Your aerobic threshold is the heart rate that will determine how to get the most from your aerobic workout. One of the questions I have been repeatedly asked by those new to aerobic exercise is how to tell if they are getting the most from their efforts. They are unsure if they are at the ‘right’ heart rate to get the most effective aerobic benefits.

First, a brief explanation of what ‘aerobic’ exercise is and why it is so important to your health. Your body converts food into energy by two very different forms of metabolism. Aerobic - with oxygen, and anaerobic - without oxygen.

Anaerobic metabolism is the creation of energy through the burning of carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. This happens when the lungs cannot supply enough oxygen to the blood to keep up with the demands from the muscles.

Anaerobic metabolism is most generally associated with short, very intense, forms of exercise, mostly with weight training or sprinting. Anaerobic metabolism is crucial to increasing muscle mass. This why you will hear from weight lifters that they do very little, if any, aerobic types of exercise.

The biology of aerobic and anaerobic metabolism is very complex and with very little research you can quickly become lost in the complexity without a degree in biology.

I am going to simplify this complex process as the vast number of people who are interested in improving their health are not necessarily interested in becoming biologists.

The primary fuels used by the body for energy are glucose and fatty acids, with protein used when the first two are depleted. The first two are burned by the body aerobically during most of our normal activity, including moderate exercise. When the activity intensity reaches approximately 80% of the maximum possible the body switches to anaerobic metabolism.

Aerobic metabolism is very efficient and produces few negative byproducts. This is not true of anaerobic metabolism which produces lactic acid which causes muscle pain and is the reason our muscles ‘burn’ after intensive weight training.

Aerobic metabolism is like burning natural gas, clean hot flame with little waste.
Anaerobic exercise is like burning old tires, with lots of thick sooty smoke. Which one do you think is better for your body?

As long as you can breath without gasping for air you are burning your fuel aerobically. There are different formulas for figuring out your ‘correct’ aerobic threshold. Look on the wall of most gyms and you will see one of these formulas on a chart comparing age with intensity.

These charts are clinical formulas based on countless measurements of people exercising at different rates to come up with an average. These numbers are good as a general indicator, especially when first beginning your exercise program.

Far more accurate is your own personal aerobic threshold and you can figure this out fairly easily. Your own personal number is the heartbeat you have when you first become breathless…when you can no longer tell someone your name without gasping for breath.

This is the level that you will get the most benefit from your efforts. Keep your heart rate a few beats per minute below the point where you are beginning to gasp for breath. You need to maintain this level for a minimum of 15 minutes to attain the benefits of aerobic exercise.

Clinical studies have shown that doing aerobic exercise at least 3 or 4 time a week will increase the left ventricle- the chamber of the heart that pumps the freshly oxygenated blood into the body - by 15% to 20%. It will do this in four to six weeks!

As you continue to train your body you will be able to do more work, or go longer without exceeding your aerobic threshold. This very positive feedback will be helpful in keeping your commitment to stay with your program. You will have proof that your efforts are having a positive effect.

Another very important benefit of aerobic exercise is that when you have substantially raised your heartbeat you are moving a lot of blood through the body. This improves the nutrient flow to the cells and helps to get rid of waste materials that accumulate during normal cell function.

It also helps to move hormones and other necessary complex chemicals produced by some cells for the benefit of other cells located throughout the body. The cardio-vascular system, and its health, is the single most important factor in your good health.

The author has been an aerobics instructor for over 28 years. He has taught classes for private health clubs and has been a Certified Group Instructor for the Y.M.C.A. since 1980. He is currently developing web sites focused on Health and Fitness.

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Source: Aerobic exercise

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Being a busy person that is constantly on the go does not mean that you don’t have the time to stay in shape and keep your body fit while you are traveling. Unfortunately, the excuses we make do not keep us in shape nor able to keep up with the high demands of a busy life. If you join a health club, you would be making a great decision and a much easier way to stay fit.

Many health clubs offer the same types of services in other facilities. Some even have guest passes to specific spas and athletic clubs around the country. Another way to stay fit while traveling is to stay at a hotel that has spas and sporting facilities. If your hotel does not offer these things, it is highly possible that the hotel itself has spa and exercise arrangements elsewhere.

