Shuttle Run Inspired Cardio Training App

Exercises for elder and senior folks

Geriatric exercises

Wouldn't you like to stay healthy and active as you get older? Are you searching for methods to improve your heart health, mood, and energy levels throughout the day? If so, you might want to consider adding some cardiovascular exercises to your routine. Cardiovascular exercises are activities that get your heart rate up and make you breathe faster. They can include walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, dancing, and more. Cardiovascular exercises have many benefits for older adults, such as:

• Lowering your blood pressure and cholesterol levels
• Reducing your risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes
• Improving your circulation and oxygen delivery
• Enhancing your cognitive function and memory
• Boosting your mood and self-esteem
• Preventing or delaying age-related muscle loss and bone density loss
• Helping you maintain your independence and quality of life

• Preserve your strength and muscle mass
• Improve joint health and your range of motion
• Prevent or reduce stiffness and pain
• Prevent or at least minimize the effects of falls and injuries

The Shuttle-Run inspired cardiovascular app is a new android app published recently on Google play that tries to address the needs of elder and senior folk who feel the need to walk or do a slow jog to regularly raise their heartrate to healthy levels for a healthy duration of time. The apps pace can be slowed down to rates that elder folks are more comfortable with without straining themselves. They can then review their exercise events over time and see whatever progress or improvements they have gained so far which the developers hope will give them the needed motivation to keep the exercise events going and gain even more improvements in their health. The app has a summary of run events that folks can review and see their gains. Note though that there will generally be fluctuations due to all of us having good days where we generally feel energized and not-so-good days when we generally would like to take things slow so reading the results over time should take these fluctuations into consideration.

Motivation for physical rehabilitation patients.

Stroke patients | paralysis | lack of movement

One of the most important aspects of stroke recovery is physical activity. Exercise can definitely help strengthen muscles, improve balance, increase endurance, and boost mood. It also reduces risk of having another stroke or developing other chronic diseases. But exercise can be a challenge for stroke patients who are paralyzed or have limited mobility. Folks who have gone through a stroke or have had some kind of paralysis may find the Shuttle-Run inspired cardiovascular app to be a motivational tool for them to get up and begin walking again – slowly – within the physical boundaries within which they are safe such as their homes or even just within their bedrooms. Set the pace to something as slow as 10 steps per minute if you want (one step in 6 seconds) and walk from one end to the other while the app tracks the equivalent outdoor distance you’ve covered. Set realistic and specific goals. Don't expect to walk a mile on the first day. Start with small steps and gradually increase the pace and duration of your exercises. Celebrate every achievement, no matter how small. Be motivated with the knowledge of having actually covered such a distance which may cause you to confidently plan actual walks outside and come back to your starting point after completing such a distance. Exercise is not easy for stroke patients and those undergoing rehabilitation. But it is possible and beneficial. With motivation, determination, and perseverance, one can overcome the challenges and achieve your goals. You can get back up and walk again.

Heart Rate based running

Heart Rate Zones

A lot of articles on running have been written on training using heart rate as a measurement parameter. Such articles have studied the relationship between a persons age, the level of exertion a person does and his heart beat rate. One will find such articles identifying a maximum heart rate with a generally accepted formula of 220 minus the persons age. Then heart rate zones have been defined that describe the intensity of an activity as a percentage of this maximum value. Five such zones have been identified and these are:

1. Relaxed or very light- 50 to 60% of Max Heart Rate
2. Light - 60 to 70% of Max Heart Rate
3. Moderate - 70 to 80% of Max Heart Rate
4. Hard - 80 to 90% of Max Heart Rate
5. Very Hard - 90 to 100% of Max Heart Rate

Other more technical studies and documentation might name these zones in a different way such as (1) Relaxed (2) Light (3) Aerobic (4) Anaerobic and (5) VO2Max. Each zone would have a description corresponding to the effects it would generally have on the body's cardiovascular cycle or the acids produced by the active muscles in the body or the level of oxygen intake the body is capable of.

The MAF Method of training

One of the principles that had inspired the creation of The Shuttle-Run inspired cardio vascular app is the MAF Method of training. MAF, which stands for "Maximum Aerobic Function", was developed in the 1970s by Dr. Phil Maffetone, an athletic coach and medical practitioner who worked with students and various athletes. He studied the relationship between heartrate and the level of exertion and developed a training method which tries to improves a person’s endurance by running at a rate controlled by the runner while trying to limit the runner’s heartrate just under a certain computed rate. This heartrate, called the MAF heartrate, is obtained by taking the difference between the constant 180 and the person’s age. The goal is to try to find that sweet spot much less measure it accurately and keep those records to see the improvements gained by the body in following the method. The Shuttle Run inspired cardiovascular app, with it’s metronome measuring the speed and distance, hopes to provide more accuracy in controlling how much effort and energy a person spends and how it keeps these records for later study and strategy-making on the adjustments needed to improve the efficiencies in using the method to improve the persons health.

