The Power of Your Body

President Kennedy wanted healthy, strong citizens so in 1960 he implemented “The President’s Council on Physical Fitness.” He was a firm believer in the pursuit of fitness goals for young and old alike. It was his goal to create a fitter, more active country, and to engage every citizen of the USA to be involved in voluntary personal activity programmes.

One of the celebrated American high school programmes to arise from Kennedy’s vision was from La Sierra High School in California, which used purely bodyweight training to improve the physical fitness of its students. It was so popular that it was adopted by over 4,000 other high schools across the country.

The students were asked to complete fifteen minute exercise sessions each day that involved a series of exercises including pull-ups and press-ups and a range of other bodyweight exercises. Students had to achieve certain benchmarks to progress. Interestingly the absolute minimum standard was for 2 pull-ups and 16 press-ups. To progress up from the base level you had to achieve 10 pull-ups and 32 consecutive press-ups.

How many of us could do 2 pull-ups and 16 consecutive press-ups today to meet the base standard?

I love the notion of everyone being as active as possible to create a healthy nation.  Aside from the NHS saving a fortune, I firmly believe that we would all lead productive lives as a result, but that’s a topic for a future edition of this newsletter.

I’ve said it before and will keep on saying it: Our bodies are amazing pieces of kit. Kennedy and, by extension, the physical education programme from La Sierra highlight the fact that not much, if any, equipment is required to get fit, healthy and strong.

All exercise is beneficial for us and our health. You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment. Bodyweight workouts offer a fantastic way of improving strength, fitness and health. They can also help overcome some common excuses for avoiding exercise, like “I don’t have time to go to the gym” and “I don’t have space for a stationary bike at home.” All you have to do is move your body.

You take your body with you wherever you go, which means you can start exercis­ing anywhere, anytime; in your bedroom, in the kitchen while you’re waiting for water to boil, in your hotel room when travelling, making it easy to find the time to exercise.

With bodyweight exercise, there’s nothing to buy other than a pair of trainers, and if you’re exercising inside you don’t even need those. You don’t need stylish clothing. You don’t even need a yoga mat, much less an expensive gym membership, although you can certainly do these workouts at the gym too. You might want a few props, such as a chair or table to modify some moves, but these are all items that you have in your home or even hotel room.

Research published in the journal Physiology and Behavior found that, as a form of resistance training, bodyweight exercise helps build muscle “independent of an external load.” But it does more than that. When Polish researchers looked at the effects of 10 weeks of body-weight exercises on various physical fitness parameters in a small group of young women, they found improvements in seven out of nine of the parameters. The biggest gains were in aerobic capacity, with a 33% improvement. Muscle endurance, particularly in the core, increased by 11%, while lower-body power posted a 6% gain. Even flex­ibility was better after the training.

Like those students of La Sierra, you don’t need to do long exercise sessions to reap the benefits. In a small study of active people in their 60s, Japanese researchers found that a work­out consisting of eight simple lower-body exercises increased the participants’ muscle strength and power by about 15% after 10 months. That may not sound like much, but during this stage of life, strength and power are often declin­ing. What’s more, the participants achieved these gains by doing only six workouts a month.

One of the great things about bodyweight training is that the exercises work multiple muscles at once rather than training an isolated muscle or muscle group, as many exercise machines and dumbbell exercises do. Therefore, bodyweight exercises are considered more functional, using more muscles and joints at a time, engaging balance, which are fantastic for transferring into everyday activities.

When you’re using your body as the weight, you can’t just change a few kilograms up or down as you can with machines or dumb­bells. But there are ways to modify moves to decrease or increase the resistance. You can adjust your body position to make the exercise easier or harder. For example, doing press-ups against a wall rather than the floor lowers the intensity of the exercise. Or you can change the number of times you repeat an exercise or modify the pace you’re working at or change your rest periods.

Thousands of studies have shown that the more you move, the lower your risks for heart disease, diabetes, obesity, multiple types of cancer, joint pain, and Alzheimer’s disease. Exercise can also lift your mood, reduce your stress level, and improve your sleep.

Bodyweight exercise is no exception.

Bodyweight exercises can be intertwined with the use of equipment, which can then create a program that works towards specific goals. If you’d like to have a sensible chat on how to use bodyweight exercises to hit your goals click the gold button below and choose a date and time that work best for you.