Jim Willis

that’s a gimmicky title. sorry. 

but i’ve got this cool little bit of data that is worth having a look at.

So, what does that show?

Well, since January of this year my heart rate variability as represented by the blue line which is a natural log transformed RMSSD (the beat to beat interval of my heart) shows a steady increase. As HRV increases relative to a baseline it can be an indicator of improved vagal health (less stress, better recruitment of the parasympathetic nervous system). Basically, since January I’ve been feeling better and less stressed out. 

Working out hard can cause your HRV to plummet the next day or two after  hard workout, that’s a sign that your body is repairing itself from the workout. In my case, it also plummets for the next day or so after I play a gig out til 2AM and don’t get good sleep. But anyway, according to the blue line above, even with the gigs and workouts my HRV is increasing!

So note that even though that blue line doesn’t look like it really went up that much, because it’s a log() the increase over time in this case is about a 40% increase in my HRV as measured by rMSSD from January to August.

But what’s more interesting here is that MAF 1 mile test showing a steady DECREASE since January. (Those little green and yellow dots).

The idea behind Phil Maffetone’s training philosophy is to do a lot of long, really low heart rate workouts to better condition the aerobic system. The MAF 1 mile test numbers here show how quickly I can run a mile keeping my heart rate below 135bpm. (obviously, as one would expect, if i go flat-out i’m much faster than the times represented here 🙂

Not only does this low heart rate training do good things for conditioning but – as seems to prove out here in the graph of my little N=1 study – training at low heart rate (in my case 135bpm max) seems to allow me to train and get faster without causing the kind of stress response on my body that would cause my HRV to reduce over time. 

Of course, there are about a gazillion other reasons why my HRV could have been increasing since January: I’ve been way more consistent with meditating every morning, I’m eating more carbohydrates (and putting on the pounds to show it 🙂 and have been outside more because it’s summer time. All of those things could also contribute to the increase in HRV.

What’s interesting here though is that i’ve got fitter (or at least faster at the same heart rate) over the past few months without incurring much of a hit on my vagal tone. Prior to 2016 i was tracking my data in different applications and it would take me too long to put up a graph but basically I was working my ass off with a lot of high intensity workouts or long rides/runs with my heart rate at around 70-85% of max and i was getting a bit faster but the trend over time was a reduction in my HRV. meaning while i was getting faster i wasn’t necessarily getting fitter. 

Since the beginning of this year i’ve reduced my workout intensity a lot and either go very hard for short workout (90-100% of max HR for a few sprints) or very easy for long ones (135bpm for an hour or more), not too much in between. This seems to be making me both faster and, perhaps more importantly, fitter.

anyway, food for thought. If you want to VERY EASILY track you HRV on your iPhone, HRV4Training is tough to beat.

Heart Rate Variability is a big deal – greater variability correlates strongly with cardiac health, low variability correlates strongly with depression and anxiety*. The rabbit hole at scholar.google.com on HRV is deep and fascinating.

I’ve been tracking my own HRV for many years using a stand alone device called the EmWave. Now though with the advent of bluetooth heart rate monitors and iPhone apps, you can get a whole lot more info pretty easily.

Here’s the deal though: you need to use a really high-quality bluetooth heart rate monitor to get decent data. I had been using a cheap Jarv heart rate monitor for years to track my heart rate while running, riding, doing intervals, etc. And it works just fine for that stuff (if a bit flakey at times and does seem to run the battery out pretty quickly, but, you gets whats you pays for).

I paired up my Jarv with an HRV app on my iPhone though and it reported my variability as wicked low. At first I was concerned that maybe I didn’t have high HRV I thought I had. Then I tried the HRV app with the much more expensive Polar H7 and my HRV #s were way up there. 

It appears that the way the Jarv reports the intervals between beats (R-R) is not quite reliable when compared to the way the Polar does the same reporting. I only found one other link on the inter webs that noted the Jarv under-reported HRV and since not everyone may have multiple monitors around to test with, I just wanted to note here that if you start tracking HRV and want reliable data, don’t use the Jarv heart rate monitor. Spring for the Polar one.

* by way of example of just how fascinating the rabbit hole is here: Low HRV correlates with depression but while antidepressants (specifically SSRIs) may alleviate the symptoms of depression, they do not increase HRV. It would be interesting to see a study on whether or not Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – which is shown to be as effective as medication in long-term alleviation of depression – causes an increase in HRV. 

On Saturday the Tour de France will kick off and I’d like to try to suggest/convince you that it’s worth watching. I’ve been watching it on and off for several years now and watching it more and more closely the past two or three years. There are a huge number of reasons why it’s a difficult event to watch and understand but I’m going to explain here how if you’ve got just a couple of hours to kill you can learn about a truly fascinating event that requires a physical and mental toughness from its competitors that rivals any other sporting event past or present.

