Fast Fitness - Using Perceived Exertion
Friday, January 29, 2010
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Perceived Exertion!
What is it?
- Perceived exertion is your own description of how hard you are exercising
- Perceived exertion is usually described on a scale of 1 to 10 (very, very easy to extremely hard).
- Until recently, perceived exertion was found to correlate with actual oxygen consumption, meaning your body is actually working medium hard with medium oxygen consumption when the effort feels medium hard. Perceived exertion scales are becoming ineffective as young people become increasingly unused to exercise and rate almost any minor effort as extremely hard.
It is not an injury when you exercise hard enough to have sore muscles over the next three to four days. It is not an injury when you use your body enough to feel aching effort in your muscles. It is not a respiratory problem when you are out of breath from hard exercise. It is not a medical problem when you are tired at the end of the day. If you have worked hard, being tired enough to sleep is right and needed, and avoids the need for taking medicines to sleep.
Work to increase the effort it takes to become out of breath and feel hard muscular effort. Work to increase the amount of work it takes for you to feel something is moderately hard.
Related Fitness Fixer: Unrelated Fun Fitness Fixer:Labels: fast fitness, perceived exertion, sleep, tests of fitness/health
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Exercise in the Heat
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
In the hot days of summer, common warnings involve avoiding the heat. What about the advantages of heat? Hot environments can improve your health in several ways.
Done right:- Exercising in the heat improves your fitness level and ability to exercise.
- Exercising in the heat increases your tolerance to heat, making life more comfortable in the heat.
- Exercising in the heat prevents the decreases in heat tolerance that otherwise occur with increased age, which can be unhealthy, even dangerous.
Exercising in the heat makes positive changes in your body that improve your fitness. You increase blood volume, improve cooling ability, make changes in sweating, increase the vasculature that helps circulation, cooling and exercising at the same time, increase specific chemical compounds in the body that improve health and ability to exercise.
When you exercise and increase body temperature, your body produces more of an interesting compound called heat shock protein. Heat shock proteins are families of proteins that do several things including preventing other proteins from damage by infection, ultraviolet light, starvation, heat, cold, and other harsh conditions. Heat shock proteins are thought to mobilize immune function against infections and diseases, even cancer.
Improved ability to tolerate heat without discomfort, called heat adaptation, occurs fairly quickly - with large improvements within the first week of exerting in the heat. Exercising in heat is more effective to produce heat acclimatization than heat exposure without exercise. Aerobic fitness is a major factor in heat tolerance.
It is a myth that you must avoid sweating to stay healthy. Exercising enough to sweat makes you more flexible, increases many chemical reactions in your body that are healthy. Sweat itself has compounds beneficial for your skin and body. Don't worry that you must exercise only indoors in air-conditioning in order to do healthful exercise. A protective environment does prevent initial discomfort, but reduces benefits and the ability to be comfortable in the heat.
This all does not mean to go out and cause yourself heat injury by overdoing without thinking. It is to gain the many benefits of exercising safely in the heat
I will cover more physical changes from exercise in the heat that improve health and exercise level in future articles.
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Labels: aerobic, aging, circulation, heat, heat shock protein, injury, myths, perceived exertion, performance enhancing modality
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Fast Fitness - Built in Upper Body and Core Exercise Carrying Children
Friday, May 29, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get better exercise and stop aching back and shoulders when carrying children (or anything else) in backpack carriers or by piggyback:
- Put on the carrier (and baby for a fun practice ride or use groceries, etc). Look sideways in a mirror.
- See if you round your upper and or lower back forward. See if you lean your upper body backward under the weight. Notice if you increase your lower spine inward curve, are tilting the hip out in back to hold up the carrier.
- Straighten upper and lower body segments. You will feel a strong pull on your abdominal muscles when you reduce overarching in the lower spine and prevent leaning the upper body backward. You will feel an upper back workout when you don't lean or round forward.
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Labels: abdominal muscles, children, fast fitness, fix pain, neck, partner exercise, perceived exertion, shoulder, upper back
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Do Military Chants Help Running? - The Jody Calls
Monday, February 23, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
When I was in the military, we ran. A lot. Every day. I love to run fast. When we ran, we sang. What did we sing? What they told us to sing - How much we loved to run. How much we loved everything about the military. Why? It kept us from saying what we were thinking. Military cadences have long been used for physical training. These are the
Jody Calls.
The origin of the Jody Calls is usually given around World War II, but chanting, sea shanties, group mantras and hymns, and others have been known for centuries. It is generally thought that group unison music reduces perceived exertion, allowing greater effort toward the common goal.
I am a career physiology researcher in extreme environments. That means I spend much time directly testing humans to see what they can do, then how to make them better at it. Doing experimental and research work personally, makes it easier to know if what you hear about fitness is true, or just another of countless repeated myths. Even doctors learn from books that are often not primary sources, just repeated by someone else who learned it in school, repeated from a non-primary source.
In the military, and since then, the Jody Calls interested me. I wanted to know if chanting and singing really make the work of running easier, or just make it seem easier, or perhaps even use more oxygen and is actually more work than running without singing. I did many laboratory experiments on Jody calls.
Some of the experiments I conducted involved running troops on treadmills at different speeds, with specially fitted masks, so that they could chant into the mask, or just breathe regularly for control tests. I collected their expired air (what they breathed out) and analyzed it for oxygen usage and carbon dioxide production, a measure of the work of running. I compared oxygen usage with chanting and without.
Why are U.S. military chants called Jody Calls? There are many stories, usually involving a civilian character named Jody or Jodie, who stayed home when you left… you left… you left… right… left….
Below, hopefully sound file will appear. Turn your computer sound on, and click the arrow to listen to one stereotype call of the U.S. Marine Corps:
More on military cadences, what I found in my experimental work, and perceived exertion to come in future posts.
Posts about Fitness Myths - click Myths.
Related post on Perceived Exertion - Fast Fitness - Figuring Heart Rate Training Range.
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Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or
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Labels: endurance, military fitness, partner exercise, perceived exertion, performance enhancing modality, running, speed, spirit
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Fast Fitness - Figuring Heart Rate Training Range
Friday, June 06, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - How to know what heart rate will give you a cardiovascular training effect.
Several formulas calculate exact heart ranges and "target heart rates." There are a variety of commercial (expensive) heart rate monitors. Arguments in sports medicine continue on which is the right formula and if heart rates in water or at elevation can be calculated the same way. These issues will be covered in posts to come. For now:
- Your body is smart. Heart rate generally follows "perceived exertion." If you feel your running or other exercise pace is moderate, your heart rate is likely to be at a moderate training range. If it feels light, then heart rate will likely be too low to give much training effect.
- Find something you enjoy enough to continue more than ten minutes at a time.
- Keep a pace that you feel is moderate to hard, depending how you like it.
If your running or other exercise pace feels moderate, it is also moderate for your cardiovascular system. If it feels hard, your heart and body and mostly likely working hard for your current level If it feels light, then it is too light to give much training effect.
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Labels: aerobic, circulation, endurance, fast fitness, perceived exertion, tests of fitness/health
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