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News to Use Exercise expert encourages public health awareness
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NEWS TO USE
SHAPE UP
Exercise Expert Encourages Public Health Awareness
by Brenda Day
Thirty minutes a day. That’s all the time it takes for inactive people in this nation to make a marked improvement on overall public health.
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Yes, once again we are talking about physical activity — exercise. But we are not talking about paying high prices to join health clubs, completing daily grueling exercise routines or competing with the jocks. And we’re not talking about having to buy special expensive equipment. So please read on.
Recent research by the Centers for Disease Control and the American College of Sports Medicine shows that just taking a brisk 30-minute daily walk most days of the week will give sedentary people more health benefits than those that can be gained by current exercisers who increase their physical activity, says UM Professor Emeritus Brian Sharkey. And, he adds, statistics from the CDC show that 250,000 lives are lost annually in the United States because of a lack of physical activity. The payoff for adding those daily walks to your schedule is high, and fitness experts like Sharkey are trying to get the message out.
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| UM denizens lift weights in the new Fitness and Recreation Center. |
A physiologist, author and past president of the American College of Sports Medicine, Sharkey does research at UM’s performance lab to help the U.S. Forest Service minimize health risks for firefighters. He says physical activity has always been an important part of his life. Because rheumatic fever kept him in bed for months at a time as a youth, he learned early to appreciate the ability to get up and move around.
“You
know, people don’t have to join a club to walk,” he says.
“And why would anybody walk inside on a day when they can go outside?
Why be confined when you can do something outside, in a natural setting,
particularly in Montana where you can walk along streams, climb hills?”
While Sharkey doesn’t claim to have an answer about what will motivate
sedentary people to get up and move, he does have some ideas about ways
individuals, families and communities can comfortably make the transition
to more active lives.
“The key is to find something you like to do,” he says. “There are lots of fallacies about exercise. One is that it has to hurt to be good. It doesn’t have to hurt to be good. It can be as simple as starting to walk.”
Begin walking at a very moderate pace for five to 10 minutes each day, and then slowly increase the distance and the speed until you are walking briskly for 30 minutes, Sharkey advises.
Even though 30 minutes a day is recommended, Sharkey says don’t get locked in. Once you start walking, you may find reasons to set goals that motivate you to become more active or to begin other activities, such as biking or swimming.
Let’s say you have some friends who are going on a long hike in the fall, and you get invited. You say, “Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” But then you realize that in order to do the hike, you are going to have to train for it. Setting goals may help you get in shape, Sharkey says.
“Be realistic about what you can do,” he warns. “If your long-term goal is to be able to make that hike, set some short-term goals that will help you get there. Increase your distance gradually and throw in some hills to climb.”
Next page: Tips for success 1, 2