Exercise: A Pillar of Health
In a simplified way of thinking about health and wellness, exercise is one of the three pillars of living a healthy life. Exercising benefits nearly every system in your body, and it helps to lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety, improve weight management, reduce risk of disease, and strengthen bones. The other two pillars of health are diet and sleep. Eating healthy will help reduce your chances of stroke, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Sleep also has its benefits, such as helping the brain to restore and recover itself. Improving just one of these three areas of your lifestyle may help you to live a longer life. Exercise, diet, and sleep influence one another in many ways, but improving all three areas will help you to maximize both your physical and mental health.
The discussion on this page focuses on exercise. Your exercise activities can be simple or highly specialized. For instance, you can jog for 30 minutes or take a Tae Kwon Do class for an hour. If you are healthy and able, you can follow the basic rules of kinesiology (the study of human body movement) in regards to your exercise. These rules are that exercise should have a specific place, a time, and a method of measurement. Exercise should also have a warm up at the beginning and a cool down at the end.
Pre-Exercise ToDos
Set a Place
For the place rule, choose a specific place to do your exercise. This can be a gym, a martial arts studio, your neighborhood park, or even your own home. Just choose a place that you can reasonably access with ease so that there are no hurtles to stop you from exercising. For example, recall that during the C19 pandemic, some people were confined to hotel rooms under quarantine. Some of those people posted videos of themselves running laps around the inside of their hotel rooms on social media. These people couldn’t go anywhere, but they didn’t let it stop them from getting exercise. You should have the same attitude. Use your creativity to find a convenient place to exercise.
Set a Time
Exercise should also have a set time. You should decide at what time you will exercise as well as on what days. For example, you can have Tae Kwon Do class twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays for one hour from seven to eight pm. Or you could jog for three days a week for 30 minutes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the morning. Alternatively, you can do a low impact activity daily such as walking for one to two hours in the park after having lunch. Use these examples to decide what activities you will do on what days and for how long.
If the exercise activities that you do are high impact and strenuous, then you should include a warm up at the beginning of a session. Some examples of activities that should have a warm up are cycling, martial arts, jumping rope, and running. Warm ups should include limbering up muscles as well as warming up muscles to avoid injury. For instance, stretching your muscles improves circulation and increases your strength and range of motion, as well as your flexibility and coordination; and a slow jog for 10 minutes will warm your muscles up to prepare for strenuous exercise. Preferably, you would do the 10 minute jog first to warm up your muscles, then you would stretch to limber up the muscles, and then do your exercise session.
Why is a warm up important? A good warm up before an exercise session will widen your blood vessels making it easier for your muscles to receive oxygen, thus improving your performance. The raised temperature of the muscles after a warm up also helps with flexibility and efficiency. A warm up also helps to slowly raise your heart rate which helps to decrease the stress on your heart. This will decrease the chance of a shock to your heart and your breathing by avoiding a sudden change. A sudden change in your heart rate and breathing can cause problems, like a heart attack. A warm up helps prepare the heart to do work at higher rates of beats per minute safely.
ToDos During a Session
Measure Your Exercise
Exercise also needs to have a measurement. Obviously, you can measure how much weight you lift, how many repetitions you do, or how many miles you walk, run, or cycle. However, basic kinesiology also calls for other measurements such as your heart rate (the number of beats per minute). Have you ever heard the phrase “getting in the zone”? Well, in kinesiology, getting in the zone means getting your heart rate in the right zone for exercise to have an impact. There is a formula to determine what your target heart rate should be for exercise. It is called the Maximum Heart Rate Formula, and it looks like this: 206.9 – (0.67 x Your Age).
The formula is less accurate for people over the age of 30. So if you are over that age, use a margin of error of +11/-11. For example, if you are 35 years old, your maximum heart rate is 183; and your overall range, accounting for the margin of error, is between 172 and 194 heart beats per minute. Tools you can use to measure your heart rate in real time include a Fitbit, a Smart watch (like the Apple Watch), or a chest strap and digital watch combination heart rate monitor.
Post-Exercise ToDos
Consider a Cool Down
If you are doing exercise activities that require a warm up, then doing a cool down is just as important. A cool down happens at then end of an exercise session because your heart is still beating faster than normal. In essence, the cool down is the same thing as the warm up, a low intensity cardio activity followed by stretching. However, the purpose of the cool down is opposite from the purpose of the warm up. A warm up helps to prepare the body and the heart to do hard work. The cool down, after an exercise session, helps to prepare the body and the heart to come back down to resting levels gradually and safely. This is to prevent shocks to the heart or the body that could cause problems like fainting, feeling sick, or a heart attack. An example of a cool down is a jog for 10 minutes and then stretching. Because the muscles are still warm, stretching will help to avoid the build up of lactic acid, as well as muscle stiffness and cramping.
Refueling
After exercising, you will need to refuel. The first step is to get hydrated. Technically, you should drink water before, during, and after your exercise sessions. During your exercise sessions, try to drink 16 ounces of water for every 30 to 60 minutes of activity. After your exercise sessions, rehydrate with water as necessary. This could mean drinking up to two liters of water three to five hours after a session. Increasing your fluid levels post-session may improve muscle flexibility, prevent muscle soreness, and build strength. You can also drink other replenishing drinks like sports drinks (that have electrolytes), coconut water, tea, or other healthy drinks.
You should also refuel by having a snack or a meal within an hour after your exercise session. This will also help to replenish the energy of your muscles so that the recovery process can start. You should be eating healthy foods that contain carbohydrates and protein. Carbohydrates (or carbs) will help to replenish your glycogen levels which will recharge your energy levels. Eating protein will also help to recover your muscles by providing the nutrients necessary to repair and rebuild them.
Incorporate Stretching
If you are doing a low impact activity, like walking, then a warm up and cool down may not be necessary. However, it’s still a good idea to incorporate stretching into your routine due to all of the benefits mentioned previously such as decreasing muscle stiffness and pain. Some muscles you should stretch include those in the arms, legs, back, and neck. You can get started with stretching with this article: “40 Stretching Exercises That Will Leave You Feeling Brand New” by Popsugar.com. Just search the title online with the website name, and you should find the article with photographed examples and written explanations. Popsugar also has a YouTube channel (@POPSUGARFitness).
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