[The Most Loathed] learns....slowly

[RisenPhoenix]

36 minutes ago, The Most Loathed said:

Big week. I found out that i need to turn out a Rank 2 performance of Biathlon in a few weeks. I've never trained biathlon so I slapped together a plan and got after it, beginning with a test. Prior to the pre-test I had no idea how accessible Rank 2 would be to me. The good news is that it's extremely accessible. In fact, once I saw how close I was I felt like my plan was overbuilt. I decided however, to stick with it. At this point I basically have four weeks of tough training ahead of me but then a week off and then I should crush the test. 

What's more is that after my first two training sessions I'm feeling pretty good about the plan. If I was fighting my way through both jerks and snatches, failure would be pretty eminent. Since snatches are flowing easily, I'm optimistic that I can kind of cruise through those and put my effort into the jerk workouts. The hardest part of this plan will be the social aspects. I'm pounding each and every day so when friends want to get together , for at least these few weeks. I'm going to turn some folks down.

I am committing to, you guys have to hold me to this, a week off after the 10K. I'll do some pilates for recovery that week, probably, and I definitely do some walking but no running or lifting except as a part of chores.

 

 

Good luck!

 

I'll make sure to keep harassing you.

 

Gonna have a lot of free time on my hands anyway.

[The Most Loathed]

I finally heard back from the guy who was supposed to look over my training plan. I shouldn't be surprised that he doesn't approve. He didn't exactly reply with a full plan just some paces he likes by weight, which doesn't really tell me a ton. 

 

I'm trying to decide what to do with this information now that I have it. Part of me says, "he's the expert, do what he says" part of me says "do what you think is best" and part of me says " it probably doesn't matter, I'm so close I could do pretty much anything and as long as I practice my lifts I'll make it".

[The Most Loathed]

In violation of the title of this log I chose to change my program. I moved to a compromise position between what I had and what I will do.

The feedback I got back was that the traditional biathlon training was to train 3 days a week with both snatch and jerk on each day. Some people do four with three days of snatch and jerk then one day of jerk and one day of snatch. What I get from this is that they want three training sessions per week on each exercise. i had two. It does mean however that pretty much all assistance work, GPP work, whatever you want to call it goes out the window just for the sake of keeping my sessions not much longer than an hour. It also means that training is pretty dull and one dimensional.

I was also told that I should be doing a single set and just adding a minute each week. So this week i should do 6 minutes of jerk followed by 6 minutes of snatch. A concession was made that the jerk volume can pile up on a person and that it may need to be broken into two sets. This is very traditional of communist style training but it also doesn't work very well, in my opinion. Young Olympic weightlifters will add a kilo or two every week for the first year or two but they hit a point where the easy adaptations are over and this model breaks down. This model also demands a certain kind of baseline and a certain kind of genetics. If you have 1,000 Chinese kids to put through training camp every year, you can crank out some of the best weightlifters in the world. When you're N size is 1 I don't like this approach.

So here was my compromise last night. I folded my jerk and snatch workout into one but I keep my set and rep scheme because I think it's better. Additionally I will drop to three days a week of training and try to keep one day of pilates and two days of jogging. This makes me feel better about my 10K prep and reduces my training volume considerably which should help both with recovery and boredom. 

For purposes of periodization and naming things I'm terming this format "Contest Prep" and if it works I may try to use it twice per year. I'll likely go back to Long Cycle so it won't exactly the same for that but the basics model will stick. This will help me a bit in organizing my year. I'm taking at least a week off in early May then I'll use what's left of May and June to prepare for the big hiking trip with lots of slow cardio and two days a week or so of lifting. June and July can be a bit more of my typical mix then depending on things I can spend a chunk of time in August or September in "contest prep" mode just because then start over. Or something like that.

 

03/8/2016

eat food intake was really clean yesterday: smoothie, chili, veggies, sauerkraut, tangelos, supper was eggs and bacon. I woke up this morning hungry and 213. not really intentional but so it goes

meditate yes. I also took an extra walk during the work day as I wasn't very focused and I figured it was better to be unfocused on the move than sitting at my desk

train all the stuff above boils down to 

Jerk 20 kg 4:00, 4:00 x 3 12 rpm

rest/prepare ~10:00

Snatch 20 kg 4:00, 4:00 x 3 15 rpm

 

today is pilates. Tomorrow I will likely do the 6 minute sets I as asked to do. Thursday I'll likely jog. Friday I'll probably lift but I could take it off. Saturday the other two local lifters are coming over. So i'll lift with them. If I took Friday off, I'll lift Sunday, if not, I'll go for a nice jog.

