“What gets measured gets improved”. So goes the quote from Peter Drucker, an immigrant to the US and an author.
When talking about exercise load, there are two main variables to measure.
The first is the volume, or total amount of training you complete. Think of volume as the quantity of your workout. Volume can take on several different meanings, depending on the type of training you are performing. If you are an endurance athlete, training volume will be the total distance you cover during your workout. In this instance, volume is most often expressed in meters. If you (like me!) measure the distance covered in miles, it’s incredibly easy to convert to meters. Multiply the number of miles you ran by 1,600. So, you did a 10 mile run, you did 16,000 meters! See, told you it was easy!
If you are in the gym or doing some form of strength training, you would calculate the total volume by multiplying the number of sets (i.e. 3) by the number of repetitions per set (say, 10) by the resistance or weight lifted each repetition (for example, 100). Using our example here, 3 sets x 10 repetitions (reps) per set x 100 pounds lifted each rep (3 x 10 x 100) gives us a total volume of 3,000 pounds lifted. Like converting miles to meters, pounds are often converted to kilograms (kg) by multiplying the number of pouns lifted by 0.45. So, 3,000 pounds lifted x 0.45kg/pound = 1,350kg volume.
If volume represents the quantity of a workout, intensity represents the quality. It’s a measure of how hard you are working. Let’s go back to our running example. If you run 10 miles in say, 70 minutes, congratulations, you have a 7 minute mile pace. Not too shabby! But we’re not quite done. The total amount of time run is expressed in seconds. There are 60 seconds per minute, so 70 minutes comes out to 4,200 seconds (seems like a weird way to measure volume). Next, we know there are 16,000 meters in 10 miles, and it took 4,200 seconds to complete this workout, we divide 16,000 meters by 4,200 seconds to get an intensity measure of 3.809 meters per second. Note, this is an external measure of intensity. An internal measure that is often used is for measuring endurance exercise is heart rate (HR).
For our gym workout, there was a total volume lifted of 1,350 kg. We know that there were 3 sets of 10 repetitions each, good for 30 total reps. Divide the total kg lifted (1,350) by the number of repetitions (30) to get an average of 45 kilograms per rep. The heavier the resistance, the greater the intensity.
There you have it, two ways to measure your training stimulus.
Let me know what you think!
