This is a picture Rachel and I took back in January '08, when she was living in Miller Apartments. It was a while ago. But, in addition, it's been a while since I've regularly exercised in my life. I'd say that the last time I regularly exercised was on my mission when I biked all day long. I was on bike for almost half my mission. After I got home, not much working out at all. So I've been pretty sedentary since then.Anyway, I've been taking this Fit For Life class this semester. I talked about it in an earlier post. Back in January when I had just began running and stuff, I took a fitness assessment that assessed how "fit" I was statistically according to my age. I just finished my followup fitness assessment. I thought I'd report my successes!
- BMI: To start off, they took a waist to hip ratio. This test isn't super accurate, but it's much more expensive to do the better ones. So for my BMI, I burnt an inch of fat on my waist and an inch on my hips for a score of 19.2, which is normal. It puts me at low risk for cardiovascular disease.
- My Heart Rate and Blood Pressure: pretty much the same. But, I'm not sure how accurate their reading was because my heart rate was a little high when they took it.
- % Body Fat: They took a skin fold test. Once again, not incredibly accurate, but not as expensive. I lost 4mm of fat on my thigh, which was good. Overall I lost 1% body fat. I'm now at 12%. This is really good. For men, you must have at least 3-5% body fat to survive, but an athletic man can have anywhere from 5-13%. So this was good!
- Flexibility: They had me sit and reach, pushing a standard along a scale. Before I didn't do so hot, but now I've improved by 5cm. This is good. Even still, I'm pretty average.
- Push-ups: Before I could do 22 before I got pooped. Now I can do 32. That's good, I guess. According to my age group 19-24 is average (50th percentile). 32 is excellent on their scale (80th percentile). I've decided to do more push-ups to build my muscular endurance now.
- Curl-ups: These are like crunches, where I reach my hands about two inches past a line on the floor. I was given 1 minute to do as many as I could. Before I could do 47, which was in the 80th percentile for men my age. Now though, 59! Which is in the 90th percentile!
- Bench Press: I increased my max bench by 10lbs! This was a great success for me, because I've never really been super muscular. But, I'm going to keep working on it!
- VO2 Max: this is a measurement of how well I utilize the oxygen I uptake into my body. Before I was average, now I'm still average, but I did improve a bit. According to the test, I'm up-taking about 2ml/min more oxygen than before. I know it doesn't really mean anything to most anyone. That's good though.
3 comments:
Way to go Rob! It's neat to see the actual results as facts. Cause you can feel like your getting more fit but you're not really sure so when you see the data it makes it way worth it! Nice working!
I spent a semester of my life studying VO2 max, so I am way excited for you. It's neat to see how your body changes over time due to exercise, especially with oxygen utilization. Anyway, I'm excited for you. And I love the matching pic.
Woo hoo Rob! Keep it up! Did you hear Amber's training for a fun run? I'd like to say I'll do it, but I'm so busy with kids it's difficult to train hard everyday. So I feel good if I get 3 hard 1.5 hour workouts a week. Before I had Kai, I trained and went on a diet and lost 6% body fat in about 6-8 weeks. It was awesome. At the time I worked out 3-4x a week, and counted my calories religiously at 1500-1700 calories a day. I'm thinking of doing something like that again. So way to go Rob, you can do it! Rachel, don't you worry about your weight, but you can still be fit & exercise! Don't let pregnancy scare you away from fitness!
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