The Joy of Exercise

Oxygen is the ignition factor in the burning of energy from the foods you eat. A good supply is always necessary for your body’s metabolic processes to take place efficiently. When your cells (particularly the cells of your brain) have an adequate supply, you feel well, have stamina, and don’t tire easily. If you tend to feel tired often, get depressed easily, or have trouble thinking clearly, it is likely that your body is not getting all the oxygen you need. In short, you are physically unfit.

Unfit people find themselves breathless after climbing stairs, lack concentration when they get involved in a demanding mental task, and are often too weary in the evenings to do anything but plunk themselves in front of a television set. They also tend to rely on stimulants or depressants such as alcohol to relax or to keep going.

Taking aerobic exercise changes all that. Any sustained-rhythm movement that puts constant demand on your heart, raising your pulse rate to between 120 and 160 beats a minute, and continues to develop your lung capacity will bring about a number of important changes in your body. It will:

Anaerobic exercise, such as running a hundred-yard dash or gymnastics, involves a high level of effort sustained over only a short period of time. The effort is such that during the activity you run into “oxygen debt” which means that you use up more oxygen than you take in. This is the opposite of an aerobic activity where, once you are relatively fit, you are able to process oxygen efficiently enough to continue running or bicycling for hours without incurring any oxygen debt. Anaerobic activities can be useful for developing muscle tone and power and for training your body to produce great bursts of strength and movement, but an anaerobic activity cannot be sustained long enough to be of real value to your lungs and heart and so to overall fitness.

Isometric exercises

Isometric exercises are those you do without any actual movement in your joints. They are muscle-tensing exercises. For instance, try putting your palm against the wall and pushing hard. Nothing happens in terms of body movement, although the muscles of your arm become very tense. All isometric exercises are based on the idea that you push or pull against objects that are immovable. Tensing muscles in this way brings about an increase in their size in the same way that weight lifting does, for whenever a muscle is put under strain it gradually increases in endurance and bulk. Isometric exercises are often “sold” to women on the grounds that they are effortless—the lazy way to exercise. In fact, they do require some energy to perform but nowhere near enough to be useful in building overall fitness. They have another disadvantage, for contracting muscles in this static way causes blood pressure to rise. In anyone with a tendency to heart disease this can be dangerous.

Yoga, weight lifting, ballet bar work, Calisthenics

Isotonic exercises such as calisthenics, yoga, weight lifting, ballet bar work, and many sports are more dynamic. They demand real movement in muscles and joints and the rhythmic lengthening and shortening of your muscles. For instance, with weight lifting, when you bend your elbow to raise the weight to shoulder level, your biceps contracts as the triceps at the back of your upper arm lengthens. Then when you straighten out your arm again, lowering the weight, your triceps is contracted and the biceps is lengthened. This kind of repeated lengthening and shortening of antagonistic muscles helps you develop muscle strength and tone and freedom of movement in your joints. It is also useful in correcting a muscle area, such as the abdomen or the upper leg, that has become flaccid and flabby. Some isotonics, such as yoga or stretching exercises, are important for developing flexibility and suppleness.

The best total exercise program you can devise for yourself involves some form of isotonics, such as the stretching exercises, done for at least fifteen minutes three times a week, and thirty minutes of aerobic activity, also done at least three times a week. You can alternate doing aerobics one day and isotonics the next if you like. Unless you are determined to become an athlete and the particular sport you have chosen demands work in isometrics or anaerobics, you need not worry about them. Your aerobic activity will build overall fitness, improve your mental and emotional state, and give you energy. The isotonic stretching will give you grace and suppleness and will fill in any muscle-toning gaps your aerobic activity leaves, as well as improving the extensibility of your muscles and tendons. For you are after freedom of movement and endurance, not building big muscles, which is decidedly not what health and fitness are all about.

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