Training with the goal in mind of constantly adjusting effort level up or down so as to keep heart rate within a range or near a particular target heart rate is sometimes called Heart Rate Zone Training. You could simply call it “zoning,” if everyone understood the context and that’s what today’s title means.
Wow, it’s been ten days since the previous blog post.
But though I haven’t been posting daily, there have been workouts every day since then and they have all been done while keeping the overall goal in mind of balancing a daily dose of healthy activity while simultaneously “detraining” by keeping the amount and level of exertion moderate enough to allow the heart to straighten out its tangled web of whatever has been causing the atrial fibrillation episodes.
There are no guidelines for how to “detrain” without simply ceasing to exercise, so I’m doing it by trial and error, with mostly random experimenting from one week to the next. The only thing I’ve been doing consistently while “detraining” is resisting the temptation to do any all-out, as-fast-as-possible pieces of any length more than a dozen or so strokes in a row.
There was no “all-out” effort of even so much as one stroke today.
All data and “live” graphs can be seen via this: link to the online logbook. To see any session’s data and its interactive graph, click the corresponding “+” sign in the “Action” column for that session.
Today’s workouts totaled eight: Two unfocused warmup sessions on the SkiErg, five unfocused pieces on the rowing machine and one focused session, the 8th of all eight. The focused session was a preset distance of 5,469 meters with the goal of steering heart rate as near as possible to 120 BPM during the session. A screenshot of its graph is below and the rest of the data is viewable via the link in the previous paragraph.
First impression from today’s first few minutes on the SkiErg were slight amazement. Heart rate remained low, even though I was starting out faster than the two previous sessions (Sept 2nd and Sept 4th) when heart rate was irregular and also insisted on being way too high for the pace / effort level.
Not sure if I should believe that it would continue normally, I watched it closely with every stroke. The heart can be tricky and deceptive, you know. But it continued to behave well on the SkiErg. In fact, it behaved very well and its average rate was less than 100 BPM during the first 100 Calories. During the second 100 Calories I added 5 intervals of 10 Calories each and heart behavior remained very good. The overall effort for today’s SkiErg session was RPE Level 2.
Once the SkiErg session was over, I wondered if the heart’s good behavior would continue through the rowing session. RowPro was set to 10,000 meters and I decided to row a bit faster than either of the previous two 10K rowing sessions to put the heart to a little test.
The results were about as good as I could have hoped for. Heart rate disappeared momentarily, nine times during the session. But I didn’t feel any fluttery feeling of irregular heart beat. The rowing session was done at RPE Level 4. For a bit more more motivation during the rowing session, I played the screen recording of a 10K session done in July 2018. It had been done at a pace of 2:17.5 and I prodded myself to stay ahead of it. It’s link is Indoor Rowing 10K 07062018 .
Eager to attribute today’s heart behavior to some cause, however illogical that is, I first decided that today’s good heart behavior was due to persisting in doing workouts during the previous sessions, even though the heart had acted cantankerously irregular and its rate was much too high during those two sessions.
But then I remembered something said by the doctor who had talked about microbiomes and the diet and how some of our most beneficial microbiomes thrive on an abundance of fiber in our food. They actually digest it and get nourishment for their little microbiome bodies from fiber in our food.
So it’s equally if not more likely that today’s good heart behavior is attributable largely to the gigantic salad which was the main course for last night’s dinner. To paraphrase something the doctor said about how fruits and vegetables are so amazingly good for us: It’s almost as if they are designed to be beneficial to us.
Heart strangeness was notable for its absence.
Today’s SkiErg session.
Finish screen for today’s 10K rowing session.
RowPro report for today’s 10K rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10K rowing session.
Concept 2 online logbook chart for today’s 10K rowing session.
Today I experienced a little amelioration. Isaiah 53:6 speaks of the best amelioration of all.
At around 3 AM this morning after I woke and then returned to bed, heart rate became irregular.
Mostly it was annoying but it happens so often that I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
Early in mid morning I started doing the daily workout by setting the SkiErg for a 250 Calorie countdown.
Leisure skiing should have resulted in a low heart rate of around 100 BPM but it was still irregular and heart rate immediately went much higher than normal for that low effort level.
Instead of skiing for the entire 250 Calories, I quit after 50 Calories and took a break for water and 80 mg of aspirin.
Ordinarily, if there is such as thing as ordinary with irregular heartbeat, it has been my experience that it is inclined to become regular after taking an aspirin.
Returning to the SkiErg after waiting more than 30 minutes for the aspirin to circulate, I set up a session to count down 200 Calories, which was the remainder of the original 250 Calorie session.
After skiing for 100 Calories, heart rate was still irregular and much too high for the effort level so I cut the session short and took another break for more aspirin and water.
