Exercise: What Should it’s Role Be?

Let’s start with this - it is absolutely a misunderstanding of the first law of thermodynamics (energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another) to say calories in = calories out so people just need to eat less or exercise more and they will loose weight and be perfect. What this post isn’t about is weight loss. It’s about medical evidence in regards to exercise and what it can and cannot do. No long term study of excercise has ever shown it to lead to weight loss. If you want weight loss, read my blog posts on PCOS, carbs and the new food pyramid.

Exercise and osteoporosis - Exercise for osteoporosis needs to be weight bearing and be 30 minutes 3 times/week. This means that if you do the exercise sitting down or in a pool, that’s not going to help with bone loss issues. Walking is the best weight bearing exercise there is for this purpose. It puts weight stress on your spine and hips, but doesn’t stress the joints the way running and jumping does. It also has an extremely low risk of injury. (If walking with a dog on a leash, please use good technique so you don’t risk a trip and fall.) You can also so weight training for osteoporosis prevention. I love machines for this as they help protect people from injury. You can do free weights, but if you don’t know what you are doing, seek the help of a trainer because correct form is really important. As walking doesn’t help with the bones in your arm/wrist, using some small hand weights can be really beneficial.

Exercise and Core Strength - This is probably the most underated reason to exercise. When it comes to reasons to exercise, having good core strength is one of the most important reasons to do so. Our core protects our neck and back from strain - two things that will lead to poor quality of life. Having a strong core also involves a strong pelvic floor, which is essential for not peeing on yourself when coughing. Think, yoga, pilates, kegels. These forms of exercise use your own body as resistance and focus on isolating particular muscle groups. You can do chair yoga if you are older or acrobatic yoga if you are crazy. Pilates can be followed along with the tv or youtube or done in a class. Form is extremely important to make sure you are isolating the correct muscles, so focus more on that than being able to do every pose.

Exercise and Cardiovascular health - The AHA recommends 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 30 minutues 3 times/week. The key to aerobic exercise is that you cross from aerobic to anaerobic when you aren’t getting enough oxygen in for what you are doing. Obviously, you can’t be in negative oxygen balance for long or you pass out, but your body will spare oxygen from the muscles for the brain. This results in a build up of lactic acid and eventually causes the muscle to cramp - see any college football game. So, a good rule for staying in the aerobic range is that you can still talk. Maybe not fully and clearly, but you could get a sentence out if you needed to. Generally, you will also have an elevated heart rate as your body is trying to deliver more oxygen to the muscles. So, if you are so aerobic that you are barely moving, this probably isn’t helping your heart, but may still be benefitting your bones. Two different reasons to exercise, two different forms, though you could hit both targets. Aerobic cardiovascular exercise can also be done in a pool - swimming laps or aqua-aerobics and sitting down - bicycling.

Exercise for strength - lets say you want to be able to lift heavy things, or have some more shapely definition in the arms and calves. What you need is strength training or lifting weights. There are many different theories on the best things to do and if you have a very particular goal in mind, find an expert in that thing to train with. That’s not me. Here are a few general guidelines. Form matters - either use a machine or a coach to keep that form. if you are doing a bicep curl for example, you shouldn’t be moving anything but your lower arm, so if you are moving your whole body to get it up, your probably aren’t working your biep. The last rep should be the hardest. If your last rep isn’t challenging, you need to increase your weights. If your first rep is so challenging that you can’t do a full set of 10 reps, you are starting too high and really risk hurting yourself. In between reps, breath. Generally you want the muscles to stay in aerobic conditions because that’s when they are burning glucose and triggering fat loss to happen. (Assuming you have fat to loose). Dont work every muscle group every day. Exercise a muslce group and then give that group 2 days off. Think Leg day is Mon Thurs and Arm day is Tues Fri and core is Wed Sat. And if you are hitting the gym 6 days a week, good for you.

Exercise for endurance - this is probably one of the most challenging types of exercise because you have to push yourself to the limit over and over and over. If you have a major goal like a marathon or triathalon, this isn’t where you should look for training advice. Seek out the well developed resources in the field. If you are training for a camino (walking 10-20 miles/day) I have some tips that are generally applicable. One - start training. I kid, but the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. The goal of training shouldn’t be to replicate the main event in every training session. The goal is to do a mixture of shorter and longer amounts. Think 2-3x/wk walking 2-4 miles and once a week walk 5-7 miles if you are camino training. When you can do that pretty easily, up eact category by 50% and so on. The body needs time for rest and repair, so doing training 7 days a week isn’t necessary and often not helpful. As you gain in strength an endurance, you can add frequency if you want. Just let your body be your guide and if the body says back off, listen and then build more slowly.

One last thing. Build from where you are, not from where you wish you were. Nothing is more discouraging than going out full of inspiration and hurting yourself and having to take a month to recover. If you are a couch potato and just looking to get in the game, don’t start with a 5k. Start with a couch to 5k plan - they are all over the internet. If that’s too fast for you - and it was the one time I tried one, just spread it out a little more. I got to 5k - and then I got to knee surgery because running is really hard on the joints. So, find something that is personally fulfilling and helps you meet whatever one of the above categories you need help with.

I hope you have enjoyed this intro to the purposes of exercise and I hope you find it inspiring. Take the first step and you will probably find that you enjoy doing something. If you don’t enjoy it, look for either a new routine, or a friend to bitch about it too. Either one will lead to continued success.