February By The Numbers
Welcome to this month’s edition of By The Numbers, where I lay it all out and look back at the data my watch collects from the month. I breakdown things like average sleep duration, steps and total workouts. Ive been doing this monthly reflection for 18-months now, and it’s proven to be a valuable tool for understanding my habits and routines and finding areas that I can focus on. I highly recommend everyone has a practice like this.
Steps: 257,918 total for a daily average of 9211.
Yesterday I coached 5 classes. I saw close to 50-people and felt like I didn’t stop moving all day. I ended the day with 8000 steps. It made me realize the importance of talking a walk! If I can be on my feet in the gym for 7 hours, and only get 8000 steps, I can’t imagine what it’s like for the person who sits at a desk for 9 or 10 hours. As for the number, this is the same average from last month, and the month before, and where I expected it to be.
Sleep: 7 hours 2 minutes average duration, sleep score average 78.
I love the idea of yearly cycles when thinking about my training. I run a lot in the summer, not a lot in the winter, I lift in the fall and try to get strong, things like that. I always thought that I should get more sleep during the winter than the summer. Dark, cold, no early sunrises to miss. Looking back, however, I realize I tend to get more sleep in the summer than the colder months. Is it do to increased training volume, or increased steps or what? I’m not exactly sure, but that’s my hypothesis so far, and I’m eager to see what happens in the summer.
As for the current sleeping routine, it’s actually been pretty good. I’m always striving for more sleep, and I think that’s a good place to be. I once heard a coach, when asked what his super powers would be, say to get an extra bonus hour of sleep every single night, and I think I would like that too, just for the gains.
Workouts: 26 total, 9 runs, 7 machine conditioning workouts, 10 lifts, 1 metcon
It was a good month of training. My primary focus had been what we renamed Miner’s Triangle. It’s a tough workout on the air bike, rower and SkiErg, trying to accumulate as many calories in a minute on each machine before taking a rest. Obviously, this was a nice lead in to the Ergathon coming up. That being said, I also have been looking back to my training from 2018-2021, and I was logging a lot of time of machines, cross-training, if you will. Lately, that piece has been missing from my training, and it’s been fun (and painful) to push the paces hard on the machines and work my capacity in a different kind of way.
I was consistent with bench pressing, at least once a week, and had a couple of short and easy workouts like this one
EMOM 12: 3 kb swings + 2 chin ups + 1 wall walk
And more brutal ones like this one:
GAIN Triathalon: for time - 5k run, 5k row, 5k ski.
As always I hope this inspires you to take a minute and reflect today. Look back at the past month and see where you can make improvements.
Justin Miner
@justinminergain