May 12, 2024 • 21 mins
How fit/strong should you be?
A general guide for some strength goals to aim for.
If you have just started your cycling journey, you can get your Beginner Cyclist Toolkit Here.
It's packed full of information and advice to get you started safely on your journey.
A general guide for some strength goals to aim for.
If you have just started your cycling journey, you can get your Beginner Cyclist Toolkit Here.
It's packed full of information and advice to get you started safely on your journey.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey folks, hope you're well. Welcome to the podcast. My
name is Dave from David Uel's Fitness. So I wanted
to talk to you today about fitness standards. Now, there's
always it's always good to have goals to be able
to work to, but it's quite often difficult to know
what sort of standards you should be working to. You know,
(00:22):
what you should you be aiming for. Now, if you're
a cyclist or a runner, then obviously your goals are
going to be based around timings. Maybe you know, to
do a ride in a certain time or a certain pace,
or to do a run at a certain time at
a certain pace, so those those standards will be a
little bit more obvious. However, with strength standards, it's quite
(00:42):
difficult to know. So I'm going to try and sort
out a few things for you today and to give
you a few things to aim for, just with some
general sort of fitness standards, general strength standards. So depending
on where you're coming from, all right, a bit of
a bit of it, and it depends equation. So you
(01:04):
could be sort of untrained, you'd be classed as sort
of a beginner. So that might be that you had
a little bit of you've done a little bit before
in the past, but because I'm targeting this at sort
of over fifties, it's really those that have maybe let
themselves go for ten or twenty years. So we're going
to be looking at the beginner category. I like to
(01:26):
call this the apprentice phase. So you're learning things okay,
then we're into immediates intermediate, so you've done a bit
of training, so you know, you're a regular gym goer,
you kind of know what you're doing in the gym.
And then obviously advanced is for people who have you know,
have been there, done it, and you're looking to really
go to the take it to the next level. So
(01:48):
we're focusing really on the beginner on the apprentice phase here,
where where you know, even if you're over fifty, you're deconditioned.
You've been out of the gym for quite a while,
so you're looking to kind of start things up a bit.
So the questions to ask was it would be you know,
(02:09):
what when was the last time you trained? Would be one,
what's your general activity level now is it? You know,
how how much do you do right now? Do you
have an athletic background, Like I said, where you were,
you know where you where you were the football or
in the past, or you know, do you play cricket
or you know you've done some form of sport in
(02:32):
the past. What's your current strength level, what's your what's
your functional movement like, what's your resistance training? What experience
have you had with resistance training? Do you know what
all the movements are called? Do you know what the
machines are called? You know all that that kind of thing.
(02:53):
So this will all play into into learning about your background.
And this is the sort of thing that I would
normally do with a client. You know, when I first
get a client on board, I asked them all these questions.
It helps me to figure out where they're at with
the training, and then it helps me figure out their
program as well. And one of the first things I'll
(03:15):
do is a functional movement screening. Now, this is really
just to see where you're at with your mobility and
your range of motion. So this is generally a good
thing to do before you start a strength training program.
So thinking of standards, thinking about all the various kind
of movements that you could do, where are you at
(03:37):
with those? And that's the first thing I'd want you
to practice. And we could think of this as the
base of a pyramid. So where are you at, you
know in the pyramid, at the base of the pyramid
is laying down the foundations. So the functional movement screening then,
and we're looking at different movement patterns. Okay, so we're
looking at a squat and a deep squad. We're looking
(04:01):
at a lunge pattern, a step up pattern. So what
what we're really looking at with those they're they're the
lower body movements patterns. We're looking to see if the
knee tracks directly up and down or does it waver
out to the side. You know what, what's that movement like?
What's your range of motion like in the squat? You know,
(04:23):
with what's that that kind of that kind of thing.
We're then looking at shoulder mobility. You know how how
good is that. We'll get you to do some some
leg raises to see how far what the angles are
of those legs, especially if you're a cyclist. You know
that that would really help with you know, with your hamstrings.
How how flexible are you at in your the leg angle?
