[uechick08]

Do you pay more attention to the length of time you're exercising, the calories you've burned, or your heart rate?

[Meg]

That's a really interesting question!

I don't pay any attention to the so-called calories burned, because I know there's no way to measure that accurately outside of a lab. Even with a HR monitor, it's a guess based on others of your age, gender, height, and weight. So that's completely out of the equation for me.

When I'm doing cardio, I do it for a set amount of time. So time is critical, but so is my HR. I do intervals and strive for certain max and average HRs. So the answer is both for cardio.

When I'm lifting weights, it's none of the above. I do a certain number of exercises and sets, but it's all about the amount of weight I'm lifting. I also factor in rest between sets, tempo, and other factors.

[BlueToBlue]

Here is what I pay attention to:

Treadmill: Speed. I run intervals of increasing speed two or three days a week. I make sure I start my first interval at the same speed or faster than the last time and I increase the speed of my intervals at the same or a faster rate than the last time I ran.

Elliptical: Resistance, RPMs, and calories. I always set the resistance to the same or a high level and then I try to keep my RPMS at or above a certain level. Some days I'm better at this than others, so I also always check my calories at the end of my session. If I haven't burned at least 225 calories, I know I haven't worked as hard as I normally do and I keep going until I get to 225. But I don't add 225 calories to my diet or anything; it's just to make sure I work out at the same rate from one day to the next.

Stair Machine: Speed and calories. On cardio days where I don't use one of the ellipticals, I use the stair machine. I increase the speed every 2 to 4 minutes and I try to go a little faster every time. I check the calories at the end just to make sure I burned as many as last time and to see if I managed to burn a few more. I have a goal of getting to 150 calories in 15 minutes--it's a meaningless number but it's good to have goals. I'm at 142 calories now.

I do all of the above workouts for 15 minutes, so there's not really anything to pay attention to in terms of time. If I'm doing something completely new, I will use the calories as a way of assessing whether or not I'm achieving the level of exercise that I want. For example, every once in a while, instead of running, I will walk on the treadmill at the highest incline setting. When I do that, I try to make sure I burn close to same calories that I burn when I run intervals.

I don't have a heart rate monitor, so I never use that measurement. The machines at my gym are uniformly incapable of reading my heart rate--although at least one of them thinks my towel has a heart rate of 200 BPM I must have been sweating a lot that day so the towel was working extra hard.

One of my mottos is "Never go back, only go forward." So I always push myself to work just as hard or just a little harder than I did the last time I worked out.

For weights, I have a personal trainer so I don't pay attention to anything there. I just do what he tells me. It's always a tough workout.

[baffled111]

Hmmm. Tricky. I primarily pay attention to the calories burned on my HRM. I have to burn 300 calories. The thing is, I burn 300 calories in about 30-32 mins, which is the time it takes me to run 3.25 miles, and in order to reach all those goals, I have to keep my heart rate within a certain range. So it kinda all works together symbiotically.

When I cycle, I map out a course based on distance.

Since I'm maintaining, I *do* eat my calories burned during exercise, or I save them up for the weekend or whatever. The calories are just estimates, but my weight is holding steady, so the formula seems to be working quite well.

I do need to start finding other goals though. With weights, goals are easy, but I'm not yet certain how to go about shifting my focus away from calories and towards speed or distance with the running. I need to do some research.

[FrouFrou]

I pay attention to time when exercising but both time and distance when walking. I walk a certain distance and know my "good" time, lol. If it takes longer than what I usually do I make sure I pick it up next time.