Understanding your treadmill console

• Most modern day treadmills come with a monitor that is capable of measuring your heart rate with accuracy

Within the fitness industry, our understanding of how the whole human organism works is constantly being reshaped and that constant transition is reflected in some of the fitness machines we use today.
Last week, for instance, we spoke about the treadmill and how the machine has evolved over time, from a one-time instrument of ‘reform’ to the integral part of our exercise landscape that it is today.

One of the things that has changed about how people exercise and use gym equipment in this modern age is that there is now a much greater responsibility placed on the user of the equipment to understand, interpret and react accordingly to the huge amount of information displayed on the machine console. 

This increasingly interactive nature of gym machines, especially treadmills gives us some great tools to work with. One of the most important of these is the in-built heart rate monitor.

Most modern day treadmills come with this monitor that is capable of measuring your heart rate with great accuracy. But that would be of little use to you if you have no understanding of what the information conveys.

The average adult’s heart beats 72 times at rest and is widely accepted to have a limited theoretical upper range of 220 beats per minute.  Anything beyond this point will book you an early appointment with your maker.

There is a simple formula to calculate that for yourself  - just take your maximum heart rate - 220 and subtract your age and this will give your maximum exercise heart rate.

Whatever figure you are left with, 80 per cent of it will represent your anaerobic threshold or the point at which your heart and lungs will no longer be able to provide enough oxygen to meet the demand from your muscles.

At this point, your muscles will accumulate lactic acid and you won’t be able to run much longer. 60 per cent of the same figure will represent the lower rung of your aerobic zone, or the point at which your body really starts to tap into its fat reserves in order to power your run or walk. 

Take a 30-year-old man.  His optimum heart rate can be calculated by taking the figure 220 (maximum heart rate) – 30 (his age) = 190. Take this figure 190 /80 = 152 beats per minute (anaerobic threshold). The same figure 190/60 = 114 (onset of fat burning zone). 

This means that our 30-year-old client has to maintain a heart rate zone between 114 to 152 beats per minute to make his workout effective.
The other figure many of us keep an eye on is the calorie count.

In general the adult body needs about 1000 to 1400 calories to have enough energy to fuel key organs like the brain, heart and lungs. This minimum number of calories is called your resting metabolic rate and it varies depending on factors such as age, sex, weight and muscle mass.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, in my article on fat; you will have to burn on average 7000 calories over and above your resting metabolic rate in order to lose one kilogramme of fat on the scale.

The million-dollar question here is whether the calorie counters on your average treadmill are accurate.
Rather than tethering yourself to the tedium of counting calories, you should pay more attention to your MET Range.

So when the treadmill says that you are exercising at 7 METs, it means you are burning seven times the amount of energy you consume at rest (Normally, we consume one calorie per kilogramme of body weight per hour).

It is easier to do the maths this way than it is to count calories endlessly.  I hope this information vastly contributes to the effectiveness of your workouts and gets you closer to achieving those sometimes-elusive goals.

rayakeyee@yahoo.com