(04:48):
Then your core stability, you know what what's that like?
And your rotational stability, So all exercises to find out
what you're like in all those various movements. Now, it's
important that you you check all these movements out before
you actually start to put some weight onto onto these
(05:11):
sort of movements. Okay, so there's no point in loading
up a barbell back squad, you know, if you can't
even you know, if your leg if you're doing a
body weight squat and your knee waivers around and your
legs you need tracking in or something or it's tracking
out and you can't keep that stable. It means you've
got weak hips. So you'd have to sort that out
before you actually put any weight on it, which is
(05:32):
only going to make it even worse and potentially injure yourself.
Same with any of these you know, the lungs is
exact exactly the same. So what's a good, good kind
of thing to aim for for for the for the
various strength strength tests then, so well, again we're looking
at the different the different movements, So we've got a
(05:53):
pull movement, So what we're really looking in there. And
I did a video the other day about the inverted row,
and I like to use the gymnastic rings for this,
So really we're looking at the inverted row. Been able
to do five reps for the straight body with the
rings down around it, starting around about hip height, so
(06:16):
you quite low down when you start in the ring row,
and your body's flat. If you take a look at
that video, I'll put a link to it in the description,
it'll give you an idea of where you're at. You
should be able to do five reps of that, so
a bit easier than doing a pull up, okay, because
I wouldn't expect sort of general population everyone to be
(06:37):
able to do pull ups, but an inverted row with
five reps is a good standard to weigh for with
good form. The squat is next, so that the squat pattern. Okay,
bearing in mind that you've fixed all those things that
I mentioned earlier, that you've got a decent already got
a decent body weight squat, and then then you can
(06:59):
do at lead three sets of ten body weight squats.
We'll then looking to do ten reps at half your
body weight. Okay, that's something to weighing for now. These
aren't absolute these figures. These are just general fitness, average
population type fitness standards. So half your body weight, so
(07:22):
you know, for example, you know, I'm eighty kg, so
I should be able to squat with forty kgs. Well,
that's what I'm aiming for, and I'm not saying I
should be able to do that. That's what I'm aiming for.
So it's a good one for ten reps. For hipinge,
we've got the good old deadlift. Okay, So obviously you'd
(07:42):
need to be a member of a gym to perform
this particular test, and the general consensus on the deadlift
is you should be able to deadlift your body weight
for around about five or six reps. Okay, so not
not full on so again, and that for me, that
would mean I'd be able to deadlift eighty kgs for
(08:05):
five or six reps. Now, I think that's very achievable
for most people, you know, I think most people will
be able to work up to that. I'm not saying
to go to the gym, absolutely not and deadlifts straight
away your body weight to see if you can do it,
because you're gonna end up hurting yourself. You've got to
learn the movement and you've got to start, you know,
debt with a much much lighter weight and work your
(08:28):
way up to that. I think with a deadlift, it's
it's a fairly technical lift to start with. Once you
get to know it, once you get to know the movement,
you know, is it is a really powerful lift. You
can you really use those legs, use your hamstrings, use
your glutes to really power that bar up. But it's
learning those moves to start with. And we've got a
(08:50):
push movement. So the push movement is a simple press ups. Yeah.
