If you run 1500 meters, say, in 6-8 minutes, then such a load is approximately 50 percent aerobic and 50 percent anaerobic, that is, the intensity of the run is such that more oxygen must be used than can be obtained, and sometimes the runner has to slow down or stop altogether because he is out of breath.And if a person runs non-stop for 12 minutes, then his work is 80 percent aerobic and 20 percent anaerobic. That is why the 12-minute test is a test not of anaerobic, but of aerobic capacity.A person can have high anaerobic capacity and be in a non-critical state. Here is an example. We are talking about the medical examination of Leslie Crawford, an athlete from Trinidad who won the gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. He showed a best time there of 10.06 seconds. A year after his victory, I learned that he was supposed to drive through Dallas on his way to Austin for a competition called the Texas Relays. I persuaded him to come to our clinic for an examination. He agreed. And soon the phenomenal data appeared. At 6 feet 11 inches tall, he weighed 186 pounds and had a body fat percentage of just 9 percent. Crawford is a very muscular man, but his training is almost exclusively sprint-oriented. When we asked him to step on the treadmill to test his cardiovascular endurance, he reached complete exhaustion after just 16 minutes of walking at a heart rate of 187 beats per minute. As with Mr. Texas, his endurance score was “poor.” Is it possible to be an Olympic sprint champion and not have the strongest edginess? It turns out you can. But as if to emphasize the paradox of the situation, just a few days later he won the 100-meter race at the Texas Relays.How is that so? The answer, as with strength training, lies in the specificity of the training. Crawford and many other world-class sprinters focus only on building muscle mass and preparing for short bursts of effort, and not at all on improving aerobic endurance.5. Aerobic exercise is exercise that requires a large amount of oxygen for a long time and inevitably forces the body to improve its systems responsible for oxygen transport, that is, exercise that is performed by the body in the so-called steady state.Let's look at it from a slightly different angle. It is worth knowing that, sitting quietly and reading a book, you are in an aerobic steady state. Why? Because you breathe regularly and rhythmically and will continue to inhale and exhale air as long as you live. Your main difference from, say, a marathon runner is that his steady state is accompanied by a more significant release of energy than yours. The level of its energy production is 12-15 times higher than the level of your basic metabolism, or the level of energy release in a state of rest. Your breathing rate and heart rate are not high enough to place the same increased demands on your body as a runner's. And the body's response to increased demands is noted in many types of aerobic exercise and is called the training effect, or positive physical changes.
Here are some such changes: the total volume of blood increases so much that the possibilities of oxygen transport improve, and therefore a person shows greater endurance during intense physical exertion; the volume of the lungs increases, and some studies link the growth of the vital capacity of the lungs with a longer life expectancy; the heart muscle is strengthened, it is better supplied with blood, with each beat the heart is able to throw out more blood; the content of high-density lipoproteins increases, the ratio of the total amount of cholesterol and HDL decreases, which reduces the risk of developing atherosclerosis. Aerobic exercises, as a rule, are associated with covering long distances at a slow pace, and not with performing high-speed bursts. But even for athletes who specialize in anaerobic sports, results improve if they increase their aerobic capacity through long-distance running.The training of American football players perfectly illustrates this principle. Before the great era of aerobics arrived in the late 1960s, coaches taught American football players to focus all their efforts on speed training and building muscle mass. As a result, the players became strong and fast, but their energy was depleted by the second half of the match. Maybe that's why the frequency of injuries in American football in the second half of the game is noticeably higher than in the first. It is also well known that the greatest number of skier injuries occur at the end of a hard training day, right before the lifts close. And this fact once again makes us pay attention to the connection between fatigue and injuries and shows the need to develop aerobic capabilities in all athletes, regardless of the type of sport.The experience of consulting many professional athletes and their coaches has convinced that a serious annual course of aerobics for representatives of various sports provides at least the following advantages:1. Reducing the frequency of injuries.2. Better performance in the second half of training.3. High performance in competitions.4. Aerobics will help a professional athlete to extend his sporting life.So, I have described five categories of physical exercises. It must be remembered that they are not mutually exclusive. As I said, almost any aerobic exercise has an anaerobic component. And, of course, for those who do aerobic sports (for example, running or swimming), it is important to add strength training to the main endurance training.What is it connected with? There are at least two reasons: by improving the strength and mobility of the main muscle groups, you can achieve better results in