Hacking of exercise

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Hacking Exercise For Health. The surprising new science of fitness.
Week 1
Introduction: Who are these profs and should I care about this MOOC?

0:23
So what are we up to with this video?
The title of the video is,
who are these profs, and should I care about this MOOC?
The answer is yes. But okay, let's start with what you'll get from the course.
When we say hacking exercise for health.
We mean hacking as in the computer sense, as in using specialized knowledge to overcome a problem in a more efficient way.
In our case, we're using specialized knowledge that we've acquired as exercise scientists to bring the health benefits of exercise to you in a time-efficient manner.
That's right. This course will provide you with a number of hacks designed to increase both your fitness and your health.
We use these hacks ourselves. We do. Because just like you,
we have a lot on the goal. We run our labs, write research papers,
teach courses and have family lives outside of work. We're busy just like everybody else out there.
Yet, by the end of the course you'll possess a set of tools and techniques to incorporate exercise into your life no matter how busy you are.
An issue that we need to address is the public health guidelines
suggest that we get at least a 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise, and strength train two days a week.


But less than 15 percent of people meet that goal. Only 10 percent of people ever do any strength building resistance exercise like lifting weights.
Getting in shape has been built into an unachievable thing that requires hours of gut-wrenching work in the gym.
But both of us have devoted our careers to discovering techniques that provide the health benefits of exercise in short periods of time, and with seemingly unconventional methods.
The point of this course is to help you get stronger and healthier.
Thanks to a series of hacks that are based on research we've conducted.
In week two, we'll teach you about cardiorespiratory fitness, and the latest research in terms of time efficient ways to get fit fast.
In week three, I'll teach you about muscle strength and techniques that will help everyone not just enormous bodybuilders and powerlifters to be stronger and stave off frailty, and the decline in strength that otherwise happens as we age.
Finally in week four, we'll both provide hacks designed to boost muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness together in less time than you ever thought possible.
We'll also provide the answer to the debate.
What's better to do?
Strength? Or endurance training?
But before we do that, we want to get you to think about the amount of physical activity you get.
If possible we'd like you to join our community of learners on the app flip grid, where we can all share short videos.
To begin, we invite you to post a video in which you describe an exercise hack of your own.
Please go to flipgrid.com and download the app.

The video you shoot and upload could feature almost any exercise hacks, something simple like leaving your running shoes by the bed to encourage you to get that morning run.
Or maybe you suggest commuting to work by bicycle or on foot for exercise rather than driving.
Whatever you suggest, we're hoping that the flip grid of ideas can be used by the learners in the course for inspiration.

Please make sure to like our learners videos and provide your take in the comments to indicate what you found helpful.
What else should we put in the introductory video?
To be successful in this course, please take part in all of the activities and assessments which are designed to help you learn through doing.
Okay, great, but I was thinking something lighter.

Like you once rocked a pretty impressive handlebar mustache?
No, listen. I think one thing that's important for people to know is that
we started at McMaster as faculty members on the same day. Yeah sure, that's pretty cool, and that we're close friends.
Like we like each other.
Great. Well, most of the time anyway.

We hope that in completing this course, you'll have the opportunity to form bonds with learners all over the world.
Learners who value fitness and health, we hope as much as we do.
Because we're all in this together.
Finally, the last thing I want to mention is that both Marty and I is exercise physiologists belong to a class of scientists who do the research that ends up influencing the rest of the exercise community, the trainers, the MDs, and the press, as well as dietitians and nutritionists.


That's right as professors at McMaster University's Department of Kinesiology, we're often challenging dogma in pushing forward the science of exercise.
So a lot of what you'll be learning from us in this course is cutting edge stuff.
That sounds a little bit like bragging to me.
Is it bragging if it's true?
I think so. Anyway, thanks for joining us on hacking exercise for health.
I hope we'll see you again in the next lecture.
That was kind of tough I got to be honest with you.
It's pretty un-canadian to do all this bragging. So embarrassing.


Week 1 Video 1 - What is fitness anyway?
যাইহোক ফিটনেস কি?
Well, in this video, we want to explain the most important things about our own particular parts of the fitness universe.
What, like you do cardiorespiratory fitness.

That's right. You do musculoskeletal fitness.
Sounds good.
Wait, before we start, please bear in mind that any important terms we mention in the videos are compiled in a glossary that you can find at the end of the course.
Great. Now quit stalling, and tell us about cardiorespiratory fitness.
Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to the capacity of your body to transport and utilize oxygen.


Scientists have found that it's one of  the best predictors of overall health.
The more aerobically fit you are, the better your heart can pump blood, the longer it takes you to get out of breath, and the farther and faster you're able to bike, or run, or swim.
One more thing, it also happens to be the form of fitness that helps you live longer, and live better by reducing your chance of  developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Basically, cardiorespiratory fitness is the thing many of us want
when we first start working out.
So how do you build this kind of fitness?
Lots of aerobic exercise performed at a moderate pace.
An approach it's reflected in the public health guidelines. Do you know how much moderate exercise the guidelines generally call for?


