Do you believe that an exercise schedule of half an hour or so is mandatory to keep you fighting fit? If yes, think again. For, Professor Glen A Gyger, the fitness expert of University of Virginia, thinks otherwise.
Gyger and his colleagues believe even a 10 minute stretch of exercise can be beneficial and enriching. Even though this may not reduce flab fast, it will help you feel good and remain disease free. Even this much, in retrospect, is quite a gain.
An expert committee, in 1988, made standard operating procedures in this context. Notably, Gyger had served as chairman of this committee in past. According to him, ‘many people complain they have no time for ample exercise.’ Ergo, that very year experts prepared a fitness programme of quicky exercises for people hard pressed for time.
According to Gyger, a fitness drill of half an hour daily is essential. But if it’s not possible to do it in one go, it can be divided into 10 minute dues spread out into the day. And each division can be clubbed with your routine working.
Gyger weaved a programme around this core idea. Participants in this regimen were called upon to do 10 minute exercise bits for a total of 15 times in a week. The exercise package included one, 7 to 10 aerobic parks like dancing to music tunes, walking down to pick up morning newspaper, and climbing stairs on way to office. Two, a few of muscle building exercises like weight lifting. Three, some easily doable stretch exercises, to be done in course of routine working at home or in office.
This above package of 10 minute long exercises was clubbed with appropriate diet regimen and tried on 40 people with sedentary work routine. Within 3 weeks of its start, all participants were seen to lose 3 pounds of their weight and gained 10-15% in their ability to perform aerobic exercises. Not only that, their muscle power too increased by a whopping 40 to 100%.
Other improvements noted were a rise in body’s flexibility and a fall in blood cholesterol level. Most of all, the snippet exercises jelled easily with daily chores. Indeed, participants gained immensely in terms of health and smartness. In recent times these short duration exercises haver attracted a lot of public attention. Even the medical experts are recommending them to their white collar overweight patients. Indeed, those who are already used to a regular exercising schedule, may not benefit from these shorties. Yet, as and when they are hard pressed for time, they may adopt these mini exercises as time gap arrangement. Now even experiments are indicating that a little-of exercise too can be effective.
For example, using staircases rather than lift, parking vehicle a little distance away from home and turn walking back home, are as good as exercises done in a gymnasium. An overdose of mental tension and a negative approach to life situations breed myriad of health sapping problems. This notwithstanding innate ability of human constitution to surmount stress and strain on its own to a great extent.
When human body is subjected to stress, it releases a hormone ‘adrenaline’ which prepares a man to face the imminent challenge. In present times most of mental stress sterns from social pressures to achieve lofty targets, to safeguard careers and to shock-absorb financial liabilities. All these agigate young and old alike.
Cure for mental tension
Today elevated stress levels are so common that their character as principal causative factor is seldom taken seriously.
Regular exercise, especially the one that engages your total attention, is a good antidote for mental tension.
It disengages mind, even if temporarily, from mundane anxieties. It deflects mind, so to say, in a totally different direction. Exercise subdues anger and exhaustion, ups your personality and self confidence, and compels you to find time for leisure and refreshment.
Apart from toning up our body systems, some exercises, especially the long duration aerobics, done before or after the principal work out, give a positive euphoric feeling.
But, a word of caution. It is well to remember that overdoing of exercise in frantic effort to find peace would produce just the opposite result. For then it would be yet another torture for a busy and tense modern day Adam. And health problems instead of going down will catch an upward spiral.
Some tips to overcome mental tension
❑ Review your lifestyle.
❑ Reset your priorities in life.
❑ Elaborate your problems.
❑ Take hot water bath.
❑ Take light exercise.
❑ Go on a long walk.
❑ Do aerobics and stretch exercises.
❑ Play outdoor games like tennis, badminton, swimming etc.
❑ Sit for meditation regularly.
❑ Take your food timely and in apt amounts.
❑ Don’t depend overly on tea and coffee to lift your sagging spirits.
❑ Take adequate of Vitamin C enriched foods as these have in them hormones that are sedating in nature.
❑ Remember having a positive attitude is like winning half the battle even before fighting it.
❑ Take ample rest, and adequate sleep.
Calibrate your tension level
❑ Fiddling with hair, or with nearly objects.
❑ Laughing loudly, breaking into uproarious laughter on petty issues.
❑ Blinking nonstop, jerking neck or limbs.
