FITNESS LIFESTYLE

ARE YOU HEART SMART?

By: Jennifer Lee, CN

ARE YOU HEART SMART?

Understanding And Strengthening Your Cardiovascular
System.

In modern times, many people have somehow fallen under the misconception that daily exercise is an option. Most of us know that exercise is good for our hearts, yet cardiovascular disease continues to top the list as the number one cause of death in the United States. If you want to live a long productive life and look your best while doing it, then daily, yes daily, exercise is mandatory.

Everyone can benefit from cardiovascular exercise. No matter your age or how out of shape you may be, beginning an exercise program will make you feel and look younger. Daily exercise doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to get your gym clothes on, lace on your shoes and sweat for an hour on the stair master. It can be as simple as going for a brisk walk, playing with your kids at the park, or playing basketball with your friends. Understanding how your cardiovascular system operates and how exercise impacts its health may help to change how you view your workouts.

CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM
Your cardiovascular system is made up of your heart, blood vessels and your blood. This system is the route by which the cells in your body receive the oxygen and nutrients they need. Its job is to deliver oxygenated blood and nutrients anywhere your body requires them and to pick up waste products from the cells so your body can rid itself of them.

THE HEART
Your heart is a pump. It is located slightly left of center in your chest and is approximately the size of your fist. It expands and contracts, pumping oxygen-rich blood through the blood vessels to the cells of the body and pumping oxygen-poor blood to the lungs where it is refreshed with oxygen and sent back to the heart for distribution to the body. Like other muscles in your body, the heart muscle will become stronger and more efficient with continued exercise.

Blood Vessels
Your blood vessels make up the largest part of your cardiovascular system. Blood vessels include arteries, arterioles, capillaries, venules, and veins. The strength, elasticity, and health of your blood vessels are critical for an efficiently operating cardiovascular system. Your arteries deliver oxygenated blood from the heart, and veins return poorly oxygenated blood back to the heart. Capillaries supply the cells with oxygenated blood and nutrients. With continued aerobic exercise, the number and density of capillaries increase.

Blood
Your blood is the carrier of oxygen, nutrients and hormones. Blood also carries away carbon dioxide and all of the waste products your body does not need and also helps to regulate body temperature.

Resting Heart Rate
Resting heart rate is the number of times your heart is required to beat per minute to adequately supply your body with blood. A normal resting heart rate averages between 60 to 80 times per minute. In some sedentary people it may be as high as 100 beats per minutes. The more physically fit you are, the lower your resting heart will be. In some elite endurance athletes, heart rates as low as 28 to 40 beats per minute have been noted. Resting heart rate can decrease significantly, as much as 10 beats per minute, with continued exercise over a period of many weeks or months.

The best time to check your resting heart rate is right after you wake up without the use of an alarm clock and before you have engaged in any activity. Count your pulse at either your wrist or the side of your neck, for a full 60 seconds. If your heart rate is higher than 80 beats per minute this may be a sign of poor cardiovascular fitness. Continually checking your resting heart rate is a good way to gauge your progress and the effectiveness of your exercise program.

Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercise is the best way to strengthen your cardiovascular sys-tem. Exercising in an “aerobic” state means that you exercise within your body’s ability to process and deliver enough oxygen to the cells. This form of exercise places an increased demand on your cardiovascular system; mus-cles require more oxygen, more waste is produced, and the body’s temperature rises. This increased demand or “stress” placed on your body on a continual basis will trigger your body to develop adaptations to deal with the stress. Some of these positive adaptations include:
Increased heart mass and volume
Lower resting heart rate
Increased stroke volume (ml of blood pumped with each heartbeat)
Increased cardiac output (total ml of blood pumped per minute; equals stroke volume times heart rate)
Reduced blood pressure
Improvement in blood lipid profile (cholesterol)
Increased blood volume
Increased number and density of capillaries supplying the muscles with blood
Improved insulin resistance
Reduced stress

Aerobic exercise should be done for four to five hours per week at your “target heart rate” or at the appropriate “perceived rate of exertion.” Swimming, running, jogging, walking, elliptical, stair climbing, cycling are all good choices. Each session should keep your heart elevated for a minimum period of 20 minutes.

