Building Plan: Week 3 Complete

I hope everyone had a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving! I was cooking up a storm for my family. It always amazes me how much better 100% home-made is versus anything else. I made some good progress in my prior weeks and lost a good bit a weight. Just in time for the feasting, lol. I am not looking forward to my upcoming weigh-in. No matter, I had wonderful times with my family and can get back to my usual eating again. In regards to working out, my goal was to not miss anything because of the holiday week. Well, I went and hurt my neck which prevented me from doing some workouts. However, I did make some excellent progress despite that.

 

Strength

I got 2 of my 3 strength sessions completed. However, the one session was more just stretching and a little bit of body weight routines. I am still seeing significant improvements in my strength. In addition, I am seeing some improved mobility and flexibility. Still nothing to write home about, but I’ll take any gains.

Running

I had a PR this week! During one of my runs, I got a 6:34 mile!!!!! I was so excited. I am also feeling slightly less winded and tired during and right after my runs. I am excited my endurance is finally building back up. I am starting my week 3/4 of my running training. I hope I can do it!

Cross Training

I still have yet to get myself back into the pool. I hope to change that this week, even if I only make it once. I got in one trainer session. It was alright, but it was more just to get my legs loose. With my neck bothering me, I couldn’t get anymore done. My brother has me doing some stretches that are slowly helping.

Final Thoughts

For Week 4 I am hoping to keep increasing my consistency and getting more workouts in. I am not too worried about my eating as I have gotten rid of most of the leftovers, so this week will be mostly back to normal eating. I do need to make sure I keep up with my food tracking though. Hope everyone is doing well with their goals!

Building Plan: Week 2 Complete

Last week was Week 2 of my training plan. Overall, I saw a good amount of improvement in my workout consistency. I still missed a cadence run workout, which I really did not want to miss. However, I let getting ready for Thanksgiving be my excuse for not getting it done. Shame on me, but I'll be good this week no matter what.

My strength sessions keep improving. I did a fit challenge last week and pretty much passed out afterwards. I am really impressed with the improvements NTC (Nike Training Club) has made to the workouts and the app. I am really enjoying using it and seeing great gains each week, both in strength and mobility.

My running keeps improving. I was able to get complete my cadence runs at 180 spm for all 3 reps. I will be moving on to Week 2/3 of my plan. Words cannot express my excitement!

I did not get my other cross training in, which was disappointing, but I will focus on that this week. I am not going to let a holiday be an excuse. It's my job to make the time!

I am still having trouble with my weight, but my main goal was to get consistent with my workouts first. I am almost there, so I will be focusing on weight next.

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well with their goals and have a wonderful, happy and safe Thanksgiving!

Choosing a Health and Fitness Ecosystem - Part 4 - The Polar Ecosystem

Polar Ecosystem

Polar has always been one of the top fitness brands since I can first remember. Their HR accuracy was always second to none and their devices were reliable and for a long time were the gold standard. They had struggled with the smartwatch, integrated GPS and smart fitness watch concepts, causing them to fall dramatically behind the likes of Garmin, TomTom and FitBit.

However, they have really stepped up and have an amazing line of products in addition to amazing mobile apps and a website to compliment it all. So, first up is the Polar Ecosystem.

Polar Flow Website

Polar Flow is Polar's portal to all things Polar health and fitness. The site features the following sections:

• Feed
• Explore
• Diary
• Progress
• Community
• Programs

Feed is just the standard activity and social feed of friends' activities. Explore is a really neat feature that allows you to see what others are doing and where, assuming they allow it to be shared. This is a really neat social feature that makes it incredibly easy to find training partners or groups. Diary is a an awesome tool. It allows you to both plan out training, see training schedules from Programs, and see what activities you completed on what day. For details behind your training, races, and progress, the Progress tab has all of the information that whatever Polar device you use can capture. Community is another social feature that allows you find groups that you can join for training, competition, etc. For example, if you are a Strava person, there are Strava groups and challenges on there.

Finally, the Programs section. I wanted to break this out of the other description because this is an amazing tool which you won't find on most sites, especially for free. To put it simply, Programs is a tool that allows you to build a running program for common distance events; 5k, 10k, half marathon, full marathon. It's only for running, but it's amazing. And unlike most sites that provide running programs, Polar keeps in mind how important strength training is. Once you create the program, it will appear in your Diary, and depending on your Polar device, it will load the training plans onto your device. I am not going into specific details, but you can explore on your own and check out the screen captures I provided.

Polar Flow and Polar Beat Apps

Polar also has the Polar Flow and Polar Beat apps for iPhone and Android. One thing that makes these such great applications is that it can turn your phone into a fitness device and does not care if you have a Polar device or not. I am not sure why all companies do not follow Polar's lead on Polar Beat. Polar Flow serves as a dashboard and sync tool for supported Polar devices, from watches to accessories to cycling tools. I used to use a standard Polar HR watch and monitor, which cannot sync with a phone (it did had a USB sync though), as they do not have Bluetooth. However, with Polar's H7 combo Bluetooth and Polar Frequency heart rate monitor, I was able to use my watch and also use my phone with the Polar Beat app. Eventually I stopped using the watch because the Beat app had GPS and tracked way more data. As a quick note, Polar Flow used to be both apps, and I am not sure why they really had to turn it into 2 apps, other than for marketing and branding purposes.

Devices

Polar currently has a very nice lineup of devices, ranging from activity trackers to multi-sport devices. They pretty much have everything to cover your healthy lifestyle. I am not going into the list, but you can visit Polar's website to learn about all of the offerings.

Polar Beat and H7 Heart Rate Monitor

Polar Flow

Final Thoughts

Overall, Polar is still a top company when it comes to fitness and fitness tracking. They have come a long way in smarter devices and activity tracking. If you know people who are using Polar, it's an awesome ecosystem to work on. Plus, as an added bonus, most gym equipment supports the native Polar signal. Up next is FitBit.

NOTE: Both Polar Flow and Beat pictures are taken from Polar's website and are property of Polar.

Week 1 Progress

So, MyFitnessPal isn't working for posting my fitness Blog there. I am pretty angry at them, but it can't be helped. Therefore, I will just post everything here. As a note, I am now on Week 2, but it's been almost 2 weeks with MFP support having no clue how to fix the issue.

Last week was week 1 of my training plan. My current focus is rebuilding my running, which involves cadence training and complementary strength and cross training. 

So, I was not as successful as I would have liked, but I still made the effort. I missed 2 of my runs, which I was no happy about, but I got in all of my strength sessions and the long bike trainer session. 

Compared to prior weeks where I was doing 10 minute cadence runs, my run this week saw an improvement in cadence, which was awesome. I was so dead afterwards though. I am in the avg HR zone of 78% max hr for my runs, and peak at 98%.  However, I recover within 30 minutes, post-run, so I am pushing myself but not past my limits. This is why I am currently seeing week-over-week progress. I am really shooting to not have more than 1 session of plateau. 

For my strength, I am seeing constant improvement in strength and flexibility. However, I still have a ton of core muscle groups that are insanely weak. I will keep focusing on them. I am starting a Nike Training Club (NTC+) 4-week workout routine that is going to help with this. 

For my bike trainer session, it was rough; really rough. I had a super active day doing yard work and carrying many heavy things up and down stairs for most of the day. And this was also my first cadence ride on my trainer. I was over 10 rpm below my goal average, and I thought I was going to die in the 30-minute session. But that's fine; the sky is practically the limit for how much improvement I can make on my cycling.

Looking forward to more consistency in Week 2 of my program. Hope everyone is working at their goals!