❑ Inability to sit steady for long.
❑ To go on a feasting spree, or on a fasting spell.
❑ Consuming too much of tea, coffee or liquor.
❑ Losing your control for no rhyme or reason.
❑ Easy to break into tears.
Walk fast, walk long
The famed actress of much acclaimed foreign films ‘Silence of the Lambs’, Judy Foster has an obsession for maintaining a slim and trim figure. The one time anchor for the famous TV Show Opera Vinfray, Judy worked hard to infuse life into her role in ‘Silence of the Lambs’. In the process thereof, she lost 20-25 kg of her body weight. And she ascribed this feat absolutely to long distance walks.
Judy claims emphatically that there is no better way, than walking, for physical agility and sound health. This notwithstanding that most people are chary of counting foot walk as a regular exercise.
Yet, fact remains that walking alone is one such exercise which entails a balanced action of all skeletal muscles even as heart beat, blood circulation, and blood pressure remain normal, sugar and blood cholestrol levels remains in check, and the pedestrian remains in a cheerful state of mind.
Talking of calories, a brisk walk consumes about 100 calories in an hour. If walking is top speed, it may consume about 300 calories in same time.
Talking of psychological impact, speed walking trigers release of natural tranquillizers called endorphins which have a soothing effect on mind and body. From a physical angle, foot march is akin to aerobic exercise which stimulates heart beat making more of oxygenated blood to reach muscles and body tissues. Regular walks increase cardiac and pulmonary outputs, keeping blood pressure and heart beats rock steady. As opposed to jogging or running fast, walking entails no danger of significant pressure on joint and bones.
And Judy experienced magical effects of distant walks in first person. She began by making necessary changes in her food habits and adopted brisk walking as a regular exercise. That reduced her weight considerably, and increased her buoyancy. And yet, there is more to walking than a physical act of foot dragging. You ought to know the right of doing it lest you injure yourself in process or benefit less in terms of health and well being.
So, take care to keep your back upright as you walk. Any tilt in backbone, forwards or backward, wont add to convenience of walking, but would surely give you a backache. Using hip joints as fulcrum, take your steps forward, swinging shoulders in ease and rhythm. Experts opine that straining of neck as you walk, is a bad habit. It only adds to your discomfiture.
As you trot along, carry your back in upward thrusts, not in forward push. This augurs well with your centre of gravity. Consequently your legs aren’t unduly encumbered with your body weight, and your feet move freely in long strides. Changing old habits is no easy matter and calls for concerted efforts. Ergo, if you desire to change flaws in your routine postures and walking style, begin rehearsing in earnest. Being by walking as you would want to, on a limited stretch of land. Then bail out walking. A few steps backwards at the start of exercise, is worth its while to synchronise your steps and rhythm. This also puts paid to hurried disorientation of gait as you shoot out for a walk. Rather than looking straight forward, it is better to look all around in phased manner so that neck gets chance to rotate and doesn’t get stiff. Your forward thrust should come all from the leg on the back front. In brisk walking, try concentrating on short quick steps to begin with. Thereafter push off forward prudently applying your back leg and foot. This will see you off to a gait of speed as well as comfort.
Exercise helps mental health too
The top ranking world chess player Grand Master Gary Kasparov gets into preparation mode for his international events well before six months of official schedule. He does this by way of myriad physical activities like jogging, weight lifting, swimming and cycling, so that when at the end of it all he sits on board of chess, he has the physical fitness of ace athlete. For mental alertness, he avers, physical agility is paramount, the two complementing one another perfectly.
Research work has show that smaritans who stroll 3 days a week for 50 minutes time have sharper intellect than those of their age group who refrain from long walks. Their thoughts, perceptions, and memory power are far superior to their sedentary colleagues. The difference is ascribable to nerve growth factor (NGF), to nervine tonic secreted thick and fast in course of physical exercise. NGF facilitates growth of dendrites, the branching appendices of nerve cells, which receive outside signals/stimuli and ferry them onwards in nervine circuit. NGF also helps in manufacturing two important brains chemicals : one—dopamine (energy rich neurotransmitter), two—acetylcholine (neurotransmitter for memory and intellect). This, incidentely, is all that Kasparov’s cerbral acumen is all about.
