Tuesday 25 August 2015

Wow Moment! Linking Withings Body Weight Scales with Fitbit


I just had a wow moment. Last year I stopped using dumb scales which dont save your precious data. I bought a basic Withings wifi scale

Its the basic WS30 and I picked it up for around £60 on sale. Its proven pretty accurate but it doesnt have fat % thats the only downside. Now Withings has its own app shown here.


Its ok, but fairly basic. Their web page is actually very good (see https://healthmate.withings.com/) and gives good selection of graphs...in fact here is my own weight graph from the last 12 months, totally over 300 measures. Remember with a wifi scale you only need to jump on the scale and it will upload your data automatically to the cloud.

However, I use fitbit a lot, and fitbit has its own wifi scale aria. Its expensive and doesnt have any more features other than body fat : see http://www.livescience.com/49888-best-smart-scale.html. Here is a great comparison of wifi scales from http://www.livescience.com


 Anyway it turns out Withings WS30 (and all their wifi scales) connect to fitbit using https://www.fitbit.com/weight/withings#. Just add your Withings account and all your historical data is uploaded to fitbit. Wow so simple. And now you get fitbit weight goals and badges too. Really awesome.




Tuesday 18 August 2015

Push ups 101: Press ups are the original body weight exercise!

Body weight exercises depend on fairly high reps and typically low resistance. The resistance can only be a maximum of your body weight by definition. The original example in the push-up (aka press up) which effectively is akin to a bench press with roughly half your body weight (45% actually). 

Why half? because your feet are on the floor acting like a pivot (fulcrum) and you are effectively levering up your body (load) which is on average half way between



However thats not to say push ups are easy, especially done correctly (ie with good form). Good form generally means keeping your body straight (no bum raising) and lowering to within 5-10cm of the floor



Different hand placements work slight different muscles, narrow hands work triceps vs wide which works anterior deltoid and pecs. Studies show during push ups there is 73-109% maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) of the triceps, and 95-105% MVC of the pec major also with serratus anterior as the top back muscle with 75% MVC compared to 27% for the mid traps and 36% for the lower traps. Read more here


 If you find yourself cheating, then try push ups on weights or on a push up grip like this



Ok, thats the preamble. How many can you do? Based on national averages, a 40-year-old woman should be able to do 16 push-ups and a man the same age should be able to do 27. By the age of 60, those numbers drop to 17 for men and 6 for women. This chart may help




Still some way to go before grabbing a World record though? see http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/pushups.html or this list!:

