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:

The post I am monitoring my heart rate with Ricardo at the White Hart Hotel’s gym appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

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.

The post My heart-rate monitor has begun to clock my return to fitness appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.