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Tag: Exercise & Fitness

  • How to Start Strength Training If You’ve Never Done It Before

    How to Start Strength Training If You’ve Never Done It Before

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    The weight room at the gym can be an intimidating place. The equipment looks like it could crush you if you use it wrong. People grunt as they haul heavy things up and down. And why don’t these machines come with instruction manuals, anyway?

    Figuring out how to start strength training as a beginner can be tough, but it’s worth the effort. Modern exercise science shows that strength training offers a host of benefits, like stronger bones, decreased inflammation, lower risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, plus better sleep, mental health, and cognitive function. And, of course, stronger muscles. “We start to lose muscle tissue as early as our 30s if we don’t [work to] maintain it,” says exercise physiologist Alyssa Olenick. That’s why current federal guidelines recommend that adults work all of their major muscle groups with strengthening activities two days a week, in addition to doing cardio.

    Fortunately, getting started is simpler than you might think. “You definitely do not need a personal trainer to start strength training,” says Kristie Larson, a New York–based personal trainer who specializes in working with beginners. Many of the basic moves you probably learned in grade-school gym class can be the foundation of an effective routine. 

    The best exercises to start with

    So, what exactly counts as strength training? “Any sort of exercise modality that is putting your tissues under load with the intention of increasing strength or muscle tissue over time,” Olenick says. That can include bodyweight-only exercises like planks, or working with resistance bands, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, or resistance machines.

    A smart place to start is with exercises that simulate the activities you do in everyday life. “Things like squatting to a bench, which mimics sitting in a chair, or a lunge where we’re getting up from the ground using one leg,” Larson says. “It’s easy to feel how that is going to benefit your life.” 

    To hit all the major muscle groups, you’ll want to check off each of the four foundational movement patterns: pushing (like with push-ups or bench presses), pulling (like with rows or biceps curls), squatting (like with lunges, leg presses, or squats), and hinging (like with deadlifts, where you lift a weight from the floor to hip level). “[Make] sure you have one of those on each day so you’re getting a little bit of everything,” Olenick says.

    Read More: Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise

    Also add in some targeted core work. Larson likes to give beginners moves like planks, bear holds (planks with bent knees hovering just off the ground), weighted marches (marching in place while holding weights), and heavy carries (where you just pick up a heavy weight and walk with it).

    Feel free to skip the barbells if they feel too intimidating. Instead, you can start with dumbbells, resistance bands, or just your body weight. “Just get comfortable being in the gym, doing these new movement patterns,” Olenick says.

    If you’re not sure how to put together a well-rounded program, you can find structured beginner workout plans online. (Larson, for instance, offers free simple guides to get started.) Just avoid any plans that offer unrealistic promises. “It should be scalable and modifiable—something where you can actually make it personalized to yourself,” Larson says. Each exercise should come with a suggested range of reps (the number of repetitions to do before taking a break), sets (how many rounds of those reps), and information about how long to rest between sets. 

    Don’t be surprised if you start to feel stronger pretty quickly. “The first six to eight weeks of resistance training, you’re getting a lot of neuromuscular adaptations,” Olenick says. “Your nervous system is getting better at recruiting and contracting your muscle fibers. They call them newbie gains.”

    How to pick the right weight

    Newcomers sometimes get stumped by which weights to choose off the rack. “For a beginner, you want to feel like you can do between 10 to 15 repetitions without a break,” Larson says. “If you get to the end of your 10 reps and you feel like you could do 10 more, the weight’s too light. If you’re fighting to do that last rep or two and you’re a true beginner, that weight is a bit too heavy.” (Although you might see videos about “training to failure” on social media—meaning lifting weights until you hit your absolute limit—Larson says that’s an advanced method beginners shouldn’t worry about.)

    Read More: Why Your Diet Needs More Fermented Pickles

    Olenick likes to choose weights based on your rate of perceived exertion: On a scale of one to 10, where one feels super easy and 10 feels like the heaviest you can lift, she suggests aiming for about a six or seven. Over time, as you get stronger and more comfortable with the motions, you can start to reach for heavier weights. 

    How much strength training to do

    Although the two-day-a-week federal guidelines don’t specify how long you should spend on your strength workouts, Larson recommends putting in 30 to 60 minutes per session. For each move, she says a good range to shoot for is two to three sets of 10 to 20 reps. “I would say 10 to 15 for weighted, externally-loaded exercises, and 15 to 20 if we’re talking about bodyweight [exercises],” she says. Then, between each set, take enough of a rest to let your muscles recover so you can give another quality effort.

    Read More: 8 Ways to Stay Hydrated If You Hate Drinking Water

    No matter how excited you are to begin, remember to keep your workouts doable. “Start with less than you think, then build from there,” Olenick says. “Make it maintainable for life.” 

