Fitocracy Catch-All

ducki, thank you for confirming that women and men are not so different.

AndrewA wrote:
Jonman wrote:

In short, those monster points are well earned. If you're pissed that you can't score those same points, then you're really pissed that you haven't put the work in to earn them.

That's nonsense, Jonman. I can play a 5 game (~7 hour) competitive ultimate frisbee tournament - which requires me to be in awesome shape, sweat my ass off, and lose a lot of skin in the process - and score 2500 points (500ish per 1h15m). That's a nice haul, but nothing like one of EvilHomer's ROUTINE days.

Being annoyed with Fito's point bias has nothing to do with being "pissed I haven't put in the work to earn them" - that's just arrogant thinking - it has everything to do with the system being massively torqued towards rewarding one specific type of athlete above all the rest.

Yeah, good point.

So swimming is worth a shocking number of points. My 1:15 workout this morning (3600 total yards) was worth 1000 more points than the 11 mile run I did on Saturday. I think part of the issue is that the system isn't really built to handle people who do a swim workout that includes a bunch of different sets (4 x 100 @ 1:30 for example). In that case, I would enter the set as 400 yards at whatever pace I actually went the 100s at. So while I did do 400 total at that pace, I also got a bit of rest in between.

Looking a bit closer, while they allow distances in yards, they have no time option that is in yards. So my times have been off by a few seconds - it's been a few years, but I think it's ~3 seconds per 50. I'll have to find a site that'll do the conversions so that I can get the pace times correct going forward.

billt721 wrote:

So swimming is worth a shocking number of points. My 1:15 workout this morning (3600 total yards) was worth 1000 more points than the 11 mile run I did on Saturday. I think part of the issue is that the system isn't really built to handle people who do a swim workout that includes a bunch of different sets (4 x 100 @ 1:30 for example). In that case, I would enter the set as 400 yards at whatever pace I actually went the 100s at. So while I did do 400 total at that pace, I also got a bit of rest in between.

Looking a bit closer, while they allow distances in yards, they have no time option that is in yards. So my times have been off by a few seconds - it's been a few years, but I think it's ~3 seconds per 50. I'll have to find a site that'll do the conversions so that I can get the pace times correct going forward.

Instead of logging sets, try logging the entire swim (i.e. 3600 yards in 1:15) and see if that gives you a different answer? That at least captures the nature of the swim a little better (i.e. includes the rest periods)

Jonman wrote:

Instead of logging sets, try logging the entire swim (i.e. 3600 yards in 1:15) and see if that gives you a different answer? That at least captures the nature of the swim a little better (i.e. includes the rest periods)

That's probably more in-line with what it should be (~1800pts for a 3600 yard workout). Unfortunately, it gets rid of the actual pacing information, which I was hoping to use to keep track of how long it takes me to get back into swimming shape after being out of the water for a month. Until they have a better solution for swimming, I guess I'll throw that info into the comments.

billt721 wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Instead of logging sets, try logging the entire swim (i.e. 3600 yards in 1:15) and see if that gives you a different answer? That at least captures the nature of the swim a little better (i.e. includes the rest periods)

That's probably more in-line with what it should be (~1800pts for a 3600 yard workout). Unfortunately, it gets rid of the actual pacing information, which I was hoping to use to keep track of how long it takes me to get back into swimming shape after being out of the water for a month. Until they have a better solution for swimming, I guess I'll throw that info into the comments.

FWIW, that's exactly what I do. It feels more accurate to me - swimming 10 intervals with 2 minutes rest between each one is a much easier workout than swimming the same intervals with 30s rest between each one, and logging it that way will reflect that in the points.

+ umpteenth 'I wish Fitocracy had a non-crap way of moving dates on workouts' posts.

Really, you'd think this wouldn't be such a problem.

AndrewA wrote:
Jonman wrote:

In short, those monster points are well earned. If you're pissed that you can't score those same points, then you're really pissed that you haven't put the work in to earn them.

That's nonsense, Jonman. I can play a 5 game (~7 hour) competitive ultimate frisbee tournament - which requires me to be in awesome shape, sweat my ass off, and lose a lot of skin in the process - and score 2500 points (500ish per 1h15m). That's a nice haul, but nothing like one of EvilHomer's ROUTINE days.

Being annoyed with Fito's point bias has nothing to do with being "pissed I haven't put in the work to earn them" - that's just arrogant thinking - it has everything to do with the system being massively torqued towards rewarding one specific type of athlete above all the rest.