Let's use that as our first in-video poll.
Answer the question that appears on the screen, and then the video will continue.
Thanks for your answer.
Now, we can tell you that the World Health Organization recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week to derive health benefits. That's 2.5 hours.
Here's the problem, most people don't meet those guidelines. Do you get enough physical activity to meet these guidelines?
At the end of this video, we'll share with you the flip grid code so that you can provide your view about why people don't get the recommended amount of exercise.
Actually, my research shows you can obtain health benefits in a lot less time, if you're willing to push yourself.
Hold on, Dr. Gibala, if I was hearing you say that for the first time, I'd have some questions.
You say you can improve your health at a smaller amount of time than most people think.
But how's that possible?
What kinds of exercise allow that to happen, and how much effort is required to get those benefits?
Great questions, Dr. Phillips. Teaching the answers will provide our learners with the tools they require to hack fitness and health, and we'll provide those details in the course's second week.
Now for my turn, musculoskeletal fitness.
That's my area of specialty.
That's the fitness that's developed when we overload our muscles.
Overload is the demand on the muscle that's above normal.
Overload is necessary to improve muscular strength, endurance, and power.

Another way of thinking it is that you're challenging the muscle. Overloading the muscle repeatedly leads to the inability to move or support the load, and we call that fatigue.
Which brings us to Milo of Croton.  That's right. All of these principles
are illustrated by the man that you see here, Milo of Croton, an ancient Greek wrestler known for his remarkable strength.
Legend has it that Milo developed this extraordinary muscular strength by lifting a cow every day.
He started when the cow was just a calf, then the fact that the cow became heavier as it grew allowed Milo to use the principle of progression to become stronger.


Together, the effect of overload and progression is that your muscle adapts by adding a little bit more protein to the inside of the cell unit called the muscle fiber.
These small enlargements mean that your muscle gets bigger,
and we call that hypertrophy.
So what exercises do you have to do to develop strength?
How many reps?
Which exercises?
How heavy is too heavy?
Good questions, Dr. Gibala.
We have a lot to learn before we can really discuss those answers.
The big thing I want to get across at this point is that strength training is something that everyone can do.
The stereotype বাঁধাধরা is that strength training is done by big people who lift big weights.


Heavyweights do make you stronger, but so do lighter weights.
That's the hack we'll come back to an examine in greater detail in week 3.
Both cardio and strength training improve your health and fitness, but what do you think is better for you?
We'll tell you the answer to that question in week 4. That just about wraps up the video. But before we go, let's double-check that you remember the difference between the two major types of fitness that we discussed.
Thanks for answering.
The next video is about how to train, how to work the systems in your body so that the work creates performance adaptations.
It makes you stronger.
It makes you able to run, bike, swim faster and longer.

Week 1 Video 2 - What is the exercise continuum?
অনুশীলনের ধারাবাহিকতা কী?
What you see here is something called the exercise continuum.
Over here on this side of the graph to build strength, the continuum theory suggests that we conduct low repetitions of very heavy weight and the thinking goes that that's the best way to maximize strength development.
Over here on the other end of the continuum, you perform lots of muscle contractions against a low resistance and the thinking goes that's the best way to build endurance.
The concept of the exercise continuum arose at the tail end of the Second World War as North American hospitals were filling up with wounded soldiers.
In fact, there were so many wounded soldiers that there weren't enough hospitals to fill them.
So many soldiers were wounded for a couple of reasons. The one that concerns us today is that these soldiers weren't getting better.
They stayed wounded because back then rehabilitation of these soldiers from their war injuries took a really long time.
Anywhere from six to nine months because the doctors of the era believed that the rest was the best way to heal the soldier's war injuries.
The doctors counseled against strain of any kind.
When the soldiers did perform any rehab exercise, they tended to use lots of repetitions with this little resistance as possible.
The idea was to avoid straining the muscles or the heart which was thought to be bad for the body.
Yet the thinking started to change thanks to a man who was very unusual for his time.
He was both an amateur weightlifter and a medical doctor.
His name was Thomas Delorme.
Raised in Alabama, Delorme had contracted rheumatic fever as a young boy.
After staying in bed for four months, four long months, he finally recovered.
But doctors warned Delorme that this has weakened heart would never again allow him to do anything strenuous.
But the Delorme didn't listen.
Weak from his illness, he wanted to build his strength fast.


While he'd been wasting away in bed, he'd read a weightlifting magazine called Strength and Health.
The magazine said if you want to build strength you lift heavy weights.
Delorme didn't have the money to buy heavyweights.
So he created some himself from metal train wheels that he found in junkyards.
Using the principles of overload and progression, Delorme grew so strong that he became a local celebrity.
He went on to attend medical school at New York University.
After he graduated in 1944 near the end of the Second World War, he began working in Chicago in an overcrowded rehabilitation hospital for injured veterans.
Remember the thinking at the time was rehab with bed rest, don't strain.
But thanks to his bodybuilding work, Delorme knew that some strain was good because it develops strength, which he believed would speed recovery.
One of the first people that Delorme tested his theories on was a paratrooper who had torn knee ligaments.
The paratrooper had been told that he would have to wear a brace for the rest of his life.
Delorme started the paratrooper on a program of heavy weightlifting
doing leg extensions and strengthening the quadriceps muscle.
Soon not only had his knee pain and swelling disappeared, the paratrooper had made a full recovery.
He could walk without a brace and even dance.


Contradicting the conventional wisdom, straining the muscles turned out to be the best way to rehab the muscles because it develops strength.
Talk about ironic. The thing that most doctors warned against turned out to be exactly what the soldiers needed.
Delorme strength building rehab techniques used the principle of overload to build strength and radically cut down the time it took for soldiers to rehabilitate from their war injuries.
In turn this helps solve the overcrowding problem in rehab hospitals.
The bodybuilding doctor would become a professor of  orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School.


