So it’s been awhile since a post and I figured I needed to update to ensure, at the very least, Google knows were still around – haha.

Future of BodyFitCheck is Bright!

I want to start doing more fitness product reviews because that is what a body fit check is.

So be on the lookout for heart rate monitor reviews and other fitness product reviews.

We are referencing heartbeat monitors here. In the event you invest in it you realized that it is functional. Certainly whether you may spend $40 or $400 you are still ending up with a monitor that spits out your same heartrate. Just a single will include quite a few other impressive functionality like data files logging, GPS, real time pace etc. While the other is without question basic and give you time together with a heartbeat. Deciding what is good for you is fairly simple: What other features do you wish jointly with your heart rate monitor

For $50 or less you can get yourself the entry-level monitors. These are equipped with the cabability to tell you real time heart rate (whether that be with a chest strap or not). Some are able to log minor quantities of data to enable you to identify average and maximum heart rates. If you’re really lucky and come upon a sale you might purchase a watch in this particular range to have manual heart rate zone functionality. This enables you to maintain zone training properly.

For watches which range from $50 to $150 you’ll receive everything in the cheaper range and a few cool extras. Certainly, heartbeat zone training automatically on most them. You could get a monitor that beeps when you exit your heart zones telling you to slow down or accelerate. In all probability you’ll have the capacity to upload your data to the Internet with the watch available in this range of prices. You will get fitness testing, accurate calories expended and logged and coded transmission between your chest belt and the heart beat monitor. Lots of these watches have pedometers to measure your daily steps, which isn’t bad for $100 or thereabouts. Undoubtedly you can obtain a great deal more, but you get the idea.

For any big spenders wanting to spend $150 plus you can get yourself everything offered inside the other monitors plus you will receive a lot more. You’ll likely get a GPS receiver built in and possess the power to find your speed, distance and therefore pace all in real time. You’ll receive a watch that trains you – the real deal. It prompts you to work much harder, tell you whether you are fat-burning or simply doing aerobic cardio work. The most pricey heartrate monitors are mini computers on your wrist. They’ve got altimeters, barometers and compass. So if you want all of that and much more get your wallet out.

When you go to purchase your heartbeat monitor just think really hard about what you need. I only need to know my pulse rate at certain points in my workouts – at the end of a sprint for instance. Lower end monitors suit me perfect. If you want to learn more about what each watch features visit my heart rate monitor reviews and peruse. I hope you find your monitor. Visit www.heartratemonitorreviewstips.com for more information.

Heaps of brands of heartbeat monitors available available for you to order. Exactly how are you to figure out what sort to pick up? Numerous things will manipulate your final decision: price range, brand and word of mouth marketing. Below I look at the biggest three companies I think of when I think of heartbeat watches: Polar, Timex and Garmin.

Polar. The pioneers. Polar made the very first cordless heartrate watch. These folks delivered the original version out their Finland manufacturing facility doors in 1982. Ever since then they have personally structured noteworthy working unions with the fitness industry. They do the job relentlessly using their high quality athletes to adjust their watch features. Over time they have personally amassed a substantial range of heartbeat watches. Polar targets to match three communities of people that fitness train: rookies, intermediate and performance sportsmen. The monitors designated: FT1, FT2, FT4, FT7, RS100 and CS100 are the starter ones. The types called: FA20, FT40, FT60, FT80, RS300X, CS300 and CS200cad are made for for the more intermediate workout trainer. Last but not least they’ve got the souped up cutting-edge range: CS400, CS500, CS500 Tour de France, CS600x, RS400, RCX5 and RS800CX.

All you need to know is the C in the name is for cycling, R is for running and FT is for (general) fitness training. Now straight up you’ll be able to narrow the monitors to what you are: cyclist, runner or general exerciser. Following that you can filter to what level you are: beginner, intermediate or performance athlete. I would typically recommend to people to go with the highest quality watch in your range. If you were definitily a starter I’d go the FT7, RS100 or CS100 and so on. If you do not match perfectly into any of those styles my optimal tip would be to go with your instinct and then move up one: on the ropes between the two newbie and intermediate – just decide on intermediate.

Timex. The verified wrist watch conglomerates but heartrate monitor young guns. Timex merely broke into the heartbeat monitoring business shortly after it was restructured in 2008. As such they have particularly minimal past experiences in the market. Nevertheless, for the most part because of Polar technology and modern technological innovations it hasn’t taken Timex a long time to prove themselves as a big participant.

Their specific brand if simplified would be: A lesser amount than one hundred bucks T5G series and over 1 hundred-dollars Ironman line. One of the T5G heartbeat watches is literally the bestselling monitor on Amazon – that’s extraordinary. The biggest difference among Polar and Timex is the visual appeal of the monitor. The Polar watches look very “wrist computery” whilst the Timex look very much like a normal watch. Little question this is the legitimate reason Timex took the top spot on Amazon as heart rate tracking becomes more popular. Timex has a tremendously bright future in the sector.

Garmin is at first a GPS maritime and aviation device company that in 2003 paid for a company referred to as Dynastream Innovations that built personal monitoring technology. For that reason Garmin got into the heartbeat monitoring sector with that acquisition. Garmin seems to prefer the top end price wise of the monitoring game. They offer their Forerunner line which all come outfitted with GPS technology and are billed in excess of $200; for any runners who desire to take measurments of live tempo etc. They have also their Edge collection tailored for cyclists. For the trustworthiest GPS option I would go for a Garmin.