any sport; paying attention to the development of muscles and their elasticity, reduce the risk of injuries, no matter what kind of sport you enjoy.Body Weight Calculation...we use a scientific method to determine the body fat component, measuring the percentage of body fat by weighing under water and measuring the thickness of the skin-fat folds in different parts of the body. But under normal conditions, this procedure is either impossible or too expensive. Therefore, we have developed a variant of the well-known Megoni formula so that everyone can calculate their ideal weight.The formula is as follows: a man takes his height in inches, multiplies this figure by 4 and subtracts 128. A woman needs to multiply her height in inches by 3.5 and then subtract 108. This formula is designed for a man with an average bone width and a fat mass of 15-19 percent of body weight, and a woman of average build with a fat mass of 18-22 percent.We believe that the relative fat mass for men of athletic build is 15 percent, and for women 18 percent. But in any case, this figure should not exceed 19 percent for men and 22 for women. Studies show that the balance between fat content and active body mass is provided by these ratios. This allows the body to develop harmoniously and achieve a good level of health. For example, my height is 6 feet 1 inch, or 73 inches. Multiply 73 by 4, we get 292, then subtract 128 and get 164 pounds. Over the past 20 years, my weight has fluctuated between 164 and 170 pounds. But you may notice: “I have a wide bone. Is this formula suitable for me?” Yes, but then add 10 percent to the final figure. To determine how wide bone you have, use the following rule. Measure the circumference of the wrist of your dominant hand, the hand you write with. A man is broad-boned if his wrist circumference is more than 7 inches (18 cm); a woman is more than 6.5 inches (16.5 cm). If the circumference is smaller, you are considered medium- or fine-boned. For example, when former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach came to us for a checkup, we determined that at 6 feet 11 inches (193 cm), he would weigh 175 pounds (77 kg) if he were medium- or fine-boned, but his wrist circumference was much larger than 7 inches (18 cm), so we added 17 pounds (7.7 kg) (10 percent) to his weight, giving him a figure of 184 pounds (84.7 kg). This is exactly what his ideal weight should be. However, accurate weighing methods showed that Staubach weighed 186 pounds (86 kg), and his body fat was only 9 percent. It turns out that, despite the fact that his weight exceeds the ideal, the extra pounds are attributed to bone or muscle mass, and not to fat, that is, for a well-trained athlete, excess muscle mass can lead to a weight that exceeds the calculated one. But for most of us, the formula given above remains fair.Note: too low a fat content in the body can cause some anomalies or disorders. Do not exhaust the body with too few calories. This advice will seem strange, because in America there are much more problems with overeating than with malnutrition. But there is also a growing tendency to voluntarily consume a small amount of calories. Sometimes this gives sad results.One of the most common forms of malnutrition in wealthy people is described in the special literature as anorexia nervosa. Young girls sometimes suffer from this disease. They exhaust themselves, sharply limiting their nutrition, sometimes even trying to induce vomiting. Here, immediate qualified help from a psychologist is needed.But there is another type of eating disorder that is not as well known, although in some cases more dangerous, because it can imperceptibly affect a completely healthy person. It is a condition called “nutritional arrhythmia” - it occurs due to malnutrition.Dr. Thomas J. Bassler, in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, described the case of twelve highly skilled marathon runners who had set new personal records for speed or distance. All of them died, mostly in their sleep. At the time of their death, their weight was equal to or close to the minimum for an adult. All of them had severely restricted their diet, consuming only the bare minimum of calories, fat, and other nutrients. The true cause of these runners’ deaths is unknown, but the term “nutritional arrhythmia” was coined to explain what had happened. The fact is that they had eaten so little that their hearts did not have enough energy to work under high physical exertion. This led to cardiac arrest.Four Basic Phases of Aerobic Exercise1. Warming up is important, but unfortunately, it is often ignored, resulting in muscle strains and tears.
The warm-up has two goals: first, to stretch and warm up the muscles of the back and limbs; second, to cause some acceleration of the heart rate so as to smoothly increase the pulse to values ​​corresponding to the aerobic phase. It has been shown that even patients with serious heart diseases (for example, angina) can perform a fairly large amount of aerobic work without experiencing chest pain, if they take their time to warm up.When warming up, light loads are performed for 2-3 minutes. Stretching exercises, for example, touching the toes with your hands, are of great importance. However, strenuous exercises (such as pull-ups, push-ups or weight training) are undesirable, because they create an oxygen debt that leads the heart to a state of fatigue even before the aerobic phase begins. Such exercises are not recommended, sometimes they are even dangerous, especially for people with cardiovascular disorders.Usually, when warming up, use a set of stretching exercises designed to prevent lower