{"id":3129,"date":"2010-01-07T19:14:22","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T08:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wpblog\/?p=3129"},"modified":"2010-01-07T19:14:22","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T08:14:22","slug":"lets-get-physical-nine-facts-about-fitness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/?p=3129","title":{"rendered":"Let&#039;s get physical: Nine facts about fitness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">This is from an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/special\/get-physical-nine-facts-about-fitness\">article in New Scientist<\/a> that is a good example of good journalism.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/yewenyi\/3982589927\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3130\" title=\"yewenyi cq09 by hugh\" src=\"http:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/yewenyi-cq09-by-hugh.jpg\" alt=\"yewenyi cq09 by hugh\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n1. What counts as exercise?\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">150 minutes of moderate exercise a week. Moderate &#8211; 3 to 6 MET.<br \/>\nI ride at least 4 hours (240 Minutes) at average of 14 kmh -&gt; which is abotu 6 MET.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">2. How much, and how often?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">If you aim for 150 minutes per week you can divide it up however you like.<br \/>\nSo my 8 sets at a minimum of 30 minutes each is good.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">3. How do you know if you&#8217;re getting fit?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">There are also ways to estimate VO2max that don&#8217;t require a sports science lab. The only equipment needed for the Rockport Fitness Walking Test, for example, is a watch. Time how long it takes you to walk a mile as quickly as possible, then measure your heart rate. Plug the time and heart rate, along with your age, gender and weight into the appropriate equation or find a website that will do it for you &#8211; try the Brian Mac Sports Coach site at bit.ly\/8c7wdx &#8211; and you&#8217;ll get a ballpark value for your VO2max.<br \/>\nI need to try this\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">4. Is pumping iron really necessary?<br \/>\n&#8220;The bottom line is that both strength and aerobic fitness make independent contributions to health,&#8221; says Steve Blair, one of the study&#8217;s co-authors, based at University of South Carolina&#8217;s Arnold School of Public Health, who helped write the US national guidelines on exercise.<br \/>\nIn the 2007 update of its own recommendations on exercise, the American College of Sports Medicine added two episodes of strength training a week, consisting of about 10 repetitions of 10 strengthening exercises of all the major muscle groups.<br \/>\nI need to work on my upper body strength.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">5. Can jogging kill you?<br \/>\nFor someone who is completely unfit, the risk can rise by as much as 100-fold, relative to when they are resting. For someone who regularly runs five times a week, their risk while exercising roughly doubles<br \/>\nStudy after study has shown that keeping active lowers an individual&#8217;s risk of suffering a heart attack by 50 to 80 per cent.<br \/>\nso real, no.<br \/>\n6. Is getting fit easier for some people?<br \/>\nWhile many people&#8217;s aerobic fitness improved dramatically, others showed a less marked response. The disheartening news is that about 1 in 10 showed no change whatsoever in their aerobic fitness, despite doing 45 minutes of vigorous exercise three times a week for the final six weeks of the programme<br \/>\nHappily, even those whose aerobic fitness did not change had lower blood pressure and cholesterol, more normal insulin levels, and less abdominal fat. &#8220;You&#8217;re never a complete non-responder,&#8221; says Bouchard.<br \/>\nI&#8217;d guess I am a lesser responder, but not a non-responder.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">7. Can you be fat and fit?<br \/>\nAmong those who were mildly obese, only a third met a common definition of being physically unfit, and only half of those who were moderately obese were unfit. Blair points out that measures of aerobic fitness &#8211; the body&#8217;s ability to deliver oxygen to the muscles &#8211; have nothing to do with the amount of fat tissue present.<br \/>\nIn the 12 years during which the subjects were followed, Blair&#8217;s study found that the risk of dying was more closely linked to fitness than fatness. People who were fit but obese had a lower risk of dying than people who were unfit but of normal weight. That&#8217;s important, says Blair, because while many overweight people find it hard to get slim, they could still become healthier with more exercise. It&#8217;s a point he would like doctors to bear in mind when advising overweight patients.<br \/>\nI am still a little fat.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">8. Do you need to &#8216;push fluids&#8217;?<br \/>\nBut this is overdoing it, says Noakes. Drinking to satisfy your thirst is all that is needed. &#8220;The easiest way to lower your performance is to over drink, not under drink.&#8221;<br \/>\nkool, that&#8217;s what I do.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">9. What if you get injured?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In many sports the most common injury is a sprained ankle. It&#8217;s a problem that often recurs: in the first year after an injury, the risk of suffering a repeat sprain roughly doubles compared with that for previously uninjured people. The risk can be reduced, however, by some simple home exercises using a wobbly platform known as a balance board. In July 2009, a team from the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands showed that using the board for half an hour three times a week for eight weeks halves the risk of a repeat ankle sprain in the first year after injury<br \/>\nI sprained my ankle catching the train. but apart from that no injuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is from an article in New Scientist that is a good example of good journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1300,1919,2501,3088],"class_list":["post-3129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","tag-excercise","tag-journalism","tag-new-scientist","tag-riding-a-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yewenyi.net\/wp\/old\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}