CHAPTER 13
In this second section of The Big Book of Health and Fitness, our attention is now focused on becoming and staying physically active. Eating healthy and regular exercise is a winning combination. A healthy diet will give you more energy for physical activity. Likewise, being fit will encourage you to follow a daily regimen of good nutrition. Too often, I have seen people sacrifice one for another. They are fit but not healthy. Or they might be healthy, but not necessarily fit. Someone who eats healthy but neglects exercise is not being fair to his her body. And someone who works out regularly but fails to eat sensibly is at health risk or won’t be able to achieve optimal performance. And then there’s the issue of improperly working out, of pushing too hard or overtraining, which can lead to injury and even poor health.
To understand why all these scenarios are quite common, one must take a close look at the body’s two energy systems and how they are related. And the best way to look at the important role that fitness plays in being healthy and vice versa is to first understanding these two terms—”aerobic” and “anaerobic.” Each has been thrown around like an old pair of running shoes and has been for years. Most people think they know what “aerobic” means, or so they say. When asked, many associate it with breathing, air, or oxygen. Or they confuse it with “cardio” at the gym, where you can also find aerobic dance classes and pool aerobics. (In fact, aerobics is a relatively recent form of exercise. It’s not even fifty years old, although humans have been doing it for millions of years. In the late sixties, Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, an exercise physiologist for the San Antonio Air Force Hospital, Texas, coined the term “aerobics” to describe the system of exercise that he devised to help prevent coronary artery disease. Dr. Cooper originally formulated aerobic exercises specifically for astronauts but soon realized that the same set of exercises such jogging, running, walking, and biking are useful for the general public as well, especially those suffering from being overweight, who are more likely to develop various heart diseases. He put together all the aspects and methods he founded in his book Aerobics, which came out in 1968 and became an immediate national bestseller.)
And what about “anaerobic”? What does this term mean? Being out of breath after short, intense, and hard activity? Sprinting one hundred yards on the track, going full-speed across the length of the pool, doing push-ups until your arms and shoulders ache, or for many, climbing several or sometimes even one flights of stairs?
Once you see the difference between aerobic and anaerobic, this knowledge can help you build better health and fitness. So let’s start with a bit of history.
Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek was the first to describe the microscopic components of muscle fibers in the middle of the seventeenth century. (He also was the first to observe and describe bacteria.) By the early 1800s, it was clear that two different types of human muscle fibers existed. Through the microscope, one showed a red color and the other white. In humans, muscles are made different than in other animals such as birds. In chickens, for example, whole muscles are either red or white. The red muscles—the “meat”—are found in legs and thighs, while the white make up the breast. In humans, however, most muscles contain both red and white fibers (the exceptions are jaw muscles, which are predominantly anaerobic).
In 1863, French scientist Louis Pasteur coined the words “aerobic” and “anaerobic.” He was studying bacteria—and those that live only in the presence of oxygen he called aérobie. “Aerobic” comes from the Greek word aero, meaning “air,” and bios, which refers to life. Some bacteria could not live with oxygen or air, and Pasteur called these anaérobie—anaerobic.
Around the same time in human physiology, the terms “aerobic” and “anaerobic” were used in relation to how the body obtained energy. They referred to two different complex energy transfer processes in cells—one that required oxygen (aerobic) and one that did not (anaerobic). More importantly, the source of energy produced in each muscle fiber was different. The red aerobic fiber used fat as its source of energy. In order to convert fat to energy, this required oxygen—a reason for the large amount of blood vessels in the human body and in these muscle fibers and for the cell components that aided this process, which are called mitochondria. These iron-containing enzymes have a reddish protein called myoglobin.
In the white anaerobic fibers, none of these structures are needed. Energy is quickly generated through a process that uses sugar (glucose) as fuel that does not need oxygen.
As a result of further scientific research, these red and white muscle fibers in humans were also called type I and type II, respectively. The red type I aerobic fibers contract relatively slowly, and these would be called slow twitch. Their slow contraction would enable them to function for long periods—hours and days—without fatigue. This also allows them to support the body’s structures, especially the joints, bones, and arches of the feet.
The white type II anaerobic fibers contract two to three times faster, and these were called fast twitch. They provide speed and power. But these attributes come with a price—they fatigue very quickly as their energy lasts only a very short time, a few seconds to about a minute (coincidentally, about as long as you can hold your breath).
In time, it was discovered that there was more than one type II muscle fiber, and these would be considered subdivisions of type II. Some of these fibers are pure fast twitch while others have a combination of both fiber qualities. Today, there are seven different fiber types, and as microscopic techniques improve, more may be discovered. But there are still two main types in humans—aerobic and anaerobic.
The chart below is an overview of the function of each muscle fiber.
Exercise physiologists in particular refer to the aerobic system when discussing the red slow-twitch, fatigue-resistant, fat-burning muscle fibers, and the anaerobic system referring to the white fast-twitch power and speed sugar-burning fibers.
So which system—aerobic or anaerobic—is working in you right now as you’re reading these words? The surprising answer is both. It’s easy to see that aerobic activity is important all the time—to maintain various functions such as posture and movement, long-term consistent energy, and circulation. But even though we’re not sprinting or lifting heavy objects, the anaerobic system is always performing some basic tasks such as burning sugar. In fact, within the complex metabolic pathways of energy production, burning some sugar helps maintain fat burning. In addition, the anaerobic system is always prepared to take action if necessary—humans have a “fight or flight” mechanism waiting to act should the need arise.
• Red iron-containing cells and packed with blood vessels
• Slow-twitch sustains long-term activity
• Resistant to fatigue
• Uses (burns) fat for long -term energy
• Supports the joints, bones, and overall posture and gait
• White cells with limited supply of blood vessels
• Fast-twitch for short-term power and speed
• Easily fatigued
• Burns sugar for short-term energy
The real question is, which system is predominating—which are you relying on? Is your body burning mostly sugar and less fat? If this is so, your anaerobic system is the one turned on more than your aerobic body. While you may not notice this, especially if it’s an ongoing problem, but your energy and endurance is not what it should be, you are vulnerable to aches and pains, body fat content is too high, and you’re under too much stress as the anaerobic system is connected with our fight-or-flight stress mechanism. In short, your health is compromised.
Instead, you want long-term energy to be free of fatigue, maximum support for your joints and bones, injury-free muscles, good circulation, and increased fat burning to slim down. You want both optimal health and great fitness.
Certain types of exercise will provide benefits that will build the aerobic system long term. I refer to these simply as aerobic workouts, meaning they will provide the stimulus to improve fat burning for more energy, continuous physical support, improved blood flow throughout the brain and body, and reductions in body fat. Easy activities, such as walking, running, biking, swimming, and the many types of aerobics classes can accomplish this if the intensity of these workouts is not too high. Your heart rate is the best indicator—lower heart rate exercise is aerobic while performing the same workout with a higher heart rate would be anaerobic.
This is where the issues get more complicated. In the short term, any activity can help build the aerobic system, even very hard efforts. But continue these kinds of exercise routines for too long and your body will break down from injury, fatigue, and ill health. You’ll become a casualty of the fit but unhealthy crowd.
