Inclines

Sunday, October 12, 2008
Booty kicker.  I am 20 days in to this experiment and certainly 20 days healthier.  The first day I broke out in a sweat going 1.5 mph before settling in on a 1.2 mph non-sweat generating speed. However, with my background in sports medicine I understand the necessity of the SAID principle (specific adaptations to implied demands) - meaning that I need to continually raise the bar in order to keep making good progress.  Thus today I tried walking my usually time and speed at 3% incline.  I am happy to report that my gluts are a little sore but I am no more sweaty than I was walking at 1.2 mph.  I will have one more long day tomorrow before I board the plane for California - so I will report how I feel physically after a 10+ mile day.

4 comments:

Mariposafan said...

So why would someone like me, who wants to use this principally to lose weight, be concerned with SAID? If I don't keep challenging my body will it stop burning as many extra calories (i.e. will my body somehow become more efficient at the walking motion)?

Juli said...

Yep, pretty much. I noticed that I wasn't able to keep my heart rate in the fat burning zone (55-70% of MHR) after 3 weeks @ 1.2 mph. So in order to keep my heart rate up, my choice was to increase speed or increase the incline. If you have ever plateaued in your progress either losing weight or building muscle, one of the reasons is that your body becomes too happy in its new state. Increase the demand on your body jump starts your progress.

Mariposafan said...

I wonder how much difference there will be? I thought that one of the results of Dr. Levine's research was that we don't need to keep our heartrate up in some range in order to burn additional calories - that keeping it up higher will result in more calories burnt but the slow and steady approach also works as long as you give it time. Am I misinterpretting his results?

Juli said...

No, I don't think so -- slow and steady seems to work as well. As a professional in the allied health disciplines, I am curious how my own body will respond. I am of the mind that as long as I am moving more (be it 1.2, 1.4, on an incline, on the flat) that it will translate to 1) feeling better, 2) better fitness, 3) healthier outlook. It is hard to gauge if there is any difference thus far since I increased my incline just prior to being off my treadmill desk for one week's time.