Several things come into play when buying a heartbeat watch. Regardless whether you buy primarily based on brand name knowledge, beauty or feature you will in all probability want to find out each individual heart rate monitor reviews, true? I do my own brand of assessment at www.heartratemonitorreviewstips.com please come by, have a read and let me know how else I can help.

So I’m sure at this stage you have heard that fitness training the good way is actually by training inside your heartrate zones. If you’d like to increase aerobic, anaerobic, lactate threshold and or VO2max fitness you must train at different heart rates. It is without saying then that you may need a pulse rate watch able to detecting your heartbeat during training. Depending on your style of training you will need a heartbeat watch having a chest strap or one without. How does one make this decision and which are the differences perhaps you may ask, I want to help.

Chest Strap Heart Rate Watch Reviews

Heart rate watches with chest band are capable of uninterruptedly and seamlessly finding your heartrate during exercising. The monitor is made up of chest strap and monitor – without having the chest strap the watch cannot determine pulse rate.

The chest band is engineered by using an electrode fitted inside. Once you put the strap roughly around your chest with the electrode over the breastbone it detects your hearts electrical signal (heart beats) and transmits into the watch.

If you’re a cyclist and wish to train the pulse rate way you might need a monitor that has a chest strap since your hands are never free (you need your hands free for 10 seconds if not more with strapless monitor). If you are a runner, sprinter, weightlifter, swimmer or another athlete where the hands are readily available you have the choice: chest band or strapless.

Strapless Heart Rate Watch Reviews

Heartrate monitors without pectoral band implement a patented technology to sense heart rate with just a watch. The way it works is the sensing technology is constructed into the watch by having a sensor at the back of the watch and sensor on top of the watch. However, they only work if you use the hand not having the watch to touch and hold the sensor on the topside. When you make this happen you’ll be essentially closing the electrical loop allowing the technology within the watch to detect your heartbeats.

How you can make your choice?

The monitor ideal to your needs is within your price range and training method. It truly depends on if you need continuous live monitoring of your heart or if checking you heart rate at different instances will suffice. The strapless watches are generally less expensive than the chest strap ones. The chest strap is occasionally uncomfortable and annoying but obviously offers continuous monitoring.

If you’re planning to buy your first heart rate watch I have found an awesome heart rate monitor reviews and tips website located at www.heartratemonitorreviewstips.com. I suggest you go and have a read before you buy one.

Fitness training the heart rate training way means to track your heart rate during all fitness workouts. So it doesn’t matter if you are cycling, running, swimming, climbing, sprinting, jumping, lifting weights or any combination you will most effectively reach peak fitness by heart rate training.

How Do I Do Heart Rate Training?

Very simple really: Get a heart rate monitor and start training with it. The link I just provided is to an awesome heart rate monitor reviews website. Most heart rate monitors, these days, provide you with many features to assist with heart rate training.

For example Polar has an OwnZone feature on some of their watches. The feature tracks your resting heart rate (knowing your absolute resting heart rate) and can then give you daily heart rate zones to stay within during training.

Overtraining will cause your resting heart rate to stay elevated the next morning. The fastest way to reach peak fitness is not to overtrain. The heart rate monitor with OwnZone will thus reward your fitness training.

What Sort of Fitness Training Should I Do?

The simple answer is do everything. I have written articles on the specific training you should do.

High Intensity Interval Training. Is about doing intervals of all out (sprinting or lifting) with short breaks between the high intensity intervals.

Sprinting . Is about reaching maximum exertion (max heart rate) for short periods of time (20-60 seconds) with short breaks. You can sprint on a bike, while running, swimming or by some other means – be creative.

Long and Slow Walking. Is about staying at 60% of your max heart rate for hours at a time. Think about walking, hiking or playing team sports once a week.

A Benefit of Heart Rate Training (Or How To Only Train 1.5 Hours Per week)

One major benefit of heart rate training is that if you know your heart rate you know how hard you are actually training. If you stay above 80% of your max heart (top 2 heart rate zones as described below) for 30 minutes at least 3 times per week: you will see all the benefits of max effort exercise. One of which is the less time you will have to exercise.

Learn to Push Yourself For 30 minutes, 3 Times Per Week

• Do HIIT training 1.5 hours a week. HIIT is shorter, harder exercise (body weight and free weight lifting and/or sprints) all mixed into 3 x 30 minutes per week.

There are several ways to do HIIT. What I find the most affective is:

Monday.

• Do 10 minutes of sprinting (3 minute warm up then do 30 second all out sprints with 90 second rest periods, repeat 3 times)
• Then do 3 minutes abs (2 min normal abs plank and 30 seconds of each side plank)
• Then do 7 min of HIIT (7 different moves using body and free weights pushing, pulling, jumping etc. for 1 minute each, or until failure each time)
• Repeat abs and HIIT.

And then as above, but mix the order:

Wednesday. 3 min abs, 7 min HIIT, repeat abs and HIIT, 10 min sprinting

Friday. 7 min HIIT, repeat HIIT, 10 min sprinting, 3 min abs, repeat abs

Changing up the order each day keeps you from slacking off one exercise, say the abs or the body weights each day, because you are pooped from the sprinting you did first.

How Do I Interpret The Heart Rate Data From My Heart Rate Monitor (Or How Do I Know I Am Making Progress)?

Your heart doesn’t lie. Heart rate training with a heart rate monitor, therefore, will give you a window to your training performance. If you see your heart rate stay pretty low (always below 50%-60% of max hr) then you know you are probably not training hard enough and are not experiencing much performance enhancement.

Essentially you can interpret your heart rate data as fitting into one of the scenarios below.

