52 Lives

I didn’t like steppers until last Thursday. I discovered something on that day, but I’ll come back to that later in this post. Before this “discovery” I didn’t like steppers for many reasons. Mainly I didn’t like them because I think stair stepping is boring if you have to climb them more than half a minute. Also the image of a blond hair dude with solarium tanning on a fitness commercial using the stair stepper is the stereotype which I don’t want to relate to.

And last but not least there are the physical reasons. My knees start aching, the stepper frame (the bar which you grab during the stepping) is always too low and I feel like I’m breaking the stepper with my weight. OK, there are couple of more reasons but I don’t like to concentrate too much on the negatives. I want to tell you about this positive discovery that totally changed my attitude towards steppers.

Give The Man Statistics And He Will Enjoy It

I’m an engineer, so some part of me is crazy for statistics. When it comes to training my favorite statistics are those which tell about the progress of my training. How many repeats I’m doing more, how much lower my heart rate is now than six months ago, how many kilos more I have on the bar and so on. Now as I’m training to ski 90 km, I was very interested to know how fit I was at the moment.

I’m a fan of Polar heart rate monitors and there’s a fit test on my Polar S410 that I can use to get one observation of my current fitness level. This one is done by relaxing and laying on the bed for 5 minutes. I have done it for couple of times, but I wanted to test myself in a different way. I wanted to use an exercise bike and do a “pedal-until-you-drop” test. In this kind of test you keep pedaling as long as you can. The resistance increases as the time goes by and the test ends when you can’t pedal anymore. After your breathing normalizes the trainer fills your head with all sorts of statistics about your fitness level. There would be now reason to take this crazy test without the statistics

Disappointment Leads To Discovery

The gym I go to has these LifeFitness bikes which have fit test on their program sets. Or so I thought. I had taken my Polar HRM’s chest strap with me so I could take the test. The Polar strap sends your heart rate information to the LifeFitness bike and it uses the HR information with the bike’s data (resistance, watts, pedaling speed, etc). You are also asked to type in your age, weight and sex. After the test you are given a number that presents your fitness level. OK, this was what I was expecting to get and I was really anxious to take test when I came to the gym.

So I went to bike and started pedaling. I started pressing the button which changes the exercise program but there was something wrong. I couldn’t choose the fit test! I wasn’t believing it! The fit test option is written on the main unit but you couldn’t choose it. I kept pressing the button for several times until I had to give up.

I was walking around the gym trying to figure what to do instead. Somehow I took a quick look of the stepper’s main unit which was also made by LifeFitness. The board looked the same and it had the fit test option. Like I wrote in the beginning, I don’t like steppers but I climbed on it just to see if the fit test was enabled.

I started climbing (oh the pain) and powered up the main unit. I pressed the program chooser and voila - fit test option could be chosen! I thought to myself that would I be ready to use the stepper for 3 minutes and get my dose of statistics? Hell yeah, said the statistics junkie in my head.

Choose Your Level

The fit test asks for the user’s information before the test. I typed my weight, age, sex and finally chose the resistance level. Everything set, ready to go. I’ve been using the exercise bike every time I go to the gym, so I started looking for the similarities in the stepper’s main unit. The display is quite the same and there are also the watts, calories and distance information covered. But there was a small piece of information that wet my appetite.

There was a small display which showed the target stepping rate. I think it is calculated based on the user given info. My target stepping rate was 14,3. Below that display was another display showing the current stepping rate. I was hooked in an instant!

Think about it. You give a guy some value that he has to reach. The guy will go nuts and try to reach that value no matter what. This is like the purest element in sports, call it an achievement, call it a goal, whatever, but still this the thing that makes sports… sports!

So How Fit I Am?

The cruel part was to keep the stepping rate above the target rate throughout the test. I tried to keep my HR on decent levels so I kept stepping just above the target rate. At the end I was given one single number… 43. Forty-three. What does it mean??? Is it good or bad? I tried to look for the value from LifeFitness site, but then I figured the information could be on Polar site too. After googleing a bit I found that value given is somewhat comperable to VOmax. During my 3000m Cooper test challenge I was able to run 2650 meters which gives VOmax result 47,7. Ouch! I was in better shape during the autumn…

As a conclusion, this test changed my mind when it comes to steppers. They don’t seem so bad anymore. Would I do the test again? You bet. Would I use the stepper for something else, for example warm ups? No way

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