Hypothermia
In 1812, Napoleon attacked Russia with 453,000 men, but after he withdrew from Moscow, the harsh cold winter reduced his "Grande Armee" to fewer than 10,000 fighting men. The vast majority of Napoleon's soldiers were not killed by the Russians. They died of hypothermia, a severe drop in body temperature.
If you dress properly...
Helmets Save Lives
A study from Imperial College in London shows that increased use of helmets by bicycle riders has markedly reduced head injuries (1).
Do you know why woodpeckers don't damage their brains when they peck on wood? Their skulls fit so tightly that they don't allow the brain to move inside. Human skulls are enclosed...
How Many Miles Cycling Equal Miles Running?
During the cold winter months when snow and ice are on the ground, it's too dangerous to ride a bike, so many cyclists run instead. The standard comparison is that one mile of running equals four miles of cycling, but that's lousy science. Although running requires the same amount of energy per mile at any speed (110 calories per mile) , riding is affected by wind resistance so the faster you ride, the more energy you use. So you have to compare running and cycling at different cycling speeds.
How to Become Strong
Would you like to become stronger? Pick six to ten weight-machine exercises and do them in three sessions a week. In each exercise, try to lift the heaviest weight that you can lift comfortably ten times in a row without hurting yourself.
How to Walk Faster
To become fit you need to exercise vigorously enough to increase your heart rate by at least 20 beats a minute. Walking slowly doesn't make you fit.
Ankle Weights Won’t Help You to Run Faster
Ankle weights do not help you run faster or jump higher. To run fast in competition, you have to run fast in practice. Ankle weights slow you down because they interfere with your coordination and make you work much harder to raise your knees.
To jump higher, you have to strengthen your leg muscles...
Temperature During Exercise
You sweat more after you finish exercising than you do while you exercise. More than 70 percent of the energy that powers your muscles is lost as heat, causing your body temperature to rise during exercise. To keep your body temperature from rising too high, your heart pumps the heat in your blood from your muscles to your skin
Preparing for Baseball
Parents often ask me what their children can do to prepare for their baseball season. Because training is specific, they should be training for baseball 12 months a year. There are very few kids who are so gifted that they can be very good in several sports. Many children start training in one...
Slow Lifting
If you want to become very strong, you have to lift weights heavy enough to make your muscles burn. It doesn't make any difference whether you move the weights slowly or rapidly. Just exercise intensely enough so your muscles feel sore the next day.
Maximum Heart Rate Formula
Many exercise programs and tests used to measure heart function are based on an unreliable MAXIMUM HEART RATE formula that predicts the fastest your heart can beat and still pump blood through your body. Although this formula is the golden standard used today, it is not based on science.
Isometric Exercise
Can you become very strong by doing isometric exercises in which you push against something that doesn't move, such as a wall?
The single stimulus to make a muscle stronger is to exercise a muscle against a resistance; therefore, you can become strong by doing isometric exercises. However, there are two drawbacks: isometrics can...
Sit Ups for Belly Strength
Sit ups strengthen your belly muscles, provided that you know how to do them. Lie on your back with your knees bent with your soles on the floor. Place your hands on your chest and slowly raise your head off the ground. Then, slowly raise your shoulders off the ground to a height...
Orthotics
Orthotics are special custom arch supports that help to absorb shock and prevent foot pain. To see if orthotics are likely to help you, ask your podiatrist to strap your foot with a special taping procedure called a low-dye strap. If this reduces the pain, you probably will benefit from custom orthotics.
Lifting Weights Won’t Make You Musclebound
Training for strength improves coordination. Your brain is a master switchboard that coordinates your muscles. Lifting weights does not interfere with brain function; it improves coordination in events that require strength, such as playing sports, working as a carpenter, opening a stuck door or beating a drum.
Super Slow Training
Moving a weight very slowly in sets of ten causes the same amount of damage as moving a much heavier weight rapidly, and causes the same type of muscle damage. Lifting lighter weights slowly is far less likely to cause injuries than heavy lifting.