So being able to do ten press ups without a break, yeah,
is something to wiiting for. I think, you know, most
people try and aim for that, and male and female,
I think it's a it's a good it's generally a good,
(09:11):
a good thing to weighing for. So, so ten press ups,
good form, you know, not wavering around, your body's not
dipping straight straight as a die, you know, you keeping
that rigid plank all the way through. But doing those
those ten press ups. Then we've got some single leg movements. Okay,
(09:31):
So we've got we've got a single leg hip hinge,
which would be a single length, single leg deadlift. Okay,
and again I'll put some link into description for some
demonstrations of these particular activities. But you're looking at single
leg deadlift twenty four CAGs for eight reps with you
(09:57):
could use a dumb bell or a cattlebell and a
single leg squat would be so doing sort of a
single leg squat would be a twenty kg. So I'm
thinking here, not an actual squat with just one on
one leg, but like a lunge that type thing, or
(10:20):
you know, a rear elevated foot squat, so like a
Bulgarian split squat eight reps at twenty kg's something to
aim for. Like I say, they're not absolute, these figures,
but something for you to aim for for core, to
finish off the strength side of things. For core, you're
looking at a sixty second plank, a rigid plank, you know,
(10:44):
everything in line, no sagging bottoms and no bottoms in
the air, no sagging tummies, everything nice and straight for
sixty seconds. Okay, So that's something again for you to
aim for. And a side plank similar straight as a
die thirty seconds. That's you know, a good, good thing
to aim for. Okay. So that that kind of wraps
(11:07):
up the strength side of things. Obviously with your fitness
you've got you've got a load of other things to
think about as well. And one of the main things,
you know, one of the biggest predictors of longevity in
people is your heart health. You know that heart. I've
done a full podcast episode about heart health, so you
can you can have a listen to that. But knowing
(11:30):
where you're at with your heart health, it's quite you know,
it's quite an interesting thing for you for you to do. Now,
there's plenty of charts around that that tell you, you
know where you're at with you with your fitness, especially
with your heart. And one of the one of the
best ways that we can measure this is summit called
the v O two max test. Now a full on
(11:50):
v O two max test. So you can get this
done at a you know, at a cycling performance center
or something like that. Not not out of this world
costly wise, you know, you'd be looking maybe between fifty
one hundred pounds to get one of these tests done.
And they basically strap you up to a machine and
they you go as hard as you can for twenty
or thirty minutes and they measure your your output basically,
(12:14):
and VEEO two max is essentially your volume of oxygen
that you can push around your body. You know, your
heart can push around your body, and that that's a
measure of your your fitness. And obviously the fitter you are,
the more you know, the more volume of oxygen you
can push around your body. So so that's what they
would measure in a you know, in a performance center
(12:38):
or something like that, or or a health center, you know,
any any good, good health center would do it as well. However,
you can there is ways of doing it without without
having to do that. There's some you know, more more
kind of at home friendly ways of doing things. And
there's something called the rock Port Walking Test, which again
(13:00):
I'll put a link to in the in the description,
and that's you just need like a like a heart
rate monitor, and you know, you just walk for one mile,
you kind of speed walk as fast as you can
without running. You don't you don't be running, and then
you put your your figures, your heart rate. At the
(13:20):
end of it, your time, you know your your age,
your weight and all all the good stuff, and it'll
spit you out a v O two max number. And
if you're a little bit more fitter, okay, and you
know you feel as though you've got a run in it,
then you can do something called a Cooper Run test again.
I'll put a link in the description, and that's a
(13:43):
similar sort of thing, except you run for one and
a half miles, you know, as quick as you can
sustain it, and at the end you put your time in,
your age, your heart rate at the end, and all
the rest of it. And that'll spit out a VO
two max as well, and they'll have charts that you
can look and you can see whether you're poor, you know,
average good, it depends, you know, is age dependent. Again,
(14:07):
the two max is a really good predictor of your
heart health for longevity. So maybe something really worth thinking
about doing one of these things other than that, you
could maybe do one and a half mile run. That's
a standard thing that you could do and time it,
you know, and you're looking for males of forty five
(14:30):
years of age completing that in twelve minutes or so,
females looking at fourteen minutes for a mile and a
half run. If you're fifty five to sixty five years
of age, then you're looking at thirteen minutes for men
and sixteen minutes for women. So that's another kind of crude,
(14:52):
kind of way of testing your physical fitness and your
heart health. Okay, other than that, we've got a few
other things that we can test. And your resting heart
rate is a good one. So you know, average heart
rate goes from between fifty and seventy two. You want
(15:13):
to be around a resting heart rate of a round
about sixty as a general kind of rule of thumb. Now,
resting heart rate does exactly mean that. So if you're
going to do your blood pressure or your heart rate,
then you need to be sitting still for a round
about fifteen minutes, not of eaten within the last half
(15:35):
an hour, because your body will be digesting foods, it'll
be working a little bit harder. So completely rested fifteen minutes,
you know, then you can take your blood pressure and
your resting heart rate. If you get one of these
heart rate sorry, blood pressure testing monitors, they'll do your
heart rate as well as you're doing that one. Twenty
(15:56):
over eighty for blood pressure is the kind of gold
standard on that one. There. Now, general kind of other
general kind of fitness things that we can think about is,
you know, your waiste circumference. If you if you're carrying
a lot of fat around your your middle, especially as
you get older. Again, that's that's a that's a pretty
(16:19):
good predictor of you know, potential problems later on in life.
