There’s a saying, “Use it or lose it.” That’s pretty much why exercise is good for you. But that’s just the short answer. The details of what actually happens in your body are truly amazing and, I think, super motivating. Here’s the the rest of the story you won’t want to miss!

[This article is going to motivate you to exercise more. So here’s the obligatory, but important, cautionary note. If you are going to start an exercise program, you should have the OK from your doctor first to make sure that you don’t have any potential heart or other health issues.]

How Exercise Makes You Stronger and Healthier

The very first day that you start your exercise program, you will be healthier than you were yesterday. Why? Because your body immediately responds to the exercise by building new cells and tissues to support that exercise. It gets ready to better handle the exercise you will do tomorrow. Isn’t that amazing!?

There are several marvelous ways that your body changes when you begin a consistent aerobic exercise program. All of the improvements your body makes increases your VO2 Max, which is a measurement of of your fitness level. Specifically, VO2 Max measures the volume of oxygen a person can consume in one minute exercising at maximum exertion.

Here are the incredible changes you’ll see in your body:

Heart
When you train over a period of time your heart will grow in size, allowing it to pump a larger volume of blood with each stroke (or pump). This allows more oxygen to be delivered to all the cells in your body. At the same time, your heart also becomes stronger and more efficient at pumping blood.

Blood Vessels
In response to your muscles needing more oxygen, your body will grow more capillaries to deliver more oxygen faster going forward. Isn’t that cool?! In addition, over time, regular exercise will make your blood vessels become more flexible allowing them to deliver more oxygen rich blood more efficiently. And if that wasn’t enough, the increased blood flow in your blood vessels serves to clean out excess cholesterol, keeping you free of clogs which can cause strokes and heart attacks.

Red Blood Cells
As you exercise each day, your body says, “OK, I get it. You need more oxygen. Alright, turn up the red blood cell production!” As your red blood cell count increases so does your ability to receive more oxygen more efficiently.

Cellular Level
This improvement is very cool too. In each of the cells in your body there are these little power machines called mitochondria. What they do is produce energy by combining oxygen and glucose (or other fuel molecules). This combination produces ATP which is the molecule that gives your cells the energy they need to do their cellular work. When you exercise regularly, guess what happens? Yup, your body creates more and stronger mitochondria in each of your cells, making you more powerful and giving you more endurance for everything in your life! Wow! How exciting is that!?

Muscles
When you use your muscles beyond what they can handle, either through aerobic exercise or weight bearing exercise, it causes your body to build new muscle tissue. Tiny tears can occur with weight lifting, and when these tears are repaired, this is what causes the muscle to become larger and more defined. Larger, stronger muscles will raise your metabolism making weight management easier.

Your VO2 Max

If you want to test your VO2 max, a simple way to do this is to perform the Rockport Walking Fitness Test. It is well regarded as an accurate way to measure your VO2 max. If you can’t get your heart rate above 120 with fast walking, here is a similar jogging test. (Again these tests should only be done with your doctor’s approval.)

What Kind of Exercise is Best?

The best kind of exercise is the kind you do everyday for 30 minutes, whether consecutive minutes or broken up throughout the day. You should aim for a target heart rate of 55-85% of your max heart rate. Here’s the formula to calculate your maximum heart rate:

Maximum heart rate = 208 - (0.7 X your age in years)

Example: If you are 40 years old, then your maximum heart rate = 208 -(0.7 X 40)= 180.
Moderate activity level would be between 99 - 126 beats per minute.
Strenuous activity level would be between 126 - 153 beats per minute.

So it doesn’t matter if you walk or run, bike or swim, play tennis or rake the yard. As long as you do it everyday and get your heart pumping you will make yourself healthier every day. The only advantage that running has over walking is that you can burn more calories in a shorter period of time. But, the advantage of brisk walking is that it is easier on your joints than running. So just choose whichever activity you like better, and go for it!

Another thing to keep in mind is that you have to stop in the middle of your exercise, don’t fret. As long as you finish it later, it’s fine. You can do 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening. Everyone has time for that right?

