Why Ice Delays Recovery
When I wrote my best-selling Sportsmedicine Book in 1978, I coined the term RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) for the treatment of athletic injuries (Little Brown and Co., page 94). Ice has been a standard treatment for injuries and sore muscles because it helps to relieve pain caused by injured tissue. Coaches have used my "RICE" guideline for decades, but now it appears that both Ice and complete Rest may delay healing, instead of helping.
Exercise Every Day or Every Other Day?
The old guideline recommending 30 minutes of exercise three times a week just isn't enough, according to the latest research. Athletes know that they need to work out every day, and all people who just want to stay healthy can benefit from the same type of exercise program.
How to Become Stronger: Weight Training for Middle-Aged and Older People
A review of 22 studies specifically on how to grow larger and stronger muscles found that the best way for untrained people to grow muscles is to use lighter weights with more repetitions. On the other hand, most trained athletes gained more strength by using heavier weights with fewer repetitions
Resistance Exercise You Can Do at Home
Resistance exercise is the best way to slow down the loss of muscle strength that occurs with aging, and I believe that everyone should do some type of resistance exercise (moving your muscles against an opposing force) as part of their regular exercise program.
Which Burns More Calories, Running or Cycling?
Have you wondered whether you burn more calories when you run or when you ride a bicycle? Running requires the same amount of energy per mile at any speed, but cycling is slowed so much by wind resistance that the faster you ride, the harder you have to pedal and more energy you use.
How Many Miles Cycling Equal Miles Running?
During the cold winter months when snow and ice are on the ground, it's too dangerous to ride a bike, so many cyclists run instead. The standard comparison is that one mile of running equals four miles of cycling, but that's lousy science. Although running requires the same amount of energy per mile at any speed (110 calories per mile) , riding is affected by wind resistance so the faster you ride, the more energy you use. So you have to compare running and cycling at different cycling speeds.
Why You Sweat More After Exercise
It's normal to sweat more after you finish exercising than you do while you exercise. Your body temperature varies throughout the day, going from around 97 degrees in the early morning to about 99 degrees in the early evening. Exercise raises body temperature considerably.
Strength Training Guidelines
1. People need to learn a correct range of motion for each exercise that is within their capability and practice that with lighter resistance. 2. There is not a lot of convincing data on repetition duration, but what there is including work we have done here, suggests for each exercise taking about three seconds for the concentric part of the rep, and three seconds for the eccentric part.
Stretching Doesn’t Deliver
Whenever I see someone stretching before or after hard exercise, I worry that the person has gotten bad advice about training. You should not stretch before a competition because stretching weakens muscles.
Cyclists Age Better
Two exciting new studies show that older men and women who have cycled for many years do not have the markers of aging found in non-exercising people. Their muscle size and strength, amount of body fat, levels of hormones such as testosterone, and blood cholesterol levels were close to those of much younger people.
Ten-Minute Workouts for Fitness
One minute of intense exercise can give you the same level of fitness as 45 minutes of more casual exercise. Two groups of out-of-shape men exercised three times a week for 12 weeks. . .
Calculate Your Fitness Age
VO2max can be used to predict a person’s risk of premature death from a heart attack. Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have developed a simple way to estimate a person’s VO2max, his maximal ability to take in and use oxygen.
Flat Feet, Pigeon Toes and Bow Legs
Many of the world's great sprinters have flat feet. In the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Bob Hayes tied the world record when he won the 100 meter dash, and five days later, he ran the anchor leg in the finals of the Olympic 400 meter relay. He took the baton with the US team in fifth place and he passed Jamaica, then Russia, then Poland and then France to run his 100 meters in an incredible 8.6 seconds, the fastest of all time.
Carbohydrate Loading DOES NOT Work
"Carbohydrate loading" the night before a big race can harm your performance and your health. More than forty years ago, I reported the case of a marathon runner who had a heart attack after carbohydrate loading in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Making Muscles Stronger
If you want to make a muscle stronger, you have to exercise it intensely enough to damage the muscle fibers and when they heal, they will be stronger than they were. You can tell you are causing muscle damage because of the burning you will feel during exercise and the soreness in that muscle you feel four to eight hours later.
