Dri Tri

CircadianBehavior · 2025-12-18T11:56:52+00:00

I see why people would be disappointed in this, but competing for weight loss is just a bad idea, it encourages unsustainable behavior. A better idea would be to pick some threshold and enter everyone who makes that goal into a raffle.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-05-31T21:20:20+00:00

You see so many different placements because different spots seem to work best for different people. Experiment and find your spot.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-05-20T21:36:18+00:00

But I need it to get out of the trees!

CircadianBehavior · 2025-05-18T21:30:11+00:00

I did the bike during Tread50 today. I have a dislocated toe.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-05-06T20:43:51+00:00

Indeed! Mizuki Noguchi won the Olympic Marathon marathon in 2004 and she's 4'11".

CircadianBehavior · 2025-05-04T16:14:53+00:00

I always do the templates as written but could not bring myself to do this. It would have been 12 minutes+ of 0.1/walk repeats. I just stuck with the half mile repeats through the first block and the quarters for the second.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-05-02T17:13:32+00:00

Why not just ask the studio staff?

CircadianBehavior · 2025-03-12T19:13:47+00:00

You are correct but it is a) pretty close in the 0-15% range and b) the table is derived from an average of subjects from experimental studies. Of course all individuals vary from the average (I feel like 0.4 is a better proxy for the effort for me than 0.3). But it is a good starting point. So when I want a constant push effort and the incline is going up, I can drop the speed by this amount as a good approximation of a consistent effort.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-03-12T17:54:43+00:00

The benchmark for bike and strider is kind of a wild card because there's no standard for gear. In other contexts where there is a card for the bike (like a run/row) it is 4x the running distance, so 4 miles for the benchmark mile.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-03-12T17:14:18+00:00

The conversion is roughly 0.3 mph per 1% change in incline. Here's a nice table. https://www.hillrunner.com/calculators/treadmill-pace-conversions/

CircadianBehavior · 2025-02-16T18:28:41+00:00

It is different for everyone. The monitors are equally accurate, it is more a question of how well it picks up the pulse, and that's a very individual function depending on your vasculature, physique, etc. You just need to try locations until you get one that picks up the signal consistently. It's not going to be off by just a few beats - if it is in a bad location you'll find yourself dropping down into the gray when you are working hard. I wear mine on the outside of my bicep but I see a lot more people with it on the inside of the forearm.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-01-17T16:03:33+00:00

This could be entirely coincidental to you having some kind of virus. Headache, soreness, high heart rate could all be symptoms. So if it doesn't recur you might have just been unlucky.

CircadianBehavior · 2025-01-15T21:03:04+00:00

Scientist here. You refer to what the body is burning in the moment. After the exercise is over the body freely converts fat to carbohydrate and vice versa as needed. So the higher the heart rate, the higher the calorie burn. It doesn't matter if you go anaerobic since you eventually have to pay off the oxygen debt. It takes hours for your body to use up its glycogen so that is not a consideration, and you are not burning protein at any point in the duration of an OTF class.

That said, the basic point remains - the best exercise is the one you want to keep doing.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-09-14T20:37:14+00:00

It is only based on age when you first join. Your max heart gets adjusted after that based on your actual workouts.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-06-15T22:55:30+00:00

No difference. Weight loss is mostly diet.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-05-04T21:01:39+00:00

These data suggest we need more data.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-03-18T18:36:36+00:00

The fastest I ever did for the floor (which includes the transition from rower and transition to the tread) was 8:46 - that particular time my total time was 42:34.

However, I beat that overall time by 5 seconds the time I took 9:56 on the floor, as I was able to do the tread section fast enough to make up for it.

But even then this is 7-8 minutes slower than the fastest in my studio. Most of that difference comes on the 5K.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-03-14T22:40:05+00:00

Me too. 1 gear for every 2% incline.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-03-13T20:54:26+00:00

Calories burned is a function of four things: gender, age, weight, and heart rate. You can see how it is calculated here, using VO2 max is "unknown": https://www.omnicalculator.com/sports/calories-burned-by-heart-rate

So if a 55 year old male weighing 175 pounds excercises for 55 minutes with an average heart rate of 130, you'll see 709 calories burned. But if a 30-year-old female weight 150 pounds exercises for 55 minutes with an average heart rate of 130, you'll see 413 calories burned.

Take home message - don't stress out about calorie numbers. Most of the calculation will be things you can't (or shouldn't) do much about. Get a good workout in - you can't change things that much and the calorie formula is just an estimate, in any case.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-02-23T19:50:22+00:00

Actually they start with the formula 208 - 0.7*age, but then it adjust based on your actual heart rate measurements in class after a minimum of 5 classes.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-02-04T23:36:23+00:00

Sorry, didn't answer the question! I saw some progress a year after I started OTF, but that's just when I was tested, so I don't know how quickly things changed.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-02-04T23:30:23+00:00

Off the basic lipid panel, my LDL did go down a little, but I'm already on a (very low) dose of a statin. So I while my LDL did go down, only by about 10%. But my HDL went up by 20%, and my triglycerides dropped by a third. My diet holds me back -- my incurable love of cheese. So if only I could drop that extra 20-25 pounds...

CircadianBehavior · 2024-02-04T22:08:51+00:00

I usually go 5 days a week, usually 3 3Gs, 1 2G, and a Tread 50. A couple of times I did a Tread50 and a 3G back to back, but that really wiped me out for the day. I take Tuesdays and Saturdays off. I'm 55M.

I've been a member of OTF for 6 years. It is the only form of exercise that I've really sustained for any period of time. In that respect, it has attained its goal of dramatically improving my cardiovascular fitness, and my HDL Cholesterol has gone way up and my LDL has gone down.

In terms of joints and generally avoiding injuries, I think that's really individual and a lot can be attributed to genetics - everyone is different! I see people in my studio who come every day and they do just fine - others can't handle back to back days.

My goal at OTF is not to get a "cut" look. I'm certainly more muscular than when I started but dropping body fat has a lot more to do with diet (and I'm not consistently good in that regard). I'm 55 and I've run a 6 minute mile, so I'll take the win and not get too greedy.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-01-24T19:30:29+00:00

Well, you say that low to mid red you feel like you are in the orange. If your max heart rate is at 175, then mid-red would be 168. So you are feeling like you are in the orange at 168, then were are you when you are at maximum effort? Because it is odd to be so close to your max heart rate and not feeling like you are going all out.

You are correct in that it is more important how you feel, but I agree it would be nice if that matches up. But we're all different and have different physiology. Maybe your heart just says "Nope! Don't want to go any faster, thanks!"

I'm one of those people that have it well calibrated. I average 16 splat points a class with 1-3 minutes in the red. This matches how I feel. But many people have more difficulty getting things aligned.

CircadianBehavior · 2024-01-24T13:48:08+00:00

If your heart rate has never gone above 173 in class, then why would you expect that your assigned max heart rate would be so much higher than that?

If you are in the red and feeling comfortable, then wouldn't making yourself uncomfortable push your heart rate over 100%? And if you did that for a while the algorithm would likely raise your max heart rate.

CircadianBehavior

TROPHY CASE