Tuesday PE

Today we will use the Heart Rate Monitors (HRM's) to measure how hard we are working in PE. 

We will do our standard warmup- Stretching, Pushups, situps, and jog.

Then, we will do some fitness relay races.

Personal Fitness has a workout day today, they will be working on their individual fitness plans.

In personal news, my new "Zero Drop" running shoes from Altra Running are on their way!  I ordered a pair of Altra Instincts.

I'm excited to get started with the "barefoot" running craze.  Altra makes their shoes so that they are designed like the human foot.  You can notice that the padding on the shoe above is the same in the forefoot as it is in the heel.  That is what they call zero drop.

Tuesday, PE Day

Today JH PE students are doing a "fitness workout" during PE classes.

We are wearing Heart Rate Monitors.

Basically, what we are doing, involves doing a different exercise each minute.  For example:  pushups for a minute, then jogging for a minute, then jumping jacks for a minute, etc...  We take a one minute break every 5 minutes or so, and watch our heart rates fall.

The "Zone" we are looking for is 140-180.  Which is right between the "Fat Burning and Aerobic" Zones.  It may even stretch into the Anaerabic zone, which is fine.

Students are improving on using the monitors, and it's fun to watch them actually look at their results at the end of class, and see "hey I spent most of my time in the zone",  or "i didn't work hard enough today".  Very nice to see.

Personal Fitness is having a workout day.  They each wrote their workout plan last week, so they should be using them today.

Should be a nice day outside this afternoon.  This teacher is hoping to get a good run in today.

HRM's Day 2

Today, PE classes will be strapping on the HRM's and we'll do some sort of running, exercise, and workout time.

For today, we are going to use a "generic" zone for "Fat Burning", and we'll set a low of 140 and high of 160.

That will be our target zone for today. 

Next time we use the HRM's we will have "logs" and each student will set their own individual zones that they set earlier in the year.

More HRM information

In case anyone was interested in Heart Rate Monitors, and what the training zones actually are...

Here is a good website.

It explains how you can calculate your max heart rate, what each of the zones are, and how you calculate them.  It's actually quite interesting.

Classroom Day and HRM reactions

Today is classroom day for me, and I spend all day in the classroom.

JH Students are starting Chapter 5 today.  They have a reading assignment, and then some key terms and review questions to do.  The assignment is posted on their edmodo classroom.

Personal Fitness will be doing assignment 4 today, which is on Cardiovascular Endurance.  Students will watch a short film on the subject and then do an assignment.  The second portion of today's assignment for the Personal Fitness students will be to figure out their proper heart rate zones.

Heart Rate Monitors went pretty well yesterday.  Although we had a few students who had trouble getting the monitor to work, well over 90% of the students were able to get it pretty quickly. 

Each student did the following:

• Put on the heart rate monitor equipment
• Got their heart rate to be read by the equipment
• Set a "target zone" for the day.
• Did a short "fitness activity" to raise their heart rates
• Looked at the results of their activity on their monitors.

We will be breaking them out again tomorrow, for PE classes, and it will be up to the students to put them on correctly, and set their target heart zone without instruction.  (of course I will help them out, if they need help)

Overall, I thought the kids really responded well to the HRM's.  It seems like they were willing to work hard when they were getting immediate feedback.  Like I said tomorrow, we will use them again, but it will be most likely another "practice day" where they are getting used to them.  Then in a few weeks, we will not only use them, but record our scores on a "Log" at the end of class.

Heart Rate Monitors

Today, all my PE classes are learning how to use the Heart Rate Monitors.

The most difficult thing is actually learning how to properly hook up the strap for the transmitter, and then learning how to set your Target Heart Zone on the watches.

The kids are doing ok, though.  It will get easier as the year goes on.

Today, the focus is just on getting them put on correctly, getting them set up, and then reading our results.  We aren't recording our results, yet.  We will however, start to do so once we have a solid grasp of how to run the HRM's.

Things that will be recorded:
Time Spent in Target Heart Zone, Time Spent Above Target Zone, Time Spent Below Target Zone
Max Heart Rate
Average Heart Rate

Today, we didn't have alot of time to "exercise" to really push ourselves.  But we do 5-10 minutes of running/walking just to elevate our heart rates, so we can see the results.

Classroom Day!

7th and 8th Health Students are learning about Heart Rates and Heart Rate Zones.
-They will be using a mathematical formula to figure out their own levels.
Once they complete the Heart Rate Zone work, they has a short discussion assignment on Edmodo.

Personal Fitness class will be doing assignment and discussion one.  Both assignments are on Edmodo.

I am running my mile run today at 4 pm on the track.  Hope I do well, but I hope we have some students beat me.