To get this information, ask a clerk at the front desk and he/she is sure to provide you with the information you need. Today, many hotels have treadmills or other exercise machines. This will help keep you active and fit. It is also important to remember that most cities or towns have a YMCA or a YWCA. Search the Yellow pages and give the facility a call. When traveling, there are many opportunities you can take to stay fit.

At times, the specific location you are in might not offer any type of exercise facility or spa for you to visit. If this happens, you can be creative and turn your hotel room into your personal gym. Before you leave to go on your trip, bring along some hand weights, exercise bands, and any other type of exercise equipment that is travel friendly. With all of these items, you can easily turn your hotel room into a gym.

Use your elastic bands are a way to achieve resistance. While in your hotel room, use furniture such as chairs or beds that will help you work out. Depending on the furniture in your hotel room, you just might want to stick to body weight exercises. These are also great ways to keep your fit and in shape. To do this, find ways to combine pushups, legups, and crunches. Though these exercises do not exercise a huge range of muscles, you will still be able to work your heart and continue to build up your endurance.

When traveling, I think we all understand that working out is not the easiest thing to put into a busy time schedule. Many people who travel have very tight time frames and do not also have time to add in a complete workout session. Fortunately, there are many other ways to still exercise in order to keep your body fit. You can simply try stretching in your hotel room or taking a long walk around the hotel or town you are visiting. Many hotels today also have swimming pools. Go for a swim.

Swimming is a great exercise that is able to work the majority of the muscles in your body. You can relax and exercise at the same time. Since there are so many ways that you can work out while traveling, you shouldn’t have an excuse for not finding some way to exercise and keep your body fit. It doesn’t matter what time you work out, just find 20-30 minutes per day to do some sort of exercises, no matter the type. Even if you cannot do the exact some workout routine you are used to, switch it up a little. Any exercise is good exercise.

Tags:
Fitness,
Good Health,
Personal Growth,
Spiritual Growth,
Stress Management,
Wellness

Source: Wellness

Popularity: 67%

Personal fitness implies not only the acquisition of certain physical skills but the ability to withstand the emergency demands of everyday living. Certainly, a personal fitness enthusiast could reasonably expect to survive a sprint for the bus or a bout of early morning driveway shoveling. Unkind, indeed, would be the Fates to deny such rewards.

People sleep better, think better, digest better, and feel better when they are in shape.

They have more confidence, too. There are very few medical studies in depth to prove these statements—for some reason research men have laid greater emphasis on other areas. But they are true. Talk with friends who regularly participate in sports, try some form of exercise yourself—the proof is there. Corroborating evidence abounds. Labor leaders have long known this. One medical report, for example, chronicles the result of a specific labor-management dispute. The union representatives had, under duress, maintained a vigorous program of fitness. The management people had not. The wrangling lasted days, with long and wearying sessions. Stalemate after stalemate was the order of the discussions. Slowly but surely the management men became fatigued. At that point the well-conditioned, union people were able to extract concessions previously not possible. Perhaps winning and losing or dollars and cents should have nothing in common with personal fitness, but they do.

The final personal fitness extra is a touchy subject. Not only do fit people have fun and gain satisfaction from their skills—they look good. Vanity and pride sometimes are not regarded as “nice.” But they play a tremendously important and beneficial role in our society. They stimulate us to study more, work harder, give more freely, and look better. There are many ways to put a best foot forward. A clean, crisp, neat, trim appearance is one. Men want to appear more manly and women more feminine.

This is part of human nature. Looking better is fun. And it is “nice.” Narcissism can be overdone and often is. But we are not concerned with Muscle Beach. A little bit of honest pride in one’s clothes, haircut, fingernails, and figure is socially acceptable. People spend time and money on their appearance, yet pretend they do not care. Nonsense! This is not an admission of a crime. Why not look better? And what easier or more economical way than through fitness?

Sports activities do have an effect on ego. G. Hambridge in his book TIME TO LIVE Adventures in the Use of Leisure succinctly summarized this as follows:

The experience of the spectator is mild compared with that of the player, which is the reason games should be played, not watched from a grandstand. At the risk of uttering a blasphemy, I wish to remark that catching a fast ping-pong ball and returning it with precision gives a pleasure not so far removed from that a painter feels when he makes a good stroke with his brush on canvas.

