ROBUST discussion

What make of treadmill did you buy, Sierra?

I'm thinking of buying one but haven't made up my mind what maker to support, except that the treadmill had better be folding in case I don't like it (like a rower I have which hasn't been used for years) and it ends up against the wall.

Currently I'm using an unpowered Nordic air strider, which I love. For how long is an open matter, of course.

Here's a link:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Proform-Pow...

It does fold up but I doubt I'd ever use that feature. This thing is dominating the room it's in, and will sit right where it is forever.

It's not as good as a gym treadmill. My previous one (which I gave to my daughter) was commercial gym quality. I loved it. Very quiet, smaller footprint. But it cost more than I was willing to pay this time (about four times what the Proform cost). That brand is True, and I highly recommend it. It's many years old, gets very hard use, and has never had to be serviced. Just toss a little lubricant under the belt every year and it's fine.

I've been told that Proform makes most of the treadmills sold in the US, though they may be sold under other names. The one I bought has features that I'm curious about. I have to check out what iFit is, and how Google maps can be used to create a workout trail. In the end, though, 'll probably just stick with plain ol' walking, not even on an incline.

Can't imagine using an unpowered treadmill. I'm not strong enough. Is the air strider a treadmill or one of those ski machines? I had the ski-style Nordic many years ago.

The Nordic air strider is a ski machine. I imagine that those with a motor use the motor to make it harder for the owner by adding resistance, not easier. When I want to exert more effort I lengthen my stride or quicken my cadence. I've already rigged up a stand for my iPad...

The treadmill you bought is much better than the ones I'm looking at. I'll buy a basic model from a good maker (I have York Fitness in mind, mainly because they have a model that I can get delivered* which has a magazine rack built in loudspeaker for an iPod) first and see if the thing is used enough to spend time and money on getting the right one before I even invest any time in studying the things enough to make a proper choice. I just liked the treadmill at the cardiac gym. I'm afraid I've never hung around gyms much, preferring to walk walk or cycle ride a horse in open air.

* I have to take one of a handful or fewer types that I can get delivered here in the wilds of West Cork. It's a two man delivery job.

Yep, it took two strong guys to deliver mine and it wasn't easy for them. Putting it together took a long time. When I was shopping, I saw some treadmills offered with delivery and setup. I opted for the one at Walmart where I was able to see it before buying. Because of the size of the store, the size didn't seem as big there. In my house it looks huge.

I have space to set it up in my study, because I have only a couple of worktables and some Lowther horns and some bookcases and a couple of other exercise machines in here, but I want to know the thing folds away against a wall in case it turns out that I use it rarely and want to replace it with another type of machine. I can take over a whole room to set up a gym, if it comes to that, but a whole gym sounds a bit too sweaty-jock to me, the same way a "home cinema" sounds nouveau-riche and tacky with it. Anyway, if the things stands in my study, it will be a reminder to exercise, whereas if it is in a special room, I can avert my eyes as I pass the door... I used to have a listening room, especially for music, which of course I never used, because I don't sit down to listen to music, I write and read while I listen to music, and watch a movie in the corner of my my screen, and carry on a conversation with whoever drops in, which infuriates musicians who drop in, because they have this Idea I put aside everything to listen reverently to their demo discs... (Except Tavener: "That's the proper way to treat Mozart.")

I think you need some attention-deficit medication!

What? You don't have a home cinema? I do -- it's called my living room.

When I watch HGTV, I marvel at the things people spend money on (for their homes): extravagant cinemas, bowling alleys, basketball courts (indoors), garages with elevators so the cars can be stacked, swimming pools in the middle of the house, and replicas of favorite bars or diners. All I want is new windows.

Patricia wrote: "I think you need some attention-deficit medication!."

You want me to do more? Okay, how about I do mirror writing with my left hand, type a new novel with my right hand, edit another novel by dictation, listen to music on my right ear, watch a movie and listen to it in my left ear, and recite the Rubiyat in the intervals of editing? I've done that.

My chimp, MiniAndre IV, which had good feet, could probably do more. Nobody accused it of having an attention deficit.

I think I believe you.

Patricia, you are such a great straight-man!

