New fitness math

Over my long middle-aged man fitness journey, I’ve trained in a variety of ways and have kept record of my fitness training doings.  It’s how my brain works.  Record a workout, study my effort, repeat the workout periodically and strive to improve my performance.

Generally, this performance improvement has been measured in the time it takes to complete the same workout.  When I used to be a runner, it was, for example, the time it took to run a fixed distance.  So, when I ran a 5k distance 45 seconds faster than the prior time, I did myself good.  Less time was better than more time, and fitness progress in my book.

Or, for example, I may have had a workout that had a time limit to it and my effort was directed towards how many repetitions of an exercise, or how many rounds of a multiple-exercise superset complex I could complete in a fixed time allotment.  More repetitions or rounds completed compared to the last time was fitness progress in my book.

And when I was into lifting heavier weights, a single repetition completed with a weight that was more than my previous workout was fitness progress in my book.

Lately the workouts I’ve been doing have a common denominator of lasting about 20 minutes in duration.  As my fitness improves, again, my natural inclination is how it has historically been; complete more repetitions or rounds in the same time while generally keeping constant the load (weight) of my training implement.  These days I’m using kettlebells as my training implement. 

But this is not what I’ve decided to do.  Instead, I’m keeping the repetitions and/or rounds relatively fixed and increasing the load as my measure of progress.  So, if my kettlebell complex consists of 5 rounds of 5 exercises performed with each arm for 5 repetitions, I’ll stick with this 5x5x5 plan and ramp up the weight of the kettlebell I’m using for this workout, while still limiting my workout to 20 minutes.

For lack of a better term, I’ll call this my new fitness math.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum