Let’s Get Physical

Health researchers at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in the US announced last Thursday that it will present 12 research teams up to $200,000 each for one and two year studies into how computer games can be used to improve the health of gamers. The projects will be designed to assess the effects of persistent playing of computer games on the young and old alike.

Apparently, Cornell University’s research group will be looking at whether a mobile phone game designed to reward children who eat healthily will influence their behaviour – if at all. Researchers at South Carolina University will spend their grant investigating the potential for using games consoles like Wii and EyeToy as a means to help stroke patients recover motor skills, while the University of Florida will analyse how the game “Crazy Taxi” for the Playstation II might affect perception skills in the elderly.
 
The research is predicated upon the basic concept that computer games teach through reinforcement, and so the question is whether health improvements can be reinforced this way as well.

Overseer the games research at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Debra Lieberman, has said “A good game, or a game where you could actually learn some skills or develop some self-confidence could displace some of the more time-wasting video games that are out there. That could be a win-win in many ways.”

I admit to being more sceptical however. Whereas I can see the therapeutic benefits of computer games in terms of helping with perception, reflexes and certain motor functions, I am more sceptical about their place as essentially nannies and health educators for children. If we want children to learn and normalise healthy eating habits and/or regular exercise, we have to teach them through example. If parents start doing so with their children while they are still young enough, by the time those children are teenagers, sport and healthy eating will be a the norm rather than the deviation.

I just hope we don’t start buying ‘healthy’ video games as a sub-standard means to expiate feeling of guilt about not otherwise bothering to raise our children properly, or even looking after ourselves…

Anaerobic literally means “without air” although it refers to exercise “without oxygen” – so it is very different from aerobic exercise where efficient oxygen absorption it the key.

Anaerobic exercises are short, hard and fast exercises, so they make use of muscles at a high rate and intensity but for a short duration and helps increase muscle strength and the ability to adopt sudden bursts of speed.

Anaerobic exercise requires energy from anaerobic sources and does not have oxygen as a limiting factor to physical performance. Anaerobic energy sources utilise lactic acid and phosphagen in the body; enabling brief, maximal muscle activity. Intense physical activities that last for 30 seconds or less rely pretty exclusively on the phosphagen system, while intense physical activity that last for between 30 seconds and 2 minutes begin to utilise lactic acid. Lactic acid is a by-product that contributes directly to tiredness in muscles. This acid must be burned in the body during recovery phases in exercise in order to embark upon another burst of anaerobic exercise. The recovery phase allows muscles to draw on oxygen from the blood in order to top up the energy used during anaerobic exercise. 

In sport, anaerobic training predominates for sprinters, high jumpers and other non-endurance sports. This is because it builds muscle mass/density and explosive power, which is better for short duration, high intensity activities, which last for 2 minutes or less. Some good examples of anaerobic training include sprinting, power-lifting, or any sudden bursts of rapid and physically intense exercise, like fast and hard punch-bag workouts.

Anaerobic exercises are also the best sort of exercise if you want to build of mass and definition of your muscles for summer on the beach…

 Do you have trouble understanding the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise? You’re not alone! Over the next two articles we will look at the differences and benefits these two forms of physical exercise, starting with:

Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic exercise is not just the stuff done by groups women in brightly coloured leotards, involving steps and big squishy balls. This sort of exercise is relevant to physical endurance – the ability to sustain physical exertion for prolonged periods – and indeed any exercises that involves and improves oxygen intake and use by our bodies.  In fact aerobic means “with oxygen” and refers to energy generation of the metabolism.

Aerobic exercises are generally lower intensity but last for longer, so long jogs instead of short sprints, swimming multiple lengths of a pool rather than racing for one, and so on. Aerobic fitness allows us to walk, run, climb uphill, swim for any length of time, and indeed one can be aerobically fit and yet not remarkably strong.

Generally speaking, if an exercise lasts for less than 12 minutes it is not completely aerobic. So strenuous weight lifting for 8 minutes, or fast sprints over short durations, will include a large degree of anaerobic metabolism, where the readily accessible energy (like sugars) stored in the body are burnt to give energy. But as the body has a limited supply of such energy, anaerobic exercise can’t last that long.

If you go for an extended jog over a long distance, your body will metabolise more aerobically. This means that muscles are used that utilise oxygen to burn fat and carbohydrates, thereby creating the energy needed to keep moving your body. During aerobic exercise it is the efficiency with which your body draws oxygen from the air and pumps it around the circulatory system that matters most of all.

Aerobic fitness is directly related to the weight of the body without fat, which mostly consists of muscles. On average, men have a higher muscle mass then women and so are generally capable of higher levels of aerobic endurance, although this is still dependent upon age and levels of exercise.