Aerobic exercise has three im-portant parts:
Warm-up: For approximately 5 minutes at a lower intensity to get blood flowing and to gradually increase your heart rate.
Conditioning: Maintain your target heart rate for a period of 30 to 60 minutes. You may need to gradually build up to this if you are a beginner.
Cool Down: For approximately 3 to 5 minutes of exercise at a lower intensity to bring your heart rate back to normal. A good cool down will help to prevent injury.

Target Heart Rate
Recommended target heart rate is 65 percent to 80 percent of your predicted maximum heart rate. (Predicted maximum heart rate = 220 minus your age.) Example: a 35-year-old person’s maximum heart rate would be 220-35, or 185. The target heart rate range (65 percent to 80 percent of maximum heart rate) would be from 120 to 148 beats per minute.

This range is based on your current level of fitness. For a beginner, you will start on the low end keeping your heart rate around 65 percent of your maximum, maybe even starting as low as 60 percent. The fitter you become, the higher on the scale your heart rate should stay. Be sure to stay under the 80 percent so you do not end up working your anaerobic system. Keeping your “conditioning” period of exercise in the target heart rate range will keep you in an aerobic state and is also keeping you in the recommended state for maximum fat burning.

Perceived Rate of Exertion Method
Perceived exertion is judging your level of effort on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being very light activity and 10 being maximum exertion. Your goal here should be to work at a level that you perceive as hard but not extremely hard. The scale below may help in determining perceived exertion.
1. No Activity
2. Extremely light activity
3. Light activity (example would be easy walking)
4. Moderate
5. Somewhat difficult
6. Moderately difficult
7. Difficult
8. Very difficult
9. Extremely difficult
10. Maximum output (example would be an all out sprint)

If you use perceived exertion to determine aerobic exercise, stay within the 6 to 8 range. At this range you should still be able to carry on a conversation without losing your breath. This is also the range for maximum fat burning.

Daily exercise is truly the best medicine for strengthening your heart and will add years to your life. MS&F

A HEART HEALTHY WORKOUT
By Danny-J, MS, NASM CPT

Endurance is the body’s ability to withstand a prolonged stressful effort or activity. A good endurance program will sufficiently increase the heart rate and allow rest periods until you can sustain the increased heart rate for longer periods of time. A heart rate monitor is not necessary for any program, but may be a good tool to monitor your progress.
 
TREADMILL PROGRAM:
This workout, starting with the walk, will gradually get you warmed up. Putting the treadmill on the incline will make you take larger steps and activate the glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves, increasing the heart rate. The jog will keep your heart rate at a steady elevated rate, then you should go all out for the sprint to get closer to that max. Next, you will go right back to the walk and repeat the sequence. This time your walk will be a recovery walk, to slow the heart and breathing down before starting the next bout of intervals. Here’s the workout:

3-minute WALK: a steady pace, fast enough to slightly elevate the heart, but still able to talk

3-minute HIKE (increase incline higher than 10 percent): keep pace at a walk, but due to the incline, you should feel slightly out of breath and have to push yourself

3-minute JOG (incline at 0 and raise speed to easy jog): keep a pace that you could still talk, but not too easily.

1-minute RUN or SPRINT (raise speed to as fast as you can go for one minute): this pace you should really push yourself, it should be hard enough that you will NOT want to talk during this minute.

Repeat 3-minute WALK: a steady pace, fast enough to slightly elevate the heart, but still able to talk

OUTDOOR RUN:
One idea to increase your endurance and distance is to find a marathon training program online. Right now, if a marathon doesn’t sound like a worthy goal, a good first milestone is to be able to run a 5K (3.1 miles) without stopping. Start by walking briskly for 5 minutes then jog for 1 minute. Back to a walk for 5 and jog for 1. Each day increase the time you spend jogging. For example, walk for 5 minutes, run for 2 minutes. When you start to recover quicker, go ahead and decrease the walk time. Pretty soon, you may be able to jog/run for 5 and only walk for 1 minute and then no walking or resting at all!
 
BIKE/ELLIPTICAL PROGRAM:
Don’t have a treadmill? Or, do you have bad knees? Try this program! Get on a bike or elliptical machine and start a “Random” program. Start with Level 3 and go from there. Start pedaling at a steady pace. The goal will be to keep the RPMs the same, even as the resistance changes during the program. Start with 15 minutes and steadily increase to 30 minutes. Once you can do 30 minutes, begin to increase your LEVEL and TIME.