That is one of the reasons why athletic games are so valuable for those of middle age and beyond. The game not only keeps the body supple and in “good tone”—which, after all, calisthenics would do; it subtly flatters the ego with a sense of mastering new and difficult things. All of us need that kind of flattery on occasion. We get it in games no matter how modest the skill required.

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Personal Fitness means many things to many people. Unfortunately, when most people say they are healthy, they really mean that at that particular moment they are free of any known illness, do not have symptoms, and have a feeling of well-being at rest. Absence of disease is a negative definition of health and fitness.

Adequate personal fitness allows the individual to perform his daily chores without interference by fatigue, to have sufficient physical reserve to meet unexpected emergencies safely, and to have enough extra energy to enjoy leisure time. It is positive in its implications and thus can be attained and maintained only by activity, not by rest.

While personal fitness is easily defined, it is difficult to measure, particularly after college years. If one strives toward being fit, it is only fair that one should be able to assess how far along the road to fitness he has travelled. He should be able to say, “I am fit” or “I am not fit” or “I am getting there.”

However, the human economy, being in a constant state of internal and therefore fairly invisible flux, is not amenable to the measurements available to evaluate, for example, the federal economy. There is no convenient metric or decimal appraisal of fitness, no series of figures which can be fed into an adding machine with a slip of paper stating, “You are 86 percent in shape” or, worse, “You are 2 percent fit.”

Many excellent tests have been devised to set up standards of personal fitness for specially designated groups. At the service academies, for example, officer candidates must perform an irreducible number of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, dips, rope climbs or shuttle runs (these vary from year to year) if they are to pass the physical fitness requirements of these academies. Likewise, most school systems have adopted a variety of fitness measurement programs in an attempt to bring all students up to an at least acceptable lower limit.

Present formal testing methods are beset with problems which render them of only limited general applicability. First, the standards proposed apply to minimum degrees of fitness. If a cadet can “pass” his fitness test, he is safe. There is no urgency for him to do his best; merely to “pass” is sufficient. An isolated instance is the swimming requirement of a well-known university. Here undergraduate students are required to swim one hundred yards in the pool before receiving a degree. This admittedly is better than no swimming requirement at all. But it falls far short of insisting that students must continue to swim, say, once a week after they have “passed” swimming. Gradations of fitness improvement should be encouraged, not merely reaching a minimum goal and stopping.

The second stricture of rigid and inflexible testing systems is that they apply to selected and specific groups. What might be good shape in junior high school would bring tears of disappointment at West Point. And what might be the absolute nadir at West Point would bring tears o£ exultation at a hospital for chronic diseases. Various tests may have great validity in comparing members of selected groups. Perhaps the range of personal fitness norms can be established for retired English bus drivers, Swedish lumberjacks, Annapolis plebes, and Boy Scouts. This is satisfactory for groups. But you are not a group. Groups may be homogeneous; individuals are not. It is fair to say that many tests can be adapted to different purposes by merely raising or lowering the minimum standards.

Popularity: 68%

Exhausting as it sounds, a rugged workout can be exhilarating. Working up a lather, shaking out the kinks, and getting out of breath can be as addicting as narcotics. Fitness should not be a deadly serious matter—it should be a kick!

There is one sound reason a man exercises—for fun.

There are dividends from fitness, to be sure. These benefits are “extras,” however. These are not reasons why people keep fit. These are bonuses for people who exercise for fun and personal fitness.

Tension is the businessman’s heaviest burden. Deadlines, promotion, competition, improvement, insecurity, and worry are part of our society. No wonder the executive has difficulty relaxing. Tight nerves and tense muscles are the usual rather than the exception. Fitness is one way out. No one can relax by being ordered to do so. Keyed-up nerves and muscles do not respond to talk. Nerves and muscles can be re-educated. Relaxing habits can be substituted for bad habits.

How To Relax
The way to relax is to non relax. Translated, this means: exercise vigorously. Having non relaxed energetically for thirty minutes, no one needs to be told to relax. He has no choice —he is exhausted—he has to relax. Ask anyone what is the best part of his workout. It is taking a shower afterward— naturally!

A workout inescapably prepares one for relaxation. During a workout it is impossible to be concerned about anything other than the task at hand. One’s every thought and effort is concentrated on the workout. Try preparing a report to the boss while watching your tennis adversary’s cannonball serve go streaking past. Try adding up all your debts while giving the bowling ball a little body English toward a remote tenpin. Try thinking about anything while exercising except exercising. It cannot be done! Your mind is off your problems—and that is good.

