A place to talk about fitness and health on Farcaster.

Fitness

2200m in the pool this morning with 9 days until sprint triathlon! 

Always shocked by how much lower my heart rate is swimming compared to biking and running. Especially since my perceived effort is so much higher

Apparently this is because while swimming your body is in a position which makes it easier to pump blood, while exertion is mostly predicated on lactic acid buildup.

It’s also easier for your body to stay cool in cold water than hot air.

Heart rate is a great proxy though for input, in some sense a great measure and equalizer for all people working out. Who cares if person x runs 5mph and person runs y runs 10mph. If they’re both avg 170bpm, you have a good sense that each individual is putting in similarly respectable efforts.

This is just my intuition though. My mom was a cardiovascular nurse so I should ask her.

GM!

wow, this is a cool insight.. makes sense though. the few times i have swam (in place of running), noticed it takes a tremendous amount of effort to get my HR up

yes! much harder to pump blood against gravity (from legs back to heart)