Betwixt Jobs

When you’re working in computers, you always want to buy expensive computer toys. When you’re working in music, you always want to buy even more expensive music toys. Having spent way more cash than I care to admit on my recording studio, I’ve been really looking forward to personal training as a way of doing a job without all that asset overhead. I mean, what do you need? Just some weights, maybe a few balance balls and medicine balls, some mats and benches, right?

Well, I’ve been trying to find ways to get more meaningful aerobic fitness data when doing my fitness evaluations. The test I’m doing right now (YMCA step box test) is very rudimentary and doesn’t really provide a whole lot of info. I could use a slightly different version of that test in order to estimate VO₂max, the metric I really need, but VO₂max estimates based off of step box tests have at best a high SEE and at worst have low validity, period. It’s also not the best of tests to use for deconditioned individuals.

There are better tests for determining VO₂max if you have an exercise bike and can use it to dial up specific tension values required by the protocol. I figured hey, no big deal, I’ll just pick up a portable exercise bike and use that for my tests. Unfortunately, almost all of those have unlabelled tension knobs, so you can’t dial up a specific power settings. I found only one cycle that can do this, and it costs about $900, which is about 4x more expensive than the next cheapest portable cycle I found.

I was also really getting into the idea of being able to measure oxygen consumption directly with a breathing mask attached to a metabolic cart. This can also be used to calculate things like basal metabolic rate. Really slick, really useful stuff. Unfortunately, the cheapest portable metabolic cart that actually works well is around $4k. The cheapest decent-quality BMR-only portable device I found was around $2.5k. But man, these things would be sooooooo cool to have.

I’m also starting to think about the idea of getting a tablet computer or something to take with me when training people. I’m only working with a few clients right now, but I’m already generating a lot of paperwork and a lot of “remember to do this particular thing with this particular person at the start of the session” types of notes to keep track of. I’m sort of liking the idea of persisting all this data in software. I’ve been looking at a few personal trainer software packages out there, but haven’t been terribly impressed with what I’ve seen so far. I’ve been toying around the idea of writing my own software, but I’m not sure I want to get sucked down that path again.

Part of me would like to think that there are only a few big-ticket items I’d have to worry about getting, and then I’d be set for a while. But the other part of me knows it’s a slippery slope. Fancy toys have a habit of getting very lonely and needing other fancy friends to play with.