DAY 9 - I knew i was in trouble when...

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr

I started yawning.

Not the "I'm so sleepy and tired, i think i'll skip today" kind of yawning. I mean i started yawning in the middle of a Plyometrics workout. As i was hopping up and down on one foot in a cross pattern (don't ask), i yawned. Then i yawned again. This is in the middle of the workout, i tell you. I'm jumping and hopping and leaping and sweating like a horse stretching for the finish line at the Preakness, and suddenly i'm yawning?

So *hop* i start to wonder *hop* what could be making me *hop* yawn. Then i remember something i heard once. *stop* Check heart rate. Yawning is a signal that the body needs oxygen. Now i'm not entirely sure what my target heart rate should be during intense aerobic exercise, so i decide to check on the Team Beachbody site. ('Cause, seriously, i know they're gonna have it.) *pause dvd, go to site* And they do.

Well. Seems a man my age pumping at 168 bpm is in what's known as the "Redline Zone." That's past the Aerobic Zone, straight through the Threshold Zone and right before the Heart Attack Zone. Or at least that's what went through my brain. I decided to take a new approach to Plyometrics this time: pause the DVD between each superset, check the heart rate, walk it out a bit and let it come back down if it was too high, then start the DVD up again and jump back in.

I know, the automated, estimated calculator can't tell me for sure what MY target heart rate is. And i did redo the calculations for a 40 year old and a 35 year old just to see how different they would be (since my heart at least seemed to be in good shape even before i started this). There's a significant difference, but they still had it in the Threshold Zone.

We'll see what happens with next week, but i may be going to the Cardio X for the rest of the initial 30 days. And i probably need to get more cardio in on different days of the week too.

Week Two Day Two... survived.


Oh, and it turns out that whole "yawning because you need oxygen" thing is just one of several theories about why we yawn. It seems nobody actually knows...