The one important feature that differentiates aerobic exercises from anaerobic type—in addition to lower versus higher heart rate—is time. Just because a workout stimulates the aerobic system to burn more fat doesn’t necessarily means you should keep doing it. If maintaining such a workout regularly for, let’s say, two or three months, it could suddenly turn on you, reducing aerobic function, lowering fat burning, suppressing the immune system, and causing physical stress with a reduction in aerobic muscle function. Whether it takes two months, two weeks, six months, or a longer time frame, this type of workout program would be an anaerobic one. Anaerobic workouts performed for weeks can temporarily build the aerobic system, but at a cost.
For a workout to be truly aerobic, you should be able to exercise the same way for many weeks and months with continued benefits. And when you’re finished each workout, you should feel great—not tired or sore and certainly not ready to collapse on your couch. Nor should you have cravings for sugar or other carbohydrates—your workout should program your body to burn more fat, not sugar. Burning too much sugar during a workout means it’s anaerobic, using up stored sugar (glycogen). It can even lower blood sugar. The result is that you crave sweets.
This is a key to differentiating an aerobic exercise program from an anaerobic one. While even a hard weight-lifting session can produce some of these benefits short term, it does not in the long term.
Eventually, even moderately anaerobic workouts soon can reduce fat burning and even lower the number of aerobic fibers your muscles contain. Scientists have demonstrated this fact. They have measured this decline. It’s not something based on anecdotal evidence. I have measured it too, in couch potatoes, aerobic dancers, walkers, and professional athletes.
In a laboratory or clinical setting, the process of fat burning can easily be measured with a gas analyzer—a device that assesses the air you breathe. By comparing the amount of oxygen you consume from the air and the carbon dioxide your body expires, one can determine quite accurately the amount of fat and sugar you burn. As exercise improves fat burning long term, it reflects improvements in the aerobic system. Not so with anaerobic exercise.
For most individuals, the best way to determine whether an exercise is truly building your aerobic system is to check your heart rate—this is detailed in the next chapter. For now, know that there are many aerobic workouts you can perform: you could walk, ride a bike, swim, dance, or perform other relatively gentle workouts that don’t allow the heart rate to rise too high.
As the heart rate rises too high, it causes your body to switch from being aerobic to anaerobic. So these same workouts can be anaerobic if you do them too fast or too hard. In addition to heart rate, another key aspect of a truly aerobic workout is that when you’re done, you should almost feel like you haven’t worked out—you should feel great, full of energy and vigor. You should almost feel like you could do it again with ease.
An anaerobic workout, on the other hand, will make you feel fatigued. Sometimes mildly so, other times quite exhausted. This is not only unnecessary but also counterproductive if your goal is to build the aerobic system. In fact, too much anaerobic exercise can impair the aerobic system.
Preventing Osteoarthritis: Aerobic Exercise Is Best
Building the aerobic system is best accomplished with easy exercise rather than those that are harder on your body. A recent study presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America provides us with another of the many reasons: prevention of osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis—OA—is a chronic degenerative joint disorder commonly occurring with aging. It’s associated with loss of the cartilage and bone in the knees, hips, ankles, and other joint and is a frequent cause of pain and disability, joint stiffness and loss of range of motion, muscle atrophy, and joint swelling. Muscle imbalance may be one of the primary causes of OA.
Those who are inactive risk reducing their aerobic muscle fibers due to atrophy, which offer the most protection of joints.
The study’s lead author Dr. Thomas Link, professor of radiology and chief of musculoskeletal imaging at the University of California, San Francisco, says that risk of OA can be reduced by exercising easy as well as not overdoing it. Link says that middle-aged adults need to be extremely careful—”once cartilage is gone, it’s gone forever.”
Light or moderate exercise, such as walking and other easy aerobic workouts, can protect against OA while both hard exercise and none at all can accelerate its onset. Those who exercise too hard risk trauma to joints, along with muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones. The latter problem can separately have adverse effects on joints, contributing to OA.
If you’re a runner, it doesn’t mean you can’t continue—just do it aerobically, avoiding hard workouts. By avoiding strenuous exercise—anaerobic workouts—one can more easily avoid an injury, even a minor one that can initiate a process that ends with painful OA. A knee, hip, or other joint injury significantly predisposes one to OA. In Link’s study, “light exercise was associated with more intact collagen structure and lower cartilage water content, which are indicative of healthier cartilage.” This also means healthier joints.
In its purest and most original sense, fitness is the ability to perform physical activity. For most of our existence on this planet, humans were extremely active, expending vast amounts of energy just to accomplish the basic tasks that kept them alive, like walking for miles in search of food. Our early ancestors had tremendous endurance based on an aerobic system that was built by their daily tasks of living. Suddenly, in just a short span of a few generations, today’s humans have become much less active, and as a consequence, we are much more prone to muscle, joint, and bone dysfunction and disease. Excluding those who are physically active, such as professional athletes, manual laborers and farmworkers, the majority of Americans have poor aerobic systems. And yet of those who do exercise such as marathoners, most get too much of the anaerobic type, which can be stressful, causing injury and recurring illnesses such as upper respiratory infections. And just like with those who don’t exercise, many of these “physically fit” individuals also have poorly functioning aerobic systems.
To get your aerobic system working correctly, you must diminish or avoid factors that suppress it and increase the factors that help it. Stress has a negative impact on your aerobic system. The different types of stress and how to control them are discussed in a later chapter. For now it’s important just to know that stress of any kind programs your body to burn less fat and more sugar. The more stress, the worse this problem will be. Anaerobic exercise can be another stress that reduces aerobic function.
Dietary or nutritional factors that cause excess stress can especially inhibit aerobic function. The most common of these stresses is eating too much refined carbohydrate foods and products containing sugar. Deficiencies of essential fats or other nutrients can also inhibit aerobic development.
If the aerobic system is impaired, energy needs switch from fat burning toward using more sugar. This is associated with a real deficiency in aerobic function, resulting in a variety of signs and symptoms I call the aerobic deficiency syndrome.
Nothing is better than walking for overall fitness and health. Of all the types of exercise, walking is the one I recommend the most, and not just for beginners but also for regular exercisers. I’ve even had professional athletes add walking to their programs.
Walking is the most fail-safe exercise. Scientific studies show that walking burns a higher percentage of fat than any other activity because of its low intensity. Walking activates the small aerobic muscle fibers, which often are not stimulated by higher-intensity aerobic workouts. Walking also helps circulate blood, process lactic acid, and improve lymph drainage (important to the body’s waste-removal system).
THE AEROBIC DEFICIENCY SYNDROME—ADS
The ADS is not an epidemic so easily defined that it makes big news each day, like AIDS, cancer, or heart disease, but this problem is destroying the quality of life for many millions of people. It’s one of the major reasons for functional illness, leads to common physical problems from aches and pains to debilitating impairments, is a primary cause of the overfat epidemic, and is a significant contributing factor to chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.
