I am near the end of the second week in my new fitness regime which entails going to the White Hart Hotel five days a week, not for a few drinks but to their gym, above the swimming pool, where I am bullied by my personal trainer, Ricardo.

I plan to make more use of the pool in the future but at the moment I am on a strict gym-based routine.

The gym, much too conveniently placed by the bar, has weights and training machines which I use under Ricardo’s strict instructions wearing my heart rate monitor and watching that I never go above or below a planned rate. The devise is strapped to my chest and transmits its readings to a watch on my wrist. For a mildly obsessive nerd, the technology and the measurements are added joy.

Training to the monitor was surprizingly difficult at first because I kept wanting to go faster and for longer than its readings allowed. After a short period of time though, I can already see the benefit, and in a week I was already do a noticeably tougher regime at the same heart rate.

After my ill health took me out of the world of total fitness for a couple of years, I am now determined to get back to where I was before that brain haemorrhage messed me up a bit. So, I keep my eyes on my heart rate and my speed on the running machine, the cross-trainer, the training bike and a few other machines and, at the moment, keep going without stopping for 35 minutes. Already, after a couple of weeks, I am longing to do more and, in another week, I will meet up again with Ricardo and, I hope, up the speeds and start to do some weights again.

I combine this aerobic training at the gym with my daily Taichi practice at home in the garden and at two classes a week with my instructor Neil at the White Crane Fighting Arts club here in Lewes (see Links in the right hand column).

I may have given up Kungfu reluctantly but our style of Taichi, the Southern Chinese Suang-Yuang form, is very much a soft martial form and, as I have found in class, there is no reason to believe I have gone soft on the martial arts especially as I will continue with my weapons training, sword and seven and a half foot staff, too. This new programme seems to fit and, dare I say it, I am beginning to feel great.

To help create the right contemplative atmosphere at the gym, I have been playing some Sikh music on my iPod, recommended by my good Sikh friend Kal. Snatam Kaur is singing Sun–Ai, a listening celebration and appropriate as today is the Sikh holiday of Vaisakh. Happy Vaisakh everyone:

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I wore my heart-rate monitor for the first time in a long time, too long, yesterday.  I was going back to see my personal trainer, Ricardo, to see if he can help me get back some fitness after a bit of a ropey Autumn and Winter. I am now back into my kungfu training but I want to speed up my aerobic fitness and that’s where my session with Ricardo was surprizingly encouraging. The heart-rate monitor clocked my progress on various running machines, a cross-trainer and a rowing machine and, considering I hadn’t been anywhere near the gym since August, I did, according to Ricardo,  OK.

After the session I returned home, ran up two flights of stairs and began writing this. I photographed my heart-rate for the record and, as you can see, it was 95 beats per minute. Not bad. I continued to wear the device, which is placed on a strap around the chest, to see what it would read when I had finished this blog some five or ten minutes later.

It was soon down to 75 beats per minute……and when I finished it had gone down further to 72.

I would like my weight to go down as easily. This morning I weighted in heavier than I have ever been….

…at an appalling 76 kg, or just under 12 stone. I mostly weigh 72 kg and have done so for years. I shall revisit these measurements when I have something good to show – I hope.

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I am wearing this contraption for training purposes under the instructions of my therapeutic personal trainer, Ricardo and I find it fascinating and, let’s admit it, I have got slightly obsessive about it.

I wear a mini-computer on a strap around my chest which transmits my heart rate to the watch on my wrist and, if I so wish, I can tell just what every activity does to my heart. Does making the coffee raise it more than drinking it, I wonder?

Well, yes it did. Making it raised my heart rate to 84 bpm and I have now finished the coffee, it was great, Columbian, black and strong, and my resting heart rate is now 74 beats per minute. I expect it to settle at about 64 bpm but I promise not to obsess.

When I last saw my neurologist, who is observing my recovery from that brain haemorrhage that I suffered 18 months ago, she was slightly concerned that some of my remaining symptoms could indicate that I may have had a minor stroke at the same time as the haemorrhage and the subsequent grand mal epileptic fits. As a precaution, I am having my blood pressure tested every month for a year and, so far, so good.

Doctors call high blood pressure hypertension and, I suspect, if I do have a problem, it is nothing to do with my heart but more to do with my difficulty in relaxing and switching off my brain. The heart rate monitor has been an unexpected bonus here.

Some scaffolding men have been removing their gear from the house next door and I have just had to rush downstairs again to tell them off for putting ladders on my roof without asking for my permission. I was firm but fair and my heart rate rose to 94 bpm. After a few deep breaths, I am writing again and I am down to 82 bpm but then I am a very fast typist.

Where the monitor is a brilliant devise is at the gym where I can work out exactly what pace to set so that my exercise is at the appropriate aerobic intensity and, just as importantly, that my cooling down afterwards is sufficiently relaxed to bring down my heart rate to a good resting speed.

In time, I think, I will learn to recognise how much I should exert myself and just when I should rest.

I took it to the park yesterday with my kung fu instructor Neil for our weekly lesson. It was interesting to see how my Tai Chi form could be much more relaxed and just how much my Chinese Straight Sword pattern pushed up my heart rate. Now that I am concentrating on soft styles in my martial arts training, the monitor is a useful spy telling me just how much looser and more relaxed I need to be.

The scaffolders have gone, the coffee is drunk and this blog is complete – my heart rate is now 74 bpm. Room for improvement I think. I wonder if this excellent little piece of equipment will actually show me how to relax one day.

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