As a machinist and building maintenance engineer, I can almost guarantee any ill feeling you're experiencing after a trip to your local gym is due to the air quality.
Gyms are rarely purpose built facilities. Rather, theyre rented and renovated spaces. In turn, airflow in the structure is planned for light industrial or office space. Almost no thought goes into the fact that gyms are sometimes hundreds of occupants moving the air at two to three times what the OSHA or planning documents indicate. Paints with VoC's, sealants, and even offgassing plastics from gym mats or new equipment can turn the air quality from decent to garbage in a few hours.
I was once contracted to fix an air handler issue at a fitness center. The root cause was a set of 6 un-ventilated panini presses that were placed near the front desk as part of an effort to sell snacks and sandwiches. The added smoke and particulate had decreased the filter life and burned out a blower motor. The solution was either get rid of the electric grills, or start replacing 30 day filters every week.
You’re not even mentioning CO2 concentration. I work in a large, open office with seemingly sufficient airflow, but after buying a CO2 detector on a whim I’ve seen that it frequently reaches 1200ppm, and you actually can tell that you feel like crap when that happens.
I can’t imagine if the whole office was filled with people exercising.
Our office has those installed as a regular feature in all meeting rooms. Main takeaway lesson: never fit more people in a room than was designed for. Air quality is a balance of inflow (equals outflow) and usage. Fit 9 in a room for 6? PPM way above 1000.
Depends on the exercises you do. An outdoor gym is feasible depending on climate, air pollution, and what's available in parks. (Or simply cycling/jogging outside)
Home gyms can cover part of it. You can do a lot with a chinup bar, bodyweight exercises, powerblock dumbell sets.
I'm actually in a city too cold to go without a gym year round, and I do barbells so I can't do those at home (space too small). But, mentioning the options above for those who don't have the same constraints.
Start sharing it with your fellow gym members and collectively demand that management make some changes to improve air quality. Crowdsource some testing devices to prove your point if necessary, now that you have an idea of which points you have to prove.
i have a pet fascination with air quality- not in any real sense, but im always just wondering about it, since its so varied and virtually invisible. are there any simple small tools you know of that are good at get information about air quality. the only thing i see people sometimes use is a particulate meter that tells them the concentration of particulate matter of various sizes. seems like it would be cool to have a kit of different tools to measure things like c02 levels, voc's, particulates etc
You can get CO2 meters quite easily on amazon. They sell them as a commodity for greenhouses measurement.
For particulates, the Laseregg is the best I've found.
Apparently the laseregg 2+ measures VOC, but I'm not sure about that. From what I heard there are no VOC meters available at a consumer level. CO2 is the best proxy, because high CO2 means low ventilation, which prevents venting of VOCs.
I've been running for twenty years and am currently on a half-year streak with around 15km / day.
In all those years I've been sick for about two weeks all in all. Before working out, that was like the average over half a year.
Conclusion: Figure out what works for you, have a daily routine, add a bit of obsession and stop reading stories about the pros and cons of exercising.
Same with me during my peak running period last year; even when I was feeling ill or off, a run, albeit grueling at the time, always seemed to aid in my recovery (if only for the placebo of getting myself out of bed).
I really need to start doing it on the regular again...
Prior to my knee injury I was a happy runner, and I definitely found that just going for longer than 15 minutes would completely clear out my nose if I was at the congestion stage of a cold.
Of course, my nose would be congested again a few hours later, but it was still a decent motivator since I hate taking medicine.
True that. All those pace yourself arguments are usually coming from those who're just trying to justify their own laziness. Fact is, if you want to increase or even keep your performance those two days/w a 30min followed by a protein shake won't change anything other than making you fat because you think you just burned two pizzas.
I have one rule: I only ever do sports if I have rested well the night before. It took me until I reached my 40s to realise that lack of sleep + heavy exercise = high chance of catching a cold.
Other sure ways how I can get sick: overdo sauna after exercising and, by far the worst, overdoing cold showers (Jim Hoff anyone? - I got seriously sick experimenting with that)
I guess the overall strength of my immune system is below average :-(
There is a high correlation between insufficient sleep and catching cold. It kind of made sense but I've looked it up and found several studies supporting this.