 

My new heart rate monitor showed up yesterday. I will use it while jogging but i've also started heart rate variability testing in the morning. According to the app, it takes a week to get a baseline before I can know anything. today I got a score of 63 which they tell me means I'm ready to exercise today. Subjectively I can feel a little soreness and my pecs are tight from jerks but yeah, I could lift today. It'd be a 90% kind of day, no records being broken.

[The Most Loathed]

03/29/2016

eat Good eating all day. I ate my lunch stuff that I brought. I did snack on a little cottage cheese at home. After Pilates I had to go to the grocery store to pick up some things for tonight's supper so I grabbed three chicken legs off the hot bar and wolfed those down. That just seemed to make me more hungry. So I had a protein bar when I got home to curb that.

meditate Yes. Although my mind was ready to be done almost immediately. I tried to find more stillness but had moderate success at best

train Pilates night. 

 

This morning my HRV was noticeably poorer than yesterday morning. I would have expected the opposite given the very light nature of training yesterday and that I went to bed a little bit early. I do feel a little draggy this morning so I'm wondering if that's what's coming through. I'll be interested to continue to monitor this.

[Elastigirl]

Looks like your workout schedule is a good combination of trainer recommendations and what you know will work best for you.

[The Most Loathed]

14 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Looks like your workout schedule is a good combination of trainer recommendations and what you know will work best for you.

thanks  I'm optimistic

Also, I miss having all you guys around, writing in your logs. How do you just turn it off for a week?

 

03/30/2016

eat daytime food was pretty good. I did walk past the candy dish and eat a "fun size" Mr. goodbar and Krackle. Wow did I not expect that freighttrain. I felt useless for about 90 minutes as my body dealt with it. Dinner was aborted because as I put the ground lamb in the pan I caught a whiff and it was not good. We used half the ground lamb back on Saturday and I assumed it would keep just fine in the fridge but that sour smell told me I was wrong. Laura and I were both dragging so I offerred a quiet night in with take out food. Laura picked Punch Pizza which is a really good, local, neopolitan pizza place. She ordered and I went to get. It was delicious and I at half the pizza (I think it's a 12" pizza) and a little bit or their bread (another 1/4 of a pizza basically) and some salad.

 

meditate I did not meditate. Laura and I were both dragging yesterday and I was pretty sure I'd just fall asleep

train nope

I made a judgement call. I was feeling draggy and Lara was looking like she felt the same. Dinner was a fail so that was when I gave Laura the option listed above. The second half of that option was that it would just be a quiet night. I don't regret it.

 

After supper we watched episode 2 of cooked. Then I walked the dogs and took a shower and went to bed...at 8. Laura was asleep I read a bit more of Primal Endurance (that guy really needs an editor) and started to doze. I slept off and on until 9 when Laura went to take her contacts out and we kicked the dogs out of bed and went to sleep for the rest of the night.

Thanks the crazy night life of two DINKs. Bed by 8 and lights out at 9. I feel a lot fresher today and unsurprisingly my HRV was markedly improved. Suprisinginly my weight isn't ridiculous considering all the pizza in my belly. It'll still be high tomorrow as it will take two days for me to shed the water and to get everything else back on track but it was nice not to see a big bounce.

 

 

 

[Rooks]

Just an FYI, as I know you pre-ordered this book.  Cool prizes just for having ordered.

 

 

[The Most Loathed]

 

1 hour ago, Rooks said:

Just an FYI, as I know you pre-ordered this book.  Cool prizes just for having ordered.

yep. I submitted my entry this morning.

I've considered paying for a consult with one of the mobility WOD guys so a free one would delight me to no end.

[Elastigirl]

Are you finding Primal Endurance helpful? It has been on my  possible reading list.

[The Most Loathed]

27 minutes ago, Elastigirl said:

Are you finding Primal Endurance helpful? It has been on my  possible reading list.