Recovery: the Key to Improvement in Your Sport
If you want to become stronger and faster and have greater endurance, you need to exercise so intensely on one day that you damage your muscles and feel sore on the next day and then train at a reduced intensity for as many days as it takes for your muscles to heal and the soreness to lessen. Then you take your next intense workout.
Get Stronger in 30 Minutes a Week
Most competitive bodybuilders spend hours trying to do many sets over and over again. You don't need to do that. Various studies show that you can gain up to 80 percent of your maximum strength by picking out four to eight specific lifts, lifting one set of ten of the heaviest weight in each, and repeating your program two or three times a week.
Recreational Runners and Cyclists Should Lift Weights
To preserve muscle and bone size and strength, recreational runners and cyclists should do upper body and core weight lifting and resistance training. Everybody will lose muscle and bone size and strength with aging. Your bones weaken progressively after age 30, and between ages 35 and 50, about 28 percent of North American men and women suffer from bone weakening called osteopenia.
Sit-ups the Right Way
Sit-ups can strengthen your belly muscles, but doing them incorrectly can hurt your back. Sit-ups should be done while you lie on your back with your knees bent enough for the soles of your feet to touch the floor. Place both hands on your chest and slowly raise your head off the ground.
Electric-Assist Bikes and Trikes
I predict that in the next few years, virtually all cyclists will have motors on their bikes. I think that you can get a better training effect with a motor than without it. Anyone who has difficulty accelerating a bike will benefit from an added boost from an electric motor.
Is Napping Healthful?
Power napping for an hour can help you to learn, remember and interpret more efficiently. The frequency of daytime napping increases with age, and up to 70 percent of older adults around the world take daytime naps.
Arm Exercises: Conductors Often Have Long Lives
Eighty-year-old Ricardo Muti just extended his contract to conduct the Chicago Symphony to 2023. Pablo Casals, Nadia Boulanger, Arturo Toscanini, Arthur Rubinstein, Mehli Mehta and Paul Paray all conducted major orchestras into their nineties,. The constant exercise involved in the act of conducting may be a strong part of the reason for their long lives.
Should You Breathe Through Your Nose or Your Mouth When You Exercise?
Just about everyone with an unobstructed nose will breathe through their nose when at rest or during casual activities, but most people will breathe through their mouth during exercise. The more intensely you exercise, the more likely that you will have to breathe through your mouth because you may not be able to get enough air through your nose to feel comfortable back of your mouth.
All Exercisers Can Benefit from Elite Training Methods
You will gain the most benefits from your exercise program if you follow the “stress and recover” training principles that competitive athletes use. A study using accelerometers to measure the physical activity of more than 90,000 healthy people over six years found that the more and harder they exercised, the less likely they were to suffer heart disease.
No Need to Measure Maximum Heart Rate
Your maximum heart rate is the fastest your heart can beat and still pump blood effectively through your body. As you age, your maximum heart rate drops. The maximum heart rate formulae used by heart rate monitors (such as MAXIMUM HEART RATE = 220 – age) are all based on averages. They can be used to help you plan your exercise program, but they should not be interpreted as absolute limits or goals.
Your Muscles Make Your Heart Stronger
When you contract your skeletal muscles, they squeeze the veins near them to pump extra blood back to your heart. The extra blood flowing back to your heart fills up your heart, which stretches your heart muscle, causing the heart muscle to contract with greater force and pump more blood back your body.
Walk Faster, Live Longer
The faster you walk, the longer you live. Picking up the pace is more healthful than just walking slowly, even if you go longer than the recommended 30 minutes per day.
Listen to Your Body
The best way to achieve a high level of fitness without injuring yourself is to listen to your body. Don't depend on heart rate monitors, fitness trackers or other gadgets.
Lack of Fitness, Not Too Much Sitting, Shortens Lives
A new study suggests that it is the level of fitness, not time spent sitting, that predicts susceptibility to disease and longevity.
How to Keep Your Maximum Heart Rate Up as You Age
Your maximum heart rate is the fastest your heart can beat and still pump blood effectively through your body. As you age, your maximum heart rate drops. This means that your heart is weaker and more susceptible to damage, and you can't exercise as fast over distance as you could when you were younger.