Always Heart Rate Training Above 90% Of Your Max Heart Rate

If you always see your heart rate in this range you know you’re training for performance enhancement. Constantly training in this range means you are training at your VO2 max and will thus see a gradually improving VO2 max. I am guessing you are the type of person that goes sprinting lots and does high intensity interval training. Fitness training in this heart rate zone is very hard work and can almost never be sustained long enough to over train. Still sometimes people push themselves too hard.

A heart rate monitor, if worn when at rest, can help you to pinpoint over training. If you train in this zone too many times per week and for too long you have a high chance of overtraining. Check your heart rate each morning right when you wake up even before you get out of bed. If it is consistently elevated (10 beats per minute more than your absolute resting heart rate) you are overtraining. The method isn’t sterling but it is simple and fairly accurate.

To prevent overtraining you can mix up your heart rate training by sometimes staying in the below range of heart rates.

Heart Rate Training Above 80% But Below 90% Of Your Max Heart Rate

If you always see your heart rate in this range you know you’re training at your anaerobic threshold. Training at your anaerobic threshold over time also increases your VO2 max, which is a good measure of overall physical fitness.

If you only weight train you should try to see if you can do exercises in succession while staying in this heart rate range the whole time. Doing the exercises in succession has the added benefit of doing more things in less time. And you get the heart benefits of training at your anaerobic threshold.

Heart rate training in this range is hardcore and most people would not be able to train at this level for more than 30 minutes (talking most people here because I know all athletes can for longer).

Like I said above – use your heart rate monitor to check for overtraining each morning.

Heart Rate Training Above 70% But Below 80% Of Your Max Heart Rate

If you always see your heart rate in this range you know you’re training for endurance. Endurance training will definitely cause your resting heart rate to decrease over-time. The reason for this will be because your heart has gotten more efficient at pumping blood to your body.

Training in all the above heart rate zones will cause your heart muscle to get stronger and better at pumping blood. And, for this reason, will beat less times per minute.

Lance Armstrong is said to have a resting heart rate of 32 bpm.

Training4cyclists.com has a page asking the question: What is your lowest heart rate ever? And has 182 responses (July 2011). If you want to know what other people’s resting heart rate is go and see at that link.

I’d say the vast majority of people who like to  walk, hike, slow jog or bike will be in the below heart rate zones while fitness training.

Heart Rate Training Above 60% But Below 70% Of Your Max Heart Rate

If you always see your heart rate in this range you know you’re training for general fitness, which means general health and well-being.

You will still be burning a good amount of calories which is good for weight control. And you will still be increasing your general cardiovascular performance, which is good.

However, if your choice of exercise is to do sprinting or high intensity interval training but you always see your heart rate in this range then you are not sprinting or HIIT hard enough. It is not necessarily a bad thing to not go hard enough. You should just know that training in this heart rate range means you will not be improving your anaerobic threshold and thus VO2 max.

You would definitely see a benefit if you experiment fitness training in the above higher heart rate zones once in a while. Just saying, the research can’t be wrong (if link doesn’t work go to scholar.google.com and type in: benefits max effort exercise).

Heart Rate Training Above 50% But Below 60% Of Your Max Heart Rate

If you always see your heart rate in this range you know you’re not seeing the performance enhancing benefits of the above heart rate zones. Think of this heart rate range as the warm up – nothing more.

Warm ups are good don’t get me wrong, but know that you would see awesome benefits if you experiment getting into the above heart rate zones while heart rate training.

I’ll leave it up to you.

I hope you can now gauge your fitness training the heart rate training way.

Update: I am no longer doing 30 day trials. The goal of my 30 day trial experiment was to try a new and radically different fitness program every 30 days. I realised that for the past 10 years I have not done this, and I have had great success. I scrapped the idea and have happily returned to trusting real data. My real data is in the form of heart rate monitor and blood pressure monitor. Regular self checking, I believe, is crucial to success at fitness.

I mentioned previous  how I am going to do monthly habit and fitness trials in hopes of attaining the perfect balance and enjoyment. To incorporate this into my view for Body Fit Check I have widened its scope to body, mind and soul. I think most of you would agree that a negative mind has negative effects on your body. So let’s think big, act big and optimise them both to become the fittest people we can.

There is no doubt in my mind that if you get in the habit of doing monthly habit trials you will improve your life. Knowing which trials to perform is not hard, easy really. For my first trial beginning April 1 I am going to read for 2 hours every single day. Of the endless opportunities I had, I want to inspect with you how I arrived at this trial and how you can choose your first trial in 5 minutes or less.

How You Can (and I did) Choose Your First Trial in 5 Minutes or Less

1. Choose what you want to accomplish:

Examples…

• free up time (wake up earlier, go to bed later)
• get more work done (less media, less distraction)
• quit a habit (smoking, drinking, too much tv)
• start a habit (a diet, a fitness routine)
• work up to something (more sales calls, more friends, more connections)
• increase or decrease known cause vs. effect (reading business books equals motivation so read, running makes me happy so run more, eating McDonalds makes me fat so eat less McDonalds, smoking makes me stink so smoke less or not at all)

I recently quit my mechanical engineering job and moved to Brisbane because I knew I wasn’t doing what I should be. In essence I broke a bad habit and cut out the bad stuff: wake up and go to work, be unhappy, come home and do things I like, go to sleep, rinse and repeat. I hated work so I quit working. This is the basic idea of the habit trials: trial doing things you love or stop doing things you hate for 30 days to form or stop the habit. To choose your first 3o day trial have a think about what you really want to accomplish and bring that aspiration down to its core. I have given you some examples above and I think your first habit trial will fit into one of those. Mine is increase known cause vs. effect: Reading business books and like make me feel good and give me motivation so I will read more of those books.

