If You Can’t Race, Rake!

Fifty-Plus Fitness Library

Library : Year 2 | Session 11: Physical Activity and Intellectual Function

If You Can’t Race, Rake!

By Lewis G. Maraham,
M.D., FACSM

Nobody needs to sell masters athletes on the virtues of exercise. So it was probably difficult for you to stifle a yawn when Physical Activity and Health, A Report of the Surgeon General, was released amidst much tub-thumping last summer, with the blessings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and the American College of Sports Medicine. Another lament about the lard-laced society we live in, and what we ought to be doing about it. Probably nothing you haven’t heard a hundred times before.

Don’t be so sure. Yes, the list of good things exercise can do for your health is there as you’d expect, along with almost two dozen ways you get your minimum daily ration, ranging from waxing the car to walking the stairs. But look again. For one thing, the “official” list of ways exercise keeps us from falling apart may be longer than you thought. Along with the old standbys--less risk of dying from heart disease, better control of blood pressure--are the news that depression and anxiety are now officially vulnerable to the powers of exercise, and that regular physical activity can reduce the risk of developing diabetes and colon cancer. Exercise, the report sums up with magnificent reserve, “Reduces the risk of dying prematurely.”

Comforting news, certainly, to readers of this newsletter. But since your’re all presumabley masters athletes anyway, and don’t have to be sweet-talked into sweating since you already do as often as you can, is the report anything more?

Perhaps not, if you’re certain you’ll never be injured badly enough to bench you, or that you’ll neverd get a case of sport burnout, or that you’ll never go through an exercise dry spell when the projects at the office are eating you alive and you can’t figure out when you’re going to be able to get in the groceries, never mink spending an hour at the gym. But in real life these things have a way of happening. And when they do, the report’s findings show, it doesn’t have to be the end of life as the masters athlete knows it.

That’s because the mountains of epidemiologicval evidence have now give us a much clearer idea of not only what exercise can do to keep us healthy, but how much it takes to get those results. Or how little, depending I guess on your point of view. Exercise is not a light swintch that’s flipped on or off, but a dimmer with infinite settings. And the setting that delivers a basic, broad shot to our overall health is more precisely known than ever before. Note that it doesn’t take a finely tuned athlete to achieve it, either.

The official stand now is that a “moderate amount” of physical activity every day will do the job. Since exercise “amounts” depend on no fewer than three variables--duration, intensity and frequency--this report is the first to finally define its terms, declaring: “A moderate amount of physical activity is roughly equivalent to physical activity that uses approximately 150 Calories of energy per day.” Almost two dozen real -world equivlents are listed on a sliding time/intensity scale (see box). The less time you have to spend, the harder you’ll have to work.

This is what I call “hip pocket” information, something you stash away, just in case, like an insurance policy. Masters athletes have a genius for being hard on themselves, convinced that raining is an all-or-nothing situation. Lightswitch fitness. If they can’t have their first choice--filling up that log and honing themselves to race-ready perfection--they figure there is no second choice.

But if you’ll reach into your hip pocket, you’ll find there are plenty of things you can still do to keep the “health systems” tu ned up even when you’re nursing a chronic injury, or plowing through an endless crisis at the office that’s put your normal workouts far back on the shelf. If you can’t train for awhile, at least reach reach for the rake. It’s a simple matter of good health.

>What’s “Moderate,” Anyway?

(What the 150-calorie floor looks like.)

Washing and waxing a car, 45-60 mins.

Washing windows or floors, 45-60 mins.

Volleyball, 45 mins.

Touch football, 30-45 mins.

Gardening, 30-45 mins.

Walking 1 3/4 miles in 35 mins. (20 mins/mile)

Shooting baskets, 30 mins.

Bicycling 5 miles in 30 mins.

Dancing fast, 30 mins.

Pushing a stroller 1 1/2 miles in 30 mins.

Raking leaves, 30 mins.

Walking 2 mile in 30 mins.(15 mins./mile)

Water aerobics, 30 mins.

Swimming laps, 20 mons.

Wheelchair basketball, 20 mins.

Basketball (game), 15-20 mins.

Bicycling 4 miles in 15 mins.

Jumping rope, 15 mins.

Running 1 1/2 miles in 15 mins. (10 mins./mile)

Shoveling snow, 15 mins.

Stairwalking, 15 mins.

Dr. Maharam, a primary care sports medicine specialist, pratices at 800A Fifth Avenue (at 61st Str.), Suite 302, New York, NY 10021.

Reprinted with permission of Masters SportsTM