back pain. This set is called the Williams exercise, it consists of the following movements: lying on your back, tightly hug one knee to your chest and hold it for five counts, then repeat the same with the other leg. Then, press the knees of both legs to your chest and hold it for five counts, after which the legs should be lowered, extended and relaxed. The last movement is pressing the lower back to the floor with straightening the spinal column. And again, you need to hold this position for five counts. The exercises are repeated several times for 3-4 minutes. At this time, the head is on the floor. When you don't have time for a regular 5-kilometer run, do the following warm-up: instead of gymnastic exercises, run the first 400 meters at a very slow pace, while swinging your arms, rotating your torso, and thus warming up your muscles right on the run. But, of course, we do not recommend this method of warm-up as mandatory.2. Aerobic phase - the second phase of training, which is the main one for achieving a health effect. In this phase, you perform the types of exercise that you have chosen yourself and then made it as regular as brushing your teeth or having breakfast before going to work.I am often asked: how much aerobic exercise is really necessary for health? But this question can be answered in different ways. It all depends on the type of exercise, on the intensity of its implementation. In the four main types of aerobics (skiing, swimming, running and cycling), you will get the desired health effect by exercising for at least 20 minutes a day, 4 times a week.When recommending this amount of exercise, I start with the minimum intensity level in each sport. For example, a 20-minute workout is completely justified if you run 3-3.5 kilometers in those 20 minutes, or swim 700-750 meters, or cycle 8 kilometers. If you play sports or other sports, then at least four such workouts per week are needed to achieve the desired effect. But 20 minutes is only the minimum. The optimal duration is more likely 30 minutes 3-4 times a week. Another way to determine the required time for aerobics is to use a point system. Recent studies at the Aerobics Center convince us that a man should gain 35 points per week, and a woman at least 27 points. There are many ways to get such amounts of points (familiarization with the tables confirms this), but it is important to understand that you need to exercise at least 3 times a week. Trying to divide 30 points into two workouts per week may be more dangerous than useful. Especially intense physical training is absolutely contraindicated for people over 40 years of age, if it is carried out only once a week. Of course, you can get 30 or 35 points in one day, but our studies show that if you reduce the number of workouts to once a week, it is not only dangerous for health, but also leads to a loss of aerobic capacity. By working out 3 times a week, you will ensure an increase in aerobic capacity, and with four-time workouts you will significantly improve your health. But it is not at all necessary to work out five or more times a week. I especially condemn intense physical activity 7 times a week. Even with a five-time schedule, I would recommend alternating light and heavy days. It is unwise to force yourself to go all out every day, because the fatigue that has accumulated can lead to injuries to muscles, joints and bones.3. Delay - the third phase of aerobics takes at least 5 minutes; during this time you should continue to move, but at a fairly low pace to gradually reduce your heart rate. If you trained by running, then after crossing the finish line, walk another four hundred meters or, if the distance is not measured, spend 5 minutes on such a delay. If you were walking, just slowly stomp on the spot, swim back and forth in a shallow part of the pool, after cycling, ride slowly or get off the bike and walk for 5 minutes.The most important thing after aerobic exercise is to continue moving so that blood can circulate from the legs to the central vessels. Otherwise, nausea, dizziness or even loss of consciousness may begin. Remember that serious heart problems often occur not during exercise, but after it.4. Strength training - this phase of aerobics should last at least 10 minutes, includes movements that strengthen muscles and develop flexibility. Exercises with various types of weights or strength exercises (push-ups, squats, pull-ups or any other strength exercise) are quite suitable for this stage.One of the main reasons that usually prompts to do strength exercises is that it increases the strength and durability of bones and joints, and this will make you less susceptible to injuries during the aerobic phase.If you strictly adhere to all four phases of aerobic training, then, I am sure, you will be able to avoid serious injuries. In our Aerobics Center, runners have covered a total of more than 4.5 million miles, working out according to various programs. There have been no fatalities and musculoskeletal injuries have been minimal.If you follow the recommended time for all four phases, aerobic exercise will take less than 40 minutes.Can regular exercise cause cancer?Regular exercise is a protection against it. The results of one study attracted the attention of many newspapers and magazines, some even having the following headlines: “Study shows that strenuous exercise can be harmful to health.” After that, a large number of people come to our clinic with a variety of questions. What about someone who has been doing physical exercise for many years? The studies mentioned in the newspapers were presented at the University of California and the National