How To Choose A Good Sport For Yourself
With a sound and constructive examination under your belt, you can confidently and happily make concrete plans.
Now what?
Now you are ready to go. But—what do you do?
Assuming that you are between the ages of thirty and eighty and further assuming that you are not a lifelong sportsman accustomed to the rigors of training, you should look for a sport with five important features.
Your particular activity should promote stamina and strength.
Disregard all of the other requisites listed below if you will, but be sure to insist upon an activity which aims at stamina and strength. In this way your body is not suddenly called upon for a sudden burst of maximum or near-maximum effort.
Rather you experience a gradual increase in exertion which is never at the limit or all-out. Then painful or even serious injury, especially to the muscles, joints, and heart, can be obviated. If an individual has been out of school for a few years and abruptly engages in activities which are intermittent and violent, disaster can result. Many a proud yet flabby former four-letter man has lost his life from mere snow shovelling. The statistics are sobering.
One study states that only 3 percent of people out of school are physically fit. I cannot imagine how such a figure was obtained because even 3 percent seems to me optimistic. Selecting an activity which is repetitive and which builds up endurance is the first rule.
Stamina and strength are so interwoven as to defy unravelling. Stamina implies the gradual acquisition of endurance through the performance of repetitive exercises. For example, paddling a ping-pong ball incessantly against a concrete wall would certainly increase endurance and the skill of this action. However, very little increase in strength could be expected. Skipping rope would also increase endurance without a marked improvement in strength.
Weight lifting may make this distinction more understandable. Should the neophyte rush to a nearby YMCA and attempt to press two hundred pounds over his head, this might be his last earthly act. This is one sudden, maximum-effort activity which can be hazardous. Should this same chap lift a puny twenty-pound bell over his head but accomplish this twenty times at three-second intervals, he would have shown remarkably good sense. First, he would have lifted the equivalent of four hundred pounds, not the two hundred pounds which caused his initial collapse. Second, he would have built up stamina (repetition) and strength. And finally, no single twenty-pound lift would be overly taxing.
The Need To Check Your Fitness Before The Exercise Programme Starts
A fitness check-up includes base line or resting examinations. However, it then proceeds to test the patient for functional reserve. The blood pressure and so on are measured before, during, and after exercise.
This gives an idea as to the amount of activity which can be safely tolerated and as to the ability of the body to recover from this activity. Such an examination will safely predict your tolerance limits and “how far you can push yourself.”
A practical measurement is the response of pulse rate to rest, stress, and recovery. The normal resting pulse is quite variable and depends on many factors, such as posture and emotional state of the patient. For a given amount of moderate, non exhausting work, the pulse rate of the fit individual is slower during exercise and returns to normal more quickly than does that of the non fit person. During exhausting work the pulse rates of the fit and the non fit may reach the same levels, but the fit subject does more work by performing longer before his pulse reaches this maximum.
