Balance fitness is a term coined by the American College of Sports Medicine, over a decade ago, when it offered its position on the Recommended Quantity and Quality of Exercise for Developing and Maintaining Fitness in Healthy Adults. The call was for all to engage in regular aerobic (walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, dance, gym classes) exercise, adding that one should also include some form of strength training of moderate intensity, as regularly as the first category of activity.
How often is regular? There are seven days in a week. If your child came home from school, boasting of a test result of 3 out of 7, would you be satisfied? You should raise your activity levels daily, whatever energy-burning form you choose to use (become less rather than more efficient in some of your ways. Don’t use escalators in shopping centres, walk the stairs; don’t park as close to the entrance as possible, park further away and walk, etc.).
Evidence shows that regular cardiovascular (activities that raise the pulse rate safely) and muscle-resistance exercise increase your stamina, develop and strengthen muscles and improve flexibility. Exercise also increases bone density; helps prevent the conditions that lead to coronary disease; will control hypertension and help lower blood pressure and assist in resisting mature-onset of non-insulin-dependent diabetes.
Exercise also facilitates the management of weight gain, reducing obesity and unnecessary fat in the body; it will ameliorate the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis; mitigate anxiety and depression to allow you to cope with stress; it will reinforce a sense of self-esteem and confidence which grows from the perception of an improved body image.
Aerobic exercise has long proved its fitness benefits; one of the most appealing is the fact that you can start doing it at any age. Two years ago my elderly neighbour started walking 3 km every day. She’s 82 now and we don’t know where the hell she is!
Modern aerobic exercise has been with us for over 30 years. “Aerobic” means being with oxygen, and aerobic exercises are those that progressively increase our muscles’ demand for oxygen over an extended time. In the early 80’s, Dr Kenneth H Cooper, the Director of the Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, gave the world the term, to signify those exercises that stimulate the body’s adaptation to utilizing oxygen more effectively.
Aerobic activities are those of moderate intensity that use the large muscle groups such as the legs, buttocks and arms with energy supplied by processes requiring oxygen. Aerobic exercises, then, are any rhythmical, repetitive movements that contract and relax the large muscle groups of the body, raising the heart rate to a safely targeted level, and maintaining it for at least 20 minutes to yield maximum benefit. Movements such as brisk walking, swimming, jogging, cycling, dancing, or, as most of us identify it, exercise to music, are aerobic. Aerobic, or cardiovascular fitness develops stamina or endurance- the ability to continue a given activity briskly and without tiring, or running out of oxygen and getting into oxygen debt.
Over time, with regular aerobic exercise, the cardiovascular respiratory systems-heart, arteries, veins, lungs- begin to function more efficiently so that we are able to work comfortably for longer periods, with less effort. Oxygen, which is essential for muscle contraction, is conveyed from the lungs, through the bloodstream, as it is pumped from the heart to all areas of the body.
Exercise trains the heart to pump at a slower rate per minute (heart rate), while increasing the amount of oxygenated blood (stroke volume) that is sent to the muscles. In this way, the heart’s workload as a muscled organ is eased. Fewer beats, together with a stronger stroke per minute, mean a less strained and more efficient heart.
Of significance for us is that aerobic exercise is a potent route to decreasing fat levels in the body. Good aerobic exercise is performed at an intensity and for a long enough period to stimulate the oxygen system in the muscles to burn carbohydrate and fat to release the mechanical energy needed to perform the movements. Aerobic exercise is a competent way to drive the body to burn (metabolise) stored fat tissue as the energy fuel used in movement. The lunatics who run the Comrades are relying on aerobic energy to cover that horrendous distance through non-stop movement!
Our bodies are the most sophisticated fat-storing machines to be found (behind every great woman is her butt?). This explains the frustration we suffer as a consequence of this relentless machine’s principle of transforming any kilojoules not used as fuel for activity directly into fat. Fat, or adipose tissue, is the only form of storage our DNA dictates. Aerobic exercise, thankfully, is the effective method of transforming the body into a more capable fat-burning organism.
Walking is the most sensible and available form of exercise. You’d think that walking was an inherited skill that all able bodies received from their ancestors, a motor skill and technique that was common to everyone? Not on your navicular! While we may all share 26 bones, more than 100 ligaments and 33 muscles in each foot, our manner of walking is an acquired skill, seldom formally taught, and so it is that we witness such a multiplicity of gaits.
