The human body is the most sophisticated organism on the planet. The more than 600 muscles in the body are there for a reason. They need to be active, and it is through exercise, creating movement, that the body is maintained and functions most reliably.
With few exceptions, everyone can benefit from becoming more active, which is what exercise is. The advantages are shared equally by the young, the mature and the more mature (Old is only a state of mind; a physically fit older person will possess a physiological age lower than that of their years. You don’t stop exercising when you grow old; you grow old when you stop exercising).
Inactivity is the critical variable in the fitness formula for all ages. The natural, inevitable decline in our bodily abilities is accelerated by inactivity. We are no longer engaged in work that requires physical labour. We have machines that can do the work of a hundred men in a fraction of the time (a woman?). We rely less and less on our own mechanical actions. Our bodies fall into unhealthy states of disuse, the muscles atrophy, vital organs such as the heart and lungs work inefficiently. Low levels of physical fitness become as significant predictors of premature disability and death as smoking or high blood cholesterol and pressure. South Africans are aping the trends in the first world: a rocketing increase in obesity rates, kids welded to couches or in front of electronic screens, bodies degenerating through lack of use.
Exercise stimulates healthy growth during the first two decades of life, then, maintains healthy functioning of the entire organism during the next longer decades of life, and arrests the aging process. Thus, it becomes more, not less, important in the more mature years to animate the physical systems of our bodies to resist the deterioration that accompanies a sedentary existence. Remember, the universal rule of the body for all ages is ‘Use it, or Lose it’. To extend our capacity to continue living independently and not to be burdens to ourselves or to others can be sustained by doing more exercise, rather than less.
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.