heart zones

Cell phones aren't just for calling people anymore Not only can you play games, surf the web, get turn-by-turn directions, and listen to music you can now do "medical monitoring" on a gadget that you carry around in your pocket or purse.

HeartZones: 101 Week Six

One of the best ways to get fitter is to constantly take small fitness steps. One of these systems is called Kaizen, whcih means (loosely) small constant change.

"Kaizen" is a Japanese expression for constant small improvements. In other words, there is a great deal of value in a program that makes a 1% improvement 100 times, resulting in more than a 100% improvement.

Would you consider training in shoes that don’t fit you? That should also be true about the way you train. You should train based on YOU. Training is personal. It must be designed around you, your time, your fitness level, your goals and a bunch of other things. So, if the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. Design your own program.

OK, kids, workouts for Week #2 are now posted at Hearzones 101.

If you're like most people, you learned a lot about yourself and how you work out in Week #1. I remember a few years ago, when I did sub-max tests on participants in our health club's studio cycling program. One of the, whom I'd known for years, came up to me after the class and said "Gee, my max is a lot higher than I thought." It turned out she was working with a age-based formula number that had her some 20 beats below what it should have been.

In this very emotional time of year, I'm here to remind you that your heart needs not only physical activity to keep it strong, but mental activity focused on the heart as well.

In the Heart Zones family, we have Dr. Dan Rudd, also known as "Dr. Love," who constantly reminds us to listen to our hearts in all aspects of our lives.

As you count your blessings this year-end, think about your "Heart Light" and what it does for you. Here's some tips from Dr. Love to start you on your Emotional Heart Zone journey.

Who said it? "Failing to plan is planning to fail" or something like that. This time of year, when short days and lower temperatures force many of us inside to do our workouts on treadmills or stationery bicycles, it's easy to just get on the equipment and endure a set period of time.

But I'm here to tell you, you can make the time go faster (and maybe GAIN some fitness at the same time) if you actually go into these workouts with a plan.

A friend just got back from a national conference of Heart Zone practitioners. What did they talk about? Well, among other things, one of the big topics of discussion was on recovery.

"You know," she said, "most people aren't training too hard, they're recovering too little." When I started to think about it, it made sense. In the quest to "make every workout count, m any people workout near their threshold in every workout. Then, they wonder why they aren't improving.

Intervals are fun. Well, maybe that's too strong a word.
Interval Training is a way to improve your aerobic capacity, the ability of the body to remove oxygen from the air and transfer it through the lungs and blood to the working muscles.

Simply put, interval training is just varying the intensity within a workout. In the early days of the running "boom," we learned that the Swedes call this "Fartlek", or speed play.

Yesterday, I loaded up djsteveboy's "Rainy Day Run" on my nano (yes, it's been raining in the desert) and went for a recovery run in the hills near my home. Afterward, I loaded it up to motionbased.com

Recovery is a wonderful thing. It gives our bodies a chance to repair, of course, but it also is comfortable and allows the mind to wander while working out ... you don't have to worry about where your next breath of air is coming from. Anyway, I used the time to think about how to teach you to create a training plan that works for you. Remember, this is all about YOU.

Are you an exerciser or an athlete? By that, I mean do you workout with a plan, or do you just do the same things over and over.

In working with clients at the gym who do most of their workouts indoors, I find many of them have been doing the same thing for years ... and they wonder why they aren't getting fitter (or losing weight, or feeling better). The answer, my friend, is they don't have a plan.

So, over the next week, we're going to talk about goals and setting up a plan to meet those goals. First, we must go over the basics of goal-setting. Training without a goal is like getting in your car to take a trip and not having a map -- you never get to a destination. Now, the serindipity might be wonderful, but that's not the point. You want to accomplish something, right??

Before you decide on a goal, I want you to read this great article from Runner's World . It's not just for runners and it applies as much to life as it does to training.

After you've read it, I want you to set a few training goals for the next six months. It could be an event or cutting some time off one of your regular rides or runs. I'm going to show you how to apply a Heart Zones periodization plan to training.

I now have confirmation that I'm not weird. Well, my daughter still thinks I am, but my love of tech toys does NOT make me weird.

A new survey for the Oxygen Network found more than three out of four women said they'd choose a large-screen TV over a diamond solitaire necklace. They also picked a snazzy cell phone over designer shoes. And bye-bye little black dress. Women would rather buy an iPod.

OK, I draw the line at the shoes. Here's the story from USA Today

Has it been more than a week since my last blog? Sorry, I know you were holding your breath waiting for me to return to the blog-o-shere.

Along those lines, I read an interesting piece in Information Age about blogs. Check it out here to see what many bloggers think about their writing.

As for training this week, most of the country has been hot, hot, hot.