Walking Is Great Exercise- Another Myth Exploded

In an effort to get a sedentary public moving, magazines, doctors and others often recommend walking as exercise. Walking doesn't cost anything, most everyone can do it and it has a low risk of injury. Too bad it doesn't do much.

As reported in the June 2009 edition of The Physician and Sports Medicine, walking alone does not result in enough physiologic stress to be considered a significantly beneficial exercise.

Our bodies need to be challenged. They adapt to the stress you apply to them. That's why if you're lifting the same weights or running the same 2 miles in the same amount of time that you were a month ago, you are actually getting less benefit (and burning fewer calories). As your body gets stronger and more fit, you need to increase the challenge.

Walking is not the be-all end-all exercise that so many tout it to be. In fact, according to research, people who continually walk as exercise typically lose 4 to 6 pounds of lean muscle mass. That's really bad!

Less muscle means less strength; less strength means everyday life is harder than it needs to be. Many of the characteristics associated with old age are actually the result of loss of strength due to the lack of strength training, which results in loss of muscle.

Regular walkers also experience a reduction in their resting metabolism of 2 to 3 % each decade.

The loss of lean muscle and the metabolic slowdown in walkers are close to those found in completely sedentary individuals. This means that if walking is the most physically demanding stress an individual experiences, there is not enough of a physiologic challenge for the body to positively adapt. In other words, no results.

As we age, without the right type of regular exercise, we experience musculoskeletal and metabolic deterioration. To offset that process you need to work at a level that stimulates the body to improve.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't walk. Some individuals use walking as a stress release, to plan their day, to brainstorm or to think through problems. I think walking can be a great activity on your off-days (along with riding bike, recreational sports, dancing, etc.). Just make sure to incorporate 3 days a week of challenging exercise including strength training and cardio intervals or metabolic resistance circuits.

(If you're a competitive power walker please don't leave a nasty comment or send me an irate email. Obviously, that's not the type of walking the researchers are talking about.)
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10 Machines You Shouldn't Use

10 Machines You Shouldn't Use

Obviously, writers want you to read their articles so they come up with attention grabbing headlines, that may or may not be totally accurate.

Let me start out by saying that if your primary goal is burning maximum calories and dropping weight, isolation machines should be a very small (if any) part of your strength training routine.

You will get much more metabolic "bang" for your time and effort "buck" by concentrating on compound exercises that work multiple muscles. Everyone seems to love Bicep Curls and there's nothing wrong with adding them to your program occasionally. However, if you are limited in time (like most people) and are interested in fat loss (like most people), you will be much better served by Rows and Pulldowns than by Curls.

I agree with much of this article. I haven't had a client do Behind the Neck Pulldowns in at least 8 or 9 years, Body & Soul's Leg Extension machine pretty much just collects dusts and I will never own a Hip Abduction machine. For the most part, I believe standing exercises are better than seated, and dumbbell exercises are superior to the same movement on a machine. That being said, I think a blanket condemnation of all 10 of those machines goes a little far.