Exercise & Fitness Archive

News briefs

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Health guidelines advise all of us to spend at least two-and-a-half hours per week in moderate-intensity activity. For many people, that means walking, which requires no special equipment or training. But even if you can't rack up those 150 minutes, establishing a regular walking routine might extend your life, suggests a study published online Oct. 19, 2017, by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Researchers looked at data on nearly 140,000 adults (average age about 70) who answered questionnaires about their exercise habits over 13 years. People who were inactive were 26% more likely to die during the study period compared with people who did some walking (up to two hours per week) as their only form of activity. And people who walked more — at least two hours per week — lowered their risk even more. The study is observational and doesn't prove that walking kept people alive longer during the study. However, we know that walking is associated with a lower risk for developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. If you don't want to walk in cold weather, try walking at a mall or an indoor track at a YMCA, or use a home treadmill.

Careful preparation — including a consultation with your doctor — can help you stay safe.

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Whether you're a lifelong fitness enthusiast or returning to exercise after a hiatus, training for a triathlon could be a welcome way to focus your workout. These competitions, which combine swimming, bicycling, and running, have grown in popularity in recent years, including among older adults. According to USA Triathlon, the sport's governing body, more than 40% of all members are in the 40-to-59 age group — and some are in their 80s.

However, a recent study documenting the odds of dying during these events may have given pause to some would-be triathletes (see "Death and cardiac arrest in triathletes"). That's unfortunate, because the risk is really, really low, says Dr. Aaron L. Baggish, director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. "These findings shouldn't scare people away from doing triathlons. But the study does identify some issues about these events that are worth understanding," he says.

Friendly competition and other aspects of "gamification" may help people become more active.

If you're one of those people who meet their goal of 10,000 steps on most days, good for you. If you're not — and if exercising feels like a chore — maybe you just need to get your game on.

People who turned their step counts into a competition boosted their daily walking distance by almost a mile, according to a new study. The six-month-long study included 94 families who tracked their daily step counts with a wearable device or a smartphone. Half were randomly chosen for the "gamification" arm of the study, which was designed to encourage collaboration, accountability, and team spirit. These families received small prizes tied to achieving daily and weekly step goals. Just over half of the participants were women, and their average age was 55.

Research we're watching

Sleeping either too little or too much has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease. But how much do other interconnected factors — namely, activity levels and body weight — affect this observation?

In an effort to find out, researchers studied nearly 240,000 healthy adults ages 51 to 72 who were part of a nationwide health study. The investigators examined the influence of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, television viewing, and body mass index on sleep duration and death rates.

Ask the doctors

Q. What's the best time of day to exercise to get the most benefit?

A. Some people swear by morning workouts, because they squeeze them in before a busy schedule can derail their efforts. Morning exercise sessions may also help them move into their day feeling energized. But others dread the idea of dragging themselves out of bed early to hit the treadmill. Instead, they save their workout until the end of the day, when they feel more limber and can unwind.

Keeping active in the winter months is crucial for wellness.

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Workouts often fall by the wayside in winter. It's cold and snowy, and if you're like a lot of women, all you want to do is curl up under a blanket with a cup of hot tea and snack on some leftover holiday cookies.

"Based on my experience with clients, it seems like people go into hibernation mode from Thanksgiving until March," says Dr. Beth Frates, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School and director of wellness programming for the Stroke Research and Recovery Institute at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.

If you are interested in returning to a workout routine after being away from it for an extended period of time, it’s very easy to injure yourself. In order to avoid this, get your doctor’s approval and gear your activity to your current level of fitness.

If you want to keep your New Year’s resolutions, you need to approach them as a process of behavior change, make your goals realistic, and have a specific plan for how you will reach them.

Your range of motion — how far you can move a joint in various directions — is determined by many things, starting with the inner workings of the joint and the structures surrounding it. Stretching exercises can help extend this range of motion. To understand how, it helps to be familiar with these structures and how they can help — or hinder — a joint's flexibility:

• Joints are the junctions that link bones together. The architecture of each joint — that is, whether its structure is a hinge, pivot, or ball-in-socket — determines how the bones can move.
• Muscles surround joints and provide the energy used to move them. The amount of tension in the muscles surrounding a joint is a key factor in how big of a range of motion that joint can achieve. Muscle tension can be affected both by passive factors, such as tissue scarring or your habitual posture, and by active factors, such as involuntary muscle spasms or purposeful muscle contractions.
• Tendons are flexible cords of strong tissue that connect muscles to bones and make movement possible. When a joint moves, energy from the muscles is transferred into the tendons, which tug on the bones.
• Ligaments are tough, fibrous bands of tissue that bind bone to bone, or bone to cartilage, at a joint. An example is the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), one of five ligaments that together control the movements of the knee. Among other things, the ACL keeps the knee joint from rotating too far.

When you stretch, you're working muscles and tendons rather than ligaments. Ligaments are not supposed to be elastic. An overly stretchy ligament wouldn't provide the stability and support needed for a safe range of movement.

Another type of training, known as power training, is proving to be just as important as traditional strength training in helping to maintain or rebuild muscles and strength—maybe even more important.

As the name suggests, power training is aimed at increasing power, which is the product of both strength and speed, reflecting how quickly you can exert force to produce the desired movement. Thus, faced with a mountain hike, you may have enough strength to reach the summit. But can you keep up with the younger members of your hiking group? Power, not just strength and cardio fitness, can get you up the steep inclines quickly and safely. By helping you react swiftly if you trip over a root or lose your balance on loose rocks, power can actually prevent falls.