Making A Commitment
You have taken
the important first step on the path to physical fitness by
seeking information. The next step is to decide that you are going
to be physically fit. This pamphlet is designed to help you reach
that decision and your goal.
The decision to
carry out a physical fitness program cannot be taken lightly. It
requires a lifelong commitment of time and effort. Exercise must
become one of those things that you do without question, like
bathing and brushing your teeth. Unless you are convinced of the
benefits of fitness and the risks of unfitness, you will not
succeed.
Patience is
essential. Don’t try to do too much too soon and don’t quit before
you have a chance to experience the rewards of improved fitness.
You can’t regain in a few days or weeks what you have lost in
years of sedentary living, but you can get it back if your
persevere. And the prize is worth the price.
In the following
pages you will find the basic information you need to begin and
maintain a personal physical fitness program. These guidelines are
intended for the average healthy adult. It tells you what your
goals should be and how often, how long and how hard you must
exercise to achieve them. It also includes information that will
make your workouts easier, safer and more satisfying. The rest is
up to you.
Checking Your Health
If you're under
35 and in good health, you don't need to see a doctor before
beginning an exercise program. But if you are over 35 and have
been inactive for several years, you should consult your
physician, who may or may not recommend a graded exercise test.
Other conditions that indicate a need for medical clearance are:
- High blood pressure.
- Heart trouble.
- Family history of early stroke
or heart attack deaths.
- Frequent dizzy spells.
- Extreme breathlessness after
mild exertion.
- Arthritis or other bone
problems.
- Severe muscular, ligament or
tendon problems.
- Other known or suspected
disease.
Vigorous
exercise involves minimal health risks for persons in good health
or those following a doctor’s advice. Far greater risks are
presented by habitual inactivity and obesity.
Defining Fitness
Physical fitness
is to the human body what fine tuning is to an engine. It enables
us to perform up to our potential. Fitness can be described as a
condition that helps us look, feel and do our best. More
specifically, it is:
“The ability to
perform daily tasks vigorously and alertly, with energy left over
for enjoying leisure- time activities and meeting emergency
demands. It is the ability to endure, to bear up, to withstand
stress, to carry on in circumstances where an unfit person could
not continue, and is a major basis for good health and
well-being.”
Physical fitness
involves the performance of the heart and lungs, and the muscles
of the body. And, since what we do with our bodies also affects
what we can do with our minds, fitness influences to some degree
qualities such as mental alertness and emotional stability.
As you undertake
your fitness program, it’s important to remember that fitness is
an individual quality that varies from person to person. It is
influenced by age, sex, heredity, personal habits, exercise and
eating practices. You can’t do anything about the first three
factors. However, it is within your power to change and improve
the others where needed.
Knowing The Basics
Physical fitness
is most easily understood by examining its components, or “parts.”
There is widespread agreement that these four components are
basic:
Cardiorespiratory Endurance - the ability to deliver oxygen
and nutrients to tissues, and to remove wastes, over sustained
periods of time. Long runs and swims are among the methods
employed in measuring this component.
Muscular
Strength - the ability of a muscle to exert force for a brief
period of time. Upper-body strength, for example, can be measured
by various weight-lifting exercises.
Muscular
Endurance - the ability of a muscle, or a group of muscles, to
sustain repeated contractions or to continue applying force
against a fixed object. Pushups are often used to test endurance
of arm and shoulder muscles.
Flexibility
- the ability to move joints and use muscles through their full
range of motion. The sit-and- reach test is a good measure of
flexibility of the lower back and backs of the upper legs.
Body
Composition is often considered a component of fitness. It
refers to the makeup of the body in terms of lean mass (muscle,
bone, vital tissue and organs) and fat mass. An optimal ratio of
fat to lean mass is an indication of fitness, and the right types
of exercises will help you decrease body fat and increase or
maintain muscle mass.
A Workout
Schedule
How often, how
long and how hard you exercise, and what kinds of exercises you do
should be determined by what you are trying to accomplish. Your
goals, your present fitness level, age, health, skills, interest
and convenience are among the factors you should consider. For
example, an athlete training for high-level competition would
follow a different program than a person whose goals are good
health and the ability to meet work and recreational needs.
Your exercise
program should include something from each of the four basic
fitness components described previously. Each workout should begin
with a warm-up and end with a cool-down. As a general rule, space
your workouts throughout the week and avoid consecutive days of
hard exercise.
Here are the
amounts of activity necessary for the average healthy person to
maintain a minimum level of overall fitness. Included are some of
the popular exercises for each category.
Warm-up -
5-10 minutes of exercise such as walking, slow jogging, knee
lifts, arm circles or trunk rotations. Low intensity movements
that simulate movements to be used in the activity can also be
included in the warm-up.
Muscular
strength - a minimum of two 20-minute sessions per week that
include exercises for all the major muscle groups. Lifting weights
is the most effective way to increase strength.
Muscular
endurance- at least three 30-minute sessions each week that
include exercises such as calisthenics, pushups, situps, pullups,
and weight training for all the major muscle groups.
Cardio-respiratory endurance - at least three 20-minute bouts
of continuous aerobic (activity requiring oxygen) rhythmic
exercise each week. Popular aerobic conditioning activities
include brisk walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, rope-jumping,
rowing, cross-country skiing, and some continuous action games
like racquetball and handball.
Flexibility
- 10-12 minutes of daily stretching exercises performed slowly,
without a bouncing motion. This can be included after a warm-up or
during a cool-down.
Cool down-
a minimum of 5-10 minutes of slow walking, low-level exercise,
combined with stretching.
A Matter of Principle
The keys to
selecting the right kinds of exercises for developing and
maintaining each of the basic components of fitness are found in
these principles:
Specificity-
pick the right kind of activities to affect each component.