There is a great deal involved in keeping the human creature upright and balanced on two limbs. It wasn’t that many thousands of years ago that our predecessors took that giant step for humanity and overcame gravity to raise their forelimbs from the ground and assume the two-legged posture characteristic of our species.
Today, we watch the inheritors of this quantum leap in evolution amble, dart, dodge, drag, hike, hoof-it, hobble, limp, meander, mince, perambulate, pace, ponce, ramble, sashay, stagger, saunter, stride, stroll, shuffle, strut, trip, tread, traipse, tack, totter, tramp, trudge, toddle, undulate, weave and waddle, and, amazingly, they’re all walking! So many postural differences, so many gaits, and each announcing volumes about the states of physical fitness and mind, moods and self-image and confidence of the mover.
Good dynamic posture is essential, not only during exercise but while we stand, sit or lie. Before we move onto walking as an exercise with great potential for cardiovascular fitness, here are some hints on practising good posture:
Stand tall, spine erect, but never rigidly tense, as in the military stance, where the lower back is over-arched and the shoulders exaggeratedly pulled back. Imagine a thread rising through the crown of the head (like a marionette suspended on a string) and running down through the middle of your body, and you should keep your balance in relation to this mid line.
Legs should be hip distance apart with the knees soft, relaxed, never hyper-extended nor overly bent. Locking the knees throws the body out of alignment, creating too exaggerated an arch in the lumbar region of the spine and threatening wear to the discs between the vertebrae. Tuck your bottom under you, with a slight pelvic tilt upwards so that the abdominal muscles are held in and never allowed to slacken or sag.
Abdominal muscles should be kept in a slight state of tension to assist in maintaining good upright posture. Shoulders should slope downwards and into your back, with no excessive military chest lifting. The back of the neck should be long, without the chin thrusting forward, but at right angles to the neck. Remember, always, the six T’s of Posture-
Toosh Taut, Tummy Tucked Tight, Too, and you’ll be better prepared to use your body to its full potential!
Armed with your postural principles and an awareness of the many gaits of wo/man, you should consider walking as an excellent ‘first step’ exercise for all ages.
Walking has many advantages. It is inexpensive, can be done at any time and allows the pleasure of working outdoors. Exercise is one of the great social practices and it is most enjoyable to walk with others. For safety, it is always best to walk accompanied and to select times and locations with care, to place yourself at less risk (a massive Rottweiler makes an excellent walking companion!). Keep away from major roads, as inhaling carbon monoxide and lead fumes from busy traffic is hardly conducive to respiratory fitness.
By controlling the pace at which you fitness-walk (a stroll, sniffing the flowers or pricing the neighbours’ houses is not the same), you govern the intensity level of work. As you grow fitter, this can be increased progressively. Simultaneously, you can increase the duration of your walk and the distance covered, to increase the workload as you become more able.
Increasing the speed will burn more energy, so aim to raise your pace slightly each week and vary the pace during each walk. The Swedish fartlek principle of playful variation is a splendid practice to follow. Continually surprise the body, force it to utilize more muscle fibres, by changing fixed routines. Not only vary the terrain and pace, but, as the mood takes you, large-step sideways for 20 paces, change leg and repeat, walk on, add skips, hops, other gaits, walk backwards; introduce variety to your movements, and you’ll surprise not only your companions and passers by, but your body as well.
Good walking posture includes placing your heel on the ground before the rest of your foot is pressed down, heel to toe, the weight moving on to the ball of the foot as you press down for locomotion forward, allowing the other leg next to repeat the sequence. Your whole foot is used and you push off firmly from your back leg while keeping the spine erect throughout the workout. Swing your arm vigorously, elbows bent, to increase the cardio output and to help increase your pace when necessary.
To improve your condition over time, remember to increase the distance you
travel at a steady pace, before you increase the speed at which you walk. As walking becomes easier and your leg muscles strengthen and the cardio system adapts to feeding those working muscles with oxygenated blood, you may wish to increase your work load, to push up the kilojoules or METs (the heat burned when oxygen is consumed) you use by carrying additional weight in a small back pack (announce to the curious that you always carry the Collected Works of Milo Kilo and Ezra Pound), or by holding a light pair of dumbbells to use the upper limbs more fully as you power walk.
