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If you’re a long time reader of 60 in 3, you’ll notice that I usually try to save money while improving health. I believe that health and wealth can easily go hand in hand. There’s no need to spend a lot of money on expensive gear, gym memberships or supplements. Most healthy choices end up being quite affordable. In fact, being healthy might save you money when you do things like walk instead of drive, eat at home instead of out at a restaurant or ride your bike to work. However, today, I’m going to change that a bit and tell you about the one place where you shouldn’t skimp, your feet.

Oh The Humanity!

Think about the the kind of life that feet lead when they belong to a person who’s interested in fitness.  They walk between 2 to 3 miles a day!  They go to the gym where they get pounded on for hours and hours.  They go running and have to withstand 100 to 200lbs of impact EVERY SECOND.  They go hiking and need to climb hills over rocky uneven terrain.  Sometimes they even go dancing and spend an evening shuffling around and getting stepped on.  In short, it’s a rough life, and while the rest of your body may appreciate it, your feet can easily get worn out.

Good Shoes Are A Must

Beyond giving your feet an occasional bit of rest, your most important means of protecting these valuable assets is shoes.  Which is why I’m going to tell you that shoes are the one area you shouldn’t try to save money on and instead go for the best quality possible.  That said, there’s no reason to go out there and buy a $300 pair of LED lit, computerized, pumped, Air Jordans, Racing striped, springs in the heels, Blu Tooth equipped sneakers from Nike.  Those aren’t quality, they’re just silly.  What I’m talking about is reasonably priced shoes that are also comfortable and quality.

At Work

Yes, good shoes begin at work, not at the gym.  Think about it, you spend an hour a day at the gym, but you spend 8 hours a day at work.  So the shoes you wear at work are a lot more important than your gym shoes.  Contrary to popular belief, you can actually get comfortable work shoes that don’t actually look like those old rubber shoes that nurses used to wear.  Just look for something with rubberized soles as opposed to hard leather.  For women, this is going to be a bit more difficult and I’m not going to pretend like I understand women’s fashions enough to give specific advice.  However, you really need something that combines looks and comfort if you intend to wear it for multiple hours.  The more padding on the bottom, the better, and the more natural of a position your foot is in, the better.

At The Gym

If you’re an avid gym goer, and especially if you’re a runner, you need a new pair of shoes every six months.  No, this is not my way of helping the American economy recover by encouraging more spending.  Your shoes wear out.  The padding on the bottom becomes more compressed and less springy the more you use it.  At the six month mark, your shoes no longer provide you with a cushion to exercise on.  That’s why you need to replace them with something that will protect your feet from the constant impact of working out and running.  Keep in mind, good shoes don’t need to cost a lot.  My running shoes cost around $100 and I occasionally find a good deal as low as $60.  So keep an eye out for deals.

If possible, you should also go to a store where they can help you get the right fit by looking at how you run and walk.  Different people use different strides and shoes that are comfortable for one person can be painful for someone else.

Personal Recommendation

I’m not going to recommend a specific shoe model because I know it’s not going to be a good recommendation for all people.  However, in general, I’ve usually bought New Balance shoes.  I’ve found them to be very comfortable, durable and reasonably priced.  If you’re in the Bay Area, I recommend a store called Sports Basement.  They have a great selection and I’ve always found their sales people to be knowledgeable and helpful.

NOTE - as usual, I am not connected in any way with Sports Basement or New Balance nor am I making these recommendations at their request.

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Your feet bear a lot of strain when you’re active.  Make sure you protect them with a good pair of shoes.

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It never fails, get three people together in a gym and ask them to discuss their workout and inevitably the conversation will eventually turn to machines vs. free weights. If you’re completely clueless about this argument, it comes from the fact that some people prefer free weights like dumbbells and barbells while others like to workout on specialized machines that offer a narrow range of choices for exercises per machine.

