"Tim Downie" wrote in message
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Existential Angst wrote:
"Jason Earl" wrote in message
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On Fri, Oct 21 2011, RichD wrote:

I work out on the rowing machine twice per
week, among other things; running, stationary
bike, swimming, tennis, squash. It's the best
full body workout I know. I typically do 25 min.,
250 calories.

That sounds like fun, although I generally take the calorie readings
from machines with a large grain of salt. As long as you always use
the same machine (or same type of machine) it is a useful benchmark
though, and you probably do burn approximately that many calories.

However, there's one odd thing - I hardly
sweat! Is this a bad sign? Is the 'fitness
feeling' an illusion, am I really not getting my
money's worth? As opposed to the bike,
where I'm drenched.

Also, squash generates the most perspiration.
Which seems weird, because it doesn't feel
so draining as the others.

There's more to sweat build up than how hard you exert yourself. If
the room where you use the rowing machine has an unusually low
relative humidity, for example, or more airflow, then it would
effect how much sweat build up you get. Playing squash in a warm,
poorly ventilated, and humid room is going to make you sweat a lot,
even if you don't hardly move around at all. Heck, sit in the sauna
for a bit and you'll sweat buckets without even moving.

If you want to measure how hard you are working get yourself a heart
rate monitor. It's not perfect, but it is a heck of a lot better
than trying to measure how much you sweat.

One thing I've noticed with running in a club is how much sweating varies
from runner to runner. Logic would suggest that being fitter would result
in less sweating but if anything, I've noticed the reverse. It would seem
that fit runners start sweating "pre-emptively" to avoid overheating

That would be a very inneresting study, to see if training begets sweating.
Evolutionarily, profuse sweating could be quite the DISadvantage, in certain
climates.


This isn't awfully consistent however and I think some folk are just
"early onset sweaters" whilst others are "late onset sweaters".
Consequently, I think it would be hard to use sweating as a measure of how
hard one is working other than to say that on an individual basis, the
more you sweat, the harder you're probably working.

True, only a valid comparison within an individual. Still, a useful
barometer, if environmental factors can be parsed out.

It's interesting to try to equate caloric burns of different
exercises/activities with running. I have done this extensively with some
of my "proprietary calisthenics", on both biomechanical/calculational bases,
AND perceptual bases, which includes the sweat factor. Not an easy thing to
do, but between the two methods, it seems you can converge on a value.

But, nothing like a calorimetric chamber... which, btw, are themselves
difficult and expensive to use, which is why indirect calorimetry (VO2) is
so popular. But unfortunately, indirect calorimetry is not useful for
non-steady state non-aerobic efforts.
--
EA




Tim