This entails a range of arm movements integrated with your walking, pumping the arms, strengthening biceps, triceps and deltoids to improve muscle tone and endurance, as well as cardio fitness. By using all four limbs, it will increase the intensity and effectiveness of your walk; you’ll burn more METs, consume more oxygen and kilojoules and distribute the activity burden over a greater proportion of the muscle mass. This will provide a more economical and intense workout while you walk, but should be considered only after you have been fitness walking regularly, at least 3 times a week, for some time.
The wise say, it is only when you have walked in the moccasins of another that you can smell how bad his feet are. I say, rather, gather ye your gaits, put both your best feet forward, get walking, and enjoy the fitness benefits available from our earliest means of motion.
Later, we will see the reasons why all faddist diets fail (you’re overweight if you have stretch marks on your car). Unless you practise regular, moderate exercise to convert fat into energy for action, those wobbly bits will never disappear and your muscle tone will always remain a disappointment.
Muscle training (activity in which the muscles and joints of the body are placed under positive stress, forcing them to progressively overcome resistance, so that strength and flexibility are increased) has been shown to help lower LDL cholesterol in the blood while raising the level of ‘good’ HDL cholesterol. Resistance exercise also helps adjust and control body weight because the muscles of the body are the tissues best adapted to consume calories; muscle tissue is active tissue. The more of this form of tissue you develop, the more energy you consume, and the more stored fat is recruited to provide this energy.
Studies show that there can be up to a 36% increase in kilojoule afterburn as a direct result of strength training, the muscles continuing to burn energy well after the activity has ceased. Muscle exercising also stimulates the building of bone, thus lowering the risks of osteoporosis. Studies of both male and female runners show that they have up to 40% more bone mass in their legs than their non-running counterparts. Bone mass is also increased in all parts, the spine especially, as a result of strength training resistance exercises.
The physiological changes associated with the aging process are slowed and, with regular exercise, muscles can keep functioning powerfully into the autumnal years. Trained, stronger muscles give greater energy and force to help maintain good posture, while allowing for easier movement, as well as protecting bones and the more vulnerable soft tissue organs of the body.
Well-tone muscles give all ages, especially the mature, increased functional independence to cope with the everyday tasks of carrying, lifting, reaching, pushing, raising, bending, stepping, turning and climbing. With this autonomy there comes a heightened sense of pride and accomplishment as all muscles, for all ages, respond to the resistance challenges of exercise by becoming stronger and better toned.
A stronger body is less prone to injury. Stronger muscles, tendons and ligaments allow you to tolerate greater physical, and, therefore, psychological stress. Our muscles help absorb the shocks of daily activities thereby protecting the rest of the body. Muscles we have made stronger will perform this function that much more proficiently.
If you stop using your muscles they will atrophy, waste away, becoming smaller and weaker. Because individuals tend to continue to eat food containing the same number of kilojoules as when they were more active, the extra energy, unused mechanically, is stored in the body in the only way possible, by being converted to fat. Thus, with inactivity, you soon possess less muscle and more fat tissue. Conversely, someone who carries excess fat and begins to exercise regularly, while controlling his or her intake of kilojoules, will gain muscle tissue and lose body fat.
It has been found that the more lean body mass (active muscle tissue) we develop, the higher the basal metabolic rate (BMR-the number of kilojoules the body burns every minute) so that a person who routinely exercises will be generating more heat from the kilojoules they consume, not only while working, but during rest as well.
The reward for every 500 g of muscle you gain (and, remember, the regular exerciser will become heavier because muscle tissue is heavier than other tissues. Don’t panic! The scale might show your body mass as a few kilos heavier, but your shape changes, dropping sizes, looking and feeling better; a number on the scale is meaningless!) is a rise in metabolic rate of approximately 210 kilojoules a day! More active than fat tissue, every 500 g of muscle requires between 210 and 420 kilojoules merely to sustain cellular activities. Conversely, inactive adults, from their mid-20s begin to lose approximately 250 g of muscle every year, resulting in 0,5% loss in metabolic rate. However, one can resist this natural decline by strength training to increase the percentage of muscle tissue and reverse the loss.
