Conditioning

Lesson 5

Thank you so much for joining along once more.

Let's jump right into it with a follow-up on our homework assignment.

Last week I asked you to identify your resting heart rate and your heart rate after moderate activity. Simple as that. Hopefully you have those numbers ready. If not, it's ok. Go ahead and run through this lesson and get those numbers later this week and apply them with the information we are going to cover today.

Let's talk about interpreting those numbers, because this week we are focused on conditioning , and your heart rate numbers are a key factor in determining what your current level of conditioning is.

We'll start with resting heart rate. A typical person has a resting heart rate somewhere between 60 to 100 beats per minute. If you're a bit less than 60 that's fantastic. Down in the 50s would really be optimal. If you're pushing up toward that 100 range at a resting heart rate, then we want to work on our conditioning to get that number down. A lower resting heart rate is an indicator of a positive long-term health prognosis. A low resting heart rate is correlated with reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes and dozens of other negative health outcomes. That of course is logical right? if you have a low resting heart rate that indicates that you are active, that you are engaging in regular physical activity, that your weight is at an optimal level, so of course your risk of a variety of diseases and disorders will be reduced.

It's good to look at metrics to understand where we're starting from and help us to set appropriate objectives for improvement. You have your resting heart rate number, again 60 to 100 is typical, a little below 60 is ideal, so if you are right now at the 70, 80, 90 or 100 range, we want to work for improved or lower resting heart rate numbers through conditioning work.

What do the other numbers mean? What does it mean when our heart rate elevates during moderate exercise or intensive exercise? What are ideal heart rates during those moments of strain, stress or exercise?

I wanted you to look at your heart rate after moderate levels of movement to understand how quickly your heart rate will rise. For example if your resting heart rate is 55, that is an indicator that you are in rather good condition right now. It would therefore be expected that when you engage in moderate levels of movement or exercise your heart rate would not elevate much. Maybe up into the 70s would be expected. So a range of around 20 beats per minute from resting to active. Or let's put that into a percentage increase, about a 40% increase. However what would be expected is that someone who has a resting heart rate of 100 who then engages in a moderate level of movement for example climbing a flight of stairs or walking from your car into the office, it would be expected that they could see a spike jumping up to 160 beats per minute commonly, an increase of 60%. Additionally the rate at which your heart rate returns to a resting rate will take longer in those who begin with a higher resting heart rate. Those are all negatives that cause our body stress. That make it difficult for us to recuperate properly and are indicators that we will be prone to long-term health challenges.

So lesson one, is that we want our resting heart rate to be closer to 60 or even below, and that we want to control that as best as we can through conditioning, which we will dive into in just a moment.

The next lesson is determining what our maximum heart rate is. When I say maximum I'm defining that as the heart rate level that we want to avoid exceeding, because that could be an indicator that we are overworking our body and putting ourselves at risk. There are certainly exceptions to that rule, but in general , exceeding our maximum heart rate is not in our best interest. The general medical consensus in determining your maximum heart rate is to simply take the number 220 and then subtract your age. For example you are 40 years old then we subtract 40 from 220 and we have 180. Your maximum heart rate is 180. Why that number matters beyond understanding where our extreme limits are, is that when we are working on improving our conditioning we want to target a heart rate that is 70 to 80% of our maximum heart rate number. So again our example of The 40-year-old with a maximum heart rate number of 180. Then 70 to 80% of 180 yields a conditioning heart rate range of 126 to 144 beats per minute. Pause right now and do the math quickly. Determine what that conditioning heart rate level for you is. You're going to want to have that in mind as we continue on.

Basic conditioning recommendations are that we should engage in 20 to 30 minutes of vigorous exercise at least three times a week. I certainly think you should do more, but let's keep the three times a week as a good beginning point. That conditioning heart rate range is what we are targeting during those exercise sessions. Let's talk about how we get there.

As a beginner then I do recommend you focus on low intensity steady state (LISS) exercise. This means walking, biking, hiking, swimming, at a low to moderate intensity level that is maintained during the entire exercise period. The objective is to get our heart rate up into that target conditioning zone and keep it there for 20 to 30 minutes. I recommend LISS for beginners for a few reasons. Number one, we are using the fact that we are not in optimal condition to our advantage. As I mentioned earlier if you have a resting heart rate currently that is in the 80, 90 or 100 beats per minute range, it will accelerate, it will spike more rapidly and at a higher percentage level due to the lack of current conditioning. Simply what I'm saying is that we can take our heart rate and elevate it into the target conditioning zone rather easily with low levels of exertion while we are still beginners. That 40-year-old example we've been using, who has the target conditioning heart rate range of 126-144. If that person is a beginner and has low levels of conditioning their heart rate will spike into that target zone with very little effort. A casual walk down the street for 20 minutes would generally do the trick. This way we're taking it easy on our joints and muscles, and we're not over exerting ourselves and pushing our heart rate up to that maximum level or beyond. For beginners I really do believe that's important because the last thing that you want to do to yourself is cause an injury or create undo pain and discomfort. That may cause you to quit or give up and not continue on your path of improved health and fitness. In summary , if you consider yourself a beginner, then start with the LISS training, low intensity steady state, for 20 to 30 minutes , and you may need to build up to that, maybe it's 10 minutes to begin with and then you build up to 12 and 15 and work your way up, that's fine. Be patient, give yourself plenty of time to do it safely and comfortably. LISS training will be your friend for a while.

