Heart-healthy Walking Workouts

0

Posted by admin | Posted in General | Posted on 18-09-2010

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some people walk a rut in the mud trying to decide upon an exercise program. They don’t like running because it hurts their feet. Maybe they’ll walk down to the gym and have a look around. But those bodybuilders and power lifters are too intimidating, so they just walk on and don’t look back. What about the health club? Walk in and look at all the pretty women with hard bodies. What to do? Keep walking and thinking.

Sometimes you really can’t see the forest for the trees. This whole time you’ve been pacing around you’ve been active and burning calories. Oh my gosh! You’ve discovered your exercise program. Yes sir, walking can be your fitness program. It’s been shown to have many health benefits and there are several variations you can use.

Most people take walking for granted and fail to associate it with any health benefits. They think you have to grunt, sweat and experience pain to be healthy and happy. But, that just isn’t so. Anything that keeps you active can keep you healthy, and here’s how.

Aerobic Power

Contrary to popular belief, walking can increase your aerobic power. Any previously sedentary individual who walks three times per week for 30 minutes a moderate pace will show improvements. Doing so for 12 weeks can increase aerobic power by 12 percent. Obviously, the faster you walk the greater the aerobic benefits.

Body Composition

To lose fat, you must be active and burn calories. Walking is an activity and it burns calories. In a 16-week study, a group of people lost an average of 12 Ibs and decreased body fat by six percent. The group walked 90 minutes per day for five days per week. Walking a mile burns approximately the same number of calories as running a mile; it just takes more time.

Blood Lipids

Walking can increase the levels of HDL cholesterol, which transports cholesterol to the liver for removal from the body. A program of at least 12 weeks of high-intensity, long distance walking will increase the HDL levels in the blood and put one at a lower risk for cardiovascular disease.

Blood Pressure

If you suffer from mild or moderate hypertension, walking can lower both the systolic (pumping) and diastolic (resting) blood pressure. Even people with normal blood pressure will experience a slight drop in pressure. These reductions may not be spectacular, but they are significant. Other walking benefits, such as weight loss, will also help lower your blood pressure. Walking also lowers your resting heart rate.

Mental Health

Taking long walks can also be good for the soul. Any form of exercise can relieve stress, combat depression and ease anxiety. You may not be able to walk away from life’s problems, but you can walk off the stress.

Bones and Joints

Men lose bone strength as they age, although not nearly to the same degree as women. Regular walking can have positive effects on bone density and lessen the risk of fractures. Because walking places less mechanical stress on the joints, it is less likely to result in injuries.

Think of it this way; the journey to good health starts with a single step. Putting one foot in front of the other is all it takes to get started. Walking is simple, safe, accessible to everyone and has the lowest dropout rate of all exercises. After a while, most people want to experiment with various forms of walking that will further increase their aerobic capacity and strength.

Here’s some basic walking programs to try.

Walking 101

This is for beginners. It’s for those who are severely out of shape and want lo begin an exercise program, like newly uprooted couch potatoes or those recovering from an illness. It consists of brisk walking at around three to four miles per hour. To do this, take longer steps than normal and proceed at a faster pace. Be sure to learn to walk erectly and keep the shoulders back. Breathe deeply as you walk and let your hands and arms swing freely at your sides.

All you really need for walking is a good pair of shoes and some comfortable clothes. Any type of shoe will suffice. Most wear regular tennis shoes, but you can purchase walking shoes at a sporting goods store. Clothing should be loose and comfortable, and appropriate for the weather if you walk outdoors.

Advanced Walking

As your strength and aerobic capacity increases, you’ll want to pick up the pace and walk both faster and for longer times. However, at some point you will reach a level where you can’t challenge yourself further by walking alone. Now it’s time to get serious about walking and add some challenging variations to the routine. To increase the workload, try walking over hilly terrain. This will raise your heart rate and burn more calories at the same time. Walking briskly up a 10-degree incline will burn about 300 calories in less than 30 minutes.

Another method for increasing the workload is to carry additional weight as you walk. Most commonly you see people carrying light hand-held weights when walking. Alternatively, ankle weights, weight belts or weighted backpacks can also be used alone or in combination. Try walking up a hill with a weighted backpack if you still think walking isn’t much of a challenge.

Race Walking

This is not a more intense form of walking, but a unique form of movement. Sure, you’ve seen the people who seem to wobble rapidly along the sidewalk – that’s race walking. This requires using strides, where longer steps are taken and the feet follow a straight line. The strides are very rapid and the pelvis rotates dramatically with each step. This shifting of weight with the hips causes the person to glide smoothly along the path.

Besides lower body movements, race walking also uses the upper body.

The arms are used as pendulums to regulate the leg and hip movements. As you step forward with your leg, drive your opposite arm backwards to propel you forward. As the leg pushes forward, bring your arm forward for the next movement. Because race walking is not as natural as normal walking, it will take some practice and possibly a little coaching to get it down right.

The good thing about walking is that you can do it just about anytime and anywhere. You can walk around the block at lunch time, walk to work or simply walk around and explore your own neighborhood. During the spring and fall you will surely want to take advantage of the outdoors. Many parks have walking trails and most athletic fields have running/walking tracks.