I knew from reading blogs over the past year that I get a shot of motivation each and every time I read an interesting business article. Especially about entrepreneurial success or personal growth/development examples. Case and point: Tim Ferriss’s Blog and Steve Pavlina’s Blog. I really wanted to bring that awesome flash of motivation to its core, which meant stepping away from the confinements of the internet. Given both Tim Ferriss and Steve Pavlina have written books (Tim’s: The 4 Hour Workweek and The 4 Hour Body; Steve’s: Personal Development for Smart People) it was obvious for me to explore other similiar overreaching books that Tim and Steve recommend (the books in the photo above are the one’s I will be reading in April).

The ultimate goal is to stick with this habit. Two hours of reading a day is a habit that will have profound effects on my life. I can just picture myself in 5 years looking back at the 100s maybe 1000s of books I will have devoured and thinking how awesome a habit it was for me to form.

What habit do you wish you formed 5 years ago? Try doing that now for 30 days.

2. Assess the difficulty:

Examples…

• money required (a plane ticket, new books, new clothes)
• time required
• stress on relationships (being a “yes man” (like the movie) for a month, sleeping in the day working at night)
• interference with prior engagements (ride bike 200km a day when you have a job or are getting married this month)

Does two hours of reading a day seem like a lot to you? What about two hours of television? Two hours less of work vs. more of work?

When you put two hours in context it really is not that much time. If I look at the people around me, I know they could watch one less hour of TV and go to bed one hour earlier (to read) a day. I have lots of free time given my situation so making two hours a day reading time is easy. I do not know your situation so I can not say how easy or hard your habit trial will be. The whole point of the month is to trial the habit. It’s 30 days of forfeiting TV to read or 30 days of quitting drinking to see how it makes you feel. If you don’t like how you feel at the end of the 30 day trial simply go back to what you did before.

I have thought long and hard and think you should assess the four dot points above. Does the trial you have in mind interfere with prior engagements or put undue stress on your partner? Think if you want to trial cycling for 200km each day. That amount of cycling will take up a lot of time and most likely consume YOU for the entire 30 days. How will that affect your family and friends? Your work situation?

I wanted to keep my first habit trial simple, enjoyable and worthwhile. Books are relatively cheap to buy brand new, cheaper if you own an Amazon Kindle and even cheaper if you have a library pass. For me to commit two hours a day puts zero stress on my relationships and does not interfere with my life in any harmful way whatsoever. I had the idea of doing a “yes man” trial for 30 days. The idea was to copy what Jim Carrey did in that movie: say Yes to everything and everyone. That trial would accomplish, at its core, more friends and more experiences but would be very difficult. Just think of the money you could spend in that month.

Just be mindful above your habits difficulty.

3. Form your rules, set your goals and tell someone about your trial:

Examples…

• must read for 2 hours each day. Does reading in 30 minute blocks work best?
• must wake up at 5am each day. Does 6am or 7am work better for me?
• must walk for 2 hours rain or shine each day. Does walking in the morning make me feel best?
• must quit drinking alcohol on weekdays. Is limiting consumption a better option?

You can tweak your habit trial at your own discretion. It is possible that you can tweak your habit to make it less difficult. So if you want to trial cycling every day, maybe start out small and see how difficult that is and iterate the distance and time spent cycling to find the sweet spot. Steve Pavlina’s book Personal Development for Smart People talks about baby steps when working your way though a difficult habit trial. He gives the example of ones goal to be able to approach a complete stranger and start a conversation by the end of the monthly trial. So as to increase interpersonal skills. The idea is to for the first week try smiling at strangers you pass on the road, then say hello and by the end of the month introducing yourself and forming a connection.

I arrived at two hours of reading because I am an avid movie watcher. I enjoy watching a movie a day instead of watching 30 min television shows. I look back at the last 3 years and guess I have watched 400 movies. A typical movies is two hours long. So for a month I want to read instead of watch movies. Simple as that.

My Goals

I want to find out which best way to consume the literary information: Is it reading for two hours in the morning or in the night? Reading for one hour in the morning and one hour at night? Or is it reading in 30 minutes blocks throughout the day? These questions are the types of questions you will need to ask yourself of your trial. What are your goals? How can you maximise your trial to benefit your future?

I am going to format my weeks according to my goals. I suggest you do something similar to assist you in determining the best possible pattern for your new habit.

Week 1 – Read in a single two hour block. Trial the block in the morning, afternoon and night.

Week 2 – Read in two one hour blocks. Trial reading each one hour block at different times to see what works best.

Week 3 – Read in four 30 minute blocks.

Week 4 – Assess the previous three weeks and make any required adjustments to the best option so far.

My Rules

The habit trial I am doing is already pretty core: read for two hours total each and every day. But I definately see some room for my own deviance so I need to set some rules.

I suggest you set some rules for your trial as well. The rules are meant to keep you on track and on target. If you want to trial not watching TV for a month, set the rule that you also can’t stream TV on your computer, you can’t watch movies on your TV and you also can’t watch youtube on your iPhone. I do not know how strict you want to be but that is just an example of some boundaries you may want to set within your trial month.

For me, I want to keep things pretty simple so I only have two rules for the month:

Rule 1 – You can not redistribute your reading hours over days. You must read for two hours each day. You can not read for 14 hours on Sunday or for seven hours two days a week. It must be two hours each day.

