into play?
Lately, i've been exploring this question: to see if HRMs might also help tune effort and recovery for optimal training. This post isn't the ultimate finding of that exploration, but a description of how this exploration is being set up, and especially the rationale for it.
Maybe before addressing that one, it would be useful to take a step back and say why/when a heart rate monitor at all? And THEN take a look at an approach for exploring its use in weights work. (if you know all this stuff about R-R distances, how/what HRM's monitor and calculate, just skip scroll to re-enter RTK for the resistance application...)
What do we actually "monitor"?
We are electric plastic people. We pulse. Electrically. And because of that, those pulses - electrical impulses moving through the muscle of the heart in this case, but like any electrical activity, can be detected- in this case via conductors on the skin. Once the pulse is detected, a signal that represents the pulse can be transmitted and communicated to a device that does so much more now that just count the beats, but beat counting is no small thing.
R-R distances
What we know from this measure.In a way, all we know explicitly from a heart rate monitor is that there is a pulse. The computer in the HRM translates this into a frequency of beats per minute, relatively accurately - close enough for most healthy people's purposes, and especially the higher end models like the Suunto T6C, you'll see used in research papers as the measuring device in studies. These heart rate monitors track the specific measurements between the big peeks in the heart rate pulse - the R to R distance (seen above) - we'll come back to this and why being able to note the differences in distances is so valuable for training.
The rather impressive thing is that, from the miracle of statistics, we can use readily knowable values like age, gender, height, weight and max heart rate to figure out all sorts of things about energy systems being taxed, our capacity to use oxygen, and more recently, based on load and effort, a more clear picture of how long we'll need to recover from the type of work we've done, so that we can specifically focus our training on making the whole of us get stronger. All that from the simple lub dub moving the blood, pushing the o2, saying we're alive.
The first thing to measure from the measure: Max Heart Rate
In order to take best advantage of a heart rate monitor, a key value to get is the Maximum Heart Rate. Max Heart Rate (MaxHR) is pretty much the greatest number of beats one's heart is capable of generating in a minute. It's age, gender and ethnicity effected. But that said, it's also individual as well as being somewhat device-specific. Consequently, Max Heart Rate is a pretty important value to get right because so many other measures take this limit as a critical part of the calculations. There are a bunch of ways to get at that, some more than others.
Statistical Approaches. Max heart rate is often simply calculated based on equations derived from stats of various populations. These equations (many examples here) often provide an ok ball park but LOADS of people have heart rates that are higher or lower than the calculation, so i don't want to give the equation.
Maximal or Near Maximal Tests. I'd like to suggest you get it measured. There are many ways to self test or get a Real Test. If your doc has cleared you to work out, check if you can do a MaxHR test; if not there are ways to do partial max exertion tests to get a good enough approx till you're more fit.
Device Sorta Specific. Also, quick note, besides the fact that there are a bunch of ways to figure out your max heart rate, they vary by device you're using. I can crank out a good five beats more on an evil elliptical than i can on a bike, and the bike's higher than the rower, and the rower is higher than kettlebells. THis is pretty normal based on amount of big muscles used in any given activity.
The First Use of MaxHR: Zones of the Heart
The next thing that comes up in heart rate monitor use is figuring out whether we're staying aerobic or going anaerobic in our efforts - and how long in either zone. The border crossing from aerobic to anaerobic is pretty much 85% max. It is not unusual, howerver, to have multiple "zones" defined in the aerobic area as well to indicate at least a kind of degree of effort.
Load and Recovery. This sense of effort can be important for planning effort levels, effect on the central nervous system (CNS) and recovery. For instance, not every day would one want to work for an hour at the anaerobic threshold, or only do cardio work at 60% of effort if one is a healthy, mobile person. So checking what zone one has been training in may help with understanding if one has been working sufficiently to promote a desired adaptation.
Why Else is this Zoning important? Energy systems.