Cancer Research Foundation’s international conference on cancer. The effects of strenuous exercise were studied on rats and guinea pigs. The animals ran on a tiny treadmill for 2 hours every day. In response to such stress, the animals’ bodies released substances known as free radicals. Currently, the most heated debate in oncology is whether free radicals cause cancer. The researchers did not find that the animals that overcame the stress developed cancer, but theoretically suggested that such a possibility exists. Regarding the results of these studies, it is worth paying attention to several points:1. The duration of the exercise - a second hour of continuous physical exercise at a time is very serious physical exertion for both animals and humans. In such cases, the exercise no longer gives a training effect, but contributes to an increase in tension. The terms "eustress" and its opposite "distress" are not yet too familiar. "Eustress" is the so-called normal stress that does not cause excessive tension in the body's functions. Eustress, which develops during physical exercise, does not make excessive demands on the body. "Distress" refers to physical exercise stress to the point of exhaustion, which can lead to injuries and chronic fatigue. As for the animals that participated in the experiment, they were clearly in a state of distress.2. There may have been conditions that predispose to cancer, but it has not yet been proven that cancer actually developed. I have carefully studied the medical literature and determined that epidemiological studies have not found any effects of exercise on the development of cancer. On the contrary, physically active people are better protected from cancer, especially colon cancer. This is evidenced by the results of studies by Garabrant and colleagues who followed 2,950 men with rectal cancer. In men who lead a sedentary lifestyle, the risk of developing this form of cancer is 1.6 times higher than the average in everything, including running distances. The conclusion from all this is again harmony. If you run or swim long distances or increase the volume of the load, then the need for food must also increase or you will suffer from a lack of it. In any case, for most people it is better to find such an amount of physical activity that would keep the body in proper shape. And it should be remembered that the loads typical of highly qualified athletes will simply exhaust less prepared people.The human physique should be a harmonious combination of fat mass, on the one hand, and bone and muscle mass, on the other hand, unfortunately, many people violate this balance, most often by exceeding the percentage of fat compared to bone and muscle mass more than in those who lead an active lifestyle. Scientific studies by Rush and Hoffman showed that physical exercises stopped the growth of tumors in animals.Interesting data from studies by Perska and colleagues, who found that the higher the resting heart rate, the higher the mortality rate from rectal cancer. Interesting data on this issue can also be found in the already mentioned Pfafenbarger study. Of the 16,936 people in the group who spent less than 500 kcal per week with physical activity, the percentage of mortality from cancer was 25.7%. In those whose physical activity corresponded to the expenditure of more than 500 kcal per week, this figure was 19.2 (I want to remind you that 500 kcal is approximately the amount of energy that you spend running 5 miles - 8 km per week). Recent studies have revealed the presence of so-called natural killer cells, or NK cells, in the body. They are active against certain forms of cancer, being the body's first line of defense in the fight against it. EU cells are a kind of bullets that kill and destroy cancer cells in the body, preventing the growth of tumors. Dr. Lee Verh showed in his experiments that under the influence of moderate physical exercise that causes a state of eustress, the number of EU cells increases. If the load is excessively intense (distress), the effectiveness of the EU cells decreases. The body tries to adapt to such a load, so repeated distress exercises can eventually turn into eustress, thanks to which a training effect is achieved. Therefore, any negative effect of exercise on EU cells comes on condition that the exercises become regular and consistent. In conclusion, I want to say that it is not yet possible to more fully shed light on the problem of an increase in the risk of cancer as a result of regular physical exercise. The endorphin effectThe feeling of happiness and even euphoria caused by running and other aerobic exercises has in recent years been associated with a powerful release of hormones called endorphins. They are intensively produced during physical exercises aimed at developing endurance. Endorphins are morphine-like substances produced by the pituitary gland in a variety of situations, including during intense physical activity. As a result of several studies conducted by Scottish and English specialists in the mid-70s, the structure of the endorphin molecule was revealed and a connection was established between the state of euphoria and the release of endorphins after intense physical work. This feeling can last with a fairly high intensity from half an hour to an hour and even longer. In experiments on dogs, scientists have found that immediately after intense physical activity the level of endorphins is high and remains so for 1-1.5 hours. In a number of cases, it has been shown that endorphins are an excellent and effective anesthetic. It is believed that the presence of endorphins in the body may explain the case