US president Harry S. Truman awarded him the Legion of Merit.
Strength training remained a part of Delorme's life well into his 70s.
Today, we're indebted to Delorme for many things.
Most pertinent today is  the idea of the exercise continuum.
The idea that repeats of light exercise builds muscle endurance, while low reps of heavy exercise build strength.
In fact, two systems are at work when we discuss fitness.
Endurance training typically refers to long duration, low to moderate intensity activity that builds cardiorespiratory fitness increasing the body's ability to use oxygen and produce energy for sustained movement.


Many people think of jogging when they think of this type of exercise,
although, it also encompasses everything from swimming to cycling to rowing.
At the other end of the spectrum a short duration intense exercise
that's usually associated with building muscle strength and size.
Also known as musculoskeletal fitness.
Many people refer to this type  of exercise as resistance training.
It encompasses everything from body-weight exercises such as push-ups to heavy barbell squats.

When you're working with free weights or universal weight machines you tend to be performing resistance training.
Now in the next video, we'll look at the mechanics of the way that these two forms of training improves specific systems in the body.
But before we go, let's conduct an activity with the concept of the exercise continuum.
On Twitter using the hashtag hacking exercise select your favorite form of exercise and explain where it falls on the exercise continuum.
Next, look for other answers that have employed the same hashtag and reply to them to conclude whether you agree with their assessment.
Now let's conduct a simple quiz.
To build strength and rehabilitate the wounded World War II soldiers, Thomas Delorme employed a principle of musculoskeletal fitness that is described in an earlier video.
Which principal did Delorme use?
The answer is overload. As you recall, overload is a demand on the muscle that's above normal.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom of rehab in the 40s, Delorme asked the soldiers to strain their muscles same as he had done as
a young man looking to regain his strength after that boat of rheumatic fever.
Essentially, he used the principle of overload to help the soldiers regain their strength.
Thanks for watching this video and thanks for joining us for hacking exercise for health.


Week 1 Video 3 - How to assess your own fitness
কীভাবে আপনার নিজের ফিটনেসটি মূল্যায়ন করবেন।
When human being conducts some strenuous exercise on a run,
or on a bike ride, say, then that human being responds by improving itself.
It's a remarkable process.
So how exactly does it happen?
It all boils down to the body's stress response and how we deal with it.
Exercise is considered a stress on the body.
A physician named Hans Selye developed in the 1930s, a theory that predicts the way the body will respond to stress.
Selye's general adaptation syndrome says that the body responds to a stress in a manner intended to reduce the stress the next time we experience it.
When you're at rest, you're in something called homeostasis. Your heart rate and breathing rate are relatively low and constant, and there's a good match between the body's demand for energy and its capacity to supply it.
But once you start exercising, the additional activity throws the body out of homeostasis and the body needs more oxygen than you're giving it.
You feel out of breath, and in the short term you respond by doing things like increasing your heart rate and breathing faster to get more oxygen to your muscles.
Then once the stressor is gone, once you stop exercise and returned to rest, the body works to recover from the stress.
It adapts so that the next time the stressor presents itself, that is the next time you exercise, the body gets disturbed to a lesser degree.
The concept is simple enough, but the adaptation or self-repair that takes place is incredibly complex.
The body's response to endurance exercise involves changes in every element of the pathway that control supply and utilization of oxygen to produce energy from the brain, heart, lungs, blood vessels, and all the way to your muscles.
Selye's general adaptation syndrome also applies to strength training.
One key substance in muscle is protein, and at any moment two opposing protein related process that are happening in the muscle, new proteins are being synthesized, and at the same time different proteins are being broken down.
Muscle atrophy happens when the rate of protein breakdown is greater than the rate of protein synthesis.
Whereas hypertrophy is the opposite process, and protein synthesis is greater than protein breakdown.
To increase the strength or size of your muscles, you need to boost the rate at which protein synthesis proceeds to a greater degree than protein breakdown for as long as possible.
The way you do that is by stressing the muscle to stimulate the strengthening or hypertrophy of the muscle tissue.
The muscle needs to experience a load that is heavy enough to fatigue the muscle.
Some experiments suggest that one way to stimulate protein synthesis is to subject the muscle to a load that is greater than 60 percent of the single repetition maximum.

To get you thinking about your personal health, we think it makes sense to first assess your fitness.
To assess your cardiorespiratory fitness, click on this link and answer a few questions such as your age and your resting heart rate.
One way to assess your strength, the numerous ways exist.
Probably the easiest is to determine the number of times you can perform two body weight exercises that pretty much anyone can do anywhere.
First, drop to the floor and perform as many push-ups as you can do in one sitting without taking more than a two second break.
Next, find a chair, stand in front of it, and perform a motion called box squats until you can't do anymore.

Once you've noted the number of push-ups and box squats that you can do, go to these two links and see how you stack up against everybody else.
Remember that each and every time you do any exercise, it provides a stress and your adaptation to that stress results in benefits.
Now to test what you've learned, by conducting push-ups and box squats, you were stressing your body.
Using the Coursera discussion board, post an explanation of the way that your body will employ Selye's general adaptation syndrome to change after the stress of exercise.
Next, let us know how your fitness stacked up.
Tweet at us with the hashtag, #HACKINGEXERCISE.
We encourage you to apply to each other's tweets as well as sharing and commenting on one another's reports.