Gradually, you'll begin to notice that your heart rate is not spiking as quickly, that you have to push a little harder, walk a little faster, pedal a little more intensely to get your heart rate to move into that target conditioning zone. This is evidence that your conditioning efforts are working but also this could be an indication that it's time to switch to, or to begin incorporating HIIT training. High intensity interval training. If you're not familiar with that HIIT training is the concept where we are causing our heart rate to fluctuate through the course of the workout to spike and then settle down. Raise, then calm down. We don't go all the way down to a resting level but we're doing this up and down heart rate technique throughout the training session. HIIT training has the advantage of being more efficient for stimulating fat burn within our bodies. However, it is a more advanced technique so again, I don't recommend it for beginners because for a beginner to start with HIIT training, you're very likely to push your heart rate too high, and that will lead to injuries, discomfort, and struggles with recuperation. Ultimately, when we push our heart rate too high, we don't move into an efficient fat-burn state; our body just moves into a stress state, a protective state, and that's going to inhibit our efforts to lose weight.

These are my recommendations. If you have a coach with whom you are working and your coach advises you to do something different, listen to your coach. They know you better than I do and you're paying for their services, so trust their judgment. But if you're using this course as your guide, your path to improved health and fitness, that is my recommendation. Start with less training until you build up some conditioning. Then begin to incorporate HIIT training. Don't just shift over to exclusive HIIT training; incorporate HIIT training and have a slight overlap between the two styles for a period of time.

For those of you with more advanced fitness levels, you're probably already involved in HIIT training. Fantastic! You understand the benefits and you've probably learned how to manipulate your movements to ensure your heart rate is in the proper zone. That's awesome. Again, we don't want to be pushing that maximum heart rate too much, but I stated there are exceptions for those who are more advanced. For high-level athletes. Pushing that maximum heart rate will often be part of your training program. Understand that you stick with what you know is working for you. For the rest of us, which is probably most of you who are viewing this session, we just want to, again, be getting our heart rate into that target conditioning zone, whether it's through LISS training , HIIT training, or a combination of both.

Recapping here, we understand more about heart rates, what numbers to be looking for, what are we targeting, where are we trying to direct things. As we structure our workouts to put us into that target conditioning heart rate zone, we will see our overall conditioning improve. Again, defining that conditioning as where our resting heart rate is at and how quickly do we return to a resting heart rate following exertion.

Beyond heart rate, what is the most reliable measure of our conditioning level? How else do we measure improvements in our conditioning? Our ability to move, particularly against resistance, is another excellent metric. What we've done up to this point with our balance and resistance moves are all effective methods to measure and track improvements in our overall conditioning. Continue to do those movements and observe and track your improvement over time to gauge your conditioning.

One more area of conditioning that I would highlight is your mental conditioning. Hopefully, as you go through this course and others, you notice improvements in your mental well-being. Maybe you're noticing your emotions are under greater control. Maybe you're feeling some depression being relieved. Possibly, your energy levels are increasing, which certainly offers a mental boost. Above all, I hope you are learning new skills and realizing you have expanded capabilities that you have not fully tapped into yet. I expect those new skills and the realization of your more significant potential brings you hope and optimism for your future. We can have the greatest physical conditioning possible, but if we are still depressed, if we are still struggling with negative thoughts, it doesn't really matter so much, does it? So I applaud you for being a part of these courses and actively engaging in mental and physical conditioning. Keep it up and stick to it. You will reap the benefits

Another suggestion for building mental conditioning is to engage in meditation. I'm talking about a very simplistic meditation technique here. Even though it is basic, it is still challenging for most. What I’d suggest is the simple practice of counting your breaths. Work to clear your mind and only focus on the sounds around you and counting your breaths. In & out, “1”. In & out, “2”. In & out, “3”. So on, up to 10, then reset and begin again at 1. By resetting after 10 in & out breathing cycles, it helps us stay focused and not fall asleep. If you drift and count past 10, reset back to 1, once you catch yourself. Set a timer and start with 5 minutes. Build up your time if you feel the practice is beneficial.

That's our conditioning lesson for this week, which means it's time to give out your homework assignment. Our next lesson will be on recovery. Your homework is to track your sleeping patterns through the coming week. I want you to track the number of hours you sleep and how you feel when you wake up. Simply rate how you feel on a scale of one to five when you wake up. Five being your best self, fully refreshed, energetic anxious to tackle the day. One is that you wake up in such awful condition that all you want to do is destroy your alarm clock the way Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day.

Many of you have smart watches that already do this for you. They're going to give you excellent data regarding your sleep and may also include software that actually will ask you to rank how you felt when you woke up the next morning, so use that data; that's great if you have it. But if you don't have one of those types of trackers, just do it manually, create the log, and have it ready for our next lesson.

So rank yourself accordingly daily and review those sleep numbers and we'll talk strategies for improved sleep and overall recovery next lesson. Thanks so much for joining me today, catch you next time.