But Gyminee is different!

Next to your daily exercises, you can enter a lot of additional details, like food you eat all day, your weight, waist size, arm size and lots more details.

Registration is required to test the site (which is free in the basic version) and I know you guys dislike registrations as much as I do, so I’ll show you what I think are the main features of Gyminee.

Track every workout

Obviously that’s the main thing. Tracking your workouts. Gyminee makes it very intuitive to create a custom workout.

You just write down what you want to do on a regular basis and suggest a schedule.

Then you add an exercise. There are plenty of them in the Gyminee database. If you do some strange sports you can add a custom exercise.

What’s really cool is, that you can watch videos of how you can do an exercise properly. Especially when it comes to lifting weights it’s very important that you don’t hurt yourself during the workout.

So after you have your standard workout saved, you can select one of them after your next workout.

Of course you can say. Nike+ can do that without all the typing. Then you’re right! But what makes Gyminee so special is the variety of information you can save there. Finally it’s possible to really track every sports related activity you’re doing.

Set your goals!

A lot of people do sports to lose weight or to increase muscle mass. From my own experience I can tell that goals are very important for your motivation.

Analog to the workouts you’re doing you can set different goals like body weight, push-ups or the total sleep time.

If you keep track of your weight, you can see a detailed curve of your progress. You can change to kg and the metric system if you want.

Do you eat?

So if you’re really into tracking anything you may consider writing down everything you eat all day.

I can tell you, that this is very time consuming and you should think twice, if you really want to update this information on a regular basis.

However, the really huge food database makes it easy to add a lot of meals you’ve eaten. And with a growing community more and more food will be added.

With this database you don’t have to enter the calories, fat, carbs and protein manually.

Privacy

Although Gyminee is meant as a community site, revealing your weight and eating habits may not be an option for you. You can select who can see your information in the permission settings of the site

All for free?

Every feature I described above is free. But if you want even more functionality and statistics you can go pro.

I think 15 bucks for 3 month is kind of expensive for a web 2.0 site . That’s $60 a year.

On the other hand I saw no advertisement in the free “Gyminee Standard” version. And that’s how usually web companies and blogs make their money.

Conclusion

Gyminee is a great site to keep track of your workouts and eating habits. If you truly enter all this information you can later see which food / workout was really effective.

Especially people highly motivated by goals should give it a try.

Obviously this affected my writing habits. I wrote stuff about non sport related topics like tech and mobile communication.

The big return? A new start?

However I would like to start through again, for that reason I changed the design, deleted almost all private training sessions and removed some advertisement that sucked.

# of feed readers dropped dramatically

This is obvious. No new content here and everyone leaves. I would do the same. But perhaps you want to give me a second chance.

This is my feed address

I would be more than happy!

Is there any topic you’d like to see here?

Tell me about your interests. I’d love to cover new sport related topics. Just send me a mail or leave a comment!

Thank you!

Markus

You’re afraid to get too bold from blogging? With Springflex you can now do your workout directly in front of your PC. Attach the machine like a vise on your desk and start pumping. The SkyMall page says you can do over 120 exercises with it. Wow! My first guess was no more than 5

Schedule for lazy bloggers

Please take this blogpost with a grain of salt

1. Drink!

   You should drink before, during and after your workout. If it’s somehow impossible for you to drink during sports, you should think twice before you exercise exceeds an hour. Dehydration is one of the main factors that you’ll lose energy and your headache after your workout.

   Water is good! You don’t need those l-carnitine drinks! Your body will produce enough of it.
   Add apple juice for long distances if you like.

2. Eat!

   Even if your goal is to lose weight you should consider eating a small portion before your workout. Usually a fitness bar or a yogurt is enough.
   But: You should also avoid too much food. That isn’t necessarily connected to headache, but you’ll avoid that your stomach hurts during sports.

3. Vitamins!

   It can’t be too bad to eat some fruit or vegetables sometimes. Don’t forget that vitamins are important for your body and your endurance.

4. Don’t go over the top!

   Try to increase the intensity of your workout progressively.

I hope this advice will help you to prevent headache after an intensive workout.

I’m talking about the video “Exoskeleton Turns Humans Into Terminators”!

It’s about a robotic exoskeleton, developed by Sarcos, which mimics every move the person inside does! My only concern is, that it’s used for military purposes only. With some modification and weight improvements it could be used for people with osteoporosis or other diseases.

But as we know, technology subsidized by military sometimes has a good impact on the whole population, like the world wide web. Let’s see what lies ahead.

But now, the video:

But how to achieve this goal? Eat more and lift more weights to gain more muscle mass?
If you ask me: No! Try it the other way round: Eat less but more healthy for a fixed period of time!

Bear in mind that you should already have a basis of muscles to do this! I would not advice this for someone who just signed the gym contract.

Endurance

Running, exercise bikes and rope jumping is good for your endurance and your body! Try to run more than 20 minutes and you can, if you like, do anaerobic training intervals.
But you shouldn’t push too hard: Too much training will result in shrinking muscles, because muscle mass is used to supply energy for your body during really intense workouts.

Lifting weights - Faster

Usually no personal trainer would advice to lift your weights very fast. Because,

• the swing makes it easier for you to lift the weights, which is not really good and even looks ridiculous on some occasions
• fast movements could result in joint pain! So be careful!