Before going anaerobic, we're primarily using fat for fuel. Good-o right? And fat is generally converted to fuel in the presence of oxygen. Breath in and out. Cook a calorie. Yodelayheehoo. SO aerobic, which means in the presence of oxygen, is a good thing. Sleeping is aerobic. Running so that you can carry on a conversation is aerobic. Quite a range.
But (a) oxidising a gram of fat gives off a hefty 9kcals of energy and that's grand, because fat oxidation is not what you'd call a fast process. So relatively speaking only a certain amount of muscle can be turned on at once since there's only so much fuel available.
When we pump up the demand - to sprint, or lift heavy - when we have to recruit more muscle to get that extra power, we need a burst of fuel for that. And a burst is about all we'll get from the phosphate system (anaerobic) which can do a good burst but only for a moment (well, 30sec), and then there's sugar in the muscle and bloodstream, if it's there to be had - it can only do so much more - for maybe a minute or so. Imagine a 400 yard dash. And then it's gone.
The goal in most endurance training is to be able to raise the threshold at which we can take advantage of the plentiful fuel resources in the O2/fat equation. So you'll see folks with their heart rate monitors working on Time - being able just to work longer at a given aerobic heart level. So they're watching their heart rate to stay in that "i can still talk while i'm running mode"
And then there's the pushing the envelop - the anaerobic/aerobic envelop. Here, the goal is to tax the upper end of the system - to push into the anaerobic for brief or longer periods with recovery spurts (to rebuild those rarer energy system resources) back in the aerobic world to drive up the aerobic threshold.
The more power we can generate with Fat/O2 the better.
Total Eclipse of the Heart Rate Monitor: Cardio. The above more or less explains the fundamental uses (not all, but the basics) of HRM's for endurance work generally. There's a lot more to current heart rate training and high end heart rate monitors than what i've just described. Current approaches calculate EPOC, heart rate variability, vo2 capacity, and something called "training effect" that is very cool to be able to see to what degree one's workout really *is* pushing one's training to cause an adaptation, or just keep one at the same level.
Shifting to Resistance Training
How does this monitoring apply to resistance training? i bet there's lots of ways, but i'm afraid here it gets a bit personal. Indeed, it's rather a challenge to find any papers that have a person using a heart rate monitor throughout a training session, rather at most, before and after the session. Why is this? Maybe it's because using a HRM in resistance training is stupid; or maybe it just hasn't been looked at. So why am i? Where am i?
I'm using an HRM to test
- energy system taxed,
- overall work of a workout,
- effective recovery between sets
RE-enter the Return of the Kettlebell
I have been following Return of the Kettlebell since the fall - this has light, medium and heavy days in order to allow suitable amounts of volume, recovery and load to promote an hypertrophic adaptation. Part of the protocol is progressive increase in load over time, but the way to progress load is first to get the speed up for a set completion, and time down between (and within) the max number of reps & sets ( 5 ladders of 5 rungs each) before moving onto a new weight.In doing this work, i became curious as my times were going down, what kind of work i was doing - what kind of effort i was putting in - how much of the work was happening especially on heavy days in the aerobic zone as opposed to pushing into the anaerobic - where power is supposed to take place.
Hypertrophy vs Power. Part of the challenge in this protocol is that it's not a power protocol, per se, but an hypertrophy protocol. That means it's more reps with less recovery than power - much closer to endurance than power (as best we understand hypertrophy). So, really, most work *would* be in the aerobic zone - though perhaps towards the higher end of the MaxHR. At least that's how i've been looking at it.
Ramping Up the Heart: Warm ups for Work, Revisisted
This may be stating the obvious, so forgive me, but even if working quite hard, it can take time to get the heart rate up to working level. By working level, i simply mean where one is working at a level of effort to induce an effect on work capacity (O2 capacity) would take place. This is one reason perhaps to consider doing a warm up on a bike for ten minutes.
Why bother? why care? Well personally, i haven't. I've used my initial sets in RTK to warm up. What that means is that by the time the workout is done 20 or 30 mins later - only half to a third of that effort has been working my heart outside of MAINTAINING my current level of endurance strength, and letting me advance it's training.