Question:
How does your body respond to the stress of exercise? Explain the way your body will employ Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome after being exposed to the stress of exercise. (Tip: review this lesson's Reading) Participation is optional Type your response here... Reply
Answer:
When I do Exercise.  Exercise  is given a stress on my body. Then  my body works to recover from the stress.
My body adapts so that the next time the stressor presents itself, that is the next time my exercise, the body gets disturbed to a lesser degree. The concept is simple enough, but the adaptation or self-repair that takes place is incredibly complex.


Week 1 Video 4 - How do you get the biggest bang for your exercise buck?
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Before we finish up this week, we want to leave you with probably one of the easiest exercise hacks of them all.
It's based on hard science, two different studies conducted by some of the legends of exercise physiology.
Are you referring to yourself, Eagle Much?
No. To Ulrik Wisloff of the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology.
One of the pioneering figures  of interval training research.
You co-authored the study.
So you're referring to yourself.
Okay. So I did co-author of the study, but the credit goes to Ulrik.
Anyway, back in 2013, his lab track, two groups of inactive but
otherwise healthy overweight men who exercise three times a week for 10 weeks.


One group followed what I call the Norwegian protocol, which involve for boats of hard cycling.
Each lasted four minutes and was separated by a few minutes of recovery.
The other group performed just a single heart interval, one four minute boat of cycling each time they exercised.
The first group boosted their cardiorespiratory fitness by an average of 13 percent, which is a good result.
Yes. But what happened to the other group?
The other group increase their cardiorespiratory fitness by 10 percent, which was almost as good even though they did a quarter of the hard exercise.

Wait a second. You're telling me that the group that did less exercise got almost the same benefit?
That's right. Let's put that in context. A 10 percent boost in cardiorespiratory fitness for the average adult amounts to a remarkable reduction in the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
The same reduction in risk and fact is if you loss more than two inches or five centimeters from your waist circumference or reduce your blood pressure by five points.


That's a big deal. A lot of studies are conducted
along these lines for resistance training.
They tend to track two groups.
One conducts resistance training with three sets performed a fatigue.
The other group conducts the same training, but performs only one set to fatigue. In study after study, the gains are not all that much bigger for those who conducted three versus one set.
Many studies show that three sets of a given strength building exercise like bench-press or squat conducted over 10 weeks will give you strength increase of about 35 percent.
Conversely, a single set of the same exercise conducted over the same time period will give you increases of around 30 percent.

The point, most of the effect comes from the first set. A similar relationship exists for exercise and longevity.
For example, a 2014 paper that looked at how much aerobic activity most extended lifespan tracking more than 50,000 adults over 15 years.
The runners among that group tended to live three years longer than the people who didn't run at all.
They had a 30 percent lower chance of dying from all cause, and 40 percent smaller chance of dying due to cardiovascular disease.
But the really interesting finding was this. You've got the health benefits of the aerobic activity even if you just ran about seven minutes per day.


Running for as little as 51 minutes a week or a little more than seven minutes per day markedly reduced the risk of death in the 15 years of follow-up,both all cause and cardiovascular related.
You could run less than six miles a week total and still get the same health benefits when it came to longevity in the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
If you want to maximize your training, you're better off doing multiple sets.
But if you're just interested in getting the biggest bang for your buck,
one set is really effective. The key point is that just a little bit of exercise provides significant health benefits. I think of it like this.
If you take a soaking wet sponge and you wring it out, you get most of the water out the first time you do it.
We will ring in and out a second, or third, or even fourth time get you more water?
Sure. But the biggest effect comes from the first time you do it, and whether we're talking cardiorespiratory fitness or musculoskeletal strength, the relationship is similar.
If you're pressed for time or you're intimidated by exercise, do something, go for a walk preferably up a hill, do some push ups, do some squats, swim, bike, run, do anything because the biggest reduction in risk comes from doing some physical activity of almost any kind.

Being physically active even for a small period of your day can go a long way towards boosting or maintaining your cardiorespiratory fitness which brings us to the exercise hack.
Just get some activity in, use the stairs instead of the elevator, walk from your house to the local store. Do something, something is better than nothing. Do a little more and you'll get a little more benefit in terms of building fitness or strength.
But the biggest benefit you get is from the first time. Now for a quick multiple-choice question, it ties back into the title of the video.
According to the Cooper Clinic study, running for a certain amount per day provided about the same health benefits as much large quantities of running, markedly reducing the risk of death from all causes and cardiovascular disease.

So how little can you run per day to still get the most health benefits from exercise?
The correct answer of course is just seven minutes per day, and that concludes the first week of videos in hacking exercise for health.
Next week, stay tuned for Marty to work through hacking cardiorespiratory fitness.

