Mass versus acceleration
 

So, as I often mention, I was Active Duty Army and now I am in the National Guard. Since I came home, I have made an effort to exercise on my own.

I need to stop allowing girls to interfere with that, school, and other really important things.

I have been doing better with the exercise--since I had annual training five weeks ago, I have done push-ups, sit-ups, and a two-mile run three times every week, even though I am not seeing any progress.

In six weeks I have my Annual Physical Fitness Test, where the Army will judge my worth based on how many push-ups I do in two minutes, sit-ups in two minutes, and my run time. I will pass the push-ups, do well with sit-ups, but I really worry about the run, my fastest time was ninety seconds too slow.

I really hope that I speed up as Arizona cools down.

My other concern is height and weight. I was several pounds over Army standards at annual training and it looks like I am about halfway there.

Anyway, this is basic physics, right? Is there a formula that would give me an idea how much I should speed up as I lose weight?

Thanks! I hope that all of you have a great weekend!

How much overweight would you say you are?

My suggestion for the run is to start out slower, and train longer. Start so slow that you feel like you are going too slow. If you start too fast you get worn quickly and have no gas to finish strong. Is the time still something like 18 minutes for 2 miles? Thats 9 minute miles, which is not too difficult. Instead of training for 2 miles, run at least 3. I don't care how out of shape you are, if you start out slow and pace yourself you can make it all 3 miles. You've got to put your mind in another place and stay mentally strong. As you run the 3 miles for a couple weeks you will notice minutes being shaved off your time. After 6 weeks you should be getting a lot faster.

I hated running in high school. When I started trying to run for 5k's, it turns out I love it. The key to making it is to pace yourself. When I start out for the first mile I have to really hold myself back from going to fast. After the first mile I am fully warmed up, and can speed up a bit. At the start of the 3rd mile I can feel my legs and lungs working hard, but since I paced myself I can still speed up to finish strong. Over the course of a few months I went from 45 minutes down to 30 minutes for 3 miles.

There's not really a formula, because it depends on where and what that mass is, plus other factors. To take one extreme, if it's all a beer gut, then it would (simplistically! - see below) be a simple linear relationship: lose 10% of your weight, and you'd accelerate 10% faster. But at the other extreme, if the excess weight is all in your leg muscles, losing weight would decrease your speed.

But all that's almost irrelevant, because much depends on the type of muscle you have (the ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch fibers), how well they're trained, the exact shape of your body (biomechanics), the efficiency of your respiration (for anything but short sprints), and much more. If the running test is still 2 miles, it's going to be a test of your aerobic capacity more than anything, so as cbaber says, you have to aim your training at increasing that. Of course reducing non-muscle weight is going to help, and - the good part - the training will help reduce weight.

Hi Xist,
This is probably not what you want to know. Anyway, for healthy people the amount of energy it takes to walk, jog or run a given distance is just about proportional to their weight.
So if you lose 10% of your weight and speedup 10% you are doing the same amount of work.
One way to look at it is:
Let's say you are 10% over your weight goal. And you can run 2 miles in 19:15. As you lose weight and increase your pace you will get to your goal weight and 2 miles in 17:30, but will be doing the same amount of work - burning the same number of calories and requiring about the same effort.

For a 200 lb person it takes about 115 Kcal per mile to walk or run (at a comfortable pace). The Army PFT expects a 25 year old male to run 2 miles in 17:30, about 6.86 mph. That's a solid running pace, so probably takes 125 Kcal per mile. So 2 miles is about 250 Kcal. For comparison, a large order of McDonald's fries is about 500 Kcal.

-mort

I don't really have anything to add, but cbaber and jamesqf have it pretty much summed up. If the test is 2 miles, than run 3 or 4. That way it will be like baseball players before they bat. They use the doughnut to make their swing heavy, that way when they get into the box, their bat seems light. If you run more than 2 miles, then when it comes to test time, you'll be able to do 2 miles in your sleep.

You shouldn't put girls on your s**t list, because they are stopping or interfering with your school and exercise (and ecomodder :p). You have to have a reason to make yourself better and what better than all the girls! :thumbup:

Of course it also would help if you weren't in such a ridiculous place (temp. wise) to exercise. ;) When do you exercise? Morning before it heats up, during the day, or in the evening after it cools back down a little?

Also, hockey. I can't tell you how many people I've seen join us playing hockey and have lost not just one pants size but 3,4,5 sizes. They have to change out their whole wardrobe to get clothes that fit again. :D

@jamesqf: Is there a way to determine the muscle type one has? Is there a way to measure one's respiration efficiency to measure and track improvement?

I hurt my back 2 years ago and wasn't able to walk. For 2 months all I did was lay on the couch in agony and sleep maybe an hour per night. Due to the extreme pain, I wasn't able to get to the kitchen to eat. I'm 6'2", and went from 190lbs down to 160lbs.

When I could finally move again, I found that running was very easy. On my first run, I went 6.2 miles in 70min. Pull-ups were also a breeze. 5 months after the injury, I climbed Mt. Rainier with ease compared to the last time.

As others have pointed out, weight is a critical component of performance, and among the easiest to change. While I can't recommend obliterating the disk between your L5-S1 vertebrae as a healthy way to loose weight, I can recommend modifying your diet, paying attention to portion sizes, and reducing sweetened beverages.

