How fit is Fit?

[Cheathj]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

A marathoner who stops running entirely will be average after two months? I think that's a bit too fast.

A bit fast I think as well. I think you lose a level in about 2-3 months. It's a lot easier to maintain than it is to increase your fitness.

You could even simulate it if you wanted, with a HT roll every 2-4 weeks to see if you lose it...every 2 weeks would mean an avg 10 HT joe lost a level a month while a healthier person maintains it longer.

It's also a lot easier to say "my PC does his daily exercise every day we're in town" than it is to get your ass out of bed and run every morning. You could even have PCs make monthly will rolls to maintain fit/very fit...but that seems a bit extreme. Lacking an external motivation (e.g. drill sergeant), you could even ask for F/VF PCs to have a minimum will, or a proper obsession etc, and not do with any rolls.

[pawsplay]

Plus, it's still easier to get Fit again than to develop it in the first place.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Cheathj

A bit fast I think as well. I think you lose a level in about 2-3 months. It's a lot easier to maintain than it is to increase your fitness.

I would think you would drop the first level much faster than subsequent ones.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I would think you would drop the first level much faster than subsequent ones.

Yeah, probably.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I would think Fit is appropriate for anyone getting about an hour of solid cardio per day right now, with Very Fit representing 2 or more hours a day. As such, anyone graduating from USA or USMC boot camp is likely going to have Fit, but if they wind up in a low-intensity MOS that may disappear after a few months.

I think that a short period of reasonably intense work can change a fitness level for an individual - maybe 2-3 months at 3x the exertion levels above, 4-6 months at the levels above, or 6-12 months at the levels above. That would let someone entering basic get to Fit by the end, and let someone entering a Special Ops program (or just the Ranger School) with Fit progress to Very Fit by the end.

I don't know. I've finished three marathons and for each of them I trained specifically for three months. Granted, I was starting from a reasonable level, but during those three months I definitely did not run 14 hours a week, and maybe not even 7 hours a week on average. Of course I was no recordman but I did them running, not walking, and finished between 3 hours 50' and 4 hours.

I think the same is true going the other way - someone who stopped exercising completely would probably go from Very Fit to Fit in 3 months, and lose Fit 3 months after that (if even that long!).

I agree with others here. You lose the top edge performance quickier than that; even after just two weeks of complete rest your performance will show the first signs. On the contrary it takes longer to lose basic above-average fitness.

[pawsplay]

Marathon training invovles not just Fit but also a high level of Running; your overall performance could be significantly worsened if both abilities start degrading.

[pieclone]

At my fittest I've been Very Fit, ST13, HT12 and maybe a couple of FPs spare. That was around age 21. It would absolutely be possible for me to attain that level of fitness given 10hrs/week inside of six to nine months, even as I am in my mid-thirties. Given a year and sufficient motivation and I could push ST14, HT12-13, Very Fit and a few FPs on top. I'd weigh in around 240 or thereabouts at that level of fitness.

After six months of attending the gym 5 days a week for a minimum 1hr per day (most days 1.5-2hrs) I went from Unfit to Fit - that's me being about 20lbs overweight (around 240lbs @6'4") to being maybe 5lbs overweight (about 220lbs). This was after quitting smoking which I had been doing for around 15 years - around 20/day.

I did probably around 75% Cardio and 25% Strength training. By the end of the six months I had probably bumped my ST & HT in GURPS terms to somethere between 11-12, developed Fit and maybe an extra FP. I was in training for a sponsored walk across North Africa that ended up falling through but the work I put in would have left me able to cope well with the predicted daily mileage and heat.

12 months later and no longer visiting the gym due to other commitments I'm probably back to ST11, HT10 and on the cusp of Unfit and losing my extra FP again.

I think 3 months of training is sufficient to change fitness level. Loss of fitness level will depend. Once the body is at a certain level it much easier for it to stay there. It's only the sedentary nature of my job that has caused my weight gain. If I were out and about I'd expect to retain much of the work I put into my fitness last year with only a minor drop due to lack of maintenance.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Cheathj

I've been thinking about this one; I've always disliked this. Just checking world record times, you see a gradual decline in speed over distance
100m = 9.58 sec (probably with some extra effort in there as well)
400m = 43.18 sec
800m = 101 sec
1600m = 223 sec

Some years ago, I sat down with a Guiness Book of World Records, and tried to tweak Sagatafl's movement/stamina rules to fit real world performances.

It turned out,the way I was trying to do it, I'd need almost a dozen different movement speeds that any character can choose to use:

Slow Walk, Walk, Walk Fast, Jog, Jog+. Run, Run+, Sprint, Sprint+ and Dash. Each speed functioned as a multiplier to the equivalent of the character's Move stat, and each had a Stamina Loss interval.

So, in short, I've found out one way to do it that's bad. It's somewhat more complicated than is desirable, and doesn't accomplish much so as to justify the complexity.


Eventually I decided to switch to a two-pronged mechanic: Characters get an Exertion Interval and a pool of Fatigue Points, using the former for long-term exertion (movement, physical labour), and the later for the equivalent of GURPS' Extra Effort.

The two mostly track each other, but not entirely: A person with mainly white-fibre muscles like me would have more FP for the same Exertion Interval (I'm a sprinter and hockey player type), but each stamina level costs a lot, while a person with mainly red-fibre muscles (a typical soldier, rower or marathon runner) would have fewer FP for the same Exertion Interval, but his stamina levels would be fairly cheap.

Exertion interval is simply how long you can go, relative to a normal person. So it might be x1.5 or x3 or x4 or x6. Or less than x1 for an out-of-shape couch potato like me. That part of the systme is thus agnostic about how long an average person can walk in a day, or jog before having to rest. It only talks about relative time intervals.

It's not a precise as the former implementation, but it has the huge advantage that long-term physical exertion is deterministic. If a character can run a triple-marathon today, then he can also run a triple-marathon next week - there are no dice rolls, so no lucky or unlucky runs so that character's exertion capacity varies more wildly, from day to day or from week to week, than it does in the real world.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

A marathoner who stops running entirely will be average after two months? I think that's a bit too fast.

It doesn't match my experience at all. At age 21, I was 18 weeks at a folk high school, getting lots of physical exercise and eating right. I achieved a pretty good fitness. If I wasn't Fit GURPS-style, then I was at least more than halfway there. 3 or 4 CPs towards the 5 CP cost of Fit.

Then I went home, back to my normal life, very little exercise, and frankly eating a lot of unhealthy crap. And 4 months after I came home, I took a physical fitness test that yielded a numerical result, called a "Kondital" in Danish, "condition number". The test consisted of pedalling a stationary exercise bike at high speed and high gear, I think to achieve a certain pulse frequency. Corrected for age, I - barely - ended up in the highest bracket out of five.

Clearly the highest bracket doesn't mean Very Fit. It's a test for normal people, and so it somewhere around Fit or a little under it. But my point is, my fitness level seems to deterioate much slower than one would expect.

It does deterioate, though (I'm a couch potato now), and it could be that I'm weird genetically, this way. I've also never been anywhere near able to run a marathon and I doubt I could train that high. I'm more of a sprinter than a jogger. At another time in my life (age 18) I was in peak condition, I considered it ardorous to bicycle about 9 km against the wind, but I had fun running around in an indoors soccer field (or hockey field) burning energy like crazy to compensate for not being really skilled (GURPS-style Extra Effort).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I would think you would drop the first level much faster than subsequent ones.

But which level is the first one?

Are we operating under the assumption that different individuals have different natural Fitness levels, and that either-Fit-nor-Unfit isn't the baseline, the average, for everyone?