June 2, 1986
Fitness
ATHLETIC DRINKS FOR THE SUMMER HOT SPELLS
First of Two Parts.
There is a scene in “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” in which Clint Eastwood is forced to trek 50 miles or so across a bone-dry desert. The experience leaves him looking like a month-old corpse. His recovery is excruciatingly slow. Kindly brothers at a mission bring him back to life with liberal doses of soup.
Although few if any exercising bodies go through the physical trauma Eastwood portrayed, the travails in the film were in no way exaggerated.
The human body is composed primarily of water, and when water is removed in any quantity, the body begins to function less efficiently. All the way down to the cellular level.
The body’s primary cooling mechanism—sweating—makes use of the body’s water. Sweating transports the heat produced within the body to the body’s surface, where evaporation releases the heat into the atmosphere. The more that evaporation is inhibited—under humid conditions, for example—the more difficulty the body will have in ridding itself of accumulated heat.
The more we exercise, the more heat we build up, and the more the body must work to rid itself of the heat before it begins to adversely affect vital bodily functions.
Sweat is not composed solely of water, however. It also contains salts and various track minerals, such as potassium. It was in an effort to replace fluid and at the same time replenish some of the substances being lost by the exercising body that the first wave of athletic drinks was created. Drinks such as Gatorade, ERG, and the now-defunct Body Punch.
Besides replacing water, the athletic drinks also provide some of the trace minerals the body loses. The drinks include sugar (nearly instant energy) in one form or another. Each athletic drink has its own “secret” formula that is considered by its creator to be the perfect ratio of replacement elements for those being lost, thereby keeping the exercising body in a state of chemical balance.
If the exercising body can remain in chemical balance, it enjoys several advantages:
# Better, more efficient performance.
# The ability to perform longer under adverse conditions.
# The ability to recover more quickly and thoroughly.
In most instances, the athletic drink companies add flavoring to their drinks to make them more palatable. No matter how desperate to replace lost minerals the human body may be, the mouth isn’t anxious to accept a drink that tastes like sweat.
With the huge influx of exercising bodies in America over the past decade, the athletic drink companies have been doing quite well. Naturally, Gatorade, with its national advertising campaigns, is doing much better, for instance, that Southern California’s privately owned ERG.
However, the more serious the exerciser, the more likely he or she is to gravitate toward ERG. Its formula appears to be more compatible with marathoners, while Gatorade tends to find a market with weekend athletes and those interested in power sports.
From the standpoint of the aerobic exerciser, it should be noted that if you are embarking on a long workout, it is best not to begin consuming the athletic drink until you are at least a half-hour into your workout. The reasoning is simple: Because of the sugar content of the athletic drinks, they will stimulate an insulin reaction if consumed before you begin exercising.
Before you begin your exercising, drink plenty of water. Once the body has warmed itself up and has begun metering its internal energy reserves, consumption of athletic drinks will serve to begin replacing depleted resources. (A caution, however: It is better to consume the athletic drinks on the diluted side because the stomach will be better able to empty the drink through its walls than if the solution is too concentrated.)
June 9, 1986
Fitness
WATER IS STILL THE EXERCISER’S BEST REPLACEMENT FLUID
Second of Two Parts
For the person who exercises regularly, water intake is essential.
It replaces the water we lose through perspiration (our heat transference mechanism) when exercising. It keeps up the circulating blood volume, thereby allowing oxygen to be carried more effectively to the exercising muscles. It creates an environment in which damaged cells can be flushed more effectively from the system. On a cellular level it provides a hospitable environment in which the cells can more easily function.
Although there are all sorts of athletic drinks available, the most effective fluid replacement is still plain water (combined with a well-balanced diet).
With the valid concern surrounding purity—or lack of purity—of tap water, many people are turning to bottled water of one kind or another. This is especially true in areas where underground water tables are being polluted by hazardous chemicals.
Considering the volume of water an exercising athlete must consume, it becomes of concern that the water be pure and untainted—and that partially accounts for the popularity of bottled waters among aerobic athletes.
Northern California has a variety of premier bottled-water companies. In the Napa Valley, more noted for its bottled wines, the mud-bath-and-mineral-water town of Calistoga boasts two of the state’s largest bottled-water companies. Calistoga Water is the largest, while Crystal Geyser is working diligently to catch up.
Crystal Geyser was founded in 1977 by bank executives Peter Gordon and Leo Soong. Both enjoy the outdoors, and between the concerns that go with a company that is doubling in size every year, they attempt to get in their fill of running, cycling, skiing, and sailing.
Soong explained the consumer sophistication that has overtaken the bottled-water industry. “After drinking bottled water for some time, people begin to notice nuances in taste, and they develop preferences,” he said, comparing the bottled-water drinker’s palate with that of the wine drinker.
