Better Cheaper Smaller Home Gym
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Every Thing Is Everything “During aerobic activity ... you’ll breathe faster and more deeply. This maximizes the amount of oxygen in your blood. Your heart will beat faster, which increases blood flow to your muscles and back to your lungs. Your small blood vessels (capillaries) will widen to deliver more oxygen to your muscles and carry away waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid. Your body will even release endorphins, natural painkillers that promote an increased sense of well-being... Aerobic exercise keeps your muscles strong, which can help you maintain mobility as you get older. Aerobic exercise also keeps your mind sharp. At least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise three days a week seems to reduce cognitive decline in older adults.” (Mayo Clinic, February 2009) “People with high levels of physical fitness, called cardiorespiratory fitness, have a lower risk of dying from all causes of death, including coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease, than people with low levels of cardiorespiratory fitness.” (Journal of the American Medical Association, May 2009) It's Always Something Even if you exercise for an hour a day, you're still awake for another 15 hours. If you spend too many of them sitting, you'll have significantly higher risk of "cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome risk factors, and obesity ... because any type of brief, yet frequent, muscular contraction throughout the day may be necessary to short-circuit unhealthy molecular signals causing metabolic diseases." American Diabetes Association, "Role of Low Energy Expenditure and Sitting in Obesity". So Don't Just Sit There! |
March 7, 2011. Here's a real deal. A complete home gym that fits in three square feet. Costs fifty bucks. Press Play and watch the video to see it in action. Works for all the exercises I think are important. The ones that improve your balance, your muscle and bone strength, your aerobic endurance. Really an all-in-one small product. I got it because I liked the design of the "balance board" part of the deal. Quickly and easily adjustable between two modes: easy and not-so-easy. Very lightweight. You can lean it up against the wall on one end; takes up less than one square foot. Or stick it in a closet. Lately, though, I began to appreciate the other things you can do with this. You can pop some legs onto the balance board and it becomes a "step deck". You know, for "step aerobics". Back to the nineties. Or was it the eighties? Or seventies? But, you know, if you don't have a treadmill at home, this a Better Cheaper Way to walk or jog in your living room. Actual aerobic exercise. You get your heart rate up. You breathe hard. You sweat. You burn calories. I'll show you how. Next Monday. But wait! There's more! This thing comes with resistance tubes. Like I use for Strength Exercises. But these clip onto the Step Deck/Balance Board. So you can can improve your balance and strength at the same time. But takes some practice. This is harder than chewing gum and walking at the same time. Do it carefully. You should check this out. It's really the exercise version of a Time & Space Machine. Lets you squeeze a lot of exercise into a little time and a small space. You buy it at Amazon.com for $50. Press Play for a simple balance exercise: Balance Standing on two feet Standing on one leg Knee Lifts on the Balance Board |
Cost-Benefit analysis Old folks like me (should) fear falling because, get this: of the 300,000 men and women over 65 who fracture a hip this year, 20% will die within a year. And 50% won't regain their mobility; they'll move to nursing homes. Journal of the American Medical Association. You, like everybody, could slip, trip or otherwise sprain an ankle or end up on your butt later today. And off your feet for six to eight weeks. Not to mention the pain. So take a few seconds to consider ... Balance Training Three minutes a day will do the trick; five or ten minutes is better. You're too busy? C'mon, wake up and stand on your balance board for the first three minutes you're checking your e-mail. Really, you can do that. Personally, I'm not big on that kind of multi-tasking. But it beats a sprained ankle. You can buy a balance board for twenty dollars. That's less than the co-pay in the emergency room. Or you can spend fifty bucks on Today's Way of the Day and add some strength to your balance. Every Thing Is Everything When you strengthen muscles, you also strengthen your bones. Weight-bearing exercise - like standing, walking and jogging - contributes mightily to bone density and strength as well as to muscle mass and strength. If your bone density's on the way down - and this begins after age 35 if you don't counter it with exercise and diet - you're on the way to osteopenia and its severe form, osteoporosis. If you get there, you're at a significantly higher risk for hip, spine, wrist and rib fractures when you lose your balance and go down. |