- But I see your true colors, shining through ...
- — "True Colors," sung by Cyndi Lauper
These days I find my life defined by five particular colors ... Gray, Blue, Green, Yellow and Red.
I have to go through heck and high water to get to Yellow.
The Yellow zone, that is. The desired, near-the-top heart rate zone as measured by the Myzone fitness heart monitors, which I first wrote about March 20.
At that time, my problem was a basic Myzone device (the MZ-1) that didn't want to work correctly. After the column ran, Myzone's vice president of sales for the Americas kindly reached out and offered an upgrade: the Myzone Switch, which comes with two bands and can be worn not just on the chest, but on the arm or wrist.
To review: Myzone, as states the website, "is a wearable fitness tracker and online social platform that shows and rewards effort when you work out. It displays real time heart rate, calories and intensity with five color-coded personalized zones and has a simple rewards-based metric called MEPs (Myzone Effort Points) that align with the [World Health Organization] guidelines for physical activity. The data can be displayed collectively for group training or individually direct to your smartphone" via an app, which keeps up with your heart rate and color zones during your workout.
Myzone borrows from social media: It connects you to your gym. Your trainer can spy on you. You and your gym-mates/Myzone "friends" can spy on/compete with each other. And you can compliment each other (or otherwise) on your efforts.
Before the workout you start out with resting heart rate (light gray), which gets you nada MEPs. As your heart rate speeds up, you go up the color ranking and rack up more MEPs, faster. Dark Gray represents an effort of 50%-59%; Red, the pinnacle, represents a 90%-100% effort, but even Myzone says that "most people shouldn't be aiming for the Red zone with every workout." After your workout you get a summary that includes workout duration and calories burned; bar and pie charts indicate time in each zone, average and peak heart rates, and total effort percentage as well as total MEPs. (I suspect it'll probably laugh at you if you do a five-minute walk and a couple of jumping jacks and quit.)
I've gotten some satisfaction from the MEP thing. Myzone has inspired me to crank up the workouts; at least three days a week I put in a couple of hours (early-morning Zoom classes, offered by my gym, WOW Fitness; freestyle dance; Peloton peddling), racking up more than 200 MEPs at a time. The goal is to rack up 1,300 MEPs a month. The gals I work out with and I usually hit that goal around the second week of the month.
BRONZE, SILVER AND GOLD
Myzone users can progress to statuses of Iron, then Bronze, then Silver, then Gold and so on by hitting 1,300 MEPs for so many consecutive months.
I've been Bronze for a while now. But Bronze is one thing, Yellow is a whole other-colored animal.
It didn't take long for Yellow to dangle carrots at me and then snatch them away. The usual scenario: I'd hit upon some move that would put me into the Yellow for maybe a couple of weeks before that move stopped working and I'd find that the same move barely got me out of the Blue. And I've never reached that Red zone pinnacle.
The only time I can reach and stay in the Yellow is by going on independent Peloton rides, cranking the resistance way up and peddling, hind part raised, up an imaginary Mount Everest. Or sitting down, pedaling faster at a reduced resistance, but raising and lowering my arms like I'm on Gilligan's Island trying to signal a passing plane.
Granted, Myzone warns that the more fit one gets, the tougher it will be to get into the higher zones. But gee whiz. All the other ladies who work out at WOW Fitness, and via Zoom, seem to be able to get in the Yellow and Red zones just by making faces. Me? I'll combine the moves of a TV dance competition hopeful, an NBA star, a Tour de France champ, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno in their Mr. Universe days ... and Forrest Gump running from his childhood bullies. Then I'll look at my heart rate on my phone. What, I only hit Blue and Gray? What, did I fight the Civil War on this thing???!!!
When we have heart-rate challenges during the cardio portions of the class, the goal being to get in the Yellow, I'm the last to do so.
BURPEE HELL
It's Myzone, in fact, that I blame for being plunged into Burpee Hell.
My trainer, WOW Fitness owner Kameelah Harris, became dissatisfied with my performing a modified version of the burpee, a particularly evil exercise that involves bending over, arms extending to the floor, jumping back into a full horizontal, or "plank" position, maybe doing a pushup; jumping back to standing-bent-over position then rising up in a brisk leap, as if to indicate, "Yes! Yes! I love trying my best to kill myself!"
For the longest, I did these the old-lady way: Using a chair to support my arms, instead of bending to the floor. Kameelah is an unabashed burpeephile who loves to make her pupils do 100 of these, usually 10 to 15 at a time, during many of her classes. So I was particularly grateful to use that chair.
But back on April 28, Kameelah eyed my workout chart for the 5 a.m. Zoom class and saw that the modified burpees had not even lifted me out of the Blue zone. "Those burpees do nothing for your heart rate," she sternly messaged me via the Myzone comment feature.
"Aren't burpees supposed to be anaerobic?" I messaged back, knowing this was going to be a battle I'd already lost.
"Right. So that should put you in the Green/Yellow range," she answered.
The woman was not going to rest until I began doing burpees the "regular" way. My Old Lady Card was being confiscated. Worse yet, I'd discovered shortly beforehand that I actually could do a regular burpee, albeit clumsily.
TRYING FOR YELLOW
Fast-forward to last Monday's class. Brickhouse, another of Wow Fitness' instructors, led the class and, showing more mercy than Kameelah does, made us do only five sets of 10 burpees each. I did what I thought was a good job, was almost able to keep up, and was confident that I had some Yellow on my chart for the class.
Nah. All Blues, Greens and Grays.
Message from Kameelah. "No Yellow? I thought you got there at least once this morning."
I babbled a long reply that ended with "Maybe the Myzone Switch is harder on people ... ?"
So now I'm cowering in fear of what she may find for me to do to get me in Yellow. Thanks, Myzone!
Oh well, guess I'll try not to be Blue over this.
Myemail: hwilliams@adgnewsroom.com