Heart Zones e-Newsletter

Welcome to the November 2004 edition of The Heart Zones e-Newsletter copyright: Heart Zones, your source of heart rate training information
	Gobble, gobble – Turkey, Pulse and Dressing Feedback from Zoners: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things about Your Heart Monitor A Question from the E-Mailbag: Beta Blockers and Exercise What is my Heart Monitor Telling Me? and... Games, Ideas and Motivation for Training Delicately Educating Your Trainers WEB Specials EXTRAVAGANZA!
	1. Gobble, gobble – Turkey, Pulse and Dressing Gobble, gobble, gobble time is this month and here are a few ways to “re-frame” this months holiday. How many of us have blamed the lazy sleepy feeling on tryptophan, a compound in turkey breast that causes sleepiness? This compound is the amino acid, which is an important building block of protein. Tryptophan also acts as a precursor to niacin (a B vitamin) and serotonin. Serotonin is a compound formed in the brain that plays a role in sleep production and relaxation. Which could mean that an increase in dietary tryptophan, might increase sleepiness? But really, the amount of serotonin produced from the tryptophan consumed in an average three to four ounce serving of turkey is not large enough to cause a significant increase in sleepiness. Rather than the turkey, that lazy feeling is probably due to the tremendous amount of calories from carbohydrates (starch and sugar) found in a traditional holiday meal. Indulging in a full-fledged Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings and Herculean-sized portions may also contribute to sleepiness. Simply put, overeating requires the output of a lot of energy. Then the digestion of all that food calls for the use of even more energy! So, those who exercise dietary prudence will not experience extreme fatigue at meals-end, which means for the rest of you, take a nap and please stop blaming the turkey! Heart Zones has a couple of FUN ideas for you. 1. How about finding out about a turkey trot in your area – a 5K, 10K, walk/trot. Exercise always stimulates a healthy appetite and is a great way to keep your training consistent during the holidays. 2. How about having a “Fit” turkey dressing? Nice way to make your guests smile - (see picture below)..... a) Cut out aluminum foil in the shape of workout wear b) "Dress" the turkey and roast like you would a normal turkey..... c) Bake turkey as you would with your favorite recipe. The aluminum workout wear prevents tan lines.
	2. From the E-Mailbag Feedback from "Fixing the Most Annoying Things about Your Heart Monitor" Last month, we provided a few suggestions on how to deal with annoying things about your monitor. A couple of comments/suggestions came in: FROM John C. As my HRM has gotten older the chest strap does not pick up as well. I find that rather than using just water I wet the chest strap and put a dash of table salt on each electrode. That assures a reliable conductive path for at least 2 hrs. Also, I have found that my daughter’s out of date saline solution (from contacts) is an excellent wetting agent. FROM Sara D. Thanks for your suggestions on how to fix your monitor – especially the one about the beeping, it can be so irritating! One thing that I have done about not being able to see the numbers, is I bought a bunch of cheap reading glasses and now have them in all of my gym bags and in my locker at the gym. I wear a scrunchie (hair thing) around my wrist and clip/tuck my glasses on that so that I always have them. FROM David A. I have found that cleaning your chest strap really does help with getting a reliable and consistent signal. I just wear mine in the shower and use my wife’s lingerie mesh laundry bag to store it and allow it to dry – (although, sometimes depending on the time of my next workout, it could be a little damp and cold to put on!). Looking for a monitor? Read the functions and features of heart monitors at www.heartzones.com
	3. Beta Blockers and Exercise – A Question from the Heart Zones E-Mailbag: I would like to suggest that you address hypertension and/or cardiac conditions that may alter heart rate monitor readings. There are probably many subscribers who take medication to control blood pressure or arrhythmias, have a history of bypass surgery, or some kind of cardiac condition. Have you done any research into these areas? In my case, I take a beta blocker to control hypertension. Beta Blockers slow my heart rate which in turn blows the normal heart rate monitoring scale to pieces. Both my doctor and instructors at the gym say that heart rate monitor training won't work for me and that I should use the "scale of perceived exertion". Blech...I wanna use the heart rate monitor! Suggestions? Surely there I am not alone in this dilemma. Thanks! Angie from Jackson MO. This response is from Carl Foster, Ph.D. Heart Zones Faculty Member and Director of Human Performance at the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse and President-Elect, American College of Sports Medicine. Generally the rules are the same with HR altering medications (atenolol is one common name, and beta blockers is sort of the generic name), use %HRmax. But, the HR max has to be determined on drug, at the same time of day. Some drugs are fairly short acting, and will give very different responses throughout the day. For that reason, it's best to exercise at the time you had your stress test, and hopefully the stress test was fatigue limited. However, 70% of your available max HR is still representative of the same %VO2max. If you don't have a stress test, or if the dosage has changed since your stress test, then you have to fall back to alternative methods like RPE or the Talk Test. Generally you can assume that an RPE of 4 (or 14 on the old scale) is just about the highest intensity that allows comfortable speech. Both of these markers are more or less 80% of HRmax.
