What we do and what intensity produces daily caloric expenditure. Walking slowly, lifting weights fast, and sprinting up a hill produce varied caloric burn in the same amount of time.
We hear the adage, “Do what you enjoy” and even, “Just keep moving”, to develop and sustain a life of physical activity and wellness.
However, preferences for physical activity change and preferences for short term consequences may change too.
Preferred Caloric Burn
When situation calls for it, I graph caloric expenditure on client fitness dashboards. My Apple Watch tracks calories burned while I workout and provides feedback following any completed workout. These are easy metrics to monitor and evaluate athlete performance.
One client of mine latched on to this bit of feedback. That is, she is incredibly motivated to engage in fitness behaviors that produce high calories burned each day. Behaviorally speaking, when she monitors her workout data and sees higher calories burned, then that feedback likely reinforces her previous fitness behaviors (e.g., running over rugged terrain for 90 minutes). She will do anything to increase her caloric expenditure.
As we worked through her goals, and workout regimen, we discovered certain activities that produced the highest burn.
This analysis is useful because it allows us to continually improve while maintain high levels of desired athletic performance.
The various physical activities and workouts are listed on the left. Following the activity type paired with caloric expenditure allowed us to evaluate:
- Did the athlete “push” themselves hard enough?
- Which workouts need to be modified?
- Among the workouts, what should be modify?
- Are there any workouts that should be removed from our programming.
The answers to each of these questions is ongoing and requires continuous dialogue between coach and athlete.
It is a shaping process.
Preferences For Workouts
Among the workouts displayed above, we designed each “superset w/run” that cater to the athlete’s preferences. These supersets often included variations of running 400m along with weighting training in between running intervals.
Athlete preferences included:
- duration of workout,
- desired total caloric burn
- preferred cardio equipment, and
- movements in the athlete’s repertoire
Evaluate Your Own Preferences
Duration, total calories, preferred equipment and movement are but a few of the millions of preferences that can be evaluated when assessing health and fitness. Maybe these variables are not important to you or friend. But which variables are? Are you forgetting to leverage your own preferences to meet your health and fitness goals?
Preferences aren’t everything, but they sure do help when you’re getting started.
Reach out if you need you help getting started today.
Keep moving.
