You're doing it wrong.....

Here’s a link on why it’s not a good idea to hold on to the bar: walking.about.com

You’re a dipshit. And you’re probably fat, too.

This seems wrong, based on things I’ve read. Do you have a cite?

And crazyjoe for the win!

Hey, thanks for the link. I have searched in there a lot, but I can’t find the part about not holding onto the treadmill…which section is it in?

I mostly agree with EmAnJ. That is, the idea that “work harder for longer equals more results”, while intuitive, is plainly wrong in most cases when it comes to cardiovascular training. Even more, it’s entirely possible to work hard and exert a lot of effort without any real affect on your heartrate. Sure, you’ll probably burn more calories, but heartrate is a far better way to determine your results than the sheer number of calories.

Case in point, this morning I went to do my cardio as I usually do in the morning. The machine I usually use is in need of maintenance (the one most directly in front of the TV, go figure). I was doing the same resistance and speed that I usually do, but because it was clicking at the extreme end of one stroke, it was causing a jerkiness in the movement. As a result, I was actually having a hard time keeping up my usual speed, and I was getting winded much more quickly, but my heartrate wasn’t really any different. So I interupted my workout, went to the machine next to it, and was actually able to go faster, with my heartrate where I like to keep it, but I was much less winded because my stride was efficient. So, while I may or may not have actually ultimately ended up burning more calories from the extra effort in maintaining an unnatural stride, it wasn’t affecting my heartrate significantly, so most of that extra effort was just utterly wasted.

Point taken, and cardiovascular endurance is a reasonable goal. But that’s also why I chose the 170 value. With the way I’ve seen people use equipment like that, if their Heartrate is less than 170, they have to be amazing athletes, at which point I’d be wondering why they need to hold on so tightly.

As a personal anecdote, when I first tried doing cardio several years ago, I believed the intuitive “harder for longer equals better” idea and I would go hard enough to keep my heartrate around 180-190 for 20-25 minutes. I did that for several months and never lost a pound, and it never got any easier; in fact, it got continually harder until I eventually gave up. When I added cardio to my workout again about 6 months later, I’d read up and adjusted it so that I did some fatburn zone and some cardio zone. Not only did I see quick fat loss results, but I also quickly saw vast improvements in my cardiovascular endurance where I was adding resistance, speed, and time to my workouts whenever it started to feel too easy.

So sure, it’s possible that that person has specific goals and his workout is intended to meet it, but I would say the chances that his workout is optimal for those goals are next to nil, regardless of whether he’s training for fat loss or cardiovascular endurance. I just have a hard time imagining someone using that incline, at the speed, holding on for dear life and not having a heartrate that isn’t outside of either of those ranges.

I’m not sure what you’re reading…a higher heart rate tends to indicate your body is also putting more effort into building endurance, trigerring the muscle-building response instead of the fat-burning response.

Nope - I go by heart rate. If I get my pulse up to 140 by holding onto the side and upping the incline, then there is no difference than if I never touched the sides at all and went at a lesser incline. I am burning the same amount of calories, and achieving the same effect.

And I am not putting any more trauma on my joints by holding onto the sides - less, if anything.

I do not hold onto the rails to get my heart rate higher - that is another of crazyjoe’s assumptions, and it is wrong. I get onto the equipment to get my heart rate above a certain level by the end of the second minute, and to maintain that level of exertion for the rest of the twenty minutes.

Besides, if I let go of the heart monitor, the thing can’t read my pulse rate and speed up or slow down like it is supposed to do.

Regards,
Shodan

Actually, on a quick search, it appears that some of my information is antiquated regarding those zones and that the difference is much smaller than I recall reading (I seem to recall numbers as high as 60-70% fat in the fat burn zone, an as low as 20% at the extreme end or above the cardio zone, but they seem to be more like 50-60% and 35-40% respectively). So yes, there’s an inverse relationship, but it’s apparently not what I thought it was. So, for that, I’ll withdraw that example of better benefit.

However, I will maintain that, whatever your optimal zone is, chances are if you’re working out hard enough that you have to hold on for dear life, that you’re probably exceeding your maximum safe heart rate, which probably does produce a very poor fat burn, along with a real risk of heart damage. And I just can’t imagine someone is working out like that an not outside of any reasonably safe heart rate zone. That was the idea of the 170 number I chose, as to be something clearly outside of a safe zone for most people, while still being achievable for them.

I can’t really comment on the OP (don’t know if the described person is doing something wrong – silly and slightly dangerous maybe but not necessarily wrong) but I can tell you about an encounter that combines two of the phenomena described above.

The other evening I said something to a guy I’d never seen before who was using the lat pulldown machine with a cable wire, grabbing the bar overhead and twisting around from side to side to stretch. I mentioned that since the wire was made to go up and down and not to be twisted side to side, he might be damaging it and if that happened, since it’s a city recreation center, it would take a long time to repair. (The cable has been broken on the abductor/adductor machine for over a year.)

