The sauna and the workout

Post in progress...

1. My body's reaction to the sauna isn't stable. Usually I climb in with it at 60 °C and stay in for 25 minutes until my heart rate is near 100 bpm and I'm drenching. Occasionally though there have been times when this exposure was unbearable and I had to crack open the door to survive. Clearly somehthing else is going on.
2. The heaters are thermostatically controlled by interior air temperature. My body is heated, however, by radiant energy and not by air convection. So the thermostatic control doesn't do a good job regulating heat transfer to me. When the thermostat turns off the radiant heat decays out and there is a significant reduction in how hot the sauna feels. In other words there is a perceptual undershoot. I think a new control strategy is warranted.
1. Use the temperature of a simulated person mass instead of air temperature to control the air
2. Use a simple switch to control the heaters
3. Replace the thermostatic control with a timer alone. <--My plan at the moment
3. I want to explicitly mention how important my heart rate is while I'm using the sauna. It came as a surprise to me that it was so valuable. It allows me to get a good feeling about the stress I'm being exposed to even when the conditions of the stress are hard to determine. The variables that determine stress are:
1. Exposure time, Energy absorbed, Body hydration reserve, Fatigue?, Air temperature, Body heat absorption characteristics? (what are they?), clothing, 
2. Hmmm. I am seriously out of my depth here. And I think I know some people who actually know this stuff. Maybe I can even find some serious research online.
4. Here are some other sauna workout references.
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16877041
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1292364/pdf/jrsocmed00144-0007.pdf
3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1405706/

My Evolving Exercise Diary - Version 1.01

I cleaned up My Evolving Exercise Diary a little bit on Google Docs this morning. The only significant thing I did was to eliminate the need to sort the SH Key in the Entry Types sheet and I got rid of the SH Key check column in the Diary sheet itself. It's such a small evolving change. (It's shared to view so you must save it before you can edit it.) There are introduction and help sheets with it and even previous posts that describe it more.

My Evolving Exercise Diary can be used as it is by replacing the sample data with your own diary events. For those already using it though upgrading is not a painless process. Since spreadsheets combine data with formulas, upgrades need to add in the user information from the old diary without overwriting the new formulas. Here's how to go about it:

1. Save the new Google Docs spreadsheet so you can edit it.
2. In the Entry Types sheet: Cut and paste to match your old version. (It's all data and no formulas.)
3. In the Diary sheet:
1. Make new rows or delete some so that the number of rows in the new diary match the old.
   (Do not copy rows from the old diary into the new diary! You must copy rows from the new diary and paste them into the new diary. There are formulas in the rows and they need to be the new formulas.)
2. Copy the SH Key column from the old diary into the new one.
3. Copy all the green user input columns one at a time except for the Training Cycles column from the old diary to the new diary. (There were no changes to the formulas or the data in the Training Cycles column. I just changed it to blue.)

Alternatively, you could figure out what changes were made and make them yourself in your old diary. (Hint: Each VLOOKUP function has a new additional parameter ", false".)

If anyone is using this I sure would appreciate a comment. I think it has a certain elegance missing in other workout spreadsheets.

Adding an infrared sauna to my program

I just bought a far infrared sauna and of course it offers a whole new set of considerations about how to use it and integrate it into my intermittently flagging exercise program.

First, here's what it looks like. You'll have to imagine the pervasive cedar scent.

I'm satisfied that the better quality infrared saunas are safe. They emit the same kind of radiant energy that is produced by things like campfire embers, warm rocks, human bodies and cute little kitty cats.

As a note, I think it's strangely counterproductive the way that sauna brochures describe infrared as being between microwaves and ultraviolet-B. I wonder why they don't also relate it to cosmic rays, x-rays, microwaves and particle beam accelerators?

On the other hand, the time and temperature exposure levels that the saunas provide is a legitimate concern. Both traditional saunas and infrared saunas can provide an extreme environment and they must be used carefully.

I don't have any strong feelings about the health benefits of infrared saunas. I'm pretty skeptical about all the claims. I bought mine for purely creature comfort reasons. If any health benefits come along that would be nice too. It is, however, both a physical an emotional benefit to relax in total warmth when those cold winter days start coming around. Just knowing it is there with it's wonderful cedar scent always offering comfort and (can I use the word "warmth" again) is enough to get me through the day.

Then comes the question about how to use the sauna and I have questions with few answers.

