Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights_ - Alex Hutchinson [38]
A few years ago, Foster and his colleagues enlisted 20 female students for a study of the physiological responses to indoor cycling, in order to investigate earlier reports that spinners could exceed their “VO2max”—a measure of the maximum rate at which your body can send oxygen to its working muscles. The results, published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research in 2008, confirmed that spinners were somehow exceeding the “maximum” that earlier tests had calculated for them.
Spinning doesn’t, in fact, have any magical effect on oxygen circulation. The results simply indicate that people in an ordinary cycling class managed to reach higher peak intensities than they did during the rigorous progressive exercise tests that doctors and researchers use to measure VO2max—and much higher intensities than a typical gym user slogging away on a solitary exercise bike. These peaks are held for only short periods of time, and the average intensity throughout the session is relatively moderate: typically 65 to 75 percent of maximum intensity, Foster found. This pattern of highs and lows mimics the “interval” workouts used by endurance athletes to maximize fitness.
In general, this is a good thing. But it does carry risks for new gym users aged over 40, who may have undiagnosed heart disease, Foster cautions. A simple screening tool like the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire, PAR-Q (see Chapter 1), can help determine whether you should see a doctor before you start spinning. Some clubs offer classes aimed at beginners, which is a good way to start. After you’ve been spinning for a few months, the greatest danger will have passed, Foster says. Then you’re free to give in to what the music, the instructor, and the group are urging you to do: go all out.
Will taking the stairs make a real difference to my health?
Sprinting up the 1,576 steps of the Empire State Building, as participants in the annual Empire State Run-Up have done each year since 1978, certainly qualifies as a vigorous workout. But you don’t have to work in a skyscraper—or enter stair-climbing races—to get the benefits of a stair workout. Researchers in Ireland have been studying the benefits of dashing up the stairs periodically over the course of a workday, and they’ve observed surprising fitness gains. “I think the key thing here,” says Colin Boreham, a professor at the University College Dublin Institute for Sport and Health, “is that stair-climbing is one of the few everyday activities at a moderate to high intensity that one can do surreptitiously without having to change, use special equipment or look foolish.”
Competitive stair-climbs for charity are a growing phenomenon. The TowerRunning.com website (motto: “Take the stairs and not the elevator”) lists well over 100 events around the world, and Italian scientists have analyzed the physics and physiology of these events in a study of “skyscraper running” that appeared in 2010 in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. Among the notable insights of the study is that using the handrails to haul yourself up turns the activity into a full-body workout much like rowing, resulting in a “global, maximal effort.” About 80 percent of the power you exert goes to raising your body against the force of gravity, 5 percent goes to whipping your limbs back and forth, and the remaining 15 percent goes toward running tiny semicircles at each landing.
Because of its high intensity, stair climbing offers