I think the ideas in it are very good, although it id deliberately very focused on people who don't want or think that they need to lift. I think that the writing is really poor. There is a lot of repeating and padding. I'm halfway through the book and here are the Cliff's Notes.

Problem: Modern endurance training can destroy even the best bodies by middle age

Solution: Eat Primally (Paleo) and train less volume and in specific heart ranges. 

 

More Info: 

Food

• no sugar or grain products
• No seed oils
• eat as much meat and veggies as you want (he does get further into macro nutrients when he opens up the topic of Ketogenic diets but no too specific)

Training

• Aerobic training - 180-your age. If you're doing cardio, you're doing this. If you stop progressing then you need to train at an even lower heart rate
• Anaerobic training - at the halfway mark he's only said it should be short duration and super high intensity
• Black Hole Training - between the Aerobic level and about 90% max is what he calls the Black Hole which is where he says most people mistakenly spend most of their time. Here you don't see the benefits of aerobic or anaerobic training and, in fact, cause damage

Periodization - this part I don't quite have as ingrained but basically

• Base building - train aerobically 3/week at the aerobic heart rate. at least two months of this to start then I think it was 4-6 weeks each cycle
• Race Prep - add in some anaerobic workouts, I think it was 2/week in addition to the 3 aerobic. Do this for 2-4 weeks
• Rest - no training for the same number of weeks as race prep
• start over

That's pretty much it. Each of those bullets could probably have a sentence or two more of clarification and truly encompass everything in the first half of the book. He's already advertising that chapter 7 will be success stories so I'll likely skim that. 

 

I heard him talk on the Paleo Solutions Podcast and Robb Wolf always asks people what he should do to improve his energy levels at Jujitsu. He thought Robb should cut lifting down to twice a week at most and max out at 30 minutes, he specifically suggested heavy squats for time where the lifter does a few, breaks for a short rest (seconds), goes again and so on. When form breaks down or the reps are one or two consistently, the lift is over. He also suggested that Robb find a Jujitsu partner who would be open to them both training with a heart rate monitor on and both take a break of one of them goes of 180-age. That seems to pretty perfectly square with what is in the first half of the book so I think that this is pretty much the entire message.

[Elastigirl]

Thanks for the summary. Hmm, looks interesting, but I am not sure it would be that worth the money to buy the book. I already use Maffetone's formula when I do swings. I am toying (gasp!) with the idea of adding a bit of running in to my workouts, and I wanted my pace to be set by the Maffetone formula, so it may be helpful for me in scheduling that. 

[The Most Loathed]

8 minutes ago, Elastigirl said:

Thanks for the summary. Hmm, looks interesting, but I am not sure it would be that worth the money to buy the book. I already use Maffetone's formula when I do swings. I am toying (gasp!) with the idea of adding a bit of running in to my workouts, and I wanted my pace to be set by the Maffetone formula, so it may be helpful for me in scheduling that. 

I'm sorry if I wasn't paying attention when you talked about it. I'm really fascinated to hear more about the maffetone swing interaction. How long have you been doing it and did you see improvement. I'm debating if I can apply this to Long Cycle or Jerk because of the chest compressions but I want to play with it. Snatches seemed like a natural fit but wanted to get through my test at the end of April first. Feel free to just link to something you've already said.

[The Most Loathed]

03/31/2016

eat good food throughout the day. Laura bought two slices of my favorite cake when she stopped by the grocery store so she and I each had one with dinner. Cardamon, Ginger Angel Food Cake is amazing.

meditate yes and pretty decent

train

Jerk 20 kg 6:00 12 RPM

Rest 18:00

Snatch 20 kg 6:00 15 RPM

 

I hate single set workouts but it's what's recommended by the guy running the Seattle Certification. I'm choosing to look at it as part of the brain game of finishing brutal 10 minute sets. I already have the tools I need to finish the set, my brain is my only obstacle. Practicing by stepping through the minutes just teaches my brain that it is capable.

 

04/01/2016

I don't normally write these up during the day that I'm talking about but today's a little special. I'm working from home and also I already did my workout.

eat I plan to have my smoothie around 9ish. Sometime after I will grill a delicious steak that Laura picked up last night while she was buying the cake and some other things we needed for supper. If I snack this afternoon I'll have protein bars available to me.

meditate TBD

train

Today I did my first heart rate cardio. I was going to run but it's in the lower thirties do I decided to row. The goal was to keep my heart rate around 140. 

