Folowing on from the discussion over the garden fence earlier in the week I thought I would start my new training regime with a trial of a low intesity cross training session at the gym.

My understanding so far is that cross training is designed to ensure that  your body/muscles develop in a balanced way as opposed to just being great for one sport/activity.

So yesterday I picked one of the cross training machines and went low intensity.

My recollection of the advice was that I should target a heart rate of 80% of the heart rate I feel comfortable with for 20 mins continuous hard exercise.  Well Thursday’s bike ride saw me averaging 148bpm for over 90 mins – so I picked 150 (which co-incidently is the max training figure for my age on the gym machines) – multiplied this by 0.8 and hey ho my target was 120. From reading on web there is a method of calculating heart rate range and then applying %ages for easy, medium and hard training regimes – but for the moment I will keep it simple.

What did I do?  Well for the first 10-15 mins on the cross trainer I thought it was really easy. By 22 mins I was starting to sweat (and getting bored) and by 42 mins of consistent power and spm I started slowing down.  I reached my target of 50 mins (thanks to listening to the White Stripes “Elephant” on head phones which finished at about 49m 35 secs).  Cool down was a few low intensity weights and a short dip in the pool.

Has it worked? I must admit I felt tired but quite good and my muscles haven’t complained.

What next?  I need to think about what other exercise regimes I shall bring into my regime, perhaps Yoga, what intestity targets and start drawing up a weekly schedule (arrggghhh) with probably two options depending upon the weather.