Now, there's a caveat here: not EVERY workout ever should be or needs to be in that higher region of the heart. But looking at my heart rate let me know that i was not taking advantage of the training opportunities i could be just by doing some preliminary warming up. I had sauce left for more VOLUME, and volume is king.
This kind of thinking for a warm up is not the norm to me, but it's been revelatory. Indeed, as if to underline this, Coach Hauer the other day, looking at some vid of my snatch work, commented that my second long sets were consistently stronger than the first ones (i didn't warm up before these sets). Second sets are definitely the ones pushing into training effect rather than maintenance when i look at the logs. Hmm. And they seem stronger? Hmm. "So warm up before you do your snatch test?" was the suggestion. Just warm up.
The logs i'm looking at are of my heart rates at points throughout the sets.
The above image for example is RTK medium day, five sets of five ladders, concluding with two sets of double kb squats, then, seeing i had more time/energy, finishing with the 5*20s double swings.
What the lower panel shows is a combined EPOC (the line going up) and calculated cumulative training effect (the colored bands) of the workout. Training effect here - is how long one might need for recovery before doing another workout of this intensity. This one was a TE of 3.1 - meaning that (a) the workout was causing more than a maintenance of current training, but was pushing slightly into the realm of causing an adpatation/improvement. That also means however, that there's a recommended 1-3 days break before doing this kind of workout again. We'll look at how to get more precise below.
Inter-Set Recovery
Another thing i've been checking with an HRM is where the reasonable recovery is between sets. Now on the one hand, one usually "just feels" when it's appropriate to get back, or one takes recommendations of how long to pause based on the type of effort one is performing.
Two things happen in RTK: pavel initially recommends two minutes between ladders, but he also suggests trying to get time between reps in sets down with the goal of seeing how quickly one can get the time down for the workout to use as a gate for moving up to the next weight.
I have recently been using an HRM to see if the way i "feel" about readiness to start the next set is mapped at all to a given heart rate level - if i'm trying to keep my heart working. What i've learned is that i can still perform well without pooping out by the end of the set if i start a little less recovery than i had been wont to give myself. In other words, when i've pushed myself to start say ten beats higher than my normal "feel" it's been ok; it hasn't cost me performance of good reps. In other words, the HRM has let me check where to reset "feel" to start again to push my training adaptation a bit more without pushing too far and too hard.
Record
Right now, using an HRM in resistance is mainly a way for me to keep track of the fact that
a) i did my workout
b) i put some good effort into it
c) give me a visual comparison of the same workouts within a given block or blocks over time
and to use that to see patterns of adaptation or not to see what else i might want to do with my training.
For instance it was checking my total training effect (a measure of heart rate variability to determine fatigue and time needed for recovery) from RTK that let me know i was probably ok to do the snatch practice work i've been doing on the days between RTK (lots of snatching in prep for the snatch re-test at RKC II end of feb). That's been great to have.
Calories and High Heart
I also admit that i like to see how many calories a workout burns - relative to the given accuracy of the calculations on the HRM. For instance, 10 mins of swings at the end of an RTK session burns as many calories as 20+ minutes of pressing. Wow. so that's just another bit of motivation to say ya do the few extra swings - get a few extra calories and a bit more effort on the heart too. I like to see about getting my heart rate up with 15 or 20 heavy swings, 15 sec pause and then more swings with clean reps "can i get it up a few beats higher" mayn't be the smartest thing in the world, but it's brief and fun and well, it's again, something i'll be looking at over time - if there are changes in swing volume to achieve the same thing, measuring fatigue and so on.
Biofeedback again? Heart Rate Varability Fatigue and Recovery
There's some work that suggests monitoring those R-R distances can also be used for very specific training tuning. I'm looking forward to trying this in march - you need ten days of non-training to get a base line - time i don't have to take away from prep work right now. But from this, and some nifty math, one can get a simple number that if one is above it, don't train; below it, go ahead.
