January 10, 2016

This past week, news broke about a class-action lawsuit Fitbit Charge HR now faces due to inaccurate and dangerously low heart rate readouts.

The Fitbit Charge HR is the only heart rate monitor I’ve ever used. I first bought it in February of 2015 to use for DDPYoga, but also because I was curious about how many steps I was getting in a day (turns out, it’s not a lot). Back in June, I said I was underwhelmed with its performance. No matter how hard I was working, sometimes my heart rate was barely breaking 100 (and my zone is 134-154). Or, sometimes I’d be near my zone, and literally seconds later I’d be back in the 90s again.

In December, some people on the private Facebook group for DDPYoga certified instructors were asking about new heart rate monitors. DDPYoga instructor Christina Russell commented that the DDPYoga Performance Center uses the Wahoo Tickr X because it’s the most accurate they’ve tested. With some Christmas money, I bought the Tickr X.

I wanted to see how the Fitbit did compared to the Tickr X, so I put them both on at the same time. It only took me a few workouts to see that the Tickr X killed the Fitbit in direct competition.

Obviously, this isn’t a scientific comparison. But, with each workout, my heart rate was about 10 bpm higher on the Tickr X compared to the Charge HR. That number may not seem like much, but look at the difference in calories burned.

Also, my right shoulder was sore during these workouts, so I wasn’t necessarily looking to get into my target zone and stay there. Instead, I was just looking to stretch out a bit. So keep that in mind.

DDPYoga – New Year’s Eve

On New Year’s Eve, I did a lower body workout so I wouldn’t have to use my arm as much. I don’t remember which one, but I was using the DDPYoga Now app (which is pretty cool, by the way).

Martial Arts – New Year’s Day

When I was training with my karate instructor, he told me about a tradition he’d had at one point – training your whole system on New Year’s Day. I kind of did that. I warmed up with some DDPYoga stretching before doing the old Yang-style tai chi chuan form, followed by the five Hsing-i elements and the animal forms I’ve been taught thus far. After that, I reviewed my karate forms and ippons, taezus, and kihons in 2 directions. If the should would’ve been feeling better, I would have done 8. Notice the downward trend at the end, which was me trying to remember some of those wazas since I haven’t actively practiced them in eight months.

DDPYoga – Jan. 02

This was probably Stand Up 2.0. The average bpm was closest here, though there are still widely varying numbers.

After this workout, I decided to ditch the Fitbit entirely. I know I don’t get as many steps as the “gold standard” of 10,000, and I’m tired of feeling inferior to people telling me they have three times as many steps as I do for the day. I know I think I’m sleeping 7 hours, but may really only be getting 5.5 hours of sleep (as we compared Fitbit stats, a person I went on a date with was shocked at how restless I was). And I know, with pretty convincing supporting evidence, that my heart rate is better measured with the Wahoo Tickr X than the Fitbit Charge HR.

October 16, 2015

I hear you loud and clear, Metamora. You want evening yoga? You’re gonna get it.

Through a partnership with Metamora Parks & Recreation, I’m happy to be bringing DDPYoga to central Illinois for the first time ever.

What’s DDPYoga?

Well, first of all… It ain’t your mama’s yoga!

DDPYoga is a fitness system that combines elements of yoga, traditional fitness, sports therapy, and dynamic resistance to create a kickass workout.

With it, you can:

1. Burn fat standing still!
2. Increase your cardio without running, jumping, or lifting!
3. Get more flexible!

The best part is you can do all of this with minimal joint impact.

What I like most about the DDPYoga workout is that you can make it as easy or as challenging as you want. People of literally all ages and fitness levels can do DDPYoga.

See some more inspirational transformation videos with this playlist:

What Are Some More Details About DDPYoga In Metamora?

Classes will be held Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. in the Metamora Park District activity room starting January 5.

The first session will last 13 weeks, with the last class finishing on March 31.

A minimum of 8 people must sign up for the session, but we’ll have to limit it to about 15 people because of the space.

How Do I Get Started?

Edit: Learn more about my current DDP Yoga class offerings here.

August 29, 2015

Several months ago, I made what I considered to be a startling discovery: I am consistently in my fat-burning zone when I do Chinese martial arts forms.

