At 6’ 0" and 212 pounds, your BMI would be 28.7, which is considered overweight but not obese.
For someone who works out a lot and has a good amount of muscle, a 28 BMI is fine.
I just got myself one of those fitness watches, a Garmin, and seeing the VO2 max reported out has me remembering this post and more curious about how their algorithm works.
It apparently is not too bad at correlating with real lab test numbers (roughly within 5% assuming a fairly accurate HRMax is entered) and even better at being internally consistent for trending purposes. It uses formulae relating pace to %HRmax.
Thing is VO2max is trainable only to a certain limited degree (I’ve read up to 15% improvement but do not vouch for the factoid) and more of it inherent to the individual.
OTOH lactate threshold is fairly highly trainable. That’s what %HRmax you can tolerate. And form, the efficiency of running is trainable as well.
My WAG is that you were seeing more lactate threshold improvement and that is fitness too.
Three biggest risk factors for dementia. Are they really diabetes, alcohol consumption and air pollution?
Yes? Or more precisely on a part of the brain strongly associated with dementia in UK Biobank participants. Physical activity did not. At least for the aspects surveyed. (List buried in supplementary materials; strength training not listed.)
The actual paper if you are interested:
More benefits: cognition and mood. (Gift link.)
So, I was looking for something to plug in for my active rest days. I find that I kind of need a good program to keep me interested.
I’m doing the Mark Wildman 2 hand club and clean & press programs currently. He has a Turkish get-up program that would work, but my adjustable kettlebells only go down to 12kg, which is a bit much to start.
Enter the Bells of Steel 6-12kg adjustable kettlebell!
I did say one of the TGU program, and will work quite well for what I want. It’s lighter weight, so I can rest, but it’s structured the same as the club program, so it keeps it interesting.
I wanted to link some interesting data to this thread. Mainly for the graphs, which don’t show up in the summaries.
These are the relevant graphs.
The second graph emphasizes how much oxygen capacity is required to do certain activities. The book argues that it is worth exercising so that one can do basic activities one enjoys even if aged. That it is frustrating and limiting not to be able to walk up steps or lift something of moderate weight.
Pretty sure I’ve lived a life where the most I’ve done from this chart is walk brisky up the stairs. And even then it may have been when I was 16 or 18.
How do we feel about yoga for strength building? I’m thinking about taking it up. I’ve been doing some gentle poses daily and my arms are getting stronger for sure.
It’s really good. Obviously you have to do the right poses, but in general, you can get quite strong from just bodyweight exercises. It’s probably best to supplement with some weight training or resistance training, but it’s a great learning base.
You can get strong doing progressions with body weight. For example, you could do push-ups while putting weight on your knees. Once you get better, regular push-ups. Then with a more difficult hand position. Then push-ups where the hands are not symmetric, or where the feet are elevated. Things like bodyweight pull-ups and dips are challenging exercises for many people.
I think yoga is better for endurance and flexibility. It will give you some strength.
A year of lifting weights pays dividends years later.
There seems to be a new problem with WaPo gift articles: they are demanding email sign up to view the free article. FWIW here’s a link to a different source reviewing the same study.
Thanks. Did not realize they now did that.
Another article possibly of interest:
Definitely lots in the article that doesn’t make it to the abstract. Worth reading the whole thing.
Basically it’s a shot in the how to divide a limited amount of exercise time discussion. Not shocking results.
Given three hours a week to exercise dividing it up between cardio and strength gets most of the cardiorespiratory fitness benefits (all aerobic gets slightly better VO2max gains at 1 year but not on other risk factors) while getting the lion’s share of strength gains too.
Briefest review: mixing it up good.
because I don’t do any kind of exercise.
Bumping this to share this article. I readily admit the actual research article confuses the heck out of me, so I am trusting the summary. Which could be a mistake.
More emphasizing the front end benefits of just a modest amount of strength training in the mix with diminishing returns. Returns diminish faster for strength than for hypertrophy according to the article.
“The most effective range for muscle growth is noted to be around 5-10 sets per week per muscle group.”
“The most effective range for strength gains is noted to be around 2 sets per week per muscle group.”
Also comments on frequency.
Good news to me. I’m only at the gym 2-3 times/week, which is near optimum for increasing strength. It’s sub-optimal for increasing muscle volume, but I don’t care about that. I’d rather be stronger than I look.