FITNESS FIRST HOUSE BASICS GUIDE FOR HEALTH AND FITNESS

In order to best determine how to reach your fitness goals, you first need to figure out where you are, physically. And the best way to do this is to sign up for a fitness evaluation , including a full health/fitness history and other important measures, such as the following: Resting heart rate: Also known as pulse, this test measures the number of times per minute your heart beats while you’re sitting down or in some other way relaxing. As you exercise more and more, your resting heart rate will likely drop. Heart rate after physical activity: Generally, you exercise for about 15 minutes on a treadmill or stationary bicycle and test your pulse. Cardio exercises can gradually lower this number. Blood pressure: This test measures how hard your heart has to work to pump blood through your blood vessels. Cardio activities (see Chapter 8) can help alleviate high blood pressure (hypertension), which can lead to health problems. Percentage of body fat: Instead of measuring how much you weigh, which doesn’t necessarily indicate how fit you are, measuring your body fat tells you how much of you is fat and how much is muscle, bones, blood, organs, and other tissues. Up to a point, the lower the number, the better; reducing your body fat is often a matter of eating better and burning calories through cardio workouts and lifting weights . Strength: This tests measures the strength of your upper body, abdominal muscles, and lower body by doing sit-ups, push-ups, leg extensions (on a weight machine), and so on. Weight lifting, helps improve your strength. Flexibility: Because flexibility is the downfall of even the super-fit, make sure your evaluation measures the range of motion of your joints and muscles. Chapter 6 gives you the lowdown on stretching, which is one of the best ways to improve your flexibility. The simplest — and, perhaps, the cheapest — cardio exercise is walking. Other popular cardio exercises include running, cycling, in-line skating, swimming, rowing, and (if you live in a snowy winter climate) snowshoeing and crosscountry skiing Many men focus heavily on weight training, while some women shy away from it. The truth is that both men and women need to do some strength training (along with some cardio workouts, discussed in the preceding section, to get the heart and blood vessels into tip-top shape) for one important reason: to help burn more calories. Strange as it seems, weightlifting improves your resting metabolism, which means you turn into a fat- and calorie-burning machine. Cardio and strength together: Two for the price of one A few activities combine cardio and strength training into one workout. One of the most popular, circuit training combines a cardio warm-up and cooldown with a series of weight-lifting and other strength stations. Not only can circuit training save you time, but it’s also a lot of fun, because you move from station to station every 30 or 40 seconds. Two other popular strength-cardio exercises are yoga and Pilates, which tend to focus on core strength, the strength and flexibility of your midsection. respectively, yoga and Pilates can be highenergy, revved-up workouts or soothing, mind-body workouts that leave you feeling refreshed.Stretching Your Mind (and Body) Don’t let recent headlines claiming there’s no correlation between stretching and injuries fool you: If you stretch properly and do it after (not before) you work out, studies show that you reduce your risk of injury. What Are You Eating? The link between exercise and nutrition has been clear for decades, and you’re likely to have trouble improving your fitness if you make poor nutritional choices. But how do you know which choices to make? Low fat? High carb? Low carb? High protein? Low calorie? Food pyramids? Hydration? Vitamins? It’s enough to make your head spin. Knowing what to eat for optimal fitness has never been a murkier proposition. Fortunately, we guide you through the haze, giving you a clear picture of the benefits of a low-fat, low-bad-carb, high-good-carb, moderateprotein, Mediterranean-food-pyramid, lots-o-water, balanced diet. Flip to that chapter when you’re ready to get the final scoop on nutrition — final for based on current scientific research, that is. At Home or at the Gym — Choosing What’s Best for You To join or not to join, that is the fitness question everyone asks himself at some point. Joining a gym can be a big financial investment, and many people choose not to join for that reason, opting for the free activities (walking, running, cycling) available just by walking out your front door. But gyms have plenty to offer, including the latest and greatest workout equipment, fun and invigorating classes, the opportunity to schedule time with a personal trainer, and the infectious energy of other gym members. Chapter 18 gives you step-by-step instructions for how to scout out and decide whether to join a local gym and offers a basic lesson in gym etiquette. Chapter 19 offers practical advice on deciding whether to join an exercise class or purchase a DVD to use at home. A gym isn’t the only place to use exercise equipment. If you have the money to invest in your own equipment, you can set up your own home gym in your basement, spare room, garage, or any other convenient area. Special Exercises for Special People Fitness isn’t only for those buff, 20-something gyms gods. In fact, you can start exercising in your 80s and still reap the benefits of a healthier, longer life. And the earlier in life you start working out, the more likely it will become a lifelong habit. Chapter 23 offers some tips and advice for beginning an exercise program in your senior years. How early is early enough? How about the womb? One study shows that women who exercise during pregnancy have leaner babies who turn into leaner kids. The benefits