14th February. A day when all hearts should rejoice. Not all do though!
Some hearts are rejected, sadly by their owners, left to slumber in the darkest corners of inactivity, quivering softly in the caverty that is the human chest.

Today is Tuesday and Tuesdays for me are the days when I have one of my two weekly spinning classes at the local baths in Norrköping (Pronounced Norrsherping).
It’s a 55min workout using Activio´s pulse system.

Each participant chooses a pulseband and enters their maximum heart rate into the system. If they don’t know their Max HR then the system will help them work it out. It can take up to 5 classes before you localise your own Max HR. Each participant has their own personal monitor on a projected screen just above or beneath the workout profile as seen below.

All the information you need is projected onto a screen beside the instructor

A typical 55 min workout can look as shown in the picture below.  Just as challenging for the mind as for the heart.

activio graph

A steady warm-up to around 13th minute then a set of 9 x 3 minute intervalls at 90 cadens (bpm) only broken by a 60 second rest at around 70 cadens. Hard Intervalls are done sitting, active resting intervalls can be done standing if preferred.

There is another more joyful class where I mix a lot of the music and chop and change in accordance with my own mood and taste as seen here below.

Activio class design

Now you could be forgiven for thinking that it looks like just one big hill to climb up but in fact this profile is for the heart. The figures along the X axis indicate % of your maximum heart rate.
The Y-axis is the time. A shadowed line moves from left to right across the projector screen and where the two lines meet you match that target with your own heart rate by applying the right resistance and holding the musics tempo.

During the New year up untill the end of March I run 2 hour classes that are designed to be as much like a cycle race as possible. Always changing the cadens from medium to slow to fast but trying to teach the body to reach the right heart rate, sometimes maintaining the same heart rate with different power output; pedaling faster and slower as in the final image below.

2 hours activio

I always add a 5 minute warm-down at the end so that the participants can check from week to month just how quickly their heart-rate falls after just 5 minutes. When your heart gets stronger, it increases the amount of blood it can pump around the body per beat which enables it to beat fewer times per minute. A handy way of knowing that your condition is improving.

Finally, as I frequently tell my participants. This class is not for you, it’s for your heart.
So why not give your heart a present on Valentines day, and give it a bloody good work-out!

Footnote:
Vätternrundan #4. Plastic bags over the socks and inside the shoes for the second time in 4 years. Wet, wet, wet was the keyword again. I did it, other than being wet there was a rumour of one man cycling twice around the lake. In this weather??