Let me begin by saying I sort of agree with you. In general, I definitely think the points are out of whack. But regarding your activity specifically compared to lifting, how would you change it?

Someone lifts 10# 5x. They get 15 points for that. A week later they lift 12.5# 5x. They get 18 points for that. That's the way it's supposed to work. When you play a game of ultimate Frisbee, you're probably logging that as extreme? Ok. A week later you play harder. Under what criteria can the site give you additional points? There's only a few difficulty settings, so you really can't pick a harder one. With lifting it's super easy. I just change the weight/sets/reps and get different points. You can log time and intensity. How would you change things to show progression?

Basically, most of your exercise is coming from distance run in a set time, but even logging it that way would be tricky because some of that is probably jogging, some sprinting, and not to mention jumping, diving, and so forth. I don't know how you would possibly put all that data in unless you load gps info, and even then you're going to lose the jumping, diving, etc. Meanwhile lifting is just really easy to log and increasing rewards for progression, on of the site's stated goals, is very easy to implement. What would you do to include the additional info?

Hypothetically, suppose we recalibrate points. Now my 3 hours of lifting is worth the same as your three hours of ultimate. In six months, my weights have all gone up, and now I'm putting up heavier, bigger lifts. To show an increased difficulty, my workout is worth more points. But since there's currently no way to show increased difficulty of your games, you're falling behind again. What would you do to change the way progression is rewarded for nebulous intensity activities like ultimate? Especially difficult is the note that if you and some other dude played 'extremely intense' games, you might do significantly more work than he due to differences in fitness levels to begin with.

Edited because I have terrible gramer.

Popping in to post that I'm going to start tracking with Fitocracy again, now that they have the app, maybe it will be a little easier. I have a membership at a very nice Y and I'm determined to make good use of it.

I haven't been paying much attention to the points or the challenge that much, I'm just glad to be back to hitting the gym regularly again. Taking the time off in December really showed how lax I had become with not only working out but eating as well. Today was a cardio day and I was struggling to make through a 30 minute session on the elliptical. Made it though, but damn...Definitely not even close to where I was in Oct/Nov.

I've been actually surprised by how actually recording the activities on the website gets me motivated, too. It's been fun the past couple weeks!

Agreed that the points system is outa whack. That said...

The way that Fito has attempted to add some measure of difficulty to the endurance sports is using heart rate and pace. There are massive problems with the way they've implemented it which mean that I can log the same workout different ways and get wildly different points, but I'm on board with the general concept.

If I log a 0.25 mile sprint at 6 min/mile pace with HR data, that scores me 350 points. No HR/pace data and the points awarded are far lower. Sprint intervals are one way to get >5k points hauls as an endurance athlete. I think it's a good thing to encourage speed training and the use of HR monitors. Ave HR plus distance run should be possible to get via a Garmin for Ultimate? Doesn't really solve the general case however, as a sport like rugby where you alternate endurance and strength continuously and couldn't wear a watch/monitor would be really tough to score.

Likewise, even if I want to maintain my sylph-like (ahem) figure for maximum running efficiency, I should be doing some strength training. I do think a factor that accounts for how close to my maximum I'm lifting, or a bonus every PR would be useful to encourage people new to lifting like me. I'm not going to be lifting anything like Miashara, EvilH & co and I'm fine with not scoring as many points as them at lifting...just a little encouragement to keep progressing.

Unfortunately, some other things that are very beneficial to general health/injury avoidance, like foam rolling & stretching get virtually no points. If you really want to see points injustice, go to a hard yoga class and tell me that it should only net 180 points an hour.

I may be out of the challenge, I have done something to tear up my shoulder. I'm giving it a couple of days, heat/ice before I bother a doctor, but man, it hurts to lift my arm, and if I move it in a certain way, my arm starts to feel like it's going numb. I probably pinched something, I dunno. I have got to get better about warming up or stretching. I'm forever injuring myself at the gym, so I'm obviously doing it wrong.

A friend just started using this, so I poked my head in again, since I haven't checked in over a year. A big part of why I stopped is that they just didn't have a way to enter more than half of the exercises I do at my strength training/circuit training class, so it got frustrating.

Well, now a lot of them are on there, so that's awesome. Might even try using the phone app to log stuff.

Maybe it's just me, but I started trying to use the iphone app a while back and gave up out of frustration. As an example, I tried to enter time on an exercise bike. It let me enter the time spent, but then I couldn't figure out how to add any other details, average HR, distance etc. I got frustrated a couple times and just gave up.

