Tips to Increase Stamina

Tips to Increase Stamina - Vibrant Life, Nov, 1999 by Sherry Ballou Hanson

1. Frequency, intensity, and time/duration are the components of a safe, effective exercise program. Mess up any of these, and you risk injury. Experts agree on a few basics: three or more workouts a week, at a heart rate not exceeding 60 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, for 20 minutes or longer. Even moderate exercise works to increase stamina.

2. Know your limitations. If you are overweight and out of shape, you will need to lose weight as you shape up. Over age 40? Don't try to run the marathon in two hours. Asthmatic? Don't try to run through an attack. Whatever your health problem, work with it, not against it. Stay in touch with your doctor and/or trainer.

3. If you select activities you enjoy, you will increase your chances of sticking with them long enough to get in shape and feel good. Don't take up running if you hate it; there are other ways to get in shape.

4. Remember the cardinal rules for every sport: warm up, stretch, and cool down. This is especially important if you are forced to be a weekend athlete. Don't wait until the morning of your mountain climb to begin calf-stretching exercises, or you may find all your enthusiasm for the sport going up in smoke while you cool your heels for the next month.

5. If you are into heavy training for your sport, alternate hard and easy days. Weight training, for example, should not work the same muscles on consecutive days or you will be breaking down tissue instead of building. Long runs should alternate with short. Don't perform an arduous rock climb two days in a row. On the night before that big white-water trip, don't max out on the rowing machine. Moderation is the word!

6. Cross-training is one of the most effective and safe ways to improve stamina and performance level, as well as a great way to avoid injury. Choose two or more activities that complement each other, such as weight training and trail running, or biking and swimming.

7. One of the best ways to add vigor to your life is to add strength training with weights to your lifestyle. Recent research at Tufts University found that women who worked with weights or weight machines for 45 minutes twice a week for a year emerged physiologically younger by 15 to 20 years than when they began.

8. If you follow a vegetarian diet and lead an active lifestyle, be sure you know what you are doing. Vegetarians who don't eat dairy foods or other animal products need to use extra care to monitor their consumption of some nutrients that occur mainly or almost exclusively in animal foods. Vitamin [B.sub.12] deficiency is especially common.

9. Choose a breakfast cereal that lists whole wheat, whole grain, whole oat flour, or rolled oats among the first ingredients. This ensures that the product has not been refined and is more likely to contain essential ingredients such as magnesium, manganese, chromium, and copper. If you are taking in enough fluids, your urine will run clear most of the day. For every pound you lose to sweat during a workout, you need to drink 16 ounces of fluids or you will become dehydrated.

10. When you travel on business, try to exercise first thing in the morning. This will help you acclimate to time changes. Later in the day, business meetings may prevent you from following your usual routine. Energy flagging? Try the full body stretch. Stand with arms relaxed at sides. Rotate head slowly forward, to left, back, to right. Then raise arms overhead and drop forward slowly, bending knees slightly to touch floor. Stretch back up slowly, arms overhead. Again, then relax.