Week 2 Video 1 - What’s the most important number you have?
Scientists like to measure everything, including cardiorespiratory fitness.
We do that by testing something called your maximal oxygen uptake. That's the rate that your body can take up oxygen from the air and get it to your muscle cells. There, the cell powerhouses known as mitochondria use the oxygen to convert the energy stored
in sugars and fats into muscle motion.
The shorthand for maximal oxygen uptake is V02 max. VO2 max is measured using machine like this. It's able to analyze how much oxygen your body removes from the air?
It does this by assessing the oxygen content in the air that you breathe in and comparing it to the oxygen that's left in the air that you exhale.
Many health professionals believe cardiorespiratory fitness should be the fifth vital sign, something that's routinely measured in the doctor's office along with body temperature, pulse rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure.
“Do you know why the VO2 max score tells scientists and physicians so much about your overall health?
The answer is E, all of the above.
The reason for that is because so many different parts of human anatomy play a role in your VO2 max, your heart and your blood vessels, your airways in lungs, your muscle tissue, specifically the mitochondria, those powerhouses in your muscle cells.
If you have a good VO2 max score, that's a good indication that pretty much every aspect of your cardiovascular and respiratory systems must be functioning well. “


Conversely, a poor VO2 max score can tell medical doctors and
scientists that you are on your way towards experiencing health issues, such as chronic diseases, cardiovascular disease, and Type 2 diabetes. In Week 1, we use the online calculator worldfitnesslevel.org to use things like your height, weight, and activity level to estimate your VO2 max score.
If you're serious about your fitness consider conducting a real VO2 max assessment at a university physiology department or any good medical clinic.
If that's not available there's another way to assess your VO2 max and we invite you to try it out. It's called the Rockport Walk Test.
Stew? We're going to have you do the Rockport walk test, okay?
Wait what? You want me to walk a mile?
Now, if you're really fit the Rockport walk test may underestimate your true fitness, but for everyone else who represents a handy way to estimate VO2 max would just three numbers;
weight, the shortest time to walk a mile, and heart rate once you're done.


Here's what you do. Step 1. That's how long it takes you to
walk a mile as fast as you can.
On a 400 meter track, one mile amounts to about four complete laps. Next, take your pulse as soon as you're done walking a mile. If you don't have a heart rate monitor, simply count the beats at your wrist while timing a minute with a watch or a phone.
Step 3, plug the numbers into the appropriate points in the following equation.

Where do you fall on the table?
Take a moment to learn where your VO2 max score puts you. So to recap things we've learned in this video. The definition of cardiorespiratory fitness.
Three ways to assess your VO2 max score;
directly by conducting a test at a university or health care facility that measures the difference, you can use an online calculator that asks you questions and then uses an algorithm to provide you with an answer or you could use a submaximal exercise tests like the Rockport walk test.
However you derived your VO2 max score, I hope you're happy with the results. Now, at the course discussion board, use what method you use to determine your VO2 max score then reflect on what you learn from assessing your score.
Were you surprised your result?
Has this affected your knowledge or willingness or unwillingness to engage in exercise regularly?
Please comment on at least two other learners posts that you found inspirational in some way.
Finally, you may consider sharing your experience on Twitter using the #HackingExercise.
In the next video, I'll tell you more about the traditional way to build cardiorespiratory fitness, and later in the week, I'll show you
more time efficient ways to do it.
I  used the online calculator that asks me questions and then uses an algorithm to provide me with an answer.
I use the online calculator worldfitnesslevel.org to use things like my height, weight, and activity level to estimate my VO2 max score.
I am happy with the results. And I will try to maintain the result.

Week 2 Video 2 - Where do the Physical Activity Guidelines come from, anyway?
Hi and welcome to Hacking Exercise For Health. In this video, we're going to talk about the traditional way to build cardio fitness.
The best known guidelines come from public health agencies.
They gathered together experts like medical doctors, exercise scientists, and epidemiologists to determine the best exercise advice.
The remarkable thing about it, their advice has a lot to do with British double-decker buses.
I'll explain. Many people have long linked physical activity and exercise together.
Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, said that eating alone will not keep a man well, he must also take exercise.
But it was well into the 20th century before the link between physical activity and health was scientifically established, British physician, Jeremy Morris, established the connection.

He studied the effect of exercise on health in an ingenious way. The challenge was to compare the health of people who got a lot of exercise with those who got very little. Morris studied the tens of thousands of people who work two different jobs in the London transit system.
The first group was the drivers who piloted the crowded double-decker buses around London's congested streets. The second group was the conductors in those same double-decker buses who moved along the vehicles passengers going up and down the stairs between levels dozens of times a day in order to take tickets and maintain order.
The drivers sat for 90 percent of the time they were working.
In contrast, the conductors climbed an average of 600 stairs each day.


Who do you think was more healthy?
Consider for a moment the two different transit jobs. Then, in the blank provided, identify which one you think would tend to be healthier for the people working in it?
Then, in a sentence or two, explain why you answered the way you did?
Now, for the answer, as you may have expected, the difference in the activity levels  that came with the two jobs made a big difference in the health of the transit workers.
The more physically active conductors experienced fewer than half the heart attacks of the drivers.
They contracted heart disease much as frequently, and when they did experience a cardiac event, the conductors were much more likely to survive it relative to the drivers.
Doctor Jeremy Morris published his research in 1953.
Since then, dozens of epidemiological studies have established that exercise is associated with a reduced risk for developing cardiovascular and many other diseases.


Today, we know that exercising regularly probably is the single most effective thing you can do to prolong life and improve health, which is why we have guidelines from agencies like the American College of Sports Medicine and the World Health Organization.
Such guidelines advocate 150 minutes of weekly moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity to promote health. The guidelines are designed that way because scientists, trainers, and coaches, for years, thought that getting fit required lots of steady-state endurance exercise.
To get you thinking about that 150 minutes, consider various ways to get your weekly dose of moderate exercise in a discussion post.
Bear in mind what moderate-intensity exercise means. It's a brisk walk for some. For others, it's a light jog or a swim. If you're on an exercise bike, you should be pedaling hard enough that you're still able to speak, that is to carry on a conversation, but you should not be able to sing.

