[Assaf Farran]

Scott,

It seems everything is relative (no pun indented. Well… maybe a little bit).

I wasn’t trying to sprint when initially trying the right configuration for ME.

I had indeed seen your video beforehand, and while I noted the captions ‘note how Scott can speak easily and is not limited by breathing…’, I did struggle balancing this with ‘go hard’ which was the other directive for the workout. I most certainly did run out of breath.

Someone looking at me from the side, would have probably thought I’m not moving particularly fast, but it was still too fast for me (considering weight/slope/capacity). Relativity 😉

The upside of this meandering experiment is that I’m learning to have better self-awareness and developing my intuitions about not only effort and intensities but also about recovery – going too hard has really wore me out in ways that made it clear I have to very patient with recovery (I’m 49 and don’t have a long athletic history).

It also helped drive home just how hard it is to monitor yourself and how much I could benefit from having a coach. I hope to act on this very soon and with some luck maybe even get to work with you ?

 

As for the Physics discussion, first just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, when I say stair master I mean an escalator type machine, not the one where your feet stay on the same two ‘steps’.

If indeed there was a misunderstanding about the type of machine used, then the following is not relevant.

But if we are both talking about escalators, then given such a machine,  I believe that at the scale we’re talking about (mechanical forces) the principal that governs is the Galilean relativity principal (aka Galilean invariance) which states that:

… inertial frames exist, and that the same laws of physics apply in all inertial frames of reference, regardless of one frame’s straight-line, constant-speed motion relative to another.

Another way of putting it is that all inertial frames are created equal. We can say whether one inertial frame is in motion or at rest relative to another, but there is no privileged “rest frame”.

There is no experiment that comes out any different in laboratories in different inertial frames, so there is no experiment that could tell us which inertial frame is really, truly at rest.

This includes the force of gravity, which is why for example if you were to drop a ball from the same height, it would take the exact same time to hit the floor whether you do this on the surface of the earth, or inside an elevator rushing down (assuming constant-speed), or an elevator rushing up.

A useful way to frame the escalator scenario, is to imagine a static normal staircase (walls, ceiling and all)  enclosed inside a giant elevator.

The elevator is descending and a person is climbing the staircase inside it.

Not only are the mechanical forces involved the same as if the elevator was at “rest” on the ground, but  (according to the principal above), you cannot even design an experiment that could tell the two scenarios apart.

So, going back to our escalator, as long as you are not interacting with something outside the inertial frame (such as holding onto the handrails) there is no mechanical difference with the staircase in the elevator scenario, or with a staircase on the ground.

The escalator stair you are pushing off is indeed moving ‘down’ relative to the room the machine is in, but it is not moving at all relative to you and so the effort you need to raise your leg to the next step above  is the same as if it was still.

I am not a physicist by any means, but that is how I understand it.

In any case, given that mountains do not include escalators (thank god) we can treat the distinction as anecdotal rather than meaningful.

Whatever gets the job done 😉

Thank you kindly for your attention

Asi