In fact, most gyms are set up to have one area in which people work out on machines and another area in which people use free weights. for beginners, this can be a little confusing. After all, it seems like these two options are identical. I can get on a machine and do some curls or I can use dumbbells. I could use the leg press machine or I could do some squats. What’s the difference?

Form Is Better On Machines

As I’ve said before many times, form is very important when you workout. You want good form in which you slowly and gradually move the weights around. You want to primarily use the muscle group which you intend to workout. That means if you’re doing curls, you shouldn’t be swinging your entire body around trying to lift those weights.

For the purposes of good form, machines are better. Machines force us to have good form by stabilizing our whole body. For example, when I do a curl on a machine, I’m sitting and my upper body is relatively immobile due to the various supports on the machines. That means it’s only my biceps which are doing the work. With free weights, I’m free to swing more body parts around which could contribute to bad form. In fact, you can see that if you click on the free weights curls link here. The person working out is swinging back and forth, which is bad form. By way of comparison, look at these machine curls here. You can see that the whole body is much more stable and only the biceps are working. Do free weights have to mean bad form? Not at all. It’s very possible to achieve good form with free weights, but it’s somewhat easier with machines.

Muscle Recruitment Is Better With Freeweights

What the heck is muscle recruitment? It’s that thing your body does when you lift something and need to maintain your balance. Think of it this way. When you do a squat, you’re lifting a weight up with your legs. Your leg muscles are doing most of the work lifting straight up, but your body also recruit quite a few smaller muscles groups to maintain stability, to keep you upright and to prevent you from falling over. If you did the same exercises with a machine, less of your body would be involved.

Muscle recruitment is a little like form. It means more muscles are involved in the exercise than just the ones you wanted involved. The difference is that bad form means you’re making things too easy for those primary muscles. You’re replacing the work they’re supposed to do by doing it with other muscle groups. Muscle recruitments means you’re adding more work which is being done by other muscle groups.

Take a look at a free weight squat here, vs a machine press here.  Both have very good form and in both, the legs are doing the same amount of work.  However, with the free weight squat, the user is also recruiting other muscle groups to keep himself upright and stable, which the machine press does not do.

Less Injuries With Machines

By their nature, machines limit the potential for injuries.  You’re not going to drop a weight on your foot, you’re not going to move your arm into a weird position and tear a tendon and you’re not going to find yourself pinned to the bench with too much weight on your chest.  Machines are in fact safer to use since they limit the range of things you can do.

More Accurate Progress With Machines

It’s easier to measure progress with machines since the movements and weights are always the same.  For example, if I use the example of the machine press vs. the squat I showed above.  The machine press is easy to adjust for less or more weight, but what about the squat?  My body weight ranges up or down a few lbs every day.  Since I’m also lifting my body weight, that could make things harder or easier.  Also, as you lose weight, exercises with freeweights could feel easier because you’re lifting less weight.  Finally, you could adjust your form or grip to make things harder or easier, something that’s more difficult with machines.  For example, if I’m doing a bench press, a narrow or wide grip on the bar could make things harder or easier.  With a machine press, there are places for you to grip, which means you always grip in the same spot.  All of these things combine to make machine workouts more precise.

Even Workout For Both Side With Free Weights

With machines, you typically workout both sides at the same time.  For example, when you do curls, you’re doing them with both hands at the same time.  This is not always true, but in general, that’s how most machines are set up.  That means one side could be doing more of the work and you might not notice it.  In fact, many people, when doing two handed exercises, will let their dominant hand or leg do most of the work.  With free weights, and specifically with dumbbells, it’s impossible to let one side do more of the work.  So you end up with a more even workout for both sides.

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So have we solved the argument?  Well, not really.  Personally, I’m a free weights fan.  However, I believe that most people who are new to the gym start out with machines before they use free weights.  That will help you learn good form and how to avoid injuries.  In the end, the best workout is the one you feel comfortable with.  The differences between free weights and machines are relatively small and both are far better than not working out at all.