of a football player who broke his leg in the first half, played the rest of the match and did not notice that he had a fracture until late in the evening.In 1982, Guy Gerrish, a runner from Salt Lake City, broke his tibia at the seventh mile of the Boston Marathon. Despite this, he finished the race. However, he then needed hours of surgery to immobilize the bone with a steel splint from the hip joint to the knee. Surgeons believed that the 38-year-old runner had such powerful thigh muscles that they could serve as a kind of splint for the broken bone while running. Endorphins helped him tolerate the pain and continue running, spending an average of 4 minutes and 20 seconds per kilometer.The effectiveness of acupuncture's healing effects is also thought to be related to the release of endorphins. For many years, the Chinese have used acupuncture as an anesthetic during surgery, including open-heart surgery. Some studies investigating the phenomenon of electroacupuncture have shown that the analgesic effect is associated with increased levels of endorphins in the body.After strenuous exercise, the increase in endorphin levels has reached fivefold, as reported in 1980 by Italian experts. In this study, eight world-class athletes (males, average age 21) were tested at maximum load on a treadmill. Before the test, the endorphin level averaged 320, immediately after the 12-minute test, it rose to 1620. After 15 minutes, it was still 1080, and after 30 minutes, it was about 420, which is still higher than the resting level.Endorphin levels tend to increase during pregnancy and spike during labor. This likely explains why a woman can endure discomfort during pregnancy and excruciating pain during labor in the wild. If a woman is well-trained aerobically, her potential maximum endorphin level may be higher than that of an untrained woman, which will make labor much easier. Of course, the beneficial effect of aerobic exercise also affects the course of pregnancy. It is especially pronounced in women who exercised before pregnancy...A fairly high amount of endorphin is probably present in the body even during relatively low-intensity exercise. According to data obtained at the Aerobics Center, it is believed that most people who run about 5 kilometers, spending 5-6 minutes per kilometer, fall (albeit briefly) into a state of euphoria during and after physical exertion. And these feelings are most likely related to the release of endorphins, although we can't always confirm this conclusion with scientific data for low-intensity exercise. After all, we don't even know yet whether the "second wind" effect is somehow related to endorphins. But a recent report from Loma Linda University, presented by Lee S. Burke and his assistants, offers some scientific justification for this view. The studies were conducted among men aged 45. Some of them were in good physical condition, others were not. Both groups stopped moderate exercise (even with the inclusion of light jogging). Endorphins also affect mental activity. Psychiatrists have used exercise as an antidepressant as a standard procedure for many years. Sometimes with depression, the level of endorphins is abnormally low, and in such situations physical activity is especially important. Many doctors believe that physical exercise is the best natural physiological tranquilizer, and they are used not only to combat depression, but also in some cases to relieve stress and relieve overexcitement.... the test subjects performed work on a treadmill to fatigue according to the Bruce test, which involves increasing the angle of inclination and speed of the treadmill belt every 3 minutes.In well-trained people, the level of endorphins increased rapidly and reached a peak by the 12th-15th minute of the test. Even if these people continued to run for another 2-3 minutes, their level of endorphins did not rise any more, and when motor activity stopped, the amount of endorphins decreased within 15-30 minutes. In untrained people, the maximum level of endorphins in the test was slightly lower than in trained people, and was reached 3-6 minutes before the end of the load. The run was still going on, and their level of endorphins was already falling. But when they stopped exercising, this level jumped sharply again and reached a second peak. And the longer it took for the endorphin content to decrease to normal levels, the better the person was in.So, physical activity helps to reach the highest endorphin levels faster and maintain them longer. The body, apparently, has some mechanism that allows it to compensate for the muscle pain that untrained people usually experience after exercise. In this regard, a hypothesis is put forward, according to which the pain or “stiffness” of muscles and joints, often accompanying aerobic exercise, often disappears during repeated exercise.Endorphins are morphine-like substances that can spread throughout the body and suppress pain. But if this is not a temporary painful sensation, but a real serious injury, endorphins will mask the pain and as a result the injury may increase even more, which will be accompanied by such intense pain that they will no longer be able to relieve. Therefore, “running through the pain,” as athletes are often advised, is not always the right thing to do.Here, it is better to follow this rule: if you feel only slight pain, continue to exercise; if during exercise the pain disappears, and then returns with greater force, it is worth resting for a few days and consulting a doctor.Thus, if you follow the principles of training outlined in this article, you will definitely achieve good health. We wish you success!