To put that into perspective, my heart rate is usually 10-20 beats per minute higher doing martial arts than it is doing DDPYoga. I do DDPYoga to burn fat and to build muscle, so imagine my surprise when I noticed that martial arts get my heart pumping faster than a program that touts itself for its heart-rate-jacking, fat-blasting workouts. (See my experience with using the Fitbit Charge HR for DDPYoga here.)

I’m not knocking DDPYoga here. In fact, as I write this, I’m just a few hours short of acquiring the teaching hours I need to become certified.

What I’m saying is that Chinese martial arts have almost a stigma attached to them. Many consider them to be just a way for old people to stay healthy as they age. And yes, while that’s true, it’s only one aspect.

Chinese martial arts help people burn fat.

I’ve experimented a few ways – doing my tai chi chuan form and Hsing-i forms without any other workout for the day, doing those forms after DDPYoga workouts ranging in length from 20 to 40 to 60 minutes (which is usually my favorite) – and the bottom line is that Chinese martial arts raise your heart rate and allow you to get into your fat-burning zone.

Let’s take this morning, for example.

 

I started off doing the DDPYoga Mix Tape routine – one of the most challenging 35 minutes in that set. I was able to raise my heart rate quicker than I’m usually able to, shooting up into the 120s fairly early. (Remember, my fat-burning zone is 134-154.) I peaked in the workout at 159, and you can easily see from my chart that I backed off pretty quickly. Overall, I stayed at 122 average beats per minute.

It should be noted here that it’s hard for me to get in my fat-burning zone. Even when I’m putting all my energy into it, I’ll still see myself in the 120s, about 10 clicks below where I should be.

This might have to do with the placement of my Fitbit Charge HR. It needs to be placed on my wrist just right. I usually wear mine so that the sensor is on the top of my wrist, but for working out, I’ve found it works better when I turn it inside. If it wobbles from punching or it slides from sweating, I can see myself going down 30 bpm. Literally. So, I may be in my FBZ without even knowing it sometimes.

After I finished that, I went to go do my tai chi chuan form outside in the park since it was nice out this morning. That took me about 5 minutes. I followed that with the five Hsing-i chuan element forms and the four animal forms I know so far. Even though I was only working out about a third of the time with martial arts, this chart looks like I’m staying in my target zone longer. It’s been that way on other workouts, too – I’m consistently noticing myself in the 130-150 range.

The kicker here is that I don’t feel like I work as hard at Chinese martial arts as I do at DDPYoga. That’s usually the reason why I do it at the end of my workout, so I can cool down. With DDPYoga, I’m drenched at the end of the workout, “sweatin’ and swearin’,” so to speak. But with martial arts, what I feel like would be a “light” workout can still put me in my zone.

So, if you’re looking to complement your main exercise program, think about martial arts. In addition to all of the great values martial arts teaches, they’re also a fully capable weight-loss and muscle-building system.

If anybody has any heart rate advice related to martial arts, please comment.

June 14, 2015

You probably know by now I’m an advocate of the DDPYoga fitness system. I first picked it up in August 2013 after listening to Diamond Dallas Page talk about it at length during a profanity-laden episode of the Steve Austin Show.

However, after hundreds of workouts, I only picked up a heart rate monitor for the first time this year. It was the Fitbit Charge HR, and it has dramatically changed how I do my DDPYoga workouts.

Why wear a heart monitor?

The main principle of DDPYoga is engagement, or dynamic resistance. It’s a tensing of the muscles so that the more you flex, the more blood you pump to your muscles. The more blood you pump to your muscles, the faster your heart has to beat. And the faster your heart beats, the more fat you burn.

If you are operating at your maximum heart rate for up to 25 beats per minute less, you’re engaging in aerobic cardiovascular exercise. Think running, walking, biking, skiing, or doing DDPYoga. With this type of exercise, you are burning fat as your fuel source.

In anaerobic exercise, in which you exceed your maximum heart rate for a long time, you burn sugar as your fuel source, and that requires more recovery time. Think sprinting or weightlifting.

Dallas implores people to be wearing a heart monitor at the start of each workout so that your body is in its optimal fat-burning zone. If you exceed it, he recommends heading into the Safety Zone position for a few seconds so you can lower it.