So if you're between fifty and sixty, you've got a
bit of fat around the middle, then you know we
want to be maybe thinking about you know, getting that
getting that down just to just to improve your chances
later on in life. And I'm thinking here, you know, sixties,
seventies onwards now again. And a crude rule of thumb
(16:43):
on this one that I like to use is that
having a waste size no, no bigger than half of
your height. Okay, just let me explain that one for
a minute. So if you're six foot, you know, seventy
two inches, you want a thirty no bigger than a
thirty six inch waist. Okay, it's quite a crude way,
but it's a it's a good way. You know, five
(17:05):
foot ten is what's seventy inches, So you'll be wanting
a waste to conference no bigger than thirty five inches,
So you kind of know, really if you if you've
carrying weight around your middle, you'll you'll kind of know.
The other thing is your BMI. Again, it's a bit
(17:27):
bit crude, but keeping your BMI under twenty five is
a good thing. You know, your body fat presented below
twenty twenty below twenty five for females is good at all.
General kind of things to aim for, So there's lots
to go out there. If you are starting a program,
(17:47):
you know, like a health and fitness program, then having
these things to aim for, you know, your strength standards
to weim for, you know, then your VO two MAC
standards to aim for, then you know you're beyond well
on your way to you know, to really achieving those goals. Now,
(18:07):
whether what you prioritize is a whole different ballgame depending
on what your goals are. Now. I read something the
other day and it kind of struck a chord with
me as as we get older, you know, and I'm
talking for the gentleman population here, maybe more so because
(18:28):
it's kind of where I'm at as well. So I'm talking,
you know, fifties knocking on the door of sixty. I
tend to gravitate towards the endurance sports, you know, cycling,
you know, long distance running. And I don't know why,
I just tend. It seems to be that. I mean,
(18:48):
I enjoy those I enjoy cycling in that but what
that means is you tend to leave the kind of
strength training alone. You don't tend to do the strength training,
and it's at your detrim Really, you need to be
doing strength training even at that a you know, say,
even at that age, especially at that age. So if
(19:09):
you're knocking on the door fifties, sixties, even in your forties,
you should be having a good solid strength training program
at least twice a week, you know, if not three
times a week. Now, if I've got a few general
off the shelf strength training programs for over fifties, if
(19:31):
you want to message me and ask me for one
of those, I'd gladly share one of those with you.
You've just got to make sure you follow it, that's all.
So a six week program, an eight week program, for
twelve week program, whatever it is, get that strength up,
you know, because it's going to help so much later
on in life with you know, with your longevity, with
(19:52):
your quality of life as well. But saying that, you know,
the heart side of things is in important too. But
please don't neglect the strength training and aim at the
standards that I've mentioned to you here, and obviously again
just a quick warning not to embark on a program,
(20:16):
a fitness program, unless you've got the all clear from
the doctor. Now. I'm especially talking here from fifties sixties.
If you are fifty and over, then get yourself down
on the doctors for your free health check. Yeah, please
do that. If you haven't done it already, you can
chat about this. It's a very basic check. But you
(20:37):
know you're going to get everything looked at and you
can then say you can ask them and say, look,
you know, can I'm going to start a fitness program.
I'm going to day Shell's fitness Hey, and he's going
to do me a program. Is that okay? And you
know he'll he'll give you or she'll give you the
all clear. Okay. So so please do that before you
start a program. Hope that was worthwhile. Folks, Thanks so much.
