Another Goal Reached!
A while back I read something on my friend Aaron Rashkin’s blog about working out. He said that no matter what he is there at the gym 6 days/week. So I have made it my goal to get to the gym 6 days a week. I haven’t reached that one yet, but I can tell you that I am well on my way. I was there 4 days this week and tomorrow I have an appointment with a trainer so that will make 5. Aaron talked about the fact that even if he is exhausted he is still there. The intensity may be low if he is tired once in a while, but he is still there no matter what.
So adding on to what Aaron said I want to make sure I am there no matter what and then once I am there I want to focus on having the greatest possible intensity that I can have. This is where I reached a goal just today. The first part of my workout every time I am at the gym is a 28 minute cardio workout on the elliptical, Precor machine, or treadmill. Usually the elliptical. I just like it. I always set the settings to show me the # of strides/minute. If intensity is what I am going for then the total # of strides is meaningless and so is the total distance. All I care about is strides per minute. The other thing I have been focused on is the # of calories burned off. It follows obviously that the greater the intensity the more calories I will burn. I don’t care how accurate the # of calories is in fact. It is just a measuring stick. For a while now I have been doing between 140 and 150 strides per minute and coming in somewhere in between 400 and 485 calories. So I have had it as my goal to hit 500 calories. Today I hit 500 calories for the first time. The way I did it was by starting with the end result of 500 calories and working backwards. So if 140 strides/minute was getting me close to my goal (and it was – more and more frequently I was hitting 480 calories) then if I could just increase the intensity so that I was over 150 strides per minute I could probably do it. Then based on what I am presently reading as well as a ton of other literature I have read I know that I have to actually see myself reaching the goal. I have to see the 500 number on the display. So I went to work this morning visualizing that I had already reached that goal. I did this on Wednesday morning and I hit 490, so I knew this goal could be reached. I just had to increase the intensity. This morning I was not only consistently over 150 strides/minute I was getting close at times to 160 strides per minute. Just as I was finished the readout showed 503 calories. Here’s the most amazing part of it all. My achievement did not go unnoticed. The guy on the machine next to me tapped me on the shoulder. I had to remove my headset and ask him to repeat himself. He said,
“That’s a hell of a workout” as he nodded in the direction of my display. When I realized what he said I was so charged up that I couldn’t help myself. I of course thanked him and immediately explained that for some time now my goal has been to reach 500 calories. I tapped right on the number on the display, looked at the guy and said,
“This is the first time I’ve reached my goal”
So now I have a new fitness goal. To consistently be at 160 strides/minute. I don’t know what the goal is yet in terms of calories. Certainly to keep it at 500+.
The question here is what really made the difference today. Besides the technical monitoring of the strides/minute. The answer is explained in a newsletter I happened to publish literally the minute before I headed out to go to the gym.
THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES!
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