Since benchmarking my fitness against the tests in the previous post, I’ve focused on: Improving my best-effort one and half mile. Press-ups according to the technique in the previous post Sit-ups according to the technique in the previous post. Pull-ups Plank 500 metre row How am I tracking progress? I’m using a simple Google sheet to manually plug in my numbers each time I do exercise. Here’s what it looked like for Week 1: Improving my best-effort one and half mile I’m pretty excited about doing this one. I’ve run a lot of miles since May this year but I haven’t really been seeing any improvements in pace. I’m always hovering around the 9min 30sec/mile pace for 3.5 miles. I’m hoping that by using the treadmill to get faster over shorter dosctances such as 1.5 miles, I’ll get baseline quicker. I bust a gut to hit that 13min mark for …[Read More]
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How fit can I get in a month? (part 2 – a humbling experience!)
Benchmarking against the tests and metrics I chose in the previous post was quite a humbling experience! Here are the tests/metrics and my initial test scores: Resting heart rate. Angelique measured my pulse on my wrist. The Mayo Clinic article suggests counting the beats in 15 secs and converting this to the beats per minute. Mine is 16 beats in 15 secs, so 64 in a minute. Fastest time to run 1.5 miles (2.4km) This is a key test I think as it measures aerobic fitness. Here’s a screenshot from the Mayo Clinic article that shows what different times mean: And from the Men’s Health article on the same test: The Scorecard: 12 minutes or more: Slow Between 10 and 12 minutes: Ordinary 10 minutes or less: Endurance excellence https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a19534622/fitness-level-tests/ I did my initial measurement on the treadmill and I scored 13:00 mins flat. Which is slow! Number of press-ups …[Read More]
How fit can I get in a month? (Part 1)
It’s time for another challenge and life experiment. They always seem to come back to fitness. I’ve been running about 15 miles a week for a few months now but not really seeing a difference to the belly, so I started to think about trying a different approach. I was thinking about how fit is it possible to get in one month? What do we mean by ‘fit’? A Google search led me to a few interesting articles. This post will feature three of these articles and pick out the tests and metrics I’ll focus on: How fit are you? See how you measure up (Mayo Clinic) 10 Standards to Assess Your Fitness Level: Before you stamp yourself “in shape,” make sure you can pass these fitness tests (Men’s Health) Six Ways To Test Your Overall Fitness (Coach Mag) Mayo Clinic Here’s the one from the Mayo Clinic: How fit …[Read More]
God I love Chip
Chip is a savings app that helps you to save effortlessly. I’ve written about Moneybox before about how their app helps you save without feeling the pinch. Chip does something similar but with AI. You connect the app to your bank account and it looks at your previous spending history and what you’re spending currently and then somehow calculates what you could save without feeling the pinch. You choose how aggressive you want the AI to be. I opted for the medium level at the beginning and now I play with the higher settings just to see how much more aggressive they really are. So every now and again, I get a message from Chip saying that I could save say £30 today without feeling the pinch, and that this will be moved from my bank account to Chip at 3pm. You can choose not to move it but I …[Read More]
The Fear Bubble by Ant Middleton
This book charts the story of how Ant Middleton climbed Everest. It also details Middleton’s philosophy on fear and positivity. And he goes deep. It’s one of the most honest books I’ve read. He tells us about all the times he’s failed. His flaws. All the times he’s messed up. But it’s his upbeat philosophy and views on attacking life with positivity that really shines through. It all stems from a realisation that he had whilst on operations. He used to feel almost overwhelming fear long before a mission and for a long time after it finished, and he realised that he couldn’t continue like this for the long term. He deconstructed where he should really feel fear and he realised it should be where it was justified: right before the bullets started flying until the time when he was out of immediate danger. This window of time, he called …[Read More]