Get moving and get a grip

According to the American Heart Association, most Americans are not physically active enough to gain any health benefits. And according to the latest joint American Heart Association/American College of Sports Medicine guidelines, all healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 65 should be getting at least 30 minutes of exercise five days out of the week.

Taken together, these two statements suggest most Americans are asking for heart trouble. And indeed, heart disease is No. 1 killer worldwide and the leading cause of death of American women.

So what is the answer? Get moving! Where exercise and healthy movement is concerned, it’s never too late to do the right thing. The American Heart Association has developed a program called Start! that is designed to help people change their lives to incorporate heart-healthy habits. Check it out on its Web site at www.americanheart.org.

Activities such as biking, walking, trail hiking, swimming and dancing can all be good for your heart. You should engage in activity that raises your heart rate and gets you panting, maybe even perspiring a bit. If you’ve never exercised, or if it’s been awhile and you’re significantly deconditioned, visit your doctor before starting an exercise program. Chances are that your doctor will be delighted you plan to get moving, but be sure to get a thorough checkup before you get started.

Start small. Jogging to the end of the driveway may be a significant accomplishment in the beginning, but you may be surprised at how quickly your body will adapt and improve. If you keep at it consistently, you can work up to 30 minutes at a time of aerobic activity. The AHA Web site has lots of tips to help you get started and stay on track — and I’ll be offering plenty of tips, motivation and advice in this space in the months to come.

Now that you’re committed to engaging in healthy aerobic activity on a regular basis, you should consider a strength-training program as well. (This means working out with some form of resistance such as weights.) There are many benefits and, if you’re motivated, you can find ways to improve your musculoskeletal strength and your cardiac health at the same time. In the future I’ll be offering plenty of advice on that as well.

But for now, consider the benefits of a regular strength-training regimen: better joint health, stronger bones, decreased risk of injury, improved mobility, less joint pain, better balance and better stability, just to name a few. Increasing lean muscle mass can raise your metabolic rate and cause you to burn more calories throughout the day, enhancing and enabling fat-loss efforts. Some research suggests that regular participation in a strength-training program can lower cholesterol and blood pressure, decreasing the risk of coronary disease. Strength training also helps you to look and feel better, in addition to making it easier to carry the groceries in from the car.

Recent research has provided strong evidence that even seniors in their 90s who have never exercised their entire lives show substantial gains in strength and mobility after beginning a weight-training program. Again, consult with your doctor before beginning any exercise program.

Most of us could stand to improve our functional strength, and you do that by performing compound or complex movements — movements that call on groups of muscles to work together, rather that isolation movements, which force a muscle or group of muscles to work by itself. Doing curls with dumbbells or a barbell can greatly improve the strength and size of your arms, specifically your biceps. Doing chinups will strengthen your biceps, but it will also strengthen muscles of the mid back (the latissimus dorsi, or “lats”). Most importantly, it will train your arms and back to work together whenever you perform a pulling movement.

Getting a grip

An often-neglected aspect of strength training is grip training, but grip-strength competitions are becoming more and more popular. The truth is, most people could benefit from doing some grip work. It not only strengthens your grip, but can decrease or eliminate elbow and wrist pain and make injuries to these joints less likely.

To work your grip, you need to work with resistance in all the planes of motion of the wrist. The wrist can move in six different ways. To see what I mean, put your hands out in front of you, palms down. Bend your wrist so that your hand swings down toward the floor. This is called flexion. When you bend your wrist in the other direction, swinging your hand toward the sky, this is known as extension.

Hold your hands out in front of you again. Now move your hands at the wrist so that your thumbs move toward each other. This is called radial deviation. When you move them in the other direction, so that your pinkies swing away from each other, this is ulnar deviation.

And finally, when you twist your wrist so that your hand moves from palm-down to palm-up, you are engaging in supination. Twisting in the other direction, palm-up to palm-down, is called pronation.

Most people who work grip at all work flexion and extension and call it a day. This is better than nothing, and might make your forearms grow a little bit, but it won’t improve your grip or joint health much. One of the best ways to work the grip is to get a wrist roller. This is simply a tube or dowel with a cable to which weight plates or dumbbells can be attached. Grab the tube and roll up the cable, raising the weight, then unroll it slowly, lowering it. That’s one rep. Try to do five. If you can do more than five, add more weight. This will challenge your forearms (which is where the muscles that move the hands, wrist and digits are located).

Another great workout for the heart and the grip is the sledgehammer and tire drill. Get an old truck tire (most tire places will be glad to let you have one for free). Get a sledgehammer that weighs at least 10 pounds. Hit the tire with the sledgehammer, as hard as you can, lifting the hammer over your head and engaging your entire torso on the downswing. Try hitting it 20 times. When you can do that without resting, try hitting it 40 times. See if you can work up to three minutes of continuous swinging. Your heart rate will probably rise dramatically, and don’t be surprised if your abdominals are sore the next day. This is also a great core workout. Fighters use this drill all the time to build up speed, power and wind.

I’ll have more on grip training in columns to come. Until then, keep moving!