ADS occurs when the aerobic system is not well developed and maintained, and the body only has the anaerobic system to depend upon for energy, movement, and physical support. This becomes a major risk factor for functional illness and disease. It’s no different from vitamin C deficiency or being deprived of any other necessity of life. It can cause problems in any area of the body dependent upon the aerobic system, which is most areas. It can affect your body chemistry causing hormonal imbalance; your physical body causing hip, knee, or back problems; or your brain resulting in depression. By now, you know what causes ADS. In general, the two most common causes of ADS are as follows:
• The underuse of aerobic muscles. It’s the simple rule of “use it or lose it.” Only a small percentage of the population is naturally active—their day-to-day work activity is relatively high. And few people perform proper aerobic exercise.
• The overuse of anaerobic muscles. Most exercisers overtrain not by volume but by performing too much anaerobic activity, such as weight-lifting, or activities performed at too high an intensity.
Other common causes of ADS include carbohydrate intolerance, low-fat diets, and stress, all of which can significantly impair aerobic function.
The symptoms of ADS are many; the most common ones include the following:
• Physical fatigue. The lack of long-term energy can start each morning with difficulty getting out of bed or produce periods of tiredness during the day.
• Mental fatigue. This may include poor concentration or lack of creative energy and even feelings of depressions or lack of initiative. Sleepiness while working or driving is also common.
• Brain dysfunction. From learning problems to cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s, building a better brain can only happen with sufficient physical activity that develops the aerobic system.
• Recurrent physical injuries. Do you know many people who don’t have any type of physical complaints? Shoulder and back pain, knee and wrist problems, spinal dysfunction and weak ankles. It’s not normal to have any injury at any age, even for people who exercise. When you have an injury, it means something went wrong, typically in the aerobic system whose muscle fibers support joints, other muscles, ligaments, and tendons.
• Excess storage of fat. When the aerobic system doesn’t work effectively, instead of burning fat, the body stores it. This can occur on the hips, thighs, and belly, and even inside the arteries.
• Blood sugar stress. The many symptoms discussed in the chapters on carbohydrate intolerance, including frequent hunger, craving for sweets or caffeine, tiredness after meals, and moodiness, are associated with abnormal alterations in blood sugar. Without adequate fat burning, more reliance on blood sugar causes stress.
• Hormonal imbalance. Premenstrual syndrome and menopausal symptoms are common in women with aerobic deficiency. But both men and women can develop hormonal imbalances, including low levels of sex hormones.
• Poor circulation. Since so many of the body’s blood vessels are found in the aerobic muscle fibers, a lack of aerobic function results in fewer operating blood vessels and diminished blood flow. In those with aerobic deficiency, up to 70 percent of the body’s circulation may be inoperative!
• Reduced immune function. Much of the body’s antioxidant activity occurs in the aerobic muscle fibers—without their activity, the immune system can be impaired leading to frequent infections and illness.
• Exercise intolerance. Some people are unable to exercise consistently without getting more fatigued or physically injured. This is usually due to poor function of the body’s aerobic muscle fibers.
Many of these signs and symptoms overlap with those of carbohydrate intolerance. That’s because they are intricately related to each other—they can each contribute to the other’s presence.
In addition to the problems noted above, ADS is associated with an increased production of lactic acid. The body is always making lactic acid, and it’s an important chemical product of muscles which is recycled into energy. But the combination of poor aerobic function and an overactive anaerobic system means too much lactic acid. This not only can cause further reductions in aerobic function but also contribute to depression, anxiety, phobias, and even suicidal tendencies. It’s been shown that raising lactic acid levels in normal, healthy people can produce these symptoms. This is probably due to the effect of lactic acid on the nervous system. Excess lactic acid can also disturb coordination. It’s a cause for concern, especially in those who require a more finely tuned, coordinated body for their work or sport. A high-carbohydrate and low-fat diet can also aggravate high lactic-acid levels as can various nutritional imbalances such as low levels of thiamin (vitamin B1).
Other symptoms related to higher lactic acid levels include angina pectoris, seen in patients with certain heart problems. The heart is a muscle, and it’s not immune to the damaging effects of lactic acid. High levels of lactic acid create a major stress on the heart and blood vessels and may aggravate existing problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease. This may be one reason for the incidence of heart attacks in people who are running or jogging—a combination of ADS and excess lactic acid. (It should be noted that both aerobic and anaerobic muscles normally produce lactic acid, and when entering the bloodstream lactic acid is converted to lactate.)
Walking is one of the best ways to get started on an exercise program since it’s a simple, low-stress workout that is not easily overdone. Walkers generally have little difficulty keeping their heart rates from getting too high, though there are exceptions. If there’s a problem with walking, it’s that the heart rate won’t go high enough once you’ve developed your fitness. The mechanics of walking results in less gravity stress than you experience in jogging or running, but still enough to give you the important fat-burning benefits and others such as bone-strengthening effects.
We’ve all heard and read about the many wonderful benefits of exercise. But did you know most studies that demonstrate these great benefits were done using walking? You don’t need to make exercise complicated, expensive, or intense. And I’m talking about just an easy walk—not power walking, race walking, or carrying weights. Here are some of the facts about the benefits of easy walking:
• Regular, easy walking increases life expectancy. It also helps older adults maintain their functional independence, an important concern for society. Currently, the average number of nonfunctional years in our elderly population is about twelve. That’s a dozen years at the end of a life span of doing nothing: unable to care for yourself, walk, be productive, or just enjoy life.
• Regular, easy physical exercise such as walking can help prevent and manage coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, as well as hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, and depression. This occurs through improved balance of blood fats, better clotting factors, improved circulation, and the ability to more efficiently regulate blood sugar.
• Regular exercise like walking decreases your risk of developing degenerative disease. The lack of exercise places more people at risk for coronary heart disease than all other risk factors. Aerobic deficiency is an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease, doubling the risk. Inactivity is almost as great a risk for coronary heart disease as cigarette smoking and hypertension.
• Walking is associated with lower rates of illness, injury, and disease, including such problems as colon cancer, stroke, and low-back injury.
In addition to the above benefits, walking may be the best way to improve the brain. Many studies demonstrate this fact. By age fifty, sometimes sooner, many people begin a long decline of normal nervous system function, especially the brain. Aging itself increases your risk of cognitive decline and conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. One of the best ways to prevent the common loss of brain function is with regular walking. Not only can this easy exercise improve the coordination between brain and body to make movements more efficient, including improved balance and gait, but virtually all other parts of the brain benefits too, including those associated with memory, cognition, social function, speech, hearing, behavior, and learning.
Every step you take sends messages from each muscle fiber throughout your body via nerves to your brain. This increases the brain’s blood circulation (brining in oxygen and other nutrients), stimulates the growth of new neurons (brain cells), and improves communication between neurons, even making new pathways between the brain and body. The result is that you can build a better brain that takes better care of your body. In fact, walking can significantly increase the size of the brain. Other exercises, such as weight lifting, yoga, and hard workouts, may not accomplish these same incredible benefits.
How long does it take for these changes in the brain to occur? If you’re inactive, they begin to happen during your very first walk. In the first few months of regular exercise, researchers have demonstrated the many physical changes that occur in the brain.
