Shifting Focus From Heart Thumping to Muscle Pumping

About 25 years ago, great masses of people first began to take up jogging. You couldn’t drive down the street without passing a dozen joggers in new running shoes and Dolphin shorts. Maybe it was a reaction to the immense changes of the ‘60s and the ‘70s, but everybody, it seemed, suddenly wanted to get fit. Truly, jogging was the drug of the 1970s and 1980s. Releasing endorphins became the new turn-on.

Since those heady days, jogging has lost much of its faddish popularity, replaced as the exercise du jour by step classes, treadmills, elliptical trainers, indoor cycling, StairMasters, cross-country trainers, walking, kick boxing and a dozen others. All of them have this in common: They’re aerobically based. And that makes them incomplete if what you want is complete fitness.

*

Now, while I love aerobics and do them every day, they’re not all that I do. I also do strength training. In fact, at 47 I do a lot more strength training than I did in my 20s and 30s. Why? Because every study I see and every research paper I read comes to the same conclusion: The older you get, the more important strength training is to your body.

This surprises a lot of people, given that, for a quarter-century, endurance has been drummed into our heads and made synonymous with fitness. People proudly announce, “I walked my three miles today,” but rarely do they say, “I worked every major muscle group today.”

The fact is, if you intend to stem the tide of aging and are in your 40s, at least 30% of your fitness regime should be devoted to strength training. If you’re in your 50s, strength training should be at least 40%. And if you’re in your 60s or older, a full half of your exercise time should be strength. The reason that this strength-aerobic formula changes according to age is because the body changes as it ages, losing up to 10% of its muscle mass per decade.

Sadly, the average 60-year-old who didn’t do anything to stem the tide when she was younger has already lost about a third of her muscle mass and strength. You can be sure, though, that if she had been losing 10% of her money per decade, she would have done something about it.

*

In this column, I’ve often extolled the virtues of strength training. Still, I don’t think it can be praised too much, not when human physiology can be so cruel.

My prediction is that weight training will be to the new millennium what jogging was to the ‘70s and ‘80s--but with a difference: Weight training will not go out of style. While many people gave up jogging because it hurt their knees and other joints, they’ll stick with weight training because it increases their bone density, raises their metabolism, improves balance, reshapes their body and, in general, makes daily living easier. In many ways, weight training makes you feel young again, particularly when paired with an endurance program.

*

One way to add strength training to your fitness regime is by using the machines or free weights at your gym; many gyms offer body conditioning classes. You can also have a few sets of dumbbells around the house and do a set (12-15 repetitions) of exercises that work every major muscle group at least twice a week.

If you don’t have dumbbells, there are other ways to incorporate strength training that use your own weight to create resistance: squats, lunges, push-ups, dips, chin-ups, etc., as well as using tubing, resistance bands--or water wings that increase resistance in the swimming pool.

For whatever reason, people haven’t taken to weight training the way they have to cardio activities. Maybe they see it as too tedious or complicated. That’s why my advice is to make weight training more social, the way joggers did. Just as you hung with your jogging partner on that last mile, no matter how tired you were, you and your partner can keep each other honest and inspired, as well as healthy and strong. Now that’s a turn-on for the new millennium.

*

Copyright 1999 by Kathy Smith

Kathy Smith’s fitness column appears weekly in Health. Reader questions are welcome and can be sent to Kathy Smith, Health, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. If your question is selected, you will receive a free copy of her new video, “Kickboxing Workout.” Please include your name, address and a daytime phone number with your question.