WORLD RECORDS

  • non-stop: 10,507; Minoru Yoshida (JPN), Oct 1980 DETAILS
  • non-stop (women): 302 (without leaving the push-up position); Maria Tobar (USA), 23 August 2014 in Sacramento, USA
  • one year: 1,500,230; Paddy Doyle (GBR), Oct 1988 - Oct 1989
  • 24 hours: 46,001; Charles Servizio (USA), 24/25 April 1993 at Hesperia VIDEO
  • 1 hour: 3,877; Bijender Singh (IND), 20 Sept 1988 DETAILS AND NATIONAL RECORDS
  • 1 hour (women): 1020; Alicia Weber (USA), 1020, 13. August 2011 in Clermont, Florida, USA (in this hour, she did also 826 mountain climber exercises!)
  • 30 minutes (women): 829; Alicia Weber (USA), 8 February 2011 in Clermont, Florida, USA
  • 10 minutes (women): 450; Alicia Weber (USA), 24 May 2009 in Clermont, Florida, USA
  • 3 minutes (women): 190; Renata Hamplová (TCH), Record Festival Pelhrimov 1995
  • one minute: Record claims up to 199 in one minute have been made. We do, however, not continue to publish these record claims, because it became impossible to judge about the correctness of the exercises at this speed. The last record that was accepted by the Guinness Book of Records were138, achieved by Roy Berger (Canada) in on 28 February 2004 in Ottawa. Before, we have also verified 138 pushups in one minute, achieved by William T. Mello (USA) on 30 May 2002. The same statement applies for the category "100 push ups with legs on a 80 cm high table" where the last verified record was 45.7 seconds by Roy Berger (Canada), achieved on 24 February 2001 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • one-armed, one week (168 hours): 16,723; Paddy Doyle (GBR), Feb 1996 in Birmingham
  • one-armed, 5 hours: 8,794; Paddy Doyle (GBR), 12 Feb 1996 in Birmingham
  • one-armed, 1 hour: 2521; Paddy Doyle (GBR), 12 Feb 1990 in Birmingham
  • one-armed, 30 minutes: 1382; Doug Pruden (CAN), 30 July 2003 at the Body Quest Health Club Edmonton
  • one-armed, 10 minutes: 546; Doug Pruden (CAN), 30 July 2003 at the Body Quest Health Club Edmonton
  • one-armed, 10 minutes (women): 180; Alicia Weber (USA) on 23 September 2011 in Clermont, Florida
  • one-armed, on back of hands, one hour: 1025; Doug Pruden (CAN) at the Don Wheaton Family YMCA in Edmonton, 8 November 2008
  • one-handed handstand pushups: Yury Tikhonovich (RUS) did twelve pushups while standing on one hand in June 2006 at the Starclub variete in Kassel (Germany). He repeats this feat almost every day in the rehearsal for his show VIDEO (AVI, 1.3 MB)
  • on fists: 5557 (in 3:02:30 hours), Doug Pruden (CAN), 9 July 2004, Body Quest Health Club Edmonton
  • 1000 pushups on fists: 18:13 minutes, Doug Pruden (CAN), 9 July 2003 at the Body Quest Health Club Edmonton
  • on back of hands, 15 minutes: 627; Paddy Doyle (GBR), 8 November 2007, Stamina's Boxing Self Defence Gym, Erdington, Birmingham RECORD HISTORY
  • on back of hands, 15 minutes (women): 385 (including a record of 251 consecutive ones without leaving the push-up position); Eva Clarke (Australia), 19 June 2013 at Gems American Academy in  Abu Dhabi, UAE VIDEO
  • on back of hands, 30 minutes: 1386; Paddy Doyle (GBR), 8 November 2007, Stamina's Boxing Self Defence Gym, Erdington, Birmingham RECORD HISTORY
  • on back of hands, 1 hour: 1940; Paddy Doyle (GBR), 8 November 2007, Stamina's Boxing Self Defence Gym, Erdington, Birmingham RECORD HISTORY
  • finger-tips, 5 hours: 8,200; Terry Cole (GBR), 11 May 1996 in Walthamstow
  • one finger: 124 Paul Lynch (GBR), 21 April 1992 in London
  • on both thumbs with 30 kg extra weight: 20 David Zhorzholiani (GEO), 19 October 2013 in Marneuli, Georgia
  • with a 50 lb [22.68 kg] plate weight on his back: 4,100: Paddy Doyle (GBR), 28 May 1987 in Birmingham
  • with hands on raw eggs: 112; Johann Schneider (AUT) / a video can be downloaded here as Quicktime video (1.2 MB) or AVI video (1.4 MB)
  • one-armed, with hand on a raw egg: 8; Darryl Learie (Canada), 5 January 2012 in the city TV studio at Breakfast Television Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. VIDEOTHE STORY BEHIND THE RECORD
  • while balancing on three medicine balls (diameter: 24 cm), 1 minute: 70: Joh-A Kpalete (GER/TOG) on 8 December 2014 at Powrx fitness company in Köngen, Germany
  • while balancing on three medicine balls (diameter: 22 cm), 1 minute (women): 61; April Calderon on 14 September 2012 at Millennium Park in Chicago VIDEO
  • Planche pushups, 1 minute: double amputee Temur Dadiani (GEO) did 36 planche pushups (starting from and returning to a planche position) on 3 August 2014 at The Ministry of Defence of Georgia, in Tbilisi. VIDEO
  • Bakasana Pushups: 42 while keeping the "Bakasana" (crow) yoga position, Kukuri Salbishvili (GEO), 16 September 2014 in the Ksani #15 prison, Georgia VIDEO
  • 4 hr relay (team of 10): 17104 by a team at Owensboro Middle School (Kentucky, USA) on 30 June 2012. The team members were Bob O'Brien, Mark Kahn, Scott Lowe, James Egbert, Marcus Winstead, Khiry Maddox, Collin Carrico, Mazden Ng, Anthony Tate and Chris Vessels.