Muscle Stimulating Machines
Advertisements on television claim that you can wrap a special belt around your belly, plug it into an electric outlet, turn on the electricity, and then watch your belly muscles contract to give you rock-hard belly muscles.
You can bet that the beautiful people who demonstrate the machines on television didn't get their belly muscles...
Spot Reduction Doesn’t Work
You'll see lots of exercise programs, devices and machines in television commercials that claim to get rid of fat from your belly. While they can strengthen your belly muscles, there is no such thing as spot reduction.
When you take in more calories than your body burns, you store them as fat. Some people...
Build Muscle and Improve Balance with T’ai Chi
T'ai Chi can help older people improve balance, which can protect them from falling and breaking their bones. It is also a safe way to build muscle strength.
Older people lose coordination and are at increased risk for falling. T'ai Chi is a specific training program aimed at teaching people how to maintain balance...
Electronic Ab Machines
Your brain does send an electrical impulse along nerves that enter muscles to cause them to contract. The electrical impulses generated by ab machines are so weak that they can't possibly cause contractions that strengthen muscles significantly. If they did give you enough electricity to strengthen your muscles, they would give you a very painful shock.
Mamo Wolde, Olympian
Mamo Wolde died recently at age 71. At 36, He won the 1968 Olympic marathon and the 10,000-meter silver medal in Mexico City. He spend the last part of his life in prison. He was buried with a guard of honor of some of the greatest distance runners who ever lived.
In 1960, his...
Anabolic Steroids
When I look at today's baseball players, I just can't believe how big they are. They are larger and stronger than the best players of the 1930s to 1970s. Babe Ruth, arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived, was a fat elephant with relatively small muscles and a huge belly compared to the average player today.
Muscles and Diet
Many body builders and weight lifters are overly concerned about what they eat and what food supplements they take. If you want to grow larger and stronger muscles, you should concentrate on lifting weights, but you can help muscles grow larger by understanding how what you eat affects how you recover from hard exercise....
How to Start an Exercise Program
If you want to become fit and use exercise to help prevent a heart attack, first check with your doctor to make sure that you do not have anything wrong with your heart or blood vessels. Intense exercise can increase your risk for a heart attack if you already have a damaged heart.
Exercise with Flu or a Cold
Should you exercise when you have a cold or the flu? Most doctors allow their patients to exercise when they have a cold, as long as they don't have a fever and their muscles don't hurt when they exercise.
Hyponatremia – Low Sodium Caused by Too Much Water
A 28-year-old woman collapsed and died after finishing the Boston Marathon. Her blood salt levels were extremely low and she died from a condition called hyponatremia. A few weeks ago, a policeman training for bicycle duty died of the same condition. On July 26, 2005, sports medicine experts issued a warning to all athletes from the First International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference.
Repairing Damaged Knee Cartilage
The ends of bones are soft, so they must be covered with a thick white gristle called cartilage. Once damaged, cartilage can never heal. When knee cartilage is damaged, the person spends the rest of his life losing more cartilage until it is completely gone and the knee hurts 24 hours a day.
Prepare for a Marathon
Many marathon runners think that they have to run 100 miles a week to compete successfully, but most will be able to run a marathon faster if they run fewer than 50 miles a week. Top marathon runners can run 100 miles a week and not be injured because of their superior genes.
Exercise Choices for the Out-of-Shape
Sixty-five percent of people who start an exercise program drop out in the first six weeks, often because of injuries. Jogging and running are high-injury sports because your feet hit the ground with a force greater than twice your body weight. Pedaling and swimming are safer because you pedal in a smooth rotary motion and when you swim, the buoyancy of the water dampens forces on your muscles.
Get Stronger in 30 Minutes a Week
Most competitive bodybuilders spend hours trying to do many sets over and over again. You don't need to do that. Various studies show that you can gain up to 80 percent of your maximum strength by picking out four to eight specific lifts, lifting one set of ten of the heaviest weight in each, and repeating your program two or three times a week.
Dizziness in Athletes
Athletes and other very fit people may feel dizzy when they rise from lying to standing because of their slow pulse rates. Exercise makes your heart stronger so it can pump more blood with each beat and it doesn't have to beat as often.
