​I’m writing this while drinking beer, watching Baywatch, listening to Eddie Trunk, and nibbling some dark chocolate.  Make of that what you will. I’m doing this after hitting a personal best with my Crossrope set; 28:45 of continuous jumping.  I worked up a nice sweat which felt like a good way to end the week.

​That workout really did lead to this week’s column.  We all know working out burnscalories.  But what effect, if any, does that have on calorie burn when you are done? Apparently, the huffing and puffing from exercise is a sign of an oxygen debt.  Who knew?  

Physiology nerds call it excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).  The basic idea is strenuous exercise leaves you oxygen deprived.  You need to take in extra oxygen to get back to your resting metabolic rate. The larger your oxygen debt the more calories you burn after your workout.  This is starting to explain why it seems to take so much longer to get back to resting rate after sprinting or some type of HIIT workout.

Interestingly, strength training helps with EPOC.  Greater muscle size leads to a greater post-workout calorie burn. Working larger muscle groups also contributes to a greater EPOC and its concomitant energy burn.

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​California’s 7–day Covid case rate has fallen so far, we are back to our early June numbers.  Notwithstanding that, because of my governor’s completely arbitrary tier system, my county only this week went down to the red tier.  For the longest time I could not understand how the red tier wasn’t the highest tier.  Instead purple is the highest tier.  Have you ever seen movie with people screaming purple alert in a crisis?  Me neither.  

It finally hit me.  The governor set up a system based on his dick.  I’ll leave it all of you to decide if it’s ever yellow or orange.  He was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle so maybe she can tell us.  For sure, he looked down one day and realized purple is more severe than red, so here we are.  This may explain why 2.1 million Californians have signed the petition to recall the bastard.

This song will make you do HIIT.  It starts with an aggressive rhythm and around the three–minute mark on the album version it really takes off.  No matter how tired I am, when this song comes on, I kick it into high gear.  When the song takes off, I involuntarily go into a higher gear.  I think I linked this song recently but I can’t be asked to enact my own labor to check.  Just enjoy it (again.)