Saturday 8 August 2015

How fast can a person go on a bicycle? from motorpacing to rocket bikes


 The fastest unassisted human powered bike world record was 82.8Mph by Sam Whittingham set in 2009. Barbara Buatois managed 75.7Mph in 2010. In 2011, a college team from TU-Delft in the Netherlands became the 2nd fastest all-time with a rider, Sebastian Bowier: 80.5Mph. These bike require serious gearing



However you can go faster with assistance. Way back in 1979 Jean Claude Rude was an ambitious man and the French cyclist wanted to break the world bicycle speed record. In order to become the world’s fastest on bike, he had to go faster than his fellow countryman José Meiffret who had set the record at an impressive 204.7km/h (127.2mph) in 1962. This amazing speed was achieved on the German Autobahn, presumably closed for other traffic, near Freiburg where Meiffret was riding in the slipstream of a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. But at a speed of 160km/h (100mph) when suddenly Jean Claude’s rear tire exploded and was torn from the wheel.



Forward to 2013, Guy Martin did 110mph using motor pacing (sheltering behind a truck)!






The motorcycle racer and lorry mechanic from Grimsby was filmed by Channel 4 last year, as he attacked the record of 110mph set by Dave Le Grys on the unopened M42 motorway in 1986.
With no unopened motorways available, Martin opted for Pendine Sands in South Wales, a seven-mile stretch of beach with a history of record breaking: it was first used in 1924 by Malcolm Campbell to reach 146mph in his Bluebird. But pedalling a pushbike on sand at over 100mph is hairier than Martin’s cheeks.

Using a similar compound gear system to Dave Le Grys’s original 1985 bike, built by Cliff Shrubb, Hope supplied custom cranks, bottom brackets and two 60-tooth chainrings. With a 16t sprocket on the seat tube and 15t on the rear wheel, the wheel turned 15 times for every pedal revolution. At 112mph, Martin’s cadence was 97rpm, and the wheel was spinning at 1,460r
 
 


Olympic Cyclist and IRONMAN triathlon winner, John Howard set a 152.2 Miles per Hour speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats near Wendover, Utah on July 20, 1985. He is drafting in the wake of a 500 Horsepower Streamliner. This type of human powered record is called motor pacing. The pace vehicle was modified by adding a large tail fairing to the 337 MPH record holding Vesco Streamliner. The fairing keeps the wind off John and reduces the aerodynamic drag he is pedaling against to near nothing.
This type of record was invented by Charles "Mile-a-Minute Murphy" who drafted a train to set a 60 MPH record at the turn of the century. A mile of plywood sheets was attached to the railroad ties, so Charles would have a smooth surface. He had to be lifted onto the train just before they ran out of the plywood surface!
The previous record holder at 138.8 MPH set in 1973 was physician, Dr. Allan Abbott, a cycling enthusiast and motorcycle racer.

 
 

What about powered bikes? Now this is crazy. Frenchman Francois Gissy hit 285 km/h (177 mph) on a rocket-powered bicycle. Now, at the Circuit Paul Ricard in the South of France, he's knocked his own world record out of the park. Dialing in a massive 4.5 kN of thrust, which generates roughly the equivalent of 560 horsepower, Gissy took his rickety-looking rocket bike up to a monstrous 333 km/h (207 mph), hitting top speed in just 4.8 seconds and generating about 1.96 Gs worth of acceleration.


Thursday 6 August 2015

WHAT IS YOUR REAR END WORTH? (Product Review: Canyon VLCS 2.0 / Ergon CF3 / Suspension Seatpost £215)

OMG! £215 for a seatpost that’s ridiculous! Yes it is....but it could be worth it and your rear could thank you for it!!



I saw this in the press when it was launched by Canyon in 2012 as a suspension seatpost for the road and I was intrigued. £200 was too much but I bought one off ebay for less than £100 in great condition (seatposts don’t generally deteriorate second hand).


Suspension seatposts are usually big and heavy for MTB and not at all suitable for light road bikes. So if someone can make a 229g road version that would be very interesting indeed.
The VCLS ( Vertical Comfort Lateral Stiffness) flexes and take the sting out of harsh roads, cobbles, potholes and any poor surfaces. The post is split into two halves like two flat springs, which operate parallel to one another up to 2.5cm yet the Flip Head ensures the saddle stays horizontal.