Maybe I need to find a tutorial online or something.

Cod wrote:

Agreed that the points system is outa whack. That said...

The way that Fito has attempted to add some measure of difficulty to the endurance sports is using heart rate and pace. There are massive problems with the way they've implemented it which mean that I can log the same workout different ways and get wildly different points, but I'm on board with the general concept.

If I log a 0.25 mile sprint at 6 min/mile pace with HR data, that scores me 350 points. No HR/pace data and the points awarded are far lower. Sprint intervals are one way to get >5k points hauls as an endurance athlete. I think it's a good thing to encourage speed training and the use of HR monitors. Ave HR plus distance run should be possible to get via a Garmin for Ultimate? Doesn't really solve the general case however, as a sport like rugby where you alternate endurance and strength continuously and couldn't wear a watch/monitor would be really tough to score.

Yes. Right there with you.

Unfortunately, some other things that are very beneficial to general health/injury avoidance, like foam rolling & stretching get virtually no points. If you really want to see points injustice, go to a hard yoga class and tell me that it should only net 180 points an hour.

The only real disagreement I have with this is that again, there's the calibration problem. Because Fitocracy does a mediocre job measuring progress at things like yoga, (This is not something I really blame them for. Irritating, but I can't come up with a good way to do it either.) yoga points will eventually be outstripped by other exercises that show progression better. I'm in prefect agreement that stretching, yoga, and so forth should be worth more, but I'd concede that this may just be because my primary lifts are worth so much. If you compare yoga to say, curls or tricep extensions, they're actually about on par.

To say nothing of arguably the two most important forms of injury prevention, proper diet/hydration and rest periods, are worth no points or a deficit.

fleabagmatt wrote:

Maybe it's just me, but I started trying to use the iphone app a while back and gave up out of frustration. As an example, I tried to enter time on an exercise bike. It let me enter the time spent, but then I couldn't figure out how to add any other details, average HR, distance etc. I got frustrated a couple times and just gave up.

Maybe I need to find a tutorial online or something.

No, it's not you, the mobile app just sucks. I have the App downloaded, but still enter it all through my browser.

fleabagmatt wrote:

Maybe it's just me, but I started trying to use the iphone app a while back and gave up out of frustration. As an example, I tried to enter time on an exercise bike. It let me enter the time spent, but then I couldn't figure out how to add any other details, average HR, distance etc. I got frustrated a couple times and just gave up.

Maybe I need to find a tutorial online or something.

No, it's not you, the mobile app just sucks. I have the App downloaded, but still enter it all through my browser.

duckideva wrote:

I may be out of the challenge, I have done something to tear up my shoulder. I'm giving it a couple of days, heat/ice before I bother a doctor, but man, it hurts to lift my arm, and if I move it in a certain way, my arm starts to feel like it's going numb. I probably pinched something, I dunno. I have got to get better about warming up or stretching. I'm forever injuring myself at the gym, so I'm obviously doing it wrong.

Boo!

Hoping that rest / heat / ice do the trick. I keep half-expecting one of my knees to blow out with my current activity level for this challenge, but all my body parts are hanging in there so far.

duckideva wrote:

I may be out of the challenge, I have done something to tear up my shoulder. I'm giving it a couple of days, heat/ice before I bother a doctor, but man, it hurts to lift my arm, and if I move it in a certain way, my arm starts to feel like it's going numb. I probably pinched something, I dunno. I have got to get better about warming up or stretching. I'm forever injuring myself at the gym, so I'm obviously doing it wrong.

Dang shoulders. Such a complex mechanism! As a 40something, my warmup goes like this. 5 minutes of machine rowing (or the elliptical - something with as many joints moving under load as possible). Start real slow. The point is not to do anything but warm up the joints and connective tissue. I'm not trying to break a sweat, nor really even breathe hard by the end. Then the muscles. That is next. First few sets are ludicrously light. Squat the bar, bench the bar, overhead press even less. The only one that isn't the bar is deadlift. But it probably should be! After that first lifting set is over, I feel I am pretty much able to crash into my accessory lifts which use most of the same muscle groups at full speed and weight. But getting started - I can only imagine I will continue to dial it back further as I get older.

Something entertaining I read from Jim Wendler - NSFW language, I paraphrase - but the gist of it was "lifters are always recovering from something." Something we inflicted upon ourselves.

