Sensible Fitness

at 12:08 PM

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine Gretchen Reynolds wrote about the latest research about exercise and stress. We have known for some time that exercise can reduce anxiety and stress and bring about calmness. Princeton University researchers have made remarkable discovery about the brains of rats that exercise. The scientists had two groups of rats, one group of rodents was allowed to exercise and the control group was not. Then all rats were put in cold water to swim (they don't like this!). The scientists could tell which nerve cells (neurons) were activated by swimming (or stress) because of the specific genes they expressed. They then examined the brains and found that in the exerciser group the youngest neurons (nerve cells) created by running were less likely to express the genes in response to stress. The cells "born from running" appeared to be "buffered from exposure to stress". Therefore through running the brain seemed to be biochemically calm. We still don't know how that translates in humans or how long or how intense we need to exercise to have stress-reducing benefits.
As for me, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that intense exercise brings me calmness and serenity. I am less stressed or prehaps can handle stress better. I'm a better wife and a better mom. So get out there, exercise and make your brains more resistant to stress.
And maybe if you are interested in doing a great lower body exercise (my favorite lower body exercise) which really defines the quadriceps (the muscles in front of the thigh) and the hamstrings (the muscles in the back of the thigh) you can do some lunges. I did just say the lunge works both the quads and the hamstrings, however... you can tweak the lunge so you can work the quads more than the hams or the other way around. Here is the way you do this. If you want to really work more your quads, make sure that you don't take a giant step during a forward lunge (take a smaller step) and lift your heel an inch or two off the floor. Taking a small step and having more weight transferred forward through lifting the heel off the floor works the quadriceps. Alternatively if you want to work your hamstrings more, take a bigger step and when you come down in a lunge try to focus on lifting your toes off the floor thus transferring the weight to your heels. In this case you are really working your upper hamstrings and your glutes (your butt muscles!).