All these brain and body benefits can be accomplished with easy aerobic exercise. How easy? The equivalent of a sustained thirty-minute walk, at least four or five times a week. Many Americans are not this active, including children and teens who spend most of their spare time watching TV and playing computer games.
For some people, especially those who have been inactive, overweight, or have chronic illness, even walking may pose overexercise problems. Whether you’re twenty-five or sixty-five, if you’re beginning an exercise program, or have been inactive for a period of time and now want to start walking, consider using a heart monitor to take the guesswork out of your walk. I’ve seen too many beginners walking with too high a heart rate. It’s often because they’re with other people and the instinct to be competitive comes into play. Talking while walking also increases the heart rate, and so does walking up a hill too fast before some level of fitness has been achieved.
The most important thing for a walker to realize is that it’s a fat burning and endurance routine. Base your walking on time rather than miles.
Walking is also a useful physical therapy following an injury or a period of low activity. Many people in this situation can begin building their fitness with easy walking.
Sometimes, even walking is difficult due to an injury or some other problem. Try walking in a pool in waist- or chest-high water. Gradually walk in shallower water before trying it on dry land.
As great as walking can be, many people feel uncomfortable about doing it. They somehow feel it’s not enough of a workout or it’s too easy. It’s that no-pain, no-gain feeling your nervous system has recorded in its memory. It’s time to add some new memory.
Surprisingly for many, walking is also valuable to the competitive athlete whose sport may be cycling, running, triathlon, and even tennis or soccer. Walking can be used as part of a warm-up and cooldown. Competitive athletes, when they’re in a rush or working out with others, often don’t warm up properly. One way to ensure this is done is to walk for twelve to fifteen minutes before each workout. Even if you bike or swim, a walk is a great way to warm up. It turns on your aerobic fat-burning system, increases circulation, and all the other benefits of aerobic function. The same is true for cooling down after your training session—going for an easy walk can help speed recovery. If you make it a habit, you won’t feel right missing it.
Walking can also have a cross-training effect on your muscles and nervous system, helping to stimulate muscles you might not normally use in your workout. These are the very small aerobic fibers used during low-intensity activity. Many trained athletes say that initially, their walk routine initially made them a bit sore. That’s due to the lack of use of these small muscle fibers, which helps bring more blood and nutrients to the anaerobic fibers.
Former athletes seeking to restore their fitness can benefit from walking; it keeps them from being too aggressive early in their training.
TWENTY WALKING TIPS
You can get in admirable shape simply by walking. It can serve as the cornerstone of building an aerobic base for health and fitness. Most people will succeed with walking because it’s simple, very inexpensive, and easy. These three exercise aspects resolve the most difficult parts of getting back into shape. Many people will not need or want more than simple walking, but if you do, you can use this base as an essential platform to build more fitness for running, competition, or just higher levels of working out.
Here are some important and simple recommendations:
1. Have a regular routine. People who fit a regular workout into their daily schedule usually stick with it.
2. Work out from or near home rather than driving somewhere. A treadmill at the gym can be intimidating, especially if you’re even a bit overweight or out of shape. There are lots of mirrors and sweaty jocks with enlarged muscles. Personal trainers can be okay, but often have their own agenda that may not fit your specific needs.
3. Don’t buy special workout attire. Cheap shoes, simple gym shorts, and T-shirts work great.
4. Wear the flattest and most comfortable shoes you can get—these are usually the least expensive. As studies have shown, these won’t increase your risk of getting injured.
5. Your workout should be so easy that when you’re done, it feels like you haven’t done much of anything. The “no pain, no gain” attitude causes injury and is a common reason why people don’t remain in a routine. You want to train your body to burn fat. This is accomplished at moderate levels of training intensity, not high levels. A heart monitor serves as a biofeedback device (like a coach), informing you that your level of intensity is too high or low (as indicated by your heart rate). I strongly advise using a heart rate monitor so you don’t work out too hard—this topic is addressed in the next chapter.
6. Don’t count calories. You want to burn fat, not just calories. Diet (not dieting) and exercise must go together.
7. Keep your walking simple. There’s no need to add more stress to your life. There’s no special way to walk (some people look like zombies when they walk as a workout). Just walk. Don’t exaggerate your gait or carry weights.
8. Work out in a pleasant environment—a park, quiet streets. Don’t walk along a busy road.
9. Schedule your workout in the morning if possible, before you start the day. Those who do this generally stay on course. As the day progresses, if you’ve not done your workout, you keep adding more things to do. Now your workout is in jeopardy because you’re too busy. Get it done early in the day, and it’s done.
10. Don’t eat sweets, refined carbohydrates, or fruit juice before working out. Actually, don’t eat sweets at all, but if you eat them before working out, they can reduce fat burning. Sweets can raise the hormone insulin, which could impair metabolism to turn down fat burning, so the calories you burn from your workout (and for some time afterward) are sugar calories not fat calories. This could result in more fat storage.
11. If you drink a small glass of water after waking, there’s no need to carry water with you as you can have some immediately upon completion.
12. Make your walking workouts a time of peace and relaxation. That means not chatting on the cell phone or to others around you. It’s a time to meditate on your life and dream of getting more fit and healthy (and anything else you want to dream about).
13. Don’t work out if you have an elevated temperature, even a half degree. The body raises the temperature when it has to work very hard (to fight an infection, for example). Exercise can interfere with that process. You could stress your immune system even more if you work out when you’re getting sick. Your body requires rest at that time.
14. Don’t work out in extremes of weather, especially severe cold or heat. Have an alternative when those days arrive: an indoor workout, a mall (better than not working out), or it may be time to buy that treadmill.
15. Don’t worry about how far you go. Base your workout on time. Start with twenty minutes, if that feels physically easy. Build from there, as you are consistent, to thirty, then forty-five minutes. No need to exceed an hour unless you love it so much that longer weekend walks are fun.
16. Slowly start your workout with a slower walk to warm-up. After about twelve minutes, maintain a good comfortable pace. End the same way: by slowing down again.
17. Work out at least five or six days a week. Choose your busiest days, such as Monday or Friday, for an off day from exercise. The body needs recovery, and this will help guarantee that.
18. Don’t overtrain: Working out with too high a heart rate (which gauges the kind of workout you’re having) increases stress hormones and is not unlike other stress reactions. This is an unhealthy condition. Easy, low–heart rate workouts don’t trigger stress responses and are examples of healthy fitness.
19. The most difficult part in getting started is making room in one’s schedule. Changing habits is always perceived as difficult; it’s really just a matter of deciding to do it. Once you do that, the rest is relatively easy.
20. Occasionally, a particular disability might restrict you from doing certain activities (most people complain of things they believe limit them from working out, yet most of these are not valid excuses). Heart conditions, previous surgery, certain medications, and other things may require an adjustment in workout schedule. Ask your doctor if anything could be a problem.
Walking is also the best way to keep your body limber and prepare yourself for the next golf shot. While many courses actually discourage walking since it slows down play, the use of a golf cart will only generate one mile of actual walking for 18 holes, but walking the same course is equivalent to going five miles on foot. Nor does walking negatively affect performance, as it once was thought; some studies have shown those who ride and those who walk shoot the same scores. The benefits of walking are obvious: you burn calories, it’s a mild aerobic exercise, it keeps the blood better circulated as well as keeping the muscles and joints loose.
