Posted: 2/10/2010 7:37:14 PM EDT
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I've been doing strength training for about 18 months now and have neglected my cardio/endurance training.
I've got a rower, so I plan to remedy this situation because now I have a good base of strength to work from. My question is: what metric do you use to gauge the health of your heart/lung system? Is it going X distance in Y minutes, and improving this? Or is going as long as you can go? Or is it by measuring your heart rate (I have a heart rate monitor for my rower, so this is easy)? If the latter, should I look at resting heart rate, or recovery heart rate (i.e., after ramping your heart up to max HR, how low does it go after resting for 1 minute?) Thanks! |
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I usually go by distance/time for 3 mile and usually 800m as well. If I can run 3 miles in the same time I did when I was 18, I'm happy. ETA- I should also say that because I hate running, once I usually meet my goal for a run time I usually just try to maintain it. I don't care to keep trying to get faster and faster- I know my capabilities and I know that it would take more running than I'm willing to do in order to get faster than that time.... |
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Quoted:
I've been doing strength training for about 18 months now and have neglected my cardio/endurance training. I've got a rower, so I plan to remedy this situation because now I have a good base of strength to work from. My question is: what metric do you use to gauge the health of your heart/lung system? Is it going X distance in Y minutes, and improving this? Or is going as long as you can go? Or is it by measuring your heart rate (I have a heart rate monitor for my rower, so this is easy)? If the latter, should I look at resting heart rate, or recovery heart rate (i.e., after ramping your heart up to max HR, how low does it go after resting for 1 minute?) Thanks! All "endurance" (meaning something of a sustained duration) is muscular in nature. Absent some kind of dysfunction like asthma or emphysema, the pulmonary system is not a limiter for exercise. That said, either of the metrics you cited are valid measures of endurance. Which you use depends on what your goal is. For running and swimming, the best metric is pace. For cycling it's power (work/time). I'm less familiar with rowing, but some ergs do give power data. Distance/time would be more objective than heart rate, but HR beats a sharp stick. What exactly are you trying to measure? |