Hi Jeanette & Rhea & Jeanie & Natalie!
Good evening!
Well, Jeanette, like I said, I don't really agree with him, but here's one of his paragraphs: "The level of exercise that will be shown to be damaging is high energy-level exercise. This includes such activites as fast dancing, running, jogging, handball, squash, tennis, long-distance cycling and heavy weight lifting. Most of these are performed to be aerobic, that is, intensely enough to cause sweating and panting. Strenuous exercise involves an energy output over 350 kcal/hour by common convention and will refer to any activity that occasionally causes sweating, pain, nausea, dizziness, etc. in people who are judged fit enough to do it." He goes on to say, "The goal of this chapter is not to debunk exercise altogether, but to show the dangers and adverse effects of strenuous exercise as compared with mild to medium or moderate exercise."
If one reads this very hard to read section (lots of big words), his main concern is over exercise causing heart attacks -- and his assertion is that it is exercise that causes some of these bad heart conditions, not that the condition was already there to begin with. He writes: "Extreme aerobics such as running and marathon cycling not only do not prevent CVD (cardiovascular disease), they appear to cause them. Knee problems, stress fractures of bones, and joint problems affect a majority of those doing strenuous exercise for years, not a small fraction. Warmup and cooldown phases can help somewhat..." He goes on and on...
After reading this and being very confused, I realized that his viewpoint and statistics are very limited. He drops out time. What I mean by this is that he accuses exercise of causing cardiovascular disease, yet at the turn of the century, cardiovascular disease was so rare that a physician once showed a group of students the body of a man who had died of it as being an oddity -- and probably something they would never see again. Dwight Eisenhower's personal physician said that up until the 1920's, cardiovascular disease was almost unheard of -- it's a recent disease -- very recent.
In another book I read on centarians (people who live over 100 years of age)-- there are three areas of the world that have many, many centarians -- and all of them involve activity -- not of a mild sort, but all day walking or tending chores, etc.
So how can this be? -- people have exercised, run, cycled for thousands of years -- what's the difference now from then? Do you see, this doctor, Mr. Joel M. Kauffman, doesn't research this all the way back in time. He completely drops it out. And it should not be dropped out.
In my research of Indian tribes of long ago, Indians were noted to be able to run all day long -- literally -- and never get winded or get tired -- all day long -- with no adverse reaction whatsoever -- of course they had been running all of their lives and so were used to the activity. In a recent book I'm reading by an Indian author, he talks about exercising 3 hours a day just to keep fit -- with absolutely no adverse reaction. This was in the late 1800's.
But Mr. Kauffman makes it appear that even the best of the best atheletes might drop dead suddenly because of strenuous exercise, and says so.
I won't even post what he writes about on water -- it seems almost silly to do it -- and he notes NO statistics whatsoever to back up his assertion. I like statistics on this kind of thing -- specifics -- something I can cut my teeth on -- I'm not one to buy rumor...
So anyway, this has me wrapping my wits around it, trying to understand, and again, I think one of the main problems with it again, is that he completely debunks what he calls strenuous exercise without researching it all the way back -- and there are records going back at least 200 years that could be researched. But I'm still going to have my hubby read it and see what he says and I'm going to go see the chiropractor who gave me the book on intense exercise and get his take on this, as well.
In the meantime, I'm going to know what I know and not be thrown off by this. I love my exercise -- I see improvement -- and that's enough for me right now.
Anyway, did IMAX2 today -- but left out interval 9, just because of he time factor. Love that workout.
Hi Rhea & Jeanie & Natalie! Sorry about your back, Jeanie, but glad you've discovered the FIRM workouts are doing well for you.
And Rhea, yes, I can't wait to get the Step Blast.
Well, again, it's late. I must get to bed.
Have some terrific workouts, everyone.:7