Many people rely on the body’s anaerobic system trying to keep up with the fast pace of a stressful life, often leaving the aerobic system behind. Anaerobic muscle fibers provide us with the power and speed we sometimes need in the course of the day. When we see great athletes on TV or in ads, it’s often their anaerobic qualities that we find so impressive—speed, power, and bulging muscles. The problem is that many people seek out this type of body at the expense of their aerobic systems, and therefore their health. Ideally, a program direct at both health and fitness would begin by developing the aerobic system first and then carefully improving anaerobic function as necessary and if desired.
HEALTHY HIKING
Hiking is something I’ve enjoyed since I was a child. Growing up in the country, I learned the joy of going out my back door and wandering alone through the wooded mountains of New York State. I never strayed too far from home; but as I got older, longer and more rugged treks would follow. Once I had a driver’s license, I began to explore trails in state and national parks throughout the northeast—Maine’s Cadillac Mountain, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and of course, the Appalachian trail. Many years later, after hiking up Colorado’s Tenmile Range Peak 10 Summit (13,615 feet), I was so in awe at the top that I stayed too long, not realizing that coming down would be longer and more difficult than the ascent. Tom Petty’s hit song “Learning to Fly” was just released and remained in my mind, helping me down the rocky trail after dark.
Of all the sports I’ve participated in, from running, biking, triathlon, and even golf, hiking still remains my favorite. If the weather is cooperating, I try and go for a short hike almost every day. I am lucky that I don’t have to go far to reach the trails since I live in southern Arizona and the Santa Catalina mountains are literally right outside my backyard.
Hiking and walking are really one and the same. Though hiking usually means going longer or venturing out in the backcountry—and away from civilization. Because of this, there are a few things to remember to make these hikes—whether for two hours or two days—more enjoyable.
One of the keys to successful hiking is building a great aerobic base. This teaches your body to burn fat as an energy source. With more aerobic muscle function, other optimal training benefits follow, including the ability to walk farther, hike faster when you want with reduced physical wear and tear, and more rapid recovery. It’s also the best way to avoid getting tired or bonking. These are just some of the endurance benefits the aerobic system provides.
Optimal aerobic fitness and health also means more capability to carry heavy loads up steep slopes for long periods, better adaptation to higher altitudes, maintain alertness and good judgment after extended periods of exertion, and better acclimate to the extremes of cold or heat. Of course, training in these same environments for shorter periods of time will certainly help your body function better in preparation for longer treks.
Strength and power can also be developed through your training and is best done following the building of a great aerobic system. For most people, I don’t believe that strengthening individual muscles, such as by lifting weights, is a necessity. You can adequately train your body during shorter hikes on hilly terrain; you’ll more than likely build sufficient muscle function for longer, tougher treks. However, if you don’t train your body by regularly hiking steep trails, you won’t be able to easily accomplish these tasks during longer trips. In this case, weight lifting may have a place in training, although it won’t be as effective as training your muscles by hiking shorter versions of the same terrain. And this anaerobic activity is best done following a proper aerobic development, which could take two, four, or more months depending on your particular needs. In three to four weeks of weight lifting, you’ll obtain significant improvement of muscle function.
Nourishment is an important consideration during hikes. This includes foods consumed during a hike and your regular diet. While hikes of two or three hours may not require any food if you burn sufficient body fat, longer treks will require packing food. During a longer trek, healthy dense foods rather than refined carbohydrates will provide for your long-term needs if your aerobic system is working well.
Whether you’re climbing the high Colorado peaks or hiking through parts of the Grand Canyon, your body works best by using its internal energy sources rather than rely on external sources. In other words, by burning more body fat as a major energy source, you can hike longer. While humans use a combination of both fat and sugar (carbohydrate) for energy all the time, training your body to use much higher amounts of stored fat offers many more times the energy than sugar. Fat is our endurance energy, and sugar is for short-term power. In fact, a well-conditioned endurance hiker would need much less food during a daylong trek because, even in a lean body, he or she has significant fat available for energy—enough for long-distance hiking over rough terrain. This is what training is all about—increasing fat burning is accomplished through relatively easy aerobic exercise. This includes such activities as walking, running, and biking—regular hikes will easily accomplish this task. Lower heart rate training will increase your capability to burn more body fat, but higher levels of intensity can reduce fat-burning and increase sugar-burning. In addition to having more endurance energy, this will also help you reduce body fat and lose weight.
Your day-to-day diet when not hiking is also an important part of this equation. Consumption of refined carbohydrates, such as pasta, bread, sugar-containing foods, sports drinks, so-called energy bars, and other low-quality high-glycemic items, can significantly detrain your body by reducing its ability to burn fat—even if your training seems satisfactory.
Both diet and training can provide you with a great aerobic system that can generate high amounts of energy from body fat. The end result is that you can perform more activity with the same or lower levels of intensity, as measured by heart rate. In other words, walking up steep slopes with a pack becomes much easier and faster without fatigue. This is because your slow-twitch aerobic muscles use fat for energy, so their physical ability improves while having almost unlimited energy. Additionally, your food needs during a hike is reduced.
Relying less on food during a hike is important because eating a meal can reduce blood flow to the muscles (much of your circulation is diverted to the intestines for digestion); eating while walking can also impair digestion (and therefore absorption of sugar, fats, and other nutrients). And all the food you must carry means more weight to haul.
With a good aerobic system, whether you perform a short hike, twelve-hour slog, or a multiday trek, you should not require any special food or sports drink other than your regular meals and snacks, plus water. And those you normally consume should be the same nutrient-rich, easily digestible food items you regularly consume—introducing new foods or ones your body is less accustomed to can sometimes cause gut disturbances such as indigestion, gas, diarrhea, or constipation. For most people, effective foods to carry during a long hike might include natural carbohydrates, such as fresh fruits, protein items like hard-boiled eggs and unprocessed meat and cheese (if consumed relatively soon depending on temperature), and other foods high in fats that include raw almonds and cashews.
Whether a longer or shorter trek, you can also make your own trail ration: My Phil’s bar recipe—see pages 186-187—has been used by endurance athletes for decades; it provides everything you’ll need nutritionally (except water), is very easy to digest, will last a week or more unrefrigerated, and it’s delicious. These would be a great addition on any trek lasting more than two or three hours, especially over several days or a week or two.
Companies that manufacture specialty sports drinks and energy bars make wild and false claims about energy and hydration. However, fruit juice, such as apple or grape (avoid citrus), or honey works just as well, if not better, considering that many sports products have to be digested. Fresh fruit, such as apples, pears, and nectarines, along with fruit juice, and honey do not require digestion, so their sugars are more available for energy and don’t produce the typical indigestion from bloating (gas) that other carbohydrate products create. In addition, most of these highly processed food items contain unhealthy ingredients.
