"Average" fitness

(Jordie) #1

So today at the gym I noticed that the cross trainer I was working on had a “fitness test” mode. I plugged in my age, weight and sex, and then I had to keep moving at 60-80rpm for as long as I could, while the machine cranked up the resistance every two minutes. At 11min (it went up to 35 minutes!) I was starting to feel tired so I told myself I’d get to 12:30 and then if I wanted to stop I could. At 12:30, I felt like I could have kept going if I had someone encouraging me, or was trying to impress someone (ie, by this point I was “sweaty and very tired” but not “red faced, gasping, stumbling, exhausted”); but neither of those two situations obtained so I let myself stop.
The machine crunched the numbers and told me my fitness level was “Average”. I was actually pretty thrilled - I’d say it would be at least 6 years or maybe even more since I would have claimed Average fitness levels for myself. So I’m chalking this one up, and celebrating it, as an NSV :slight_smile:

(Melanie Marie) #2

I would totally accept that! I wonder if my elliptical machine has that setting. I still haven’t figured out all the options.

#3

Just wondering if it was using heart rate in the calculations or purely the fact that you could crank out the power?

(Jordie) #4

I think it was probably just power - I did have my hands on the heart rate
monitor for most of the exercise but it didn’t seem to be reporting my
heart rate anywhere. I definitely wasn’t at max heart rate though, I know
what that feels like!

(Omar Newsome) #5

That’s awesome! You were able to push past that initial barrier which I suspect will move with time!