I took 5 minutes to warm up then went to work. I found that my pace needed to be roughly 2:10, maybe a bit more, per 500m. It felt pretty good so I kept it up for 30 minutes. Around 15 minutes I had to back off to 2:15 pace but I still felt very good. I finished off with a 5 minute cool down. 

 

I think I'm going to try to stick with the heart rate cardio for the rest of the year, whether it's running or rowing, I want to give this a shot and see if it has the impact I'm looking for. I'll likely steal from Elastigirl  and try to use it in conjunction with swings and/or snatches too.

Also, I need to test it. I'm thinking a rolling start to 10 km row and 10 km run keeping HR below 143. 

 

[The Most Loathed]

04/01/2016

My food went to crap on Friday when I realized that the restaurant in the park had opened for the season so after my lunch I went over and had fried calamari and a beer to celebrate their opening weekend. Then, when Laura got home, she wanted to go out for sushi so I joined her in that andhad a couple whiskey. then our bartender gave us each a free shot of the house made ginger whisky, which Laura didn't want but didn't want to not drink so I had both... four whiskeys. It was more than i wanted.

 

04/02/2016

Breakfast was out, I had and egg scramble. I had a protein bar for a snack then the other two competitive kettlebells lifters in town came over and and one brought her husband. So we had four of us in my garage gym. Four is definitely capacity, probably 3 is capacity. But we had fun. Everyone enjoyed a bit of community and got a workout in. Then it was Salmon and cauliflower for supper and we wrapped up Cooked by Michael Pollen.

 

I liked the message of cooked which is that food is important and cooking is important. I like that he examined four different aspects of cooking and talked about really high quality food. I totally agree with one quote he made about people who cook, "they buy the highest quality food that they can afford and prepare it as simply as possible". That said, a lot of his science is incorrect and that bugs me. I haven't gone to wikipedia to look up his professional history but in a lot of cases he make broad statements that I'm fairly certain he's not qualified to make. I think that in many cases he says and does the right things for the wrong reasons

 

04/03/2016

Breakfast was three strips of bacon and three eggs. Then we went and did grocery and other shopping. I had a chai from the coop. At 1:00 we went to a nearby lake where Laura ran the stairs and I tried to do my first Maffetone heart rate run around the lake. OMG!!! I couldn't even run consistently and keep my heart rate low enough. I would jog as slow as I could and my HR would climb. when it hit 144 I was would walk until it dropped to 135 then job as slow as possible. I repeated this for about 7 km. I need to be able to run that by the end of the summer. That will be an indicator of whether I've been successful in following this program by the end of the summer. Supper was meat and spinach balls. I hadn't eaten in something like 8 hours so I was famished by then 

 

Planning for the new week

• Monday - we're supposed to go to a concert tonight so no training planned
• Tuesday - pilates, probably my last formal class for a couple months
• Wednesday - Kettlebell biathlon 7:00 test
• Thursday - My 1st rugby practice
• Friday - Hill walking
• Saturday - Biathlon practice
• Sunday - aerobic work, TBD

Thursday I will attempt to practice rugby. I've been looking for something else to mix in and Laura has long had an infatuation with rugby and I like it as much as about any sport. The obvious issue is that I'll be well above the mean age for people playing the game , let along starting out. We'll just see how this goes. For me, it's more about the getting out and running around and dealing with trying to tackle or run someone down and less about winning or even playing in games. 

[peelout]

1 hour ago, The Most Loathed said:

 The obvious issue is that I'll be well above the mean age for people playing the game , let along starting out. We'll just see how this goes. 

Thats exactly what I was thinking when I read you were going rugby.  This should be really interesting to watch.  I get a little banged up kayaking, but I have a lot of protective equipment and the rocks are not intentionally out to hit me nor am I intentionally aiming for them.  

 

Doesn't it feel great to be in good enough condition where its still something to try despite advancing age?  Playing Rugby is a door that closes early for those that don't take care of themselves. 