The concentration or strength of the carbohydrate solution refers to the amount of sugar and water in the drink. This can influence how your intestines handle the drink, which then affects how well you absorb the sugars. Homemade liquid carbohydrate drinks are best because they are simple to make, are made from natural foods, don’t contain unwanted or unhealthy ingredients (some are not listed on the label), and you can adjust the amount of water and carbohydrate to your particular needs.
For most hikes, a 6 to 8 percent carbohydrate solution is ideal for most people. A simple drink can be made by adding six to eight grams of carbohydrate (approximately one heaping teaspoon), such as honey, to 180 ml (six ounces) of water. Another option is to use store-bought juice, most of which is 6 to 8 percent carbohydrate, but not the concentrated versions, which are much more condensed and require dilution.
The 6 to 8 percent concentration will not remain in your stomach for too long but will empty into the small intestines at a similar rate as water. Liquids that are concentrated with more than 8 percent carbohydrate can remain in the stomach longer, not allowing the stomach to empty as fast and delaying the absorption of sugar, and cause stomach distress.
Walking long distances, hiking uneven trails, jumping from rock to rock, maneuvering through tall grass or down slippery slopes all requires one important function—being light on your feet. This means maintaining quickness to prevent falls, sensing the ground’s ever-changing terrain for stability and being prepared for a last-moment shift in your body’s weight to avoid a loose rock or rattler. (I occasionally see them here in Arizona and give them a wide berth on the trail.) In order to accomplish these physical tasks, your feet and brain must be in constant communication. The right shoes will allow this important activity.
Thick soled, oversupported shoes, including most hiking or trail running shoes, can impair your walking performance. In particular, “high-top” type hiking shoes can weaken your ankles. This can occur because the shoe’s support around the ankle, like other physical wraps, braces, and supports, can eventually weaken muscles, ultimately causing you to lose stability in the ankle.
While there are many people who hike barefoot—after all, shoes have been around for only the last ten thousand years while man has been around for several million years—and even barefoot hiking clubs, it’s not necessary to be completely unshod to maintain good agility and keep your feet stable. Although spending some time being barefoot, even for only fifteen minutes a day, helps strengthen foot and ankle muscles and improve sensation of the ground and communication with the brain, lighter, simpler, and thinner shoes are best for most people.
The minimalist and barefoot running shoe movement has provided a good way to find shoes that work well for most hikers. These are shoes that offer thinner, more flexible soles, and without an oversized heel that can affect one’s natural gait.
I hike in perfectly flat, unsupported shoes. I wear a lace-up Puma running shoe that’s leather with a sole that’s about a quarter-inch thick from heel to toe. A lace-up style helps assure it’s snug enough on your foot each time you put it on without excess movement during hiking. Even if I’m climbing some big boulders in tight spots off the trail, these shoes are perfect. The feel of each crevice in my feet helps with maneuverability.
Thick shoes reduce the brain’s ability to properly sense the ground and, therefore, the body’s ability to most effectively change movements to match varying terrain. This can increase the risk of slipping and falling. And they can slow you down. In addition, on long hikes, the added weight of thick, oversupported shoes require more oxygen—not a significant factor until you’re out there for a couple of days. Most importantly, a great hiking shoe should be perfectly comfortable. Not just on the trails but also on walking around while shopping or going for a walk on paved streets. The topic of feet and shoes, and how to find the best fit, is discussed in chapters 16-18.
For those looking for information on how to get into great hiking shape and related nutritional needs, everything in The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing (Skyhorse 2010) can be applied to hiking and mountaineering.
In order for anyone to be both healthy and fit, anaerobic function must be balanced with the aerobic system. Unfortunately, many who exercise focus almost all their attention on their anaerobic systems even at the risk of losing aerobic function. Home gyms, spinning classes, muscle-pumping equipment at the local health club, and the latest fitness rage called CrossFit lure the public into thinking bigger is better. “Go hard, go fast, work those muscles to exhaustion!” This “no pain, no gain” mind-set is injurious to one’s health and is a poor way to become fit.
Here’s briefly why: The anaerobic system includes the white fast-twitch muscle fibers, along with the related mechanisms used during high-stress activity—speed and power. This includes increased sugar-burning while reducing fat burning; it also adds stress not only to the workout but afterward as well. This throws the body out of whack; it creates a metabolic imbalance.
Interestingly, the same type of imbalance can also occur in someone who is physically inactive. The out-of-shape person must rely on one of the energy systems, but because aerobic function is not turned on, the anaerobic one becomes active with the result of too little aerobic and too much anaerobic function. This imbalance then becomes an additional stress, maintaining a viscous cycle.
Excess anaerobic activity, through some combination of over- or underexercise, work stress or diet, inhibits the aerobic system through several mechanisms:
• Increased anaerobic function can change your muscle fibers, resulting in more anaerobic fibers and fewer aerobic ones.
• Increased anaerobic function produces more lactic acid, which can inhibit the enzymes necessary for the aerobic fibers to function properly.
• Too much anaerobic function can increase stress hormones, reducing fat burning and aerobic function.
It’s possible to improve aerobic and anaerobic function, with the result of high levels of both. But the first step must be improving your aerobic system. Since the human body is made up of mostly aerobic muscle fibers, most of your physical activity should be aerobic. There is also a lifestyle factor to consider: for many people, from the time they get up in the morning until they finally drop back into bed at night, they are rushing, hurrying, and continuously under stress. Aerobic exercise, along with good nutrition, can correct common anaerobic system excesses, allowing you to build better health.
An important case history of one of my patients exemplifies the importance of aerobic and anaerobic balance. Gary, a high-level executive in a stressful corporate job, started exercising at his company’s gym. At age forty, he felt the need to feel younger, lose the excess fat he was gaining around his waist, and get more energy. At first he felt great. He lifted weights three or four times a week, jogged on the treadmill each day, and played squash once or twice a week. But after three months his shoulder began hurting. Then his knee started aching, and he felt much more tired during the day, unable to concentrate on his work. The company doctor said his examination did not reveal any problems. That’s when Gary made an appointment to visit my clinic.
My examination found Gary to be in a state of aerobic deficiency, in part due to every workout being anaerobic. I switched him over to an easy aerobic program of the same training duration, with walking, easy stationary cycling, and swimming; I also told him to avoid all anaerobic exercises. Within three weeks, Gary was much more energetic, and his shoulder and knee problems were gone. After three months of building up his aerobic system, Gary was ready to add weights back to his workout routine and start playing squash again.
Gary had to do two things to improve his fitness and health. First, he had to temporarily stop all anaerobic exercise. By doing this, a significant inhibiting stress was taken off the aerobic system. Second, he had to develop his aerobic system. In Gary’s case, it took three months to build his aerobic system to a level that was balanced with his anaerobic system. Only then could he return to anaerobic workouts.
While Gary took three months to build his aerobic system, others may need twice that time frame. Still others are best only performing aerobic exercise for longer periods as they are unable to tolerate even small amounts of anaerobic work.
