System Maintenance.

Hi Everyone.  If you reach Simpleweight Now.  We’re going down for some simple maintenance.  All steps on our path to a simpler weight management tool.

Tack, Tick, Tick, Tick – Metronome Interval Strength Training Hack.

I recently began interval strength training as a form of exercise.

For those new to different types of workouts, interval strength training is a form of circuit training. Basically, I perform a group of weight training exercises in sequence with little rest in between. I target different muscle groups, and I perform the circuit of exercises twice with little to no rest between exercises.

At first, Interval Strength Training was really difficult for me to do. Why?

I had to think:

• What exercise I was doing?
• How do I do that exercise?
• What exercise is next?
• How many repetitions was I on?
• Where am I in the 4 second cadence?
• Am I using the correct form?
• Did I just hear my 2 year old daughter dive into the toilet?
• Who is going to sign up for Simpleweight.com next?
• Will the Cubs win the World Series?
• Man this exercise is burning pretty good now.
• Will the …. as you can see too much to think about, my mind starts to wander, and I just get lost.

With interval strength training, you use a cadence to lift weights in a rhythm. While contracting the muscle, I count 2 seconds and then hold 2 seconds, then while releasing the muscle, I count 4 seconds, repeat for 10 repetitions with no rest.

For example, for a bicep curl, I count 2 seconds up, hold 2 seconds, then count 4 seconds slowly releasing the bicep curl back down to the resting position. I immediately lift again using the same cadence until I reach 10 in the set and move on to the next exercise in the circuit with little or no rest (30 seconds or less) in between sets.

As I mentioned before, the problem I had was I got lost in all the counting and thinking.

UP, Two, Three. Four
DOWN, Two, Three, Four
UP, Two, Three, Four
DOWN, Two, Three, Four
What Repetition am I on?

How do I stop all this counting?

I use a metronome to maintain the cadence. A metronome ticks at whatever rate you want. I set my metronome to 60 beats per minute and let it tick off my cadence. Google Metronome, and you’ll find all sorts of web-based metronomes to use.  Of course you could use an iphone app as your metronome of choice. Of course you can use a loud clock or watch, but I find a metronome better especially a digital metronome that allows you to set the beats per measure.

See, you can set a digital metronome to 4 beats per measure. which means:

Tack, Tick, Tick, Tick.
Tack, Tick, Tick, Tick.
2, Tick, Tick, Tick.
Down, Tick, Tick, Tick.
3, Tick, Tick, Tick.
Down, Tick, Tick, Tick.
4, Tick, Tick, Tick.
etc…

If you are using the Colorado Experiment workout, described by Tim Ferris, which uses a 5 second cadence, just set the metronome for 5 beats per measure.

Whatever cadence you use, your mind is free to count the number of repetitions while the metronome does the work of keeping your cadence straight.

A Weight Management Journey

Well, hello everyone.  It’s good to get simpleweight back up and running.

First off, why the simpleweight hiatus?

Well, this project has been a labor of love for my brother and I.  We had an idea, we ran with it.  When we came up with simpleweight, at the time, there was not many web ways to manage your lifetime fitness goals.  There were quite a few Diets, but nothing that was diet agnostic.  Also, at the time, all the weight loss websites were a pain in the neck to use.  They just weren’t that simple.

Since the time we hatched the simpleweight idea, we have seen numerous new web tools, competitors if you want to call them, and other ways to maintain and track your fitness goals.  We have always had a decent amount of users, nothing that would put us in the A-list of websites, but enough to say we were attaining some of our goals.

Yet, we stumbled and lost focus.  Simpleweight started to see competitors, and we started adding features because we felt like we had to rather than because we should. We were not getting real as 37signals would say.

One of our original goals was to make this weight website so easy that you’ll actually use it.  Well, I used it, and used it, and used it.  Yet, at some point (August 17, 2008), I stopped.  In fact, I fell off the weight management wagon.  I not only stopped using simpleweight, I stopped recording any data.  Yeah, I weighed myself everyday, and still do.  I would weigh my food still, and track my exercise on my various fitness related gadgets, iphone apps, or my pedometer.  I just never recorded the data I kept.

Tracking data and not recording data doesn’t make the data very valuable.  In fact, it is almost worthless.

A Return to Roots

Why Simpleweight and what can we choose to do?  Because it is all a choice.

I have a couple of options with simpleweight:

1. Keep it as is. This is not an option in my book.  The experience I can see from my usage and the aggregate patterns I can identify from users, that simpleweight needs to be easier and more useful.  During my hiatus, I tried competitors products, and I was just as dismayed at the lack of usefulness.  If I had found a sound competitor I could recommend, I think we’d close up shop, but I couldn’t find anything phone based, web based, or desktop based that was easy to use that provided the right amount of data to help with weight loss and weight management.
2. Tweak it. We could do this, but I think there is just too much baggage.  Sometimes, we need a clean slate.
3. Throw it out and Start over. This I think might simpleweight’s best path.  To Get Real about what exactly is the absolute necessity required in managing ones fitness and add to it the pin-point focus that’s necessary.  There is a big challenge here.  More to come on that.
4. Just Throw it out and give up. I’m not ready for that.  I still think there is a value to tracking ones fitness, and I think we can do it in good fashion.

So, What’s our Challenge?

The big challenge is there are many parts to weight management and fitness.  There is food out (exercise), food in (eating), the physical factor (actually going throw the physical motions), the mental factor (behavioral psychology behind eating and motivation for fitness), and finally the out of our control genetic factor.

The question for Simpleweight is:  How can we best help you, our user, with your weight management?  What can we do to help?  What data can we help you collect?  How can we present that data to help you mange your fitness?

For example, there are social networks all over the place that will help you stay motivated.  Do we need to include that in our implementation since the psychology of eating is such a strong factor?

Other questions we ask, Who can we help?  How can we help?  Then finally, Is it possible for us to make a living helping you all or should we just chalk it up as giving back to the community?

How can we make a weight management website so simple you will actually use it?

These are decisions we are going to make over the next few weeks, months, days, however long it takes.

Stable-yet

So, I’ve made some more changes to our server configuration files.  I think I have it stabilized.  Also more good news, we may be seeing the end of the tunnel on a major overhaul.  Still a long way to go though.  I’ll keep you posted.  I definitely need the simpleweight update though, I’ve gotten lazy with my own measurements.

Migrating from one rails server to another.

Well,

I migrated from mongrel to passenger phusion in an effort to reduce our memory footprint and help stabilize simpleweight to make it easier to use.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’m still debating on the backend administration settings and what our next move is to help you maintain your weight.

Of course, if you have any suggestions on what we can do at simpleweight to help you with your weight management goals, let us know.

Thanks for now.  More to come…