[The Most Loathed]

10 minutes ago, peelout said:

Thats exactly what I was thinking when I read you were going rugby.  This should be really interesting to watch.  I get a little banged up kayaking, but I have a lot of protective equipment and the rocks are not intentionally out to hit me nor am I intentionally aiming for them.  

 

Doesn't it feel great to be in good enough condition where its still something to try despite advancing age?  Playing Rugby is a door that closes early for those that don't take care of themselves. 

Yes...but...ask me again on Friday. I may not think so then.

 

[Sloth the Enduring]

Your bad day of eating is about as good as my good days.

I like the idea of Maffetone, everyone needs more base miles, but I think his levels are too low.

How was the concert?

[Elastigirl]

On 3/31/2016 at 9:27 AM, The Most Loathed said:

I'm sorry if I wasn't paying attention when you talked about it. I'm really fascinated to hear more about the maffetone swing interaction. How long have you been doing it and did you see improvement. I'm debating if I can apply this to Long Cycle or Jerk because of the chest compressions but I want to play with it. Snatches seemed like a natural fit but wanted to get through my test at the end of April first. Feel free to just link to something you've already said.

I don't think I talked a whole bunch about it. Several people on Pavel's site Strongfirst, use the Maffetone formula for their swings sets. They swear by it. I only gave it a shot for  about 6 weeks, so not really long enough to tell. My max rate is supposed to be 120 (180-age-10 for my allergies) In my short time, I'd say it helped a bit. It helped me pace myself. But then I got bored and frustrated, because it took so long for me to finish the sets. My max was 100, and I needed to wait until my HR went down to 100 in my rest before I started again, or I would quickly go over the max. The people on the Strongfirst site, said it took a while, but then  it really helped. I think I'm going to try again, only up the formula by 10, which then really isn't the Maffetone formula, but might be a good compromise. At a HR of 130, I can still talk, so that seems reasonable to me.

 

Interesting on your experience with the running. I thought that would be easier to maintain the lower HR, but even though you are in good shape, it didn't. And I can get my HR up to 120 just by walking fast up our hills. 

 

 

Sounds like a fun week, with a concert and rugby!

[The Most Loathed]

11 hours ago, Sloth the Slow and Steady said:

Your bad day of eating is about as good as my good days.

I like the idea of Maffetone, everyone needs more base miles, but I think his levels are too low.

How was the concert?

I don't think your good days involve a whole order of fried calamari. 

 

The maffetone levels are really low. I'm trying to spend my scant few minutes of unplanned internet time to  figure out if there is really any validity to the 180- age or if it's just an arbitrary number.

 

The concert was decent. I don't go to a ton of concerts because they are loud, late and especially because the sound mix always sucks. In the case of Iggy Pop, you really need to hear the vocals for the music to work but in typical fashion, they were largely drowned out by the guitars. I've never seen him in person before and had no idea that he had such a limp and so many postural issues from it. He moves like a polio victim. That said, the dude is 68 or 69 and many 40 year olds couldn't keep up with the guy on stage. 

I'm listening to a Post-Pop Depression playlist on YouTube right now.

 

9 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

I don't think I talked a whole bunch about it. Several people on Pavel's site Strongfirst, use the Maffetone formula for their swings sets. They swear by it. I only gave it a shot for  about 6 weeks, so not really long enough to tell. My max rate is supposed to be 120 (180-age-10 for my allergies) In my short time, I'd say it helped a bit. It helped me pace myself. But then I got bored and frustrated, because it took so long for me to finish the sets. My max was 100, and I needed to wait until my HR went down to 100 in my rest before I started again, or I would quickly go over the max. The people on the Strongfirst site, said it took a while, but then  it really helped. I think I'm going to try again, only up the formula by 10, which then really isn't the Maffetone formula, but might be a good compromise. At a HR of 130, I can still talk, so that seems reasonable to me.

 

Interesting on your experience with the running. I thought that would be easier to maintain the lower HR, but even though you are in good shape, it didn't. And I can get my HR up to 120 just by walking fast up our hills. 

 

Sounds like a fun week, with a concert and rugby!

Six weeks is enough time to get an idea of how it'll go. In the primal endurance book he wants a person to go two months in that zone before adding in anything with a HR above it. The boredom an frustration seems like an inevitability with this program and they warn of it in the book I'm reading.