First though, let me say that i’m not a huge fan of road racing, especially team-supported road racing (like the Tour de France) where the competitors have a  crew that follows them along with spare parts/bikes, etc.  To me, self-supported overland racing like the Tour Divide is a much better measure of a cyclist’s moxie. But anyway, that doesn’t diminish the fact that the TdF is still awesome to watch. 

What makes the Tour de France (and other pro road cycling races) so difficult to comprehend is that it is an individual sport played by teams. You think you understand this. 

For years I thought I understood what that statement meant. Then I watched Slaying the Badger. If you do one thing before watching any of the Tour de France stages, watch this movie. It’s about Greg LeMond’s nasty rivalry with his teammate, Bernard Hinault (aka the Badger).

LeMond is the only American to have won the Tour. His victory predates (just barely) the point at which cycling became a sport of drug-enhanced bullshit artists like Lance Armstrong. The movie is awesome, it’s on Netflix and in under two hours you will come to understand the meaning of the phrase “an individual sport played by teams” in all of its complexity. I implore you to watch this movie. Even if you’re not that into cycling. I bet you will enjoy it. You can’t make up a character as complex and slippery as Bernard Hinault. He’s fascinating to watch.

Which brings us to the whole performance enhancing drug thing which really destroyed road cycling’s image.

Where Slaying the Badger is a vivid picture of total dysfunction at the team level, a new movie that follows around a bunch of younger, (purportedly) drug-free cyclists called Clean Spirit is really a great look at how members of a cycling team can support one another while still pursuing individual victory.

The movie follows around the Argos-Shimano team and its star, Marcel Kittle in last year’s Tour de France. If you watched last year’s tour at all you may recall the moment when British cyclist Mark Cavendish gave Argos-Shimano rider Tom Veelers a shoulder bump and knocked him off his bike. The filmmakers do a really excellent job of capturing how the team responds to Cavendish. Marcel Kittle makes for a great hero in this story that tries to recast cyclists as athletes instead of drug addicts.

Both of these movies are on Netflix. Watch them. Even if you’re not into cycling they give you an awesome background into team and individual dynamics and you also come away with an understanding of just how grueling of an event – physically and mentally – the Tour is for these athletes. 

It’s not just the cycling though. The scenery is awesome and NBC does a good job with zooming out to place you at each stage. Kelly and I really enjoyed the footage last year from Arles and Aix where we road bicycles several years ago.

We watch it with our kids and our oldest always has questions that lead to us looking up some town or city or region on Wikipedia. 

And then of course, there’s the food.  Each stage presents a new opportunity to try a regional wine/cheese/something delicious so that if you can’t ride like the cyclists in the tour, at least you can eat like them.

Oh. Also. To watch the tour, NBC has a mobile that has been getting better and better every year. In past years we’ve just used Airplay to send the live stream (or archived stage coverage) to our Apple TV. Hoping we will be able to do the same this year. 

I’ve been doing some of the workouts in the Chris Carmichael’s Time-Crunched Cyclist book this winter. With another snow storm in the forecast and at least another week on the indoor trainer, I thought I’d share this particular routine. 

The most effective-seeming workout in the Carmichael book is the back to back Over-Under days, I’ll explain what Over Unders are below but what’s crucial is that you have a good rest day before day 1, make sure you do full effort on day 1 and 2 and then have at least a full rest day afterwards, maybe even two rest days.  Like the book title says though, the workouts don’t take very long, so that’s good. Especially since being on the indoor trainer is unbelievably boring. 

Over-Under intervals alternate between a really high-intensity steady state for two minutes and pretty close to all-out effort 1 minute. You alternate between these two states for up to 12 minutes at a time and rest in between sets before alternating again for some prescribed length of time.

Your legs don’t get much recovery during the 12 minute part because after the all-out sprint for a minute you’ve got to return to high-intensity spinning. It’s brutal but helps to burn time quickly on the indoor trainer and the effects are noticeable after just a couple of weeks.

For me, my “Under” heart rate is between 145-155 and my “Over” heart rate is 150-165 (it gets higher towards the end of the workout). Since working this workout into my indoor trainer routine back in November, I’ve noticed increased endurance and longer sustained effort in my legs, seen my resting heart rate come down from 59 bpm to a low of 49 bpm and it makes doing time on the indoor trainer less boring. Anyway, thought i’d share:

From Carmichael book:

“cadence should be high (85-90 rpm). To complete the first interval, bring your intensity up to [92% of your max heart rate]  … maintain this for the prescribed Under time and then increase your intensity to [97% of your max heart rate] for the prescribed time. At the end of the Over time return to your under intensity range and continue riding at the level of effort until it’s once again time to return to your over intensity. Continue alternating this way until the end of the interval… Recovery periods between intervals are typically about half the length of the work interval.” [e.g. a 12 minute interval would have 6 minutes of recovery before the next 12 minute interval.]

Over-Unders require that you know your max heart rate or max power on a power meter because you are going to do 92% of your max heart rate for the “Under” and 97% for the Over but i’ve found that after a few intervals you really need a power meter to be accurate because by the second or third set your HR isn’t recovering the same during the Under portion.

