Welcome to the quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Brock Armstrong. I'm the get fit guy.

And I'm here to ask you, do you really need a heart rate monitor or an expensive blood lactate test to determine how hard you're working?

Well, it turns out that you probably already have a pretty darn good innate sense of it on your own.

For example, back in the 1980s, when we'd put on our short shorts and our knee-high socks, our wrist and headbands and head out for a jog,

well, we didn't have an activity tracker on our phone or a GPS on our wrist or a heart rate

monitor in our hat. We would simply go out for an easy, moderate, or a hard run. I know, I'm

stunned too. How on earth did we ever manage to qualify for the Olympics or the Boston Marathon if we

didn't know our splits and our current pace

and our heart rate zone. Well, unless you were fancy enough to have a coach with a stopwatch,

you probably used perceived exertion. Perceived exertion is simply how hard you feel that your body

is working at any given point during a workout.

This includes things like your heart rate, respiration, sweating, muscle fatigue, and much more.

You know all the delightful physical sensations that we experience during physical activity.

Using these factors to determine the amount of exertion that you feel has been found to be a good

estimate of your measurable variables, such as heart rate and lactate threshold, which is when your body manufactures lactic acid,

faster than it can flush it. Now, if this seems too simple, I know you're probably thinking, That's fine, if you aren't serious, but for my training program,

I need the accuracy of a watch that can measure down to the square meter.

Well, I'm here to tell you that, you know what? You probably don't.

Your own sense of your own exertion is nearly as accurate as using the

latest tech. The trick is to have a scale to judge it by. This is where Swedish researcher

Gannar Borg comes in. Dr. Gannar Borg invented what he called the Borg scale, which matches how hard you feel

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