Fitness Assessment Data from Andrew in March 2009
Comments from UltraFast CrossTrainer®:
Shown below is fitness assessment data provided by Andrew, who is 28 years old. As you’ll see in the chart below, Andrew was in good shape (by most people’s standards) prior to using the UltraFast CrossTrainer®. He plays baseball in the spring/summer (approxmately 2x/week), hockey in the winter (1x/week), and he bikes to and from work 4 days a week from May to October (4.5 miles each way). He also sporadically works out at a gym (anywhere from 2x a month to 3x a week - entirely weight training) and at home (push-ups, sit-ups, various strength exercises with resistance bands). In between his assessments, Andrew used the machine 30 times, and he played hockey several times. Here are the results Andrew reported:
Measurement |
1/24/09 |
3/8/09 |
Change |
| Body Fat % | not reported |
not reported |
NA |
| Resting Heart Rate | 60 |
66 |
10% increase |
| Blood Pressure | not reported |
not reported |
NA |
| Flexibility - Touching Your Toes | 2" from floor |
1" from floor |
1" improvement |
| Sit-ups in 1 minute | 52 |
60 |
15.4% increase |
| Push-ups in 1 minute | 101 |
105 |
4.0% increase |
| Squat Thrusts in 1 minute | 27 |
33 |
22.2% increase |
| Distance coverd in 10 minutes | 1.25 miles |
1.5 miles |
.25 mile increase |
Comments from Andrew:
Hey Chris,
I'm attaching the logs. I also wanted to provide a bit of explanation which helps to illuminate the results.
I didn't see as much improvement on pushups as I'd hoped to see. One thing I'll say about that though is that i felt better after assessment 2 than assessment 1. I felt like I could have done a few more if i'd had a bit more time, whereas at assessment 1 it was basically a total collapse at the end. I also kept a better form longer for assessment 2. So the number didn't improve that much (disappointing) but i felt better so I do think there is an improvement in strength there. Another comment on the pushup test is that I've always done push-ups to stay in shape so it is not surprising to see less improvement in that area.
I also have to make a comment about the aerobic assessment. At assessment 1 I'd never before tried to see how fast i could run 1 mile. In fact i very rarely run and i basically hate running. I was using my in-laws creaky old treadmill, a piece of garbage which sounds like it is going to destruction at any given moment. Anyway, I entirely underestimated how hard it would be to run a mile so at about 3/4 mile i realized the machine was set slower than it needed to be. So i thought i would compensate for that by running 1.5 miles and boosted the speed up. At about 1 1/4 miles I realized i was still going slower than i needed to be so i put the speed as fast as it could go and almost immediately it ground to a halt. Turns out I didn't actually break the thing (which would actually be a blessing since then they'd replace the junker) but that ended the test for me. coincidentally that was exactly 10 minutes. I was pretty winded but felt I could certainly have run it faster. For assessment 2 i decided to just see how far I could go in 10 minutes (the same amount of time as the first run) so I had the treadmill for about half the time at 90% capacity and the last half at about 95% because i didn't want to cause it to shut down again. that probably sounds more impressive than it is because this treadmill is a piece of junk that was probably built by Henry Ford. By 10 Min I was at 1.5 miles (assuming the thing accurately records distance accurately).
Regardless of how far/fast I actually went, what really made my day was how much easier it was the second time. I really didn't feel like I'd been pushed at all and wasn't breathing hard. I could easily have gone faster and farther at that same speed. So at the end of the day I went a further and felt a lot stronger and better afterwards which to me means using the UFXT improved my endurance.
I also started to notice an improvement in endurance in my hockey games towards end of the assessment period. I'm the sort of player who always goes as fast as I possibly can and consequently i usually spend half the game feeling like i'm going to die. However, in my games towards the end of the assessment period and after, I definitely felt like I had more energy and speed with less of that 'i'm going to die' feeling. So again, i feel as though that is another indication that my conditioning is improving. A doubter could easily say that was just a few games, or that was just a bit of hopeful psychology at work but I don't believe that is the case.
At the end of the day, i'm convinced that I've had improvements in all three areas - flexibility, cardio and strength.
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