Exercise Telemetry - Ever try driving a car without a working speedometer? Try covering it up sometime. You will find that your sensory experience increases.. You will try to "feel the road" , "listen to the engine rpms", "visualize your rate of travel in comparison to other cars", so on and so forth. This will work, it will get you from Point A to Point B, but not in the safest, or most time efficient manner.
The same goes for exercising without any telemetry. Doing your lunges, box jumps, squats, bench press. You will see, hear and feel things. You will get results, but are you doing them in the safest and most time efficient manner?
A few years ago, I used to road race motorcycles in the CCS & WERA leagues, and telemetry was everything. It would make, or break you.. Below are a few images from the cockpit of my A Series Race Bike.
In the first photo you can see that I have black duct tape over allot of the gauges. This is extremely important when racing. Ideally if you have TOO MUCH telemetry in front of you, you become over-whelmed with data, and don't make effective decisions. As you can see what I needed in front of me at the time was my RPM's from 9500 to 17500 (where all my power is generated from), and I needed data from the tower, Lap Times, Track Temperature (that was one HOT may day), and not displayed was my engine temperature in the display on the upper right hand side. This gave me all the data I need to make an accurate decision on either hitting the throttle, or slowing it down.
Lets bring this back to the exercise world.. When you are on your elliptical or treadmill, and you see all that data, Mets, HR, Incline, Pace, Watts, etc. How much does that all mean to you? Do you change your workout as a result of it?
What we have here is an exercise world filled with either too little, or too much telemetry, and as a result, you the exerciser suffers. Well there is a solution.
Stick with the one metric that you know best.. Your heart rate.. When I sit down with someone and discuss their track forward in fitness, one of the first things I mention is purchasing a heart rate monitor, and with most things in life, the more you spend on it, the better of an item you get..
Personally I own a Polar FT80 monitor. It gives me both real time views on my watch, and also lets me download my data and analyze it later via Polar Personal Trainer (Free Web Service for Polar Monitor owners that have the flow link device)
I have a friend who owns the Polar RCX5 monitor . Yet another solid monitor with both real time, and down loadable data functions.
There are many different models out there, with lots of gadgets and gizmo's to attach (Cadence Sensors, GPS Pods, and alike), but just remember the one metric you REALLY need to get results (heart rate).
In the image below, I'm going to give you the telemetry data from a workout I had last night... It was an assistance lift workout, so it wasn't terribly intense, however it will give you a good idea what to look at when examining heart rate guidance.
The above image is my heart rate over time, as you can see I know exactly when I am "Warmed Up" and ready to begin lift (0min-6:30min). My Heart rate climbs over time in a curve, then I let it come down and normalize, for when I begin my lift.
Looking at the data over time, each "spike" represents a specific activity I am doing. Understanding how high that spike goes lets me know how much effort I am exerting into a particular movement.. From there I can tweak reps, weight, or even form, to bring it to the desired intensity level.
Taking a look at the 45 minute mark.. You will notice a HUGE extended spike. This particular spike was attributed to a movement called "The Shoulder - Complex".. The Shoulder - Complex is a 40 rep No rest lift that contains 8 High Pulls, 8 Clean & Jerks, 8 Jerks, 8 Clean & Jerks, 8 Bent Over Rows, all without putting the bar on the ground..
The spike and length of duration lets me know that hey my weight is set correctly on this, and I need to spend a few more attempts at this before I bring the weight even higher.
This graph also lets me know that some of the movements I do lack overall intensity. I need to analyze the moves, and determine what it will take to get the desired intensity spikes.
In future posts, once I get into developing the energy systems, the heart rate guidance will come into play more frequently.
As of right now, regardless if you are a gym rookie, or warrior, get yourself a HR monitor, and let it provide you guidance to get you to your end result.
One last thing, remember folks, your ego is as accurate of a speedometer, as sticking a wet finger into the wind to determine how fast its blowing. :)
Thanks for reading :)
-T
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