I swapped a titanium post for this today and did a short 10km ride on bumpy roads. The titanium post has tiny amount of give may 5mm but its not a setback / layback design so it was always pretty jarring. The effect of the VCLS was immediate. It smooths out a lot of bumps really well. Not so much so that the ride feels spongy but enough so that you rear feels cushioned (in fact my hands were much more jarred). You actually cant directly feel the movement but its definitely there. The setback curve of the designs adds more to the effect, and actually improved by riding position relative to the cranks. For weightweenees there may be a weight penalty of 100g or so compared to tune / ax-lightness etc. but these carbon posts are also v jarring. Who wants thousands or millions of bumbs transmitted up your spine year after year. No, this is one area where the cost and the weight are definitely worth it!

Why so expensive? It is overpriced as RRP but its apparently made from crushed basalt (rock) which is then melted down and extruded into very fine fibres before being made into a seatpost which compared with titanium, basalt fibre has better elasticity, and the resin used in construction also gives a higher level of damping.

Any restrictions? Yes v limited sizes:  27.2mm diameter and 300mm length post only. So it wont fit a lot of bikes without a shim and I am not sure if a shim will be ok with this design. Also I think you need to swap heads to fit carbon rails. Also clamping it into the frame securely proved a problem because the parallel design resists the seatpost collar. However this video gives advice on fitting.


Overall: pretty amazing design which looks simple and is effective. Recommended and ask yourself....what is protection and care of your rear end worth to you!! ;) 

Fitness Radar Score:
Tech: 9/10
Effectiveness: 9/10
Cost 4/10

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Izumi Tabata: mystery of the effective 4min workout




Definitions

Tabata has come to mean  interval training or high-intensity interval training (HIIT) but it features the following characteristics:

1. very very high intensity 
2. a rapid dense workout 
3. short periods of rest 
4. as many repetitions as possible (up to about 8)




History




The Tabata Protocol was created by Dr. Izumi Tabata alongside Irisawa Koichi, head coach of the Japanese speed skating team. Tthey were increasingly aware of the apparent success of including short bursts of very intense exercise within the training. The results seemed to indicate such a training method was just as effective as moderate, longer duration exercise.  In a 1996 study, Tabata found that this type of high-intensity interval training showed excellent results for boosting a person's aerobic and anaerobic conditioning.





Tabata Seminal Study



One group of moderately trained students performed an hour of steady cardiovascular exercise on a stationary bike five times a week. The other group did a 10-minute warmup on the bike, followed by four minutes of Tabata intervals, four times a week – plus one 30-minute session of steady exercise with two minutes of intervals.



The results were startling. After six weeks of testing, the group following Tabata's plan – exercising for just 88 minutes a week – had increased their anaerobic capacity by 28% and their VO2 max, a key indicator of cardiovascular health and maximal aerobic power, by 15%. The control group, who trained for five hours every week, also improved their VO2 max, but by 10% – and their training had no effect on anaerobic capacity.















Tabata-style sprinting improved anbaerobic capacity while the long-duration group did not.



Hidden Benefit



However there was another important benefit. Tabata protocol burns approximately an extra 150 calories in the 12 hours after exercise, even at rest, due to the effect of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption







HIIT vs Stead State



HIIT/tabata seem better than the same amount of steady state (even) activity. Tremblay et al.  compared HIIE and steady state aerobic exercise and found that after 24 weeks subjects in the HIIE group lost more subcutaneous fat, as measured by skin folds, compared to a steady state exercise group when exercise volume was taken into account (Table 1). More recently, Trapp et al. [5] conducted an HIIE program for 15 weeks with three weekly 20-minute HIIE sessions in young women. HIIE consisted of an 8-second sprint followed by 12 s of low intensity cycling. Another group of women carried out an aerobic cycling protocol that consisted of steady state cycling at 60% for 40 min. Results showed that women in the HIIE group lost significantly more subcutaneous fat (2.5 kg) than those in the steady state aerobic exercise program (Figure 2(a)).







 Mourier et al. [40] found a 48% reduction in visceral fat, measured by MRI, compared to an 18% decrease in subcutaneous fat following an exercise regimen consisting of steady state exercise two days per week and HIIE one day a week for 8 weeks in type 2 diabetic men and women

Which Exercise?