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My wife suffers from the occasional migraine. It used to be much worse but after some recent medical treatments, things have gotten better. In fact, the migraines seemed to go away. So she finally felt confident enough to start exercising.

She started slow. A pilates class, a yopa class and some aerobics classes. Nothing too hard or strenuous. Since those seemed to go well, she figured something a bit harder might be fine too. So she signed up with a personal trainer and tried a session of weights and resistance training. For the next three days, she suffered from horrible migraines.

She proceeded to do some research online and found out about exercise induced headaches, something I was completely unaware of. It seems like some people will get anything from mild headaches to serious migraines following any sort of strenuous exercise and that weight lifting is particularly common as a cause.

After seeing her struggle with the pain and feeling helpless to help, I thought I would share what we found with all of you so that we could help prevent this pain in others.

Ways To Avoid Exercise Induced Headaches

• Stay hydrated - No need to overdo this with those huge bottles of water. However, drink a bit of water between each one or two sets of exercises.
• Warm up and cool down - Don’t just start and stop high intensity workouts. You need to start slow and end slow to give your body a chance to adjust.
• Try to stay away from a lot of high impact exercises - That means elliptical is better than jogging and swimming is better than almost anything else.
• Avoid bent over exercises - One of the suspected causes of exercise induced headaches is blood flow to the brain. So be careful with any exercise that has you bend over like dead lifts.
• Talk to your doctor - There are some medications that could work. Since exercise induced headaches seem to be related to blood flow, medications that constrict blood flow might help. Please do NOT take any medications without first consulting with a doctor.

For additional information, check out the following links:

USA Weekend

Relieve-Migraine-Headache.com

Drew Baye’s high intensity training

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That’s all we’ve found so far. Hopefully, once my wife feels better and returns to the gym, I can give you a bit of an update on how well these tips helped. One thing to note, she was doing fine with her aerobics and pilates classes, some of which do involve light weight lifting. So it’s not all exercise which causes this.

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Note, the following information is for cardio sessions, not resistance training.

One of the most common questions I get is “am I working out too hard?” or the opposite “am I working out hard enough?” Usually, people will tell me how fast they run, how long they swim or what resistance level they turn the elliptical machine up to and ask me if that’s the right difficulty level for them.  Unfortunately, that’s just not enough information for me to answer that question.

Heart Rate

Ideally, cardio exercise should keep your heart rate somewhere between 60% and 80% of max.   Anything less and you’re not really working out very hard.  Anything more and you’re placing too much strain on your body.

What’s My Max Heart Rate?

A rough estimate of your max heart rate is 220 minus your age.  So for me, being 34, my max heart rate is 186.  That means that if I want to keep my workout between 60 and 80%, I should keep it somewhere between 111 and 148.

But How The Heck Do I Measure That While Exercising?

Yah, that’s the problem.  It’s a little hard to measure heart rate while exercising.  You either need to stop and measure it yourself or you need to hold on to some handle or device that will measure heart rate for you.  Both of these options interrupt your workout and can actually get a bit dangerous.  In fact, the only time I ever fell off a treadmill is because I was trying to measure my heart rate while running.  Seems a bit funny now (ok, it seems a lot funny now) but it was quite painful back then.

So What’s The Alternative

Here’s a slightly less scientific but more practical approach.  Try saying the following sentence while exercising.  “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.”

• Were you able to say that without any problems at all and with a normal sounding voice?  If so, you’re probably not working hard enough.
• Did you have issues saying that sentence and needed to gasp for breath between every word?  If so, you’re probably working too hard.
• Could you say the sentence but had to pause midway for a quick breath?  If so, you’re probably working at the right level.

In general, you should be able to talk while exercising but not hold a normal conversation.  If you can hold a normal conversation then you’re not working out hard enough.  If you’re completely unable to talk or need to breath between every word and you’re straining for every breath, you’re working out too hard.

