People often ask me about exercise without using weights and weight machines. What exactly is weight bearing exercise?
The bones in the human body are as alive as any other tissues. Bone is laid down in the same direction as mechanical stress. In other words, as you use your body, your skeletal frame, your bones build, and become more dense. Just like muscles, if you don’t use them, they will weaken.
In fact, interestingly enough, this is a big problem for astronauts. When they are exposed to the weightless environment of outer space, their bones actually shrink up to 2% per month, and they return brittle and weak. They actually develop Osteoporosis over a very short period of time.
Why do I mention astronauts? Well because people that are bedridden because of an injury, or just people who don’t exercise much, tending more towards the sedentary lifestyle, exhibit these same symptoms of Osteoporosis, albeit over many years.
So weight bearing exercise, opposing the force of gravity, is an important part of your fitness routine, be it running, rowing, or lifting some weights. My personal favorites are body weight exercises, that use only the weight of the body to stimulate and build muscle and bone.
In researching for this article, I found a very good piece on the subject What’s G Got To Do With It? You can all search google for terms like “astronaut osteoperosis”, “astronaut bone mass”, “exercise bone density”, etc.
I keep seeing a lot of studies suggesting that regular exercise, and in particular cardiovascular exercise such as running, have as much benefit on the brain, protecting against depression and anxiety, as they do fighting cardiovascular disease.
A recent issue of ACE’s “Fitness Matters” featured an article titled “This Is Your Brain On Exercise” by Jim Gerard, they talk about this affect…
”People who exercise more have a lower risk of developing depression and anxiety. Brain imaging techniques show that when we’re exercising, parts of our brains are consuming more oxygen and are more metabolically active.
In Fact, the shield that exercise puts up against depression and anxiety is just as strong as its long-renowned protection against cardiovascular disease. Studies suggest that people who exercise regularly and have a stroke later in life might suffer less damage because they’re able to utilize cellular stress proteins developed from exercising.”
The “hollow body hold” is a really easy exercise for anyone to do. Easy as in simplicity, but it will work your abs like crazy. I would start with 30 second sets. Please beware to *NOT* arch your back, keep it flat against the floor at all times.
What also makes this a great exercise is it doesn’t take up much space, you can do it while watching tv, in a hotel room, or pretty much anywhere…
You’ve probably heard it, you’ve probably had a conversation about it, or maybe you asked the question… How do I keep my butt firm, or the back of my arms? The ladies ask, how do I keep my tummy firm, or my boobs?
Or maybe you’ve wondered, is there a certain diet or exercise regimen that is good for my skin?
There are a couple of points to keep in mind here. First off, the good news. Cardiovascular exercise is great for your circulation, and as such is great for your skin. Think: it removes toxins & improves blood flow, etc. Also, if you’re smoking, this is bad news for your skin, so stop, or at least cut down. And here’s another little gem, drink lots of water! Dehydration is bad for your skin. Don’t know if you’re dehydrated, well if you’re thirsty, you’re more than likely long since dehydrated. Better yet check the color of your pee. That’s right, yellow means your dehydrated, clear means you have plenty of fluids.
What else? How do I lose fat in this one location? Unfortunately it doesn’t really work that way. Your body distributes your fat exactly how it sees fit to. It does this by concentrating fat around your center of gravity. That is slightly different in men than women, but on the whole, what you need to keep in mind is that exercise overall reduces your overall bodyfat content, which reduces it everywhere at once. That’s right ladies, as you probably already know, when you lose weight, your breasts get smaller too. Less fat means firmer. One caveat to all of this though, as you gain muscle mass, the fat you do have sits better on your body too, so that is a small added benefit. In general try to do a combination of cardiovascular training such as running or other sport that gets your heart rate up, and on alternate days resistance training, which builds muscle mass. These two in combination will increase your metabolism, improve your overall body composition (or body density) so that your burn calories more efficiently.
Last but not least, don’t forget your diet. As my favorite write/speaker on nutrition Michael Pollan says “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much”. Check out his video below.
I’ve had people ask me about target heart rate before. In one case a person said, my trainer suggests I use 128bpm as my target heart rate. In another case someone said, I heard my target heart rate should be 135bpm.
As with everything the truth is always a bit less black and white. The American Council on Exercise says “research shows that optimum exercise intensity for fitness improvement is in the range of about 50 to 85% of maximum oxygen consumption. This corresponds to about 60-90% of maximum heart rate. The ranges are broad because of the effects of the level of fitness, as well as genetic factors. The higher a client’s level of fitness, the higher the appropriate exercise intensity.”
There are a few different methods to calculate all of this, with fancy scientific names, but for simplicities sake we’ll call it percentage of heart-rate reserve method:
rhr - resting heart rate (hr first thing in the morning)
mhr - maximum heart rate (220 - age)
(mhr - rhr) x intensity + rhr
For me, my resting heart rate is 50bpm because I run alot. My mhr is 180.
(180-50) x 0.75 + 50 = 130 x 0.75 + 50 = 98 + 50 = 148.
So if I want to shoot for 75% I’d go with 148bpm. Given the above 60-90%, that means 128bpm at the low end, and 167bpm at the high end.
As anecdotal evidence, I can tell you the best average I’ve hit for one hour of running, really going all out is 147bpm, maxing out at 155bpm. If I do an all-out sprint, a barely push above 160, and how long can a person sprint for?
There is also something called the talk test, which says if you’re at the intensity which is low to moderate, especially for beginners, if you can still carry on a conversation, and breathe comfortably. People with higher fitness levels, and pushing for higher functional capacity may find this method conservative.
In the end a lot of these measures depend on variables such as any smoking history, current weight and percent body fat, and so on. There really is no magic number. Keep in mind that the higher heart rate you exercise at, the greater benefit you will see overall, but to a point. In the beginning especially, don’t over do it. And as always, increase gradually.
What about monitoring your heart rate, what’s the best method? I recommend a heart rate monitor from the likes of Polar or Garmin. Polar has some as inexpensive as $60 and at the higher end, Garmin has some $299 models which have GPS, and can give you a lot of data that sync up to your computer. But primarily what you want is to know what your min, max, and average were for your workout. You can always write that information down.
As always consult with your physician if you are beginning an exercise program for the first time, especially if you have a pre-existing condition, injury, are a smoker, are overweight, or are an older individual.
There are a few methods that personal trainers, and folks doing their own training, can measure their exertion level during exercise. METs are one of those methods.1 MET is defined by the American Council on Exercise as “a person’s oxygen uptake at rest”, or more technically at 3.5mL of oxygen per kg of bodyweight per minute.With that in mind you can quickly scan the list below and see what types of exercises require more or less exertion. With that in mind you can choose exercises that will hit the range you are targeting, and thus reach your fitness and weight loss goals.
backpacking: 5-11
playing basketball: 7-12
boxing in ring: 13
canoeing, rowing: 3-8
cycling 10mph: 7
dancing: 3-8
hiking: 3-7
judo: 13
mountain climbing: 5-10
jumping rope (60-80/min): 9
jumping rope (120-140/min): 11-12
running (10min/mile): 10
running (9min/mile): 11
running (8min/mile): 12
running (7min/mile): 14
running (6min/mile): 16
skiing downhill: 5-8
skiing x-country: 6-12
soccer: 5-12
stair climbing: 4-8
swimming: 4-8
tennis: 4-9
As you can see running is by far the hardest, and consequently it’s the reason why running in combination with weight training is recommended as one of the most effective ways at weight loss.