 

I was able to row and maintain a really solid heart rate and keep a good pace that made me happy. Running, not so much. First there are hills (very low and gentle in my case) and those change the exertion. For me, though, just going from a fast walk to a jog put my heart into a slow climb to 134. No matter how much I slowed down it climbed. I have to assume that this is the cost of moving a 215 lb body around, 

Interestingly, when I do my morning walk, I usually take the stairs back up to my office. I breathe heavier on that stair climb than I did during that run, by a fair bit. I checked my HR on my fitbit (not the most accurate but it was what I had handy) and it clocked me just over 100. This plus the fact that I wasn't breathing hard at all during my job makes me question what I thought was a pretty tight correlation between breath and HR. 

 

I'm going to keep doing the Maffetone stuff for a while, although mixing in the rugby and lifting may make the training less effective. We'll just see where it all goes.

 

04/04/2016

eat spot on eating for content. smoothie, burgers, salad, frozen veg, saukraut, quark. dinner was scrambled duck eggs. I had a double helping of full fat cottage cheese when we rolled out to the concert. I probably didn't need a double helping but it was good

meditate yes. It was a decent session although I started to get kind of restless about halfway through so I had to work to bring myself back to calm.

train nope, Iggy Pop concert.

Also, it was a late night so we'll see if that impacts today or, more likely, tomorrow.

[Sloth the Enduring]

My FB blew up this morning with pics and raves about the show. It's been about 10 years since I've been to a big concert, but I gave real consideration to Iggy; he's amazing. He has a serious leg length discrepancy and it's messed up his body.

I took a closer look at the Maffetone formula and it's actually pretty close to how I spend the first few weeks of every preseason. I learned old-school training methodology from my elders as a new cyclist (6 weeks in a 42X19 gear before you even look at hills).

[Elastigirl]

It will be  interesting  to see your experience and results from using the Maffetone formula

[The Most Loathed]

11 hours ago, Sloth the Slow and Steady said:

My FB blew up this morning with pics and raves about the show. It's been about 10 years since I've been to a big concert, but I gave real consideration to Iggy; he's amazing. He has a serious leg length discrepancy and it's messed up his body.

I took a closer look at the Maffetone formula and it's actually pretty close to how I spend the first few weeks of every preseason. I learned old-school training methodology from my elders as a new cyclist (6 weeks in a 42X19 gear before you even look at hills).

I never knew about the leg thing until the concert. I assumed it was a new thing until I Googled it on the way out. Shows how much of a fan I am.

 

I have no idea what 42X19 is but I'm taking it as an endorsement of the the slow and steady concept.

9 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

It will be  interesting  to see your experience and results from using the Maffetone formula

Yeah, I have no idea what to expect but I've been looking around for disagreeing opinions but anyone who has tried it seems to be pretty positive on it.

 

04/05/2016

eat food was rock solid. smoothie, beef, homemade slaw, veggies, saurkraut. dinner was two eggs and two strips of bacon. Weight this morning was 213.

meditate no. I tried but couldn't find an unoccupied room to meditate in during the day when I tried.

train no. I was supposed to go to Pilates last night but it was rainy and gross and Laura got stuck at the office late so I offerred to go pick her up and have her drop me off at Pilates on the way home. Unfortunately it took much longer than expected to get to her job (rush hour traffic) so I was going to be fairly late. So I opted to go home, eat, do dishes and go to bed super early. I laid down about 8:15 and began skimming Primal Endurance as I had hit the chapter of nothing but testimonials. around 8:45 or 9 I put the book away and started dozing but knew I'd have to get up eventually to put the dogs out one last time. 9:30 or so I did all that and was back asleep quickly. I really am trying to take sleep more seriously and get more of it. I think I'm succeeding. 

 

Also yesterday, I had my first free wellness coaching session for my insurance plan.This is a service that they offer (they make everyone do). There is a tinge of pride in my voice as I say that they really didn't know what to do with me. My BMI is obese (31.5). I workout something like 5-6 hours per week. My blood work is very good (although I do need to get my 2016 physical done). I eat sweets about once a week. I was required to pick something I wanted to work on so I picked weightloss. I haven't been super motivated this winter to get down to 200 but it's still a number I like. So, she's going to call back in a month and see how I'm doing. All in all, it was a pleasant conversation.

