Project Exercise

I was talking to a friend at work about my i30×5 workout program yesterday.  He is considering doing it so he asked me what he needed.  I told him that he would need either some dumbbells or resistance bands.  I also told him that an interval timer, while not required, would be highly recommended.  The Gymboss Interval Timer, I said, would be a good choice.  It’s a pretty cool timer and it works out great for the i30×5 workouts.  It has become the “gold standard” for Tabata training.

As a fellow iPhone user, my friend said that he was going to look for an interval timer for the iPhone.  Why didn’t I think of that!!!  So we searched iTunes for interval timer apps and we found a bunch of them.  In fact, Gymboss makes an iPhone interval timer app.  These apps pick up where the hardware Gymboss leaves off.  It is way easier to set the timer.  The settings are very flexible.  You can set delays at the start.  You can use different sounds and many of them can play music from your playlists.  Another great feature of these timers is that you can have it sound a different tone to signal the last interval.  You can even set some of them to signal a few seconds before the end of each interval.  The cool thing is that many of these apps go for “free” or for very little ($1.99 or less).

So for anyone thinking about getting an interval timer, check out software timers for your computer or smart devices.

A while back, someone asked me how to do push-ups without using weights or a weighted vest.  Here I show you how to do it with resistance bands.

If you want to lose weight, gain weight or simply maintain your weight, you need to figure out how many calories your body needs on a daily basis.  You can get a pretty good idea by getting your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate and adding the amount of calories you expend beyond that.  Basically BMR is the number of you would burn if say, you laid in bed all day long.  To get an accurate figure would require a lab.  However, you can get a pretty good estimate using a simple equation.  We will get to that in a moment.

To find out how many calories we expend beyond our BMR we need to find our activity level using the Harris Benedict Formula.

Ok, so here we go.  To find out how many calories you burn, do the following…

Step 1 – Figure out your BMR

English BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) – ( 6.8 x age in year )
 
Metric BMR Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 9.6 x weight in kilos ) + ( 1.8 x height in cm ) – ( 4.7 x age in years )
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 13.7 x weight in kilos ) + ( 5 x height in cm ) – ( 6.8 x age in years )

Step 2 – Figure out your activity factor and add it to your BMR

We will use the Harris Benedict Formula to determine your total caloric requirements

1. If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
2. If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
3. If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
4. If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
5. If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

Example

Ok, so let's figure out John Doe's total caloric requirements.  Joe, 35 years old, is a 6 ft, 175 pound male.  While Joe has a desk job he works out regularly using P90X.  So using the BMR formula we get this…

Step 1 – Get Joe's BMR

66 + ( 6.23 x 175 lbs ) + ( 12.7 x 72 inches ) – ( 6.8 x 35 years old)
Simplified… 66 + 1090.25 +914.4 – 238 = 1832.65
BMR = 2308.65

Step 2 – Add Joe's activity level to his BMR

According the Harris Benedict formula (see above), Joe's activity factor is 1.725 (P90X is an intense 6 day a week workout program).  So…
2308.65 x 1.725 = 3161.3
Joe burns over 3000 calories a day!  

So if Joe wants to lose weight, he could reduce his caloric intake by about 500.  So he could eat around 2661 calories a day.  Over a period of 7 days he could shave 3500 calories (7 x 500).  That is roughly a pound a week.