This winter I've tried only cold showers after running outside. Cold showers as in (sometimes) my neck hurt if I did it too long. Did not catch a cold until this spring and I think this is more correlated to insufficient rest/sleep (on top of exercising) than to water temperature.
My takeaway is enough rest is not optional and cold showers are doable even in very cold water. I have no idea how hard would be a bath in water + ice.
Interestingly Ive noticed the same thing in regards to exercise plus sleep. But instead of taking that as an indicator of my immune systems strength, I thoufht it was more an indicator of how absolutely filthy gym equipment is. I always shower IMMEDIATELY once Ive finished working out these days.
I can concur to your experience. I was knocked out for two weeks-to-month by overdoing strength, interval training and cold showers (~1 year), in combination with start up life; paradoxically sauna regime helped a lot (rigorous super hot 10-15 minutes + immersed super cold 2 minutes phases). Still, I was catching flu regardless. I also tried 3 days of salt-water fasting to reboot immune system; not sure how much that one did. Cold/coughing after a massive exercise was usually more bronchospasm/exercise induced asthma when I was not used to it. Lack of sleep was always a killer, I had 50% chance I catch some sickness symptoms when sleeping <5 hours within two days, especially when weather was bad.
I gotta stash this one away. I often refer to the disaster of 20th century health science as scientists repeatedly gathering a single point of data and then drawing a line (or hyperplane) though it, but this is a great article clearly demonstrating an example of that, and how plausible it all seemed at the time.
(Not that it's a trend limited to the 20th century. But it seems to me to have been extremely bad in the health area in that time frame. Not uniquely so necessarily, but quite bad.)
I imagine the 20th century was the worst time for it because we had more sophisticated data collection and analysis methods, but failed to recognize our own inadequacies when using those tools to draw conclusions.
My personal experience with long (100miles+) cross-country mtb riding (with lots of climbing) is that in fact, catching a cold after such a strenuous ride is way more common than the base rate. This is also the experience reported by most professional cyclists (check TdF reports).
My under-researched model of how this happens, is that there is a lot of tear-and-wear in the muscles where the effort is happening, which leads to inflammation, and that's where the white-blood cells might end up.
Perhaps you're mistaken? The results discussed in the article claim the opposite, and point out:
"Their first conclusion was that athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling. The original 1980s studies had relied on runners’ self-reports of illness. But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically, their odds of becoming sick were about the same as for anyone else in the race’s host city.
The athletes probably had misinterpreted allergies or short-term scratchiness in their airways after the race as a cold, says John Campbell, a professor at the University of Bath who was a co-author of the new review."
While my (running) experience is similar, I alao believe it's possible to over-train. That is, it wasn't a single event that did the wearing down. The single big event is what finalized the lowering of the immunity threshold.
So that looks like the fault of the ends (read: the event) was actually led by the means (training).
That may be more due to inadequate preventative sunscreen/protective clothing per outdoor time, every one who spends time outdoors without it shows signs of skin aging like the a/b test in one, truck drivers, with the side closest to window showing significantly more wear and tear versus the interior facing side.
In addition to sunscreen, there are nowadays a lot of arm/leg covering just for SPF protection even in hotter temperatures - I always wear the arm protection/eyewear when outside.
The standout quote for me: "[immune cells] moved elsewhere, migrating to the animals’ guts or lungs, portions of the body that might be expected to need extra immune help after hard exercise".
Rapidly producing immune cells during exercise, then letting them (and more) die off would be a baffling response. But pumping them into the lungs (because you've been breathing hard through your mouth) and gut (for when you make up lost energy, and maybe eat some raw meat you've been hunting)? That makes a great deal of sense.
That effect is unconfirmed in humans, but it would ground our observations in an evolutionarily-sane outcome.
Yep - wasn't mentioned in the article, but I'd imagine the reason post-race marathoners are more likely to mistake coughs for colds is that marathons are also demanding. If your muscles ache and you're lethargic and coughing, that looks a lot like a cold.
Very low reps (1-4) at a high resistance (85-100% of a 1-rep max) is the standard powerlifter workout. But usually you'd do that for many sets. Lifting a 1RM for a single set seems either grossly inefficient (I have a similar max and it takes me 6 warmup sets just to get into the 405+ range), or he's risking injury by not warming up enough.
