Even the most committed couch potato has sprinted to catch a bus or an elevator, and all of us can remember how it feels to exercise. Physical exertion makes your heart beat faster and harder. Your breathing also gets faster and deeper. If you’re at it long enough, your skin will get flushed, warm, and damp with perspiration.
Your muscles will be taut from effort, and they may ache and stiffen up for some time afterward. If you are really pushing yourself, you may notice some nausea, abdominal discomfort, or lightheadedness, and you might enjoy high spirits right after you come to a stop, only to feel tired, sleepy, or a bit grumpy later in the day.
You don’t have to be an exercise physiologist to know that exercise makes your heart, lungs, and muscles work harder or that your metabolism speeds up, producing extra heat. But even though an occasional burst of exercise may enable you to catch a bus or enjoy a sporting afternoon with the kids, it won’t do much for your health.
For fitness and health, sporadic exercise won’t do—but regular exercise will do very nicely indeed. The body responds to the stress of habitual exercise with a remarkable series of adaptations that are collectively known as the training effect. Hippocrates didn’t have the benefit of modern exercise physiology, but the Father of Medicine seems to have predicted the training effect some twenty-four hundred years ago when he wrote “that which is used, develops; that which is not used, wastes away.” Regular exercise will produce long-term changes in many of your body’s organs and functions. But at the heart of your improvement is your heart itself.
Your muscles will be taut from effort, and they may ache and stiffen up for some time afterward. If you are really pushing yourself, you may notice some nausea, abdominal discomfort, or lightheadedness, and you might enjoy high spirits right after you come to a stop, only to feel tired, sleepy, or a bit grumpy later in the day.
You don’t have to be an exercise physiologist to know that exercise makes your heart, lungs, and muscles work harder or that your metabolism speeds up, producing extra heat. But even though an occasional burst of exercise may enable you to catch a bus or enjoy a sporting afternoon with the kids, it won’t do much for your health.
For fitness and health, sporadic exercise won’t do—but regular exercise will do very nicely indeed. The body responds to the stress of habitual exercise with a remarkable series of adaptations that are collectively known as the training effect. Hippocrates didn’t have the benefit of modern exercise physiology, but the Father of Medicine seems to have predicted the training effect some twenty-four hundred years ago when he wrote “that which is used, develops; that which is not used, wastes away.” Regular exercise will produce long-term changes in many of your body’s organs and functions. But at the heart of your improvement is your heart itself.
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