Monday 11 August 2008

Distance not Time, or the Olympic 10 second sprint

How do you set your exercise goals? It seems to me that most people will work out on certain equipment in the gym for a certain amount of time. Many instructors set member's programs with 10 minutes on this kit, 5 minutes on that, which is a strange way of working to me...

If you're watching the Olympics at the moment, are you looking forward to the 10 sec sprint, the 2 hour cycling race, or the 2 minute swimming finals? I know it sounds weird, and would be very hard in certain contests to see who got the furthest after an certain amount of time. It is also hard to remember the distance you cover in your allocated time. I bet most people know that the 100m world record is just under 10 sec (currently 9.72 by Usain Bolt of Jamaica).

My brain remembers times more easily than distances if I'm trying to improve my performance.
If you set a distance goal to run, cycle or row, and then try to beat your previous time is much more motivating than running for 10 minutes, and checking how far you've run.
Try it, and let me know...