Kenneth Gardner
Dear Mr. Gardner,
I LOOK forward to reading your column each week. I am lacto-vegetarian, exercise intermittently and am very health conscious. I am 5'11" and 180 lb. Can you help me design an exercise routine to sculpt my abdominals and increase my energy level?
I currently jog 1 1/2 miles, two to three times per week and I do a lot of work around the house. My hectic work schedule does not allow me to go to the gym. What can I do to achieve my goal? I have a phobia for weights because I do not want to increase my body mass and I want to lose 10 lb.
- Theodore
Dear Theodore,
Thanks for the excellent questions. Your questions have set the stage for a series of articles, as it is not possible to do justice to all the issues in one article. I will comment on some of them briefly today.
Theodore is 5'11" tall, weighs 180 lb and wants to lose 10 lb. There are numerous factors that relate to one's body weight, such as one's sex, height, genes, lifestyle (formative) nutrition, age and health status. All these factors are important in terms of how exercise will impact one's quest to achieve a desirable body weight. The ideal body weight depends on the factors mentioned previously, in conjunction with the individual's body frame.
FRAME STRUCTURES
To determine the size of an individual's body frame, measurements can be taken at a number of anatomical sites to assess the size of specific bones. You might have heard of persons having big bones compared to others having small bones. There are also those who have medium-sized bones, thus the terms large frame, medium frame and small frame. These variations in body frame will set precedence for the weight that is desirable or ideal for the individual. Thus if a female is 5'11" tall, weighs 180 lb, she could range from being overweight to being obese, depending on the size of her body frame. On the other hand, if the same height and weight factors were applied to a male, he could be displaying the ideal weight or be overweight.
It is prudent to have all the relevant factors to make the proper assessment of whether there needs to be weight gain, weight maintenance or weight loss. The individual's body mass index is another parameter that is used to assess the individual's status in terms of the height and weight.
AB EXERCISES
Theodore, you have a phobia for weights, but see the need to have well-sculpted abdominals. There are a number of exercises that can sculpt abdominal muscles, such as bent knee sit ups, abdominal curls, abdominal twisters, abdominal crunches, leg lifting exercises, half sit ups and rowing exercises. The key to abdominal exercises is to immobilise the muscles of the hips that might help to do the actions that should be done by the abdominal muscles. By lying on your back and using your trunk and legs in a variety of exercises the abdominal muscles can be recruited quite easily to do the work. You should be able to tell which muscles you are working based on where you feel tension developing during the exercise.
Being busy around the house and jogging one and a half to two miles three times each week is good. The ideal is to make exercise a part of our daily routine, however, with the lifestyle of most persons that is impractical, thus the compromise of a minimum of three times per week.
Persons who cannot go to the gym can get an excellent workout at home if they know a variety of exercises that can be done at home. Similarly, a good understanding of how the body works will make it possible to generate improvements similar without weights (use your own body weight to generate and resist force). Push ups, pull ups, chin ups, sit ups and so on are good exercises to improve both strength and endurance in specific areas of the body. You can increase your weight and simultaneously reduce your body mass by burning fats to give you energy while you improve your muscle tone.
Kenneth Gardner is an exercise physiologist at the G. C. Foster College of Physical Education; email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com.