(21:01):
If you're still listening watching this and get stuck into
your fitness program, let me know how you get on
and I shall speak to you later. Bye for now,
Hey folks, hope you're well. Welcome to the podcast. My
name is Dave from David Uel's Fitness. So I wanted
to talk to you today about fitness standards. Now, there's
always it's always good to have goals to be able
to work to, but it's quite often difficult to know
what sort of standards you should be working to. You know,
(00:22):
what you should you be aiming for. Now, if you're
a cyclist or a runner, then obviously your goals are
going to be based around timings. Maybe you know, to
do a ride in a certain time or a certain pace,
or to do a run at a certain time at
a certain pace, so those those standards will be a
little bit more obvious. However, with strength standards, it's quite
(00:42):
difficult to know. So I'm going to try and sort
out a few things for you today and to give
you a few things to aim for, just with some
general sort of fitness standards, general strength standards. So depending
on where you're coming from, all right, a bit of
a bit of it, and it depends equation. So you
(01:04):
could be sort of untrained, you'd be classed as sort
of a beginner. So that might be that you had
a little bit of you've done a little bit before
in the past, but because I'm targeting this at sort
of over fifties, it's really those that have maybe let
themselves go for ten or twenty years. So we're going
to be looking at the beginner category. I like to
(01:26):
call this the apprentice phase. So you're learning things okay,
then we're into immediates intermediate, so you've done a bit
of training, so you know, you're a regular gym goer,
you kind of know what you're doing in the gym.
And then obviously advanced is for people who have you know,
have been there, done it, and you're looking to really
go to the take it to the next level. So
(01:48):
we're focusing really on the beginner on the apprentice phase here,
where where you know, even if you're over fifty, you're deconditioned.
You've been out of the gym for quite a while,
so you're looking to kind of start things up a bit.
So the questions to ask was it would be you know,
(02:09):
what when was the last time you trained? Would be one,
what's your general activity level now is it? You know,
how how much do you do right now? Do you
have an athletic background, Like I said, where you were,
you know where you where you were the football or
in the past, or you know, do you play cricket
or you know you've done some form of sport in
(02:32):
the past. What's your current strength level, what's your what's
your functional movement like, what's your resistance training? What experience
have you had with resistance training? Do you know what
all the movements are called? Do you know what the
machines are called? You know all that that kind of thing.
(02:53):
So this will all play into into learning about your background.
And this is the sort of thing that I would
normally do with a client. You know, when I first
get a client on board, I asked them all these questions.
It helps me to figure out where they're at with
the training, and then it helps me figure out their
program as well. And one of the first things I'll
(03:15):
do is a functional movement screening. Now, this is really
just to see where you're at with your mobility and
your range of motion. So this is generally a good
thing to do before you start a strength training program.
So thinking of standards, thinking about all the various kind
of movements that you could do, where are you at
(03:37):
with those? And that's the first thing I'd want you
to practice. And we could think of this as the
base of a pyramid. So where are you at, you
know in the pyramid, at the base of the pyramid
is laying down the foundations. So the functional movement screening then,
and we're looking at different movement patterns. Okay, so we're
looking at a squat and a deep squad. We're looking
(04:01):
at a lunge pattern, a step up pattern. So what
what we're really looking at with those they're they're the
lower body movements patterns. We're looking to see if the
knee tracks directly up and down or does it waver
out to the side. You know what, what's that movement like?
What's your range of motion like in the squat? You know,
(04:23):
with what's that that kind of that kind of thing.
We're then looking at shoulder mobility. You know how how
good is that. We'll get you to do some some
leg raises to see how far what the angles are
of those legs, especially if you're a cyclist. You know
that that would really help with you know, with your hamstrings.
How how flexible are you at in your the leg angle?
(04:48):
Then your core stability, you know what what's that like?