Rule 2 – You must consume books (audio allowed). The books can be from the library or on an Amazon Kindle it does not matter. Two hours reading a Men’s Health magazine does not count. Two hours reading online blogs does not count.

Please, please have a good hard think about what habits would make your life and mind better. Who knows what is possible if you just go out and grab your perfect life? I know that reading for two hours every single day will drastically improve my motivation. And with improved motivation, who knows what else will come…

Chuck in the comments what you’re trialling this month. Or if you are not just ready stay tuned for my updates and experiences and jump in next month no worries.

Update: I am no longer doing 30 day trials. The goal of my 30 day trial experiment was to try a new and radically different fitness program every 30 days. I realised that for the past 10 years I have not done this, and I have had great success. I scrapped the idea and have happily returned to trusting real data. My real data is in the form of heart rate monitor and blood pressure monitor. Regular self checking, I believe, is crucial to success at fitness.

Yesterday I wrote of my new beginnings in Brisbane and introduced you to my plan for doing monthly trials – trials where I test out and review fitness and health programs sold online so that you don’t have to. Also I gave notice my intent to, alongside the fitness trials, do monthly habit formation trials (wake up at 6am for a month, not watch TV for a month etc) to try and optimise my body, mind and soul to achieve a fully conscious chosen life (essentially apply the principles of the book Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina).

The way I see it, for you and I to achieve a fully fit body we need to check and test everything: body, mind and soul. Fitness trials for a healthy body, habit trials for a healthy mind and then using conscious thought to decide what is best for a healthy soul. When I say healthy soul I am not trying to get all spiritual on you, I am just referring to you being able to look into a mirror and be happy with everything you have become. I think your soul represents your fully conscious life path. So that if you consciously make every decision everyday of your life you will stay aligned with your soul. For example, when I was living in the remote northern areas of Western Australia working as a mechanical engineer I had lots of money to buy the best food, electronics and holidays. I worked from 7am-3:30pm and so had lots of time to get a fit body. My soul was in disarray, however, because I had been blinded by money when I made the decision to accept the job and move to the isolated town of Dampier. Somewhere deep within (my soul) I knew I would rather have been living somewhere else and rather be doing some other profession all together. I probably had a healthy body and mind but I had strayed far away from my soul by accepting a life I didn’t really enjoy living. So I consciously made a decision to quit lying to myself (my soul) and pursue what I love. I want all of you, at least on the fit body front, to do the same.

I received feedback from some of you and the main message was: make sure your monthly trials are geared towards helping us instead of just explaining what you are doing (like a narrative). I really appreciate this feedback and felt it deserved a full post of attention. I write at Body Fit Check in hopes of helping people – you. Most of the posts I write are geared towards informing or helping you, or at least I try to write them that way. So with my plans in motion for the future of Body Fit Check, I want to explain how you can really take advantage of Body Fit Check.com to attain your optimal body, mind and soul.

Presented in the list below are 5 ways, as I see it, for you to do take full advantage of Body Fit Check.com:

1. Follow along with one month delay doing the fitness program trials I do. I have been performing different exercise programs for over a decade and am very confident in my knowledge of what works and what does not. In theory, I could probably just read the fitness programs and know how I will feel and look at the end. That only works on face value, however, so me actually committing to the program and doing the moves as prescribed will give you one month head start on what to expect (if you read along as I go). I am going to, as best I can, provide advice, tips and tweaks for each and every program done. If you come to my conclusion post, which I will write shortly after I conclude each month you will have guidance to succeed in your own fitness trials. Because fitness is so much about adherence the goal is to ultimately help you find the program that best suits you.
2. Consciously change your current habits to make time for your fit body pursuit. Exercising is already a habit I have created. I unconsciously know to go to the gym or sprint or be active but only because I have created that habit for myself over time. I know that you have reasons for doing the things you do: changing out of your work clothes when you get home, sitting down to watch some tele before dinner and after, driving to work in the morning even on a sunny day, gardening on sunday morning etc. The point is these are mostly unconscious behaviours that you have made habit by consciously deciding to do them many times over. If you are serious about obtaining your optimal body, mind and soul you may need to change some habits to clear time for the fitness program trials. My monthly habit trials will not be to clear time, but instead to optimise enjoyment, awareness and productivity. I can’t say that you should do the same habit trials I do but I will say that you should, and will need to, do some trials to attain your optimal body, mind and soul. Use my habit trial findings on Body Fit Check.com to help decide which trials you want to do and how to do them. I will do my best to describe all my thoughts and motivations for each trial before, during, and after each one.
3. Pay attention to my Recommended Products, Best Of and Meal Planning Guide. At the time of writing this post the only recommended product I have is a heart rate sports watch. Go and have a read why at that link. Be warned it is both highly informative and lengthy. The Best Of section in the Body Fit Check sidebar is reserved for our best resources as decided by both us and you as the readers. Please have a good read of the pages/posts listed there. We do not take the title of Best Of lightly – they are top notch. A while back I spent a week taking photos of all the food I ate during it. I took note of the ingredients and methods I used to prepare the foods and then made posts for each and every meal. The fat loss meals page provides the window to a perfect meal planning guide you can use – if your goal is fat loss.
4. Subscribe to Body Fit Check.com by email or in a RSS reader. The benefits of doing one or the other is that you will be updated of Body Fit Check.com updates right to your front door – sort a speak. Sign up for the email updates and you will receive an email (probably 2 or 3 a week) every time the webpage is updated with a new article. Sign up for the RSS feed and you will have the updates delivered to your own personal RSS reader. If you know not what a RSS reader is try Google’s Reader out for free by signing up here.
5. Join the soon to be thriving Body Fit Check Facebook community. I love using Facebook. And so it was a natural progression to create a page for Body Fit Check. At the time of writing this post the community is strong but small. Our army currently consists of friends and family – as it should be to start. Please come have a chat with us there, leave a comment, start a discussion or just have a look through some of the photos. The best people will all sign up so make sure to Like us to help promote the community to your own awesome Facebook network.