While training and exercise is important for maximizing the efficiency of your body, weight reduction multiplies the effects of training. It's like trying to get the best quarter mile time at a drag strip; you have to make the engine more powerful (training) while reducing the amount of mass that has to be accelerated (diet).

As cbaber pointed out, 2 miles is too short to train. I don't even hit my groove in a run until 25min in. Jeff makes a good point that girls don't have to get in the way of progress. Last week, my wife pushed me to go faster than I normally would have gone on my 6.2 mile run, and I enjoyed it. Then there are bedroom activities that are very aerobic...

You could even join a coed team and have fun while getting exercise. I bet a game of Ultimate Frisbee would leave you hurting, and that brings me to my last point. "Pain" is where the gain is. If you can hold a conversation while you are on a training run, you aren't pushing hard enough. I've seen too many people going through the motions of exercise without putting forth the intensity needed to make it worthwhile.

JamesQF, good point, I was asking about acceleration, which is immaterial.

Thread closed! :)

Wow. Four responses! I am going to need to split my window!

I love Opera Classic!

First, I want to apologize for the length of my original post. I edited it down a few times and that was the best that I had.

To be honest, I do not feel that my relationship with any of the girls that talk to me can progress. When I meet a girl with whom I feel that I can have a serious relationship, I will make time for her, but I will take care of myself, and try harder to be the best person that I can.

As for my weight, six weeks ago a scale at Fort Huachuca said that I was at 218, and this morning my scale said that I was 214.4, with my limit being 211. Hopefully, that will not be a problem.

My time limit is 17:42, but unfortunately, the brand-new laptop on which I kept my log broke and I lost my run log. I think that my best time was nineteen minutes.

At annual training, I kept hearing how running 30/60s (sprint/jog) are the best way to train, although it was the same Private that just kept talking. I try to maintain a constant speed on Monday and do 30/60s the other days.

This morning it was 81°, but we had 71% humidity. When I wrote that I ran three times a week, that was the average. In order to run at six, I need to go to bed at nine, which rarely happens when I spend time with girls.

I do not have a "beer gut," the only alcohol that I have ever consumed was Zzz\Nyquil, according to instructions, although I doubt that you should use Zzzquil for months on end.

I just like sleeping and not lying in bed, bored.

I have wondered if I have a "Gatorade gut." I would rather discuss that with an actual medical professional.

If I reach my "fighting weight" without otherwise improving physically, I should be twenty-three seconds closer to passing. In theory, if I dropped to 203 pounds, I would make my run time.

So, now I do Insanity every day?

Jeff88, this donut's for you! Yum yum yum!

There are girls in whose company I want to improve myself and there are girls that will keep me where I am.

There are relationships that can progress and those that stay in one place.

When it cools down enough to run after sundown, hopefully I will have time to do that as well.

If it jiggles, I do not think that it is muscle! :D

Thanks again, guys! I hope that I covered your responses! Please enjoy your respective evenings!

If you don't have an externally-imposed schedule to meet, try doing what the natives do. Take a siesta in the afternoon, then enjoy the cooler hours of late evening.

Yes, but you'll need an exercise science lab, and to get your VO2 max measured will cost you unless you can get in on a study that includes it as a metric.

In order to knock a minute and a half off your time, you'll have to do two things: run longer to improve your aerobic endurance, as others have suggested, and run faster to improve your cadence (the key to reducing your time). The Private was only half right when he said alternating sprinting and jogging is the best way to train, because you need the aerobic capacity to maintain the higher pace as well. I would do at least one longer run each week (the rule of thumb is no more than 10% increase in mileage each week, so don't do too much too soon), and at least one speedwork run--it doesn't have to be rigidly structured, either, if you don't want (what runners call fartlek, a Swedish word that loosely translates to "speed play" and entails sprinting during a run when you feel like it, for as long as you feel like--the key is just to get used to your feet moving faster).

Split window with Opera Classic and a larger screen! Love it!

I have a very difficult time falling asleep at night, so I use melatonin and Zzzquil. Napping is not really an option, unfortunately.

I want to keep running two miles the first day of the week to watch my progress, but increase the other runs by 10% a week?

Thanks guys! Enjoy your evenings!

In the academy, running was my challenge-regardless of my affinity for lifting heavy objects and climbing. I found that chasing the leader was the best thing for me. It left me really struggling to walk, or do anything, after the runs, but I built up my endurance. Since I was still professionally lifting back then, I got to the point of running 7-9 miles, the basic PT we did before, after, and during the run, then squatting or deads after. Nothing like running a 10k then pulling 5+.

Point: Do what workout you NEED to, then get your own workout in afterward. Find someone better than you, and chase them. Find someone stronger, try to beat them.

(I've never been the fastest or the strongest, but I've gotten fast and strong chasing the other two!)

I stayed up later than I wanted last night trying to do schoolwork, but everything seems to go wrong for me, and I still do not even have the software installed that I need for the assignment.

I have always had great difficulty with motivation. I stared out my sixth week of exercise with the same dismal results that I have had from the beginning, which is demotivating, but I tried to push myself harder, figuring that I would not see results otherwise.

Despite my lack of motivation, I wasted little time, put a clean t-shirt in the freezer, and at eight in the morning, it was already 91°F with 39% humidity.

I failed my run by over four minutes, changed my shirt, and quickly soaked the new one, fresh out of the freezer. According to my scale, I lose a couple of pounds each time that I run--I was down to 210.6, and usually the sweat evaporates before I get weighed after a PT test.