Strength training results in specific strength changes. Also,
train for the specific activity you’re interested in. For example,
optimal swimming performance is best achieved when the muscles
involved in swimming are trained for the movements required. It
does not necessarily follow that a good runner is a good swimmer.
Overload
- work hard enough, at levels that are vigorous and long enough to
overload your body above its resting level, to bring about
improvement.
Regularity
- you can’t hoard physical fitness. At least three balanced
workouts a week are necessary to maintain a desirable level of
fitness.
Progression-
increase the intensity, frequency and/or duration of activity over
periods of time in order to improve.
Some activities
can be used to fulfill more than one of your basic exercise
requirements. For example, in addition to increasing
cardio-respiratory endurance, running builds muscular endurance in
the legs, and swimming develops the arm, shoulder and chest
muscles. If you select the proper activities, it is possible to
fit parts of your muscular endurance workout into your
cardio-respiratory workout and save time.
Measuring
Your Heart Rate
Heart rate is
widely accepted as a good method for measuring intensity during
running, swimming, cycling, and other aerobic activities. Exercise
that doesn’t raise your heart rate to a certain level and keep it
there for 20 minutes won’t contribute significantly to
cardiovascular fitness.
The heart rate
you should maintain is called your target heart rate. There are
several ways of arriving at this figure. One of the simplest is:
maximum heart rate (220 - age) x 70%. Thus, the target heart rate
for a 40 year-old would be 126.
Some methods for
figuring the target rate take individual differences into
consideration. Here is one of them:
- Subtract age from 220 to find
maximum heart rate.
Subtract resting heart rate (see below) from maximum heart rate
to determine heart rate reserve.
- Take 70% of heart rate reserve
to determine heart rate raise.
Add heart rate raise to resting heart rate to find target rate.
Resting heart
rate should be determined by taking your pulse after sitting
quietly for five minutes. When checking heart rate during a
workout, take your pulse within five seconds after interrupting
exercise because it starts to go down once you stop moving. Count
pulse for 10 seconds and multiply by six to get the per-minute
rate.
Controlling Your Weight
The key to
weight control is keeping energy intake (food) and energy output
(physical activity) in balance. When you consume only as many
calories as your body needs, your weight will usually remain
constant. If you take in more calories than your body needs, you
will put on excess fat. If you expend more energy than you take in
you will burn excess fat.
Exercise plays
an important role in weight control by increasing energy output,
calling on stored calories for extra fuel. Recent studies show
that not only does exercise increase metabolism during a workout,
but it causes your metabolism to stay increased for a period of
time after exercising, allowing you to burn more calories.
How much
exercise is needed to make a difference in your weight depends on
the amount and type of activity, and on how much you eat. Aerobic
exercise burns body fat. A medium-sized adult would have to walk
more than 30 miles to burn up 3,500 calories, the equivalent of
one pound of fat. Although that may seem like a lot, you don’t
have to walk the 30 miles all at once. Walking a mile a day for 30
days will achieve the same result, providing you don’t increase
your food intake to negate the effects of walking.
If you consume
100 calories a day more than your body needs, you will gain
approximately 10 pounds in a year. You could take that weight off,
or keep it off, by doing 30 minutes of moderate exercise daily.
The combination of exercise and diet offers the most flexible and
effective approach to weight control.
Since muscle
tissue weighs more than fat tissue, and exercise develops muscle
to a certain degree, your bathroom scale won’t necessarily tell
you whether or not you are “fat.” Well-muscled individuals, with
relatively little body fat, invariably are “overweight” according
to standard weight charts. If you are doing a regular program of
strength training, your muscles will increase in weight, and
possibly your overall weight will increase. Body composition is a
better indicator of your condition than body weight.
Lack of physical
activity causes muscles to get soft, and if food intake is not
decreased, added body weight is almost always fat. Once-active
people, who continue to eat as they always have after settling
into sedentary lifestyles, tend to suffer from “creeping obesity.”
Clothing
All exercise
clothing should be loose-fitting to permit freedom of movement,
and should make the wearer feel comfortable and self-assured.
As a general
rule, you should wear lighter clothes than temperatures might
indicate. Exercise generates great amounts of body heat.
Light-colored clothing that reflects the sun’s rays is cooler in
the summer, and dark clothes are warmer in winter. When the
weather is very cold, it’s better to wear several layers of light
clothing than one or two heavy layers. The extra layers help trap
heat, and it’s easy to shed one of them if you become too warm.
In cold weather,
and in hot, sunny weather, it’s a good idea to wear something on
your head. Wool watch or ski caps are recommended for winter wear,
and some form of tennis or sailor’s hat that provides shade and
can be soaked in water is good for summer.
Never wear
rubberized or plastic clothing, such garments interfere with the
evaporation of perspiration and can cause body temperature to rise
to dangerous levels.
The most
important item of equipment for the runner is a pair of sturdy,
properly-fitting running shoes. Training shoes with heavy,
cushioned soles and arch supports are preferable to flimsy
sneakers and light racing flats.
When to
Exercise
The hour just
before the evening meal is a popular time for exercise. The late
afternoon workout provides a welcome change of pace at the end of
the work day and helps dissolve the day’s worries and tensions.
Another popular
time to work out is early morning, before the work day begins.
Advocates of the early start say it makes them more alert and
energetic on the job.
Among the
factors you should consider in developing your workout schedule
are personal preference, job and family responsibilities,
availability of exercise facilities and weather. It’s important to
schedule your workouts for a time when there is little chance that
you will have to cancel or interrupt them because of other demands
on your time.
You should
not exercise strenuously during extremely hot, humid weather or
within two hours after eating. Heat and/or digestion both make
heavy demands on the circulatory system, and in combination with
exercise can be an overtaxing double load.