    How to start strength training without getting injured

    In nearly every strength-training exercise you do, you’ll want to focus on maintaining a neutral spine—a tall, open-chested posture with your rib cage stacked over the pelvis. But Olenick points out that form exists on a spectrum, rather than simply being good or bad. “Most things you do in the beginning will not be with perfect form,” she says, adding that that’s okay. “You’re not automatically going to get injured just because you’re doing it imperfectly.” 

    The truth is, most beginners aren’t actually the novices they might think they are. “A lot of people have fear around strength training. But we lift heavy things in our everyday lives all the time: We’re carrying heavy grocery bags. We’re bringing in the dog food. We’re opening heavy doors against the wind,” Larson says. “Most people underestimate what they can lift.” 

    No matter how you start or what your technique looks like, you’ll still be building muscle. As long as you keep things manageable, “you can’t mess it up in the beginning,” Olenick says. “Everything you do is beneficial.” 

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    Jennifer Heimlich

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  • Backward Walking Is the Best Workout You’re Not Doing

    Backward Walking Is the Best Workout You’re Not Doing

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    I’ve spent my whole life happily walking in one direction: forward. It was, I believed, the only way to go, so I dutifully logged dozens of miles a month looking like every other person out for a morning stroll.

    No more. Thanks to TikTok, I discovered a new (to me, at least) spin on walking: backward walking, also known as “retro-walking.” Though it’s trending on social-media platforms right now, physical therapists and fitness trainers have been touting its benefits for years. It’s a low-impact way to burn calories, strengthen your legs, test your coordination, and even improve pain, experts say—all of which lured me onto my quiet, rural street one afternoon to give it a whirl.

    After about 50 steps, I realized going in reverse was no walk in the park. It burned. I could feel the switch-up in my lower legs in a way I don’t with ordinary walking unless I’m powering up a hill. There was a mental challenge, too (beyond ignoring the strange looks from my neighbors). I had no idea what was behind me, so I had to engage all my senses to ensure I stayed upright and didn’t trip over any unexpected obstacles—including my walking partner, who was slightly faster and, therefore, a couple steps behind me.

    When I told a handful of experts about my surprisingly fun retro-walking expedition, they agreed more people should make it part of their routine. Here’s a look at why.

    It’s great for older people

    Backward walking is an underrated way to engage your glutes, shins, and the muscles in your feet and ankles, says Joe Meier, a Minnesota-based personal trainer and author of Lift for Life. Plus, it mitigates the impact of each step, reducing the force exerted on the knees and lower back. Part of its appeal, he adds, is that it’s so accessible—and suitable for people of any age and fitness level.

    Read More: Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise

    Meier has noticed that older people, in particular, are drawn to backward walking as a no-frills way to spice up their fitness routine. “If you look around a gym that has tons of treadmills, you’ll see at least one or two people walking backward at any given time,” Meier says. “There are always older individuals walking backward on the ground, too, and you can tell someone has told them, ‘Hey, you should try doing this because it’s great for your balance and coordination—just don’t trip over anything.’” He points out that many pickleball players have adopted the practice: It can help strengthen their knees and ensure they don’t take a (metaphorical) step back on the courts.

    You’ll engage different muscles

    Walking backward requires you to stand up straighter than you do when walking forward, Meier says. By reversing your stride, you’ll create a new challenge for the muscles in the abdomen, lower limbs, and back. “You might notice your glute muscles—your big butt muscles—are doing more work,” Meier says. (Author’s note: You’ll definitely notice.) Meanwhile, your calf muscles will need to work opposite of how they usually do. When you walk forward, your calf contracts concentrically, which means the muscle gets shorter, he explains. When you’re going in reverse, your calf muscle contracts the opposite way and gets longer as it bears your body weight. That switch-up can be a valuable way to improve your fitness.

    You’ll also be targeting the quad muscles on the front of your thighs. According to one study—yes, scientists have studied this—people who walked backward three times a week for six weeks ended up with improved quadriceps muscle strength, compared to those who walked forward for their exercise. The quads are responsible for knee extension and straightening your leg, Meier explains—so they, too, work differently when you’re walking backward. “That’s one of the reasons why people say it helps their knee pain improve,” he says. “You’re essentially strengthening your quads by doing this backward walking trick.”

    It can be good for people with injuries

    When New York City-based Peloton Tread instructor Marcel Dinkins had patella issues, she took up backward walking. She returned to it recently after tearing her ACL. “You get to push off,” she says, describing the motion required to launch into walking in reverse. “When you have running or knee issues, you usually have a little pain right underneath your patella. Running backward gives you some respite and relief.”’

