Posted By Rich Bryant on September 20, 2009

Measuring Progress

It seems to me the height of illogic to measure the progress of a fitness program by measuring something other than that which you are attempting to improve.

I’m speaking, of course, of peoples’ totally illogical tendency to measure improvements in health by weighing themselves.

Consider the case that I work out like crazy with goal of becoming less fat, and in doing so I gain twenty pounds of rippling muscles while losing twenty pounds of fat.  In this case I may look and feel like Tarzan (actually, it would take me substantially more than losing twenty pounds of fat for me to achieve that goal), but the scales tell me I’ve made no progress!

A much better measure might be, for example, to pick a shirt you’ve not worn in several years and set as a goal to be able to wear that shirt again.  One thought I like to entertain is that if I can fit into a shirt I wore fifteen years ago then I have turned back the hands of time by fifteen years!

Other goals might be to improve certain aspects of your workout – to be able to swim some number of laps in a day, or to do some number of sit-ups.

For myself, I would never choose to measure my progress by measuring my weight – it’s just far too likely that I would be setting myself for a let down that, in reality, I would not deserve.

Noodle Legs

Lately I’ve noticed that my first twenty to twenty-five laps in the pool seem to be a lot more work than those that come after.  When I start my muscles are a little tense, and this tends to cause my body to fight itself while swimming.

But somewhere after lap number twenty I start to notice that my legs in particular start to become much more relaxed – a state that I have whimsically dubbed “noodle legs”.  When the noodle legs set in I find myself swimming more strokes between inhaling and exhaling, and I find that the time between the end of one lap and the start of the next is reduced from maybe five seconds to maybe two seconds.

Cramps Ahoy!

This past week I’ve been sidelined by craps in my right calf on multiple occasions.  And I’ve learned that such cramps are not to be taken lightly. I’ve tried simply getting better hydration and taking magnesium supplements to avoid the cramps, all to no avail.

Today, however, I had some great success by drinking a bottle of Gatorade’s new lower-calorie ‘G2′ beverage about one hour before my workout.  Maybe it was coincidence (I think not), but today I had absolutely no evidence of cramps, even though I pushed myself pretty hard in the pool.  I’m also thinking that what is good for the calf muscle is also good for the heart muscle.

So, I’ll be hitting the G2 pretty regularly this week – we’ll see if it continues to keep the cramps away.

NOTE: The author has no affiliation with Gatorade or G2, other than being a consumer of their product.

Categories: Workout Diary
Tags: cramps, goals, measuring, progress