(Greta Waitz)? In a few years, women will probably achieve that their shoulder girdle will become as strong as that of men. Certainly, women will catch up with men and then surpass them in running and swimming at ultramarathons and long distances.
In the meantime, there is only a myth that women are naturally weaker, especially during menstrual periods, that they must be subjected to stress tests before playing sports, that they are not able to throw and run as efficiently as men, because their shoulders and their pelvis has different proportions.
So, you can do any sport - from aerobic dancing to football. You will gain mobility, flexibility, strength, a greater supply of vitality. However, it is necessary to train taking into account the characteristics of the female body. It is not at all necessary to acquire masculine strength, but you have higher endurance, more flexible joints, elastic muscles. By carefully reading this book, you will be able to:
- choose an exercise program that suits your age, physical condition, lifestyle;
- improve performance in the sport you are already involved in;
- use different sports for year-round training;
- balance the development of strength and flexibility of various muscle groups, which will help improve overall physical condition and protect against many injuries;
- to study the basic principles and methods of training used in physical training or sports in order to achieve better physical fitness or higher sports results;
- create a diet that meets your individual characteristics;
- control your weight throughout your life, using exercises that will help change metabolism and reduce or, conversely, increase appetite;
- find answers to all those questions that men do not have to think about (regarding menstruation, menopause, etc.);
- identify their own injuries, recover, protect themselves from them.
Chapter one
Which fitness program to choose
Your body is designed to move. With a sedentary lifestyle, pressure rises, appetite disappears, bones become brittle, muscles hurt, you get tired quickly, your mood deteriorates, and a period of depression often sets in. If you lived many centuries ago, then you would have to move in search of food, while building a dwelling, making clothes, collecting fuel. In addition, you would run races, dance national dances, participate in throwing competitions, ride down the mountains, play various games that require good physical fitness. Nowadays, it doesn't take much physical effort to clothe and feed yourself, but you still need exercise to feel healthy and energetic.
What is exercise for?
When you actively exercise, oxygen reaches every cell in your body. Exercise helps the skin become shiny, sometimes fade and acne, because blood circulation is activated, reflexes improve. Classes tone the muscles, they become more elastic, and you become fit, attractive and graceful, because the joints acquire a greater range of motion. Exercise helps you achieve and maintain your ideal weight, which can never be achieved with diet alone. However, exercise helps control appetite because it increases the amount of endorphins that the brain releases (these newly discovered substances are often called the "opium of the brain" because they nullify the will, and also prevent the body from feeling hungry until it really doesn't need to be recharged).
Exercise helps. resist chronic fatigue, increasing the supply of vitality. They give an extra supply of oxygen to the brain and make you more energetic throughout the day. This, in turn, helps you sleep deeper and more restfully at night because it releases endorphins that help release the nervous tension built up during the day (because you are physically tired and do not feel empty at the end of the day that physically inactive people usually experience). Exercise helps prevent depressive states not only because it relieves nervous tension, but also reduces excess adrenaline and hormones in the body that contribute to stress. Physical education also builds self-confidence: you feel that you can improve your well-being and appearance, no matter what your age and physical condition.
Exercise stimulates metabolism and helps empty the stomach. Exercise makes it easier to quit smoking. Athletes who have quit smoking are known to be able to handle more exercise more easily because they have extra oxygen in the blood, which of course goes down when a person smokes.
Good physical preparation helps the body recover faster after any surgical operations, since strong muscles have a wider ability to utilize oxygen than flabby ones, and the more oxygen they receive, the faster the wounds heal. (Today, in many hospitals, patients undergoing chest or abdominal surgery cavity, are forced to perform a special exercise program for several weeks before the scheduled operation.)
You may want to exercise to relax or improve your mood. Tests conducted by M. Carmack and R. Martens show that people who run for this very reason get a much greater emotional charge from their activities than those who exercise just because someone told them how useful it is.
Everyone must find their own reasons that encourage her to start exercising. One woman did weight lifting and karate for a whole year in self-defense. Another decided to get rid of back pain by swimming a mile five times a week and doing special exercises for the abdominal muscles and back.
Remember that it is not too late to start exercising and even taking part in competitions at any age, regardless of health status.
A number of organizations promote the development of physical education for people suffering from chronic diseases, physical disabilities or disabilities.
Exercise and the heart
The most important reason to exercise is to strengthen the heart. Like other muscles, the heart can be better trained and able to do more work. When you push yourself hard, like carrying a bag up the stairs, your heart pumps extra oxygen-rich blood to the working parts because your muscles need oxygen to contract. Initially, the heart rate increases and the heart pushes blood (and thus more oxygen) faster to the muscles in the arms that carry the bag. However, if you carry weights every day (shop bags), your heart and muscles will get more exercised. The heart will begin to pump more blood per contraction, and the muscles will use oxygen more efficiently. Thus, gradually the heart gets used to work and does not need to increase the frequency of contractions in order to perform the same physical activity.
If you are involved in any sport that requires a high level of fitness, then the exercises increase the size of the chambers of the heart. Larger chambers are able to expel more blood with each contraction, and thus the heart contracts more slowly and the pulse becomes slower - both during exercise and at rest.
It is known that the heart of a well-trained athlete, as a rule, is much larger in size than the heart of a person who leads a predominantly sedentary lifestyle. At first, doctors were confused by these enlarged sizes, they mistook them for heart disease, but today any doctor familiar with sports medicine knows that strenuous exercise increases the size of the heart. In weightlifters and representatives of other speed-strength sports where explosive efforts are needed, the muscular walls of the heart become thicker. In long-distance runners and other endurance sports, the heart chambers stretch to hold more blood. In one form or another, the heart responds to stress by strengthening itself to withstand any stress.
Strenuous exercise also helps control high blood pressure. Instead of a sharp increase in upper (systolic) and lower (diastolic) pressure, which is observed in untrained individuals, only systolic pressure increases in trained individuals. This is because the aorta and large arteries are stretched to take in more blood; diastolic pressure in highly trained athletes may even drop during exercise to levels below those at rest. Thus, the blood vessels remain elastic and the heart is not overstressed.
A study conducted at the Department of Sports Medicine at Tufts University found that endurance athletes have less dense blood plasma than people who lead a predominantly sedentary lifestyle. (Plasma is the liquid component of blood.) This again makes it easier for the heart to pump blood through small vessels in the muscles and under the skin. Plasma that is denser than normal has been found in people with chronic inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, and tuberculosis.
Physical exercise also train regulation processes, which allows you to send additional portions of blood quickly and efficiently only to those muscle groups that perform the load, and not immediately to all parts of the body.
Even relatively light exercise, such as walking and climbing stairs, can help dissolve potentially dangerous blood clots. A study led by R. Sanders Williams, M.D., found that regular, light exercise performed by men and women in a certain way stimulated blood vessels and released greater amounts of plasminogen activators in them than in people who were predominantly sedentary. life. (Plasminogen activators stimulate the production of plasminogen, which dissolves fibrin, a fibrous thickening protein in the blood.) A clot in the largest blood arteries leads to heart attacks. Exercise also lowers "bad" cholesterol levels in the blood by increasing "good" cholesterol levels and reducing the amount of plaque already built up in the arteries.
The sudden death of people - in most cases men - while jogging or any other strenuous physical exercise is cited as evidence that exercise is dangerous to the heart. However, Dr. Jeffrey Coplan emphasized in an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in one9eight0: “Since millions of people are now jogging in America, it is likely that someone, by coincidence, will die while running. - just like some people die while eating, reading, sleeping."
Women in the premenopausal period are less susceptible to coronary diseases. An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in