Your exercise program should be balanced, just as diet
should be balanced. You need one or more activities to exercise the heart and
lungs and to build endurance. Brisk walking, jogging, and swimming relatively
long distances are good for this. Other parts of the program should be aimed at
improving strength, agility, flexibility, and muscle tone. Suggestions for a
home exercise program to achieve these objectives can be found in such
publications as these: Adult Physical Fitness.
President's Council on Physical
Fitness
Washing- ton, D.C., Supt, of Documents, U.S. Government
Printing Office
Physical Fitness
Department of Health Education, American Medical
Association, 535 N. Dearborn, Chicago, Ill. Seven Paths to Fitness.
Department of Health Education, American Medical
Association, 535 N. Dearborn, Chicago, Ill Most people understand how. Specific
exercises for various muscles and parts of the body can develop strength. These
are certainly worthwhile. For some reason, one particular area of relative
neglect is the abdominal muscle area.
Another is the muscles of the back. Both
are important in terms of good posture; both are important, too, as aids in
avoiding sagging waistlines and backaches. We give exercises for these in this
chapter along with another exercise for the muscles of the buttocks; and the
four exercises, in addition to their general value, are helpful in restoring
muscle tone in these areas in people who are slimming down.
But we think it important to go on at once to emphasize here
the activities that exercise the heart and lungs and build endurance.
When you
are at rest, all the muscles in your body use only about one thirtieth of the
oxygen they can use during maximum effort. The more oxygen they use, the more
the heart will respond, pumping harder to get more oxygen- Physical Activity I
87 carrying blood into circulation. Over a period of time, as a result of this,
heart pumping efficiency will increase.
The heart will become able to pump much
more blood with each stroke. At the same time, lung capacity, much of it never
used in sedentary living, will increase to absorb and feed more oxygen into the
bloodstream.