Women who jogs and exercise daily remain saved from age related cerebral lapses. And this is supported by a study conducted by San Francisco campus of University of California on 6000 women aged 65 year and above. It concluded that physical labour, jogging and exercising saved women from losing out on their mental faculties as they grow older in years.
The report highlighting this study was tabled in a sitting at American Academy of Neurology in Philadelphia. The women volunteers for this experiment, the report said, were divided in 4 groups, and their intellectual acumen tested, first at the start of study, and then after a gap of 8 years. What came to light was this that greater the degree of physical exercise undertaken by a subject, lesser was the fall recorded in her memory, concentration, and such like mental faculties. Neurophysician Dr. Christini Yaafi who was associated with this study said : light exercise is good for women, and more of exercise is all the more beneficial. At the same time studies conducted on animals, at ‘National Institute of Aging’ affiliated to ‘National Institute of Health’ in America revealed that physical activities and biochemical constitution of human brain are co-related. According to researches manual labour and physical exercise trigger several molecular, cellular and biochemical reactions.
No doubt, physical exercise is vital for a disciplined life style and vibrant living. Exercising comes easy, provided your willpower is strong. And it doesn’t demand too much of you. All you must do it to include exercise in the list of your routine chores. Take your physical activities to a level that sweat flow from your body in streams. Scouting, running, swimming ought to be part of your exercising schedule. For these are within your realm and reach.
If it is not possible to exercise everyday, do it three or four times in a weak, each session lasting for 30 to 40 minutes time. Don’t treat exercise as a formal obligation, instead, enjoy it as a refreshing break which promises you lots of frills and thrills.
Abstain from doing whatsoever makes exercise a cumbersome drill. Being an exercise crazy fitness freak serves no purpose. Your body has its limitations—which shouldn’t be exceed. Exercise can be executed even on single spot by way of manoeauvring abdomen back and other body parts.
It is important that exercise is easily doable and enjoyable. Like, use ladder or staircase rather than lift while going upstairs. Make it a habit to go scouting on errands. Take your dog for a long trek. Pick up some new engaging and stimulating assignments. Remember any piece of work that burns your body energy—is good for you, and makes you fit and fine.
A rich diet should invariably go with exercise. Include fresh fruits, green vegetables, soups etc in your everyday food. Here below are some tips to make you health and fitness savvy.
Fruits : Eat seasonal fruits. Cut them into small pieces and savour with citrus or pineapple juice—or their mixed juice.
Salad : Have a pick of choicest tomatoes, carrot and cucumber. Cut them into small pieces and top with honey, lime juice, salt etc. This adds to taste as well as nutritive value of salad.
Soup : Soups made of carrot, cabbage, tomato, spinach etc. are worth having a weakness for. Soups not only give you extra energy, but also make you feel fresh and buoyant.
Balanced intake of water is beneficial for health: To remain live and kicking, make sure you down 8 to 10 glasses of water everyday. Apart from that, coconut water, whey, lemon drink etc are elixirs for mind and body. These health-drinks are good props for sagging spirits.
Sound sleep is vital for health : And rightly so. Here is how. When you are in deep sleep your body secrets growth hormone. This hormone sets pace for your body’s growth and development. This ensures that everyday wear and tear of body cells and tissues is adequately taken care of. For a balanced and uninterrupted secretion of this hormone a minimum 8 hours of hassle free sleep is mandatory.
Think positive : Having a constructive view point is benediction for brain cells. If you are obessed with your obesity, and feel low and lost, your problem will go on increasing. You’ll have to think big. Like, you are capable of doing almost anything and everything. The day you develop this perspective, your mind will automatically go in right direction.
Now or never : First of all decide upon your aim and objective. Then work towards it. If you make sincere efforts, success wouldn’t be hard to come by. Have a friend who is inspiring and encouraging. Unleash your latent powers and give them a right direction. This done, success is bound to follow suit.
Exercise to the beats of music
Body reacts to rhythmic beats of music most naturally, and that’s the reason why it has found place in fitness programmes.
Scientific investigations have proved that music is extremely significant to human life. It not only relaxes a tired body, it also infuses vigour and freshness into it. Ergo, music is deemed ideal for exercise. That is, you dance your body to the beat of music, and that constitutes your physical exercise. Aerobics has emerged as the most popular form of this exercise. Aerobics literally means exercising with air or oxygen. And the name was given by Dr. Keneth Kooper, an American fitness expert. He was the first person to expound that body must be provided with as much of oxygen as possible. That bloods cells and tissues with extra oxygen, causing them to release more energy in course of respiration.