What kind of relationship do you think there is between ambient temperature and run time? If there is an inverse relationship between run speed and temperature in Kelvin, I will lose one minute from my atrocious run this morning and my PT test October 18th.

I ran two miles as fast as I could, then went another three blocks, about a quarter mile.

The weight loss after running, is just sweat.
The real weight loss, is utterly minimal.
Are you hungry when you return from a run ?


Go back to the basics :
7000 kilocalories (kcal) less = 1 kg (just over 2 pounds) less.
Cut down the intake.


Running hard for short periods will NOT improve your condition.
You'll just get tired.
Train for longer periods, at least over 1 hour, but not as hard, say 70-80% of your max. heart rate
(rough formula : 220 - age ; if you were a sporty guy : 205 - half your age)


If you want to lose fat, training @ 60-70% max. heart rate for a longer time will do the trick.
You shouldn't really sweat (in normal conditions - AZ isn't really normal)
You shouldn't be hungry when you get home from training - unless it's your regular time to eat .
If you can stand it, go out and train sober to loose more fat - you force your body to use the stored fat as no fast sugars are available.

Well, yes, I just multiply each pound that I lost by sixteen to get the liquid ounces that I lost. I will be weighed after running the same distance, so I should sweat the same amount.

No, I do not even think about food when I come back, I just want to lie on a hammock in a cold and dark room, but I understand that if I do not eat and drink, it will take me longer to restore my energy, and if I do not consume protein, my push-ups are supposed to be for nothing.

Seven thousand is the average between fat, starch, and protein?

I eat about half of what I used to--I used to have a high metabolism, but it betrayed me!

I think that I would have been fine had I exercised the entire time that I was home, but I worry that as I eat less, my metabolism slows down further.

I used to always order two foot-long sandwiches from Subway (the low-fat ones, with plenty of vegetables) or two chicken burritos from a Mexican restaurant. Now I only eat one, which is now too much, I need to find something smaller.

When I would go out to eat, I always tried to find something reasonably healthy, with plenty of vegetables, although few places had servings large enough for me.

Many times I took a girl to dinner and she watched me eat two plates.

Now the girls out-eat me.

For breakfast, I have two servings of Slim Fast Protein after my run. For lunch and dinner I have chicken and vegetables.

I have tried to measure my heart rate after a run and I always mess up.

Considering my performance, I would not call myself "a sporty guy."

I have heard many times that running slower burns more fat, but yes, I would imagine that would really require that you exercised longer, at that slower speed. Also, muscle is supposed to burn fat throughout the day, so many argue that weight-lifting burns more calories than cardio.

When I was Active Duty, running slowly always hurt my knees, while I did not have that problem if I could run quickly. Sadly, my speed is now slow, but my knees have not hurt since I started running. Maybe two miles is not enough to cause problems.

I always figure that if I ran enough to lose weight, my knees would hurt less.

No, nothing about Arizona is normal, but we love our "winters!" :D

I am afraid that I do not understand the last bit. Train sober?

Fasting?

I started taking a one-ounce serving of Zzzquil (with melatonin tablets) some months ago and was able to sleep much better, but that is the only alcohol that I consume.

Unfortunately, I keep sleeping nine hours. Sometimes more. I would set an alarm, but it always takes me a while to fall asleep. I guess that I should allot eight and a half hours.

Until I deployed, I usually woke up after six hours, although I had a problem falling asleep in class, at Church, and when visiting people. At least I do not do that anymore, although I usually seem to be daydreaming.

As usual, this post is far too long, although I edited down a fair amount. Usually, the more that I edit a message, the more disjointed and robotic it sounds.

When I got back this morning my roommate asked about how I was moving my arms. Several times, Sergeants told us that if we needed to run faster, to move our arms harder, while if we were running slowly, to move our arms less.

I only pump my arms when I consider that I am running quickly, but I consider myself to be a very slow runner now.

So, I am not moving my arms enough? A quick Google search shows that runners need to move their arms, but nothing conclusive about the effect.

I want A-B-A testing! :D

Sleeping 9hrs instead of 6 will certainly "slow" your metabolism. It takes way less energy to sleep than to be awake, regardless of what you're doing. And you're right about muscle burning more calories. When I'm lifting, I have a lot of difficulty getting above 190lbs.

I sweat any time it's above 20 degrees F, and I've noticed I go much slower when the sun is beating down on me and causing more sweat than usual. When it's colder out, it seems to not drain me as fast. I loose my appetite after a run for several hours. Weight lifting makes me hungry though.

I can lose weight by never going to sleep?! :P

I am tired enough...

I have a picture on my phone of a puddle that froze over at school back in January. I was still wearing shorts, but not enjoying it nearly as much as normal. I walk fast enough that I sweat even when it is cool out.

Woah, the professor was actually on time today! She passed out a three-point extra credit quiz and kept saying that it was easy--for once I agreed!

Apparently, I was the only one to put away my laptop during the quiz...

Use the lost water as an extra insurance you'll weigh less.

I know my weight will easily vary 1 kg on a day to day basis.
That's what I can leave behind in the restroom / toilet / crapper / head / ... in a single - ahum - sitting.

You got to get an idea about how many calories you're burning through the day, all activities combined, then see how much you may take in given the weight you want to lose ...

I'm about 5' 8" and went by on 1800-1900 kcal / day, while walking anywhere between 30 and 48 km a week - that's 5 to 8 hours of condition training / week - losing 1 kg or even a bit more /week.

