HEALTH ARTICLE – 14: THE HEALING VALUE OF EXCERCISE (3)

What kind of exercise should I do?

• A well-rounded fitness program should incorporate three basic components: 1) cardio-vascular endurance, 2) strength building for muscular strength, and 3) For flexibility. Following this guideline, any program you select should include exercises that increase heart and lung capacity, stretch tight muscle groups, and strengthen weak ones. Many people tend to neglect stretching exercise and end up with lower back pain.  

Aerobic Exercise (three times a week)

1.         Cardio-respiratory fitness refer to how well the lungs deliver oxygen to the blood and how well the heart and circulatory system send blood and its nutrients throughout the body. Programs that develop heart and lung capacity are often referred to as Aerobic, and they accomplish their goal by elevating the heart rate for a sustained period. Aerobic exercise typically serves as the foundation for any fitness program, since a healthy heart and lungs are essential to the safe and skillful performance of almost all exercises and sports.

2          Minimum of twenty minutes three to five times a week is recommended

• Choose any activity that uses large muscle groups that can be maintained continuously, and that is cardio-respiratory in nature.
• Examples include brisk walking, swimming, jogging, running, bicycling, cross-country skiing, skating, stair climbing, hiking, dancing, basketball, soccer, and racquetball.
• Intensity or the speed of the workout is crucial and is measured by how fast the heart is made to beat.
• The target heart beat is 65 to 90% of your maximum safe heart rate. Sustain this rate for some length of time.
• To determine your maximum safe heart rate, subtract your age from 220. Your target heart beat is 65 to 90% of this number.
• So if you are 40, your target heart rate is between 117 and 162 (220 -40 =180. 180×65% = 117; 180 x 90% = 162).

Strength Building exercises (three times a week)

• Muscular strength and endurance exercises use progressive resistance to increase the size and strength of muscle fibers, resulting in greater physical ability to perform work.
• Recommend…..minutes three times a week
• Weightlifting machines such as the Nautilus, are typical of the types of resistance equipment used.
• Push-ups, chin-ups and curls produce similar results but require no special equipment.
• Strength-building is also an effective way of improving general fitness, converting fat to muscle, and increasing metabolic rate.

Stretching Exercises (once or twice a week)

• Ten to fifteen minutes once or twice a week is great added to other exercises. For example in the use of AB-Doer.
• Flexibility training is an aspect of fitness that is often neglected. However, forty percent of your body is muscle, including some 650 voluntary muscle (muscles over which you have control).
• The goal of flexibility training is to increase the …range of motion around a joint.
• As muscles become stronger through exercise, they also become tighter unless flexibility training is done.
• Use, slow sustained stretches rather than bouncing, as bouncing can create microscopic tears in your muscles which will scar over as they heal and further diminish your flexibility.
• Stretch at the close of your exercise as your muscles are more limb then.
• For a warm up, do your regular exercise at a slower pace for the first few minutes.
• It is wiser to vary your exercise so you are constantly working on a variety of muscles.

How to get a Trainer

• An athletic club, start a club in your church or video in your home.
• Buy a book on exercise, with pictures showing each exercise. Your Personal Trainer is excellent.

How much exercise should I do?

• If you have not been exercising start slowly
• If you have a health problem, check with your doctor
• Enjoying your exercise is critical because you will continue for months and years to come.

Finding time to Exercise

• Every time you exercise adds an hour of life to your life
• Since exercise makes you healthy, you get more done in less time. You are more alert.
• You get creative ideas when exercising, which make you more effective.
• Devotional time to worship, listen to bible, teaching or motivational messages while exercising
• Exercise with your spouse, children or a close friend and utilize the time building the relationship.

Walking

• This is the best exercise for the body when done regularly. Four or five times a week is ideal with occasional long walks.

Walking versus jogging

• Mile for mile, jogging burns only about 20% more calories than brisk walking says James M. Rippe, MD
• Jogging jars your body with  triple your body’s weight every time you impact the ground, increasing the possibility of joint injury.

Handling a common difficulty –

1. Sore muscles

• From the build-up of lactic acid in your muscles. This occurs because your body burns off both fat and muscle cells as you burn calories.

2.  Blisters

• Blisters can be avoided by starting slow, wearing an extra socks, having comfortable shoes, and dry feet. If blisters strike, it is best to protect them, and let the fluid be re-absorbed into the body.

What does the Bible say about exercise?

The Bible, both in the old and new testament, is mostly silent and speaks indirectly of physical exercise. However in one verse it speaks plainly of its added value to the body (possibly its positive effect of extension of lifespan here on earth), while urging believers to strive for spiritual excellence which profits both in this life and the life to come.

⁸ For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come (1 Tim 4:8).

So if you could only do one, either physical or spiritual exercises, then do the spiritual ones. However, if  you can couple the two together, for example, by praying and/or listening to audio recording of scriptures, and receiving creative flow from Almighty God as you exercise, then perhaps you can do both.

Even though bodily exercise is only for this life, this life could last eighty years. And to perhaps extend them to one hundred, will bring glory to God, since He has established a covenant of health with us.

¹⁹ What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? ²⁰ For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).

• We need to take into account the context in which Paul wrote 1 Tim. 4:8: no cars, walked everywhere they went, no automated equipment, but worked hard physically all the day long They did moderate level of exercise particularly walking.

• In all, I think it brings glory to God to do a moderate amount of exercise. It saves me 50% on my doctor’s bills, so now I have money to invest in other things, and it helps keep me alive, so I don’t leave my wife as a widow, or our children fatherless.