Ok, seriously.... math: if you eat 3000 kcal per day and lose 1 lb per week, you're burning 3500 kcal per day. This is quite a lot. It's near impossible unless you work out a lot and are veeeery muscular... or are impossibly tall... or, well, fat. (Or a combination of those.)
Take me for comparison: I am 187cm (6'1ish) tall and weigh 75kg (165 lbs), pretty much smack in the middle of the "normal weight" range. I like running, do about 50km (30 miles) per week. I count calories and let my wrist watch measure my energy expenditure 24/7. On rest days (mostly sedentary), I burn about 2100 kcal. To get up to 3400, I have to do some sort of hard run and some lighter activity in addition, or do a long run (18km+).
Now I'm not everybody of course, but you can't be that abnormal, right? So I'm not buying your numbers.
Running is probably the worst sport as far as caloric expenditure is concerned.
A serious endurance cyclist or swimmer will certainly go through 3000 kcal on a normal training day if not more.
I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks. What's more is I know these numbers are very accurate as we train with power meters that record our energy expenditure with minimal error.
It's important to distinguish between serious athletes and average people who exercise. It's possible that truly competitive athletes - for instance, who run 120 miles a week to your 30 - will be much more likely to get ill from their efforts. It can take serious fitness - and a mentality acquired only by years of serious training - to push yourself to the extent that you fall ill, and maybe the recreational "athlete" described in this text can't reach that point.
I'm the same height as you as recently dropped 5kg to 81kg due to fasting and cutting starch from my diet. Why wife started freaking out because I was looking so skinny (I'm not remotely fat normally either). I can easily burn 4000 kcal a day. All it takes is one hour on the bike. I burn ~3000 kcal on rest days. You have an endurance optimised build, I have a sprinters build. Everyone is different. Those numbers seem perfectly normal to me.
3500 kcal per day is nothing. One can have a basal resting metabolic rate of 2500 kcal, then do some sports and you get 3500 easily. And you seem to be a bit underweight, go build some more muscle. 75kg is featherweight for that height ;)
A couple of years ago, I took a half-day hike up a mountain called Timpanogos with my son. According to my fitness tracker, I burned over 8000 kcal on that trip. It was a bit strenuous, but not painful. The estimate of calories burned seemed reasonable to me.
EDIT: According to this chart, I probably burned around 600 kcal per hour:
"Myofibrillar hypertrophy" is the relevant search term. "Underground Secrets to Faster Running" by Barry Ross IIRC is a good read about high weight, low rep protocols. You can perform the same workout everyday of the week with long rests (5 min) between sets.
I used to do heavy dead lift singles (405-500+) as part of my power lifting routine. The warmup alone would crush many people, so I wouldn't exactly say you were not doing anything strenuous.
If you're going in cold right to 450+, my back is scared for you.
Considering the article example is a marathon (26.2 miles, burns ~2600 calories) and your example is deadlifting (4 sets of 8 deadlifts @ 175 kilograms burns ~100 calories - equivalent of running .5 miles).. I'd define this test case as 1.9% as 'Strenuous'.
Ok, let's think about the energy equation. In order to do as much work with a one rep workout versus a standard 5x5 (five sets, five reps) workout, you'd need to be lifting 25 times more weight (one rep total vs 25 reps total). The problem is, your one rep max is not going to be 25 times your 5x5 max.
In any case, I don't think the premise underlying this makes sense. Resistance training is for triggering muscle growth, not burning calories. Perhaps there's some biological reason why a 1 rep workout is effective for you, but I don't think the PE equation helps here.
How long does it take you to get to the gym? Surely doing a couple more reps after getting to gym, warm-up, and mobility isn't going to hurt your time spent.
As others said, your exercise does not burn enough calories to impact weight loss / gain.
I suspect your weight loss may be due to the exercise affecting your eating patterns (if you eat high calorie food before going to bed you will likely gain more weight than if you get same calories in a sweet drink right after a long ski race; not sure why).
