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Right now we are living a reality that we had only seen in science fiction movies, we have had to change our lifestyles, adapting to a way of relating to each other that is absolutely different from what we were used to.
In this situation we receive a tremendous amount of information, including lots of advice about what we should do to stay as healthy as possible; I hope this opinion column is not one of them, with a kind of cooking recipe to follow.
Thus, we should carry out exercises that try to improve some components of physical condition that are relevant, since they are associated with survival, absence of disease and quality of life. Among them the following:
A. For cardiorespiratory fitness, also known as aerobic capacity: It depends on the amount of liters of blood that our heart can mobilize in one minute, as well as on the ability to extract oxygen from our muscles.
It can be improved with continuous exercises of moderate intensity (where for example one can talk but not sing during it), which should be done up to 30 minutes a day for adults or 60 minutes a day for children and adolescents , They can be continuous or divided into units of up to 10 minutes.
For example, using an exercise bike or treadmill, walking or jogging on site, or jumping rope. It is also possible to train this capacity by doing exercises of greater intensity, with which we would spend less time, but this would not be advisable in people without a complete prior medical check-up or who are doing this training program without supervision.
B. For muscle strength: It mainly depends on the amount of muscle mass in our body, as well as the efficiency of the nervous system. You can train by performing movements that have resistance; for example, using as a weight a bottle with water or even your own body weight in push-ups or “push-ups”.
The movement should be done a number of times until a tired feeling is reached in the working muscles. If you need to do more than 20 repetitions it is likely that the weight you are using could be increased; on the contrary, if you can perform less than 5 times the movement, I would suggest decreasing the weight you are using. The World Health Organization suggests doing this type of exercise twice a week, personally I think it should be a workout to do on a daily basis.
C. For balance and coordination: It is a necessary training to improve the quality of movement and also decrease the risks of falls. To do this, progressions are made from stable to more unstable surfaces, raising the center of gravity and / or decreasing the surface of our support base (which is the area formed by joining the external contours of our feet). For example, exercises on one leg and with eyes closed. This type of training should be done especially by children and older adults.
The other element to consider is that we must decrease our sedentary behavior, for which we must interrupt regularly – hopefully in periods of less than an hour – the sitting or lying position during the day, to exercise for at least five continuous minutes.
It has been seen that maintaining a sedentary behavior generates a greater risk in the health condition of the population, even going so far as to block the benefits that a physical training program could provide; Thus, it is not advisable to kill yourself for an hour a day in a gym and then sit all day in front of a computer or take an elevator to move two or three floors.
All these tips should be accompanied by a healthy diet and an adequate quantity and quality of sleep. Hopefully they can stay as active and healthy as possible; The time will come when we return to exercising without restrictions and outdoors.
* Full Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile
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