drphil’s Fitness newsletter
SUMMER
Hi, Get-Fitters.
This piece is a general introduction to exercising in the warmer months. Summer in South Africa is upon us and exercising requires fine-tuning.
“Summer’s here, and the time is right, for dancin’ in the streets…”
Way back in the 60’s, the Mamas and Papas invited Californians to
celebrate the summer months by getting outdoors and active. Likewise,
today and here at home in South Africa, the seductive summer call is to shed those extra
clothes and layers of accumulated winter fat, to get into shape more in tune with our balmy and sultry season.
Even while we may read that Procrastination Day has been postponed, yet again, it’s difficult to ignore the strident calls to get fit for summer. Every magazine offers alluring articles on how to transform your bodies into bikini-readiness within 21 days, with only 20 minutes of easy exercise, three times a week. Treat these spurious claims with the
scepticism they deserve! Accept reality, but don’t despair!
While the waist is a terrible thing to mind, if you’re prepared to commit yourself to regular exercise activities, not just for the few short weeks before the holiday season, but throughout the year, you can burn away much of that needless fat, take control and feel and look better.
Here are some useful tips to help you enjoy summer fitness, without too
much stress:
Keep in mind the essential trinity of fitness: Cardio, Strength, Flexibility, and include movements that will satisfy all three components of physical wellness. Always warm up before becoming active.
Try to be active at least 4 times a week, for at least half an hour, to stimulate regular cardiovascular action, to strengthen the heart, to carry oxygenated blood to working muscles, to burn kilojoules, to combat depression, to prevent disease, to release pleasurable endorphins. For cardio work, walk, jog, dance, cycle, skate, swim, run, skip. Convince yourself not to use lifts or escalators; take the stairs and discover how fast you can develop stamina.
Buy a skipping rope and practise jumping rope. It can be done in and
outdoors, and with regular performance, will increase your cardio fitness
quicker than with any other method available.
HOWEVER, skipping is the most difficult of cardio exercises. It requires so much coordination, stamina, balance and strength, that the average mature would be safer and better-off with less stressful cardio moves.
Try, always, to include some resistance training in your routines, to strengthen
muscles and stimulate bone growth. You will develop a more efficient body
and, incidentally, burn more calories, used to feed that extra muscle
tissue.
Include stretching exercises, to create flexibility and fluidity in your movements, to avoid injuries and to enable peak performance, while learning to relax more completely. When stretching, don’t bounce; relax muscles statically. Don’t lock or hyper extend joints.
Accept that there is no such thing as spot-reducing, selecting the spots you wish to shrink. Next, be happy that you can spot-shape. By working specific muscle groups, you can shape and sculpt particular areas. My 250 videos on my philjoffefitness.com site will offer a large range of supervised moves to achieve cardio-vascular and muscular fitness.This will increase lean muscle mass that will, in turn, help you metabolise more fat and so improve the overall appearance of your body.
Think positively about nutrition, to whet your sunny disposition. Diet should never represent deprivation; it is learning to eat sensibly and nutritiously. Remember, the fundamental principles of good eating: eating to live, not living to eat. Over-eating is the destiny that misshapes our ends!
Cut back most radically on saturated fats. Eat a low-fat, low sugar, high-fibre, high protein, and, especially, high variety, high complex carbohydrate diet. Your balanced diet should include the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals, especially the antioxidants, vitamins E, C, D,and Beta-Carotene, and the trace element, Selenium, to target the free radicals, those molecular vandals that exhaust our immune system. Because it’s summer, turn more to fresh fruits and salads to raise your complex carbohydrate intake.
Practise eating 4-6 small meals a day, rather than the traditional, heavy meal at night, when you are least active. The more often you encourage your body to digest foods, the more energy it will burn in consuming the light meals.
Stay hydrated. This is the most important rule for summer training.
More than 70% of your body is liquid, and in the summer heat, the liquid balance of the cells is easily disturbed. Drink cool water before, during, and after your exercise sessions. Drink water regularly, when you are not exercising, too. Within half an hour after training, replenish the body’s liquid and energy supply by drinking either a glass of fruit juice, or an
energy drink. This will replace fluids and electrolytes lost through sweat, provide energy to working muscles and prevent dehydration and heat sickness.
While summer days make training outdoors inviting, take care to resist the mad-dogs-and-Englishmen-syndrome. Never train in the mid-day sun! Ideally, stay out of the sun between 11am and 4pm, as this is the period when South African cancer-threatening rays are at their peak. If you train outdoors, or just lounge at the pool, use a water-resistant, broad-spectrum sun screen that protects against both UVA and UVB rays and which has an SPF of at least 15. Wear protective clothing and always cover the head, especially while jogging on our sun-drenched roads.
Remember, your body temperature increases when you exercise as a result of the heat the muscles produce. If your body gains too much heat from the summer environment, it sometimes struggles to evaporate enough sweat to cool the skin and body.
If the heart rate rises too rapidly, this makes it difficult for sweat to evaporate. This
condition introduces the threat of heat injuries, such as heat exhaustion, muscle cramps, and heat stroke. Decrease the normal intensity of your exercise in these circumstances, to protect against the heart rate from rising too high.
Never wear gear impermeable to sweat; wear cotton or, out of the sun, expose more, not less skin, to enable evaporation and cooling.
Don’t take salt tablets; you can’t become sodium deficient.
When exercising (except Yoga and Pilates), acknowledge that time wounds all heels. Wear a good pair of training shoes to give support to the feet and lend them wings as you work your way into summer fitness and a body shape that will prove that you’re never too old to become younger.
Get active, encourage your body to burn energy, and you’ll share your enjoyment with all those others who have found that summer fitness is fabulous.
And, for those of you near the ocean, realise that Life’s a Beach, then you Fry!