	4. What is my Heart Monitor Telling Me? Dear Jessica, I was wondering if you could help me figure out what my Sports Instrument heart monitor means. I am a female, 53 years old, and 142 lbs. Jogged 5 miles in 51:32. This is what I would like explained: fz (fitness zone) :14 min Hz (health zone) 3:17 min Pz (performance zone) 47:12 bpm, average 151 bpm. It is set on the fitness zone (fz). Where am I trying to be-more in the fitness zone than the performance zone? Hopefully you can understand my question. Thanks for your help. Terri First of all – because you input into your monitor your age, the monitor automatically set your training zones. On this particular monitor – Health Zone is calculated to be 50-70% of your age-calculated maximum heart rate, the Fitness Zone is calculated to be 70 – 80% of maximum heart rate and the Performance Zone is calculated to be 80 – 100% of maximum heart rate. Since you entered in your age as 53, the monitor no doubt calculated your maximum heart rate as 177 bpm. If you told me that your RPE (rating of perceived exertion – how you felt on a scale of 1 to 10) was about a 5, so a fairly easy going run and pace averaging 10 miles per hour then I would say that your maximum heart rate is likely much higher than 177 bpm. The bottom line is that we need to first establish what your maximum heart rate is and then from there to answer your question with regard to where you should spend most of your training time in the fitness or performance zone will depend on your maximum heart rate and of course what your training goals are (do you want to get faster, enlarge your fat burning zone, etc.) Lastly, if you know what your maximum heart rate is you can set your zones based on it – the Sports Instruments monitor automatically sets your zones – accurately. For more information on why and how to find your maximum heart rate, go to www.heartzones.com and buy Sally Edwards book, Heart Zone Training. And of course, feel free to follow up with me with further questions. Thanks for your questions!
	5. Games, Ideas and Motivation for Training Okay, so last month, I asked for some response and ideas on creating some adventure activities with a bit of a Reality element. Here are some responses: FROM Joe S. A group of us guys wanted to stay competitive and active through the winter months and we came up with a competition for every month. It was a good excuse to get together and have some fun. We did swimming, mountain biking, trapshooting, pool, climbing, trail blazing (in this competition you had to guesstimate the total amount of time you would spend in a particular zone while blazing up a trail and the one who came close won). We basically made it up as we went along and used a point system (the points were accumulated through each competition and at the end the one with the most points won the money that we each put up to enter the competition). It was just 2 bucks to enter and we averaged around 10 guys each month. At the end, if you won you had to buy pizza and beer for everyone and something for our club house – (I converted my garage to a workout room where we run anywhere from 2 to 8 computrainers). It was fun to do and a good excuse to do something other than meet at a bar or get stale with riding indoors all the time. FROM Suzanne M.: I really enjoy your newsletter and wanted to “air” an idea that I haven’t completely figured out but maybe someone else can expand on it. I participate in a game called Bunko every month with a group of women. Each host is responsible for the evening prizes and snacks. It is generally theme oriented like bath accessories, office supplies or one woman did different cuts of meat as prizes! Anyway, one thing that always comes up during our get together is conversations about getting in shape or starting a new diet or just simply being fed up with not having any motivation for getting into shape. When I host, I am going to use some of your Heart Zones products (and other fitness stuff) as prizes then maybe use it as a way to get people started on heart zones training (which I love, I took Sally’s seminar last year). It seems like I could probably enlist some of the other hosts to do the same and have the themes link together, but I haven’t completely thought it through. Any ideas you have would be appreciated! Thanks again for a great newsletter! EDITORS NOTE: Great idea – perhaps each month’s prizes could include an item that you could use to accumulate Heart Zones Training points with like a jump rope, E-Grips for walking, a punch card for cardio classes at a local gym or a card set of Heart Zones Activities. Or perhaps you give everyone a Heart Zones Training Log Book (we will give discounts on volume purchases over 8). Once everyone is on board with Heart Zones Training points, perhaps the conversations will be about all the different activities everyone is doing to get the highest recording of points accounted for every 3 months! Got more ideas on how to create an adventure for yourself and friends? We would love to hear about it and if needed will help launch your game with a special training or products. Contact Jessica! Email Jessica@heartzones.com
