I love listening to Russian. Same with Thai.
German has to be at the bottom of that list.
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The Stroke Per Minutes (hur hur hur) is low, should be aiming for mid 20’s. It’s not giving you a split time in the picture which is the common speed metric for rowing/erging. I’m old and fat and can barely hold a sub 2:25 split time for 40 minutes. There are lots of good videos on rowing on the YouTube, these guys are my favorites:
Be careful if you start trying to sprint for lower split times, I tore a calf muscle doing that and it sucked.
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I’ve been avoiding/not doing workouts at all. I’m on vacation, and today was day 1 of some kind of physical activity for fitness, which I’ll be doing for at least 8 more consecutive days. I’m getting my weightlifting equipment back out of storage on Tuesday, and will be setting that up for squats and bench press. The moving will count as physical activity, and then the next day, I’m hiking a nearby mountain.
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It’s been 5 months since I posted this, and we got our Peloton bike a week later, so I feel like enough time has gone by for an update. In short, I’m thrilled with the purchase. To get the obvious out of the way:
- It’s a really expensive bike ($1,895 for the version we got, $2,495 for the advanced version)
- It gets far more expensive when you take into account the $40 monthly fee that provides content (the classes)
To me, the test of whether a piece of equipment is worthwhile is whether you actually use it, rather than some evaluation of that thing’s attributes. And both my wife and I have definitely used it. Over the last 5 months, this is my usage:
Basically, I’m doing something virtually every day, and I’d be surprised if that changed going forward. There are 4 pieces to this:
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The physical bike. It seems like a solid piece of equipment. But I’m sure you could buy equally good or even better equipment for the same price. So this isn’t actually a major plus.
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The content. The digital classes are great. There is a broad mix of instructors with very different personalities and different types of classes in terms of both music playlists and class types. For example, there are almost 1,900 45-minute long cycling classes. And even though I don’t have a treadmill, I download running classes to listen to on all my runs now.
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The way it game-ifys workouts. You know the way some websites and games make it very addictive for you to use them? Peloton is the same. At the top of your screen you see your calendar history, which looks like this:
So it becomes a little bit addicting to get your “dot” in each day. Some other smart things they do:
- They give you your current streak, but they do it in weeks rather than days. That way you’re motivated to keep the streak going, but you can miss a day or two and still feel like you’ve got this very strong streak going.
- While you’re riding, you’ll get little notifications (that can be turned off) if other current riders hit a milestone, like a 10-day streak or their 100th ride.
- You can virtually high five other current riders, which sends them a little notification (I think this one is dumb, but others seem to like it.) Putting these last two points together, you tend to get a whole lot of virtual high fives when you hit a milestone, which is kind of motivating.
- They send you a free shirt when you hit your 100th workout.
- During live workouts (workouts are either live or on demand), instructors will call out users that hit milestones. “Hey spidercrab, nice work on your 100th ride.” I’ve only done on demand rides and so I haven’t ever experienced this, but people seem to love it.
- The large community, and the additional content they provide. One of the most surprising things for me is how many non-cycling workouts I’ve done. The stretching workouts have been excellent, and something that I probably should have been doing forever. (I’ve always been a runner and super inflexible and often sore/injured - it’s no coincidence that I didn’t historically focus on stretching.) And the strength workouts are great, too. There’s nothing super novel about the strength workouts - they’re basic bodyweight and dumbell workouts focusing on different parts of the body. But what’s been fantastic is that there’s this very large Peloton community where a personal trainer puts together a monthly calendar providing workouts each day. That way, I don’t have to burn the energy trying to decide which workout to do, I just click the link on the calendar. At this point, I might be getting more benefits from the strength workouts than the actual cycling workouts.
So that’s a quick summary of my Peloton experience. Do you need a Peloton and its expensive membership to do these things? Again, no. But the fact is that I wasn’t doing these strength and stretching exercises before, and I’m now doing them regularly. Plus the thing that I actually intended when I bought it, which is getting a good, low-impact workout that I could use to complement running.
Five thumbs up.
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Felt pretty good on my morning run, so I pushed myself and got a new PR with a 30:01 5k. I know that’s not fast in the grand scheme of things, but it feels like a good achievement for a 40 year old guy who started running less than a year ago after being sedentary for more than a decade. I’ll break 30 one of these days.
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Nice work! So long as you keep setting PRs, you should be pleased.
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Its absolutely an achievement.
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That’s 5 minutes faster than I’ve ever run it. Nice work.
Interesting article. Suggests the body largely adjusts to burn the amount of calories it thinks it needs to burn - by blowing it on other not-so-helpful stuff if you don’t exercise.
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You will probably break 30 next time you try.
Totally neglecting your upper body for a year and then hitting the weight room is an interesting experience.
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Wait until tomorrow…
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I think this is generally well understood by the higher caliber trainers and fitness coaches. Of course it is totally not understood by the median member of the public who is condition to think of weight loss in terms of morality.
Very similar article based on the same research/book.
It’s consistent with my personal experience and mostly inconsistent with what I’ve been told and read forever.
I basically don’t lift anymore and am fat and weak. It’s sweet.
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Having kids is the end of gainz.
Didn’t you have a pretty sweet home gym set up? That helps a lot. Maybe wait until the kid is a bit older and try to get back to respectability.
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For me, not being fat frees mental space for anxiety about all kinds of other stupid shit.
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Yeah it’s very sweet and I think I’ve used it four times
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I’ve been walking 2 miles each way to the gym then lifting weights 4 days/week. Walking/hiking 8 miles or so on the other 2 or 3 days. Legs in best shape of my life, upper body filling out, still can’t lose a fucking pound.
Every time I run a calorie deficit I want to smash everything in my house. I scream at inanimate objects. I’m afraid my neighbors are going to call the cops thinking I’m abusing someone. Sometimes I just scream it out in the car over the stupidest shit. I risk ruining my work relationships.
I already am not talking to my ex for finally telling her off while in a dieting phase - which I think is a good thing. You will not be surprised to hear my forum meltdown last week was in a trying to diet period. I just feel like I’m in a constant state of peak frustration and rage when I run even the slightest calorie deficit.
I just don’t know what else to do except go back on test. It’s the only thing that seems to work. Maybe I just need to push through the frustration and rage. But it’s hard to do that and have any interaction with humans online, much less in person.
I’m already on Wellbutrin, which I think has actually improved my outlook a lot when my cortisol isn’t spiking. Apparently a decent chunk of people lose weight on Wellbutrin - LOLOLOLOLOL - I think we all knew that wasn’t going to be me.
I probably do need to stop listening to audible books about mountaineering and war disasters while I hike/workout. They pump me up and make the exercise fly by, but all the life and death drama can’t be helping my stress hormones. Pretty sure I’m the first guy ever to do squats while listening to an oral history of the Sandinistas.
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