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If you don't know that regular exercise can help you live longer and reduce your risks for a host of diseases, then chances are you've been living under a rock. Come out from under!
Recent studies show:
- Leisure-time physical activity is associated with a reduced risk of premature death, even after genetic disorders are taken into account (Journal of the American Medical Association).
- Improving fitness appears to help men live longer following a heart attack (The National Exercise and Heart Disease Project).
- Lifestyle physical activity, such as taking the stairs, gardening, and walking instead of driving, is as effective as structured gym workouts in improving fitness (Journal of the American Medical Association).
- Even infrequent exercise helps postmenopausal women live longer (Journal of the American Medical Association).
Want to know where to begin? For starters, just think about opportunities to increase your physical activity when you go about your daily business. Instead of putting off the trip upstairs until you have more than one reason to go up there, go up any time an opportunity presents itself. In stores or at work, pretend the elevator doesn't exist. And why on earth wait for the "best" available parking space when you could park away from the crowds and take a few extra steps to the building? If you think you don't have time for these changes, think again. Not taking a few extra minutes now may actually shave off years from your life.
Exercise is so important for a number of reasons. For one, your body was designed to be used. Like any fine tool or instrument, it can get rusty or off-key if it just sits around, but when it's regularly tuned up, it gives you optimal performance. Fitness helps you to look and feel good. And let's face it. When you are not fit, it's near impossible to feel good about yourself.
How do you know whether or not you're fit? That depends on lots of things, such as your age, overall health, family history, exercise routines and eating habits. Granted, you can't change all of these influences, but you'll find if you work on the ones you can do something about, your overall health is bound to improve.
What is fitness?
Fitness can be described as a condition that helps us look, feel and do our best. That means being able to rely on your body to perform when you need it to, whether it be doing daily household tasks, enjoying a brisk walk on a beautiful fall day, running a race or bench pressing your own body weight. Only you can set your fitness goals. Your present fitness level, age, health, skills, interest and convenience are among the factors you should consider. If you start out slowly, you may find that a simple success spurs you on to take it to the next level.
The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports outlines the following five basic components to physical fitness:
- Cardiorespiratory endurance - The ability to deliver oxygen and nutrients to tissues and to remove wastes throughout sustained periods of time. Long runs and swims are among the methods employed in measuring this component.
- Muscular strength - The ability of a muscle to exert force for a brief period of time. Upper-body strength, for example, can be measured by various weight-lifting exercises.
- Muscular endurance - The ability of a muscle, or a group of muscles, to sustain repeated contractions or to continue applying force against a fixed object. Push-ups are often used to test endurance of arm and shoulder muscles.
- Flexibility - The ability to move joints and use muscles through their full range of motion. The sit-and-reach test is a good measure of flexibility of the lower back and backs of the upper legs.
- Body composition - Often considered a component of fitness. It refers to the makeup of the body in terms of lean mass (muscle, bone, vital tissue and organs) and fat mass. A particular ratio of fat to lean mass is an indication of fitness, and the right types of exercise will help you decrease body fat and increase or maintain muscle mass.
Your exercise program should include something to improve each of these five basic fitness components. Each workout should begin with a warm-up and end with a cool-down. A warm-up generally consists of five to 10 minutes of low intensity movements, such as walking, slow jogging, knee lifts, arm circles or trunk rotations. A cool-down consists of a minimum of five to 10 minutes of slow walking, low-level exercise, combined with stretching. As a general rule, you should try to get moderate intensity exercise, like brisk walking, most days of the week.
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External Sources
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Journal of the American Medical Association
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President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports
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This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.
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