 

Tonight I wlll do the 7 minute test for my biathlon training. Rugby is still on the docket for tomorrow although rain is in the forecast which doesn't make me super happy.

[The Most Loathed]

I've been using my new heart rate monitor to check my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) each morning (save one) with and app called Elite HRV. So I figure it's I've done it enough to talk about it..a little bit. I would consider this intial impressions and not a final review.

 

The basic idea is that I sit still for two minutes and thirty seconds right after I wake up but before I take the dogs out. In that time my heart rate monitor not only measures my HR but time between landmarks in my heart rate. A well rested, calm, healthy human will have a certain amount of variability in the heart rate. As a person gets increasingly stressed the heart responds by locking down that wiggle room. This process measures that wiggle room and does a small amount of analysis and give me a score. 

Wikipedia

Elite HRV (I'm not saying this is a good or bad app, the link has screenshots and an FAQ)

 

HRV itself gives a score from 0 (probably dead) to 100 (so good, something is probably wrong). This specific app shows me this value but also gives me their own score from 0 to 10. Any number that isn't 10 also gets assigned a grouping of Sympathetic or Parasympathetic which tells me either that my body is stressed (heavy or novel workout, not sleeping, those kinds of things) or recovering from stress, respectively. Then it provides a sentance or so telling me what it suggest in terms of workload. It's pretty generic, basically if I'm above a 7 it says to go hard, if I'm 5-7 it says go easy and if I'm below 5 it tells me to take the day off. I'm pretty consistently a 7, 8 or 9. However, this may not mean I'm always ready to go.

 

The app tries to be specific to the user so the first measurement acts a baseline. Then the app builds out a week of data and pins that down as a baseline going forward. It is suggested that the user do the baseline during a rest week to set it as high as possible. I did not do that. As a result, when I do rest, the app may think I'm in an overly parasympathetic state and tell me to rest. So I may see if I can delete my profile and start over sometime.

 

So far, it frankly hasn't told me anything i don't know. I didn't do it on purpose but I started a habit years ago of doing a little big of a physical inventory upon waking, or so I have learned since using this app. Within seconds of waking I can tell if I'm sore, if I'm not but probably should be, if I'm under or over fed, if I'm going to be groggy and so on. these feelings seems to compile to something similar to the HRV. In the two minutes I'm waiting for this thing to finish I tend to think about how I feel and sure enough, if I feel like crap it says I'm 6, if I feel great it says 9 and if I'm so-so it says 7.

 

I'm going to keep trying to use this, I have all the stuff. But for anyone else considering using HRV. I'd have to say that it's probably not worth it. If you already have a BlueTooth heart rate monitor, get one of the free apps and try for yourself but save the $50 if you're thinking about buying a monitor just for this.

[peelout]

We, including myself, are getting seriously addicted to technology.  We now have apps to tell us how we feel.  I'll admit it sounds cool though.  I'd like to have data showing continuous HR data all the time every day so I could track the trend over a year.  Technology is probably already here and I just don't realize it (and wouldn't want to pay for it if it is). 

[The Most Loathed]

04/06/2016

 

eat spot on again. Supper was salmon scramble. I did have a piece of toast with it because rye toast is the right way to eat salmon scramble. 

meditate no. Just did not work up the motivation. I have to admit that while I like meditation and think it's valuable my motivation on this one just isn't as strong as some other things.

train

I did an 8 minute test for biathlon. I recorded it but haven't uploaded it yet. i'll try to get that done this weekend. 

Jerk 20 kg 8:00 12 RPM. I did rest through about two reps so ~94 reps. However the last minute or so my arms just would not lock out and I don't feel like I achieved fixation (my arms kind of waved around near lock out) so I'm guessing more like 80 good reps

Snatch 20 kg 8:00 15 RPM. These were pretty legit ~120 reps

 

I got 154 points if every rep counted. I think if I were actually being judged it would be closer to 140 points. 150 in 10:00 is what I need in a few weeks. I'm on track to success.

 

Tonight I try Rugby.

 

Laura has been talking about signing up for a while. Last night she did it which I think is awesome. Knowing her, I wonder if it will be the right long term fit but I'm super happy to see her trying it.