> if you eat high calorie food before going to bed you will likely gain more weight than if you get same calories in a sweet drink right after a long ski race; not sure why
I don't think that's right. Eating a hypercaloric diet will likely gain you more weight, and hypocaloric will result in weight loss. It doesn't matter when you eat the food. Eating carbs or protein right after a workout is the subject of the nutrient timing, which is largely moot for protein (as long as you get enough during the 24 hours), and only important for carbs if you are an endurance athlete or have multiple workouts per day.
So this is very interesting to me as a swimmer. I find that at the peak of my curve (where I train harder for the regional meet) I often get sick more often, and for far longer. In swimming, this is catastrophic to your performance for the meet, so we try at all costs to prevent illness, but it always happens to one or two of us. The question I pose, does this just apply to shot term exercise, or does intense training (5 hrs a day) for about a month have the same effect.
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Gyms are rarely purpose built facilities. Rather, theyre rented and renovated spaces. In turn, airflow in the structure is planned for light industrial or office space. Almost no thought goes into the fact that gyms are sometimes hundreds of occupants moving the air at two to three times what the OSHA or planning documents indicate. Paints with VoC's, sealants, and even offgassing plastics from gym mats or new equipment can turn the air quality from decent to garbage in a few hours.
I was once contracted to fix an air handler issue at a fitness center. The root cause was a set of 6 un-ventilated panini presses that were placed near the front desk as part of an effort to sell snacks and sandwiches. The added smoke and particulate had decreased the filter life and burned out a blower motor. The solution was either get rid of the electric grills, or start replacing 30 day filters every week.
I can’t imagine if the whole office was filled with people exercising.
Home gyms can cover part of it. You can do a lot with a chinup bar, bodyweight exercises, powerblock dumbell sets.
I'm actually in a city too cold to go without a gym year round, and I do barbells so I can't do those at home (space too small). But, mentioning the options above for those who don't have the same constraints.
Just more pleasant in general as well.
For particulates, the Laseregg is the best I've found.
Apparently the laseregg 2+ measures VOC, but I'm not sure about that. From what I heard there are no VOC meters available at a consumer level. CO2 is the best proxy, because high CO2 means low ventilation, which prevents venting of VOCs.
https://getawair.com
It does a decent job.
That wouldn't make much sense: what if you feel ill only after doing certain exercises (e.g. cardio versus weight lifting)?
Conclusion: Figure out what works for you, have a daily routine, add a bit of obsession and stop reading stories about the pros and cons of exercising.
I really need to start doing it on the regular again...
Of course, my nose would be congested again a few hours later, but it was still a decent motivator since I hate taking medicine.
Wish my knee would stop being shitty.
Other sure ways how I can get sick: overdo sauna after exercising and, by far the worst, overdoing cold showers (Jim Hoff anyone? - I got seriously sick experimenting with that)
I guess the overall strength of my immune system is below average :-(
This winter I've tried only cold showers after running outside. Cold showers as in (sometimes) my neck hurt if I did it too long. Did not catch a cold until this spring and I think this is more correlated to insufficient rest/sleep (on top of exercising) than to water temperature.
My takeaway is enough rest is not optional and cold showers are doable even in very cold water. I have no idea how hard would be a bath in water + ice.
(Not that it's a trend limited to the 20th century. But it seems to me to have been extremely bad in the health area in that time frame. Not uniquely so necessarily, but quite bad.)
Kind of like social media algorithms today.
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My under-researched model of how this happens, is that there is a lot of tear-and-wear in the muscles where the effort is happening, which leads to inflammation, and that's where the white-blood cells might end up.
"Their first conclusion was that athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling. The original 1980s studies had relied on runners’ self-reports of illness. But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically, their odds of becoming sick were about the same as for anyone else in the race’s host city.
The athletes probably had misinterpreted allergies or short-term scratchiness in their airways after the race as a cold, says John Campbell, a professor at the University of Bath who was a co-author of the new review."
So that looks like the fault of the ends (read: the event) was actually led by the means (training).
Deleted Comment
Rapidly producing immune cells during exercise, then letting them (and more) die off would be a baffling response. But pumping them into the lungs (because you've been breathing hard through your mouth) and gut (for when you make up lost energy, and maybe eat some raw meat you've been hunting)? That makes a great deal of sense.
That effect is unconfirmed in humans, but it would ground our observations in an evolutionarily-sane outcome.
