The Fitness Appraisal: I'm Officially a Freak

Let me get two things out of the way before I begin. First of all, I think I mentioned joining a gym and updated my weight (no change) at the end of the blog. A couple of you have pointed out I don't lose weight by actually joining a gym. Of course, I failed to mention that I swam a couple of times last week (2km each) and did a brief, 60min workout in the gym. Hence the expectation that I might lose some weight. Not to be though!

Secondly, yes I am writing a blog entry on a Saturday night. It's sad I know, but it would be sadder if I wasn't going to Rotto on Sunday and Monday nights. I'm treating those two days as my weekend, so it was quiet last night and will be tonight also.

Anyways, there is a reason for writing this now. Today I had my fitness appraisal and I have a lot of figures to remember. Today raised way more questions than it answered.

I just made it to my 11am appraisal. The chap to appraise me was Chris, who's South African. He asked me to fill in a form - the usual stuff: what injuries I've had, what my aims are, what sort of things I want to do, and how much time I'm willing to give. So I filled it in.

A few minutes later Chris came back and read through the form. Obviously he'd already seen me and formed an impression. He saw that I'd written, among other things, that I want to work out twice a week for two hours.

He raised an eyebrow.

He asked why I wanted to work for so long, and I told him: its about as long as I was working out when in the UK. Then he told me that it was futile - that anything over an hour was of no benefit. In fact he said that, without putting additional sugar into your system you'll be burning muscle.

Now, I'm not sure I can really agree with that, but then I don't have any expertise. But other experts gave me that programme in the UK, so what do you say? I'm sure in health ed we were told you burn sugars first, then fats and finally muscle. He totally skipped fats! Maybe he knows what he's talking about, but I might seek a second opinion.

Nonetheless I handed him my old programme, which I took along with me.

He had no problem with my aim.

Things got more interesting when he started taking my measurements. Quite a bit of them actually, including weight, height, skin folds, blood pressure, resting HR, etc. The weight was 94.7kg, but that doesn't count as loss as it was a different set of scales. I'm 181cm tall by the way - 5' 11.5".

Blood pressure was OK (117 over something), resting heart rate was surprisingly low at 60, but still OK (72 is normal). Lower is better, but being only 60 was a surprise to Chris.

Come to think of it, Chris was surprisingly indiscreet and not very good at all at hiding his surprise at some of my (better than expected) results. I'm not entirely sure that's a good quality in someone who is dealing with people looking to improve themselves on a daily basis.

Turns out my body fat is 25% or so, which is about 5% outside of the ideal band for healthy people. That was absolutely no surprise to me (or Chris).

In this time he'd looked over my programme. I spoke about my previous efforts. He looked at me, dumbfounded.

"You ran at 12kmh for 15 minutes on a 4% incline"

"Yeah - 4% or 4 degrees. I can't remember"

"Really?"

"Um, yeah."

We moved on. I found that I had to moving.

I explained what I focused on last time, and what I enjoyed. As mentioned I'd already done a session at the gym on Thursday - just a quick one - and it was clear they didn't have all the equipment I needed to continue that old programme. I'll publish my old routine when I get a chance (I don't have it hear, I think I have it at work).

My focus in the previous programme was on shoulder strength (for bowling and, I'll admit it, appearance) and core strength (for balance and a healthy back). I wasn't too worried about building up muscle mass, and I certainly wasn't worried about building strength in my legs.

We'd looked at what I wanted to achieve, and we'd looked at my body shape. The final test was one of fitness. Nine minutes on an exercise bike, keeping the RPM to 60. He asked me how fit I thought I was. I had no idea (or, really, any idea of what units I would use in giving an answer - really, what should I say - "two-thirds of an aerobics instructor"? "one-and-a-half golfers"?).

He hooked me up to a heart monitor and I hopped on. It was really very easy at first, a little too easy. He'd started me too low. After three minuted he increased the resistance on the bike and it was a little harder but not much. Three minutes later, for the last leg, it got a little harder. I was sweating moderately. Towards the end of the final leg he said he set the bar too low for me.

Once again, he looked surprised.

"This is actually on quite a high level, and you're not even meeting the target workout heart rate. I haven't made it hard enough for you."

He'd been taking readings all the way through the session, and as I removed the monitor and sat down he did some calculations. He looked at them and did them again. Then he looked at the tables.

"OK, so we've looked at your power output in this session and converted it to power output per kilogram. But your figure is artificially low as you never reached the target heart rate of 145bpm - you only got to 138."

The figure was 2.14 (watts or kilowatts per kg - I'm not sure which). Looking at the chart and trying to make his jaw-dropping look less obvious. For a male my age there were a series of figures - percentile figures. The median was about 1.6 I think. There was another figure for 75th percentile, about 1.9. I remember the highest figure though - for the 95th percentile. It was 2.34. I was in about the 85th percentile for fitness, given my age.

OK, now you're all surprised too, just like my South African friend. He was stumbling over his words trying to figure it out.

Suddenly some stroke of inspiration came over him. I thought he'd finally realised he forgot to carry the one or something, and that would make my figures better correspond to ... my figure.

But I was wrong. His stroke of genius, as we exited the appraisal room and moved to the counter was that he now gets to design a workout for me. I'd already mentioned I'd need a new one about half an hour ago.

All-too-casually he mentioned it again.

"So, you still need a programme then?"

"Yeah I think so."

"We don't always do programmes for members you know."

"Oh really? That's OK then - I'm happy to use my old one. I'll just do the ones I can."

"No! Um... no, it's OK, I'll sort one out for you. I can't do it now, but when will you next be in?"

"Wednesday or Thursday I think. So Wednesday's fine."
(I wanted to get it done as soon as possible - I'm at Rotto before that)

"Can we make it Thursday? Thursday afternoon? I'll be in on Thursday afternoon."

"Yeah, OK, if you like. Do you need to do it because you did my appraisal?"

"No I don't normally have to do it but I should this time. The others might not ... get it."

"Um... OK." I was getting a touch uncomfortable. My form was still out so I picked it up to file away: "So this form I filled out - that goes in this filing cabinet?"

"No leave it out - I'll keep it separate. I won't let the others see this, they probably won't ... get it."

"Um... OK." Genuinely getting uncomfortable now.

"And I'll keep your old programme - is that OK? I'll keep it with your forms here. Separate."

"No problem. I can print out another one."

"OK, great."

"Yeah, see you Thursday I guess. I'm gonna do a bit of a session in the gym now if that's OK."

And I did. Bigger than last Thursday's one, and enough to be sweating profusely. After a 5 minute run to cool down I swam 500m too, to cool down further and wash a bit of sweat off me. It was a nice day for it.

Anyways, now I'm filed away separately from everyone else (under C for Circus Freaks I imagine), we shall have to wait and see what my programme will look like on Thursday.

I was curious tonight after I was weighed. I went to the original set of scales and weighed myself.

I've lost two kilos, but that still doesn't count as weight loss! My weight always fluctuates during the week (usually goes up on the weekend when I booze and eat through my hangover). I weigh myself every Thursday (there's a reminder in my phone). So the true test will come when I return from Rotto.

Until then...