Everybody’s heard of mall walking. Many malls open early in the morning so people can walk their long or circular corridors. Since most malls are multiple level, you can walk the stairs to make your workout more strenuous. Best of all, malls are excellent for the summer and winter months; they provide a safe environment, and they’re free.

If you don’t want to have to leave the house to walk, then invest in one of the many good quality treadmills that are available. Many offer a computer that will vary the walking speed, as well as constantly increasing and decreasing the slope to simulate mountain trails.

Facts & Figures

The Rockport Walking Institute (RWI) is dedicated to conducting research on walking and disseminating the information. Working in conjunction with doctors and exercise scientists, the RWI developed the following fact sheet.

Walking is the number one participant sport in America.

According to a recent report, 90 million people walk for physical fitness.

Walking is a healthy, natural function of the human body.

Because of the structure, shape and flexibility of the spine, the human body is better suited for walking than for sitting, standing or running.

Fitness walking is more than just walking for fitness.

Simply defined, fitness walking is walking at a brisk enough pace to maintain your heart rate in the target training zone. Fitness walking is the cornerstone of a total approach to personal fitness that uses walking as the major exercise, but also includes improving strength and flexibility, paying attention to diet, and reducing stress. With fitness walking, the goal is to develop a training program that will strengthen your heart. There isn’t any magical overall fitness formula that is right for everyone; it’s all tailored to the individual’s ability and level of fitness. And fitness walking is virtually an injury-free exercise, with a very low participant dropout rate.

Walking speeds vary greatly.

For a person in reasonably good health, a normal walking pace is somewhere between 3.0 and 3.5 m.p.h.

3.75 to 4.0 m.p.h. is considered a brisk pace, although speeds of up to 5.5 m.p.h. are not unusual for well-conditioned athletes. For most people, anything below 3.0 is slow.

Regular walking can help you lose weight.

Fitness walking is an excellent adjunct to an overall program to lose weight. While walking burns about 20 percent fewer calories at most speeds than does running, it still is the preferred exercise for most individuals who seek to lose weight. This is because walking is ideal for a consistent program, and consistency is what counts in an overall lifetime weight-management program.

Walking produces a variety of important health benefits.

Walking improves cardiovascular efficiency, may lower blood pressure, relieves stress, reduces body fat, strengthens leg and abdominal muscles, and may improve the quality of sleep. Moreover, biomechanics studies have demonstrated that the foot lands with only 1.5 times the force of body weight in walking, while it may exceed three times body weight in running. Thus walking poses much less risk of orthopedic injury.

Walking is truly an ideal sport for consistent, life-long aerobic conditioning.

Fitness walking is especially beneficial to the cardiovascular system. By expending 2,000 calories a week in vigorous exercise, participation in a fitness walking program can significantly reduce the risk of heart attack. Indeed, fitness walking is frequently incorporated into a cardiac rehabilitation program.

Continue Reading

Rugby Fitness Training – A Scientific Approach

0

Posted by admin | Posted in Fitness | Posted on 15-01-2010

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,




A periodized approach to rugby fitness training


Rugby union traditionally was a sport that was played by amateurs who trained like amateurs. Since the advent of professionalism which has trickled down throughout the league structures it is now common place to see the majority of rugby players training in their own time. As is seen with many people in the gym the new found enthusiasm for fitness may not paralleled by the same level of knowledge about how to train.

Rugby produces some unique training requirements not seen in other sports. It is a sport that caters for all types of physiques and places demands on almost all the bodies’ physical characteristics.

I will not go into an in-depth discussion of the various requirements of rugby and variations for each position. However, I will briefly review the main requirements for success. The demands of rugby are varied and I could almost list every physical ability and say it impacts upon performance, however the main factors are:

• Aerobic power – more specifically a high aerobic power over a pure steady state aerobic base e.g. a good 6 minute run test score more important than good 10 km time. (Obviously these two are highly integrated but still are different).

• Lactate tolerance – The key limiting factor during play, affects both aerobic power and speed endurance.

• Speed – More specifically acceleration and repeated sprint speed endurance.

• Agility – The ability to decelerate and change direction or move in a non linear direction.

• Strength – Both maximum strength and speed strength and as any sport requires a strong core as a foundation.

To add to this you could easily point out maximum speed is important in many situations and you can never be called too fast, but in general it is not too decisive. Muscles size is also not hugely important to success as it is your strength, absolute, relative and fast speed that is more important. Though one factor affecting maximum strength is of course muscle cross section area. I have not mentioned above about flexibility but just like core strength it is a fundamental that needs to be used to restore ideal posture and muscle lengths. How much flexibility is optimal past these ideal lengths is an issue of much debate and beyond the scope of this article.

To effectively cover all the main attributes a rugby player needs to optimize performance he must cover six main types of training methods:

• Aerobic training – To develop lactate tolerance and aerobic power.

• Sprint training- To enhance acceleration and repeated sprint speed endurance.

• Resistance training- To build maximum and fast speed strength.

• Agility training – to learn effective mutli-directional movements and changes of pace.