The physically fit person is rewarded with an elevated metabolic rate confirming that the effects of exercise are cumulative. It isn’t exact to ask how many kilojoules you use during any particular activity, because the raised BMR effect of exercise, whatever its form, continues to function for many hours after you stop exercising. Because you are helping to provide more muscle tissue, you create more active units to metabolise fat as you exercise at moderate intensity for periods, not only at one point in the day, but at any other time during your day, the effects of each session being cumulative.
The active body becomes a more efficient fat-burning organism. This explains why dieting without exercise is never a fully successful weight-control method. Without an increase in muscle tissue to metabolise fat the body is unable to regulate its weight.
As mentioned, it is the natural propensity for humans to try to find the method of least resistance to achieve goals. Experience should teach us that there are seldom easy panaceas for overcoming the difficulties of a satisfying existence. Later, we’ll see that even stress, in some forms, can have positive effects, but our TV advertisers continue to promise miraculous results from magical fat dissolving pills, or rock-like midriffs from electronic devices one attaches to offending body parts while you lounge at the pool side, pill-protected from the cream cakes which they suggest you can safely demolish. Not so.
The pills are useless, unless taken with a strictly controlled diet (so, who needs the pills?). The electrodes on the flabby potbelly are a silly accessory, better attached to the forehead, mildly shocking the brain as you chant “I-will-not-idiotically-buy-any-more-of-this-useless-stuff-on-TV-ever-again”. On a simple level, while it is true that our tens of thousands of muscle fibres are activated by electrical impulses travelling from the brain through the motor nerves to the muscles, involuntary stimulation of this kind is ineffectual in creating good muscle tone or developing strength because only a limited number of muscle fibres are enlisted in each pulse.
In active exercise we operate in such a way as to increase the number of motor units brought into action. Each motor unit, or nerve, serves a number of muscle fibres. When a nerve fires, all the muscle fibres it serves and controls contract. Muscles work on an ‘all or nothing’ system. Each muscle unit contracts fully or not at all. Active exercise methods (passive exercise is a misnomer) utilise the greatest number of nerves recruiting the greatest number of muscle fibres so that optimum results are achieved.
The more muscle units invoked, the greater the force of the muscles’ contraction and the greater the possibilities for strength improvement. Plugging into a machine will not result in a stronger or a better-toned musculature as too few muscle fibres are affected. No Mr Universe body has ever been attained through electronic gadgetry, the feeble advertising notwithstanding.
Only exercise can create the physical conditions in your body to enable you to function at optimum levels. It will provide you with the stamina and endurance to persevere and bring to fruition all the tasks you undertake. It will protect you from a range of life-threatening diseases and chronic conditions.
Exercise will give you a body whose range of movement is extended, making you more capable of enhanced performance. It will release endorphins into the bloodstream, opium-like substances formed naturally in the brain under certain conditions of positive stress, giving a sense of mild euphoria and analgesia that represents the ‘high’ that accompanies regular exercise.
Train, Don’t Strain; Activate, Don’t Assassinate!
William Blake proposed that the road to the palace of wisdom lay through excess. But, I ask you, are you going to take training advice from a poet who sat starkers in a tree, chatting to an angel? In an extreme world in which we witness so much excess, it comes as no surprise that, on the one hand, there are large numbers of the totally sedentary, doing no exercise at all, while, on the other, there are those who are obsessive about training, driving themselves in the fantastical belief that more must be better.
These are the gym junkies who haunt health clubs seven days a week, sometimes training twice a day. These are the grim roadrunners, determined to cover more and more kilometres. These are the aerobic addicts, resolutely claiming their permanent space on the studio floor, doing back-to-back classes, one after the other. These are the aerobic instructors, teaching well in excess of the 10 classes a week that would keep them within the parameters of safe fitness.
It’s well known that exercise is a major contributor to a healthy lifestyle. But, the compulsive exerciser is a dysfunctional exerciser, one driven by the fear of not doing enough, not being good enough, not being thin enough. Like the dysfunctional eaters, the compulsive exercisers ignore the signals from their own bodies. They disregard pain, hunger, and fatigue, forcing themselves to do more.
Exercise is pleasurable when practised for its recreational, fitness and health benefits, and there are few who wouldn’t enjoy the release of natural endorphins that moderate exercise encourages. It’s an irony that we exercise to take greater control of our lives and to raise self-esteem, yet, by over training, we become imprisoned in exhausting obsessive action, over which we have diminished control. For the exercise addict, training becomes something less than gratifying. Exercise is used, instead, as a method to consume energy, burn calories, or to reach unrealistic goals of strength or performance which are unachievable, simply because over training makes one weaker and even less likely to succeed.
