Month: July 2017

Running miles to lose weight? You’re wasting your time

Josh Hafner , USA TODAY Published 12:07 p.m. ET June 14, 2017 | Updated 1:53 p.m. ET June 27, 2017

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this article misstated a detail from a University of Western Ontario study. Both groups in the study gained some muscle mass.

In the United States, a nation fatter than any other, running remains the most popular workout activity. That’s according to a Fitbit analysis of fitness tracker user data.

And if tied-up treadmills across the country are any indication, much of that running is long distance.

Here’s the cruel catch, though: Running miles at a time doesn’t shed fat as efficiently as other forms of exercise. In some ways it doesn’t help much at all.

As fitness author Lou Schuler explains in his book, The New Rules of Lifting For Women, relying on long-distance running to lose weight poses a key problem. The human body, ever-resourceful, eventually adapts to the repetitive nature of running. And that added efficiency means the body burns fewer calories for the same amount of work.

“If your goal is to be leaner, then greater endurance isn’t really to your benefit,” Schuler concludes.

Dr. William Roberts, a University of Minnesota physician and former president of the American College of Sports Medicine, likes running. He’s blogged for Runner’s World and served as medical director for the Twin Cities Marathon in St. Paul.

“But If I’m looking at a gym and looking at what can I get the most bang for my buck from, it’s whatever I can use that moves and works the most muscle groups at the same time,” Roberts said.

That means adding strength training to any pure running routine, Roberts said, the latter of which neglects upper body muscles. Losing weight requires about 40 to 60 minutes of activity most days of the week, he said, and at least half that time should be spent bulking up.

“If you can build strength and build muscle mass, you’re going to burn more calories,” Roberts said. “Even if you’re idling.”

That’s because strength training causes tiny tears in the muscles. Those require calories as they repair, meaning your body keeps working long after you leave the gym. That’s less so with steady, moderate jogging.

Fitness coach Adam Bornstein put it this way in Shape: “With cardio, you can slog away for 30 minutes at a lower intensity and burn 200 calories — or you can just eat 200 fewer calories per day. It’s the same thing.”

If you love running, fear not: Sprinting may work as well. A study from the University of Western Ontario asked one group of people to run at a slow, steady pace for 30 to 60 minutes, three times per week. Another group ran 30-second sprints, between four and six of them, three times each week — a way less time-intensive routine.

Both groups gained some muscle mass. But after six weeks, the sprinters shed more than twice the body fat of the joggers.

Follow Josh Hafner on Twitter: @joshhafner

As millennials flock to high-intensity workouts, hip pain follows

By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel

Wellness

December 21, 2016

Physical therapist Karena Wu couldn’t help notice a trend in patients visiting her New York City office this year. Many were under age 35, enjoyed strenuous workouts and were suffering immense hip pain.

The millennials had pushed themselves in endurance races such as the Tough Mudder or weekly CrossFit and metabolic conditioning classes that placed wear and tear on their bodies, she said. And with little downtime between routines or adherence to proper form, they were putting the long-term health of their hips at risk.

“A lot of millennials are doing all of these high-intensity exercises that are great for the mental and physical components of health, but if you’re not as conditioned as you think, you’re going to put excessive stress on the soft tissue and the joint,” said Wu, owner of ActiveCare Physical Therapy.

It’s not uncommon for active young adults to experience some joint pain, but orthopedic specialists worry that regimens that rely on heavy weightlifting or intense aerobic exercises are causing more hip injuries. There are no definitive studies that correlate the two, but research in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy says high-intensity activities appear to increase the risk of hip osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease.

What’s more, specialists at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have reported a rise in cases of young adults with femoral acetabular impingement, a condition that occurs when the ball of the femur fails to fit securely into the hip socket. High levels of activity, they say, can cause the plate to fuse in an abnormal shape and result in a hip impingement

Shane Nho, an orthopedic surgeon at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, recalls a spike in hip, shoulder and knee injuries as CrossFit gyms sprung up several years ago. These days, he said, patients are coming in with hip ailments from high-intensity interval training, even some barre classes.

“We probably see at least a couple patients a week with injuries related to those types of intensive classes,” Nho said. “The types of workouts these guys are doing . . . they’re doing it at all costs, despite poor form, mechanics, fatigue or their actual baseline level of conditioning.”

Neuromuscular imbalances, or weakness in certain muscle groups, are often the root cause of the pain that Nho’s patients experience, he said. If patients come in as soon as they start feeling discomfort, he said, it’s easier to connect them with the right physical therapist to improve their stability and flexibility.

Hips are built to withstand tremendous force, but they need full range of motion to work properly, hence the importance of flexibility and stability, Wu said. She encourages her clients to do yoga or attend a Pilates class if they are dead set on physically taxing workouts.

“Flexibility is critical in trying to prevent injuries,” she said. “The body has a tendency to overemphasize larger muscles because they are easier to activate, so sometimes they get a little overused and smaller stabilizing muscles get underused. You create an imbalance.”

A weight-room regular since high school, Niranjan Nagwekar, 28, figured there was no need to spend much time warming up before squatting 250 pounds. But as the New Yorker ramped up his lifting, he started feeling a deep pain in his left hip

“For the longest time, I thought I just had tight hip flexors, so I started stretching a little more, but the pain persisted,” Nagwekar said. “I didn’t feel much discomfort walking or sitting down, so it was kind of a strange thing to explain to a doctor because they were like, ‘If you could walk, you could sit, you’re fine.’ But I couldn’t lift as much as normal.”

It turns out Nagwekar had developed a hip impingement. Doctors recommended surgery, but he decided to opt for physical therapy.

Nagwekar became a patient five months ago at ActiveCare, where Wu has guided him through mobility exercises involving foam rolling, core conditioning and stretching with resistance bands.

“I’m back to about 80 percent capacity,” Nagwekar said. “Any kind of power lifting that requires dynamic movement of the hips takes me a little longer. My hips don’t move as fluidly as before, but I can still do them.”

@DaniDougPost on Twitter

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel covers the economics of education, writing about the financial lives of students from when they take out student debt through their experiences in the job market. Before that, she wrote about the banking industry.

Follow @DaniDougPost