Want to live a long life? Run
reuters.com
reuters.com
Of course, the causation theory is very appealing, and I personally find I feel much better, and have greater intelligence, when I exercise aerobically. I definitely intend to keep at it... and suggest you do too. :-)
EDIT from page 2: "People who took up exercise when they were older also improved their health" - that suggests causation, but it also depends on who took up the exercise. Perhaps the people who responded well to it.
As far as causation goes, I don't have too much of a problem with that. The clear hypothesis would be that runners have stronger hearts more capable of dealing successfully with degenerative conditions like heart disease, and therefore they're less likely to die of a very common killer of the middle aged. The hypothesis isn't proven by the data at hand, but is at least very strongly suggested.
Dr. House: "Excuse me miss, do you have cancer?" [Woman shakes her head] Dr. House: "Wow. Mango juice prevents cancer"
I went for a 2k run the other day just to see what it was like after swimming but not running for a couple months. It was about the same as when I ran everyday (maybe even a bit easier), and I have a slightly more toned upper body now.
If your goal is to get a workout (burn calories, raise your heart rate, move your muscles, etc.), then why would you want to learn to swim more efficiently? Wouldn't it just take more time to achieve the same amount of exertion?
Of course I understand that if you want to win a race you need to be efficient, but it seems to run counter to the goal of exercising. No?
Swimming efficiently also is more of a full body workout I think than just paddling your arms.
Also swimming poorly can be frustrating and would make people not want to work out as long or maybe give up swimming alltogether.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic Some beginner swimmers (including myself before TI) swim anaerobically (lactic acid produced, pain in muscles). Only with better technique will you be able to swim aerobically (laps).
"Olympic swimmers are able, at best, to convert only 9 percent of their energy into forward movement while swimming the front crawl or freestyle, the fastest and most efficient of the four competitive strokes. (On average, the butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke follow in speed and efficiency.) Most of the rest of us use as much as 98 percent of our energy overcoming water resistance. " (2)
"But the real killer for competitive swimmers is a third type of resistance that arises at the interface between air and water—wave drag. Moving along the surface of the water inevitably creates waves. Physically speaking, swimmers force a mass of water in front of them to rise up against gravity. This not only robs swimmers of energy, but it has a disproportionately greater effect the faster they go.
The problem is that wave drag increases as the cube of any increase in swimming speed. And it gets worse if a swimmer makes jerky or uneven movements, either bouncing in the water or moving from side to side, because this wastes still more energy making waves." (1)
(1) http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg15921455.600-s...
But it feels fantastic to move efficiently. I don't know if that gives a better physical benefit (though I bet it's a factor) but it provides motivation. And that helps with the most crucial factor of all for effective exercise: to do it.
A lot of swimmers do interval training too - eg 20 by 4 lengths every X minutes (with X including some rest time) - as you get better you drop the minutes to give yourself less rest and can up the number of intervals too.
I guess its all down to enjoyment to swim more efficiently, as you counter the energy savings by going faster and longer ... Its like the pleasure you get from programming in a language you are expert in vs the one your just learning (which is rather frustrating until you get good at it and don't need the manual every two minutes!).
Actually, though, you don't need to have good technique to get a good workout from swimming. In fact, I think swimming badly is significantly better exercise than swimming well.
If you use soap and shampoo that are specially formulated to remove chlorine after you swim, it will also help you immensely. Most of the bad effects of chlorine for your skin are from longer-term exposure. Of course, you still have the carcinogen issue...but you can minimize that somewhat by swimming in a cooler temp pool with cool ambient air.
Your comment prompted me to find this international list of non- and low-chlorine pools: http://piscinasana.blogspot.com/ .
Advice to anyone who runs on anything besides grass or rubberized tracks: buy expensive running shoes ($80+) fitted to you by a someone who knows what they are doing. A sales person at a specialty running store should be qualified.
Or go barefoot.
I prefer the latter.
"The study also showed that people cannot use the risk of injury as an excuse not to run -- the runners had fewer injuries of all kinds, including to their knees."