A minimalist's no treadmill indoor running

Running indoors without a treadmill. Indoor running in a minimalist’s space. Is there such a thing? The Shuttle-Run inspired cardio vascular app attempts to realize this by allowing YOU to move yourself about a “stationary treadmill” instead of having the treadmill’s track rolling underneath you. This means you physically displace your weight horizontally across space instead of merely bobbing up and down over a stationary point over the earth. Displacing your weight over a distance is perhaps closer to doing an actual walk, jog or run over a stationary surface. In fact, the effort spent by the deceleration and acceleration of stopping and starting back the other way at both ends of the shuttle path might even mimic actual movement outdoors. The app’s logic takes care of the distance and speed tracking work that the treadmill does. Also, treadmill track slippages that sometimes happen will cause it to register a distance that's greater than that which you actually run. Not to mention the fact that such slippages require time, effort and money spent on maintenance. Then there's the use of electricity too whose sources at this era might cause treadmill runs to be less friendly to the environment thus possibly contributing more to the amount of CO2 generated into the atmosphere than necessary. Running, jogging or walking over a non-moving length of real estate ensures that the only amount of CO2 we expel into the air is that from our own lungs. Now, treadmills do not stop when your feet stop which sometimes causes you to fall off the end. By physically travelling over your “stationary treadmill”, it is the movement of your legs that actually control your physical movement oven your “stationary treadmill” hence you stop moving when your legs actually stop. The only trade-off one might think of between using the app and a treadmill is the amount of space you will need to walk or run in whilst using the app over the footprint taken up by a treadmill. However, this temporary length can be obtained by simply moving furniture out of the way and then dissolved by moving furniture back right after the event. The footprint taken up by the treadmill will permanently be allocated to the treadmill for as long as you own it even when and specially during the time it is idle and not being used.

All weather walking and running

The weather can play a big role in your determination of whether to perform your measurable, cardiovascular exercises or not especially if you perform it outdoors. Performing it indoors using the Shuttle-Run inspired cardio vascular app solves this predicament whether that be due to rain or snow or at any time of the day or at noon in the tropics with a hot, scorching sun right above or in the dead of the night where it would not be safe to do a short run around the block without the risk of being mugged.

Time and energy efficient exercise

Today’s age has found man to be a lot busier than ever with more activity seeking time and effort from most everyone. Such is today’s rat race that it is imperative we determine which activities we might afford to avoid being done. Unfortunately, regular exercise is NOT something we can afford NOT to do as not getting enough of it can make us lethargic and affect both our physical and mental capabilities and eventually our effectiveness and productivity. Unfortunately, still, a lot of us fail to realize this until it is too late substituting our lack of natural exercise with substances we take internally, such as vitamins or energy drinks, which might give us the notion of being energized but may eat away in the long run. Precisely doing the just the right amount of natural exercise at precisely the right intervals within just the right amounts of time changes all that.

It is not the intention of this blog nor of the app to dictate what levels of exercise is good for the individual as this clearly will depend on the needs of each individual, which at times, will require the help and advice of a medical or athletic professional. It is, however, the goal of this Shuttle-Run inspired cardio vascular app to provide a solution on precisely controlling and measuring the amount of effort and rate of effort expenditure that an individual goes through and record it for future reference.

Shuttle Run and Beep tests:

Police personnel fitness test

The Shuttle-Run inspired cardio vascular app is one that is inspired by shuttle run and beep (sometimes known as “bleep”) tests popular with police forces not only in the U.S. or the U.K. but in most other countries which follow these standards. While the app may not necessarily be one which implements the standards followed by these police forces in screening their applicants, designating the proper 15 or 20 meter running paths and creating runsets with the proper steps per minute and shuttle length coverage step values can be set so that these values produce the actual timing that these police fitness tests take. Checkout trainer Tom Hig's comments on training on a treadmill and it's equivalent to that of running downhill on 0:53 of the you tube video below.

The Shuttle-Run inspired cardio vascular app

For all of the situations mentioned above, the Shuttle Run Inspired Cardiovascular training app tries to address. The idea for its development came about during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 where everyone was in lockdown state. It came as a method to continue exercising, raising heartbeat to substantial levels while indoors, not just for the elderly but for middle aged as well as younger folk as well. Download the app from the Google Play Store by clicking the link below

Measure and apply just the rightr incremental amounts of effort into your exercise

The Shuttle-Run inspired cardio vascular app allows you to increase or decrease the effort intensity gradually and in minute amounts by gradually increasing or decreasing the speed at which you move across the strip. This makes it possible to measure, control and and compare the intensities which make your heart beat at certain rates thus making it easier to keep it beating at a certain constant rate and thus realize whatever small improvements your cardiovascular system goes through.

Version 1.00a - February 16, 2024 bobbyg.agency