Reaping the maximum benefits of exercise - The time-honoured approach

Participation in specific exercise programme is common across age groups due largely to the increase in awareness of the health deficits that accompany inactive or sedentary lifestyles.

It has been established that inactivity occasioned either by the mode of living or secondary effects of debilitating illness could lead to deconditioning, accelerated loss of muscle strength and functional decline, particularly among older adults.

Sedentary people have 35 per cent greater risk of developing hypertension than athletes do.

On the other hand, consistent engagement in exercises has been shown to have positive effects on the human body systems and general wellbeing.

People who maintain active lifestyle have a 45 per cent lower risk of developing heart disease.

Added to these advantages, is the comparatively low cost of exercise as a therapeutic modality.

Perhaps the missing link in the self-engaged exercise is the inability to reap the required quantum of the available benefits on one hand and the needed precaution in the course of engagement on the other.

Exercise needs to be specific and carefully tailored towards different groups of individuals, specific tissues in the body, as well as the targeted function.

Intuitively, pregnant women, children, athletes, military and the aged will require different doses and kinds of exercises to meet their respective needs.

Suffice it to state that the types of exercise either low impact or high impact, and the amount required are premised on basic guidelines.

Guidelines

The utilisation of exercise as a therapy is a fundamental part of the practices of some specific professions such as physiotherapy, exercise physiology, kinesiology/biokinesthetics, physical education and the likes.

All these professions lay emphasis on carefully scheduled programmes of exercise to help individuals attain their desired goals.

This is often achieved by employing the components of exercise prescription which form the core values of therapeutic exercises.

As described by Dr Robert Butler, former Director of the National Institute on Aging in the United State of America, “If exercise could be packed into a pill, it would be the single most widely prescribed and beneficial medicine in the whole world.”

This assertion wouldn’t have been made out of mere exaggeration, given the established benefits that abound in exercise participation.

So rewarding the self-engaged exercise appears to be, however, maximum benefits and safety can only be guaranteed if certain principles are adopted. The following are the tips for adopting the right approach to exercise participation:

Intensity/Overload

To be meaningful, exercise must task tissues so as to challenge the inherent health deficits such as poor balance, compromised gait, low physical fitness, etc.

Intensity of exercise must be sufficient to overload the heart, breathing system as well as bone and muscle systems without overstraining them.

An individual body part must be exposed to a load to which not normally exposed in order to improve the desired function. Overload is the critical yardstick upon which the extension of the limits of human performance depends.

This principle is applied to all forms of exercises be it strength training, aerobics, endurance training, flexibility and balance training.

Progression

This principle is similar to overload but entails gradual increase of overload overtime and not all at once. It may best be thought of as an extension of overload principle. If progressed too rapidly, exercise may frustrate an individual since he/she will be unable to attain the desired goals or it may even result in injury or tissue damage.

Specificity

Training a specific body part through exercise will only improve that part of the body being trained. In other words, exercise must be responsive to the intended goals.

Walking 4km distance regularly every day may boost endurance but not necessarily impact on flexibility or balance.

Exercise engagement must reflect the type of physical performance or skill required by an individual with respect to the activities of daily living.

For instance, strengthening exercise directed towards pelvic floor muscles stands to cause improvement in bladder control and sexual function.

Recuperation/recovery

Although, regular participation in exercise training is advised, continuous engagement without rest is not helpful either. The body needs time to allow adaptation of physiological mechanisms required for a given activity. Overload training should not be done daily since muscles require time to recover. If training intensity is increased too quickly, it may in turn lead to increased risk of fatigue or injury.

Duration/frequency

Healthy adults should engage in a moderate-intensity aerobic exercise for 30-40 minutes for five days per week and this should begin with what is tolerable.

In addition, adults aged 18-64 are expected to accumulate at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week in bouts of 10 minutes or more to achieve the health benefits of exercise.

Use/disuse

This principle underscores the common slang “use it or lose it”.

It stresses the need to strike balance between stress and rest. This can be achieved by either interspersing periods of low intensity with periods of high intensity for recovery or by considering cross training.

In conclusion, engagement in self-prescribed exercise is cheap no doubt but adopting the right approach can be more rewarding.

Seeking professional advice via reliable sources can further guarantee safety and rewards.

The writer is a senior lecturer, Department of Physiotherapy,College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana (Korle Bu Campus).