Wrist Weights to the Rescue!

[stevenpiziks]

So I've been pounding through the workout/game Supernatural on the Oculus. The workouts come in three levels: low, medium, and high intensity. I started out with medium and quickly progressed to high. I check my progress by tracking my heart rate with my Fitbit. The Fitbit also tells me how many calories I've burned, which is handy--I can put the information into Noom, and it adjusts my calories for the day accordingly. I get to eat one "extra" calorie for every two I burn.

Anyway, I noticed lately my heart rate wasn't going as high during even the most difficult high intensity workout. I also wasn't sweating so much and wasn't becoming breathless. Stupid aerobic exercise! How dare it improve my muscle efficiency?

Trouble is, I was burning fewer calories as well. I needed to figure out what to do.

So I went to the sporting goods store near our place and bought a set of wrist weights. Three pounds for each wrist. Then I climbed into the Oculus.

Boy, could I feel the difference! It was tough, but I powered through it. My usual Oculus workout runs 60 minutes, but this time I had to stop at 40. I finished things off with a 20-minute treadmill run.

Check the stats when I was done. The Fitbit sorts heart rate into Fat Burn, Cardio, and Peak. I was spending most of an hour-long workout at Cardio, with maybe five or seven minutes at Peak, though this time was shortening lately. I was burning about 600 calories.

With the wrist weights, I spent 36 minutes at peak and burned 850 calories.

Okay, then. We'll continue with them.