Taking that much time to do so few Calories on the SkiErg is very unusual. After another 30 minutes to allow the second 80 mg dose of aspirin to enter the system, I returned to the SkiErg and setup a session for the last remaining 100 Calories.
Even though I started out easy in the third installment of the SkiErg session, heart rate continued to be irregular and too high. So I increased the pace a bit to see if perhaps going a bit faster would nudge the heart into normal behavior. But it remained irregular and too high for the effort from start to finish of the third piece of the total time on the SkiErg.
Determined to do a total daily workout of 250 Calories on the SkiErg and 10,000 meters on the rowing machine, I kept my workout clothes on and took a long break before going to the rowing machine.
During that long break I had a substantial breakfast and about 12 ounces of home-brewed Starbucks coffee. By the time I was about half way through the coffee, more than four hours had passed since I’d taken the last portion of aspirin. So I took some more aspirin with a bowl of cereal and followed it with the remainder of the coffee.
The rowing session would be the 4th workout session of the day. When the 10,000 meter rowing session started, heart rate was still irregular and too high. Heart rate got as high as 192 BPM. There are two screenshots, below, which illustrate that heart rate reached 192 during the rowing session. There were two separate heart rate monitors worn during the session. One was on the chest and the other on the wrist. Each of them recorded high heart rate before heart rate behavior was ameliorated, but the Apple Watch shows that heart rate went even higher than 192 and reached as high as 202 BPM. I wouldn’t have known it, without the chest strap or the Apple Watch on the wrist. It just felt a bit fluttery, with no other symptoms.
I wasn’t rowing especially easy, but wasn’t rowing hard either. It was probably RPE Level 1 or Level 2 at the very most. Breathing easy, but rowing at a sufficient level to have a nice little bit of sweat.
After 4,001 meters of rowing, which took about 18 minutes and 24 seconds, heart rate suddenly became normal and dropped down into a normal, totally appropriate range for the effort level. It remained regular and at a normal rate for the remaining 5,999 meters of the rowing session.
Happy endings are nice. 🙂
Part 1 of 3 on the SkiErg today.
Part 2 of 3 on the SkiErg today.
Part 3 of 3 on the SkiErg today.
Report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
Concept 2 logbook chart for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
The point highlighted on the Concept 2 chart shows where heart rate reached 192 according to the signal from the Polar chest mounted heart strap.
Screen shot of the rowing session heart rate graph from the 2nd heart rate detector, a wrist-mounted smart watch.
The subconscious will stall and give you the runaround while snickering at you until you take the reins and point the way.
Like yesterday, today had an early start. Also like yesterday, the subconscious ignored last night’s intentions of doing the workout first thing in the morning as it found one thing after another to do.
Eventually, after about two hours of puttering, I realized time was flying by and scattering its feathers through my brain in the process.
Allow the heart to lead and there’s a rain of confusion. Take the reins of the skittish heart and confusion will not reign. I took the lead, held the reins and changed into workout clothes.
Did the SkiErg session first. Everything went okay except there was a computer problem and the session wouldn’t upload with the ErgData app. Manually entered the SkiErg data into the Concept 2 logbook. I’d done the SkiErg session barefoot (so it would be more fun), so next I donned some shoes to protect my feet while they’d be in the footrests of the rowing machine.
While donning shoes, heart and subconscious started snickering and dickering about doing less than 10,000 meters rowing, but I just set up RowPro for 10K and started. The chosen goal was an average pace of 2:15 or better.
The heart seemed to grumble now and then as its rate readout would disappear from the display. But it remained steady overall. It also remained in the appropriate beats/minute range for the the effort – whenever its readout was being displayed.
So everything was okay in today’s workout fray.
No chart and less data than usual for today’s SkiErg session, because a firmware problem was reported when I tried to upload it.
Not that I’ve ever done any yoga. I haven’t. But my better half has sort of suggested it a few times.
One and only one workout session was the original intention this morning. That workout was to be 200 Calories on the SkiErg. It was done.
Yenning for just a little bit more workout, I set up the rowing machine for 3,000 meters after finishing with the SkiErg.
One session of 3K on the rowing erg seemed enough to have earned some coffee and breakfast.
Generally I like to do a minimum of 10K rowing in addition to whatever is done on the SkiErg, but today seemed like a day to take a vacation from the usual workout.
A grand total of 379 Calories was burned and a few ounces of sweat were generated. The coffee tasted good afterwards.
The first workout session today was 200 Calories on the SkiErg.
Finish screen for the 3,000 meter rowing session.
Report for the 3,000 meter rowing session.
Graphs for the 3,000 meter rowing session. The graph isn’t very smooth because I slowed a few times, to operate a remote control for choosing music.
Perhaps, but not definitively. Yesterday the question arose as to whether the cause for heart strangeness (atrial fibrillation rearing its head) during the last two of yesterday’s five 2K pieces was having eaten a large breakfast and then resumed rowing while the stomach was feeling full.