	6. Delicately Educating Your Trainers Recently I took an indoor cycling class which used some type of level system (from 1 to 10) to guide participants towards monitoring their intensity and resistance on the bike. Throughout the class, as music and tempo changed, the instructor told us to go to level 5 or level 7 or level 3. The most that I was able to assume with regard to this instruction was the higher the number the more resistance I should use. I adjusted my resistance based on visually mimicking her cadence and effort. As far as intensity, from time to time, the instructor suggested that we be in a particular zone, however, the zone number, percentage or feeling was not explained. I determined that it was not even close to the system we use since often she wanted us in Zone 5 and recovering to Zone 3. Incidentally, this was a two hour indoor ride and descriptive words such as endurance and pacing were used quite a bit. Does this type of class sound familiar to you? So, if you are a Zoner or wanna be Zoner, how do we go about participating in group classes where our instructors are not properly trained or lack skills in properly instructing us on safe, measurable intensity monitoring? I decided my best approach was to simply print out the analysis chart recorded from my Timex data recorder for her. I added a short note stating that I was new to her class and unclear about her instructions during the class. I explained that I did get a good workout and used my monitor to gauge my intensity during her class and that ultimately, since I wanted to do an endurance workout and continue to build a base for myself, I kept my heart rate in Zone 3. I also asked when would be a good time for her to explain her level system to me so that I could apply her instructions in class with the goal I have in participating in cardiovascular activity. The bottom line is this, we all have heard TONS of different theories on zones, fat burning, and training by maximum heart rate or anaerobic threshold etc. Ultimately, we want YOU to have the skills on how to write a training plan and train based on your goals, but certainly, we also want your fitness clubs to be on board and on the same page. Here are some ideas on how to delicately educate your trainers and instructors: 1. Pass the information on Lend your Heart Zone Training book to your trainer and tell her/him a little about what you have learned. 2. Suggest a Seminar If you have taken a seminar or want to take a seminar, provide our information to the club director and help organize to make it happen. 3. Ask questions. Have the trainer explain the method and purpose of measuring intensity and make sure that it real and not fabricated. 4. Teach! One of the best ways to learn what you don’t know is to teach. As you inquire about measuring intensity with an instructor, tell her all that you know about maximum heart rate. In other words, engage her in conversation assessing their knowledge and letting them know that you know the heart zones training system.
	7. WEB Special Extravaganza! Maximum Heart Rate T Shirts. Always know your zones – wear them on the front of you and use your T shirt as a training tool. This shirt is full color with all of the Zones – a chart on your chest. Web Special is buy one and get one free – so you can give it as a gift to your training partner because when you find your zones you empower your life. Two for the price of one - $14.95. www.heartzones.com

	Click here to send this newsletter to a friend or sign up to receive this free monthly e-newsletter or send an email to subscribe@heartzones.com To unsubscribe, send an email to unsubscribe@heartzones.com and make your subject line read: unsubscribe If you would like to contribute to the newsletter content, or have ideas, questions, or concerns for us to address, please contact the editor by email at: jessica.menendez@heartzones.com copyright: Heart Zones staff@heartzones.com http://www.heartzones.com Phone: (916) 481-7283 Fax: (916) 481-2213 Mailing address: Heart Zones 2636 Fulton Avenue Suite #100 Sacramento, CA 95821 The Heart Zones e-Newsletter is a Heart Zones publication Publisher: Sally Edwards Editor in Chief: Jessica Menendez PLEASE forward this e-mail to friends and colleagues who are also interested in fitness and sports training using the heart. THANK YOU!