• Plyometric training – To support speed strength in linear and multi directional movements.

• Core and flexibility training – To create the underlying foundations of all the above training.

These methods will develop all the attributes that are stressed on the rugby field. These can be combined into three sessions, a track session – Sprint training, agility and plyometrics, a gym session – Strength and core training and an aerobic session. This does not need to take up your whole life but just a few hours per week if following an optimal training routine.

To go through each training method is of course beyond the length of this article and is comprehensively covered in my book1. Ignoring the specific details of each training method we can instead focus upon the underlying design of the training programmes within each of the six methods above.

Periodization principles

Most of us are aware of periodization, yet so few people integrate this fully into their training programmes. I believe this is due to the complexity of the theory. The reason periodization was created was to:

1) Maximise the response from the training stimulus.

2) Allow continuous gains to be made from week to week and year to year.

3) Avoid injury and overtraining.

Periodization seems to suffer from an all or nothing approach, either a scientifically designed programme is used or nothing is implemented. However most trainers are using the theory without knowing it. Forget macro cycles, training variables and such, if viewed on a sliding scale then the most basic form of periodization is setting a new programme every month. Which most people do, the next level up would be applying a certain type of training for a few weeks then changing the focus, e.g. an endurance phase then strength phase. This again is easy to implement. How far to advance the system up to the traditional theories of step load progression of intensity and macro, meso cycles, weekly load variation etc is dependent on many a factor including the athlete you are working with.

I present here a method of using periodization that can be implemented by trainers or players alike. The key to using periodization is to determine the training phase and setting appropriate training parameters. Then using these you can cycle the parameters over the duration of that training phase.

Let me explain, as an example, say you are looking to increase the muscle size of the prime movers used in rugby, this is known as specific hypertrophy phase using traditional periodization terminology2. The general guidelines for this would be 6 – 12 reps with around 3 minutes rest using the necessary exercises. A simple way to introduce periodization would be, over a 6 week phase to vary the reps as below:

Week 1 & 2 12 Reps

Week 3 & 4 9 reps

Week 5 & 6 6 reps


This is using the foundation principles of program design, it is increasing the intensity while decreasing the volume – Classic periodization!3. This method can and should be extended across all the training phases within your resistance training routines.

Let’s take a look at a typical off-season. To maximise the gains from resistance training you would build a base early in the off-season followed by focusing on increasing muscle size then developing maximum strength and converting this to power so your are physically at your biggest, strongest and most explosive by the start of the next in-season.

To do this you could have four training phases, preparation, hypertrophy, strength and power phase.

Off-season

Preparation Hypertrophy Strength Power

With each phase you can associate the traditional training parameters to achieve the goal of that phase’s training. For example, preparation4 uses sub maximal lifts for between 5 to 15 reps, hypertrophy uses 6 – 12 reps to failure, strength 1 – 5 rep max and power for sake of argument 2 – 6 reps with sub-maximal loads (please note there are many methods for power development beside this).

Using these phases is already putting the science of program design into practise. This can be further enhanced by varying the reps within each phase. This will maximise the training response over the phase:

Season – Off-season

Phase – Preparation – Hypertrophy – Strength – Power

Reps – 15 – 10 – 5 – 12 – 9 – 6 – 5 – 3 – 1 – 6 – 4 – 2

Through such simple variations of one training variable you have introduced intensity and volume manipulation throughout the course of the off-season and within the phases themselves. This will produce more optimal results. For each training phase a different exercise routine would be followed to introduce specificity and you could also vary the rest periods to further extrapolate the volume, specificity and intensity relationships.

If you now start introducing recovery weeks you begin to incorporating the other needs of periodization – avoiding overtraining and maximising adaptation. This can be furthered enhanced by using specified variations in training intensity within the weekly micro cycles, e.g. heavy and light days and before you know it you are applying the main bulk of periodization and reaping its benefits on athletic performance.

The above serves to exemplify how to easily introduce periodization into resistance training, of course these principles need to be taken and applied to the other training methods also, e.g. aerobic, agility, plyometrics etc. Again the exercises within each phase and variation in training parameters, e.g. volume, intensity need to be designed and altered to mediate the required changes across the off-season or during the in-season.

If this sounds too simple then just remember that periodization is a relative rather than an absolute. It is about maximising the response from training while ensuring the athletes does not suffer injury or over training. The benefits of using an undulating model versus a linear model5 or the fitness fatigue theory over classical6 are all well and good, but the crux of the matter is putting in place a periodized routine of some sorts. This can be done by:

• Applying training phases during the year to achieve a certain training outcome.

• Varying the reps, rest, intensity over the training phase.

• Using recovery weeks, days and techniques to ensure the body is fresh.

This is all covered in my book Rugby fitness training: A twelve month conditioning programme. Though it is a book designed for rugby players the principles outlined above are central to its theme. It will teach you how to take the general principles and apply them to you or your clients training routine.

In the programme section I have added three rugby programmes, these serve just to as an example of a possible routine, the success of the programme will rely more on how you as the coach manipulate the training variables within each training phase and change the training between the individual phases.

Continue Reading