Early this morning, before having so much as a crumb of food or a sip of coffee, I began the day’s workouts.
Remembering yesterday’s words, “Perhaps I will try duplicating today’s workout again tomorrow…” but on an empty stomach from start to finish, that thought was put into action and fulfilled this morning.
Happily, there was no heart strangeness from start to finish.
Actually, I did feel a tiny bit of cardio flitter-flutter in the chest. It happened one time and was during the third 2K. But it was so ephemeral that it bordered on being imaginary, though vividly so. Heart rate did not vanish from the display like it does when Afib is more persistent, so I will attribute it to being an imagination of the heart.
Perhaps rowing on a full stomach isn’t a good idea. But on the other hand, perhaps it is merely a coincidence.
Scientific experiment, this was not. Scientific experiments are more thorough. Experiment, it was. And I will keep it in mind for future reference.
Following are screenshots and data for today’s workouts.
Chart and data for the first workout session today.
Finish screen for the fifth of five 2K sessions this morning. The ending heart rate of 119 was a normal heart rate for the effort and was within a very few beats per second of the finish heart rate for each of the previous four 2K sessions.
Report and graph for first of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for second of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for third of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for 4th of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for last of five 2K rowing sessions.
Today’s heart behavior was virtually perfect, until after my stomach went from Empty to Full, with breakfast.
Perhaps I will try duplicating today’s workout again tomorrow. But if I do, there will be one difference. That difference will be to postpone eating until after all parts of the workout are finished.
Usually, eating before a workout seems to make no difference.
Zero heart strangeness happened during the first session, which was 200 Calories at RPE Level 2 on the SkiErg.
Zero heart strangeness, likewise, during the first of five lively though moderate 2K rowing pieces which followed the SkiErg session. Well, I should say almost zero during that session.
Lively though moderate rowing continued in the second and third of five 2K rowing pieces and heart behavior was perfect during each of those. My stomach had been completely EMPTY during each of those sessions.
In between the third and fourth of five 2Ks, I ate breakfast. Stomach went from Empty to Full. It was a big breakfast, volume-wise, because it included a couple quarts of water in the form of protein drink, Chia drink and 12 ounces of coffee. Plus, there were 3 pita sandwich things.
Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway in case it is not obvious, I felt very “full” in the stomach area after breakfast. But I didn’t want to wait for the sandwiches and liquids to percolate through the digestive tract, so I didn’t wait to go the rowing machine.
Going at a moderate pace of about 2:17/500 meters, heart rhythm disruption made itself felt after about 1,500 meters of the 4th 2K. It wasn’t drastically irregular, but I could feel it now and then and the heart rate display went blank a few times during both the 4th and 5th of the five 2K rowing sessions. If you look at the screenshots (below) of the finish screen views for the 4th and 5th 2K sessions, you can see that in each of them the heart rate display (bottom right corner of the RowPro screen) is blank. That’s because heart rhythm was too erratic at the finish, for the heart strap to transmit a heart rate signal.
It is PUZZLING and I’m wondering if rowing on a rather full stomach was a significant factor to have caused the fibrillation.
Everything became normal again, after all the rowing was done.
Chart and data for today’s SkiErg session.
Finish screen for first of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for first of five 2K rowing sessions.
Finish screen for second of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for second of five 2K rowing sessions.
Finish screen for third of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for third of five 2K rowing sessions.
Finish screen for fourth of five 2K rowing sessions. Notice that heart rate display went blank before the finish.
Report and graph for fourth of five 2K rowing sessions.
Finish screen for second of five 2K rowing sessions.
Report and graph for last of five 2K rowing sessions.
Most definitions of defibrillation only refer to applying an electric shock to the heart. But it seems there are other ways, less shocking, to coax heart rhythm back to normal. Today’s workout sessions on the ergs seemed to work as an effective defibrillator.
Defibrillation has a few definitions but what they all have in common is that they relate to restoring normal heart behavior by stopping the fibrillation of the heart. If you’ve ever seen a fish flopping around out of water, that’s a good analogy for heart fibrillation.
Every time my heart goes into its floppy-fish mode it is annoying. It’s worse than annoying if it happens after bedtime at night. That’s what happened yesterday evening. It continued all night and caused sleep loss. It was still happening this morning after I gave up trying to get any more sleep and got up for the day.
For the sake of possibly benefiting the heart and its mitochondria, I decided to start today’s workouts early in the morning, before having any breakfast or coffee.
I decided to divide the day’s workouts into smaller than usual increments, to arrive at the same desired goal of time on SkiErg and rowing machine.
Because the SkiErg session of 200 Calories is the shortest of my usual workouts, I did that one first. One nice thing about the SkiErg is that I don’t have to bother with shoes or socks. It can be done barefoot as easily as with shoes on. Somehow, using the SkiErg barefoot seems to make the experience seem more like play than work.
