Spin, Spin, Sugar

I mentioned about my Monday Core Mishap and In other news,  I took a spin class! It’s been at least 3 years since I have done a spin class, but this class was different because it was for beginners. I am so glad I took the beginner course. It was really informative.

In addition to refreshing my memory on how to properly set up our bikes, the instructor taught us how to listen to our bodies via our heart rate and our breathing. Basically, you find nearest your age on this “heart chart” and take your pulse for 10 seconds. Then find your BPM on the heart chart. For example, if you are 30 years old and your BPM is 28 or over, then you are at about 85% of your maximum heart rate. This is good percentage to be at when doing intervals –but not a healthy level to be at for long periods of time, he explained. This is when the body starts to use other things than oxygen to fuel our body, it will use fat, and even muscle.  Thus, this explains the importance of fueling our body properly by eating things like protein and complex carbs. It was like a lightbulb went off in my head. Something clicked and this whole exercise and eating right made sense! Lol. I guess it has to be explained to me in what my fiancé would call “nerd terms”. Can I help that I am a visual learner and like charts? Haha.

He also went through what resistances would give us a 60%  max heart rate, which is good for building our cardiovascular system hence making our hearts more “fit”.  HyperStrike does a much better job of explaining it here. It was very interesting and next week I can listen to my body, my heart when I join the big boys in the regular spin class! Don’t worry though, it wasn’t all talk. We did a total of 35 minutes of pedaling. I was nice and sweaty when the class was over. I might invest in a heart monitor so I can always listen to my body and know where I am in terms of my BPM so I can take advantage of interval training. Score!