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 As holiday shopping season begins, you can give memories, and monitors, to the fitness fans on your list. Bill Webster / The Washington Post
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The perfect gift for the fitness freak in your life
Saturday, November 29, 2008 11:34 PM PST
By Howard Schneider and Vicky Hallett
The Washington Post
Printable version
E-mail this articleOn Christmas morning 2006, Roger Bischoff didn’t find his biggest present waiting under the tree. Instead, his wife, Susan, teased him with packages of related goodies. There were socks, rain gear, a water bottle ... and finally, travel documents saying he was headed on an REI Adventure to the Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks in Utah. The next day.
“He’s always been very creative with gifts, so I wanted to up the ante,” says Susan, who knew her outdoorsy hubby would thrill at the chance to go hiking and snowshoeing. “It’s a gift that lasts longer than the moment you open it. It lasts longer than the trip. You carry it with you.”
Indeed, Roger, who’s 38, calls it “the best gift ever” — not just because his experience was so fantastic, but because it got him hooked on pursuing other adventures, both near the couple’s home in Bellevue, Wash., and far from it. (He climbed Denali this summer.)
So as holiday shopping season begins, don’t forget that you can give memories, and maybe even some muscle, to the fitness fans on your list.
Bischoff’s very merry Christmas is an example, but the gift doesn’t have to be that grand.
• REI also offers local adventures. Plus, through the company’s Outdoor School program, there are one-day outings that involve mountain biking or basics of land navigation. (Which just happen to pair well with a new set of wheels or a high-tech GPS, if you like wrapping things, too.)
• Know a certain someone who can’t stand a gym filled with weights and ellipticals? Send him or her to one with rock-climbing walls.
• Gift cards were once just for retail therapy, but fitness outlets have them as well. It’s a good way to release baggage instead of coming home with some. And certain people have a passion for tap dance that they could never have for the treadmill.
• A traditional gym membership is a very generous gesture, but unless you’re sure your BFF has been aching to join a certain club, it’s the sort of present that has the potential to go to waste.
Even a handful of personal training sessions can make a difference, says Tanya Colucci, head of training at Mint Fitness in D.C.
• For anyone involved in competitive racing, one of the biggest expenses is just entering events. So an IOU for registration fees (for a couple of 5Ks, for example) would be much appreciated. To show you really care, say you’ll even pay for the upgraded sweatshirt.
• Heart rate monitors also make good gifts for the fit person in your life. Using a heart rate monitor can help with a workout program, but physiologists say it’s important to understand the limitations of the devices.
Monitors measure heart rate accurately. They typically establish training zones set as a percentage of the user’s maximum heart rate — 60 to 70 percent for basic fitness, for example, 70 to 80 percent for improving aerobic endurance — or use other protocols based partly on heart rate.
But everyone has a distinct maximum rate, a genetically determined “speed limit” that declines slightly with age. It can be measured in a lab but otherwise can only be estimated. So take it easy at first. See if the zones set by the monitor square with how you feel. Working out at 60 percent of your maximum heart rate should seem fairly easy; does it? Does 75 percent feel invigorating or leave you gasping? After a few workouts, you should have a sense of whether you need to move it up or down a few beats.
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