Another way to think about it, you're not quite breaking a sweat. You should be breathing heavier than normal, but you shouldn't be out of breath.
Now, about that discussion post. Create a plan that sees you getting
your 150 minutes of exercise. Maybe that's through three 50-minute runs a week or maybe you're walking  quickly to and from your child's school every day for 15 minutes at a time, in the morning and afternoon, for a total of 30 minutes a day, which adds up to a 150 minutes a week.
However you get it, describe the plan in the discussion post. Then, go and read other people's plans and compliment a couple that you find particularly well thought out.
In the next video, we'll describe a hack for your cardiorespiratory fitness, one that takes a lot less time than 150 minutes a week.

I Create a plan that sees my getting My 150 minutes of exercise. It  is 30 minute runs and walking three a week and 60 minutes  walking  quickly  from my coaching to house.
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• High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): a form of exercise involving alternating bouts of more intense effort with periods of recovery
• BaselineFitness: initial starting fitness level prior to exercise training
• One Minute Workout: intense interval exercise protocol involving 3 hard sprints of 20 seconds each.
• Performance Adaptation Switch: theory proposed to explain how different types of exercise trigger physiological remodelling
• Endurance Exercise: moderate-intensity continuous exercise performed for a prolonged period of time
• Type I Fibres: slow twitch fibres that tend to be recruited for relatively easy movements that do not require a lot of force
• Type II Fibres: fast twitch fibres that tend to be recruited for powerful movements that require a lot of force
• Metabolism: sum of all chemical reactions in the body
• Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption/After-burn: transient period of elevated metabolism above resting level during recovery from exercise
Systolic Blood Pressure: pressure exerted on arterial vessel walls when the heart contracts.
Week 2 Video 3 - How can you hack cardiorespiratory fitness?

Hi. Welcome to hacking exercise for health. In this video, we're going to learn about the most time-efficient method to trigger the health boosting effects of physical activity.
A way that you can get the benefits of a 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week in just a small fraction of the time.
It's called, high-intensity interval training. Or as we like to call it around here HIIT, and it's been in use by elite athletes for more than a 100 years.
Employing intervals in their training regimes, was everyone from the record breaking four-minute mile Sir Roger Bannister, to the flying Fin Paavo Nurmi, to the American middle distance runner Steve Prefontaine.


But very few mainstream amateurs ever used intervals, in part because very few scientists studied the aerobic benefits of interval training.
One of the researchers who helped convince the world of the potency of interval training was the Japanese researcher Izumi Tabata.
He showed in 1996 that training using brief intense intervals could
substantially improve cardio-respiratory fitness. I began my first serious study of the power of  intervals soon after I became a university professor.
Between my career and family duties, I felt like I never had time to work out which is a way that a lot of people feel. I needed time-efficient fitness. So I decided to stage the first of what would become a series of experiments Studies that I'm continuing to do today.
For the first experiment, we gathered together a group of university students.
They were athletic young men and women and we assess their baseline fitness by testing how long the subjects could pedal a stationary bike against a tough resistance. Keep going, you're doing great.

25 minutes, nice job. Then the subjects went off and conducted our training intervention. The training amounted to six training sessions
over two weeks. The sessions were difficult but brief.
Each one required the subjects to conduct a half dozen sprints.
Each sprint required the subject to peddle as hard as possible for 30 seconds. So during each session the subjects were conducting up to three minutes of hard exercise.
Now, remember that endurance test the subjects had conducted at the beginning of our study?
The hill tests that ask them to pedal a bike up a fixed resistance.
After the six training sessions, we asked the subjects to do the test again.
How do you think they did?
Take a guess with this poll. Keep going, keep pedaling.
50 minutes. That's twice as long as last time. This time, the subjects had doubled their endurance time on average. It was incredible.
In less than 20 minutes of hard exercise or both the time required to do the dishes, these young men and women had doubled their ability to pedal against a fixed resistance.
It was a most remarkable result  I've ever experienced in my lab. More than a decade later, I'm still exploring the potency of ultra short bursts of exercise.
I'm still discovering how fascinating they are. The latest protocol we're exploring is called, The One Minute Workout.
Because it amounts to just three hard sprints of 20 seconds each. We took two groups of outer shape people, one group, we had them do the one-minute workout three times a week for 12 weeks.
That was the 320 seconds sprints conducted within about ten minutes, for a total of three minutes of very hard exercise.
The other group did the exercise guidelines. A 150 minutes a week of continuous aerobic exercise.
Then we compared the benefits.
So who became more fit?
Sounds like another opportunity for a pole.
Think about the circumstances of the experiment.
That one group conducted a training regime based on 320 second all out sprints while the other group did moderate intensity exercise for 50 minutes three times a week.
Guess who became more fit.
The correct answer was D. After 12 weeks, both groups increased their fitness by about the same amount. That's right.
It was possible for everyday non-athletic sedentary individuals to derive the cardio-respiratory benefits of the exercise guidelines, three 50-minute sessions per week with just a single minutes worth of hard exercise, performed three times per week.
The improvement in cardio-respiratory fitness was the same in both groups. An increase of 19 percent on average.
It all goes to show how little exercises required to produce enormous benefits if you're willing and able to work hard.
Now, in the next video, I'll tell you about why these intense burst of exercise worked.




