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targeted exercises posted: Sat 2011-08-20 20:25:38 tags: fitness

After 10 sessions of treadmill cardio, I can safely say my limits stem from:

1. Breath. I found a groove a couple sessions ago, ~4.8mph jogging, where I felt like I could sustain my breathing indefinitely if my muscles could keep up. CV training will naturally pull up pulmonary efficiency, but the process would be aided by including respiratory exercises in a muscle-targeting routine. Conventional Western medicine generally prescribes aerobic (i.e., cardio) exercise for pulmonary rehabilitation. Yoga specifically suggests deep-breathing exercises to literally expand lung capacity.

2. Leg and foot muscle fatigue. Basically my "running muscles", which were never well-developed to begin with, have gone flabby and atrophied. Solution: toe raises, calf raises and squats to build the major foot-to-butt muscle groups.

3. Overheating. After a workout, the skin of my adipose-insulated belly and waist are cool to the touch, while my head and neck are bearing an uncomfortable burden of dispersing excess body heat. The only remedy is building lean body mass.


So: for extra CP there's pranayama yoga deep-breathing. For feet and calves there's toe raises and calf raises; for thigh and glutes, squats. "The Glute Guy" seems to have some interesting and novel ideas about targeted gluteus exercises, but I'll have to review his schtick more closely another time. And that pretty much covers the lower body.

The abdominal exercises with the greatest balance of simplicity, safety and effectiveness are sit-ups and crunches. The Janda sit-up supposedly works the surface-most abdominals more than conventional sit-ups, and there's a Janda variant of the crunch as well.

I've had on-and-off problems with back strain throughout my life. What usually happens is, I lift or move something heavy and unwieldy like a mattress or refrigerator, and later that day or the next my back rebukes me by seizing up every time the strained muscle activates. And back muscles routinely activate in combination with complementary mucles, perhaps even just to balance while retrieving a light object like a plate from a cupboard, or to support a neutral sitting posture. So safely working up to a stronger back would be great. A muscle-by-muscle breakdown of specific exercises is a topic for another day, so for now suffice it to say hip lifts and various lying leg lifts work the back with little knee risk, and lunges can be added when lower-body strength supports it, with some attention to knee safety.