No running for me, I merely walk @ 6 kph / 3.7 mph.

Running faster uses more energy, so you need to take that into account.

If you go to a nutritional consultant, they can tell you to within 100 kcalories/day what you can take in and still lose weight ...


7000 kcal less with a balanced diet, will translate in losing about 1kg.


You should.
Eating too little, means your body will go into harvesting mode.

My sister's been in that position ...
she went to a nutritional consultant, and had to eat MORE !

I've been eating a lot while on a diet.
Much of it stuff that's "free for use" in other diets - I counted all of them.
Carrots. Tomatoes. cauliflower.
Strawberries. Ananas is good, too.
You can eat lots of this kind of stuff, keeping your metabolism rather busy, which in turn also burns energy, without adding much calories.

Some of this stuff gets called "negative calories" these days.
But it isn't ;)
Negative calorie food - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


What's wrong with the Subs, is the bread ...

If you eat lots of bread or similar food with dough in it: cut down on it, it's a lot of calories and it really adds up.
Industrial bread / dough products are the worst.


BTW I've lost 6lbs during 3 weeks in CA and AZ last year. :)
Lots of walking, and staying away from McDo and the like, but frequenting SubWay ;)


Measure it while running , that's when it counts ...
The tools to do so have gotten cheap these days.

I used my dad's old bicycle heart meter to get an idea of what kind of load put me at 70% of my max. heart rate - chosen to be right in between burning fat and improving my physical condition. And it's done both.


Of course, but that way you build up your condition, and over time you'll get to run faster for longer.

I've cut some 12 minutes off what was once a 55 minute walk ... keeping around the same heart rate

Whatever physical activity you do, it's always muscles that make it happen.
Having more muscles by body weight %, is what burns more calories.

The brain uses a fair deal of power too ... if you use it :D

After having slept, but before you've eaten anything.

There 'll be little or no easy sugars to burn, so the energy has got to come from the long-term storage ... fat.
That's also why you shouldn't push it too hard, and have to keep going for a while : you need to give your body time to get hold of that long-term storage energy.

Nope - puts the body in emergency mode ...
Slows down metabolism, and gets more nutritional value out of whatever you'd still eat.


More movement = more calories burned ...


One of the tricks to cheat the scales that I noticed :
take in your regular kilocalories for the day, but doing so using cookies, roosted peanuts, chocolate etc . : all the stuff that's way too many calories but adds less weight, will translate into an artificial extra weight loss the next day ... but you'll feel hungry, despite getting in the right amount of energy.


Not drinking diet / light ... drinks usually helps to stay away from other sweet, calorie rich stuff.

Oh boy! :)

For lunch the day before my last PT test in Active Duty I ate a kilo of carrots. I figured that it would get rid of some weight that I did not need at the time.

That is definitely speed walking. I do not have any idea why I used a WoW character name instead of my usual handle, Strider, like I do everywhere else, except that Strider is common, and Xist is not.

I was always late to classes in eighth grade, so I started walking like Aragorn--at least in the books. The nickname was obvious.

I always maintain a fifteen-minute mile. People say crazy things about how quickly they walk or can walk, but I am quite certain that most people walk 2 MPH--or less!

Years ago I had a friend say that if you were exercising so hard that you could not maintain a conversation, you were burning muscle instead of fat.

I have done a great deal of running since then. Once, while running in formation, a female Soldier complain that I was talking with the Soldier next to me, and I just said "run faster."

I sure hope that my body is not harvesting as I eat a foot-long sandwich, laden with vegetables!

When I was a substitute teacher, I played a video (five times!) about some silly skinny girl that wanted to lose weight and a nutritionist told her to increase her fat intake; the girl lost weight, but they weighed her on the carpet! :mad:

Ananas? Like pineapples?

I used to get invited to advance screenings through The REEL Truth. I would sign up again, but I already have too many distractions from school! I watched "Bad News Bears" and the fat kid made all kinds of claims about his attempts at weight loss, like bringing a baggie of bacon to practice. He claimed that he needed energy to burn fat.

Several years ago, I actually started following a "meal plan" that I found in a body builder magazine in order to gain weight. I was 6'2" and 153 pounds!

I kind of regret that now...

The curious thing was that it had me eating vegetables! I had avoided those previously.

I have only heard that said of celery, so I stopped eating it, not wanting my body to do something for no reason! :D

I used to always eat sandwiches on wheat bread, but when Subway started offering flatbread, I switched to that, although I was frustrated that it was white, not wheat, like when you can get a sandwich as a wrap, but with a wheat tortilla.

I took a girl to Subway, said something about the flatbread, and she said that it did not have much less carbohydrates than wheat. I do not have any idea, but I really liked her, so I started eating wheat again, until I realized that honey oat had more fiber...

Since flatbread is denser, I think that she may be right.

Aside from Subway, I do not eat many carbohydrates. As I mentioned, for lunch and dinner, I usually have chicken and vegetables. I think that it is absurd to avoid carbohydrates, though, since the brain runs on glucose.

I would love the opportunity to use my brain!

During our road trip, my sister, a nurse, told me that lunch meat was bad for me.

"Yeah? How is your Big Mac meal?"

Regarding the heart rate monitor, I can pick up one at Walmart. I am planning on going to purchase some more melatonin and to purchase a chair mat, like for a desk, but I will put it in front of our couch. For all that I know, my roommates will put it in my bed, points up, and light it on fire.