How do we define over training? Each one of us is different, with divergent potentials and needs, and what is detrimental to one individual may have different effects for another. We all can benefit from regular, moderate exercise, which should take no more than an hour a session, at least 4 times a week. These workouts should stimulate cardiovascular as well as muscle-developing fitness. However, we need to discover the fine distinction between a healthy commitment to regular, progressive exercise and training for athletic performance, and over-training and addiction, which lead to excessive behaviour and self-abuse.
O.T. can be defined as a state of prolonged fatigue in athletes or others caused primarily by continued high volume, high intensity training with inadequate rest and recovery between training sessions. Further training, in these conditions, will result in reduced performance levels.
O.T. depletes you of the kilojoules necessary for good exercise and drives the body to store and ration fat and, rather, burn the protein in muscle. Consequently, you don’t have the energy or strength to work at optimum level. Thus, you don’t burn as many fat calories as you would if you were training less obsessively.
O.T. makes you more prone to injuries, such as stress fractures, shin splints, soft tissue damage, strains and sprains. It will also play havoc with the normal functioning of your immune system.
There are a number of early warning signals of over training that should alert you to the approach of this debilitating condition, and these include:
Loss of appetite; Elevated early morning and post-exercise heart rate;
Elevated resting and post-exercise blood pressure; Weight loss; Weak or sore muscles; Anxiety and/or depression; Mood swings; Low motivation; Sleep disturbances; Increased susceptibility to minor illnesses, such as colds; Chronic fatigue and poor athletic performance; Menstrual irregularities; Decreased sexual response; Irritability.
O.T. induces chronic, prolonged fatigue and decrements in performance. Motivation for training diminishes, and exercise proves to be no longer a force to energise and revitalise the body. Loss of appetite, weight loss and lack of restful sleep will increase susceptibility to injury and leave one more open to infection as the body’s immune system suffers, and it is any combination of these symptoms which should confirm the diagnosis that the over training syndrome has struck.
The toughest, initial step to take is to admit that over training is your problem, that you are responsible for your condition. You need first to track down the life stresses that are the root cause of the compulsive behaviour that is making exercise and more exercise the outlet for the frustrations being suffered. Here, help from professional therapists may very well be needed.
You may be over training because you feel guilty about your eating patterns; you may be obsessed with training in the pursuit of excellence; you may be trapped in compulsive behaviour because you are unable to accept limits to the changes that it is possible for you to make to your particular, inherited body.
Whatever. Once we have come to accept that over training is our problem, there are a number of sensible steps we can all take to ensure that exercise becomes, once more, the enjoyable, life-enhancing experience it should be:
REST Recognise that resting is not slacking. You will always achieve better results if the body is allowed time to recover from strenuous exercise. Training includes the tearing of myofibrils in the tissue in the muscles. With rest, these repair, reconstitute and grow stronger, but if you over stress the muscles every day, they cannot rest and recover. Rest, by taking no exercise, at least one day a week.
ALTERNATE days of more intense exercise with ‘easier’ workouts; avoid repetitive workouts by finding variation, as in cross training and doing different sorts of exercise each day. If you are a runner or cyclist, swim one day (as a swimmer, run or cycle); avoid unchanging routines.
RELAX Learn to stretch more. Use stress management techniques. Spend time with family or friends, socialising, not training.
ECONOMISE your training sessions; not more than one a day. Complete your routine within an hour. More sets and repetitions of exercises don’t mean better results. Concentrate on fewer, but quality sets, done with less resistance, but each repetition done with perfect form.
BALANCE all components of physical fitness. Train to improve cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength and endurance, flexibility, and motor fitness. Focus on combinations of some of these elements in separate workouts.
Allow exercise to assume its rightful and valuable place in your life, as an active means to improve fitness and health, while still providing enjoyable, recreational release from the stresses of the day.
Don’t allow it, through over training, to become a dominating, counter-productive activity, taking precedence over all the other dimensions of existence.
Chill, relax, lose that glazed, tormented gleam in your eye, unclench the jaw and accept that if sometimes you have to miss a workout when something else comes up, your body will cope and you will suffer no loss of fitness! Who knows? The break may even do you good!