November 28, 2001

1. Host a Heart Zones Seminar in your area! Take a look at our national tour dates for 2002 – and if you don’t see a seminar scheduled near your area then consider proposing a site, audience and date for us to come to you. Heart Zone Training seminars give you a great source of information and motivation for launching a safe, effective and guaranteed fitness program. Whether you are looking to burn fat more effectively, improve your PR in a particular sport or simply learn how you can best measure what you can monitor – a seminar is a great place to start. If you would like to give the gift of a seminar this holiday season – heart zones is offering $10.00 off any registration for seminars hosted in 2002. This Christmas offer is valid until January 4, 2002. Plan for making 2002 another year of getting fitter. Visit the seminar schedule at http://www.heartzones.com/seminars/index.shtml

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2. Delta Heart Rate: Another way to measure your fitness. A reader recently contacted Heart Zones inquiring about the difference they were seeing in their resting heart rate and ambient heart rates both while sitting and laying down. This is a very good and common question. Here are the specifics: This athlete notices an ambient heart rate of 90 when sitting up and 62 when lying down. Resting heart rate is measured at 44. The question is whether it is ok for such a difference between sitting up and lying down. In the Heart Rate Monitor Book for Cyclists (page 84 and 85), Delta heart rate is the difference in your heart rate at different positions, for example, lying down and standing up. Do this test. Take your heart rate after lying down for two minutes. Stand up and your heart rate will "spike" but will settle after an additional two minutes. The difference is your "delta heart rate". If the difference is greater than 30, take a day off. This is not a good number. If the difference is 20-30, it is cautionary - take a day off or train in a zone lower. If the difference is 10-20, this is normal. If the difference is 0-10, this is excellent.
This is a valuable test, especially if you retest yourself daily and watch for specific trends (upward trends may indicate too much stress or over-training and downward trends may indicate you're right on track).

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3. Book Review: A new book by Sally Edwards, Rebecca Brocard Yao, and Kaari Busick, The Complete Book of Triathlons - is published by Prima/Random House and is just hitting the book stores now for the Holiday season. For novice to seasoned athlete - this book is packed with it all! Learn more about swimming, running and cycling - eating right, training smart, getting lean, buying the right equipment and of course understanding more about how you can measure and assess your fitness level.

http://www.heartzones.com/books/index.shtml

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4. Conditioning Workout: For cyclists and runners, fall and winter months are a time for reducing road and trail miles. Typically athletes will hit the weight room to work on sport specific strength and endurance. Developing muscle power can help improve your riding and running ability. For example, increased power in your legs can help you gain momentum before an uphill, a sprint or at the start of a race. Therefore, using fast, rhythmical motions can help build muscle power (fast training). The goal is to force the neurons to recruit new muscle tissues and high threshold motor units. Optimal neural stimulation will help recruit both fast and slow-twitch muscle fibers and improve power output. Okay – so very simply put – fast training is moving a load rather quickly through the concentric and eccentric phases, maintaining a CONTROLLED rhythm for 5 to 10 repetitions. The eccentric movement should not be a free-falling movement, but a controlled lowering done at a fast pace. While fast training is beneficial, incorporating slow training is important too. This means heavier lifting. This further stimulates fast twitch muscle tissues and helps provide for a stronger nervous system “base” for future muscle power development. A stronger nervous system means muscles can contract more muscle fibers at one time – this translates into the ability to do a set workload with increased ease. If you have specific questions about how to create a power program – talk to a personal trainer in your area or email fitness trainer and Red Jersey Master Trainer, Jessica Menendez at jessica@menendeznet.com

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5. Meditation Basics. Ever thought of implementing meditation as part of your fitness plan? Chris Wentworth of Heartmonitors.com makes a regular habit of attending meditation retreats. Once viewed as a mystical Eastern discipline, the practice of meditation has become strong with Westerners. Here is a bit of a 101 on meditation: Meditation helps silence the mental chatter about things in the past and the future. It helps you focus on the present, which naturally transfers into your daily activities. The beauty of meditation is that it can be done at any time. Some like to meditate in the morning to align them physically, mentally and emotionally for the day ahead. Meditating before exercising can clear the mind and help you enter a “zone” of focused awareness, which can help maximize physical performance. How do you meditate? 2 simple ways to try – “watching” your breath and focusing on an object. Watching your breath is known as vipasana or mindfulness meditation. To begin, sit quietly. Thoughts will move through your mind, but keep your attention focused on your breath. Mentally “follow” your breath as it flows in and out of your body. If your mind begins to wander – which is natural for it to do, just bring it back by concentrating on your breathing. Another method is to concentrate on an object. Focus your gaze on an object such as a candle flame, tree or ocean. Try to hold your concentration on the object until you feel you are completely present with it in the moment. Try it for 5 minutes until you notice your mind calming and increase the time as you become more comfortable with this practice. Sharp focus is important to develop in training – and for relieving stress, meditation is an easy solution. Strap on your heart monitor and learn more about the correlation between your heart and state of mind and how it is reflected in your heart rate!

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6. Heart Zones Water Bottles – have you checked them out? Let us describe them to you. White bottle, leak-proof cap and best of all – you can always check your zones as the heart zone training chart is on the bottle and easy to read. Think all your fitness buddies will want one? Probably! And for orders of 5 or more, we will kick one in on us! That’s a six-pack great for filling up last minute gifts for training buddies and friends! To order, contact staff@heartzone.com

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7. Cholesterol: Watch more than your cholesterol. We all know that having your total cholesterol count below 200 is important. But according to a recent study published in the journal Circulation, even if your total cholesterol count is below 200, you could still suffer a heart attack if your triglycerides (another type of blood fat) are elevated. The study collected heath information from 101 families in 1970 and then tracked their causes of death over 2 decades. The study revealed that for people who had normal total cholesterol levels and high triglycerides, they were two to three times more likely to die than those who had normal triglyceride and cholesterol levels. Something to ponder. Bottom line is this: Part of a comprehensive fitness and training plan should include yearly visits and exams by your physician. Know your health history and make inquiry with your doctor about what tests may be relevant based on your age and medical history.

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8. Recovery from Zone 5: Sometimes leg muscles can take a hit from workouts spent in Zone 5. Cyclists and runners can relate to fatigue and heaviness in the legs after a tough workout or race and certainly athletes in other sports or cardiovascular fitness programs know the feeling of lactic acid buildup. Besides training in zones 1 & 2 the next day or taking the day off, here are some ways you can take care of yourself and speed up your recovery process considerably. First, after a hard race or workout you can help your leg muscles pump out waste products by walking for 5 to 10 minutes afterwards. After your walk, sit down and elevate your legs for up to 10 minutes. Next you will want to soak your legs in cool water. Any source will do – cold tap water, pool or if you are lucky the ocean! Some are courageous enough to add ice, but again tap water is fine. Finally give your legs a rubdown. Whether you seek out a massage therapist of do it yourself, massage can really speed recovery my improving circulation and helping to remove waste products from your muscles. Remember that you will feel a bit of pain from stiff muscles but that pain level should never rise above 6 on a scale where 10 represents excruciating pain. ===============================================================

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