Try to lift weights with a reasonable fast speed during this training interval. Take less weight but speed up your workout. At this day you should not lift heavy weights at all.

Lifting weights - Heavy

Without lifting massive weights you won’t be able to sustain your current muscle mass. Try to do only 5 - max. 10 repetitions in one set.

After two weeks you should be able to see first results if you train hard enough

Food

First of all: Drink! Water is healthy and cheap! With an increasing age it’s more likely that you don’t feel thirsty although your body needs liquid. Make sure you remind yourself to drink more.

Keep your energy balance (calories) at a low level. That doesn’t mean you have to be hungry all the time. Try to eat healthy food like vegetables, protein and fish.

Finally

You shouldn’t do this training over a very long period of time. One month is more than enough. If you want to build muscle mass your body will obviously need more calories!

You’re really enthusiastic about getting defined muscles? Try to switch between both methods (2-4 weeks): Gaining muscle mass by eating more and lifting heavy weights and defining your muscles again by having a negative energy balance, using the training explained above.

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It’s about two men sharing their “experise” about losing belly fat after childbirth. Just watch it

THIS IS A SERIES! I STARTED WITH 10 MINUTES ROWING AND I WILL ADD 5 MINUTES EVERY TIME!
How long will I endure this?

[I'll always update this post as soon as I took a picture of my current workout]

For the newbies After a long run in the Netherlands I was injured and I thought of doing another sport instead, to give my feet a break.

Indoor Rowing seemed to be ideal for this. You use almost every muscle, but your feet rest at the same place all the time.

After my first workout I thought it would be cool to increase the total time slowly. Because I was (or am) very unexperienced I chose 5 minutes. Starting with 10 minutes. Back then I was really exhausted after 10 minutes.

Now it has become something like an addiction. Hard to stop if you are posting your workouts on the Internet. Try it

Every workout I made and will make in this series will be shown on this page. So if I’m not able to manage my next goal (+5 minutes compared to the last workout) I will stop this series.

Here are my past workouts (shot with my mobile phone)
Beginning with the first one

2007-10-14

10:23 minutes
2768 meter

2007-10-15

15:05 minutes
4132 meter

2007-10-17

20:13 minutes
5522 meter

2007-10-22

25:07 minutes
6735 meter

2007-10-23

30:05 minutes
8064 meter

2007-10-24

35:05 minutes
9466 meter

2007-10-28

40:05 minutes
10850 meter

2007-11-04

45:06 minutes
12120 meter

2007-11-09

50:06 minutes
13283 meter

2007-11-15

55:00 minutes
14539 meter

2007-11-18

60:00 minutes
15978 meter

2007-11-21

65:00 minutes
17561 meter

2007-11-24

70:00 minutes
18916 meter

2007-11-27

75:00 minutes
20128 meter

Will there be a next workout?

Next to this post I write about geeky sport gadgets. Motivation and fun while doing sport is very important, so if you would like to be informed you can subscribe to my feed or you can get the news via mail! Links are in the right navigation bar.

My RSS Feed

Markus

When it comes to baseball a lot of people start going crazy. Obviously the Pretec product development team was in a similar state of mind or just watched a good game before creating this product.

Unfortunately it’s no longer listet on the pretec homepage and I was not able to find an online retail store, but here are some specifications:

• no external power required
• Max. data transfer > 10MB
• Dimension: 38 x 35
• Weight: 35g
• Supports Windows, Mac and Linux

Somehow my first thought was: That’s a whistle. Let’s hope nobody will actually use it as a baseball. I bet the data would be lost, or what do you think?

When you connect your iPod to your computer after your run, it will automatically sync. But if it’s your first run, you’ll have to create an account first, of course. Then you’ll be redirected to the Nike+ homepage where you see your last run on the front page. Of course there are more options:

Here is the first menu:

Runs

Here you can see all your runs and then take a closer look at one run. Here you can see one of my runs in the Netherlands:

I wore my new shoes at this run in the Netherlands. Not a very good idea if you ask me now. Because of the huge blister, which has resulted from this run I wasn’t able to run more miles for my first challenge. What a challenge is and how it increases your motivation, I will tell you later.

Goals

Here you can set your private goals. As you can see in the image blow, you can chose between more often, a distance, to burn calories and faster.

For beginners my advice is not to set the goal to an almost unreachable limit. If you’re trying to lose weight try to run more often or burn calories. If you’re preparing for marathon you can toggle between distance and pace.

Map It

It’s also possible to search for runs and create new ones with Google maps. Even if you don’t have an iPod that’s a very cool feature, because it allows you to see good routes in your area.

Widgets

With widgets you can see your status and your goals on the desktop of your Mac or your PC (with a special software).

And now let’s come to the second menu, the challenges:

This is, by far, the most motivating aspect of Nike+ combined with the iPod nano.

You can enter or create a challenge like this one:

Other runners are more likely to see / discover the challenge when it’s new or when it’s starting in a few minutes. You can set up very different goals. For an individual or a team.

So you can chose between speed challenge or most kilometers / miles or even a distance race which means that the challenge is over as soon someone reaches, let’s say, 200km.

After the challenge is over you can see the results:

I had to stop the competition because of my “injury” I told you previously. But the results are really awesome!

I hope this text was interesting for you. Perhaps we can compete in a challenge together!

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