Cardiovascular Improvement

jessicahartpollock

So I've been working out for a few weeks doing cardio on the elliptical (foot deformity means no treadmill or running) and weight lifting after being pretty sedentary as a stay at home mom of three kids ages 5, 2 and 1. I've already begun to see some small increase in my stamina but I was wondering what the best way to measure cardiovascular improvement is and how long it takes to see a major difference in your day to day life, not just in workouts.

What do you guys think?

heybales

Depends on you genetically.

You may improve cardiovascularly very fast, or very slow. Even outside the weight factor. If really coming from nothing, 6 weeks will see great improvement. And doubtful you were/are sedentary being at home with 3 kids.

What you do is a baseline test you can repeat later to compare.

For elliptical, very different than treadmill since so many variables. So try to change only 1.

But I'd pick a decent set of tension, incline, and cadence or speed that you do, and see what the HR is at that set amount. Pick settings that really get the HR up there where you can barely do it for a 10 min test after a 5 min warmup slower.

Then a month down the road, use all the same settings and see where the HR is then.

Much improvement on elliptical will be in efficiency of movement, since many different ways of doing the same movement.
But after a couple weeks, you may have already gone through that, you've likely gotten it down, and weight may be a tad less (which will be an improvement too), but you can still see how much better you've done.

The other interesting way to do it.
Same first session as above.
Month down the road, change the tension to hit the same HR for those 10 min.
That should cause a different speed and total distance, so that will show how much better you are doing.

Measure your resting HR the morning after a rest day, right after waking up, and after heart calms down if alarm clock scares you to death.

jessicahartpollock

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. I think there were just so many settings I wasn't sure really which I should be looking to improve but measuring HR while on the same settings is probably the simplest way to track.