Fitness in 2020

Yes, this was a strange year for fitness. An infectious disease that spreads through respiratory transmission meant that group fitness centers, like gyms and martial arts studios, had restrictions on operations. And owners and operators of gyms and other group fitness establishments varied considerably in their following general guidelines for operating those types of activities (and the CDC was prohibited from telling Americans what they were, leading to other organizations recreating the standard proceedures the rest of the world had in place.

My primary training program was CrossFit, through Streetparking, which is an online program that was founded by two former CrossFit Games athletes (one of whom was on CrossFit Seminar staff).   So this included metabolic conditioning workouts (combination of strength and stamina), endurance, and power workouts.  Second, was martial arts through the American Taekwondo Association (ATA).  And starting in 2019, I started tracking workouts through Polar (I have a Polar Ignite heart rate monitor), so between my workout logs and my Polar logs, I have a quantified fitness
 

Heart rate zones and training benefit

Calories and heart rate per month

So, these plots show the disruption in April (although part of it was just my loosing my HRM that month), then a steady increase as I got into the swing of things in Summer.  Summer was also when I did the Street Parking Endurance program.  And then got injured.  So Fall was recovery (note a gradual increase in intensity over time) and then December, when I was doing two-a-days during the Christmas and New Year holidays.  We also see that HRM have a bias toward endurance workouts, as it is really hard to get into the Red zone unless you are running or cycling.

Looking at my Streetparking logs, I see the following:

Bassically, I continued to do about 5 workouts a week.  But a lot more endurance (run, row, cycle), in part because of doing the endurance program (many of which did not get counted here).  I increased Buts and Guts.  This is generally bodybuilding type workouts, but focused on core and unilateral lower body, which helps in preventing injury. After I went to physical therapy for IT band syndrome in summer 2019, I did Butts and Guts on a regular basis.  And less use of the sandbag, since I had other things to concentrate on.  (Program A is a kettlebell/dumbbell focused, Program B is a barbell version, Program C is a sandbag version of the same workout)

Other things of note: in 2020 I completed The Vault challenge, which was a weekly test workout (in Crossfit there are normal everyday workouts, then there are tests, which are intended to help measure your progress). So The Vault was 25 weeks of one test workout a week. (and done twice each in 2020)

Goals for the coming year

1. Complete the 2021 version of the Vault.

2. Complete a challenge that involves nutrition.  While there are competition type events in CrossFit, challenges tend to be based on consistency in lifestyle changes, so a challenge is over a month or two and involves nutrition and other lifestyle tracking in addition to workouts.  Consistency in workouts is easy for me. (that is just discipline).  Tracking nutrition is a new anmial.

3.  Do Aerobic Capacity.  Aerobic capacity is a program that focuses on stamina and endurance in CrossFit. While the roots are in endurance sports, this program is done in the context of a CrossFit program, so it recognizes that the endurance and stamina are not ends in themselves, but are as part of a broader fitness goals  (CrossFit Metcons can be anywhere from 2 to 20 minutes in duration)  But the core of Aerobic Capacity is still the endurance sports (running, cycling)\

4.  Do a power meter workout weekly and work through the introductory power meter program.  I got a Kinetic Road Machine off of Facebook Marketplace and added a power meter sensor to it, so I effectively have a metered bike trainer. So the plan here is to do at least one workout a week on the bike trainer and take a one month training program that is based on the power meter)

5. Monitor strain vs tolerance on Polar Flow. This is the measure that correlates to injury risk, and if I had my current heart rate monitor in August, it would have been flagged that I was at a heightened injury risk. (strain is the recent workout load, tolerance is the workout load over the past four weeks, so strain vs tolerance tells if my workout load has been increasing faster than my ability to adapt to it properly)