    Read More: Why Hiking Is the Perfect Mind-Body Workout

    Retro-walking has a long history of being used in a clinical or rehabilitation sense, says Janet Dufek, a biomechanist and professor in the School of Integrated Health Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has researched backward walking. One study, for example, found that after a six-week retro-walking program, participants with osteoarthritis in the knee experienced greater reduction in pain and functional disability compared to those who walked in the typical way. Another found that backward walking down a steep slope alleviated symptoms of plantar fasciitis. And in a study led by Dufek, walking backward reduced lower back pain and enhanced function among athletes. 

    Retro-walking is also used in occupational therapy. Older people might practice walking up to a kitchen sink, for example, and then walking backward away from it. The ability to move in reverse can enhance “practical activities of daily living,” Dufek says.

    It could make you more flexible

    Many of us sit all day long—which leads to coiled-up, restricted muscles. “Our hip flexors, or the muscles at the front of the thigh and the front of the hip, get tighter,” says Kristyn Holc, a physical therapist with Atlantic Sports Health Physical Therapy in Morristown, N.J. When we walk backward, we’re stretching that tissue—leading to greater flexibility, which is linked to improved physical performance, increased muscle blood flow, and a reduced risk of injuries. “You’ll notice a lot of people, especially as they get older, hinge at the hips—they get a little bit of a bend there,” she says. “That’s because their hip flexors are tight. So if we can stretch those out, it helps us be able to get that upright posture.”

    Your gait and balance might improve

    Elizabeth Stroot, a physical therapist with Core Wellness & Physical Therapy in Alexandria, Va., uses retro-walking to help people normalize their gait pattern, or how they walk. “It’s a way to tap into our neuromuscular programming and get people to work through a little limp or a range-of-motion restriction,” she says. Walking backward for just 20 or 30 feet at a time is often enough to help some patients, she adds.

    Read More: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise

    It can also improve balance control, especially among older adults, who are at a higher risk of falls. That’s because we maintain our balance through three big systems, Holc says: our eyes, our muscles and joints, and the vestibular system, or inner ear. When we walk backward, we can’t see what’s behind us, which means we have to rely on the other two systems instead, sharpening their ability to keep us upright. “You’re having to feel where you are in space, and that information is being sent to the brain,” she says.

    But you need to do it safely

    Many people experiment with retro-walking on their treadmill, which is free of hazards like rocks, uneven ground, and other people. You don’t even have to turn it on, Dinkins points out: Simply step onto the machine backward, grasp the handrails, and use your own power to move the belt. “If you’re pushing it, you’re going to get more of that resistance,” she says—leading to a better workout. If you do decide to turn on the treadmill, start at a low speed and keep the safety key clipped to you at all times, Dinkins advises.

    No treadmill? No problem: Choose a safe spot indoors or outside, like a hallway, walking track, or empty field. Dufek encourages people to partner up: “Two people face each other and hold hands, and one of them walks backward while the other one’s walking forward,” she says. “That person can be the eyes for the other one, so it’s very safe, and then you just switch places.”

    No matter where you start backward walking, keep in mind that you won’t go as fast backward as you do going forward. There’s a learning curve, Dufek stresses: “If you can walk 4 miles per hour forward, don’t expect to be able to walk that fast backward,” she says. “At least initially, if you can walk 1 mile per hour backward, you’re in a good place.” As with any new exercise, ease in gradually. You might walk backward for 5 or 10 minutes three times a week, and then after a few weeks, add 5 more minutes to each session, Dufek suggests. “As your body neurologically learns the movement pattern, you’ll be able to walk faster,” she says. “And of course, walking faster burns more calories, and then you can be out in public and get laughed out for even longer. It’s fun.” How’s that for forward progress?

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    Angela Haupt

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  • What Happens to Your Body If You Don’t Stretch

    What Happens to Your Body If You Don’t Stretch

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    Be honest: do you stretch before and after your workouts? If you don’t, you actually might be onto something. Most physically active adults with reasonable fitness goals may not need to stretch at all.

    Here’s what every busy person should know about stretching—and how little you can get away with doing.

    What is stretching, anyway?

    There are two main types of stretching: static and dynamic. Static is when you hold a stretch for at least 10 to 30 seconds. Reach toward your toes for half a minute, and you’re doing a static stretch. “That’s the stuff you can do at home when you’re on your own in the evening to maintain flexibility,” says Kieran O’Sullivan, a lecturer who studies musculoskeletal pain and injury at the University of Limerick in Ireland.

    The second type is dynamic stretching. This is a faster, “bouncy” type of stretch repeated multiple times. This type of stretching is common among athletes preparing for a game or a race because it helps warm up the muscles more than static stretching does, O’Sullivan says. A dynamic stretch is never held; the person stretching is always in motion. (Imagine swinging your leg up in front of you, then touching your toe with your opposite hand and repeating.) It’s a great way to get warm, which helps bring oxygen to the muscles, activating them so they’re ready to work.

