Notes

Swimming used to be considered the most complete sport. The Voice of HealthExercise is to take a health pill without a prescription. The solution to many evils in consultation can well be: “ Eat better and move more”. This recommendation appears in all, and each disease. “What should be done to prevent it?” we asked. The automatic response almost always (“almost”, for maintaining the benefit of doubt) is: “Healthy food and frequent sport”. So much so that even the World Health Organization recommends it: 150 minutes of moderate activity per week, or 75 minutes of intense activity. It's the one that's stinging. It's not for less, keeping us active in our day to day is a life insurance that comes out for free.
However, there may be a myth to dismantle in great features. Contrary to what you think (and sustains) popular belief: Swimming is not the best modality you can practice. "The most complete," many said. Evidence shows they were wrong. Why is it recommended by the medical community? "The truth is that doctors do not have training to prescribe exercise, unless they specialize after the career in sports medicine", says Carlos Balsalobre Fernández, professor of Biomechanics and training at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, researcher in Sports Sciences and adviser on elite sports. "For this reason, if it is a traumatologist or a head doctor who is not updated on the basis of the latest research, the trend will be to recommend swimming, because it is an inocuous sport that has no risk of injury," the doctor adds.

The doubt is served, what should the general population do in the area of health and movement? The experts make it clear: "Enter your strength." And eye because getting strong does not necessarily involve moving weights, although in some cases it will be necessary. That is, before entering into the matter it is worth remembering: “The best exercise is the one that is done. JBHNews , especially from the point of view of the general population, is that people do a kind of exercise that motivates them, likes them and has fun, because what most profit produces on health is the very adherence to the movement”, says Balsalobre Fernández.

What is the training mode then? "If you have to choose, the force. In the end, even when we do cardiovascular exercise we are also putting into practice force," says Jorge García Bastida, a doctor in Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, and a professor at UNIR.

At the physiological level, "force is the ability of the muscle to generate tension or to contract. Therefore, whenever we move we are generating it", says García. What will make the difference will be the intensity used: "It can be applied more or less. When it comes to lifting weights, we talk about what is called maximum force," he says. In short: "We make a movement few times because it requires a lot of effort."

José López Chicharro, a doctor in Medicine and Surgery, a professor of Exercise Physiology and a doctor specializing in Physics and Sports Medicine, is equally favorable: "Today, with the widest knowledge that we have of the adaptations that are produced, it could say that the training of strength is the best ally for health without a doubt". The teacher speaks of overload: "This training modality requires a certain intensity. Although it is true that the movements we make in the day require strength, I speak of exercise with guided machines, with free weights or with the body itself". In this way, the changes "which will have an impact on general health" will come, he says.

Exercise is not only a matter of aesthetics, but should be used to obtain a response at a metabolic, immune and structural level. If something insists on the Exercise Physiology professor is the relationship between muscle and health or disease. "There has been a paradigm shift in force training. Before the muscle was trained as a tissue that allowed us to generate movement, and although that concept is true, it has now become a bit outdated," explains López Chicharro, who points out: "We must contemplate the muscle as an endocrine organ, that is, when the muscle is inactivity it hardly produces health-friendly substances, but when it contracts it produces more than 50 substances that favor us in an anti-inflammatory medical status." As he says, the heart does not get sick due to lack of movement, "because it moves constantly": "The heart is sick because the muscles do not create those beneficial substances, and the fatty tissue, on the other hand, produces others that are pro-inflammatory," he explains.

With this in mind, he claims that the muscle must begin to look like "the axis of our health" and that the rest of organs and tissues "are there to serve it, because we have energetic muscle needs", concludes the doctor.

Strength training, benefits with direct impact on health
The most obvious benefit is the increase in muscle mass, "which is not very much, because with aging, the main factors of disability and loss of functionality result from loss of strength and muscle mass," explains Carlos Balsalobre Fernández, who adds: "when an older person can't get up well from a chair or fails to walk properly, it is due to the loss of these two conditioners."

Muscle resistance exercises help prevent cardiovascular disease, or sarcopenia. In addition, "there are research that shows that force work is one of the best interventions to treat metabolic diseases such as obesity or type II diabetes. Regarding the latter, it is known that people with type II diabetes who train strength are able to better control their glucose levels," he says.

Other benefits point to a relationship with greater longevity, "and above all, the prognosis of people with cancer," or cognitive and dementia improvements.

Moreover, the advantages of being strong are reflected as the age increases. "We must try to get the elders to gain strength to avoid falls and be less dependent," says Chicharro.