Week 2 Video 4 - Why does H.I.T.T. work?
Hi and welcome to Hacking Exercise For Health. In this video, we'll discuss the precise mechanism that intervals use to help people get fit so quickly.
I find that it helps to think about the process as though a switch is being activated.
A switch that signals to the body that it must change itself, and these changes enable the body to get fit.
These changes include things like making the heart a better, stronger pump,
making the blood vessels more flexible like a hose so they can carry more blood, and adding mitochondria to muscle cells helping them move faster and longer.
For a long time, we thought there was only one way to activate this performance adaptation switch to exercise for long periods of time.
But then MyLab and others discovered the way intense passive exercise could activate the same performance adaptations in a fraction of the time.
These new discoveries required us to develop a new theory, a new explanation for our exercise triggers human performance adaptations which leads to a greater health and longer life.
A way that requires a lot less time than the traditional method. To understand the new theory, I find it helpful to think of what's happening in terms of fuel gauges.
Traditional endurance exercise flips the exercise switch by depleting
the amount of fuel available in muscle tissue.
So for continuous exercise, the longer the exercise bout, the greater the fuel depletion, and the larger the adaptive response.
The closer you get to emptying the tank, the bigger the performance adaptation.
The situation is a lot different with intervals however. With a few short sprints of 20 or 30 seconds, the total amount of fuel depletion is modest, especially, compared to what can happen over a prolonged bout of endurance exercise.
However, the fuel available to the muscle is being used at a much greater rate, and that's what we think is important.
It all has to do with muscle tissue.
Muscle fiber generally is grouped into two broad categories: Smaller type one fibers, also called slow twitch fibers, usually, comprise about half of the overall muscle tissue. These tend to be recruited for relatively easy movements that  don't require a lot of force.
These fibers are also the ones used mainly during moderate-intensity endurance exercise. Type two muscle fibers, also known as fast-twitch fibers, tend to be recruited for fast powerful movements that require a lot of force.
The effort demanding during high intensity interval exercise requires both types of muscle fibers, type one and the larger type two fibers.
Sprinting is hard work and it takes all of the muscle fibers to do it.
Because interval training recruits the entirety of the muscle, the muscle uses up fuel at a much faster rate.
That's why a few short hard intervals can activate molecular signaling pathways to the same extent as much longer bouts of traditional endurance training.
Remember the switch? The traditional way to flip the switch was to
exercise for a long period of time to deplete the fuel stores.
But it turns out that another way exists to activate this switch. This way flips the switch by depleting the energy stores quickly.
If you activate the switch this way, what matters is the rate at which you deplete your energy rather than the absolute level you exhaust your levels.
The faster you deplete the energy stores, the better. You make the energy stores go down really fast, then you get a lot of exercise results.
We've found the most time effective way to get exercise effects.
Using this method, you exercise as hard as you're able, and the results show it's best to repeat this a few times in a row, that is, do a couple of intervals.
To flip the switch this way, it matters less how long you exercise.
What's more important is that when you do exercise, you go hard.
Exercise hard enough, you deplete your energy stores fast enough, and you can get remarkable benefits, 50 times as much benefit as some as long slow steady exercise in some cases.
So how do you apply the technique of triggering performance adaptations in less time than we thought?
That's what the next video is about.


Week 2 Video 5 - Which burns more calories: Interval or Endurance Training?
One thing we haven't discussed much when it comes to interval training is the concept of calories.
To a certain extent, that's because calorie-burning isn't really the point of exercise.
If you really want to lose weight, the most efficient thing is to reduce the amount that you eat.
But there's a lot of misinformation when it comes to calories and interval training.
With this video, we'd like to set things straight. Before we explain what's going on, let's see what you think.
What do you think burns more calories?
Is it a woman who cycles at a steady-state pace for 50 minutes?
Or the same woman conducting a 10 by 1 sprint workout, which sees her blasting through 10 repeats of one-minute cycling intervals?
The answer actually depends on the length of time you're measuring.
Those who exercise at moderate-intensity for long periods of time will tend to burn more calories during the period they're actually exercising as compared to those conducting an interval workout.
For example, a 130-pound woman who cycles for 50 minutes at a moderate pace might burn about 550 calories.
Meanwhile, that same 130 pound woman who does the 10 by
1 interval workout on a bike might burn just 350 calories.
The long bout of endurance exercise burns almost as twice as many calories as expended during the interval exercise. But wait a second, things change once the workout's over because of something personal trainers like to call the afterburn.
Exercise elevates metabolism or the rate at which the body uses oxygen to burn fuels for energy. The more intense the exercise, the greater the effect on metabolism and the longer it takes the body to return to its normal resting state.