And your rotational stability, So all exercises to find out
what you're like in all those various movements. Now, it's
important that you you check all these movements out before
you actually start to put some weight onto onto these
(05:11):
sort of movements. Okay, so there's no point in loading
up a barbell back squad, you know, if you can't
even you know, if your leg if you're doing a
body weight squat and your knee waivers around and your
legs you need tracking in or something or it's tracking
out and you can't keep that stable. It means you've
got weak hips. So you'd have to sort that out
before you actually put any weight on it, which is
(05:32):
only going to make it even worse and potentially injure yourself.
Same with any of these you know, the lungs is
exact exactly the same. So what's a good, good kind
of thing to aim for for for the for the
various strength strength tests then, so well, again we're looking
at the different the different movements, So we've got a
(05:53):
pull movement, So what we're really looking in there. And
I did a video the other day about the inverted row,
and I like to use the gymnastic rings for this,
So really we're looking at the inverted row. Been able
to do five reps for the straight body with the
rings down around it, starting around about hip height, so
(06:16):
you quite low down when you start in the ring row,
and your body's flat. If you take a look at
that video, I'll put a link to it in the description,
it'll give you an idea of where you're at. You
should be able to do five reps of that, so
a bit easier than doing a pull up, okay, because
I wouldn't expect sort of general population everyone to be
(06:37):
able to do pull ups, but an inverted row with
five reps is a good standard to weigh for with
good form. The squat is next, so that the squat pattern. Okay,
bearing in mind that you've fixed all those things that
I mentioned earlier, that you've got a decent already got
a decent body weight squat, and then then you can
(06:59):
do at lead three sets of ten body weight squats.
We'll then looking to do ten reps at half your
body weight. Okay, that's something to weighing for now. These
aren't absolute these figures. These are just general fitness, average
population type fitness standards. So half your body weight, so
(07:22):
you know, for example, you know, I'm eighty kg, so
I should be able to squat with forty kgs. Well,
that's what I'm aiming for, and I'm not saying I
should be able to do that. That's what I'm aiming for.
So it's a good one for ten reps. For hipinge,
we've got the good old deadlift. Okay, So obviously you'd
(07:42):
need to be a member of a gym to perform
this particular test, and the general consensus on the deadlift
is you should be able to deadlift your body weight
for around about five or six reps. Okay, so not
not full on so again, and that for me, that
would mean I'd be able to deadlift eighty kgs for
(08:05):
five or six reps. Now, I think that's very achievable
for most people, you know, I think most people will
be able to work up to that. I'm not saying
to go to the gym, absolutely not and deadlifts straight
away your body weight to see if you can do it,
because you're gonna end up hurting yourself. You've got to
learn the movement and you've got to start, you know,
debt with a much much lighter weight and work your
(08:28):
way up to that. I think with a deadlift, it's
it's a fairly technical lift to start with. Once you
get to know it, once you get to know the movement,
you know, is it is a really powerful lift. You
can you really use those legs, use your hamstrings, use
your glutes to really power that bar up. But it's
learning those moves to start with. And we've got a
(08:50):
push movement. So the push movement is a simple press ups. Yeah.