aren’t only for the kids, however. From reducing back pain and encouraging better sleep patterns to encountering an easier delivery to slipping back into your old jeans more quickly, exercising during pregnancy offers incredible health benefits. See Chapter 21 for a short tutorial on getting and staying fit during pregnancy. For an in-depth look at pregnancy workouts, check out Fit Pregnancy For Dummies by Catherine Cram and Tere Stouffer Drenth (published by Wiley). Kids, perhaps more than any other age group, understand that being active is fun. If you can tap into their natural love of activities, especially games, sports, and dancing, you can help your kids avoid the alarming rates of obesity that plague children today. Without emphasizing “exercise” or “workouts,” you can introduce your child to all sorts of healthy activities that encourage a lifelong fitness. Keep the emphasis on fun, without pushing your child into competitions or activities she doesn’t enjoy, and you’ll help your child become an adult with a strong body and a healthy heart. Testing Your Fitness We’ve never been fond of tests that you can’t study for. Nevertheless, we think the first step toward getting in shape is having your fitness evaluated. Don’t panic. This test isn’t like your driver’s license renewal exam: You can’t flunk, and you don’t have to stand in line for three hours listening to people rant and rave about government bureaucracy. A fitness test simply gives you key information about your physical condition. We constantly hear people say, “I’m so out of shape. I need to lose weight.” But that’s like telling a travel agent, “I’m in Europe. I need to go to Africa.” Your travel agent needs to know the specifics: Are you in Rome? Berlin? Moscow? Do you want to go to Cairo? Cape Town? The Kalahari Desert? Before you embark on a fitness program, you need to know your starting point with the same sort of precision. A fitness evaluation gives you important departure information, such as your heart rate, body fat, strength, and flexibility. Armed with these facts, you or your trainer can design an intelligent plan to get you to your fitness destination. And when you get there, you’ll have the numbers to prove just how far you’ve come. In this chapter, we describe what to expect when a professional tests your fitness. We also explain how to test your fitness on your own. However, even if you do most of the testing yourself, consider getting certain aspects of your fitness evaluated at a sports medicine clinic or fitness center. What’s Your Health History? When you join a gym, one of the first things you should be asked to do — after signing your check, of course — is to fill out a health-history questionnaire. Your answers to these questions give a snapshot of your overall wellbeing, including your eating and exercise habits, your risk for developing cardiovascular disease, and any orthopedic limitations or medical conditions that you may have. Typical questions include: Do you have any chronic joint problems such as arthritis? Do you have a high stress level? Are you currently taking any over-the-counter or prescription medications? If you don’t belong to a gym, ask yourself the following questions, which are designed to indicate your risk of developing heart disease: Are you inactive? Do you have a history of heart disease? Do you have diabetes or high blood sugar? Do you have a history of high blood pressure? Did your mother, father, sister, or brother develop any form of heart disease before age 50? Do you smoke cigarettes, or have you quit within the last two years? Do you have high cholesterol — either total cholesterol higher than 200 mg/dl or HDL less than 40 mg/dl? If you answer “yes” to at least one question and you’re over age 35, see a physician for a complete medical evaluation before you even pursue a fitness testing session. A physician is the only one who can accurately determine whether exercising puts you in any danger. If you answer “yes” to two or more questions, get a checkup no matter how old you are. Some gyms request that you be tested by a physician if a staff member feels you may have a medical problem. Don’t groan; a request like this indicates that your gym is on the ball. Some health clubs just want your money. They may not require any testing — other than the test that determines whether you can sign your name on a credit-card slip. If that’s the case, you need to take responsibility for getting tested. After you fill out your questionnaire, your tester should discuss the answers with you and ask for more information if necessary. If you’re a smoker, for example, he may ask you how much you smoke. Respond honestly and thoroughly. Don’t say that you run 5 miles a day if you haven’t broken a sweat since high school — or if you intend to run every day but just haven’t gotten around to it. What’s Your Heart Rate? Your heart rate, also known as your pulse, is the number of times your heart beats per minute. Your fitness evaluation should include a measure of your resting heart rate — your heart rate when you’re sitting still. Ideally, your resting heart rate should be between 60 and 90 beats per minute. It may be slower if you’re fit or genetically predisposed to a low heart rate; it may be faster if you’re nervous or have recently downed three double cappuccinos. In addition to caffeine, stress and certain medications can speed up your heart rate. To be sure, take your heart rate first thing in the morning for three consecutive days and find the average to determine your heart rate. After a month or two of regular exercise, your resting heart rate usually drops. This means that your heart has become more efficient. It may need to beat only 80 times per minute to pump the same amount of blood (or more) than it used to pump in 90 beats. In the long run, this saves wear and tear on your heart. The