Two weeks ago (September 2023), we started an End7ess SousSport Club on Strava. The requirement is goodwill, possession of at least a simple sports watch, and little technical knowledge to record and transfer your exercise data online – nothing that an average person can not do.
Obviously, this Club is not performance-orientated, at least not in the sense people usually approach sports. We are on the search for the experience of “the zone” or “the flow” while moving and exercising.
To achieve that goal, the usual principles of good exercising, healthy living, and fitness will apply only partially and up to certain levels. With time we’ll point out the differences, but for a start, we are in accordance with what is obvious: you have to exercise!
In this series of articles, I intend to follow the advancement of End7ess SoulSport Club with some instructions and goal settings for the whole group.
Let’s start with the statistics Strava provides in the form of a weekly Leaderboard. Here are the first three places for a second week (20 members at the moment.
Congratulations on the top achievements!
Let’s learn from the statistics and set up the goal for everyone in the group.
Distance statistics are of no particular value because cyclists will easily gain the distance numbers, while those who exercise statically travel no distance at all. I would like to see another kind of statistic here, for example, how many vigorous minutes per week, or even better applied power while staying in the second heart rate zone. For now, we’ll have to accept what is given. So, friendly distance competition is just for fun.
However, time spent exercising and the number of activities are quite important for our purpose. Let’s set a goal for each member of the group.
The minimum time spent exercising per day is 30 minutes. Don’t aim for some “serious” sport and wait for “the right time” to do it. Just do it every day, whenever you can. Vigorous walking is fine, some yoga is good, and calisthenics is even better because you can do it anywhere, without special equipment or conditions. Our first goal is to record at least one activity for 30 minutes every day. We can skip one day, and that leaves us with six (6) recorded activities per week.
The second important goal (actually the first according to Strava statistics) is time spent exercising. You have to add one longer exercise per week of a minimum of two hours. That can be a longer bicycle ride, a hike on the local hill, or something else that suits your inclinations. So we have five times 30 minutes, one day rest, and one day 120 minutes per week as our first goal. Altogether it is 4 hours 30 minutes weekly spent exercising.
And here we are: we have a clear goal for each member of the Club: a minimum of four hours and thirty minutes of activity spread over a minimum of six recorded exercises (no shorter than 30 minutes) per week.
So, let’s do it!
Next few weeks we’ll celebrate the success of those who will achieve that goal! Let’s make this a standard before we move on to further additions in our search for the flow!
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