Cardio-vascular exercise can boost your self-esteem and help you manage lipodystrophy, says HIV fitness expert Susan Warner
If a single product could help you manage healthy body weight,
increase your heart and lung efficiency, reduce bat fats in the blood associated
with lipodstrophy, and improve yourself self esteem, it would be a best seller.
The good news is cardiovascular can do all this and it is absolutely free.
Cardio-vascular exercise allows your heart and circulatory system to take oxygen and transport it around your body and to your muscles. It is any activity that uses the legs in a rhythmical, continuous and prolonged way. It can be a brisk walk in the park or an invigorating cycle to work. Gyms have cardio-vascular equipment like the stepper, treadmill, rower, bike and cross trainer. But the beauty of cardio-vascular exercise is at its simplest you need nothing more than your body and some space.
To optimise the chances of sticking at it long term, choose an activity you
enjoy. It might be a combination of several. You might enter a sponsored
walk such as the Walk for Life, or set yourself a specific goal like being
able
to swim briskly for fifteen minutes without stopping. Set yourself small
and manageable goals.
Research shows that to see health improvements you should exercise for 30 minutes, five days a week. This is not as harsh as it sounds, as it can be cumulative (say a 20 minute brisk walk in the morning and 10 minutes on the rower at the gym in the afternoon). If this is too much to begin with, you need to build up progressively. If you find it hard to motivate yourself on a particular day then just do a little less, but do something. Anything is better than nothing.
If you would like to fine tune your workout and get the very best results, you should look at the intensity that you are working at. A great way of doing this is to use the Borg scale, (see opposite page). Think of six as equivalent to lying down and not moving while 19 should feel like the hardest that you have ever worked physically and 20 is unachievable. Most of your workout should fall somewhere between 12 and 14 and feel ‘somewhat hard’. Any lower and your body will not adapt or improve; any higher and you may not be able to continue. You need to be honest with yourself when using the scale. When you become experienced you should find the scale accurate and notice that it corresponds directly to your heart rate.
How am I doing? The Borg (RPE) scale |
Once you are training, increase the time first (up to 30 minutes) and then the intensity (from light to somewhat hard). So if you are walking you may want to start by just doing more walking as part of your normal day. After a couple of weeks you could plan a dedicated session where you go to the park to walk briskly for no other purpose than to improve your cardiovascular fitness. This session might start at ten or 15 minutes and build up to 30. Once at 30 minutes you can monitor your intensity, using the Borg scale, and increase that until it’s moderate and you feel you are working somewhat hard.
It is important to consider body positioning, to help prevent injury and minimise strain or tension in the body. While walking, consider lengthening your spine, keeping your shoulders relaxed, drawing the navel very gently towards your spine for support and making sure the hips, knees and feet form a straight line.
Any gains are of course reversible if training ceases. Even those of us who have been exercising for a long time have periods when we stop. Don’t get disheartened, just re-start, increasing gradually, and you will soon be back to where you left off. Make your challenge for this year finding ways to do things more actively. Take the stairs instead of the lift, walk up the escalator, get off the bus one stop earlier and hide your remote control.
Don’t exercise when you have a fever or signs of infection. If you are recovering from any illnesses, consult your doctor before starting your exercise programme.
Susan Warner is the YMCA’s Positive Health Manager
6 No exertion at all