Doing the SkiErg session felt like swimming in molasses. I was very low-energy, though heart rate was high.
The first workout was 200 Calories on the SkiErg. Heart rate was too high and felt irregular throughout that session. I felt low-energy and went very slow, averaging about 2:48 for the session.
First of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions. Heart rate was irregular and too high.
The next workout was on the rowing machine. The goal was 10,000 meters total, by doing ten sessions of 1,000 meters each. For the first 1,000 meter rowing session (see image above) I didn’t pay any attention to pace and just focused on continuing to row. Heart rhythm was very irregular and disappeared from the RowPro quite a bit of the time. Heart rate was abnormally high – much too high for duration and effort level. It was done at an average pace of 2:12.5/500 meters.
Second of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions. Heart rhythm was still irregular and a bit too high.
After the first 1,000 meter session I took a break and got the Mr. Coffee busy making a pot of coffee. While coffee was brewing, I rowed the 2nd 1,000 meter session (see image above). Heart rhythm continued to be very irregular, but heart rate was in the normal range for the duration and effort level. I only focused on continuing to row and it was done more slowly than the first at an average pace of 2:17.7/500 meters.
Third of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions. Heart rate was irregular at beginning but smoothed out during the first 100 meters or so.
When I sat to row the third 1,000 meters (see image above) I decided to not only focus on simply rowing the distance, but also to do the session at a pace equal to or faster than the first 1K. It was done at an average pace of 2:12.5, like the first 1K of the day. Heart rhythm was irregular at the beginning, but smoothed out during the first 100 meters and had normal rhythm for the rest of the piece. Heart rate was a little bit too high but almost normal for the duration and effort level.
For the 4th through 10th 1,000 meter sessions, each was fractionally faster than the previous, except for the 10th. Heart rhythm and rate was normal during all of those rowing sessions from the 4th through the 10th of 10.
The 10th 1,000 meter session was done at a bit faster pace of 2:07.9, to see if it would trigger irregular heart activity but it didn’t seem to trigger anything out of the ordinary. It also had normal rhythm and rate.
Therefore I conclude that the workout sessions on the ergs were somehow helpful in defibrillation of the irregularities of heart rhythm.
Screenshots of reports & data for the 4th through 10th of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions are below this paragraph.
Fourth of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions.
Fifth of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions.
Sixth of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions.
Seventh of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions.
Eighth of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions.
Ninth of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions.
Tenth and last of ten 1,000 meter rowing sessions.
The sleeping pill I labored for today was none of the above.
So as to get a good night’s sleep tonight I spent 65.58 minutes laboring on the ergs.
Labor doesn’t have to be extremely hard to act as a sleep aid, but it has to last a while. Thirty minutes or more seems to be the minimum for exercising aerobically to serve as an effective sleep aid.
Ergs have a magical effect on sleep if they are used for a sufficient time at a moderate aerobic pace.
Each of the two workouts today was done at RPE Level 2.
Perhaps you wonder why today’s blog post title mentions a $16.40 sleeping pill. Do you? The answer is this: if you were to assign a value of $15.00 per hour to the 65 minutes and 35 seconds work on the ergs today then the wages for that time would amount to $16.40.
You might favor different value for an hourly wage of physical labor, but the value of a good night’s sleep is priceless.
Chart and data for the first of today’s two workouts, 200 Calories on the SkiErg.
Today’s workout was one session each, on SkiErg and rowing erg.
While the SkiErg session was set to count down from 200 Calories, it also had another goal which was a target pace of 2:19/500 meters. I bounced around within about 0.1 second above and below the pace target throughout the session and managed to finish within 0.1 second of target pace. It was done at RPE Level 2.
On the rowing erg, the work was easier. It was set to count down from 10,000 meters but its only objective was to burn some Calories by going the entire distance at any pace. The result was a pace that varied, averaged 2:21.5 and burned 570 Calories. It was done at RPE Level 1.
This post has the tag “heart strangeness” only because it might be concluded that there was some paroxysmal atrial fibrillation due to the look of its graph. The multitude of vertical lines in the heart rate plot happen when heart rate stops displaying a reading. Though that’s what it looks like when heart rate is irregular, I didn’t feel anything unusual. There was no fluttering etc., so I suspect that the transmitter battery may be low. I can’t be certain unless I check it, but the particular model is the Polar H7, which consumes energy about twice the rate of most other heart straps. It does so because it has not just one, but two transmitters which simultaneously transmit in two different formats. The Polar H7 is on its first battery and I’ve never logged hours-of-use vs battery life for this (or any) heart strap, so it’s merely conjecture at this point.
Chart and data for SkiErg session.
Finish screen for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
Report for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
RowPro graphs for today’s 10,000 meter rowing session.