I’m not shelling out for a power meter any time soon but here’s my poor man’s way to do this on the indoor trainer.

Find a gear that you can spin at 88-92 rpm and get your heart rate just at the top of your aerobic range. Something that really beats you up but doesn’t have you gasping for breath, this is your Under gear. Then find a gear that you can barely maintain 90 rpm for 60-90 seconds. That’s your Over gear.

I’ve found that if I force myself to maintain cadence of 88rpm in these two gears no matter what interval or set i’m in, i know that i am working the right amount effort for each interval regardless of where my heart rate is – otherwise it’s very easy to start trying to find an easier gear for the Under portion of the interval and you don’t want to do that, the point is to sustain the effort until the end of the complete interval.

So at least once a week work these two back to back days in to the workout

Day 1
5 min warmup
12 minute Over Under (2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over)
6 min recovery
12 minute Over Under
6 min recovery
12 minute Over Under
6 min recovery

Day 2
5 min warmup
9 min Over Under (2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over)
5 min recovery
9 min Over Under (2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over)
5 min recovery
9 min Over Under (2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over, 2 under, 1 over)
5 min recovery

FOTO BY MALIN JOHANSSON.

I’ve been having my mind blown for the past few days by musician Jose Gonzalez. Something about the songwriting on his new album Vestiges & Claws – the way the songs are written around the strengths and limitations of the nylon string acoustic guitar – really drew me in and I ended up going down the rabbit hole and discovering Junip, a band he plays in.

The more I listen to both his solo work and the Junip material, the more I appreciate his guitar playing. From Sweden (born in an Argentinian family), there’s a bit of Nick Drake in his songs.

Start with Line of Fire by Junip on KEXP video: 

Here’s a cut off his solo album that will give you a flavor of his picking technique:

You can find his new album on Beats and Spotify or buy it on iTunes. This one, I’m paying for on iTunes even though I can stream it with my Beats subscription. 

I’ve seen a few articles (WSJ , Business Insider this week attributing Radio Shack’s demise to our loss of leisure time.

No doubt, this quote from RS founder Charles Tandy could lead you to take that position:

“The shorter workweek, human curiosity, idle hands — all offer opportunities in this business. Everyone’s spare time is our challenge,” he said.

I don’t think these articles are correct though. We have plenty of time for leisure but we have forgotten how to be leisurely. Losing the time for leisure is very different from losing the capacity for leisure and – at least for those Americans who have met the most basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, etc – many folks have simplity lost the capacity for leisure. Like gratitude and awe, the capacity for leisure is a skil and a powerful attribute of self-sufficiency that hectic, modern life will just errode away over time if we don’t give it the mindful attention it deserves.

Radio Shack is just the tip of the iceberg of things that have or will dissappear as we continue to lose our capacity for leisure. I wrote a few months back about how John Thorne makes note of our decreased capacity to cook our own food. Many of the things that make life rich and rewarding are the fruit of attention and leisure.

As our attention diminishes so does our capacity for leisure.

Bonus: TED talk on gratefulness from leisure advocate and Benedictine Monk David Steindl-Rast. Watch Here

nubbsgalore:

“the suburb of agbogbloshie in ghana’s capital, accra, has in recent years become a dumping ground for computers and electronic waste from europe and the united states. hundreds of tons of e-waste end up here every month as countries in the west attempt to unload their ever increasing stockpiles of toxic junk. of the 20 to 50 million tons of electronics discarded each year, 70% will end up in poor nations.

"increasingly, this e-waste is finding it’s way to west africa and countries like ghana. traders bypass international laws by labeling the equipment as second hand goods or charity donations, but in reality as much as 80% of the computers sent to ghana are broken or obsolete. their final resting place is the agbogbloshie dump where they are broken apart, mostly by children, to salvage the cooper, hard drives and other components that can be sold on.

"the disposal of electronic goods in the west is a costly affair and must be done in an environmentally responsible manner. however, in places like ghana there are no such regulations, and toxic metals like lead, beryllium, cadmium and mercury are continuously being released, causing untold damage to human health and the environment.”

photos and text by andrew mcconnell

Mindblowing that the odds are very good that some of my thrown-away electronics are so far away.

Starting a fresh notebook (plus, checking out IFTTT Instagram to Tumblr script). #levenger #moleskine #noadds via Instagram

We have an ever-evolving “morning” playlist that we listen to most school days as we get the kids out the door. Bucimis performed by the extraordinary mandolin player Avi Avital has been on our morning playlist for almost a year now and I think it really sets the right kind of tone for frying bacon, making coffee and screaming at kids to find their jackets and bags.

I just came across this video for a performance of it. The percussion intro is a bit drawn out but worth it (though skip to about 1:30 if you want to get to the song). Plus, smoking accordian!

Enjoy!

This band, Real Estate, and their album Atlas, boy I’ll tell you what. It’s back in heavy rotation after I sort of forgot about it and it is STELLAR. Start with “Had to Hear.” Great sound, production, song writing.