Not only this, since strength is increasingly prescribed in high-performance sport. From soccer to swimming or marching, lift weights add up points. “In team sports, it’s the most growing thing because it’s the best exercise-based strategy to prevent sports injuries,” says Balsalobre Fernández, who adds, “a few years ago we thought disciplines like yoga or pilates were more protective and less harmful, when it’s not really like that.”

Osteoporosis, a Menopause Disease
Force work helps prevent osteoporosis. In Spain, it is estimated that 22.6 percent of women with 50 or more years suffer from it. It is a disorder that weakens the bones and therefore can lead to fractures of the hip and spine. "The bone, which is composed of a high percentage of bone minerals, responds and adapts very well to the impact and torsion", explains López Chicharro.

Hence, the experts insist that the activities with which the bone does not have an impact on its bark or is forced to twist make it difficult to gain bone mineral density. "So, every sport that generates impact and torsion (force to a certain intensity) will help people with this pathology. That is, it is to be done in a controlled manner," says the professor of exercise physiology.

In this section, there is a lot to kill. Walking would be, for those who want to increase their bone mineral density, a good option. That is, with one condition: “We have to do it on hard ground, like a promenade, and not on the beach as I see many people. Moreover, if you could do without slippers or with some without buffer, better”, says José López Chicharro.

There is more, because jumping to the comba is also performing a kind of force. "It is known that for girls specifically it is very important that before adolescence they give many jumps a week, such as jumping to the comba or playing the elastics. The jumps are considered explosive force. And when they compress the bone, it grows in density, which will be a way to prevent osteoporosis that can come during menopause," says García Bastida. Men are also affected by this disorder, although to a lesser extent: "It is mainly due to sedentary behaviour or, for example, if they only swim", says the UNIR professor.

Striking thinner, should children train their strength? Undoubtedly, but how it can be different from adults. "I like to say that if a child is given space, time and company, they are able to build very intense, high-intensive trainings. Spontaneously, they are very aerobic because the neuromuscular part is in development," says José López Chicharro, who proposes: "While adding burdens to a growing organism is not the best thing, they can learn techniques that keep older and transmit it to purely exercises of strength," he explains.

Why is swimming not the best sport?
With all this in mind, swimming has ceased to be the king sport par excellence and not even the most recommended for pains. "In fact, swimmers have back problems," Bastida points out. What's your problem? These reasons apply to general population without injuries or specific pathologies. Beyond the lack of impact (necessary for bone mineral density), "with swimming we carry out a series of movements that do not look like anything we do in everyday life. It's a mainly concentric type of contraction. There is no eccentric part, which is when the muscle is stretched trying to stop the movement, and then compress it," says Jorge García Bastida. Precisely, "a large part of the injuries come when we are not able to stop that movement, something that with swimming we are not going to work," he says.

Although this discipline works all muscle groups, "the movement we make must have sense and functionality. When we do a training, we should know that muscle and joint structures are working," she said.

And what about force? Because swimming tiresome. "This cannot be applied because water is something that moves. And if we go faster, it's because we move our arms faster. For water to offer resistance, we should use handplas or some other utensil. And it wouldn't be the best way to improve the strength levels," adds García Bastida. For José López Chicharro, swimming is a “excellent” sport as long as the person knows how to do it: “The truth is that, in the current population above the age of 40, it is scarce”.

Mobility is equally important
In the list of training modalities to perform, the mobility exercises should not be missing either: "If you work a lot of force, but not mobility, the person may stay fairly rigid and have no freedom of movement. It is known that if you do not exercise mobility, such as dynamic and active stretching, the risk of injury increases," says UNIR professor.

How many days should you train a week?
For the recommendation not to be forgotten, you can go further. How to introduce strength into the sports routine? Everything will depend on the state of health you leave. "For a person who is sedentary, it can be enough to start with one day a week. In fact, making small changes in the lifestyle would help," says Balsalobre Fernández. An example of this can be climbing two sections of stairs.

For more advanced people, “with a couple of hard work sessions a week can be enough”. And eye, because training at home is also possible. (Here we leave ten exercises to do so).

While guided exercise machines can be interesting at the beginning, the best thing will be to pass to free loads. The multi-articular and composite exercises are on which you should focus the focus. "It is the ones I recommend, whether it be to Olympic athletes who advise as to 80-year-old women. They are patterns of movements that must be,” Balsalobre Fernández said. For its part, Bastida prefers to choose unilateral exercises, or what is the same, to support only one leg. "It is more like the daily activities we can do like walking or running," he says, "If we only make bilateral movements, the stabilizing musculature will barely work." In the end, it will be best to include movements in which the subject is the one who masters his own body.
Read More: https://jbhnews.com/lifting-heavy-vs-light-weights-in-the-gym-advice/30728/