So being able to do ten press ups without a break, yeah,
is something to wiiting for. I think, you know, most
people try and aim for that, and male and female,
I think it's a it's a good it's generally a good,
(09:11):
a good thing to weighing for. So, so ten press ups,
good form, you know, not wavering around, your body's not
dipping straight straight as a die, you know, you keeping
that rigid plank all the way through. But doing those
those ten press ups. Then we've got some single leg movements. Okay,
(09:31):
So we've got we've got a single leg hip hinge,
which would be a single length, single leg deadlift. Okay,
and again I'll put some link into description for some
demonstrations of these particular activities. But you're looking at single
leg deadlift twenty four CAGs for eight reps with you
(09:57):
could use a dumb bell or a cattlebell and a
single leg squat would be so doing sort of a
single leg squat would be a twenty kg. So I'm
thinking here, not an actual squat with just one on
one leg, but like a lunge that type thing, or
(10:20):
you know, a rear elevated foot squat, so like a
Bulgarian split squat eight reps at twenty kg's something to
aim for. Like I say, they're not absolute, these figures,
but something for you to aim for for core, to
finish off the strength side of things. For core, you're
looking at a sixty second plank, a rigid plank, you know,
(10:44):
everything in line, no sagging bottoms and no bottoms in
the air, no sagging tummies, everything nice and straight for
sixty seconds. Okay, So that's something again for you to
aim for. And a side plank similar straight as a
die thirty seconds. That's you know, a good, good thing
to aim for. Okay. So that that kind of wraps
(11:07):
up the strength side of things. Obviously with your fitness
you've got you've got a load of other things to
think about as well. And one of the main things,
you know, one of the biggest predictors of longevity in
people is your heart health. You know that heart. I've
done a full podcast episode about heart health, so you
can you can have a listen to that. But knowing
(11:30):
where you're at with your heart health, it's quite you know,
it's quite an interesting thing for you for you to do. Now,
there's plenty of charts around that that tell you, you
know where you're at with you with your fitness, especially
with your heart. And one of the one of the
best ways that we can measure this is summit called
the v O two max test. Now a full on
(11:50):
v O two max test. So you can get this
done at a you know, at a cycling performance center
or something like that. Not not out of this world
costly wise, you know, you'd be looking maybe between fifty
one hundred pounds to get one of these tests done.
And they basically strap you up to a machine and
they you go as hard as you can for twenty
or thirty minutes and they measure your your output basically,
(12:14):
and VEEO two max is essentially your volume of oxygen
that you can push around your body. You know, your
heart can push around your body, and that that's a
measure of your your fitness. And obviously the fitter you are,
the more you know, the more volume of oxygen you
can push around your body. So so that's what they
would measure in a you know, in a performance center
(12:38):
or something like that, or or a health center, you know,
any any good, good health center would do it as well. However,
you can there is ways of doing it without without
having to do that. There's some you know, more more
kind of at home friendly ways of doing things. And
there's something called the rock Port Walking Test, which again
(13:00):
I'll put a link to in the in the description,
and that's you just need like a like a heart
rate monitor, and you know, you just walk for one mile,
you kind of speed walk as fast as you can
without running. You don't you don't be running, and then
you put your your figures, your heart rate. At the
(13:20):
end of it, your time, you know your your age,
your weight and all all the good stuff, and it'll
spit you out a v O two max number. And
if you're a little bit more fitter, okay, and you
know you feel as though you've got a run in it,
then you can do something called a Cooper Run test again.
I'll put a link in the description, and that's a
(13:43):
similar sort of thing, except you run for one and
a half miles, you know, as quick as you can
sustain it, and at the end you put your time in,
your age, your heart rate at the end, and all
the rest of it. And that'll spit out a VO
two max as well, and they'll have charts that you
can look and you can see whether you're poor, you know,
average good, it depends, you know, is age dependent. Again,
(14:07):
the two max is a really good predictor of your
heart health for longevity. So maybe something really worth thinking
about doing one of these things other than that, you
could maybe do one and a half mile run. That's
a standard thing that you could do and time it,
you know, and you're looking for males of forty five
(14:30):
years of age completing that in twelve minutes or so,
females looking at fourteen minutes for a mile and a
half run. If you're fifty five to sixty five years
of age, then you're looking at thirteen minutes for men
and sixteen minutes for women. So that's another kind of crude,
(14:52):
kind of way of testing your physical fitness and your
heart health. Okay, other than that, we've got a few
other things that we can test. And your resting heart
rate is a good one. So you know, average heart
rate goes from between fifty and seventy two. You want
(15:13):
to be around a resting heart rate of a round
about sixty as a general kind of rule of thumb. Now,
resting heart rate does exactly mean that. So if you're
going to do your blood pressure or your heart rate,
then you need to be sitting still for a round
about fifteen minutes, not of eaten within the last half
(15:35):
an hour, because your body will be digesting foods, it'll
be working a little bit harder. So completely rested fifteen minutes,
you know, then you can take your blood pressure and
your resting heart rate. If you get one of these
heart rate sorry, blood pressure testing monitors, they'll do your
heart rate as well as you're doing that one. Twenty
(15:56):
over eighty for blood pressure is the kind of gold
standard on that one. There. Now, general kind of other
general kind of fitness things that we can think about is,
you know, your waiste circumference. If you if you're carrying
a lot of fat around your your middle, especially as
you get older. Again, that's that's a that's a pretty
(16:19):
good predictor of you know, potential problems later on in life.