Generally speaking, aerobic fitness is a good measure of health in terms of heart condition, as steady regular aerobic exercise works the heart in a regular fashion, building up its endurance and efficiency along with the other muscles in your body.

Chiropractic and osteopathy are complementary therapies based around the manipulations and they are concerned with the spine, joints and bones in general. Although the two sorts of therapy have commonalities, osteopaths focus mostly on the joints, ligaments and tendons, where chiropractors focus more on the vertebrae and the nervous system.

Chiropractors and osteopaths share work on the principle that the body is a biological machine and any illness is due to a malfunction or foreign object interfering with its correct running. Both treatments believe that many illnesses can be traced down to problems with and in the spine and the body’s joints, like misalignment, and if these misalignments are corrected then the good functioning of the body is improved and many ailments will be alleviated.

Together, osteopaths and chiropractors mainly treat back and neck pain, but they also concern themselves with other areas of treatment, not least being sports injuries. Although the scientific evidence to back up all the claims of these two therapies is relatively thin on the ground, many GP’s acknowledge their benefits regarding the treatment of back pain – a common complaint from people involved with sport but who over-extend themselves.

Although both treatments are available on the NHS in some areas, this is far from universal. If you want to see a therapist outside of the NHS it is important to make sure that they are fully regulated and approved practitioners. Because these treatments focus on the spine, particularly chiropractic, the potential errors of a not-properly qualified practitioner can cause grave harm to your body.

It’s not a good idea to ignore injuries. If you haven’t injured yourself too badly and you are just a little sore or stiff in a particular joint or muscle, rest will probably be enough of a treatment. But if you have a pain or swelling that doesn’t go away in a week or so with rest then you should consider seeing a professional about it – just in case.

Generally, if you have doubt about a persistent injury caused by physical exercise or sport you should probably see a specialist physiotherapist. Physiotherapists can give hands on treatment revolving around the physical manipulation of the effected area (similar in its own way to therapeutic massage) and sometimes stretches and very mild exercises.

Physiotherapy is offered on the NHS in some places and there are also many private clinics and sports centres that provide the services of physiotherapists. Although doctors can refer you for physiotherapy, you can also take yourself to a private practitioner, although as there are different sorts of physiotherapy that focus on different parts of the body you may need some advice before doing so.

If you have injured your foot of the lower leg you might want to consider seeing a podiatrist. Podiatry is the diagnosis and treatment of injuries and disorders of the feet and what practitioners don’t know about foot and lower leg injuries isn’t worth knowing. They can treat most problems in their related area to the extent that they can even manufacture specialist therapeutic insoles for your shoes to hold your foot in the correct position to allow healing.

In the next article we will look at the benefits of another two respected alternative treatments: chiropractic and osteopathy.

If you are unfortunate enough to break a bone or rupture a ligament (or indeed anything worse) be sure to take yourself straight to Casualty. These sorts of injuries require immediate medical attention.

If, however, you take all the normal precautions while training it is more likely that the sorts of injuries you get (if at all) will be very minor.

When you hurt a part of your body there will invariably be reddening, swelling, heat and tenderness. This is an inflammatory response and it is part of the body’s natural healing process. Even so, if you allow your injury to swell excessively it can interfere with your healing. So remember the following acronym: N.I.C.E.R.

This stands for all those things you need to do or take in order to keep swelling down and help the healing process:

N = non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. These reduce swelling and also help with the pain. Remember to always check the packaging of any drugs for their contents.

I = ice. Cool compresses take away some of the pain and help reduce swelling. That said, never hold ice straight onto the skin. Always wrap your icy compress in something first.

C = compress. A compression bandage restricts the amount of swelling. Tie such bandages snugly but not so tight they hurt or cut off blood supplies.

E = elevate. This helps drain fluid from the effected area and thereby reduces swelling.

R = rest. A no-brainer really. Give that injury a chance to heal.

These are the potential causes of injury that lie outside our own physical ailments (as discussed in the last article), coming either from the environment we are training within or through something we do.

So for example, inadequate technique is an example of an extrinsic factor that can cause injury. Very often an injury that comes from playing a sport, particularly with repetitive injury, is due to a poor application of technique. One example would be spraining your wrist while practicing a martial art because you didn’t lock your wrist in the correct fashion while punching.

Not warming up or down before and after training are other causes of injury. Muscles perform better under load and impact if they have been warmed up before harder use, so an exercise that gets a lot of blood flowing into your muscles, like stretching and jogging, are good ways to warm them up and decrease the chances of them straining or tearing. Likewise, when you finish intensive exercising it’s a good idea to do a gentle ‘warm-down’ exercise instead of just stopping dead.