1. Should I use the sauna before or after a workout? Browsing around the web I see that most people seem to use it after a workout. I suppose their intent is to help the recovery process. But I'm thinking that warming those muscles and joints up before beginning my exercise might be a better way to go. Maybe first a little sauna with some stretching, then smoothly into a cardio session finally followed by a strength training workout. It's rather appealing to me. And I sometimes need some incentive to get out of bed and get started on those chilly early mornings.
2. My sauna temperature control does not seem to control air temperature. Since the heating effect is mostly due to radiant energy and less due to air convection this makes sense, but I don't know how they calibrate it. What is that little sensor really measuring? Is it some kind of material that is sensitive to radiant energy? Does it have a real significant mass to provide control damping when the heater cycles or is it a virtual heat load of some kind? 
3. I want to start using my heart rate monitor while I'm in there and measure my water weight loss. Today I noticed that my heart rate went from 60 to 93 in 25 minutes as the temperature built up from 126 to 150 degrees F. I was impressed with how smoothly heart rate increased. 
4. Of course the sauna exposures fit right in to the Google docs workout diary.

My Evolving Exercise Diary - Continued

This is an addendum to an earlier post. This is a little more technical and includes a link to a sample Excel file.
[Update: A more recent Google Docs link is available in a later post.]

To review, I wanted a simple flexible method exercise diary that can:

1. Track my exercises and related information in sequence as they were performed
2. Provide user definable entry types for different kinds of information
3. Allow later analysis
4. Be online, easy-to-use and free

So I came up with a diary using a Google Docs spreadsheet .

Be aware that you have to be a bit geeky to use it. The purple column on "The Diary" is an index into the "Entry Type" sheet. Green cells are for user data, blue cells contain formulas. You create a new entry by copying an existing row with its formulas into a new row, then enter data into the green cells.

A simple "one sheet" approach would have propagated columns endlessly so instead I emulated a key indexed database so that each column represents a different type of information depending on the "Entry Type" index. This approach allows the user to add, delete or change the types of information in the columns for that type by editing the "Entry Types" sheet. There is a help sheet and if you're not familiar with the technique you may find many other uses for it.

Here's an image of a sample "Entry Types" sheet.

[Update: I removed the comment about not being able to distribute this directly from Google Docs.]

Finally, I appreciate comments.

Using the rack for calf lifts

I'm still adjusting the power rack configuration for my calf exercise. Here's what I'm doing now.

The basic idea of the lift is to have the bar on my shoulders with my toes supported on the top of of a 4 x 4 inch block with my heels unsupported. I then raise and lower my heels using calves alone.

The rack is setup so the bar rests on the crossbeam below the bottom of the lift. The bar slides up and down the side of two 2 x 4 inch pine blocks located on each crossbeam as shown in the figure. Using the block avoids irritiating bumps that would otherwise be caused when the bar hits the top of the beam slider.

Homemade power rack drawing

This drawing of the rack neglects most dimensions because they are governed by variable factors such as available ceiling height and the span of the lifting bar. The desire for a large working footprint area on the mat is traded off against the bar return re-seating tolerance. I have a 1-1/2 inch allowance now which is a bit tight. Two or three inches would be better. On the other hand, having it tight forces me to be more deliberate with my lifts.

Power Rack - Base

This view of the rack base shows the nice open area available for a bench or even a section of wooden post that I use for my calf exercises.

(Hmmm. I should post some pictures of the rack being used for some typical exercises.)

Those small wooden blocks under ends of the base compensate for the small slope in the sun room floor.

I have more power rack information. I'll try to get it out soon. I'm also thinking I should make a separate power rack outline post filled with links to the various components.

Power Rack - Crossbar

My power rack design uses a crossbar shown here. The combination of a 3" separation between the holes on the vertical columns with 2" for the crossbar lets the pin control the crossbar height to a resolution of 1".

Other design notes:
1. Hard nylon trim on the edges help it slide a little better and some heavy leather on the top of the bars serves to tone down the clanging.
2. The purpose of 1" steel pins to support the crossbeam was originally to allow using an steel bar instead of the crossbeam. I never used that and if I were to make another rack, the holes and pins would be much smaller. Machining large holes is a bit of a bear without special equipment. On the other hand I'm real happy with it the way it is.
3. I make no claims to the strength of this design. It seems fine to me but if you lift a lot of weight you should get an engineering analysis including the effects of the welding, and steel tube wall thickness.

An exercise diary of power and grace

While fooling around with Google Docs Spreadsheets the other day, I came up with a fun little exercise diary. Here's an image snag and a bit of a description.


My Evolving Exercise Diary, as I call it, is a worksheet containing sequential entries where each entry is a row with a type defined separately by the user. This approach lets the user create a personalized chronological list of diverse but organized information. I also built in conversions between English and SI units which helps me on my trips abroad.

Here are some of my current entry type definitions.


I can now keep track of both cardio and strength workouts as well as other information that I usually just have scratched in the margins of my workout log. It's been transformational.

I might publish this here if anyone expresses interest. Google Docs Spreadsheets are great.