The carpet was ruined long before I moved in a few months ago. The owner paid for professional cleaning, but as my roommate said would happen, the stains were in the pad, and came back within a week. The owner just had the carpet cleaned again, but had us split half of the cost, and bought what he called "carpet runners," a plastic sheet that was supposed to poke into the carpet.

My roommates did not like that it bunched up, so they threw it unceremoniously against the wall.

A chair mat will not bunch up.

This time, stains started to return after a few days.

To be honest, I have been more concerned about my heart rate simply for my health. Losing weight should improve my run, but the weight is a secondary concern. Well, third. I have not seen any improvement in my push-ups, either.

It is running CP/M and do not know how to reboot it.

Heh. Apparently, before I went to Germany, one of our Soldiers had a habit of eating breakfast before going to PT formation. When our Platoon Sergeant returned from school, he asked if he still threw up during runs.

When I went on Christmas leave during Basic my sister's mother-in-law insisted on giving me a rich chocolate cake. It sat on my counter for a few days before I finally decided to have a taste--before a run!

It was a big cake. It was still big after I was feeling sick, but I am stubborn, so I went on my run.

However, the cake could not keep up. It fell out.

None of these Army running terms seem to work regarding food.

I often feel dehydrated when I wake up, so I will have some Gatorade, which I now make at half strength (and never put in the full amount of sugar).

I guess that I can stick to water before the run.

[waving my arms]

Well, 50% Gatorade is a little sweet, but sometimes it just tastes terrible. I keep wondering how to make my own flavoring so that I do not need to continue purchasing Kool-aid packets. I have literally gone through hundreds!

I once ran out of Kool-aid, so I tried drinking just the salt, potassium, and sugar.

I immediately ran to the store!

I have been thinking about trying lemon juice instead of the packets. I certainly do not need the artificial color and I do not like artificial flavor, but if it was clear, then people would not harass me about drinking Gatorade, and it would not stain my clothing, either! :)

This^. If you can arrange so that they are female, even better. Then the view looks good and you are motivated. (To catch anyway, maybe not to pass?)

Xist, your diet doesn't sound very good. An entire chocolate cake? Fast food, even if it isn't the worst type? Kool-Aid? Gatorade? Slim Fast Protein? Even consuming some good stuff (vegetables) doesn't make up for the bad.

Anything processed is questionable both for nutritional value and for calorie reduction. Processed foods are designed - literally - to be cheap and to make you want to consume them (in quantity), not for nutrition. Fresh (and as raw as palatable) is best.

I have seen a documentary on the evolution of cooking where a group of people were each given a cooler full of food that would meet all their nutritional needs for the day. The catch was the food was raw. None of the group were physically capable of consuming all the food in a day and they pretty much ate all day. I think there's a clue there if the goal is to consume less food and lose weight (fat).

Re. hydration: Water is best, if boring. The lemon (or lime?) juice sounds like a good idea. You can buy it in bottles (minimal processing - just some ascorbic acid as a preservative) so you don't have to squeeze it every time. Alternatively, freeze discrete portions of the fresh stuff.

Milk (plain) is a good source of proteins, vitamins and minerals, if you want more than water. Skim is not necessarily better in terms of weight loss either.

Also, take a look at the ingredients and nutrition data lists on the Slim Fast. It's a whole lot of chemicals, sugar and fat. You are going to get all the beneficial stuff, without the extra crap, with just plain milk and maybe some wheat germ or muesli.

Actually, watch out for anything liquid that has a lot of stuff in it, even home made fruit smoothies. It is really easy to consume a lot of them without feeling full.

Every person is different but these work for me:

Re. training: Running a fixed distance against the clock, trying to get faster, will only get you so far. Better is to run a fixed time at a given heart rate and try to run further or, eventually, for longer each time.

Even the cheapest HRM's will have high and low HRT alarms to keep you in the right range.

Listen to music while you run. It pumps you up, it takes your mind away from the pain and gives you an automatic means of timing your progress along your run route.

Choose the music to give yourself a warm up (speed walk?), pump up, motivation when it (usually) gets hard going and a cool down. I have several such playlists for a bit of variety.

You can also try: run for your allotted time and heart rate, then walk until recovered, then run again. Repeat a third time if you wish (or are feeling good enough after the first two).

To mix it up, climb stairs. Even done slowly that will be a hard workout if you climb high enough.

You can even figure out what your power output is if you know your weight and how far you've climbed over what time: Power (w) = {height (m) x g (9.81 m/s^2) x body mass (kg)}/ time taken (secs).

(I don't know what the units are in Imperial measurement - pounds and feet plus a conversion factor to get HP? - but the equation is the same. Find a stair well in a tall building and measure the height of one flight using a tape and multiply to get the height of how many floors you climb).

You won't always improve each day but will over time. Stress or fighting off a bug (you won't always get noticeable symptoms if an infection is kept to a low level), even hormone cycles, will affect your performance. Men do have cycles in hormone levels they are just less obvious than those in women.

You also need to rest properly. That is when the adaptation to the stress you are imposing will occur. Walk - speed walk - every second day as part of the recovery process. (~6 km/h is indeed about right for a speed walk.)

I'm not convinced melatonin (or anything else) is a good thing to be trying. Is there a medical reason for using it? If not, if I can't sleep I find some light-medium level exercise to get a bit of a 'glow' happening works.