So if you're between fifty and sixty, you've got a
bit of fat around the middle, then you know we
want to be maybe thinking about you know, getting that
getting that down just to just to improve your chances
later on in life. And I'm thinking here, you know, sixties,
seventies onwards now again. And a crude rule of thumb
(16:43):
on this one that I like to use is that
having a waste size no, no bigger than half of
your height. Okay, just let me explain that one for
a minute. So if you're six foot, you know, seventy
two inches, you want a thirty no bigger than a
thirty six inch waist. Okay, it's quite a crude way,
but it's a it's a good way. You know, five
(17:05):
foot ten is what's seventy inches, So you'll be wanting
a waste to conference no bigger than thirty five inches,
So you kind of know, really if you if you've
carrying weight around your middle, you'll you'll kind of know.
The other thing is your BMI. Again, it's a bit
(17:27):
bit crude, but keeping your BMI under twenty five is
a good thing. You know, your body fat presented below
twenty twenty below twenty five for females is good at all.
General kind of things to aim for, So there's lots
to go out there. If you are starting a program,
(17:47):
you know, like a health and fitness program, then having
these things to aim for, you know, your strength standards
to weim for, you know, then your VO two MAC
standards to aim for, then you know you're beyond well
on your way to you know, to really achieving those goals. Now,
(18:07):
whether what you prioritize is a whole different ballgame depending
on what your goals are. Now. I read something the
other day and it kind of struck a chord with
me as as we get older, you know, and I'm
talking for the gentleman population here, maybe more so because
(18:28):
it's kind of where I'm at as well. So I'm talking,
you know, fifties knocking on the door of sixty. I
tend to gravitate towards the endurance sports, you know, cycling,
you know, long distance running. And I don't know why,
I just tend. It seems to be that. I mean,
(18:48):
I enjoy those I enjoy cycling in that but what
that means is you tend to leave the kind of
strength training alone. You don't tend to do the strength training,
and it's at your detrim Really, you need to be
doing strength training even at that a you know, say,
even at that age, especially at that age. So if
(19:09):
you're knocking on the door fifties, sixties, even in your forties,
you should be having a good solid strength training program
at least twice a week, you know, if not three
times a week. Now, if I've got a few general
off the shelf strength training programs for over fifties, if
(19:31):
you want to message me and ask me for one
of those, I'd gladly share one of those with you.
You've just got to make sure you follow it, that's all.
So a six week program, an eight week program, for
twelve week program, whatever it is, get that strength up,
you know, because it's going to help so much later
on in life with you know, with your longevity, with
(19:52):
your quality of life as well. But saying that, you know,
the heart side of things is in important too. But
please don't neglect the strength training and aim at the
standards that I've mentioned to you here, and obviously again
just a quick warning not to embark on a program,
(20:16):
a fitness program, unless you've got the all clear from
the doctor. Now. I'm especially talking here from fifties sixties.
If you are fifty and over, then get yourself down
on the doctors for your free health check. Yeah, please
do that. If you haven't done it already, you can
chat about this. It's a very basic check. But you
(20:37):
know you're going to get everything looked at and you
can then say you can ask them and say, look,
you know, can I'm going to start a fitness program.
I'm going to day Shell's fitness Hey, and he's going
to do me a program. Is that okay? And you
know he'll he'll give you or she'll give you the
all clear. Okay. So so please do that before you
start a program. Hope that was worthwhile. Folks, Thanks so much.
(21:01):
If you're still listening watching this and get stuck into
your fitness program, let me know how you get on
and I shall speak to you later. Bye for now,
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