Despite the fact that our muscles and bones are good at taking stress, subjecting them to an excessive load when they are not used to it can also cause harm. Always build up gradually to exercising goals, esepcially if you haven’t been active in a particular way for a while. As an example, while running, up to 3 times your body-weight can jolt through you with every step, so you may risk fractures or pulled muscles if you go from no exercise to a hard sprint.

Finally, faulty or incorrect training equipment (like running shoes, multi-gyms, helmets or whatever else) can cause all sorts of injuries if damaged or the wrong size. Be sure to get the correct equipment for the sport or training regime you are embarking upon and always be aware of whether it is functioning properly while using it.

In our next article we will be looking at what sorts of treatments to look for if you DO injure yourself.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic are terms given to the two groups of reasons for why you might injure yourself during training – because of some problem intrinsic to your own body, or because of some causal factor external from your own body. Intrinsic risks of injury can come from factors including the condition, size and even shape of your joints. Possible intrinsic factors that may make you more prone to injury when undertaking certain exercises or particular intensities of exercise:

- poor flexibility,
- osteoarthritis,
- genu valgus (‘knock knees’),
- muscle weakness,
- spine problems,
- loose joints,
- weak arch to your foot,
- being overweight.

This list is only representative of a few of the sorts of factors intrinsic to our own bodies that may cause us to injure ourselves while exercising - if we are not careful that is.

Although you shouldn’t worry too much about going for a brisk walk if that is your preferred method of exercise, it is always worth having a full check-up of whatever niggling pains you may have before embarking on a new training regime, just so you can avoid, or at least be aware of, the potential dangers of certain exercises for your body type.

In the next article we will be looking at factors external to our bodies that may cause injury while exercising.

Over the next few articles we will be looking at injuries, what they are, how you get them and how to recover from them.

Physical activity and injury go together. This is the reality. It is impossible to go through a physically active life and NOT injure yourself in some way and at some time. If we take up an exercise routine after a long period of inactivity, our chances of receiving an injury are even greater.

But what does this mean and should we be worried?

First up, what do we mean by injury? Well an injury can be anything from a skin graze (most likely) to something severe and life-changing like breaking the spine (most unlikely, fortunately) depending on the physical activity you are engaged in. Suffice to say this is a big area to cover!

In this article I am going to focus on the most likely injuries that you can get by exercising but which can also affect your whole routine. These injuries are harm to bones, muscles, joints or the tendons and ligaments that hold them all together. If you damage any of these during training it is important not to ignore it and continue as before. This can cause chronic problems with your joints or boned (or whatever) that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

That said, most types of injury can be learned from and so if you pay attention to your instructor, or even just your own body, you really don’t have to make the same mistake twice.

Perhaps the most common form of injury from physical exercise and sports are trauma injuries. Trauma injuries include everything from sprained ankles to broken bones and they are the result of sudden impact. There’s not a lot you can do to avoid trauma injuries as by their nature they tend to happen out of the blue. However, if you watch where you are going, try to avoid awkward landings and are careful to not just dive in to contact sports without the appropriate training or equipment you can minimise the chances of severe traumatic injuries.

Nest time we will look at the intrinsic risk factors of exercise.

Following on from our previous articles about the importance of remaining flexible, today we’ll look at what cycling, Yoga and ‘Power-Pump’ instructor, Sarah Wanzo, identifies as the different sorts of stretches to loosen up your rusty joints and ligaments.

Static Stretch: When you adopt a specific stretch position (you have to feel the pull!) and hold it for a count of ten or more.

Ballistic Stretches: When you push your muscles to an extreme with by swinging a limb until it reaches full extension and then snaps back like a spring.

Passive Stretshes: When a training partner gently puches a limb further than you can move it yourself, then holding it there for a count.

Dynamic Stretches: Excersises that gradually increase flexibility by increasing the range of movement of a limb over a steady period of time. An example might be the swinging of arms forward and backward in an alternating rhythm to stretch the deltoids and pectorals.

It is vital that whatever sorts of stretch routine you embark upon, always start slowly and do not puch yourself too hard. Yes you are supposed to feel a stretch , but remember that you feel pain for a reason and if something hurts too much it probably isn’t good for you to do. Also, remember to never bounce once you are in a stretch - as is often taught in less professional gymnastics and martial arts classes - as this is one of the best ways to slip a disc of damage a ligament.

As long as you’re excersising and stretching regularly, there are rarely any good reasons to push yourself too hard.

Remember, never start a new fitness and flexibility routine without first consulting with a health and fitness  professional.