10 Facts About Exercising

We are made for the move

By Stefan Anitei on January 9th, 2008 19:06 GMT
In other times, people had to hunt animals and gather plant food for a living. At the same time, they had to avoid predators, while sheltering in caves or miserable huts. Our bodies had to be fit and strong in order to survive. But in the last millennium, and especially last centuries, technology reversed this. Our comfort is total: warm clothes, cars and buses, and machines that make anything, from washing to cooking.

1.Exercising is more than fighting weight and building muscles: it eliminates stress. It distracts out attention and occupies it with less stressful thoughts than daily activities, like knowing your body and developing physical skills, easing relaxation and eliminating routine. The endorphins released by the exercising muscles gives you the "feel good" feeling after making sport.

2.Compared to our mind, our body evolved less. Our body is built for life in the wild, for running and hunting. In our technological world, it does not experience the life for which it evolved, and this causes issues: overweight, obesity, stiff and painful articulations, weak muscles and heart, ineffective lungs, closed blood vessels, shorter life.

Moreover, the lack of physical shape makes it harder maintaining the will for exercising.

3.Exercising depends on the age, available time, facilities and costs. Sports can be individual or collective, competitive or not. Even walking to the office place, swimming, a tennis match in the evening, or biking in the week-end do count. What it is very important is that exercising must be routine, not occasional, to be effective.

Exercising consists in sports or maintenance sport activities. Competitive sports can make some depose more efforts, while attempting to win over the other, or bypass a record or their own performances.

Intense physical exercising, like biking, requires rehydration.

4.Team sports like football, rugby, basketball or volleyball require cooperation and mutual assistance and can turn into a part of the social life. Individual sports, practiced against a competitor or against the stop watch, are practiced by persons enjoying competition but preferring to base on their own forces, skills and performances.

Squash, rowing or hockey require great deals of effort and stamina (that why their rounds last less then in tennis or badminton). Golf and cricket, with a low activity level, can last many hours, and even days.

This is a list of the number of calories burned in one hour while practicing various sports: golf 250; walking 300; squash 600; swimming 300-650; biking 660; running 800-1000.

5.Shape maintenance exercises are organized in schools, swimming pools and other places. They can turn boring, but new movements and music can diversify the routine. This happens in the case of exercises with balls, ropes and other objects, which maintain a high level of coordination. Gym chambers, endowed with bars, special floors, and apparatuses for dynamic or static exercises are an alternative. Trainers can initiate participants in aerobic gymnastic or floor exercises.

6.Isotonic ("same tonus") exercises contract completely the muscle. They are made for developing some muscle groups, growing articulation flexibility, stretching ligaments and improving blood circulation. For example, pushes develop the arm and shoulder muscles, and un-benumb the articulations of the elbow and shoulder. The high required oxygen amount increases and improves heart and lung capacities.

Isometric ("same length") exercises apply muscle power against a resistance, the muscles not changing their length. This way, one contracts muscles when pushing against a wall. This strengthens arms, shoulders, chest and feet
7.Aerobic ("with oxygen") exercises mean the muscles uses aerobic metabolism. When the burning glucose is made using oxygen (aerobic burning), the energy released is high. This is the effort of a marathon runner, which must have oxygenated muscles.

The extra oxygen enters through lungs and, through blood pumped by the heart, it reaches the muscles. The heart beat and respiration must be faster and stronger. The aerobic exercising benefits the whole body: strengthen muscles, increase heart and lung capacity and efficiency.

8.Some sports are dangerous, like climbing and mountaineering. All routine exercising must start with a warm up, for preparing muscles and articulations; otherwise there is the risk of accidents, articulations, ligament and tendon breakage, or even heart issues.

9.The repose pulse is of 60-80. It can reach the value of 150 while exercising. The time period in which it turns back to repose value points the physical shape. A fit person will have the value of 120 after 90 minutes of ceasing exercising.

10.Some beneficial exercises are less known in the western world. Hatha yoga encourages physical and mental relaxation, opposed to exhausting physical effort. It comprises exercises called "asane" which can be static or dynamic, involving movements of the parts of the body or of the whole body. Breathing is very important, and must be effective and controlled. Practitioners also get a positive attitude, a thin body and general good mood.

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