He gave me a quizzical look but did stop. He kind of kept watching me after that though. As I was on the nautilus pulldown, I continued with my sets. I’m pretty strong in that (I work out regularly) so I had a fair amount of weight on it. New guy jumped on the machine after me and proceeded to pulldown the weight I had been using, as if to say “I stopped twisting the wire but I’m still a big man.”

He was nearly in tears by the time he finished the 10th one.

Fair enough. If you’re maintaining a reasonable heart rate, that’s fine. Similarly if you’re hold on for the heartrate monitor and not because you’d otherwise fall on your but, that’s fine. The depiction I got from the OP was someone holding onto the bars that would otherwise fall off the machine. All of my comments have been with regard to the people I’ve seen who are clearly using the machine incorrectly and probably have their heartrate at a level that is so high as to be unsafe.

Your initial reaction to the OP indicated to me that you were probably one of those people that uses a piece of equipment incorrectly, and if I misinterpretted it, I’m sorry.

So why don’t you walk up a hill?

I thought I pretty clearly said “holding on as if you would fall off if you let go.”

If you can walk on the treadmill with the incline cranked up, just holding the heart monitor to see your heart rate, then by god you’re not doing anything wrong. But that’s not what I said in the OP at all.

Actually, I see stuff like that all the time to the point where I can’t even bother anymore since the few times I have seen people say something that weren’t staff usually got hostile responses. Though I do find it hilarious when someone tries to show me up by doing the same or more weight, but usually with horrendous form or, even funnier, utterly failing.

The type of situations I’m refering to that are so obnoxious that it hurts to look at it are things where people use equipment so wrongly as to the point where I’m trying to figure out how they even imagined that was how it’s used in the first place. As an example, I saw one guy trying to use an iso-lateral lat pulldown machine (identical to this one) such that, I can’t figure out how he didn’t actually injure himself after the first rep.

First of all, the use instructions are on a sticker directly on the machine at eye level visibile from either side of the machine as you step into it, so even if it wasn’t completely obvious how to use it, given the chest and thigh pads and the angle of the handles, you could still look at the diagram and figure it out. Really, if people feel even remotely awkward on a machine and they clearly don’t know what they’re doing, I don’t understand why they don’t read the instructions or ask someone for help. I actually have a lot of respect for people who ask for advice on form or use of a machine when they’re just starting out.

Anyway, somehow, this guy was sitting on the machine backwards with his feet barely holding on by his toes under the structural support bar where the lower weights are stored–where you’d think the sharp corner against the top of his feet alone would be enough to indicate it was wrong-- and his back arched over the chest pad. He was pulling the weight down in a motion that was perpendicular to his body plane, but well above his head. I can’t imagine how anyone might not think they were doing something wrong either by the strange motion or the sheer uncomfortable posture his body was in. It was so incredibly painful to watch, I actually interupted my cardio show him how to use it correctly.

I haven’t seen that guy in there before or since.

That was my interpretation too, which is why I also thought Shodan’s response was basically “yes, I work out like that, and I don’t care, and you can wait your turn”. I’m now not clear if he was just commenting because he holds on for use of the heart rate, or because he’d otherwise fall off, and was offended because he interpretted it as the former and thought you were just being impatient.

Chances are, if he’s using the heartrate monitor and keeps his heartrate at around 140, he’s not one of the types you’re commenting on, and simply misinterpretted your OP.

Erm, I do. Often. Every week day, in fact, during warmer months. I walk on an incline on a treadmill at the gym because it’s not safe for me to do my uphill intervals outside in the winter.

Another excellent link WITH diagrams! It’s a blog though.

This is a bold claim. You’re saying that by exercising harder you’re actually burning less fat? Consider the implications of this claim: marathon runners would be fatter than couch potatoes.

Anyway, you seem to think that the claim is so obvious that it doesn’t deserve a cite, but I’m going to have to ask you to produce one.

Evil: he is going off the idea that a lower intensity workout burns fat instead of other stores for energy. So to lose fat, you should maintain a low (120-140) heart rate.

Unfortunately, he is missing a huge point. Calories are calories, and working harder (either by upping intensity or working less efficiently for the same amount of time will burn more calories. And of course, burning more calories (ceteris paribus) means you will drop more weight. Heartrate is a good indicator of how much energy you are expending, but isn’t perfect. If you are getting winded or your muscles are getting tired, even if your heart rate is not as high as you think it should be, you’re probably working a lot harder.

This is why most fitness instructors who are qualified will tell you to switch machines and settings every couple of weeks. Running on the treadmill all the time means you get really good at running on the treadmill, so you burn fewer calories. And I don’t think anyone is going to make significant muscle gains on a cardio machine – the whole point of those are to burn calories.

And the whole “Sweating means you aren’t doing it right” is just dumb. Sweating means you are hot, nothing more.

The first part I can’t argue with. The second part shows me just how intuitive you really are.