A Beginners Guide to Exercise and Fitness

Exercise is becoming a bigger and bigger issue each year. Over the last 20 years people have started becoming significantly more sedentary. Coupled with a reduction in the cost of food production, this has lead to a staggering rise in the numbers of people that are overweight or obese. As a result health care systems are coming under increased pressure as more people are suffering from weight related diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Also due to increasing health and safety regulations and greater accessibility to public transport and private car ownership, both children and adults are exercising far less than they used to. So, what is the answer? Well, the only solution is for people to get active again. Time to educate the people, and yourself, on what exercise is all about.

The Three Types of Exercise

Exercises are generally grouped into three types depending on the overall effect they have on the human body:

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Flexibility exercises such as stretching improve the range of motion of muscles and joints. Yoga and Pilates are two popular types of flexibility exercise.
Aerobic exercises such as walking and running focus on increasing cardiovascular endurance. Circuit training and martial arts also provide good cardio exercise.
Anaerobic exercises such as weight training or sprinting increase short-term muscle strength. Bodybuilding is the result of anaerobic exercise done to extreme levels.

Physical exercise provides the following benefits:

Maintaining a healthy weight
Building and maintaining healthy bones and joints
Repairing and building new muscles
Promoting physiological well-being
Reducing surgical risks
Strengthening the immune system

The Benefits of Exercise and Fitness Training

Frequent exercise has been shown to help prevent or to cure major illnesses such as high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, insomnia, cancer and depression, and many more diseases. Researchers have shown that three 10 minute walks burn as many calories and exercise your heart as well as one 30 minute walk. Exercise can also increase energy and raise your threshold for pain. There is conflicting evidence as to whether vigorous exercise (more than 70% of VO2 max) is more or less beneficial than moderate exercise (40 to 70% of VO2 max). However studies have shown that vigorous exercise executed by healthy individuals can effectively increase opioid peptides (aka endorphins, a naturally occurring opiate that in conjunction with other neurotransmitters is responsible for exercise induced euphoria and has been shown to be addictive), positively influence hormone production (i.e. increase testosterone and growth hormone), and help prevent neuromuscular diseases. Some of these benefits can be realized by moderate exercise but to a much lesser degree.

Common Fitness Myths

Many common myths have arisen surrounding exercise, some of which have a basis in reality, and some which are completely false. Myths include:

That over exercise can cause death
That fat weighs more than muscle
Spot reduction of fat is possible
The person who invented jogging died jogging
Exercise turn muscle into fat

Spot reduction

It is a common belief that training a particular body part will preferentially shed the fat on that part; for example, that doing sit-ups is the most direct way to reduce subcutaneous belly fat. This is false: you cannot reduce fat from one area of the body to the exclusion of others. Most of the energy derived from fat gets to the muscle through the bloodstream and reduces stored fat in the entire body. Sit-ups may improve the size and shape of abdominal muscles but will not specifically target belly fat for loss. Instead, such exercise may help reduce overall body fat, affecting all parts of the body as determined by genetics. In fact, belly fat will often be the last fat removed from the body. There is some evidence to suggest that spot reduction of fat may be possible.

Turning Muscle into Fat

Some people incorrectly believe that muscle tissue will turn into fat once a person stops exercising. In reality, fat tissue and muscle tissue are fundamentally different. However, the more common expression of this myth “muscle will turn to fat” has a grain of truth. Although a muscle cell will not become a fat cell, the material that makes up muscle can in fact turn to fat. The catabolism of muscle fibers releases protein, which can be converted to glucose that can be burned as fuel, and excesses of which can be stored as fat.

Although the composition of a body part can change toward less muscle and more fat, so that a cross-section of the upper-arm for example, will have a greater area corresponding to fat and a smaller area corresponding to muscle, this is not muscle “turning to fat”. It is simply a combination of muscle atrophy and increased fat storage in a given body part. Another element of increased fatty deposits, is that of diet, as most trainees will not significantly reduce their diet in order to compensate for the lack of exercise/activity.

Building a 6 Pack, Abdominal Muscles and the Spot Reduction Myth

Abdominal muscles are like any other muscle tissue; they don’t necessarily respond to hundreds of repetitions. If an individual can easily do 15 reps of any ab exercise, they should consider switching exercises or adding resistance. Abdominal muscles can be over-trained like any other muscle. It is important that abdominal muscles have enough rest to recover from a bout of exercise. Over-training will result in diminished gains. Futhermore, men and women all have the same anatomy that responds the same way to exercise. Men and women must follow the same rules regarding diet, exercise and life-style to achieve aesthetic and health related goals.

Too Much Exercise and Over Training

Too much exercise can be harmful, however for those looking to lose weight and get fit, too much exercise is rarely the problem. The body needs sufficient rest, which is why most health experts say one should exercise every other day or 3 times a week. Without proper rest, the chance of stroke or other circulation problems increases, and muscle tissue may develop slowly. Over-exercising does more harm than good. For many activities, especially running, there are also significant injuries that occur with poorly regimented exercise schedules. In extreme instances, over-exercising induces serious performance loss.

Unaccustomed overexertion of muscles leads to rhabdomyolysis (damage to muscle) most often seen in new army recruits. Stopping excessive exercise suddenly can also create a change in mood. Feelings of depression and agitation can occur when withdrawal from the natural endorphins produced by exercise occurs. Physical exercise releases opioid peptides or endorphins, opiates that exhibit synergetic effects with other neurotransmitters, causing exercise euphoria, also known as “runners high”, and causing addiction to physical exercise and possibly decreased sex drive.

This usually leads to over-exercising and those suffering exercise addiction are often described as “gym rat”, “gym addict”, “exercise freak”, etc. While one set of joints and muscles may have the tolerance to withstand multiple marathons, another body may be damaged by 20 minutes of light jogging. This must be determined by each person.

Exercise Improves Cognitive Function

In the long term, exercise helps the brain by:

Increasing the blood and oxygen flow to the brain
Increasing growth factors that help create new nerve cells
Increasing chemicals in the brain that help cognition

Some activities can fall into more than one category of exercise. For instance: cycling can be used for endurance or high-intensity interval training; weightlifting is resistance training and can be high-density exercise with certain workout designs. Sometimes the terms ‘dynamic’ and ’static’ are used. ‘Dynamic’ exercises such as steady running, tend to produce a lowering of the diastolic blood pressure during exercise, due to the improved blood flow. Conversely, static exercise (such as weight-lifting) can cause the systolic pressure to rise significantly.

Breathing

Active exhalation during physical exercise helps the body to increase its maximum lung capacity, and oxygen uptake. This results in greater cardiac efficiency, since the heart has to do less work to oxygenate the muscles, and there is also increased muscular efficiency through greater blood flow. Consciously breathing deeply during aerobic exercise helps this development of the heart lung efficiency. Also different types of exercise require, or recommend, different types of breathing. Martial arts often emphasis deep abdominal breathing, sometimes in through the nose and out through the mouth, sometimes only through the nose, such as in some Tai Chi Chuian stlyes. Swimming obviously breaks these rules and breathing is in through the mouth and out through the nose.