News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The old gym rat mantras — “train hard or go home” and “no pain, no gain” — are being tossed away like a pair of ratty old gym socks. Trainers in Sisters are instead preaching smart training, using heart rate monitoring to help their clients get results instead of wearing themselves out.
Local trainers are recommending that Sisters athletes — whether they’re working for general fitness and weight loss or training for a triathlon — use a heart rate monitor. A heart rate monitor is basically a wristwatch that picks up a signal from a chest band and lets the user know what their heart rate is during exercise.
Trainers like to have their clients work in several “zones” based on percentage of maximum heart rate (MHR). The simplest maximum heart rate calculation is MHR=220-your age (eg. 220-40=180).
The zones range from high intensity — 85 percent of maximum — to low (60-70 percent) and medium intensity (70-80 percent).
For folks working to burn fat and build up their cardiovascular fitness, most training should be in that 70-80 percent “aerobic” zone.
“People are either working way too hard too many times a week or they’re not working hard enough,” said Ross Kennedy of Sisters Athletic Club. “You don’t always want to train at the highest intensity five days a week. Using a heart rate monitor is allowing people to rein themselves back in to an appropriate zone.”
“It’s just a tool for getting the most out of your workout,” said Sue Rasberry of Cascade Fitness. “Even when I pull out my spin bike for my personal workout, I put my heart rate monitor on.”
Rasberry notes that climbing into the “anaerobic” zone of 85 percent and higher is not effective for what most people want out of their workout — which is to burn fat. At high intensity, the body starts burning sugars.
Diane Rodgers has been using a monitor for about a year during spin classes at Cascade Fitness.
“My whole thing is burning fat,” she said. “I wanted to stay in my target heart rate zone. I know what it should be and I wanted to stay there.”
Like many folks who use the monitors, she found it wasn’t a question of “train hard or go home.”
“I kind of had a perceived exertion level and I found it was maybe a little bit higher (than her target).”
The monitor led her to back off and not push quite so hard.
Maureen Bidasolo admits the idea of “backing off” seems counter-intuitive to a person who has been working out all her life under the belief that the harder you work, the better your results will be.
But seven weeks of using the monitor and a custom designed “cardio coaching” program at Sisters Athletic Club have convinced her.
“I dropped a whole size in seven weeks,” she said.
Bidasolo works out five days a week — two at low intensity, one moderately, one at high intensity and another with a short burst of high intensity.
Both Bidasolo and Rodgers take their monitors outside the gym.
Rodgers puts hers on for hikes and walks, which gives her a point of reference to know when she can “push it” a little. Bidasolo takes hers on vacation to get the most out of activities. And she uses it doing chores at home, too.
“Mowing the lawn — I’ll use it to do that,” she said.
While a heart rate monitor can give an athlete precise and detailed information, it’s still considered worthwhile to monitor the heart rate the old fashioned way.
“If you don’t have a heart rate monitor, you can take your pulse for six seconds and add a zero,” Rasberry notes.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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