With the vital monitor, I was able to beat my previous best time once again!

How it all began

My name is Markus and I am 43 years old. I am an enthusiastic mountain biker with the goal of maintaining or perhaps improving my times from year to year in a wide variety of 1-day or stage races. In June 2017, I became aware of the Vitalmonitor method and their experience with it through club colleagues. I was interested in this way of checking my health and immediately ordered a Vitalmonitor. After a phone call with my trainer, Berny Schimpl, a training plan was then also immediately included.

My training with the Vitalmonitor

Since I have already trained with training plans from various training institutes in recent years, I liked Berny's approach and the idea of the Vitalmonitor method right away. After the routine morning measurement with the Vitalmonitor, I get my training unit for the day from Berny, adapted to the measurement.

This helps to avoid overtraining. The vital monitor ensures that I never train too hard or too easy. At the end of July this year, a 6-day stage race was scheduled in Poland and I came to the race perfectly trained and rested. This then went extremely positively, after the morning measurement I always saw before the race that I was well regenerated and this then gave me an extra portion of motivation for the competition.

Monthly Plan vs. Vitalmonitor Method

My stress level and bio-age worsened daily due to the nervousness but my heart rate variability always remained good except for the last day before the race, which shows that you can still perform. So I finished 3rd overall in the Masters class for the race and was able to celebrate my first podium in such an event.

But the most important thing about the Vitalmonitor measurements is that after such a race or after hard training sessions you can already see the next day if you are well regenerated or if it is better to insert another loose unit. That helped me a lot this year, because other institutes write a monthly plan, but then they don't necessarily pay attention to how you cope with the units in the end.

After Poland, training went back to normal and at the end of August, I had the Ötztaler Radmarathon to compete in. There I could improve my best time from 9.04 hours to 8.24 hours. The days after were the most interesting for me, because according to the vital monitor measurements I really needed 5 days until I was back on my feet. If I had gone by my feeling, I would have trained normally again after the 2nd day.

My conclusion

Now the training for 2018 has already started again and I am curious what comes out with a complete preparation with Vitalmonitor and the plans of Berny Schimpl. For me, the Vitalmonitor is definitely an enrichment, whether for sports or for health concerns.