My soon to be released book on healthy living will have more information on healthy exercise. In the meantime, all you need is a pair of sneakers and you’re good to go. Vary your exercise every so often for a new muscular challenge and also for fun. Here are some other aerobic activities you can try:

biking
cross country skiing
swimming
tennis
strenuous yoga
squash
hiking
kayaking
golfing
soccer
jumping (jump-rope or mini-trampoline)
dancing

有這樣一句俗語(yǔ)，“不常使用，就失去。”就很好地說(shuō)明了為什么運(yùn)動(dòng)對(duì)你有好處。但這只是句簡(jiǎn)短的回答。運(yùn)動(dòng)讓你身體里實(shí)實(shí)在在變化著的細(xì)節(jié)是令人驚奇的，我認(rèn)為，非常激勵(lì)人。這里有你絕不愿錯(cuò)過(guò)的其他的信息！

（這篇文章將激勵(lì)你更多地去運(yùn)動(dòng)。所以這里有些必需的，但重要的警示。如果你要開(kāi)展一項(xiàng)運(yùn)動(dòng)，必須先得到你的醫(yī)生的許可，確保你將不會(huì)有任何潛在的心臟或其他健康上的問(wèn)題。）

運(yùn)動(dòng)怎樣讓你更加強(qiáng)壯和健康

即使是開(kāi)始運(yùn)動(dòng)項(xiàng)目的第一天，你也比昨天更健康。為什么？你的身體以建立新的細(xì)胞和組織的方式迅速地做出反應(yīng)，來(lái)支持那項(xiàng)運(yùn)動(dòng)的進(jìn)行。你的身體狀況將更好，使你更好地應(yīng)付明天要做的運(yùn)動(dòng)。這難道不是很神奇嗎？

當(dāng)開(kāi)始堅(jiān)持一個(gè)有氧運(yùn)動(dòng)計(jì)劃時(shí)，你的身體以一些驚人的方式發(fā)生改變。所有的身體狀況上的改善將增加你的最大攝氧量，而最大攝氧量是測(cè)量你的健康水平的一個(gè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。具體來(lái)說(shuō)，最大攝氧量測(cè)量的是一個(gè)人在一分鐘運(yùn)動(dòng)中的最大耗氧量。

這些就是你將在自己身上看到的難以置信的改變：

心臟
當(dāng)你運(yùn)動(dòng)訓(xùn)練過(guò)一段時(shí)間以后，你的心臟體積將變大，每一次跳動(dòng)（或撞擊）可以輸送更多的血。這將輸送更多的氧氣到你身體的各個(gè)細(xì)胞。同時(shí)，你的心臟變得更強(qiáng)壯，能更有效率地輸送血液。

血管
因?yàn)槟愕捏w力需要更多氧氣支撐，你的身體將生成更多毛細(xì)血管來(lái)便于更多氧氣的傳送。這難道不神奇嗎？另外，久而久之，定期的運(yùn)動(dòng)將使你的血管更有效率、更靈活地更傳送更多富氧的血液。除此之外，那些增加的血液在你的血管里流動(dòng)著，它們能清除多余的膽固醇，讓你免于可能引起中風(fēng)和心臟病發(fā)作的血管堵塞。

紅細(xì)胞
隨著每天的運(yùn)動(dòng)，你的身體說(shuō)，“好的，我知道了。你需要更多的氧氣。好吧，加大紅細(xì)胞的產(chǎn)量！”紅細(xì)胞數(shù)量增加了，你也能更有愜意地吸收更多的氧氣。

細(xì)胞水平
這個(gè)進(jìn)展也是令人稱奇的。你身體中的每一個(gè)細(xì)胞里，都有這些叫做線粒體的“小發(fā)電機(jī)”。它們將氧氣和葡萄糖（或其他燃料分子）結(jié)合起來(lái)來(lái)制造能量。這種結(jié)合制造出提供細(xì)胞每天運(yùn)行所需燃料的分子--三磷酸腺苷。當(dāng)你定期運(yùn)動(dòng)，猜猜會(huì)發(fā)生些什么？是的，你的身體在每一個(gè)細(xì)胞中制造出更多更好的線粒體，讓你更強(qiáng)壯，在生活中做任何事情時(shí)都更有耐力。哇！這不是多激動(dòng)人心嗎��？