I'll come back to this after i've played with it for awhile, but if you go for it, let me know. Fatigue has been desperately challenging to get a handle on. Partially because we tend not to notice it's got us until it's too late - the dreaded overtraining problem.
i'm intrigued by the fact that a phyiscal device far less subtle than ourselves may actually be able to help us learn to re-listen to ourselves - to be able to correlate our own daily experience with what the device is saying is our state. For instance on a day this approach might say "don't do a heavy day" - do i notice that ya, i'm not feeling like i could take on the world? or is there something else at play, that i might begin to learn to be more aware of?
This kind of biofeedback is reminiscent to me of another way that folks like Mike T Nelson, Adam Glass and Frankie Fairies are looking at immediate ways to test readiness for a particular move in any workout.
This kind of training - of finding ways to see and listen to our bodies - learn what the data is giving us - who knows? may just help us to move better, stronger, easier for longer.
For me, this heart rate tracking is new, so i don't have enough data yet to draw conclusions, but so far it's opened up more possibilities to get more volume safely into my workouts, and that seems to be good so far.
Related Posts
- Does cardio interfere with strength training? how bout no?
- Kettlebell article index
- general fitness index
- when to use calorie counting for weight loss - another device to encourage biofeedback
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Real People Losing Real Weight in Real Time: Update
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Back in december i did two short pieces about real world fat loss. The first one is about what real world, consistent, effective, sane, healthful and nutritionally appropriate fat loss and strength gain looks like. The second one is about how important some kind of support system is for optimizing success in getting a handle on consistent weight loss.
6 months. These pieces were inspired by the folks who had just finished Precision Nutritions 6 month program called the Lean Eating Challenge. 6 months. Not 12 weeks, not 16 weeks, but 6 months. Half a year to develop and practice nutrition and strength habits to achieve one's body comp, health and fitness goals sanely, safely, with habits to last a life time.
So i thought b2d readers might be interested to see both the winners of this real world challenge, and see the runners up as well. Here ya go: Lean Eating Challenge Results
Congratulations to all.
If you're interested in the Lean Eating challenge, it's a great great program. Folks get so much daily guidance and support in such a reasonable, effective way, it's awesome - i'll detail it more in a future post. In the meantime, here's a previous discussion (check the comments). Right now (Feb 2010) you may want to put your name on the list for the next time the program will be run (June 2010).
In the meantime, if you're looking for a similarly sane foundation to develop your own nutrition/fitness/body comp, please do take a look at Precision Nutrition (here's a detailed review, too).
Folks who read b2d know that i find PN to be a great program to learn about nutrition and how to get a handle on it for oneself. Most particularly, i think access to the forum alone is worth the price of admission. If you want to learn about nutrition and how to tune that knowledge for your body comp/health goals, i've yet to discover or be introduced to a better resource.
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6 months. These pieces were inspired by the folks who had just finished Precision Nutritions 6 month program called the Lean Eating Challenge. 6 months. Not 12 weeks, not 16 weeks, but 6 months. Half a year to develop and practice nutrition and strength habits to achieve one's body comp, health and fitness goals sanely, safely, with habits to last a life time.
So i thought b2d readers might be interested to see both the winners of this real world challenge, and see the runners up as well. Here ya go: Lean Eating Challenge Results
If you're interested in the Lean Eating challenge, it's a great great program. Folks get so much daily guidance and support in such a reasonable, effective way, it's awesome - i'll detail it more in a future post. In the meantime, here's a previous discussion (check the comments). Right now (Feb 2010) you may want to put your name on the list for the next time the program will be run (June 2010).
In the meantime, if you're looking for a similarly sane foundation to develop your own nutrition/fitness/body comp, please do take a look at Precision Nutrition (here's a detailed review, too).
Folks who read b2d know that i find PN to be a great program to learn about nutrition and how to get a handle on it for oneself. Most particularly, i think access to the forum alone is worth the price of admission. If you want to learn about nutrition and how to tune that knowledge for your body comp/health goals, i've yet to discover or be introduced to a better resource.
Related Posts
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