All this talk about exercise machines makes me hungry. I just filled a bowl with caramel popcorn - which I figure I earned on the two hour walk in the sunshine from which I just returned.

I have never darkened the door of a gym, and since I'm pretty sure I am not younger than springtime I suppose I never will...

I was never wild about the idea of carting my fat a__ to a gym where 85 other people can watch me sweat.

A two-hour walk would cripple me for life.

I have a real bike,
http://coolmainpress.com/AndreJute...
which I ride often past a gym, a class case a floor up, on a road between it and the river. Every time I pass, especially when the rows of exercise bikes are all occupied, their eyes all turn in unison to follow me, such longing on their faces.

I always throw them a cheery salute. The pedalpals, ladies no one can accuse of having a big ass, look superior.

That's a seriously handsome bike.

Thank you. I chose it myself.

Patricia wrote: "...A two-hour walk would cripple me for life."

It wasn't a brisk walk, more like a meditative stroll to settle me down after a medical scare I had with my dd (told elsewhere in the forum).

Yes, Andre has a handsome bike - which he cleverly motorized to help on his rides up hills. Very ingenious, our Andre. When life hands him lemons he makes lemonade...

Anybody know if you need to give your muscles a day of rest if the only exercise you're doing is on a treadmill?

I've been putting in an hour a day for the few days I've had the treadmill, but I don't do it in one stretch. I'm no Sharon when it comes to walking.

You're supposed to get your respiration rate up to between 60 and 70% of maximum (1) for half an hour. Add a quarter hour of warmup and a quarter hour of warm down, and that's an hour per day. The minimum requirement merely to maintain your mass (i.e. not put on weight) is three times a week; Five times a week will do you good. That leaves a day or two off in a week.

It depends how heavily you exercise. If you go in for heavy exercise, in the over 84% bracket (not advisable without consulting a physiotherapist or your physician first unless you're an experienced athlete), you should have a day off in the week, ditto if you regularly do weights. (In the above light regime, you'd do a couple of exercises with light barbels for part of the routine three times a week, say, but the weights wouldn't be the main part of the exercise on any day.)

I've decades of experience of regulating my cycling (on the road, not some poxy machine) by my heart rate monitor, and I prefer to keep it light and not wear myself out, so I go riding for a break rather than as a duty, and will seven days a week if the opportunity offers, because of course sooner rather than later the weather causes me to miss a day or several. Thus, if I miss a day irregularly, it doesn't matter too much, and I don't feel pressed to use indoors machines unless the foul weather continues for several days.

In summary, if you exercise so that you're in a sweat all the time, you NEED to take the day off in the week, but if you're exercising for cardiac maintenance, an irregular day off here and there will do no harm but isn't a scheduling requirement because real life will supply it anyway. If you take different types of exercise on different days, then that is enough variation and you don't need to take the day off. (I consider carrying groceries up the hill on which I live a day's worth of exercise, and the necessary variation. Thoroughly vacuuming a room ditto.)

All this is given on my own authority. I'm not a physio. If you're old or have some condition, or aren't used to exercise, or this is your first hear rate monitor or exercise machine, consult a trained specialist.

***

If you're trying to lose weight, eat 500 calories fewer per day and you'll lose a pound a month. Exercise to lose weight is trickier than people realise because if you're exercising most beneficially, building up respiratory endurance, a good deal of the fat you lose isn't burnt off but converted to muscle, so that that you'll feel firmer and look better but weigh the same on the scales.

(1) As a first approach, your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age in years. Other factors, such as your BMI, can move this maximum around a bit; including external factors such as medication. While in theory the maximum rate for a reasonably short time can do a fit and healthy person no harm, in practice there is NO REASON why anyone but a professional athlete should want to exceed 80% of maximum. Just past 80% lies an anaerobic region where lactic acid is generated, so you want either to exercise above it, very close to maximum, or below it.

I haven't checked my heart rate. I don't even know how to do that. And I couldn't last doing a whole hour at once. Also, I've read that ten minutes of exercise three times a day does more good than thirty minutes one time per day when it comes to weight loss.

I am using weights, but only a wimpy one-pound in each hand.

