Cross-trainer and heart rate
Jan. 30th, 2019 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcI am intentionally not very firm and ambitious about my exercise: I do not have the spare willpower to face it like an onerous chore. After some mildly irritating events earlier in the day, on Monday I didn't work out at all: I allow myself to skip the occasional day on a whim. Today, I felt like slacking off a bit so I did: most days I am on the cross-trainer for around half an hour and today I took a minute longer for the same number of strides. The less effort my workouts are, the more likely I will continue them.
My heart rate when I had finished today was in the 140s. That is already enough by normal standards. Though I do less than I used to, even my usual workouts these days still push me toward 170bpm which, though I feel okay at the time, is still high enough to make me cautious even without having any heart or blood pressure issues. Averaging 150bpm would be just fine: there is no need to push it even higher. What I take from this is that I should indeed feel free to take things a bit easy as I am still getting a good workout.
The caveat is that being gentler on the cross-trainer, not pushing harder against the resistance, is largely aerobic exercise. Cardiovascular fitness is my weak point anyway but perhaps a little bit of strength training would be better than none. I still use some resistance though: in my current workouts I average around 60% of the machine's maximum. Originally I had slowly worked up from an average of 40% to around 75% resistance. I also used to average nearly 60rpm but today was not much over 50rpm.
My heart rate when I had finished today was in the 140s. That is already enough by normal standards. Though I do less than I used to, even my usual workouts these days still push me toward 170bpm which, though I feel okay at the time, is still high enough to make me cautious even without having any heart or blood pressure issues. Averaging 150bpm would be just fine: there is no need to push it even higher. What I take from this is that I should indeed feel free to take things a bit easy as I am still getting a good workout.
The caveat is that being gentler on the cross-trainer, not pushing harder against the resistance, is largely aerobic exercise. Cardiovascular fitness is my weak point anyway but perhaps a little bit of strength training would be better than none. I still use some resistance though: in my current workouts I average around 60% of the machine's maximum. Originally I had slowly worked up from an average of 40% to around 75% resistance. I also used to average nearly 60rpm but today was not much over 50rpm.
