The Foundation of Health: Exercise

I am so often surprised to see how much emphasis is placed on diet when discussing weight loss and so little emphasis is placed on exercise. I was just in a bookstore today and there were five racks of diet books and only one rack of exercise books. I suppose a big part of this is that everyone must eat but nobody has to exercise, and many of us don’t. Overall, the biggest barriers to a regular exercise plan are two-fold, time and effort. You must take time out of your busy schedule to exercise and as you shift into a more active life, your muscles often complain of the added effort. However, regular exercise is the most important ingredient to better health in our sedentary lifestyle. If you don’t exercise regularly, even walking for twenty minutes several times a week can greatly improve your health and peel weight off. If you exercise regularly, then some of the pointers below may help you to evaluate your overall exercise routine.

I am often asked what exercises I recommend? The answer is really quite simple and flexible enough to suit many different lifestyles. All exercise routines need to include cardiovascular training, strength training (usually weight-lifting) and stretching. I think of this as a three-legged stool. You can make one leg bigger than the rest but if you remove one altogether, then the stool falls over. These aspects of exercise give us strength, endurance and flexibility. Without all three of these, we are more susceptible to fatigue and injury. Therefore, in the long run, if we are to lead active lives then we need to work on all aspects of exercise. So how are each of these important?

Cardiovascular strengthening exercises improve the strength of the heart and its ability to circulate blood and oxygen to the tissues. Of course, the lung must bring oxygen into the body but the factor that limits the body’s ability to absorb oxygen is the capacity for the heart to circulate the blood. When our body doesn’t have enough oxygen, our muscles don’t work as well and we quickly become fatigued. Strengthening our cardiovascular system therefore improves our endurance and our ability to push ourselves without becoming “stressed”. This should be the focus of those just starting up an exercise routine. In the beginning, go slow, walking or jogging instead of running. Other good cardio exercises are swimming, biking and hiking.

Stretching, while just as important as cardio and strength training, is often overlooked in our society. Even with the up-swing of interest in yoga over the past ten years, I still believe that this aspect of exercise is often under-emphasized or overlooked altogether. Stretching is, however, the most important defense we have against injury. With a regular stretching routine, we can avoid injury because our joints and muscles can move further without sprains or strains. Also, stretching increases the flexibility of the blood vessels which increases blood flow to our tissues and makes it easier for the heart to circulate the blood. It also helps us to recover from the muscle fatigue that follows cardio workouts and protects us from injury when strength training. Yoga and Pilates are two exercise systems that offer complete stretching routines and also strengthen the body.

Strength Training does not alway involve lifting weights but this is the form of strength training that most of us are familiar with. Strength training builds muscle mass and bone density so that we can withstand the greater forces involved in strenuous activity. It goes hand-in-hand with flexibility because the stronger and more flexible we are, the greater the forces we can withstand without injury. However, strength training isn’t just for those involved in strenuous exercise. Since it improves bone density, it should be part of everyones exercise routine, especially as we age.

How much time is spent on each aspect of exercise depends on the activities that we are participating in. Generally, in the beginning we need to improve our cardio strength if we want to be more active. Once this is done, then we should add strengthening exercises as we continue our cardio exercises. Stretching should be done after cardio or strength training while the body is still warm. As our exercise routine becomes more strenuous then it is helpful to set aside at least and hour per week for a complete stretching routine. A routine that stretches the back, legs, shoulders, arms and neck. In the next blog, I will discuss more about how to choose the exercises that are most beneficial for you.