Some people obtain important benefits from lifting weights or performing other hard anaerobic exercise when performed in balance with aerobic function. However, for most people, ongoing anaerobic exercise creates a physiological state similar to cancer, HIV, or other body-wasting diseases. Studies show that the biochemical changes seen in chronic disease states are similarly found in people who perform anaerobic exercise in as little as three times a week for one hour over a four- to eight-week period. The problems include low amino acids (such as glutamine and cysteine), low T-cell counts (from reduced immune function), and sometimes the loss of lean body tissue (muscle). Even in those who lost weight, it was found that most of what was lost was muscle, not fat. These same problems were not observed in aerobic exercisers.
Another problem common to both anaerobic training and chronic disease is oxidative stress. Normally, there’s a significant production of oxygen free radicals produced during anaerobic workouts, which can cause damage to virtually all bodily systems. These dangerous free radicals are controlled by healthy aerobic muscle fibers. This also significantly increases the need for antioxidants, various vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients discussed in section 1. These are nutrients most people don’t get enough of.
Outdoor activities such as lifting logs, chopping wood, and building stone walls are a natural way to improve muscle and bone strength, but it must be done in a healthy way. In a similar way, it’s one way our ancestors built health and fitness. Unfortunately, the muscle-building trend over the past thirty years has created too many injuries—another example of sacrificing fitness for health. The goal of most of these gym workouts that use free weights, machines, and other devices is to create strength. Instead, the result has been big muscles.
Muscle size is not necessarily related to strength. Bodybuilders who develop huge muscles are not nearly as strong as Olympic weight lifters who don’t have nearly as large a muscle mass but are much stronger.
When a muscle is regularly used to lift heavier weight, the nervous system responds by stimulating more fibers, with the result of more strength. Eventually, the muscle itself increases in size, particularly in men. However, both men and women have similar responses to strength training—the percentage of increase in muscle mass is similar between the genders. But women don’t have nearly the same increase in muscle size. This is due in great part to higher testosterone levels in men which also provided them with more muscle mass to start with, making it easier to further increase it during training.
Overall, there are two general categories of exercise training—strength and endurance:
• Strength training is associated with shorter-duration, more intense workouts usually associated with increased power from both neurological affects that incorporate more muscle fibers, and ultimately larger muscles.
• Endurance workouts are longer with lower intensity resulting in more fat burning capability, and little increases in muscles.
• Improper training of any type can contribute to injuries and ill health, and impair endurance.
Like endurance, there are many different philosophies and styles of strength training. But generally, there are two forms—natural and artificial. Natural strength development includes physically working outdoors. In the process of building full body strength, these activities are comprised of two important movements: picking up something heavy and carrying it. Raising an object like a small log above your waist or onto your shoulder relies on muscle contractions throughout the body.
Strength workouts in the gym, whether using free weights or the many available machines, are examples of artificial workouts. Each apparatus, for example, trains a particular muscle or muscle group—such as the pecs, quads, hamstrings, or abdominals. In nature, you would not regularly isolate a muscle or muscle group for any length of time. But one could incorporate a natural style program in a gym or home program.
NO PAIN, NO GAIN—NO BRAIN!
The media, social myth, and competitive peer pressure associated with “no pain, no gain”—an attitude that more is better regarding more speed, more distance, more weights, more intensity, and so forth—poses both health and fitness problems. Because when you’re fully engaged in this approach, you override your brain’s common sense—its instincts and intuition—to slow down or take it easier during exercise. Under the faulty pain principle, your body is being forced in the anaerobic zone rather than aerobic zone. This is a problem because it further increases the risk of the aerobic deficiency syndrome adding to injuries and ill health and contributes to the high dropout rate seen in people starting and maintaining a good exercise program.
So when someone tells you to push through the pain, ignore the ill-advised recommendation. The last thing you want to do is not listen to your body and override the brain’s better judgment. “No pain, no gain!” is a misguided emotional reaction to being fit and competitive; it’s based on sports marketing and media hype. And it’s irrational.
One group is most vulnerable to the fallout of the “no pain, no gain” philosophy. It’s athletes, and all ages. In fact, this audience is particularly targeted by sports equipment companies, the media, books, and companies that market energy bars and sports drinks. It begins in grade school. Teaching children “no pain, no gain” is an insult on their brain and body. Many of these excessive damaging workouts are encouraged by parents, teachers, and coaches.
Learning bad habits at this age carries poor exercise ethics into adulthood—and sometimes they are turned off to exercise for life. In addition, children and teens have rapidly developing bodies and brains, both of which are more easily damaged by overzealous workouts.
A key factor that differentiates natural from artificial is fatigue. When performing most weight programs, muscles are isolated and worked to the point of fatigue. This is usually not the case with natural outdoor activity, although many people find ways to overstress their bodies.
Fatigue is often glorified because it’s part of the “no pain no gain” image so prevalent in the exercise world. But it defies what most people are attempting to accomplish in a strength training program. This includes better health, stronger muscles and bones, and not impairing endurance and fat burning.
Fatigue diminishes muscle strength by reducing the number of muscle fibers used in an action. It also adversely affects the nervous system, and results in slowing down the action of the muscle—fast actions are less possible, which reduces power. Fatigue also makes one much more vulnerable to injury. Consider these other important factors:
• Fatigue can increase stress hormones and interfere with the fat-burning aerobic system. Natural strength training, where you avoid fatigue, does not create this problem.
• Fatigue can cause muscle weakness. A muscle that’s fatigued won’t contract as many fibers. You want to train your nervous system to contract larger numbers of muscle fibers to develop higher levels of strength.
• A fatigued muscle will require significantly more recovery time. Traditional weight lifting programs suggest forty-eight hours of recovery before working out again. But natural strength training can be done safely every day (although this is not always necessary).
• Because lifting to fatigue is part of the process whereby muscles get much larger (hypertrophy), the potential for muscle imbalance is high. This is caused by overtraining certain muscles with the result of too much bulk in one particular area (such as the biceps) and not enough in another (such as the triceps). This risk is reduced or eliminated with natural strength training.
• Even when performing what I call truly aerobic exercise—that which is associated with increasingly higher levels of fat burning—fatigue should not be a factor. If done correctly, most workouts should end with a feeling that you have sufficient energy to perform the same workout again. This applies to beginners and professional endurance athletes alike.
• Muscle fatigue can result in poor posture and gait irregularity for many hours following a workout. This is often the first stage of injury—ask a fatigued muscle to continue working and the risk for neuromuscular imbalance, or damage to a related joint, ligament, or tendon increases.
• By not training to fatigue, you’ll still achieve the health and fitness results you’re looking for—strong bones and muscles.
This is not to say your muscles won’t get a bit tired and fatigued when working out naturally—but it’s important to avoid significant fatigue. This results in pain and soreness by the next day. Even when moving large stones, chopping wood and other outdoor activities that build full body muscle strength, the same general rule applies.
Many patients used to come to my clinic with problems and complaints about sore, fatigued muscles. Typically, it was a runner with low muscle mass who pushed through every hard run with the result of a stress fracture in the foot or shin, or a triathlete who overtrained with the addition of weight lifting to an already busy schedule. In other cases, it was an inactive person who sustained an overuse injury. John was one of these former patients. With a desk job and no exercise during the past twelve years, John’s activity was restricted to walking from home to car, car to office, then back again at the end of the day. One Saturday morning he decided to clean out the garage, which was full of heavy items from power tools, lawn mowers, and inactive exercise equipment, to an old washing machine and cement blocks. After a couple of hours he felt fatigue and muscle aches, and by early afternoon, he was experiencing shoulder and low back pain. By the end of the day, John’s forty-five-year-old body was hurting all over. Sunday morning, he could hardly get out of bed and remained on the couch all day. Monday afternoon, his wife and older son helped him into my office.