Woah! Hey now! I said:

I ate enough to feel sick, but most of it was still left, and then I ran and threw up. That was five years ago. I hardly ever eat stuff like that and I try to keep the portions small.

As for Gatorade and Kool-Aid, as I mentioned before, I was reserving that conversation for a trained medical professional who will actually listen to me.

I am preparing for a PT test where I will be prohibited from utilizing an iPod.

I have considered that, but it is usually too warm when I run the first time.

My knees! :D

Woah! You want me to do math?! Are you crazy?! Get out of my thread right now! :P

Just kidding. I enjoy math, sometimes I even attempt to do math while exercising, but I usually struggle just to count.

Boo. I do not care too much for Imperial. I understand metric. I live five blocks from the building where I have most of my classes. It is five stories and one of the highest in the area. Why don't I just climb to the top, release a water balloon, and time the fall?

Maybe I should release several balloons and figure out the average.

I did not get to bed until just before midnight, trying to finish an assignment for school. I was not up late because it took that long, I was up late because I found a new distraction and had difficulty staying away. Then I looked at the weather, and it was supposed to be coolest at 0500.

For the love of Macguver!

So, I set my alarm for 0430 so that I could do push-ups and sit-ups before the run. My goodness! It took me a long time to turn off that alarm! It was completely dark outside and, of course, I just went back to bed.

Strange, even with Zzzquil, but without melatonin, I still tossed and turned in bed, and got really bored and frustrated, but it took me way too long to get out of bed when I did wake up.

It is 96° outside! Shouldn't that be motivation enough?!

As a Soldier, I can walk into the aid station, tell them that I have difficulty sleeping, and they will throw sleep aids at me. A friend started taking those years ago and she told me to absolutely not ever take them, but supposedly Zzzquil is magical and stuff. If I do not take it, I toss and turn all night. When I fall asleep, I wake up a short time afterward, and I am a wreck the next day. Instead, I use Zzzquil and my life is a wreck.

I should do something about that.

Let me see if I can get to the end of that site first.

I am an American! I have an excuse for everything!

I'm on a total health kick right now, for me this is far more extreme than anything posted here - you are all lightweight losers - jebus. My sweat is stronger than you...

No honest.

This regime has improved my healthy intake of food by 33.333% instantly.

I can leap rain puddles in a single bound.

I can get our of my chair without being breathless.

And the most extreme - I can CHANGE TV CHANNELS WITHOUT THE REMOTE!!!!!

And what is this strict diet of champions ?

I have 2 slices of toast in a morning instead of 3.

Ha - eat that suckers.... :thumbup:

(Oh there is something else...

http://www.stabilitees.com/store/ima...97-800x800.jpg

cheers)

Arragonis,

'kay...

For the record, is "I am lazy" an excuse or an admittance of guilt? I hate feeling like I am making excuses. When I make a mistake and a Sergeant demands to know why I did such an unthinkable thing as only being ten minutes early when that day he wanted me to be fifteen minutes early, even though he himself was actually late, I respond "No excuse."

I know that I messed up. I do not want to waste the Sergeant's time. Let's figure out how to fix this. One million push-ups and I am twenty-five hours early for every formation, even after I am released from the Army?

Let's get started.

Except the invariable result of me saying "No excuse" is the Sergeant becoming more agitated.

Oh well.

So, yes, frustrated that exercising regularly has not shown a noticeable improvement, although I might have lost the amount of weight that I needed to satisfy the Army in that regard.

I am not going to pretend that Slim Fast Protein is the holy grail of nutrition, but as I have mentioned, after a run, I just want to stop being conscious. I am certainly not about to cook breakfast.

One of the other demotivating problems is that my body seems to continue sweating for about an hour and a half after a run. I sit on my sports chair, which has a mesh back, until I feel better, take a "cold" shower, and when I get dressed and try to focus on school, I am still sweating.

For some reason, I really do not want to handle my computer, schoolbooks, etc, until I stop sweating.

Exercise is taking up way too much of my day.

Fair enough then, although we might have to define 'small'.

But what in them are you not getting in your (sensible) diet? If you are really working hard, a properly formulated sports drink might be absorbed faster than water.

But you can train with one. If you do so often enough the tracks will play in your head without the actual iPod.

So do what you can. Very few people will overtrain so do so as hard as you can manage.

OK, so go slowly.

So, you'll have to climb up and down it a couple of times. To give you a target/benchmark, one of my recent climbs was: 37 flights of steps at 3.5m per flight, 82kg, 283 seconds, 368w. That's nothing special so you should be able to beat it.

The thing is, you can be unconscious for the recommended 7-8 hours but what is the quality of your sleep like?

If you've been taking meds or had a disrupted body clock (maybe even PTSD?) it can take some time to reset into a proper rhythm when you come off it or go back to a proper routine. I worked shift work for a while and found it really did mess with my efficiency and clarity of thought. It took months to get back to normal when I stopped doing it.

If you don't want to cook breakfast (that's understandable) after a run, muesli (a good one, natural, without the usual sugar and flavouring or make it in bulk yourself and store it in a plastic container) and milk can't be any harder than opening bottle/packet of Slim Fast. It will be less expensive and better for you. Why not a piece of fruit like an apple or banana instead? Mix it up from day to day.

