ABC News: Excerpt: 'Fitness Unleashed'
ABC News: Excerpt: 'Fitness Unleashed' : "The human body is designed for function and for movement. Up until the twentieth-century inventions of the automobile, the washing machine, riding lawnmowers, power tools, personal computers, and countless other gadgets and gizmos designed to reduce the physical labor in our personal and professional lives, average folks were in near-constant motion.
A recent study that highlighted this point was led by researchers from the University of Tennessee. To try to come up with an assessment of the physical exertion previous generations might have made, the team asked members of an old-order Amish community in Canada to wear pedometers as they went about their daily lives. The chosen community is one that shuns modern conveniences and continues to maintain a self-sufficient farming lifestyle. Though there was no deliberate effort made by the participants to exercise, as they kept up their normal routines, the men logged an average of more than 18,000 steps a day. The women logged an average of more than 14,000. To put those numbers in perspective, the average American is currently walking between 3,000 and 5,000 steps a day, and the goal you'll read about in this book, the one fitness plans and gurus across the country have embraced as an ideal exertion level, is 10,000 steps. Taking close to double that number of steps, the Amish men were getting the same level of workout as a long-distance runner by doing just their daily work. Though their other physical efforts were not measured, it's a pretty safe bet that the people in this community were also doing more lifting, bending, squatting, stretching, and general exercising than your average, say, computer programmer, magazine editor, or retail-store clerk."
A recent study that highlighted this point was led by researchers from the University of Tennessee. To try to come up with an assessment of the physical exertion previous generations might have made, the team asked members of an old-order Amish community in Canada to wear pedometers as they went about their daily lives. The chosen community is one that shuns modern conveniences and continues to maintain a self-sufficient farming lifestyle. Though there was no deliberate effort made by the participants to exercise, as they kept up their normal routines, the men logged an average of more than 18,000 steps a day. The women logged an average of more than 14,000. To put those numbers in perspective, the average American is currently walking between 3,000 and 5,000 steps a day, and the goal you'll read about in this book, the one fitness plans and gurus across the country have embraced as an ideal exertion level, is 10,000 steps. Taking close to double that number of steps, the Amish men were getting the same level of workout as a long-distance runner by doing just their daily work. Though their other physical efforts were not measured, it's a pretty safe bet that the people in this community were also doing more lifting, bending, squatting, stretching, and general exercising than your average, say, computer programmer, magazine editor, or retail-store clerk."
posted by Lankadata at 12:20 AM
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