肌肉
當(dāng)你用你的肌肉做些有難度的活動(dòng)時(shí)，不論是有氧運(yùn)動(dòng)還是負(fù)重運(yùn)動(dòng)，都會(huì)讓你的身體建立新的肌肉組織。舉重時(shí)肌肉會(huì)有輕微的裂開(kāi)，當(dāng)這些裂口愈合時(shí)，肌肉也變得更強(qiáng)大更輪廓分明。擁有些大塊些、強(qiáng)壯些的肌肉會(huì)讓新陳代謝加快，讓體重更容易保持。

你的最大攝氧量
若你想測(cè)試自己的最大攝氧量，進(jìn)行rockport步行體能測(cè)驗(yàn)就是一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)單的方法。它被認(rèn)為是測(cè)量最大攝氧量的一個(gè)準(zhǔn)確途徑。如果你不能通過(guò)快走讓你的心率超過(guò)120，這里還有個(gè)相似的慢跑測(cè)試。（同樣地，這些測(cè)試必須在你的醫(yī)生的準(zhǔn)許下完成。）

什么方式的運(yùn)動(dòng)最好？
運(yùn)動(dòng)的最好方式是每天進(jìn)行半個(gè)小時(shí)，不管是持續(xù)的半小時(shí)還是一天中零碎進(jìn)行的半小時(shí)。你需要朝著使心率往你的最大心率的55-85%的目標(biāo)前進(jìn)。這是計(jì)算你的最大心率的公式：

最大心率=208-(0.7X你年齡的年數(shù)）

例子：如果你40歲，那么你的最大心率=208-(0.7 X 40)= 180
一般的心率水平應(yīng)該在每分鐘99-126之間。
較好的心率水平應(yīng)該在每分鐘126-153之間。

所以，無(wú)論你是走還是跑，是騎自行車還是游泳，是打網(wǎng)球還是用耙理庭院，都沒(méi)有關(guān)系。只要你每天做，讓你的心臟自由跳動(dòng)，你會(huì)每一天變得更健康一點(diǎn)。比起步行，跑步的唯一優(yōu)勢(shì)是能讓你在更短的一段時(shí)間里消耗更多的卡路里。但是比起跑步，快走的優(yōu)勢(shì)是它對(duì)于關(guān)節(jié)來(lái)說(shuō)更為輕松。所以只要選擇你更喜歡些的運(yùn)動(dòng)，去做吧！

另外你需銘記在心，當(dāng)不得不在運(yùn)動(dòng)中停下來(lái)時(shí)，不要為此苦惱。只要你能稍后完成它，就可以了。你可以早晨和晚上各運(yùn)動(dòng)15分鐘。這樣每個(gè)人都有時(shí)間運(yùn)動(dòng)了，不是嗎？

我將發(fā)行的那本關(guān)于健康生活的書中會(huì)提供更多關(guān)于健康運(yùn)動(dòng)的信息。與此同時(shí)，你所需要的一切僅僅是一雙穿著行動(dòng)方便的膠底運(yùn)動(dòng)鞋。偶爾讓運(yùn)動(dòng)的內(nèi)容多樣化，這將既是一項(xiàng)新的肌肉挑戰(zhàn)，也是一種樂(lè)趣。這里是一些你可以嘗試的其他有氧運(yùn)動(dòng)：

* 騎自行車
* 越野滑雪
* 游泳
* 網(wǎng)球
* 艱苦的瑜珈訓(xùn)練
* 壁球
* 徒步旅行
* 劃皮艇
* 高爾夫球
* 英式足球
* 跳躍（跳繩或小蹦床）
* 跳舞