I find a log/diary of food intake, mood - including stress, motivation, run times - elapsed and time of day you ran, #'s of PU's, SU's etc. helps. Make it as detailed as you want. Maybe for you, include hours slept and sleep and wake times. Look for patterns in what happened when you exercised well or felt motivated.

Arragonis: There is sex and there is sex. Intimate contact and connection with another human being is good. Simple orgasm maybe less so. (The diary/log will help here too.)

After work, I have found I am weaker in my workout after working 9+ hours. What I have recently found is that Instant Oatmeal is extremely cheap, and extremely delicious (relative to the amount of work it takes, and the cost).

I buy Wal Mart brand, and I eat one package about an hour before my workout. It has not given me crazy, explosive mind blowing results- but I am not fatigued after my first warm up set. I am not saying get crazy with carbo loading, just a personal observation.

Oh yea, just rip the package open, and smash. Easy peasy.

As I recall from my anatomy professor, carbo-loading works, but it also causes water retention (or something), so there was debate about the results.

"Warm-up set" sounds like weight lifting, so that would be irrelevant.

I always thought that carbs were loaded the night before, not immediately preceding, like in "The Office"'s "Fun Run."

I was kidding. Never mind...

A long time ago
 

We hit triathelon and road racing events sometime 2 a week.
Had a fellah who would not carb load night b4 but guzzle a 12 oz coke about 15 minutes prior. This was his carbo load and it worked well 4 him.
I couldnt do it just the burping while on the bike was too much of a chore.

I often belch when I exercise, but I could not tell you why. I very rarely drink soda.

I went to the supermarket last night to get melatonin and give muesli a try. It seemed like it took me forever to find most of the ingredients for the muesli recipe that I found and when I did, there was a bag of muesli right with everything else!

I looked at it, tried to guess if the end product was more expensive than the ingredients, finally bought it, and came home. I set my alarm for 0530, thought that it would come too soon, and started tossing and turning.

So, I kind of woke up a few times. I thought that it was still dark. Besides, I set my magical mystical alarm clock in shining armor!

After a while I realized that I must not have turned the alarm "On." I do not have any idea how many times I have made that mistake! Why would you ever change the time of an alarm, but not want it to go off?!

I have an appointment on-campus at 09. Right now I am just hoping that my roommate gets out of the shower in time for me to take one.

He has amazing timing!

I do it before my 5ks, also. For <$2 to get packets of about ~150 calories, and looking for more energy, it may help. Again, not talking about eating 3lbs of pasta.

You don't have to try it, just something that worked for me.

I think that the muesli that I bought was almost five dollars and I ate about one-third of it for breakfast, although there was a time when I went through many 42oz tubs of oatmeal. I had a roommate point out the difference in appearance between normal oats and minute-oats, although I do not have any idea what difference it makes.

But carbohydrates are evil! :D

He put ham in his oatmeal...

Yeah, I know but you are correct anyway. Small changes in calorie intake add up. Sex can affect athletic performance.

Carb loading should be done a few hours before the exercise and be done with low GI carbs. It takes time for what you have consumed to be digested sufficiently to influence what is in your blood. The idea is to provide a steady supply of glucose to working muscles. It can improve performance if done right.

If you are running a full marathon (OK, you're not) you are going to start consuming your body tissue regardless of what you eat. Loading for that is different to doing so for a less demanding performance.

Coke isn't low GI (it's the opposite, unless Diet) but whatever works I guess. Maybe the caffeine helps?

There is a distinction to be made between training and performing. If you are trying to lose weight, you need some carbs (at least energy) to aid repair, but it's better to exercise without consuming them prior. You want to encourage the consumption of fat. Your body won't start to metabolise fat until the available blood glucose is consumed/low.

My understanding of the difference between minute oats and normal oats is that the minute oats are pre-cooked. That should make them easier to digest. That may or may nor be a good thing, depending on the goal.

It can be less expensive to make your own muesli, like for like product. There's no shame in using a pocket calculator to figure it out in store, although you do need the (a) basic recipe idea to do so. Larger size - like 2lb+ - bags of oats and dried fruit are usually (check the per pound price) cheaper than individual serves.

You can make it to suit your own taste. The dried fruit is expensive so food manufacturers use as little as possible. I like the stuff (it tastes sweet) so I add in a lot; apple, apricot, banana, pineapple, whatever is cheap to buy at the time.

It stores perfectly in a plastic container with a snap seal lid.

Before we get too focused on muesli etc.. I was only suggesting it as a better alternative to Slim Fast, not the be all and end all of a healthy diet.

I must have done something wrong! I do not feel nearly dead enough! :eek:

When I saw minute oats and normal ones side-by-side, the minute oats just seemed worn out, like the edges had been worn off. I do not have any idea if that was typical or what in the world it would mean.

When I bought the muesli, I still had not found all of the ingredients, but felt like I had already wasted too much time, and needed to get to bed.

A few weeks ago, someone mentioned a nutritionist who did not seem to be able to eat without someone claiming that her food was unhealthy, while the nutritionist felt that it was completely nutritious.

I really think that people arbitrarily form opinions because they want to have them and they defend them because they want to be right.

Ignorant people may claim that experts are idiots, while they inherently know the truth, because they say so.

Well, I finished my bag of muesli after three meals. That was a little over 100g of carbohydrates per meal and slightly over 20g of protein. Of course, carbohydrates are evil, protein is king, and fat is irrelevant.

Whatever.