My plan is to run each fitness and habit trial concurrent to each other for each calendar month: April, May, June, July etc. My first trials, therefore, begin April 1, 2011. I have some excellent introduction posts planned before then so stay tuned.

Is there anything else you believe I missed? Is there some way I can be of better service? Please let me know in the comments.

Update: I am no longer doing 30 day trials. The goal of my 30 day trial experiment was to try a new and radically different fitness program every 30 days. I realised that for the past 10 years I have not done this, and I have had great success. I scrapped the idea and have happily returned to trusting real data. My real data is in the form of heart rate monitor and blood pressure monitor. Regular self checking, I believe, is crucial to success at fitness.

This is a post about how I got to where I am today and where to from here: Age 26, unemployed, winning, and living in Brisbane, Australia. My inner voice told me to write it…

I apologise for the lack of posting this month and last. I have been a busy boy moving cross country. Don’t be worried; I am still alive and well and so is this blog. In the last month I quit my lucrative mechanical engineering job in North Western Australia and moved to Brisbane to pursue winning. I was sick of not being 100% happy, I hated where I was living and especially hated the isolation from “the real world”. I was surviving not thriving. So after much procrastination I threw in the towel, quit my job and moved to Brisbane.

Why Brisbane?

In 2006 I lived there for a year and it was the best year of my life. Let me explain: In 2005 I decided I’d had enough of Vancouver weather and by chance came across a flyer for UBC GO GLOBAL which is the name of UBC’s (the university I was attending) exchange/study abroad program. A month later and I was accepted into the program and feverishly researching which uni/country to go. Singapore, Australia and South Africa ended up being my top 3 choices. Thankfully I chose the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia – I wonder what my life would look like if I had chosen one of the other two. So there it was I was 21 years old and getting ready to move to Brisbane for a year. I am quit comfortable saying that year was the best year of my life – even to this day. It opened my eyes to the world, to life, and gave me more confidence in myself than ever before. Thank you mom and dad for supporting my decision with lots of love and money.

I returned to Vancouver knowing full well I would not stay. There was a voice inside me that had awoken. I think that voice had been silenced by years of government brainwashing in the form of school. Kudos to them – they did a good job. Geez I must have been well brainwashed to have chosen to study engineering. Looking back I seriously can not think of a career less suited to me than engineering. I would be a better music teacher, gardener or historian. But strangely enough I don’t regret for one second breezing through the five years of uni and three years of working in the mines of North Western Australia. Those life experiences are ones I will be able to leverage many times over.

How did I find myself working in North Western Australia?

When I returned to Vancouver at the end of 2006 I had one semester before I graduated. My original plan to return to Australia was with a holiday visa then look for a company to sponsor my engineering self when I got there. I explained this plan to many different UBC friends. One day, one of them received an email advertising jobs for engineers in Australia. He forwarded the email on to me and I spent six hours that night perfecting the online application and short essay questions. Two weeks later I received an email from the recruiter wanting to schedule a phone interview. I spent hours upon hours researching the company, researching interview questions, practicing and preparing answers to those questions. After I performed very well on the phone interview, I felt so happy and relieved. Sure enough, two weeks later I received another email advancing me to the next stages of the interview process: personality test, problem solving assessment and reading comprehension test. I got a phone call a few weeks later to schedule a face to face interview in their Vancouver head office. I was a man possessed – I knew what I wanted and nothing would stop me from getting it. I prepared for that interview like a soldier prepares for battle. For two weeks I annoyed my parents, sister and brother getting them to mock interview me with questions I gave them to ask. It all payed off – I found out shortly after the interview they wanted to fly me to Australia for a site visit. At this stage I didn’t even care where I was going in Australia. I was blinded by excitement and money.

After the company sorted my visa and arranged my flights I took off for Dampier, Western Australia. It’s basically the most isolated place on earth – closer to Bali than any other major city in Australia. Anyways, it took me three years to pay off my uni debts, obtain permanent residence in Australia and save up enough cash to pursue doing what I love for a career (for at least 2 years).

So what does all this have to do with Body Fit Check?

My ultimate goal is for 2011 to replace 2006 as the best year of my life. I plan on using this blog as the centrepiece for my fun. Being the strange man I am, I have fun:

• Experimenting with different fitness programs;
• tweaking my lifestyle/habits;
• researching the latest findings in diet and human health.

I plan on spending the majority of my time doing just that – experimenting, tweaking and researching. What better way than to conduct monthly trials of my tweaks and fitness experiments? And lucky you, I am going to document control it all at Body Fit Check.

I have heaps planned for Body Fit Check this year and am so excited to begin it all today. I want to give you an overview/sneak peak at some of the Body Fit Check monthly trials I plan on doing:

Monthly fitness trials

How many fitness information products have you seen on the internet today? If your like me, probably too many.

Do any of them actually work? I plan on answering that by buying the info product and doing it for a month to see how I go. The reason I have chosen one month as my test period is because it is a concrete duration. Also, in my experience, enough time to tell if a fitness program is working, will work and is worth trying.

If you would like me to review your fitness product please send me a copy here.

If you have a fitness product you know of that you think is awesome please chuck a link to it in the comments.

