Fitness and Workout Tips

If you add exercise on top of an already stressed system, what are we doing? We are just adding more stress and making the whole process worse. Take your desk job for example where you litterally sit for maybe 6-8 hours. What ends up happening is you start developing postural patterns where your body is used to being hunched over (tight hip flexors) with a forward head tilt. You leave work and hit the gym to do what? You sit yourself down on a bike for another hour, do chest presses of three kinds, and hit the biceps. You are doing the exact same thing you did while at work but this time with load and wonder why you can't sleep at night because of back pain.

Exercise Increases Bone Health

Just as a muscle gets stronger and bigger the more you use it, a bone becomes stronger and denser when you place demands on it. If your bones are not called upon to work, such as during physical activity, they do not receive any messages that they need to be strong. Thus, a lack of exercise, particularly as you get older, may contribute to lower bone mass or density.

You cannot see your bones respond to exercise, but when you strike a tennis ball or land on your feet after jumping, chemical messengers tell your arm and leg bones to be ready to handle that weight and impact again. In fact, if you x-ray the arms of a tennis player, you would see that the bones in the playing arm are bigger and denser than the bones in the other arm.

Two types of exercises are important for building and maintaining bone mass and density: weight-bearing and resistance exercises. Weight-bearing exercises are those in which your bones and muscles work against gravity. This is any exercise in which your feet and legs are bearing your weight. Jogging, walking, stair climbing, dancing and soccer are examples of weight-bearing exercise with different degrees of impact. Swimming and bicycling are not weight-bearing.

The second type of exercises are resistance exercises or activities that use muscular strength to improve muscle mass and strengthen bone. These activities include weight lifting, such as using free weights and weight machines found at gyms and health clubs.

Most weight-bearing and resistance exercises place health demands on bone. Daily activities and most sports involve a combination of these two types of exercises. Thus, an active lifestyle filled with varied physical activities strengthens muscles and improves bone strength.