While John recovered with a couple of treatments using biofeedback to correct muscle imbalance, his story is common in both inactive people and athletes in training. Whether it’s too much too soon or the addition of more training into an already full schedule, fatigue is often an indication that you have gone past the point of safety. John’s lesson is one even highly trained endurance athletes, and those lifting weights, can follow: avoid working to fatigue. You’ll build more strength, get less bulky, recover quicker, and the risk of injury and overtraining will be greatly reduced. This also translates to increased competitive performance.
Two other factors associated with fatigue are important to note here:
• Rest. Even when your workout is just right, rest is key for recovery, and an essential part of the process. My training equation is an important consideration for everyone: Training = workout + rest.
Nighttime sleeping provides the best rest. All adults need seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, adolescents needs more.
• Pacing. This is associated with resting between lifting stones or barbells. When performing natural outdoor work, pacing is usually natural too. You drag a log or stone to where you drop it on the ground, think about the size of the next one or analyze where the stone will fit. This recovery is important to maintain and enable you to work for one, two, or more hours. In weight lifting, especially if you’re in a gym, faster pacing is often encouraged by personnel trainers, which can reduce recovery from the previous activity and increase fatigue. After working out on one machine, you usually jump right into another. But resting between each set is essential for the ability of the muscles to recover and fully contract next time. This period of time should be about three minutes or more.
This is not to say that all athletic training is easy, although most of the workouts feel that way. And they should be fun. Dedication, discipline, and getting in touch with your body’s needs are prime factors for success and are often more difficult than the training schedule itself. The typical image of training to exhaustion, which is, in fact, a common training routine, is a myth.
Another factor that helps avoid fatigue is speed. The muscle’s fast-twitch fibers are the ones that provide the most power. Natural strength training involves fast movements. When lifting large stones or dragging logs, you accomplish these tasks more successfully with quick movements. If you’ve ever tried lifting something heavy with a slow pace, you know it’s more difficult. It can also be dangerous as the slow-moving muscle fibers are not as effective and you can hurt yourself due to lack of strength. It’s the nervous system that helps regulate the speed of action.
The importance of the nervous system can be seen in a strength program. The most rapid increases in power occur in the early weeks, before the muscles have a chance to get larger. It’s the nervous system that’s responsible for the increase in strength in part by its fast actions and recruitment of more fast-twitch muscle fibers. For example, in a ten-week program of weight lifting, individuals can significantly increase their strength. But during this period, the increased size of the muscle is not significant. Long-term gains in strength, those that occur after a few months, are due to the addition of increased muscle size that also stimulates more muscle fibers.
Despite the hype in many magazine articles, websites, and elsewhere, strength training does not guarantee improvements in bone strength. In fact, it can sometimes reduce it. Not to mention the potential for fatigue, overtraining, and injury, all of which are too common. So the first thing to do is keep it simple, safe, and natural.
Instead of images of bodybuilder’s bulky muscles, let’s take a lesson from Olympic weight lifters. They want the most strength from their bodies without too much muscle weight gain, which can put them into a higher weight category where competition may be more difficult. Apart from the heavyweight and super heavyweight categories, these athletes generally are not bulky but have very strong muscles and bones—more so than bodybuilders.
Lifting heavier weight with fewer repetitions increases muscle strength and bone density better than lifting lighter weights with higher repetitions. This does not mean more weight is better. To avoid fatigue, overtraining, or causing an acute injury, the amount of weight that might be appropriate is about 80 percent of your one-repetition maximum weight. This is also the weight you can lift about six times before fatigue develops—you don’t want to fatigue your muscles at each workout, so build up slowly to learn your limits.
A heavier weight with less repetition and few activities means a shorter workout. In fact, you may be spending more time resting between reps than lifting! Even more significant is that in the time it takes the average person to travel to a gym and back, he or she could have completed the same workout at home.
For those who are not willing or able to perform regular natural workouts by lifting stones, dragging logs, and chopping wood, consider the alternative of getting some basic equipment for a home workout that will do the same. The plan is to keep it simple and safe. You really only need to perform a couple of routines to build muscle and bone strength, and without interfering with your aerobic system. The two easiest and most effective ones include the dead lift and squat (front, overhead, and/or back). Here are some examples:
• Reps: 1–6 reps in each set.
• Sets: 4 (more if time and energy permit).
• Lifting should be done relatively fast not slow.
• Recovery between sets should be three minutes (timed), more if desired.
• All movements should be smooth and natural.
• As you get stronger, slowly increase the amount of weight rather than repetitions.
• Three times per week, more if time permits.
Here is a sample workout:
• Warm-up: 15 minutes (walk, easy run or other easy aerobic activity)
• Dead lift: 5 reps
• Recovery: 3 minutes
• Squat: 5 reps
• Recovery: 3 minutes
• Repeat above lifts three more times
• Cooldown (same as warm-up)
The most important requirement for performing these workouts is that you are relatively fit and healthy. If you’re injured, have frequent colds, flu, asthma and allergies, or other indications of diminished health, wait until you’ve resolved these issues. In addition, if you don’t have a good aerobic system, developing this is the priority—perform easy aerobic training for three months or more before implementing a strength program.
When starting a strength program, even if you’re familiar with it, begin with less weight and less reps—be very conservative. Take several weeks to build up. There’s no rush. In many cases, use a barbell without added weight so you get used to the movements, then slowly add small amounts of weight every couple of weeks.
If you’re new to lifting weights, I recommend getting some one-on-one guidance with a trained professional who can help you with technique. In the meantime, start on some yard work.
So say good-bye to isolation exercises—those that attempt six-pack abs and bulging biceps. The bottom line is this: get stronger muscles and bones throughout your entire body. A simple, safe and short routine will accomplish this task. The best way to do it is go natural. Make the outdoors your new gym for a more holistic, natural workout. It’s what our ancestors did for eons.
As you can now see, before developing anaerobic function, building the aerobic system is a priority. This is true for everyone—young and old, male and female, competitive athletes and those just wanting optimal health and fitness. Too often, people who have been inactive for a long time rush back into working out without first building an aerobic foundation. As a result, in their hurry to be fit, they get injured, become more prone to illnesses such as chest colds because of a stressed immune system, or are dissatisfied with stagnating results.
In addition, you may unknowingly train the anaerobic system through jogging, running, biking, dance classes, and other seemingly aerobic workouts, including walking. That’s because your level of intensity may be too high. Accurately checking your heart rate will demonstrate this problem. There is a simple solution to avoid this potential roadblock in your quest for optimal fitness. It’s a device called the heart rate monitor. It’s cheap, easy to use, and will help you make amazing fitness gains. It’s the subject of the following chapter.