Some of the products I have in the queue for this year are:

• Visual Impact Muscle Building by Rusty Moore
• Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne
• The 31 Day Fat Loss Cure by Vic Magary
• Primal Blueprint Fitness by Mark Sisson
• Rebel Fitness Guide by Steve Kamb

To name a few…

The reason I have chosen those five first up is because they come from blogs/people I follow and read on a daily basis.

I haven’t quite figured out the structure of my monthly fitness trial posts other than to just explain how I am going as I go. I can’t wait to make some videos as well – maybe explaining the program’s fundamental benefits and if any, draw backs.

What do you think? Sound good?

Monthly lifestyle habit tweaks

After spending much time over at StevePavlina.com and reading Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina I have decided that this year I will optimise my lifestyle by tweaking my habits – one month at a time.

What does this have to do with Body Fit Check?

Everything – how can I know my body is as fit and healthy it can be if I don’t experiment with my lifestyle habits? If I give up television for one month, for instance, I will free up probably an hour or two a day (I watch nearly a movie a day on my television) to go for a walk, read a book – whatever. The point is, we make decisions everyday and those decisions, at least most of the time, are not conscious but instead on cruise control – they are habits. I want to see what happens when I consciously go against my habits. Maybe I get healthier and fitter or maybe not. I have lots of free time and I don’t see what harm one month can do.

Some examples of these one month trials:

• Giving up all media for a month (internet, TV, newspapers etc)
• Eating vegetarian for a month (I doubt I’ll entertain this one)
• Walking two hours in nature everyday
• Reading for one hour everyday

To name a few…

If you have any ideas for monthly habit tweaks please let me know in the comments. I realise you don’t know what my current habits are but I am sure your input will be helpful.

Conducting research on optimal human health

Essentially this is what has already been happening on Body Fit Check. So once or twice a week I will continue to write a science backed article that will hopefully open your eyes to something you didn’t know and hopefully help you on your path to optimal health.

Tom is currently amongst a Masters Degree in Clinical Exercise Physiology so a lot of this material will come from his university studies and assignments.

I am very excited about this portion of the Body Fit Check revamp. We will be following along as a Clinical Exercise Physiologist learns how to treat degenerative disease with exercise. The lessons learned will be manyfold. I don’t see any reason why I can not add videos as I see fit so that you can also train up on some Clinical Exercise Physiology lessons.

A better story for you to follow along to

The path to optimal health and fitness can be long and arduous. The only way for you (or me) to reach our own body’s utopia is by moving towards it one step at a time. I hope you join in while I move towards mine one monthly trial (or maybe two or three) at a time.

I spent a good amount of time over the last month trying to think of a better way to talk about this journey to optimal human health and fitness. I knew that Body Fit Check had to turn into a story. It couldn’t be just a series of research based posts that didn’t link together very well. Then I read Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina and fell in love with the 30 day trial idea Steve Pavlina talks about for breaking bad or generating new habits. I thought how can I incorporate this into something more fitness related and something useful for you. I also, being jobless, kept brainstorming ways to turn Body Fit Check into a money making real life business. I know about internet marketing and affiliate marketing and figured I might as well give it shot. And what better way to sell fitness programs than by actually doing them, testing them out and explaining to you what I honestly think.

In my own eyes at least, I feel that combining monthly fitness trials with monthly lifestyle habit tweaks Body Fit Check gets a lot more interesting for you. I hope that you will come back daily, weekly or even just monthly to see what I am up to on my journey to the best year of my life ever!

Extreme Heat Training

I have a confession to make: I lied in the inaugural post when I said I lived in Brisbane. At the time of writing this I live and work in a small town in North Western Australia and have the past 3 years. I apologise! I promise in 2 weeks time I will be living there, really I will!

Anyways, the idea for this post came about because the small town where I do live – Wickham – is undoubtedly one of the hottest places on earth. The year round average daytime temperature is 32 Celsius. That’s the AVERAGE daytime for both summer and winter (think 29 in winter and 35 plus in summer everyday). I was out the back running some mountain sprints – hills really – and it dawned on me: Is training in this extreme heat good for me? Or am I doing more harm than good? So I set off to do some research.

This post is worth reading, it’s that good. It will be especially helpful if you live in an extremely hot place on earth or train in a hot boxed inferno of a gym (I’ve been there).

[This is me doing some hill sprints out the back of my unit in Wickham, WA. The temperature was 38 Celsius as it so often is. I wouldn't recommend training in this heat if you are not acclimatised. I was only out training for 16 minutes. I was rested, hydrated and only 5 minutes walk from air conditioning. Don't try it at home kids.]

My Thinkings (Before Doing Research)

From experience, and a little knowledge of the human body I knew that your heart beats faster when training in “extreme” heat compared to “room temperature” 25 Celsius or below. The reason is your body wants 38.6 Celsius blood and when training it shoots up higher. To cool your blood your heart speeds up to pump  more to the surface of your body to convect heat away. The more times it beats per minute the more blood will reach the surface and the greater the heat transfer to the environment.

I thought since the goal of high intensity interval training is to get your heart beating really fast for short duration the hotter it is the better. Makes sense doesn’t it? Easier to get your heart rate higher in extreme heat so aim to train in extreme heat often…Hmm

Conventional Wisdom: “Sweat it out!”

It is definitely ingrained in us that training in extreme heat enables us to lose more fat and get fitter and more lean. Most people probably don’t realise that we are just losing water weight by sweating more.