In fact, other papers I've read have said that runners and cross-country skiers maintain bone density and joint lubrication into old age, while swimmers and cyclers do not.
Swimming is awesome also, but running is easier to do because you don't need a pool or a club to do it.
I'll try to dig up a link.
It seems that the more exercise you get, the more oxygenated your gums are, and (gum disease) germs survive better the less oxygen there is- so marathon runners have an extremely low incidence rate of gum disease! wow.
I'm theorizing that cyclists are somehow protected by constant movement (unlike surfers waiting for a wave). Perhaps the airflow is protective? Or perhaps it makes cyclists aerobically fitter, and this makes their skin more resistant to sunburn (and therefore skin cancer).
Some cyclists do use long-sleeve summer jerseys, but they're in the minority. Short sleeve and sleeveless jerseys are more popular because they are cooler.
I fried myself once when I was sailing, and I had the worst burns on the bottom parts of my body (bottom of chin, bottom of knees, basically anywhere the rays hit me after bouncing off the water.)
In my experience, doing regular exercise greatly, greatly increases the quality of my life. I feel generally happier, more energetic, more determined, more optimistic, etc.
My mother (over 55) took up cycling up a huge hill every day on her way back from work since a month or so ago, and, predictably, she's reporting the same result. She feels much better than she did before she started cycling up that hill every day.
Doing regular exercise is really a no-brainer. Even as a time-poor start-up founder, the benefits of exercise to your start-up (increased energy, wakefulness, optimism) are huge. The question is not whether you can afford the time to exercise, but whether you can afford not to exercise.
If you want to be healthy run, if you want to be strong run, if you want to be beautiful run, if you want to be smart run.
And indeed it has been shown that exercise improves mental ability.
I don't like running, it makes my knees ache. Now, bicycling on the other hand...
There is certainly no silver bullet to living into a healthy old-age, but it seems clear that running, biking, swimming, or any other exercise could only help you. Combined with good diet, social activity, intellectual hobbies, and who knows -- Ray Kurzweil's predictions may come true.
While biking the other day I came across this old dude (probably 70 years old) who was also on a bicycle up in the hills north of San Francisco. He was flying down this major hill, pedaling like mad, and the wackiest grin was on his face. When I'm old, I want to be that dude.
lol different strokes for different folks!
(You may also be riding in too high a gear. Spinning in a fairly high RPM is best, fighting against a heavy gear is hard on the knees.)
Any bike shop worth its lingering rubber smell should be able to help you find a bike that fits like a glove. If you don't enjoy cycling, that's one thing, but don't write it off just because you tried it on the wrong bike. Running in shoes three sizes too small probably wouldn't be any fun either. :)
Proceeding along the same line of thought, even slow, low-impact exercise benefits participants in avoiding the reinforcement of unhealthy behavior. Not only is one avoiding a day of a bad habit, but they're helping to completely break the habit, as well.
Next, of course, is that any slow, low-impact exercise helps the body replace previous bad habits with new ones. Future exercise is easier to do. One cannot just break a habit; they must find something else to do in place of it.
What is exercise? One can say that it's an activity that isn't unhealthy, regardless of specific activity. If one can't call an activity "exercise", then very likely, not only is it not neutral, it's specifically unhealthy. Otherwise, it would be called exercise--walking, jogging, dancing, swimming, participating in team sports, strolling, mowing the lawn, working outside, etc. Activities that cannot be described as physical exercise should be replaced with those that can, and they don't have to be super strenuous. I think exercise has evolved to mean "running for twenty minutes a day, three times a week" when it can also be "five hours of any kind of bodily motion every single day."
Also, here's a different perspective from Arthur De Vany:
Death by Exercise: The Aging Running Generation: http://www.arthurdevany.com/?p=797
A interesting tidbit in today's NY Times (AP story) http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-MED-Healthy-Obesit... points out that BMI and risk factors are not necessarily connected.
At the end of the day, if you want to live a long life... live healthy. Or: Reduce Stress, Exercise, Eat Well and Smile.
Fantastic Voyage, Kurzweil and Grossman, Chapter 22.
Just another one of those things.