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You shouldn’t feel like you’re about to die when you work out.  However, you also shouldn’t feel like you’re taking a leisurely stroll.  Aim for somewhere in between.

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Back at the beginning of February, I laid out a few goals for myself.  I like to do this sort of thing on a regular basis since it helps me focus on what I need to do.  Those goals were:

• Get to 215 lbs
• Up my running speed to 6.4 mph when on the treadmill
• Stop eating candy on weekdays

215lbs Goal

I  came close but did not quite achieve this one.  I am currently hovering around 216lbs.  However, I saw a steady decline in weight over the past month, which is encouraging.  Remember, weight should not be the sole indicator of your health.  However, if you combine it with a few other goals and measurements, it can give you a good idea of how you’re doing.

6.4 mph Running Speed

This one went well.  I slowly increased my running speed and I can now run at a steady 6.4mph for 40 minutes.

No Candy On Weekdays

This one also went pretty well although I wasn’t 100% perfect.  Still, I managed to cut down my candy consumption by a rather large amount, which makes me quite happy.

GOALS FOR MARCH

This month, I would like to accomplish the following:

• 215lbs - I didn’t quite make it last month, so I’m hoping to do it this month.  I want to see a whole week in which my morning weigh in is under 215lbs.
• Marathon Training - I am starting my training for the Maui marathon on the 8th.  I have a detailed training plan that a friend worked up for me and I want to make sure I follow it.
• Higher Weights - I also want to improve my weight training this month by increasing the weight I use on at least 4 different exercises.  That means I’m going to pick one exercise a week and increase the weight.
• Better Eating - Along with the no candy on weekdays rule, I want to make an effort to avoid buffets.  These are my weakness as I love food so much that I usually keep eating it even if I’m full.  I want to see if I can go a whole month without buffets.

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What are your health goals for the month of March?  If you only have some nebulous goal such as “I want to get healthier” you may find yourself at a loss on how to take that first step.  Take a few minutes to write up some specific goals you want to accomplish this month and then write down exactly how you plan to accomplish them.  It’s a quick little productivity exercise that will make your life a lot easier.

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Every once in a while, I try to high light an alternative workout on 60 in 3. No, an alternative workout is not something that involves a lot of candles and chanting, it’s simply a way to get your heart rate up and your body moving without going to the gym. Today, I wanted to talk about something I mentioned in my weekend update, Sky High Sports.

What The Heck Is Skyhigh?

Skyhigh is a big warehouse full of trampolines. Of course, that’s only part of the story. Skyhigh was the brainchild of two bay area brothers who wanted a fun and safe place to play with their kids. Being trampoline enthusiasts, they came up with the idea of a play house filled with trampolines. Of course, this being the Silicon Valley, the two brothers decided to turn their idea into a business and Skyhigh was born.

Skyhigh has three main areas. The first is a large freeform area where people simply bounce up and down as much as they want. The trampolines are all set up right next to the other with the frames covered up by soft foam. That way you can bounce from one trampoline to the other without the fear of falling in between. There are also trampolines set up on the walls so you can bounce into them and back out. The second area is similar to the first except it’s dedicated to playing dodgeball. Yep, you heard me, dodgeball. And oh wow is it a blast! The third and final area is again set up with multiple trampolines, but it also has a big foam pit into which you can dive off of the trampolines.

Skyhigh and Exercise

When my wife first suggested Skyhigh, I was a bit reluctant. After all, aren’t trampolines for kids? Well, I take that all back now. First of all, Skyhigh was an amazing workout. Within 5 minutes of bouncing up and down, my heart was racing and I was struggling for breath. My first bouncing dodge ball game was incredible fun, but it was also a wonderful cardio workout and some great balance work. Overall, our stay at Skyhigh was the equivalent of a high end cardio workout with some lower back, legs and arm work thrown in.