Although the original conducted involved using a stationary exercise bike these also work well:
  • Rowing machine
  • Burpees
  • Squat thrusts
  • Hill climbers
  • High knees
  • Squat jumps
  • Sprints
  • Shuttle runs
 Further Reading

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/25/tabata-harder-faster-fitter-quicker 
A. Tremblay, J.-A. Simoneau, and C. Bouchard, “Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism,” Metabolism, vol. 43, no. 7, pp. 814–818, 1994. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar
A. Mourier, J.-F. Gautier, E. De Kerviler et al., “Mobilization of visceral adipose tissue related to the improvement in insulin sensitivity in response to physical training in NIDDM: effects of branched-chain amino acid supplements,” Diabetes Care, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 385–391, 1997. View at Google Schol
G. Trapp, D. J. Chisholm, J. Freund, and S. H. Boutcher, “The effects of high-intensity intermittent exercise training on fat loss and fasting insulin levels of young women,” International Journal of Obesity, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 684–691, 2008. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at PubMed · View at Scopus


 

Saturday 1 August 2015

My recommended TOP 10 Spinning Workout Videos

Try these awesome spinning videos...choose the length of your workout etc!


.................................first with the solo instructor

 
 

now..........................in the spinning class itself

  
 
 
 


Infographic posters: Spinning, Treadmill, Rowing

Just found these really nice posters available to order or download from productive fitness

Indoor cycle aka "spinning"

Running on treadmill



Rowing on concept II
 
They also have the fairly useless (IMHO!) "eliptical trainer". This is not much better than walking in my opinion.

Strava app: Initial impression. My first two months of cycling with GPS

Strava is king right now. King of its own GPS tracking mountain. Its an amazing successful running / cycling app which logs your progress and uploads it to the cloud. The really clever bit is that it compares you to everyone else who has ever taken that route (and logged it) and if that doesn't appeal then it compares vs your previous times.

It seems that strava has about 8.2 million sign ups and about 1.2 million monthly active users.[1]

photo(c) bikeradar.com

Background
Strava was created by Harvard rowers Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey.  Strava uses GPS tracking in your smart phone or watch and lets lets you upload them as soon as you finish. The whole process takes only about a minute.  More than 4.5 million segments have been created globally 3/4 cycling and 1/4 running times. Its accurate too, it even deletes portions where you stop for more than 10seconds, there is a lot of processing going on behind the scenes to tie up sometimes flaky GPS signals with what you actually did. Have a look at this link for in depth strava GPS musings of impossibly fast times.

 Now here is where it gets interesting. You can bag a badge for a quick time (maybe they should do super slow badges too ;) ). The best time claims a KOM or QOM (King or Queen of the Mountain), and the site also tracks each top 10s for all time and top 10 for this year. Finally it logs top 3 personal times (for the year and for all time). And it does this for every single segment (roughly 1km+ stretches of your route). It all looks like this:



Achievements
Now you might ask so what? I started using strava in May 2015. I signed up for the free premium trial but there is no need to do this, its still awesome in its free format. I have logged 71 rides and 1 run. I can attest it seriously addictive. I wouldn't dream of going for a ride without strava now, unless its an intentionally slow nip to the shops!

Now I am not a particularly good cyclist, powertap has my 30min PB at only 250w. A pro cyclist is in their recovery zone at 300-350watts and they can cycle 250w with one leg! So not so good then. Neverthless like anyone I can go hell for leather for short periods! Using this and other tactics I have got about 5 KOMs.....ok on unpopular super quiet routes!! But the bottom line is its fun and it keeps your cycling and its a great target for improvement. This is one app which makes you think, technology is amazing these days!

Now for the downside. Some people go crazy. Some have even been killed racing for KoMs. So much so Strava has been sued, and has adapted its app. See this BBC link for an interesting description.

There is a lot more to strava on a personal level. Of course you have your route, speed, distance but you also have watts (estimated and not accurate btw....its about 20% under reporting compared to a watt meter like powertap) and energy used. Speaking of energy used...I went flat out for 30mins and used 467kj of energy (111kcal). Sadly that is about 200mls of orange juice which i drank in 10 seconds of returning to the house! Here is a screenshot of the ride:


Strava knows your entire history (if uploaded) so it can act as a useful training log.

There are also a lot of pro riders on strava link here, with unassailable times and huge rides and some riding on annonymously too.

The bottom line? Strava is free, its accurate, its fun, its motivational. Love it!

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Strava/comments/2yxa4j/strava_has_about_192000_premium_users_12_million/