    Why do people stretch?

    There’s a scientific reason. During a stretch, you temporarily reduce the amount of blood flowing to your muscles, explains Judy Delp, a professor of biomedical sciences at the Florida State University College of Medicine. “That’s actually a good signal for the muscle and for the blood vessels to stimulate changes in metabolism in the muscle,” she says, and stretching triggers the growth of capillaries that deliver blood, oxygen, and nutrients to your muscles to help them function more efficiently.

    Read More: Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise

    But mostly, we stretch because it feels good, says Nicolas Babault, a professor who studies the physiology of exercise at the University of Burgundy in France. “Sometimes that’s the reason why people do some stretching at the end of a very exhausting training session,” he says. “After that, they feel better.” However, stretching either before or after your workout does little to impact muscle soreness over the next few days, according to a Cochrane review of 12 randomized controlled trials.

    The limitations of stretching

    As you stretch, it might seem like your muscles are getting longer over the course of a few minutes, but that’s not really the case. While long-term regular stretching could have this effect, O’Sullivan says that if you can’t touch your toes when you start stretching but you can after two minutes, what’s really happening is that your muscles become more tolerant of stretching. “Your body relaxes and lets you go a little further,” he says. After you’re done, your muscles pretty much go back to normal.

    For athletes whose sports require major flexibility—such as dancing, gymnastics, and ice skating—regular stretching over months and years can elongate muscles and greatly increase range of motion. But some casual stretching before or after a workout probably isn’t going to make you any more flexible than the workout itself does.

    What happens if you never stretch?

    If you’re completely sedentary—forgoing both stretching and physical activity—your muscles won’t be able to use oxygen as effectively, meaning you’ll lose strength and endurance, says Delp. You’ll also start to lose range of motion over time. Stretching is a good way for people who have become inactive to start working their muscles and rebuilding the blood vessels they need to deliver nutrients that can help them get moving again, she says.

    However, “if you walk regularly and you’re taking your joints through that range of motion, you are [stretching] without realizing it,” Delp says. “With every phase of your gait, you are actually lengthening different muscles, and you are actually stretching muscles.”

    Read More: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise

    You can also get some stretching in by doing muscle-strengthening sessions. “Strength training done well will also increase your flexibility,” O’Sullivan says. To get the greatest flexibility gains from weightlifting, make sure you’re working through your full range of motion. That means if you’re doing a bicep curl, once you reach the top and your hand is near your shoulder, you should slowly let the weight back down rather than immediately dropping and releasing the weight.

    Stretching has its benefits and can have a place in your exercise routine, but it’s not the most important piece of the fitness puzzle.

    “Most people I know say, ‘I have about 45 minutes about four to five times a week,’ or some variation of that,” O’Sullivan says. “And in that period of time, the value of stretching relative to other workouts becomes much less.”

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    Emma Yasinski

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  • Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise

    Why Walking Isn’t Enough When It Comes to Exercise

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    Walking is often thought of as a mere mode of transportation: a way to get from point A to point B. Few of us consider the fact that it’s one of the most fundamental, accessible physical activities a person can do.

    What’s so great about walking? 

    Walking might not be as impressive as holding a plank or doing mountain climbers, but “it’s considered a bodyweight exercise, because your large muscle groups are working to move the weight of your body,” says Dr. Marie Kanagie-McAleese, a pediatric hospitalist at University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health and the leader of the Bel Air, Md. chapter of Walk With a Doc.

    As you walk, “your quadriceps, hamstrings, calves—even your abdominals, biceps, and shoulders—are all using oxygen to contract,” says Ali Ball, an exercise physiologist and outpatient cardiac rehab/wellness coordinator at OSF HealthCare in Urbana, Ill. That also makes walking a form of aerobic exercise, she adds, which means it keeps your heart rate elevated for a sustained amount of time. One study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that 15 minutes of walking was as beneficial as five minutes of running.

    From a physiological perspective, that’s a one-two punch of health benefits.

    “First, walking improves the health of our cardiovascular system,” says McAleese. “With improved oxygen delivery to our organs, we see a decrease in the risk of heart disease, stroke, obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.” 

    Read More: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise

    Research bears this out. In a 2021 study published in JAMA Network Open, people who logged at least 7,000 steps per day had a 50 to 70%lower risk of early death, compared to those who walked less than 7,000 steps per day. Meanwhile, a 2023 meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that doing moderate-intensity physical activity—like brisk walking—for just 11 minutes a day is enough to lower the risk of diseases such as heart disease, stroke, and a number of cancers.

    Plus, it’s the easiest way to counter the risk of a sedentary lifestyle, says McAleese. “Walking more throughout the entire day, even if you’re not doing it at a moderate-intensity level, is critically important,” since sitting too much increases the risk of getting—and dying from—many chronic diseases.