It is funny, I went to bed really early, set my alarm for 0430, and made sure that it was "on" this time.

However, as I laid down, I thought that my phone was probably on vibrate. Dr. Who may claim:
http://i.qkme.me/3oqn5v.jpg
I have a loft bed and I do not like climbing up and down the ladder. I woke up at 05, it was still dark, did my push-ups, and was out the door at 0530.

I was kind of upset, Google said that it was 90° outside!

It was too dark to really see my stopwatch, so I did not do my 30/60. Somehow, it did not feel too bad. I felt like I pushed myself, although I only came in at 19:37.

I know that I have run faster recently, but since I lost my log two weeks ago, that beats my best still-recorded time by almost one minute, and some of them by two.

I ran faster than on days when it was supposedly cooler.

The weirdest part was that when I completed two miles and slowed down, I did not feel like I was dying, and I still did not feel like I was dying when I completed the quarter mile.

I was not sweating as bad. I seemed to cool off in a reasonable period of time.

Yet I still want to go back to bed!

I need to report for drill at 0500 tomorrow. I honestly do not know if I will go running first, but if I do manage to wake up early enough to run before the sun comes up, I need to push myself harder!

I missed a homework assignment on Thursday. On Friday, the professor wrote back that she would accept half credit the first time, but progressively less. As usual, I was constantly distracted, but I finished the assignment before going to bed.

I had drill Saturday and Sunday. When they released us on Saturday they told us that we would have a 100% diagnostic PT test on Sunday and I realized that I needed to replace my PT belt. I drove all over creation and got home at 2330.

No PT belt. No homework done. Five hours of sleep.

Good thing that we did not have a PT test, although since I was late, I had remedial PT.

Unfortunately, the only work that I had the entire day was a bit of cleaning before final formation. Soldiers with smart phones had fun. Two Sergeants brought their laptops. One did NCO stuff while the other watched television.

I heard that one Private did homework.

They prohibited us from going the Distant Learning Center, where I could have "accomplished something."

I am not doing this stuff on my own time!

When I was released, I wasted some time to relax, and then needed to stay up late to finish my homework. I woke up at 0830 and jogged in a light rain.

I did forty push-ups! Usually I stop after thirty-five! However, I only did one set.

Before the run, I weighed 211. Afterward, I weighed 207.6. My twenty-five pound weight weighs 25.6 pounds.

I was finally able to mail off my broken computer and replace the Costco fabric softener that was not detergent with actual laundry detergent.

I guess that I will stop stealing my roommate's Tide. I just wish that I knew where my bottle went!

I ate a Caesar salad for lunch. Criticize that!

I bought a watch with a heart rate monitor and then was late for class.

I keep oversleeping by thirty or sixty minutes. Then I feel grumpy and it takes me longer to start exercising.

I started using mapmyrun.com.

Setting my alarm for seven hours seemed to work. I awoke at 0630 and was out the door before 0700.

So, my heart rate monitor does not work when I am sweating. It gave me a total of three readings. Since I needed to hold the sensor for five seconds, I only tried it every few blocks. Sometimes, it acted like it was working, then just beeped and showed the stopwatch. However, the second and third times that it worked, it showed something like 178 BPM, 93%.

This is going back to Walmart.

75°F, 80% humidity: 19:13.

I think that is my second-fastest time, ninety-one seconds from passing.

I am going to try to trim down my previous message.

Type less.
Train / study more.

Just a hint.
well, 3 actually.

Do you have any idea how long that would take me?! Stream of consciousness, also known as logorrhea, is easy!

I ran fast enough! :D

p90x
 

I know it may seam cheesy but P90x works. I followed the videos and didn't vary my diet much and I lost 40 pounds in 4 months (210lbs to 170lbs). I could do so many more push ups and pull ups. It also made playing soccer on the weekends so much easier and I didn't even need to go running during the week. I felt faster and less fatigued. Another benefit was because I wasn't running all week to get into shape, by the time the weekend would roll around and it was time to hit the field my knees and ankles would already be recovered from the pounding they got from all the running I did the previous weekend.

I also feel like Omega 3's are definitely important for your bodies overall health. GNC makes a Fish oil supplement that doesn't make you burp fish flavor all day. It really helped with my knee pain and dry skin.

I mentioned Insanity before, I have done a little with my unit. The Army likes to punish Soldiers! :D I would imagine that P90x would also be good and I read good things about Crossfit, but it sounded complicated. Doing a different workout every day makes sense, but also seems very problematic.

I have been worried about my knees. Sometimes they hurt even when I am not exercising. In Germany, it seemed like they hurt when I ran slowly, which was almost every time that I ran in a group, while I would feel fine if I ran quickly.

They say that you put three times your body weight on your feet each time that you run a step. I would think that would depend. Soldiers told me that my situation made sense, because the slower that you ran, the more that your weight just went up and down on your knees, while the faster that you run, the more that it goes forward. I really do not know, but I have been running slowly, and had I not finally run sufficiently quickly this morning, I would have wanted to start running twice a day.

I am not very fond of burping and burping fish oil sounds even worse.

How tall are you? I am not entire sure that I want to be down to a hundred and seventy again. :D

I should be able to run faster, though, as well as do more push-ups and pull-ups.

Our First Sergeant just sent out a workout schedule. I just saw that there was a workout for every day of the week and the first one was over a page, including partner-assisted exercises.

Why didn't they put out a manageable schedule a month or two ago?