So how do you know what your fat-burning zone is?

DDPYoga uses the 180 formula developed by Dr. Phil Maffetone.

Take 180 minus your age. Then, modify that number according to the rules listed on his site.

I follow 180 minus my age, minus 20 to know what my target heart rate zone is.

180-26 = 154. 154-20 = 134. So my target heart rate zone is 134-154.

How did the Charge HR help?

When I first got my Charge HR device, I did the quick and basic Energy workout to get a gauge on how it worked. Remember, I hadn’t ever used a heart rate monitor in 18 months of DDPYoga practice.

Initially, I was underwhelmed. My heart rate hovered around 100, which wasn’t close to the 130s I needed to reach just to be on the lower end of my fat-burning zone. “Maybe this thing just needs to get used to me working out,” I thought. After all, everybody’s different, so maybe there was some kind of calibration phase it needed to go through.

Later on, though, it dawned on me that I might not be fully engaging my muscles to make use of the dynamic resistance upon which DDPYoga is based. I made some adjustments, and found out that my heart rate was indeed going up throughout my workouts. With effort, I can make my heart rate soar. Not as easily as they do in the video above, but it works nonetheless.

If you’re having trouble getting into your fat-burning zone doing DDPYoga, try this guy’s video:

Four months after starting to use a heart rate monitor for DDPYoga, I’m seeing some results of using my heart rate monitor. The wrap and burn stretch on the Strength Builder (and Mix Tape) workouts on the DVDs has gotten me into the 130s, and the Mix Tape in general is the workout that keeps me the most engaged with my highest heart rates. I’m also still surprised to see I have consistently high heart rates when I’m doing Broken Table crunches. For a move that doesn’t seem like much, it sure shoots that heart rate up.

However, I still can’t find consistency in when to expect my heart rate to go up and when it won’t. For example, I noticed a drastic increase in my heart rate when working outdoors than indoors. This was especially apparent when I was doing punches a few weeks ago in the park and noticed my heart rate soaring into the 140s, a number not typically seen in my living room during the same exercise.

What to know about customizing the heart rate on the Charge HR

You have to customize your heart rate on the Charge HR if you want to follow the DDPYoga method of calculating it.

1. Open up the Fitbit app.
2. Go to Account.
3. Go to Heart Rate Zone.
4. Select that you want to use a custom zone, and then enter the Upper Limit and Lower Limit.

The caveat is that even though you select custom zones, Fitbit will still use its default zones when plotting your graph of heart rates throughout your workout. It will show you your custom zone with the graph, but it doesn’t really explain much (like what your zones are).

Tell me what you think

Now, it’s your turn to sound off with your experiences to one or any of these questions:

1. What are your experiences like with using the Fitbit Charge HR for DDPYoga?
2. How does the Fitbit Charge HR compare to other heart rate monitors for DDPYoga?
3. What DDPYoga exercises do you find help you get into your target heart rate zone?
4. What other fitness activities do you do with your heart rate monitor, and how does that compare to when you do DDPYoga?

April 8, 2015

A year after being inducted into the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame as Karate Black Belt of the Year, I’m headed back to teach a free DDPYoga seminar.

After doing the program for the past 20 months, I’ve decided to become a certified DDPYoga instructor. This seminar is a win for both of us – I get teaching experience, and you’ll get a kickass workout!

What’s DDPYoga?

Diamond Dallas Page created this style of yoga to help heal injuries from high-impact sports. As he went along, he found how it could help others.

What can DDPYoga do for a martial artist?

Flexibility has never been my strong suit. Most people are surprised when I tell them that despite the fact I’m a black belt, I can’t touch my toes. They’re taken aback when I tell them I only need to be able to kick to the groin at the highest.

But, I can’t tell you how good I feel when I do a DDPYoga workout that really focuses on the hips and knees. I feel loose and ready for a hard practice or competition.

What can I expect at the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame?

As Dallas likes to say, I hope you’ll be “sweatin’ and swearin’.”

Martial arts instructors love putting their students through bodyweight exercises. Many encourage their students to go for runs or do weight training.

With DDPYoga, there are no weights involved. We won’t be running in circles around a gym. You’re gonna stay in one spot and you’re gonna sweat your butt off like never before.