    But is just walking enough exercise? 

    It can’t do everything. Federal physical-activity guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of aerobic physical activity a week, plus two or more sessions of muscle-strengthening activities involving all major muscle groups per week. Both types of physical activity have to be of at least moderate intensity. 

    With a few tweaks, your walk can fulfill the first aerobic category. “Most people just don’t do it hard enough because they don’t think about it as exercise,” says Ball. If you’re used to a casual stroll, it’s easy to increase your intensity and get into that moderate range: You can increase the pace, walk on an incline, walk on a different terrain, or add weight via a vest or pack.

    Read More: Forget 10,000 Steps. Here’s How Much Science Says You Actually Need to Walk

    Not so much for the second category. “Walking does provide a low level of bodyweight exercise, but there are a lot of other muscle groups that we’re not really exercising when walking,” says McAleese. Strength training comes with a lot of additional health benefits, like lowering your risk of injury and improving mobility and flexibility.

    How to make your walk count as a workout 

    Wearable devices have made mainstream the idea that everyone needs to hit 10,000 steps per day, but “that’s an arbitrary number not based in science,” says McAleese. A more important metric than steps, she says, is time. When it comes to the recommended 150 weekly minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity, “you can break that up however works for you,” she explains. “If you can only fit in 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there, it all counts.”

    For walking to really qualify as “moderate-intensity” exercise, you need to be moving a little more intentionally than you would during a casual stroll from one meeting to the next. The guidelines consider walking briskly—where you could walk a mile in 15 to 24 minutes—to be moderate-intensity physical activity. That’s a purposeful, I-have-somewhere-to-be pace.

    The best way to tell if you’re in that moderate-intensity range is the talk test. “If you’re able to speak in complete sentences and can carry on a conversation—but if you were to try to sing, you would become out of breath—that counts as moderate-intensity aerobic exercise,” says McAleese.

    Read More: I Used ChatGPT as My Personal Trainer. It Didn’t Go Well

    You can also check your heart rate. An approximate (but easy-to-remember) way to find your maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from the number 220, says Ball. During moderate-intensity exercise, your heart rate should be at about 50 to 70% of that maximum heart rate, according to the American Heart Association.

    And to make sure you’re getting the most out of this type of physical activity, you also need to think about your form. (Yes, there’s proper form for walking.) “Focus on staying upright and keeping your abdominals engaged,” says Ball. Squeeze your butt, and let your arms swing naturally rather than exaggeratedly pumping them. Leaning forward, especially if you increase your intensity, can cause back pain.

    For many people, embracing walking as exercise might just require a slight shift in perspective. “We focus a lot on scheduling exercise as a very specific activity that happens at a certain place at a certain time during our day,” says McAleese. “But we really should be expanding our definition of exercise to include all levels and amounts of physical activity that we perform throughout the entire day.” 

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    Ashley Mateo

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  • I Used ChatGPT as My Personal Trainer. It Didn’t Go Well

    I Used ChatGPT as My Personal Trainer. It Didn’t Go Well

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    I love running. I will happily jog for hours (and often do, during marathons). But ask me to perform a push-up, and I might cry. I truly detest strength training.

    Unfortunately for me, it’s extremely good for you—and for runners who want to get faster. So I decided to add in two strength-training sessions per week in preparation for running the Boston Marathon this spring. 

    I wanted exercises designed to improve my pace, but didn’t want to spend money on a personal trainer. Unsure of how to start, I turned to ChatGPT.

    The chatbot did not give me the workout regimen I was hoping for—and after following its recommendations for nearly a month, I was no closer to liking strength training. But I learned some things along the way that might end up helping me become a better runner.

    Lesson 1: ChatGPT is not much of a coach 

    OpenAI’s free AI chatbot is trained on vast amounts of data from sources around the Internet so it can answer prompts with human-like text. To test out its workout recommendations, I first asked it to create a marathon training plan.

    As a running coach who’s finished more than a dozen marathons, I have a good sense of what a solid training schedule looks like. The ChatGPT results were—not that. Although it told me to run about six days a week at various speeds and distances (so far, so good), it listed hill sprints and intervals without essential details like how fast or far. It also gave me no runs longer than 14 miles, aside from the suggestion to run a full marathon a week before the end—something no legitimate coach would ever advise, since that’s far too taxing on the body to be beneficial, especially so close to race day. I asked the question twice more, adding details about my fitness level and goals. Now, it only told me to run up to 12 miles. In comparison, the longest run on most respectable marathon plans is 18 to 22 miles.

