Concept 2 Meter Settings

[[old] easyoars]

Hi<br /><br />I just wanted to find out what assumptions of body weight and age the Concept 2 erg makes to show calories burned...and is there any place where we can get a conversion table to reflect the same for our body weight/age?<br /><br />Thanks<br />Arun

[[old] c2jonw]

Hi Arun,<br />The monitor assumes a 175 pound person. Concept2 has a slide chart available that adjusts for weight, but there is no adjustment that I know of for age. Calories consumed by an individual for a given amount of work produced will vary from person to person due to differences in metabolic rates, efficiency and other factors. Like most pieces of exercise equipment that display calories, it is an approximation. JonW

[[old] easyoars]

Hi John<br /><br />Thanks for the quick reply. Where can I get my hands on the conversion chart?

[[old] Steve_R]

<!--QuoteBegin-c2jonw+Feb 25 2005, 07:32 AM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><div class='genmed'><b>QUOTE(c2jonw @ Feb 25 2005, 07:32 AM)</b></div></td></tr><tr><td class='quote'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The monitor assumes a 175 pound person. Concept2 has a slide chart available that adjusts for weight <br /> </td></tr></table><br /><br />Jon,<br /><br />This comes up a lot. Since the monitor uses the formula: Calories = (4x ave. watts/1.1639) + 300 cal/hour x time rowed (in hours), couldn't we create a formula for it? Is the 300cal/hour factor an addition for BMR or the work effort in moving someone up the slide during recovery? According to the website, this is based on 30 spm so could we say this factor would be 10*(ave spm)?<br /><br />If that is true wouldn't the formula be:<br />Calories = 4*(ave watts)*1.1639/175lb*(person's weight)+10*(ave spm)*(time in hours) or:<br /><b>Calories = (0.026603)(ave watts)(weight in lb) + 10(ave spm)(time in hrs)</b><br /><br />If the 1.1639 factor has a non-linear relationship to weight then this would not work.<br /><br />Steve

[[old] c2jonw]

Hi Steve, Hmmmm, this may be right, but I'll have to look into it some. A quick graphing of some values off the slide chart indicate a straight line relationship between weight and calories burned for a fixed amount of work, so the formula is probably pretty simple.<br /><br />The 300 calories is an allowance for keeping a 175 pound person alive and moving up and down the slide. This was determined by expired gas analysis.<br /><br />We try not to put too much emphasis on calories because it can be misleading. There are differences in metabolism and efficiency between individuals, and even for the same person from day to day. This makes calories "burned" by a person for a given amount of work an approximation at best. JonW

[[old] Steve_R]

Jon, thanks.<br /><br />I agree that the Calories can be misleading since it also doesn't take into consideration many factors including the increased metabolism after exercise. At minimum it would give a similar approximation that the monitor gives me (I weigh ~165) to other people intersted in getting an order of magnitude idea of what amount of exercise they are doing when tracking for weight loss. If this is a good equation for the slide that you have, it would be relatively easy to create an online version of the slide similar to the pace calculator. To make it slightly more "accurate" we could factor the additional work keeping someone alive by relating to BMR since the factor would increase with weight as well. My guess is that we could also factor in training band activity to give the added accuracy based on training band rather than average spm as above. Then again, maybe the correction factor would work out to be "too complex" for the general Calorie calculation and not really worth the effort. But I think it would be helpful for many people to have this kind of calculator on the C2 website.<br /><br />Steve