Literal and Figurative, As Usual

Math is not my favorite subject.  (Sing with me, in your best Cookie Monster voice:  “C is for Calculus, that’s good enough for me…”)  That said, it is darn useful, both in the literal and figurative senses, when we approach fitness.

 

In the literal sense, we use math to do things like calculate our target heart rate for cardio.  (Here’s the equation for the quick-and-dirty version:  220-your age=your maximum heart rate.  Multiply your maximum heart rate by .65 to get the bottom limit for your training range and by .85 to get the top limit.  Then check to see if you are in that range during your workout by counting your heartbeats for a minute.)  Math helps us figure out what percentage of our single rep max we are lifting today, allows us to add up our workout minutes to a weekly total to compare to our 150-minute target for basic health, and shows us whether we can spare the calories for that extra scoop of mashed potatoes.

 

Figuratively, we “do the math” to decide what workouts work for us.  If we find that our workouts make us tired in the short term, but give us more energy in the long term, we can say the math says it is a worthwhile investment of our time.  If the scale doesn’t seem to be budging, we might do the math and realize that we need to cut some calories or increase our workout intensity.  Or, we may discover that we have nothing left for our real lives when we’re done with our workouts:  the math says we’re overdoing it, since the point of working out is to make everything else in our lives more enjoyable.

 

The good news is that there are tools out there to help us with some of that math.  There are apps to track workouts and calorie counts.  Our phones and wristy overlords can tell us our heart rates.  Heck, most of us carry around a calculator all the time if we want to be more old school about the math.  (If we want to go REALLY old school, I’m sure we all have pencils and paper.)  The figurative kind of math is less conducive to outsourcing the difficult bits, but that’s all right; difficult bits build muscles in our minds as well as bodies.

 

So the take-away is:  Do the math and then go play.