There’s also a pretty good free app called Cardiio which measures your heart rate. You need to know your resting heart rate to calculate your max HR. https://www.cardiio.com/
Of course these heart rate ranges are very approximate. I run 3 times a week using a GPS and heart monitor device (and I’ve had regular and nuclear stress tests done). After a while your body knows when to push harder without referring to the monitor and you can predict fairly accurately what the monitor tracking app - in my case a Garmin product - will show after a run.
Still, tracking this stuff keeps my interest up and it’s good to see my running performance improving slightly over time, even if I’m not exactly a spring chicken any more!
Good article by Stevenson with one exception:
Under all circumstances, endurance training based on an assumed max heart rate is a bad idea. You are piling two approximations on top of each other, and the end result can be way off.
The article recommends endurance training below 85% of your max heart rate. The reason for picking the number 85% is that an average person will have their lactate threshold at 85% of their max heart rate. And training in the heart rate range just below your lactate threshold is exactly what you want to do in endurance training. (This heart rate range is often referred to as “Zone 4”).
The problem is that we do not all have our lactate threshold at 85% of our max. heart rate. And we do not all have a max. heart rate which can be calculated from the age based formula. So if we first approximate our max heart rate by an age based formula because we don’t know our real max. heart rate, and then multiply that by 85% because we don’t know our real ratio between lactate threshold and max heart rate, then we risk being very far from the real number.
In my case (I am a 50 years old male), the general formulas would give a max. heart rate of 170 and a lactate threshold of 144. But my actual lactate threshold is 161. If I train just below 144 bpm, I will only be in zone 2, not in zone 4.
So instead of making two approximations on top of each other, you could as well go directly to the result, the lactate threshold. Some watches with a heart rate monitor can measure it by analyzing “heart rate variability” - what ever that is. But there is also a rather simple test you can do if you have a heart rate monitor:
Run for 30 minutes at the highest speed you can hold for all 30 minutes. 10 minutes into the run, start logging your heart rate, so you get a log of the last 20 minutes of the run. Your average heart rate for those 20 minutes will be your lactate threshold - or at least a lactate threshold approximation which is closer to the truth than the age based methods.
That is why i prefer sit-on-top kayak over sit-in kayaks. You should try strength training and practice getting in and out. Just try to find your way and style.
@mikeholding87@gmail.com said:
That is why i prefer sit-on-top kayak over sit-in kayaks. You should try strength training and practice getting in and out. Just try to find you way and style.
I am finding many/most videos show entry and exit using the paddle as an outrigger. This works but there is a likely result at some point, especially if you are a big person … you will break your paddle. If your flexibility is such that you need the paddle as an outrigger, put minimal weight on the paddle and try to evolve until you don’t need the paddle. Carrying a spare paddle is always a good idea anyway.
I’m 5’11" and 230 lbs (up to 240 at times). I’ve been using everything from a 20-year-old Perception Sea Passage fiberglass shaft paddle to a carbon-shaft Werner Shuna, to a Gearlab carbon fiber Greenland paddle as an outrigger and I don’t recall ever feeling like I was going to break one.
If you swing both legs out you shouldn’t be leaning fully on the outrigger, It’s just there to provide a few extra pounds of resistance as you stand up (or slid in).
Run for 30 minutes at the highest speed you can hold for all 30 minutes. 10 minutes into the run, start logging your heart rate, so you get a log of the last 20 minutes of the run. Your average heart rate for those 20 minutes will be your lactate threshold - or at least a lactate threshold approximation which is closer to the truth than the age based methods.
Not a runner. Left knee doesn’t like it (leg fracture some years ago). For me, endurance training on my indoor rower has given the best benefit. I’m okay with using the approximations as my body lets me know when I’m at zone 4 on the rower.
@GrumpySquatch said:
I’m 5’11" and 230 lbs (up to 240 at times). I’ve been using everything from a 20-year-old Perception Sea Passage fiberglass shaft paddle to a carbon-shaft Werner Shuna, to a Gearlab carbon fiber Greenland paddle as an outrigger and I don’t recall ever feeling like I was going to break one.
I think the risc of breaking the paddle is highest when you exit on a jetty. The way I teach beginners to do this is with one hand on the paddle and cockpit coaming directly behind them, and the other hand on the paddle over the jetty. This prevents that they accidentally push the kayak away from the jetty when they exit. But if they place their hand midway between the point where the paddle is supported on the kayak and the point where the paddle is supported on the jetty, they can create a huge bending moment. If I do it, I can feel the paddle flexing a lot. So I also teach heavy paddlers to place the “jetty hand” nearer to the kayak than they feel convenient as this will reduce the bending moment.