Skyhigh and Fun

The best part was that Skyhigh was an incredible amount of fun. I didn’t even notice the clock and I certainly wasn’t bored. Even simple bouncing was enjoyable and I cannot even begin to explain the amount of sheer fun that trampoline dodgeball is. In other words, this was a workout that I LOVED!

Cost

Skyhigh was a bit expensive, $9 for two hours per person, so it’s not exactly a gym replacement. However, for slightly less than a movie ticket, we spent two hours having fun together and getting exercise. That sounds like a great evening out to me.

But What If I’m Not In The Bay Area?

I realize Skyhigh is a local thing. If you live in the Bay Area or Sacramento (where they just opened up their second warehouse), then I highly recommend you check them out. However, what if you don’t? Well, if you don’t live in this area then how about going online to check out what other fun alternative workouts are available in your area? Is there an indoor rock climbing gym? How about something like city beach where you can run through obstacle courses? Looked at the local dance studios lately? How about that martial arts class you’ve been thinking of? Every area has its own unique offerings. A quick online search can help you find quite a few of these fun alternative workouts.

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A workout doesn’t necessarily have to occur in the gym and it doesn’t have to be boring. Take a break and check out an alternative workout, they’re a fun way of exercising.

Sky High

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Every once in a while, I try out a slightly different workout. It keeps me interested and it also challenges my body. I have no scientific evidence to back this up, but I just feel like my body tends to get used to certain workouts and stop improving. So every few weeks I like to try something new.

The Workout

This week I went with a weights workout that was almost a cardio workout. I did all the same exercises and sets, but I did twice the reps and half the weight. So if I was going to do 10 reps of squats with 100lbs of weight, I did 20 reps with 50lbs. I kept the same slow pace with good form while doing the exercises but I rested for only 15 to 30 seconds in between each set as opposed to the 30 to 60 seconds of rest I usually do. Overall, I ended up doing the following on each workout:

(Most of these exercises are from the Four Day Workout. So if you want more information on them, take a look at that series of posts).

Abs and Back

• 20 dead lifts with 25lb dumbbells
• 20 leg lifts (wow, this one was tough!)
• 20 bent rows with 20lb dumbbells
• 20 crunches
• 20 Single arm rows with 20lb dumbbells

Legs

• 40 lunges with 20lb dumbbells (this one was another tough one)
• 20 dead lifts with 25lb dumbbells
• 20 squats with 20lb dumbells
• 20 calf raises with 20 lb dumbbells
• 20 adduction on each side
• 20 abduction on each side

Biceps and Triceps

• 20 bar curls with 40 lbs
• 20 triceps push down with 40lbs
• 40 hammerhead curls with 15lbs
• 20 overhead tricep extensions with each hand with a 15lb dumbbell
• 20 concentration curls with each arm with a 15lb weight
• 20 dips

Chest and Shoulders

• 20 dumbbell presses with 30lb weights
• 20 rear flies with 15 lb weights
• 30 press ups (push ups)
• 20 standing rows with 20lb dumbbells
• 20 dumbbell pullovers with a 25lb dumbbell
• 20 Shoulder presses (Arnold Press!) with 20lb dumbbells

Results

This was an incredible workout. It took a bit longer than I wanted, but wow! By the end, I was out of breath and barely able to move but I felt great. It felt like I had just done a complete cardio workout AND a complete weights workout. In fact, that was one of the downsides. I was so tired that I didn’t do my cardio workout. Rather than 45 minutes of running on the treadmill, I ended up doing a 10 minute walk and 10 minutes on the elliptical. I just couldn’t do another full cardio workout after that weights routine.

Would I Do It Again?

Heck yah! I don’t think this will become my standard workout since I’m currently training for a marathon and I do need to work on my running. However, I loved the feeling at the end of this workout so I’ll definitely do it again. It’s not quite a cardio workout and it’s not quite a weights workout, but it’s a really fun combination of both.

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Don’t be afraid to try new things.  Who knows, you may just find something you really enjoy doing.

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