(1) Check your heart rate with a heart rate monitor, consisting of a measuring belt around your chest and a radio-connected reporting head, mostly shaped like a watch.

The one I like best and use most often is cheap, the Sigma PC9. You get a first class belt (much better than with even the more expensive Polars) and, best of all, the watch automatically calculates all kinds of parameters for you, like maximum heart rate, three exercise zones (with beeps and bar codes), calories burned, etc. You can wear the watch on your arm or strap it, with the supplied fish block, onto a bar of your treadmill or bike, so it is pretty convenient. Also has proper ergonomics, so you can read it easily. I had an HRM, the Ciclosport HAC4 that cost ten times as much as the Sigma PC9 and in practice was no more useful -- and broke the day after the guarantee ran out! The outrageously expensive HAC4 also looked cheap as plastic on my arm, while the Sigma (including my older model which is styled differently) looks like a class act. My Sigma PC must be ten years old and I'm not giving it up for love or money.

Sigma PC9
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mo...

(2) You can read any kind of crap in women's magazines because they tell you what you want to hear so as to give their advertisers reflected credibility. Three times ten minutes might do you the same good as raising your arse from in front of the television once every hour to fetch more snacks. That's it. It is not enough to raise your respiration rate meaningfully, or for a meaningful time, or to warm up and cool down again.

(3) The hour isn't for maximum rate exercise. It is for fifteen minutes of graduated warmup in three stages so you don't pull muscles, or strain your heart, which is also a muscle. Then half an hour of exercise, also graduated, to get your respiration up for about twenty minutes. Then cool-down exercises, graduated in reverse to warm-up, to stop your muscles seizing up. I stopped counting how many times my heart specialist, his sidekicks, and the dozen or so physios I've worked with in the last year and half have stressed the importance of the "warm-down" to me. Apparently a great many people take exercise, stop at the peak, and drop dead. At least, when you step off your treadmill, keep your feet moving ever slower for fifteen minutes; don't just crash into a chair.

(4) Weights aren't graded by slack-wimpy-tough. They're either right for you or wrong. If you can just manage ten two-arm curls with your chosen weights, they're right. If you really hurt after ten curls, they're too heavy. If you can do twenty curls, they're too light. (Presuming you just want to be fit. Muscle builders have different regimes.) I use about 2.5 pounds in each hand, and do three sets of ten pushes three times a week; the therapists think that's a bit slack but I'm a) comfortable with it and b) not impressionable, so I listen carefully but do only what I'm happy to do.

(5) That last is good advice, incidentally. If you let exercise junkies talk you into a regime that doesn't naturally suit you, soon you'll find an excuse to do less and less, and next you'll be doing nothing.

BTW, Sierra, don't let the fact that the Sigma PC9 has five buttons put you off. They're at the heart of its exemplary ergonomics, what makes the thing so easy to use, because each button has a dedicated purpose (left, right), easily remembered and operated by touch even with gloved hands, rather than the complications of those one-button sequential controls on other HRMs that demand your entire attention for thirty seconds to do something simple. Some people have never heard of ergonomics!

Here's the study I was talking about, Andre:
http://www.peakhealthadvocate.com/974...

My treadmill shows distance traveled, calories burned, and pulse rate. Is pulse rate the same as heart rate? The pulse is read on a grab bar.

Thanks for the study. Might work.

You could also learn to do muscle-tensing exercises without rising from your keyboard.

Pulse rate and heart rate are the same.

Hmmm....I like not having to rise from my keyboard.

Thanks for all your advice.

That's a great article, Patricia. A few years ago I read a study that concluded the best exercise (for the heart) is a stop-go kind of thing where one does something intense for a few minutes, then cools down for 30 minutes or so and then repeats. At least that's the gist of it, I don't remember exactly the 'formula'.

I always walk (skip, usually) down the six flights of stairs when leaving my suite, rather than using the elevator, and usually walk up at least once a day. But since reading that study I run for at least two of the flights (then find my feet climbing slowly of their own accord the rest of the way, kench). Oddly, I still find that last flight a struggle.

Facing six flights of stairs would cause me to move.

Teh heh, Patricia, good bon mot!