Cardio and Heart Rate questions

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unknownauthor

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I've always been more interested in weight lifting than cardio but thanks to a slowing metabolism I've been hitting the elliptical trainer a bit lately. I've just got a couple questions.

I usually get on the machine for around 60 minutes and it reports I've burned about 1000 calories in the process. Is that a fair amount or should I be shooting for 1500 given that length of time?

I also have a question about the heart monitor. The machine says that my heart rate hovers around 80 bpm throughout the entire duration (which it tells me is a warmup heart rate) with occasional jumps to about 160 bpm but never anything in between (except for the few seconds that it's switching between the two.) What's even weirder is it's jumping for no apparent reason. I don't feel like I'm running any harder during those moments and then it just drops back to 80 for no reason as well. It's not just he one machine either so I don't think it's broken. Am I misunderstanding something here?
 
unknownauthor said:
I've always been more interested in weight lifting than cardio but thanks to a slowing metabolism I've been hitting the elliptical trainer a bit lately. I've just got a couple questions.

I usually get on the machine for around 60 minutes and it reports I've burned about 1000 calories in the process. Is that a fair amount or should I be shooting for 1500 given that length of time?

I also have a question about the heart monitor. The machine says that my heart rate hovers around 80 bpm throughout the entire duration (which it tells me is a warmup heart rate) with occasional jumps to about 160 bpm but never anything in between (except for the few seconds that it's switching between the two.) What's even weirder is it's jumping for no apparent reason. I don't feel like I'm running any harder during those moments and then it just drops back to 80 for no reason as well. It's not just he one machine either so I don't think it's broken. Am I misunderstanding something here?
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Don't rely on the calculators on the machines. Unless your sprinting the entire 60 minutes there is no way your burning 1000 calories.

More like 400-500 calories.
 
Really? Just 500? It reports I've run 5.5 miles and I have the resistance up kind of high. (Precore machine, level 10 elevation, level 10 resistance)
 
unknownauthor said:
Really? Just 500? It reports I've run 5.5 miles and I have the resistance up kind of high. (Precore machine, level 10 elevation, level 10 resistance)
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Yep. 500-600. Maybe even a bit less or more depending on how fit you are. The more fit you are at a certain exercise, the lower your heart rate will be, and the less calories you will burn. Impossible to accurately tell how many calories you burn exactly, smartest thing to do is listen to the body

Now, if you were a fat slob and were completly out of shape. And you ran 5.5 miles with a high resistance, then i don't see 1000 calories to be that unrealistic.
 
Nah. I'm 6'3" 220 pounds. The body fat percentage device they have at 24 hour fitness says I've got about 38 pounds of fat. Any thoughts on why my heart rate seems to be so random?
 
unknownauthor said:
Nah. I'm 6'3" 220 pounds. The body fat percentage device they have at 24 hour fitness says I've got about 38 pounds of fat. Any thoughts on why my heart rate seems to be so random?
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Yeah, those grip heart rate monitors don't always work properly. 80bpm is too low and 160 is probably too high. Get yourself a Polar heart rate monitor and the chest strap is compatible with most machines and you won't have to grip the heart rate monitor sensors.
 
exercise is a personal experience. No machine will ever help you exercise better than you'd be able to by listening to your own body. In fact it may be less effective as you forget how to listen to your body, and start relying on the machines to tell you what to do.

Those pulse calculators on exercise machines are notoriously inaccurate. There was even a news story in this city a couple years ago about just how inaccurate those built-in gadgets were. Some day you should have fun and experiment with those gadgets. Take your resting heart rate. Let the screen clear, then take your resting heart rate again. Do it 3 or 4 times and see how many different results you get. Start doing some light exercise, measure it again. Go from light exercise into a heavy cardio, and again, check for the difference, keep checking again and again, right after you just checked. It's not impossible that you'll get different results each time, some of which might not logically reflect your exercise level.

The calorie calculator is just a joke though. It's meant to encourage those calorie counters into chosing those machines. Fact is, nobody, except for a medical professional with access to powerful analytical tools, will ever come close to telling you how many calories you are burning at any given time.

Even your BMR is wrong. EVERYTHING in your body burns calories. The health of your lungs takes up calories, healthy digestion takes up calories, any strong organ function will be effectively burning calories, different organ health, different energy requirements. Muscle takes calories to maintain, so does fat. Muscle takes more energy than fat does, except muscle also weighs more than fat, and takes up much less space. So, without knowing your diet in detail, the health of all your organs, bones, etc, in detail, the exact level of muscle you have, and the exact level of fat you have, as well as your genetics, you will never have an accurate metabolism measurement.

IMHO everything that goes beyond diet and activity is pretty much a fad as far as getting in shape goes.

Instead of relying on a machine to tell you how fast your body is functioning (aka your metabolism), learn your body. Watch how long it takes you to recover from injury, or illness. The faster you recover, the higher your average metabolism is at, the more calories you're burning daily. It doesn't matter how many calories you burn during a workout, if you're exhausted, you've worked out effectively, you will lose weight, get strong, whatever. It's pretty simple.

There are plenty of signs that your metabolism is higher, unfortunately these are most noticeable in daily life rather than exercise time. Fact is though, it doesn't matter how many calories you've burned working out. If you've used too many, your body will get hungry to replenish them. If you've used too few, you'll still have energy to keep going. As long as you aren't eating like crap and abusing your body outside of your workout, it will respond as you're hoping, just don't force it.

If you REALLY need to count your pulse rate for whatever reason, do it after your workout when you're exhausted, and do it by putting your fingers against your neck pulse and carry a stopwatch. Manual counting is always more reliable than a handle bar on a machine.
 
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Heh, I figured the calorie counter was off by some but mainly I'm just using the number to gauge how hard I pushed myself. Though it's not accurate I would think it's consistent at least? So if I go back tomorrow and I run until it says 1500 calories I know I've burned more than I did last time. I'm not counting calories or anything I just need some way of observing improvement and I'm not really interested in getting faster. I'd much rather turn up the resistance.

And I don't really need the heart rate monitor either. I was fairly certain after running for about 30 minutes my heart rate couldn't be the exact same BPM as when I started. I just didn't know those things were so inaccurate.

Like I said I'm more interested in weight lifting than cardio but I'm just trying to get a feel for this stuff. I would like to try a marathon at some point but I don't want to embarrass myself by placing 900th against 1000 people.
 
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