After the workout, with physically tired muscles, with the glow of physical satisfaction, and with the refreshing relief of a warm shower, relaxation is inevitable. And in a few weeks nerves and muscles once again have learned the rewarding art of relaxation.

The word “athlete” will be used now and then and should not scare you. By definition, an athlete is one “trained in acts of physical exercise.” The dictionary does not specify sex, age limit, type of physical activity, or competitive ability as requisites for the definition of “athlete.” Many of my athletic patients are of both sexes, of all ages, and never compete. But they certainly are athletes. Most of my athletic patients would, to be sure, deny they are athletes—but they are. Somehow they feel they do not deserve this approbation —but they do.

Dangers Of Obesity
Obesity, the commonest background of premature death, is rare among those who exercise regularly. Obese people have a greater chance to develop heart disease, cancer, kidney illnesses, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, and other degenerative disorders. While fitness per se apparently does not lengthen life, obesity certainly shortens it. There are no vaccinations or antibiotics which protect you from these illnesses. But fitness which abolishes obesity provides statistical immunization.

Popularity: 63%

In recent times, we tend to recognize the body as the main consideration of how you’ll judge an individual, they would work hard to arrive at the best body shape as possible. Above anyone else, it is your personal self who is able to determine the outcome of your life. Personal fitness is obtain by evaluating your lifestyle, the food you eat, the stress you bring to your life, the amount of exercise you do and your perspective towards life.

• Foods- What will happen if you consume too much amount of fat and carbohydrate? Of course you will expect your body to bloat. If you want to have a fit body then you should consider watching the amount of food you take in. Do not overindulge on foods. Try to limit what you eat. Be sensitive of your body, if it is hungry then you eat and when it is full already then stop eating.

• Exercise- Doing some body movement is vital to help burn calories and to exercise every sleeping muscle you have within. Exercise can also be a stress buster since most people would enjoy moving along with cool background music.

• Being Happy- Contrary to what other would believe physical fitness is not merely dependent on how the physical body looks like. Sometimes you need to be happy for you to look good. Don’t you realize that when someone is on his sad moments of life then he tend to look slouchy and ugly too?

• Knowledgeable- Funny how people would consume their days losing weight and applying creams on their faces that when they begin to be asked about uncomplicated issues on life, they begin to lose the confidence simply because they are not informed enough. Read books, browse the internet for information, scan pages of magazines- these are few things that you can do to cultivate your mind and help your brain cells function.

• Good Health- Every people have their own personal needs in terms of nutrients and vitamins level that should be furnished into their body. Ask your doctor about your needs. Also, shun away from alcoholic beverages and the habit of smoking since these are mere vices of life that would only harm the body.

• Good Lifestyle- Take some time to take care of you. Do not develop a habit which you will regret later on in life. Sleep early. Eat the right kinds of food. Do not follow the trend even if you know that they are harmful to your health.

You see personal fitness is not all about the bodily aspect of one’s life. It involves other factors that play an important role in building up a good body. Take proper care of yourself and learn to be sensitive about your body’s needs. Good health will not only benefit you but including the people around since you can prevent the agony that they may have felt if they’ll lose you because of your careless ways.

Popularity: 63%

People who want to indulge in physical fitness should realize that it is more than a mere exercise which is mainly about weight control, muscle buildup, endurance, strength, calorie burnout, and fat. They should recognize that it is a combination of all those above mentioned aspects. Moreover, to really appreciate what physical fitness is all about then a person should take time understanding its components that should all be balanced. The lists are noted below:

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You reap what you sow; the same is true in terms of physical fitness wherein you will have a body which is dependent on your personal lifestyle. Thanks to actresses and models who paved the way for people to realize that it takes time and a lot of effort to obtain the body that they wanted to have. Physical fitness does not merely suggest having a well-toned body, it goes beyond that since it connotes more on having a healthy body and a good lifestyle which you can benefit not just physically but including mentally. You look good if you feel good. Proper diet and exercise are two main ingredients of good health that will help you manage and enjoy your life better. Our health is determined on what we eat, the choice we made in terms of our leisure pursuit, how we live our life and how we manage to keep our life active.

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Popularity: 32%