    Read More: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise

    It’s not hard to find a decent training plan online. So although I didn’t expect ChatGPT to invent a mindblowing regimen, I was surprised that the plans it spat out were so underwhelming and at times incomprehensible. But maybe I shouldn’t have been. What ChatGPT does so well is generate “a human-like, natural language output,” explains Richard Bayly, vice president of product, AI, and data at PEAR Health Labs, which owns the AI-powered fitness app Aaptiv. But while the chatbot is designed to sound like it knows what it’s talking about, it doesn’t.

    ChatGPT’s primary skill lies in sounding human, not in giving expert recommendations. The website even include a disclaimer to “check your facts,” stating that the chatbot is not intended to give advice. Even so, people are already using the site for workout suggestions. (OpenAI didn’t respond to a request for comment for this piece.)

    Lesson 2: ChatGPT generated decent exercise ideas 

    Although it failed my marathon plan litmus test, I still wanted to see if ChatGPT could give me some ideas for strength training. After asking “which body weight–only strength training exercises will help me run faster,” it listed 12 exercises that seemed fairly solid, hitting almost all the major muscle groups used in running. But as I started to do the workout, I realized I didn’t have any information on sets, reps, or whether I should do each exercise one at a time versus in a circuit. 

    I’m not the only one who has discovered ChatGPT’s workouts are missing fundamental details. One January 2024 study evaluating ChatGPT-generated workouts found its exercise recommendations were only 41% comprehensive—meaning its answers didn’t include all of the American College of Sports Medicine’s six components of exercise prescription: frequency, intensity, time, type, volume, and progression.

    Read More: This Is the Best Time of Day to Work Out

    Yet the researchers did find the workouts to be 90% accurate. Most of the inaccuracies involved telling people to get medical clearance to exercise when they didn’t need it. That might seem innocuous, but Linda Pescatello, a professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and one of the study’s authors, says this could discourage people from exercising altogether. “Requiring someone to get medical clearance is a major deterrent to undertaking an exercise program,” she says.

    Done right, AI has real potential to get more of us moving. In a recent report funded by the sportswear company ASICS, 62% of women named the high cost of trainers as a major barrier to exercising. A free, easily accessible chatbot offering targeted, on-demand workout advice on a mass scale could be a boon to public health.

    Lesson 3: The chatbot’s workouts are boring and uninspired

    Two weeks into my strength-training plan, I found myself skipping certain moves and swapping in others instead. The problem was, I didn’t trust Coach ChatGPT. Did I really need to do burpees, or had the chatbot simply come across them in some random “workout for runners” article? The answers hadn’t given me any information on why I was doing the moves, or links to learn more, so I kept questioning the efficacy of the exercises.

    Also, the workout was boring, made up of basic American gym-class exercises that felt cookie-cutter, despite all the personal info I’d included in my prompts. 

    “There’s the science of exercise prescription, and there’s the art,” says Pescatello. A robot might have completed my prescribed workout and gotten results, but I’m far too human to pump out the same 12 bland moves with gusto—especially without a trainer to hold me to it. “It doesn’t account for humanity at all,” says Kristie Larson, a New York–based personal trainer. “Sure, it might write a very good training plan—if you were also a machine.”

    Lesson 4: Turn to a human if you get injured 

    At one point, my sartorius muscle in my thigh started to act up. I asked ChatGPT, “Can I still run if my sartorius muscle hurts?” It gave me a vague, long-winded answer that wasn’t exactly “no,” but suggested I stick to low-impact activities like walking if the “pain is mild and improving.” 

    I brought this up with New York-based adidas running coach Jessica Zapotechne. Was this sound or overly conservative advice? “That question makes me think about a topic that I talk with athletes about a lot, which is distinguishing between pain and discomfort,” she tells me. There are different types of hurting, and determining what is simply part of training versus signs of an injury requires “a list of questions to go through,” she says. That’s another problem with AI coaches: They don’t ask questions, the way a human coach typically would.

    Read More: Should I Use a Foam Roller?

    “You’ve got to be very careful about your inputs, because if you have bad inputs, you’re going to have bad outputs,” says Bayly of PEAR Health Labs. “A generative AI chatbot is relying largely on information that’s widely available. I don’t think there’d be a lot of difference between a generic program that you might be able to download off the Internet versus something the chatbot might return if you are not specific enough.” AI-based workout apps like Aaptiv have users answer several questions about their goals, experience, age, and more upfront in order to generate personalized recommendations, which are then refined further by tracking what the user does on the app, à la Netflix. 

    The trouble is, someone who’s looking to AI for exercise ideas probably doesn’t know exactly what details they’d need to share to get the most helpful answer. 

    “The person who has the skill to write a great command probably has enough skill to just write the workout,” says Chicago-based strength coach Elisabeth Akinwale. On the other hand, she adds, if someone is asking ChatGPT for workout help, they might not have the knowledge to realize when it spits out something wacky, like my marathon training plans. “They don’t have the discernment to say, no, that doesn’t sound right,” she says.

