A recent study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine defines "moderate" exercise as walking for thirty minutes at a pace of 100 steps per minute. The problem with this definition is that you can't easily apply this it to anything else and at this time of year, people start getting outside doing all sorts of things. Like yard work.
You might recall my reluctance to buy a wheelbarrow. Well, Elle did pick up a red wagon from her brother and asked me when "we" could throw some dirt in the yard to cover a number of bare spots in the lawn. I decided that it would be a good thing to do while I was working through the loss of Cirque so "we" did some yard work this past Wednesday.
I had about ten 40 lb bags of dirt and five 20 lb bags of compost to move. Then, I had to mix the dirt and the compost. Then, shovel the stuff onto various parts of the lawn. I wore a heart rate monitor because, well, I wanted to know how hard I was working and how many calories I burned. I decided to keep the work time to one hour since I hadn't done any of this kind of work since my injury last year.
My heart rate ranged from 118 to 140 and I burned just over 450 calories. That's about the same number of calories I would burn shooting baskets for an hour.
So, was this "moderate" exercise?
One way to estimate "moderate" exercise is to use the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion. This method works well for continuous activity, like gardening, walking, jogging, cycling, swimming.
It's a little more difficult to use for bursts of activity followed by rest such as interval training, weight lifting, sprinting. You estimate how hard you're working - very light, somewhat hard, hard, etc.- by choosing a number between 6 and 20. This number should then be close to your heart rate, within plus or minus about 10 beats per minute.
I did this while I was doing the yard work and chose a 12 rating which would qualify as moderate (a number between 11 and 13). But, here's the point. Don't assume that just because yard work is moderate for me that it will be moderate for you. It depends on your fitness level, what you're doing, how long you do it and how fast or aggressive you are in the activity. I took my time. I could have really hustled and turned the activity into a hard or very hard session. Or, I could have moved one bag of dirt and laid down on the grass for 10 minutes and turned it into an easy session.
The same is true for walking. Pay attention to the BORG rating and your heart rate. Thirty minutes at 100 steps per minute might be challenging for some; easy for others. Find what is moderate for you.
DK
PS - to Elle's credit, she did go to Home Depot to get the dirt, did some raking, and threw away the bags :)
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