Soong credits some of the industry’s success these days with its involvement early on with the running movement. Demographically, the health-conscious runners were perfect customers for pure bottled water. Hence the involvement of water companies in race sponsorships. Perrier at the New York City Marathon, Calistoga Water at the Napa Valley Marathon, Crystal Geyser at the Bay-to-Breakers.
Although it is difficult to chug down a bottle of carbonated water immediately after a hard effort in a race, once the stomach settles down a bit, the bottled waters are refreshing and excellent fluid replacement drinks.
June 23, 1986
Fitness
GET YOUR FEET GOING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Although walking erect is a human form of locomotion among mammals, no two human being walk precisely alike. Each person is a biomechanical machine with the same number of parts, but with a unique alignment dictated by genes and life experiences.
Just as a cowboy tends to be bowlegged because of the hours he spends straddling a horse’s back, all of us—in conjunction with the downward pull of gravity—are a product of our environment.
Since aerobic sports consist of the rhythmic, repetitive motion of certain muscle groups, a biomechanic irregularity is many times multiplied during an hour’s workout. Multiply that by weeks and months and years of exercising, and a biomechanic irregularity becomes the aerobic exerciser’s Achilles’ heel.
A biomechanic irregularity can be corrected or modified in several ways.
Once analyzed, the athlete can enter upon a program of building specific muscles that will compensate for the irregularity.
But more commonly—especially with sports using the legs and feet—a podiatric appliance or device is prescribed by a podiatrist or an orthopedic surgeon.
In the last few years, podiatrists have made great advances with the electrodynogram (or EDG). The EDG is a black box that a walker or runner straps around his waist after a podiatrist attaches sensitive leads onto the undersides of several toes and other points along the soles of the feet.
The patient then walks or runs for two minutes. The impact that is fed through the shoes to the various sensors is recorded within the black box. At the end of the session, the podiatrist attaches the black box to a computer and the box empties its readings, at which point the electrodynogram software goes to work, sorting out the information and shifting it into graphs and charts that follow the precise sequences and intensity of impact at the sensitive points.
Dr. Andrew Carver, chief of podiatry at the Marshal Hale Hospital in San Francisco, has been using the EDG since April. Carver uses the EDG to analyze which shoes are best for a patient. He uses it to analyze walking, running, and aerobic dance shoes.
For some years Carver, a veteran of five marathons, has been prescribing shoe modifications for his patients in order to help them through foot and leg injuries. He believes in making adjustments with the shoe to accommodate the athlete, instead of making adjustments between the shoe and the athlete.
“You’ve got to look at athletic foot problems using an automobile analogy,” Carver says. “The sedentary person is the car with a slight front end alignment that commutes two miles a day at 35 miles an hour. The problem doesn’t really show itself. But become an athlete, and you’re an automobile with a 60-mile commute each day at 55 mph. The problem very quickly becomes apparent.”
June 30, 1986
Fitness
WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING ABOUT HEALTH CLUBS’ FUTURE
Even in simpler times, the decision of whether to join a health club was made in the confusion of a dense fog.
There will always be a place in exercising for the hard-core gym-type health clubs that cater to bodybuilders who need only weights, showers, and lockers. And there will always be health clubs with plaster statues on pedestals and lot of mirrors so it looks like an Italian restaurant gone steroid. But some experts feel that the future holds only two types of health clubs of any consequence:
# The ultra-club that covers a city block, is 75% computerized, and has four floors of pools, saunas, weight rooms, showers, ultramodern equipment (Lifecycle computerized stationary exercise bikes, for example) and a membership roster that reads like a phone book.
# The sports-medicine fitness club, where aerobic and anaerobic exercisers can go for evaluation, specific workouts to meet specific goals, and where there is a medical center where medical personnel handle patients in need of physical therapy and can write a prescription that will send them next door to the gym.
For the ultra-club to survive, it will need an incredible population base from which to draw; it’s a natural for New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
But the sports-medicine fitness clubs are not an impersonal (in fact, they prefer a membership they can handle on a personal basis and can be supported by a smaller community.
In Northern California, the new Marin Sports Medicine Fitness Center in San Rafael gives us a glimpse into the future.
The center is directed by Jean and Paul Carroll and is in the same building with the Ross Valley Medical Clinic. Besides the 4000-square-foot gymnasium, the 12,000-square-foot building also offers behavior modification programs, nutritional counseling, and diet and weight control programs, and works closely with Dominican College athletes.
It would be ideal if sports-medicine fitness clubs would encourage in-house running, triathlon, swim and cycling teams and have long-term plans to computerize (with appropriate graphs and charts of an individual’s progress) its clients’ workout programs and provide fitness evaluations.
What may be most attractive about these sports-medicine fitness clubs is that they won’t be overly expensive. Initial membership should certainly be less than $500 and monthly membership should not run more than $1.25 a day for use of the hall.