    So what is ChatGPT good for, in the world of fitness?

    In a word: “Variety,” says Pescatello. “One of the capabilities AI has in any profession is it can be a great search tool. With careful prompting, you could specify your preferences and an output could be generated that gives you more options than you feel there are now.” Larson echoes that sentiment, saying it would be best used by someone experienced who’s just looking to mix things up with a new idea to add to their rotation. 

    Still, you’d have to fit within a narrow population to get the best results. Pescatello says her team found that ChatGPT’s recommendations are currently biased toward adults and lack cultural awareness or considerations for disabilities. Their analysis also scored the readability at the college level.

    Read More: The 3 Most Effective Exercise Moves That Don’t Require Equipment

    Despite ChatGPT not turning out to be the free personal trainer I wanted, I’m still doing some of its recommended strength-training exercises regularly. I haven’t gotten faster yet, though we’ll see what happens on marathon day. 

    I find I keep going back to ask ChatGPT my 3 a.m. workout questions that feel too silly or inconsequential to bother another human with. It’s proven most useful after a session talking to a sports dietitian, when I needed a simple explanation of “anabolic potential.” The first few results Google brought up were too sciencey, but when I asked ChatGPT to define it for an eighth grader, I got exactly what I was looking for: “the body’s ability to build and repair tissue, especially muscles.” I’m finally using it for what it’s designed to do: not to give exercise advice, but to generate natural-sounding, easy-to-understand language.

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    Jennifer Heimlich

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  • To Live Longer, Women Need Half as Much Exercise as Men

    To Live Longer, Women Need Half as Much Exercise as Men

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    Women need to exercise only half as much as men to reap the same longevity benefits, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

    That’s good news for women who struggle to motivate themselves to hit the gym, says study co-author Dr. Martha Gulati, director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “For me, the news to women is: a little goes a long way,” Gulati says.

    In the study, men who got about 300 minutes of aerobic exercise every week had an 18% lower risk of dying compared to inactive men, the researchers found. But among women, it took only 140 minutes of weekly exercise to see an equivalent benefit—and the risk of death was 24% lower among those who got about 300 minutes of movement per week. (For both sexes, longevity benefits seemed to plateau beyond 300 minutes of weekly exercise.)

    The researchers ran a similar analysis on muscle-strengthening exercise, such as weight training. They found the same pattern: for women, a single weekly strength-training session was associated with just as much longevity benefit as three weekly workouts for men.

    Women tend to have less muscle mass than men, Gulati explains, so “if they do the same amount of strengthening exercises, they may have greater benefits with smaller doses just based on the fact that they don’t have as much to begin with.” Other sex-based physiological differences, like differences in the lungs and cardiopulmonary system, may also come into play.

    Read More: Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise

    To reach their findings, Gulati and her colleagues analyzed self-reported exercise habits from more than 400,000 U.S. adults who took the National Health Interview Survey from 1997 to 2017, then compared those data with death records. About 40,000 of the participants died during the study period.

    That observational approach—meaning the researchers looked for patterns in preexisting data—can’t prove cause and effect. It’s possible that exercise didn’t cause people to live longer, but rather that active people in the study were healthier overall or had other lifestyle habits that boosted longevity. The researchers tried to control for those possibilities by excluding people who had serious preexisting conditions or mobility constraints, or who died in the first two years of study follow-up, and thus may have been unhealthy from the beginning.

    The study was also limited by its reliance on self-reported exercise data, which isn’t always accurate. The survey also asked about exercise people did in their free time, and thus may not have accounted for physical activity that occurred at work or during household chores—a type of movement that research increasingly suggests can meaningfully improve health.

    In part because of those limitations, Gulati says more research is required to confirm the findings. But, she says, the study—and others that have reached similar conclusions—offers a clear signal that “women are not just small men” and that sex-based differences must be incorporated into research and public-health policy. “For years, we’ve used men as the standard,” Gulati says, even when it may not have been accurate to do so.

    Take the federal guidelines for physical activity, which issue the same blanket recommendation for U.S. adults: at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise (or 75 minutes of vigorous cardio) and two muscle-strengthening sessions each week. In 2020, about 28% of U.S. men hit both benchmarks, compared to 20% of U.S. women, data show.

    Gulati’s research, at least, suggests women may see significant longevity benefits even if they don’t quite meet those targets. But she says the study shouldn’t be discouraging for men, either.
    The latest research suggests people of both sexes benefit from even very short chunks of activity, as just a few minutes of movement per day can boost longevity.

    “Our pitch should be the same to men and women: something is better than nothing,” Gulati says. “Sit less and move more.”

