Some Facts on Exercise

What is Fitness ? - Fitness means the ability of the body to tolerate stress in all its forms - Like - A hard day in office. Fighting an infection with a germ invading the body. A skid on the road. Each and every stress to the body, be it small or big needs expenditure of energy and involvement of all the body's defenses. More oxygen has to be delivered at the muscles, more waste products have to be carried away. All these place extra demand on the circulatory system and strain the capacity of heart. How our body faces any stressful condition depends on our baseline of Fitness. For some of us, even leisure can be stressful. Exercise helps us in keeping fit. It helps in toning up the body for many eventualities.

Many people believe that if you exercise a particular area of the body, the fatty tissue in the immediate area are burned up. No its wrong. If you bend the waist often enough you'll NOT trim down your mid section. The exercise we do burns up fat from all over the body and not from a specific area. Thus it is impossible to reduce the amount of fat from a particular area without affecting the amount in other parts of the body. Thus, when we manage to reduce fat with the help of exercise and diet it has a general effect including the waistline.

It has been shown that unexercised muscles deteriorate at a phenomenal rate. For the first three days that a person is immobile, he losses about one fifth of his maximal muscle strength. Immobility also affects other systems of the body like circulatory system, nervous system, digestive system, respiratory system.

While daily exercise is desirable it is believed that at least Three non consecutive days in a week is must to maintain adequate levels of physical fitness.

If you cover one mile by walking or by jogging, you spend same amount of energy in both cases. Because in both cases you are moving the same weight the same distance. The speed does not matter. Of course, if you jog rather than walk for 30 minutes, you'll cover more distance and consequently burn more calories.

The best exercise should be moderate, enjoyable and refreshing and not too strenuous and unpleasant.

Walking is one of the best exercises.

Vigorous stretching exercises DO NOT keep the muscles flexible. Stretching exercises should be done slowly and deliberately allowing the muscles to relax. When doing stretching exercises like bending or twisting at the waist and touching toes, it is advisable to move slowly and when the first sign of tension occurs, hold that position for several seconds, then relax. Repeat the exercise for several times.

The minimum amount of time one should spend exercising in a day is 20 minutes.

Brisk walking has tremendous benefits. It also affects the human capillary systems. There are approximately 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the body. These are mostly minutes vessels responsible for the irrigation of the flesh. When the muscle is at rest only few capillaries would open and perhaps 50 times as many will open while the muscle is being exercised. A regular daily striding will not only open up more capillaries but would also help in the formation of new vessels to nourish the muscles. Exercise not only stimulates development of blood vessels in the skeletal muscles tissue, it also does the same with the heart. Thus a fit person is better prepared to survive the occlusion of a vessel. It has been shown that exercise even helps in the formation of new vessels even after an occlusion has occurs.

Striding has beneficial effect on the mind. It is said to clear the mind and improve thought process. A brisk long walk in the evening has some tranquillizing effects. They say regular brisk walking benefits anxiety and depression.