Chelsea: A Discussion of Wattage

Three athletes, all of decent or better ability.

Lindsay:

Charles: You know this guy 🙂

Jesse: a.k.a. Clan Chieftan

The workout:  “Chelsea” 5 Pull-ups, 10 Push-ups, 15 Squats every minute for 30 minutes.

Charles (5’11” 200#) Complete as RXD, a phenomenal feat.

Lindsay (5’6″ 163#) 13 Rounds RXD, 1 failed (5,7,0), 15 Rounds at 4,8,12

Jesse (6’2″ 227#) Coped out and did 3,6,9 for all 30 rounds, did face plant on a few push-ups…

Wattage (average power) = force (weight x gravity) x displacement (meters of the movement) / time (minutes)

Simple right?

Lindsay: 733.5N (kg x gravity) x 1.03m travel per pull-up x 130 pull-ups / 30 minutes blah blah blah

*do this for push-ups and squats also* and you’ll get an average power of 108 watts (kgm/s2) (yeah, three high efficiency light bulbs…)

OR

.15 Horsepower – a 163 pound human providing 1/8th the output of a 1400lb beast of burden, more than her fair share!

Jesse: 116 Watts for his measly 3,6,9

Charles: 165 Watts for his superhuman performance!!  Unbelievable.

Morals of the story: a) Charles is a huge beast, b) just because you cut the reps down to make the workout doable, doesn’t necesarily mean the workload (wattage) is really that much lower and c) Lindsay is scary at push-ups (253 in 30 minutes).

We’re smarter and sweatier than you.