Here's hoping you are back in the gym enjoying yourself soon, Ducki.

Miashara wrote:

The only real disagreement I have with this is that again, there's the calibration problem. Because Fitocracy does a mediocre job measuring progress at things like yoga, (This is not something I really blame them for. Irritating, but I can't come up with a good way to do it either.) yoga points will eventually be outstripped by other exercises that show progression better.

I can't think of a good way to do it either. The obvious one is to try to link progress to the harder poses, but then people are incentivized to try the harder poses before they're ready, which is a really, really bad idea.

I'm in prefect agreement that stretching, yoga, and so forth should be worth more, but I'd concede that this may just be because my primary lifts are worth so much. If you compare yoga to say, curls or tricep extensions, they're actually about on par.

Could be...in my case, one 0.25m interval shouldn't be worth the same as 2h of yoga, but that could certainly be solved by reducing the points for the sprint as easily as increasing the yoga points. In all fairness to the devs, I do think it's a very tough task to try to balance all the points & they'll never get it spot on, but it does seem as though there are some glaring ones that they should be ironing out.

To say nothing of arguably the two most important forms of injury prevention, proper diet/hydration and rest periods, are worth no points or a deficit.

Very true.

After our workout last night we went over and messed around with the assisted dips/pullups machine, the one where you select the amount of weight to counteract your own weight in order to make them easier to do. I was going to log those, but wasn't sure how to do so. There is no Assisted Dips category, only one called Machine Dips. Are these the same thing? I was thinking maybe the machine dips was something that added weight instead of reducing it, but didn't know.

Just log them as dips and subtract the weight displaced. That's that I do for assisted pull-ups.

H to the ickle wrote:

Just log them as dips and subtract the weight displaced. That's that I do for assisted pull-ups.

Huh. I didn't even consider that it would be an option under regular dips, but there it is! Even says assisted in the dropdown menu.

So I did my fifth and typically final set of the bench. It was hard. Very hard. In fact, it was so hard, it went beyond being typically hard. It became insultingly hard. It was like the weight was talking sh*t. Who was this weight to get all attitude-y with me? Being all nearly impossible and turning me pink? Disrespect, I tell you. Disrespect.

I turn to my lifting buddy. "I'm doing that again."

He gives me the look. "Dude, I was about to say I don't think you could do another set."

"Oh, this is happening." And I give him crazy eyes.

Dude does not argue. You can't argue with crazy eyes.

"Fine, but I'm not helping you. You're on your own," he, my spotter, advises me.

"This is happening!"

It happened. Now my arms don't work.

Moral of the story: Never argue with crazy eyes.

Miashara wrote:

Moral of the story: Never argue with crazy eyes.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/picture-5599.jpg)

fleabagmatt wrote:
Miashara wrote:

Moral of the story: Never argue with crazy eyes.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/picture-5599.jpg)

That's why you shouldn't argue with me. At any moment I may flip out, show up at your house IRL, and begin bench pressing your face.

[size=10]I'm not entirely sure what that means either.[/size]

Saw this for the first time under Treadmill: Walking -

While on a treadmill, put one foot in front of another. Repeat. Note: Treadmill should be turned on.

A few questions. First, does anyone know how to log sandbag exercises? Second, is it just me or does the search in fitocracy now only look for starts with? I type in squat and the only things that came up started with squat. Kettlebell squats didn't come up until I typed kettle.

Finally, having a broken hand sucks. I have almost 4 weeks left until my hand is reevaluated and I am already very restless. I am already stronger on the left so I don't want to do too much. Anyone do anything with sand bags? I did some squats with a bag of new cat litter and can hold it on the right which works that shoulder some. Hoping to find some other things I can do (with or without sand bags).

Sandbags: I got nothing. Search: Yeah, it's gotten wonky.

Also; I think I'm probably going to give up on Fitocracy soon. It's become more of a demotivator than anything. Since I'm never going to be able to lift weights like a guy, (cause...ya know; middle aged woman with knee replacements and old motorcycle injuries) and I don't want to be a power lifter, I feel pretty unrewarded in both points and purpose.

I'm still going to work out; but I think I'm going to search for a solution that doesn't put me in a position of never feeling good enough about what I'm doing, and that lets me easy see, track and print progression over time. I'd also like to find a solution that has some sort of calorie journal, so I can try and figure out what's causing plateaus in goals.

Any recommendations for a female friendly fitness journal application?