Aerobics entail toning up of muscles, joints of arms and legs, and the back region. It begins with a gentle warm up which gradually becomes a floor dance look alike.
Carefully chosen set of aerobics not only oxygenates body aptly, it also increases its resilience and resistance power. All the same, you enjoy the beats of music heartily. For, the synergy of music and body movements helps you express and unfold yourself most naturally.
Some believe aerobics is only for girls. Nothing could be farther from truth. Indeed it may have been true initially in the beginning. But as of now, it is equally popular with gals and guys. Likewise, some believe aerobics is only for the young. This too isn’t true. People upto the age of 35 qualify for it, the rider being they aren’t patients of blood pressure or heart disease. Better still, get yourself medically examined before taking up aerobics.
It is pertinent to note that unlike most other exercises which bring down body weight, aerobics have nothing to do with weight loss. They are merely calorie burning maneavoures. Albeit if clubbed with balancing of routine diet, a check on body weight is feasible. Reason being, as you already know, prudence in eating and drinking is vital for a slim and well structured body. Your food should be such that gives you necessary proteins, vitamins and minerals along with required calories. Those who are obessed with the idea of dieting, are on a wrong track. Unless advised by experts, dieting (so-called) shouldn’t be attempted. For a good looking body dieting hinge is a strict no-no. To look good what you need is regular exercise and disciplined life style shorn of avoidable stress, intoxicants and smoking; and a good night’s sleep. And more importantly, a careful selection of foods and drinks. For that you will have to say bye to sweat meats, fried foods and creamy and fatty cuisines.
Cautions that go with exercise
Several queries are put to me regarding exercise. And some of these are frequent and common place. Discussed here below are answers to these often asked questions.
I am frequently asked : What is the ideal time for exercise? Truly speaking, there is no such thing as ‘ideal time’ for exercise. As and when you find time for it, be sure, that happens to be the ideal time for exercise. Some believe evening time is best as between 5 to 5.30 p.m. body’s metabolic activities are at their peak. Yet the surmise is not supported by technical evidence.
Many believe morning time is apt. Because this time, they aver, is best for concentration. Some like exercising while returning from office, and that, naturally, helps them best. You too, can choose a time of your liking, and get going, as that time would doubtless prove ideal for you.
Talking of gals, they are ever so eager to reduce, before they get married. It would help them better if they stick to exercising and diet-reform for reducing flab and waist-line. Nothing like it if you have a jim nearby. If possible, hire a physical trainer to oversee your workouts. If you exercise for 3 to 5 days a week, each time for a stretch of 35 to 40 days, you will definitely succeed in shedding extra weight.
Now a word about ideal exercising machine. What is one gadget useful for training at home? In my opinion, nothing beats tread mill for in-home exercise. It keeps your entire body fit and trim. And you have a choice to alter your speed and application on roll. This breaks monotomy and gives you refreshing change and variety as you trudge along.
Some people are extremely fond of eating, and equally fanatic about their physical training. They exercise hard, and thereafter, eat wildly. With the result, instead of reducing, they shoot up in bulk weight.
So, for them, exercise is ineffective. To such maniacs my advice is they give up their craze for soft drinks, cafeinated eats, and sugary and fatty snacks. These are the items which add to your body weight very substantially.
Another point to be noted is physiological thirst which follows a workout session. Often this need of water is shoned aside people scamper for eats. Ergo, demand for water needs to be addressed first. Then and then only you should reach out for a square meal.
Pregnancy is another period when ladies had health problems. Indeed a full drawn exercise is harmful at this stage. Albeit moving and evening walks, in fair moderation, serve purpose. Begin with short distance walk, and increase distance in a phased manner. Forget about slimming or reducing on waistline as long as you are expectant. Exercise is no guarantee of a safe delivery. All it can help is in terms of good health of new born.
Rest of the fitness queries hover around putting-on-weight. Some complain of their thin legs or bony arms which are a mismatch in fancy clothing. For people as these, first requirement is to know their ideal weight as per the standard medical chart of height-weight norms. If you are distinctly underweight, then only you should think of increasing your diet both in quality and quantity. For this do consult an expert Nutritionist. All the same talk to a physical training expert who will guide you on how you can tone up different parts of your body in sync and synergy.