I had the idea that I wanted to reduce time in the gym, so I used the potential energy equation
PE= Mgh
I'm not getting any taller, so the only thing I could change was either the reps or mass of weight moved.
I made it my goal to lift heavy weights so I'd only need to deadlift 1 time and be able to pig out.
TBH, it works, I lose 1 lb a week eating 3,000 calories a day. We lift 2 times a week. Warm up, then do 2+ reps of a heavy set.
I dont really sweat after a workout, but I look pretty big and I'm still deadlifting 450lbs. But I only deadlift that weight 1 time a week.
Is that 'Strenuous'?
I didnt mention that I have to warm up, but the point of the workout is to complete a heavy set.
People always overstate their level of fitness by several orders of magnitude on anonymous internet forums.
Ok, seriously.... math: if you eat 3000 kcal per day and lose 1 lb per week, you're burning 3500 kcal per day. This is quite a lot. It's near impossible unless you work out a lot and are veeeery muscular... or are impossibly tall... or, well, fat. (Or a combination of those.)
Take me for comparison: I am 187cm (6'1ish) tall and weigh 75kg (165 lbs), pretty much smack in the middle of the "normal weight" range. I like running, do about 50km (30 miles) per week. I count calories and let my wrist watch measure my energy expenditure 24/7. On rest days (mostly sedentary), I burn about 2100 kcal. To get up to 3400, I have to do some sort of hard run and some lighter activity in addition, or do a long run (18km+).
Now I'm not everybody of course, but you can't be that abnormal, right? So I'm not buying your numbers.
A serious endurance cyclist or swimmer will certainly go through 3000 kcal on a normal training day if not more.
I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks. What's more is I know these numbers are very accurate as we train with power meters that record our energy expenditure with minimal error.
It's important to distinguish between serious athletes and average people who exercise. It's possible that truly competitive athletes - for instance, who run 120 miles a week to your 30 - will be much more likely to get ill from their efforts. It can take serious fitness - and a mentality acquired only by years of serious training - to push yourself to the extent that you fall ill, and maybe the recreational "athlete" described in this text can't reach that point.
EDIT: According to this chart, I probably burned around 600 kcal per hour:
http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburnedwalking.htm
It took us about 8 hours, so the total was probably closer to 4800 kcal.
In any case, the point I'm trying to make is that it's easy to burn a lot more than 2000 kcal per day.
If you're going in cold right to 450+, my back is scared for you.
In any case, I don't think the premise underlying this makes sense. Resistance training is for triggering muscle growth, not burning calories. Perhaps there's some biological reason why a 1 rep workout is effective for you, but I don't think the PE equation helps here.
But the problem statement begins with- You need to finish the gym in less than 2 hours/week.
I like strength training, especially 3x5s.
My workout looks closer to a 5/3/1/5 pyramid due to warmup and trying to burn myself out on the last set.
I'm glad you mentioned this, I'll play with the math this weekend and try to find a point of diminishing returns.
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How many warm up sets do you do?
Deadlift warmups at 45lbs, 135lbs, 225lbs, 315lbs, 405lbs, then heavy set 435lbs.
Bench is 45lbs, 135lbs, 190lbs(or whatever my workout buddy does), then 235lbs for my heavy set.
The goal is to do 2-3 since that means its good form. I am for 1 heavy set rather than 1 heavy rep.
Got a gym crew that probably takes the longest to put on my friends weights.
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How high do you lift it?
How's your back?
Who's we? (can I join)
Day 1 Deadlift- 435 Bench- 235
Day 2 Squats-345 OHP-160
Back is surprisingly great, my first deadlift was only 90lbs. Ive come a long way.
Here is the cheatsheet I follow: http://efficiencyiseverything.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploa...
I suspect your weight loss may be due to the exercise affecting your eating patterns (if you eat high calorie food before going to bed you will likely gain more weight than if you get same calories in a sweet drink right after a long ski race; not sure why).
I don't think that's right. Eating a hypercaloric diet will likely gain you more weight, and hypocaloric will result in weight loss. It doesn't matter when you eat the food. Eating carbs or protein right after a workout is the subject of the nutrient timing, which is largely moot for protein (as long as you get enough during the 24 hours), and only important for carbs if you are an endurance athlete or have multiple workouts per day.