Maximal Exertion vs. Ambient Temperature (and a Pretty Graph)

Many studies have been conducted on this subject. Some good some not very. One of the good ones I found is: Effect of Ambient Temperature on Man’s Capacity to Cycle Exercise. In it 8 men were told to cycle at a recommended rate of perceived exertion until they were exhausted and had to stop. They did the same test (on separate days) in varying ambient temperatures: 4 Celsius, 11 Celsius, 21 Celsius and 31 Celsius. All men’s VO2 max, skin temp, rectal temp, heart rate and sweat rate were measured during each test. All men’s time to exertion was longest at the 11 Celsius test and shortest at the 31 Celsius test. All the variables varied greatly with different temperatures. They concluded that the relationship between exercise time to exhaustion and ambient temperature is almost “inverted U.” Meaning there was an optimal temperature for exercise (top of the inverted U) and as the temperature moves away from there (top of the U) the time to exhaustion gets lower.

Another different study, one which again used cycling as the exercise: Perceived Cycling Exertion in Different Ambient Temperatures used similar methods to arrive upon the same conclusion. In the test the scientists trialed exercise performance in temperatures of 15 Celsius, 25 Celsius and 35 Celsius. All subject matter performed dramatically better in the 15 and 25 Celsius environments than the 35 one.

Note: Both the above tests the relative humidity was 70%.

I made up a graph using some of the numbers from the above studies. You can see the inverted U shape take form. The ambient temperature range you should exercise at for optimal performance is probably 7 Celsius to 18 Celsius. Given room temperature is always above 18 Celsius you are exercising in too hot an environment to achieve maximum performance… And my 38 Celsius environment is undoubtedly smashing my body, but is it doing harm?

Inverted U Relationship

But is it Harmful to Train in Extreme Heat For Short Bursts?

It appears that if you are physically fit, acclimatised to the extreme heat (as best you can be) then short bursts (10 – 15 minutes max) of exercise in hot environments is fine. But I stress, not ideal. The extreme heat environment teamed with the excess heat your body generates during work exertion combine to stress your body to the max. If you are not careful, training in extreme heat can fast become a very dangerous activity.

In Temperature Regulation During Exercise Sid Robinson, PhD Anatomy/Physiology, explains:

“In hot environments the resistance to heat loss may beso great that all of the increased metabolic heat of work cannotbe dissipated and the man’s central temperature will rise abovethe thermostatic setting. If this condition of imbalance iscontinued long enough heat stroke will ensue. We have foundthat in a 3 mile race lasting only 14 minutes on a hot summerday a runner’s rectal temperature may rise to 41.1°C.,with heat stroke imminent.”

Although I don’t doubt some people would approach heat stroke after 3 miles I am skeptical of Sid’s explanation. I would respond with: What is the definition of “hot environment”? And surely the man’s physical fitness level before running the 3 mile race would be relevant, right?

In the photo above it was 38 Celsius (surely considered “hot environment”) and I ran sprints up hills for 16 minutes. There is no way I was near heat stroke so I must conclude that physical fitness is relevant and good physical fitness allows you to last longer in hot environments while working.

The risk of heat related illness is much greater when training in extreme or even moderate heat. Why would you want to risk it? There is no proven benefit to exerting in extreme heat: Your time to exhaustion is less, you sweat excessively (straining your body) and your internal organs work harder to get blood to the surface of your body to expel the heat (more body stress).

Verdict: Exercise Hack or Tomfoolery?

Mostly Tomfoolery: There are no documented benefits to training in extreme heat. There are however, many documented risks to the body such as: heat stroke, body stress and strain, dehydration, heat cramps and heat exhaustion to name a few. Going out of your way to train in extreme heat is truly foolish, senseless behaviour. Stop going out of your way to do it! I know I am going to.

On the flip side you could classify extreme heat training an exercise hack if your goal (maybe you need to make-weight) is losing lots of weight fast (keep in mind you are losing water and salts not fat). I would advise you to consult with a Physician before attempting to lose lots of weight fast with extreme heat training.

The Take-Away

The science found that man’s ideal ambient exercising temperature for reaching his maximum exertion potential was somewhere between 9 and 14 Celsius. Next time you hit the gym have a look at the thermostat.

What temperature do you most enjoy sprint training in,  HIIT training in, lifting weights in? Let me know in the comments.

If you have read this blog at all you know how we love sprinting and HIIT: obviously because of their benefits. Less time and more fat loss are two pretty convincing traits for a workout technique to have. Would you agree?

I combined them both in a short but intense sprint routine. I call it the “identical twin sprint” because you match times: sprint and rest like for like. It is also symmetric so you finish the same way you start; as if you build up then cool down like climbing a mountain - reaching the top then ascending down the other side.

Total sprint/HIIT routine time: 14 minutes

On a Treadmill

Incline:

Use an incline of at least half the max (so if max incline is 15 use 8). This will ensure you are not just running on the spot but actually pulling yourself forward as if you were running outside, normally.

Speed:

Vary your speed according to fitness level but as a rough guide use the following.

For the walk use speed of 5 km/h – 6 km/h

For the jog use speed of 8km/h – 9 km/h

For the run use speed of 10 km/h – 14 km/h

For the sprint use speed of 14 km/h – max of treadmill

Outside on a Track or Oval

Go according to feel: walk, jog, run, sprint. Each one is faster than the last – walk is rest, sprint is all out. Use common sense.

The Identical Twin Sprint

Format is [Do this : Then do this]

• 2 minute jog : 2 minute walk
• ____1 minute run : 1 minute walk
• ________30 second sprint : 30 second walk
• ________30 second sprint : 30 second walk
• ____1 minute run : 1 minute walk
• 2 minute jog : 2 minute walk