simplest place to take your own pulse is at your wrist. Rest your middle and index fingertips (not your thumb) lightly on your opposite wrist, directly below the base of your thumb. What’s Your Blood Pressure? Have a professional test your blood pressure. Home blood-pressure machines tend to be inaccurate, as do those contraptions in the mall that charge a quarter for a reading. Blood pressure is a measurement of how open your blood vessels are. Low numbers mean that your heart doesn’t have to work very hard to pump the blood through your blood vessels. Ideally, your blood pressure should read 115/75 or below, a lower standard than the old standby of 120/80. If it’sslightly higher, don’t get stressed (that only increases it even more). However, if your blood pressure is higher than 140/90, you are considered hypertensive, a fancy term for having high blood pressure. In case you’re wondering, the top number, called your systolic blood pressure, measures pressure as your heart ejects blood. The bottom number, your diastolic blood pressure, measures pressure when your heart relaxes and prepares for its next pump. If you get a high blood-pressure reading, ask your tester to try again. The numbers can be affected by many factors, such as illness, caffeine, nervousness, or racing into your test because you were late. But if you repeatedly get high readings, see a doctor. How Fit Is Your Heart? Most reputable clubs perform something called a submax test. That’s short for submaximal test, fitness jargon for a test that evaluates your heart rate when you’re working at less than your maximum effort. Typically, this test takes you to about 75 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. A maximal test — in which you go all-out — should only be performed by a physician or in the presence of a physician. Submaximal tests are usually performed on a stationary bicycle, treadmill, or step bench. (If you’re a runner, request a treadmill; if you’re a cyclist, ask to be tested on a bike. You’re best at what you practice most.) The test usually lasts about 15 minutes. During this time, you increase your intensity every three or four minutes while the tester monitors your heart rate and blood pressure. The test shouldn’t be very hard. On a bike, the worst it should feel like is pedaling up a moderately steep hill for a few minutes. If you don’t belong to a health club, you can test your aerobic fitness using a watch with a second hand and a course that’s exactly 1 mile long. Warm up with a slow walk for five to ten minutes, and then time yourself as you walk or run the mile as briskly as you can. Take your pulse right before you stop, and make a mental note of the number. Also note your time as you complete your mile. One minute after you finish the mile, take your pulse again. See how far it has dropped from the pulse check you did right at the end of your walk. Try this test again in two months and see how much faster you can complete the mile and how much more quickly you recover. If a mile sounds like too much for you right now, do a half-mile or even walk around the block. Just choose a distance that you can measure again at a later date. Schedule a second fitness evaluation in six weeks. Those first weeks of training can bring about some dramatic changes, and it’s really motivating to see how well you’ve done. After that, changes tend to be steady but somewhat slower. Get tested again every three to six months. How Much of You Is Fat? During your evaluation, your tester will probably weigh you. Just know that your weight is of limited value. When you hop on a scale, you learn the grand total weight of your bones, organs, blood, fat, muscle, and other tissues. This number can be misleading because muscle weighs more per square inch than fat. Consider two men who stand 5'8" and weigh 190 pounds. One guy may be a lean bodybuilder who has a lot of muscle packed onto his frame. Another guy may be a couch potato whose gut hangs 4 inches over his belt buckle. Even a low weight doesn’t necessarily indicate good health or fitness. It may simply mean that you have small bones and little muscle. More helpful than your body weight is your body composition — how much of your body is composed of fat and how much is composed of everything else. Your body composition is also called your body-fat percentage. If you score a 25 percent on a fat test, this means that 25 percent of your weight is composed of fat. Like your weight, your body-fat percentage is not necessarily a measure of your health. True, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and certain cancers are more prevalent among overweight people — men who have more than about 20 percent body fat and women who have more than about 30 percent body fat. However, some researchers believe that these health problems are not caused by the extra fat itself but rather by a lack of exercise and a poor diet. In other words, if you exercise regularly and eat well, extra body fat may not compromise your health. So consider your body-fat score in a context with other health measures, such as your cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and other gauges of fitness, such as a submaximal test and your resting heart rate. An additional number to consider is the circumference of your waist. Excess abdominal fat — the type that lies deep in your belly, clumped around your organs — is linked to increased risk for heart disease. Heavy thighs, on the other hand, do not appear to be related to health problems. (In other words — to use terms we can all relate to — a beer belly is more harmful to your health than saddlebags.)Men with waist measurements greater than 40 and women with waist measurements greater than 35 should consult a physician. Although body fat testing has its limits, your results can give you great insight into how your fat-loss and exercise