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    Jamie Ducharme

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  • Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise

    Your Brain Doesn’t Want You to Exercise

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    If the benefits of physical activity were distilled into a pill, everyone would be on it. Studies show that moving improves nearly every aspect of health: boosting sleep, strength, and mental well-being while slashing the risk of chronic conditions and premature death. What’s more, studies show that exercise has a positive impact even when done in very short chunks and with no equipment or fancy gym membership required.

    Still, most people don’t exercise nearly enough. According to data published in 2023, less than a third of U.S. adults get the government-recommended amount of physical activity in their free time: at least 20 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic movement (think brisk walking) per day, plus a couple muscle-strengthening sessions (such as resistance training) each week.

    Why is it so tough to get people to do something so good for and accessible to them? Physical limitations and health problems are certainly a factor for many people, since more than half of U.S. adults have some kind of chronic condition. Modern life deserves much of the blame, too, with long, sedentary work days and infrastructure that often makes it easier to hop in the car than walk or bike somewhere. And studies have long shown that people who don’t make much money are less likely to exercise than wealthier people, in part because they may live in areas with relatively few spaces where it’s safe and pleasant to be active.

    But research suggests there’s another obstacle that affects all of us: our brains don’t want us to exercise.

    Wired to be sedentary

    For most of human existence, people had to be physically active to carry out the basic functions of life, such as finding or growing food. Humans evolved to tolerate a high level of activity—but also to gravitate toward rest when possible, to conserve energy for when movement was either necessary or pleasurable, explains Daniel Lieberman, a human evolutionary biologist and author of Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding.

    In other words, hunter gatherers weren’t out jogging to burn extra calories. From an evolutionary perspective, “that would be a stupid thing to do,” Lieberman says. “You’re wasting energy on something that’s not going to give you any benefit whatsoever.”

    As a society, we no longer move much in the course of daily life, but the evolutionary instinct to conserve energy remains, Lieberman says. “That disinclination, that reluctance, that voice that says, ‘I don’t want to [exercise],’ is completely normal and natural,” he says.

    Physical-activity researcher Matthieu Boisgontier, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, demonstrated that phenomenon in a 2018 study. While hooked up to brain-activity monitors, people were given control of a digital avatar. They were told to move the avatar away from images of sedentary behavior that popped up on their computer screens and toward images of physical activity. Boisgontier and his colleagues found that avoiding sedentary behavior took more brain power, which suggests “we have an automatic tendency” to choose relaxing over moving, he says.

    That conclusion shows up repeatedly in research. Studies show, for example, that people consistently choose to take an escalator instead of the stairs. That natural instinct isn’t inherently bad—it’s just that modern life gives us so many chances to give in to our preference for rest that “we have reached an extreme that is no longer beneficial to our health,” Boisgontier says.

    Many people also subconsciously harbor negative feelings toward exercise that go back to childhood, says Jackie Hargreaves, a senior lecturer on sport and exercise psychology at the U.K.’s Leeds Beckett University. A gym-class embarrassment or unpleasant experience with a youth sports team can make a person avoid working out well into adulthood, Hargreaves says.

    Sometimes it’s also a confidence issue. Research suggests people who view themselves as competent exercisers are more likely to stick to a regular routine, while people who think the opposite may struggle to find consistent motivation, says Stefanie Williams, a behavioral scientist who works with a U.K. organization that translates health research into practice.

    How to trick your brain into exercising

    Feeling good about your ability is crucial to finding the motivation to exercise, says Sam Zizzi, an exercise psychologist at West Virginia University. He recommends starting small—perhaps walking just a few minutes per day at first—and building on that progress over time. Observing a peer doing what you’d like to do, particularly if they share your age, gender, or health status, can also help you realize you can accomplish it, too, Williams says.

    A counterintuitive way to build confidence, Lieberman adds, is to simply recognize the ways your brain sets you up to fail. “When people struggle to exercise, they’re told they’re lazy or there’s something wrong with them,” when in reality, people who exercise purely for fitness are the ones working against their natural instincts, Lieberman says. Replacing guilt and shame with self compassion—and an understanding of how the human brain works—can go a long way.

    So can reframing what counts as exercise. You don’t need to spend an hour lifting weights at the gym; even taking a few minutes per day to dance in your kitchen or weed the garden is great for your mind and body, numerous studies show. “It’s not about going out and doing vigorous, competitive sport,” Hargreaves says. “It’s about moving,” and finding ways to move that are actually enjoyable.

    Finally, Zizzi recommends making exercise “serve a double purpose”—perhaps by planning a bike ride with friends so your workout doubles as a social outing, or making an existing work meeting a walk-and-talk. Intertwining exercise with something you already want or need to do, Zizzi says, can make it easier to ignore the part of your brain that’s telling you it’s better to park yourself on the couch.

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    Jamie Ducharme

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