program is coming along. Sure, your scale can tell you that you lost 7 pounds. But a body-fat test can tell you that your 7-pound loss means that you lost 10 pounds of fat and gained 3 pounds of muscle, results that are probably more motivating. Getting dunked (underwater weighing) Underwater weighing is the most cumbersome method of body-fat testing, but it’s also the most accurate method that’s anywhere near affordable. You sit on a scale in a tank of warm water about the size of a Jacuzzi. (When Suzanne did this, she felt like a giant piece of tortellini floating in a big pot.) Then comes the unnerving part: You blow all the air out of your lungs and bend forward until you’re completely submerged. If there’s air trapped in your lungs, you score fatter than you really are. Knowing this fact makes you try really, really hard to blow out your air, which makes you feel like you’re about to explode. You stay submerged for about five seconds while your underwater weight registers on a digital scale. The result is then plugged into a mathematical equation. This method of testing is based on the premise that muscle sinks and fat floats. The more fat you have, the more your body wants to float when dunked under water. The denser you are, the more you sink, and the more water your body displaces. The margin of error for this test is 2 to 2.5 percent for young to middle-aged adults. The results are less accurate for children, older adults, and extremely lean people. This is because lean body tissue is made up of other things besides muscle. Bone, for example, isn’t fully formed in children, and it may be somewhat porous in older adults and somewhat denser in super-fit people. You can get this test done at sophisticated sports-medicine clinics or labs for $50 to $100. BOD POD: The cutting edge of body-fat testing Underwater weighing has long been the standard for body-fat testing, but a sophisticated contraption called the BOD POD may one day replace it. The BOD POD is a 5-foot-tall fiberglass chamber that looks like a giant egg with a tinted window. You sit in the chamber for two or three 50-second tests while computerized pressure sensors determine how much air your body displaces — in other words, how much space you take up. (Underwater weighing determines the same information, just in a way that’s less convenient.) Research suggests that the BOD POD may be as accurate as underwater weighing, but the technology is so new that only a few studies have been conducted. Although the machine costs about as much as a luxury car, at universities, fitness expos, and some health clubs around the country, you can get a BOD POD test for about $25. How Strong Are You? Fear not: You won’t be required to do one-arm push-ups or lift a barbell that weighs more than your dad. Strength tests, like the other tests that we describe in this chapter, are simply designed to give you a starting point. If you get started on a good weight-lifting program and stick to it, you’re likely to see dramatic changes when you take another fitness test in two or three months. Most health clubs don’t take true strength measurements; in other words, they don’t measure the absolute maximum amount of weight you’re capable of lifting. Going for your “max” can be dangerous and can cause more than alittle muscle soreness. Instead, gyms test your muscular endurance: how many times you can move a much lighter weight. You can do many of these tests at home. Having a friend count for you and make sure you’re doing the exercise correctly is a help. Here are some common muscular endurance measures. Measuring your upper-body strength Count how many push-ups you can do without stopping or losing good form. For this test, men do military push-ups, with their legs out straight and toes on the floor. Women do modified push-ups, with their knees bent and feet off the floor. Lower your entire body at once until your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Pull your abdominals in to prevent your back from sagging. Do this test correctly! One guy we watched didn’t have the strength to lower his body all the way, so he just bobbed his head up and down| Measuring your abdominal strength The strength of your abdominal muscles is usually measured by a crunch test. (However, this test isn’t recommended if you have a history of lowerback problems.) Place two pieces of masking tape about halfway down the length of a mat, one directly behind the other, about 21 ⁄2 inches apart. Lie on your back on the mat with your arms at your sides and your fingertips touching the rear edge of the back piece of tape. Bend your knees and place your feet flat on the floor. Curl your head, neck, and shoulder blades upward, sliding your palms along the floor until your fingertips touch the front edge of the front piece of tape. Return to the starting position and keep going until you’re too tired to continue or you can’t reach the tape. Don’t cheat by sliding your arms without moving your body or by moving only one side of your body. See Figure 2-2 for an example of the crunch test. Measuring your lower-body strength The strength of your lower-body muscles is often measured on a leg-extension machine, which targets your front-thigh muscles. (This machine is sort of like a big chair with a high back.) Some clubs test lower-body strength on other machines; others don’t test your lower-body strength at all. You can test the strength of your thigh and butt muscles at home by doing an exercise called a squat, described in Chapter 14. We suggest that, if you’re a woman, you hold a 5-pound dumbbell in each hand with your arms hanging down at your sides, and if you’re a man, use 15-pound dumbbells. If you’re a novice, skip the weight and place your hands on your hips. There are few standard norms for this test, so just use your results as a basis of comparison for future evaluations.