That period of elevated metabolism during recovery is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. That's kind of an unwieldy name which is why so many people refer to it as the afterburn.
The major point you have to remember is that the more intense the exercise, the greater the number of calories expended during the afterburn.
Researchers in my lab were curious about how many calories were consumed during the afterburn, so we set up an experiment that measures subjects' calorie burning over a 24-hour period starting with the exercise session, and then for the remainder of  the day and overnight period.
One day we had subjects conduct the 10 by 1 interval workout. Then, on a separate day, they conducted 50 minutes of continuous exercise at a moderate pace.
Then, they compared the number of calories that people burned through the 24-hour post-exercise period.
What we found was pretty amazing. Remember, that the continuous exercise lasted more than twice as long as the intervals and required
our subjects to do twice as much work.
Yet, over the course of a 24-hour period, the two groups burned similar amounts of calories regardless of which type of workout they conducted.
The effect of the intense exercise afterburn was such that regardless of whether you engaged in continuous or interval based training, you ended up burning the same amount of calories over the 24-hour period in which you conducted the exercise.
So while interval training may not burn as many calories during the workout, the afterburn effect is such that the two types of workouts burn similar amounts of calories through the course of the day.
Have you had any experiences with the afterburn effect?
If not, consider performing an interval workout and then notice how your own eating and appetite is affected by the interval workout.
Share your afterburn experience either with a video on Flipgrid,
using the Flipgrid code, or by posting on the Coursera discussion board.
Please comment on several other posts that you find particularly interesting.
Finally, thanks for joining us for Hacking Exercise For Health.
Question:
Have you had any experiences with the afterburn effect?
Answer:
Yes! I have had many experiences with the afterburn effect. When I do High-intensity interval training (HIIT) such as Sprinting.  My heart is pump more first after Sprinting. That means my heart use more fuel in my body such as fat, carbohydrate  after my workout. It’s called afterburn effect.
And I feels that it affecte my own eating and appetite.










Week 2 Video 6 - What are some interval workouts I can do at home?
Hey.

In this video all walk you through several interval workouts to provide you with the benefits of more exercise in less time each workout is based on the protocols used in actual scientific studies some are for beginners others or for people who have progressed further in their training if you do opt to set yourself on a path toward vigorous exercise Here's how I'd approach things 1st Always check with a physician before starting your changing exercise routine.

 if you're out of shape don't try to be hero lower the small risk that exists by starting easy and then working your way up to the tougher sessions I'd start with an interval walking program and then moving on to harder workouts which have names like.
The 10 by one and the 102030 which you can find in my book the one minute workout only when you're comfortable with the lower intensity stuff should you consider moving up to the really potent ultra time efficient all the workouts such as the one minute workout and with all that in mind let's start with the protocol .
I call the beginner This is my mom my mouth to hi mom.
Her name is Hazel and one of the many things I admire voter is that 85 she's in great shape for age the program I'm about to describe is perfect for her or any other seniors or really anyone of any age who's just starting an exercise regimen it looks to me basically the protocol involves interval walking walking is the best medicine according to many doctors it's convenient easy and cheap the problem is that many people's pain isn't fast enough to boost their fitness which is why this protocol features interval walking you're ready .


I'm ready after a few minutes of warmup walking conduct your 1st interval by speeding up the pace to an intensity of around 3 out of 10 OK So I'm to quicken my pace now to shake.
That approach. IfIf you're not this great that's right walk at a faster pace for 3 minutes then ease off to a more relaxed pace for 3 minutes OK now let's slow it back down.
And that's it basically you walk at a normal pace for 3 minutes then walk faster for 3 minutes then slow it down again going back and forth like that for 3 minutes at a time.
Bomb stand if you can't stand there even when. You.

Look out your face. Now I admit this workout isn't all that time efficient 10 intervals in a 6 minute cycle of effort and rest amounts to an hour but it's a good way to begin to incorporate intervals into your physical fitness.
Just walked into the city. And people with type 2 diabetes who use interval walking cut body fat and improve their blood sugar control while just regular steady state walking did not once you're ready to move up to a more difficult workout you might consider trying one that I call the 10 by one that's basically just a minute of hard effort then a minute of rest and repeat until you've conducted 10 intervals add 2 minutes of warm up a 3 minute cooldown and the whole routine takes 25 minutes you can do it on an exercise bike running on a track climbing or
climbing the stairs in your office building my colleagues and I have tested the protocol on everyone from diabetics to cardiac rehab patients repeated 3 times a week for 6 weeks we've shown it can improve body composition and muscle insurance and in cardiac rehab patients in their sixty's.who conducted the protocol twice a week for 12 weeks it boosted their cardio respiratory fitness and artery health to the same extent as a group that did twice as much moderate intensity continuous exercise the format is fun and
easy it can be used by virtually anyone healthy enough to conduct these hard intervals finally there's the one minute workout that I mentioned earlier.
This week this one is based on a study that my lad conducted in late 2014 it's the smallest amount of exercise we've ever tested 322nd sprints totaling a minute's worth of hard exercise repeated 3 times in a 7 day period the protocol amounts to 3 minutes of hard exercise per week now here's how to do it warm up with some light physical activity once you're ready last through a 22nd sprint at an all out pace you're ready.

Next take a rest not a complete rest we want those legs still moving
to keep the blood flowing walk around or just cycle at an easy pace
then 3 minutes later when you Mark say. I'm going to. Hire you who doesn't get any easier again conduct some weight activity for 3 minutes and then do one more 22nd sprint after a bit of a cooldown which you can do by just walking around you're done we asked sedentary overweight obese men and women in their twenty's and thirty's to do the one minute protocol 3 times a week for 6 weeks and we were astonished at the results 3 minutes of intense exercise per week reduced their systolic blood pressure by around 7 percent.



And it boosted their cardiorespiratory fitness by 12 percent which is associated with a 12 to 15 percent reduction in the risk of dying from all causes in fact Marty slack conducted an experiment that compared the benefits of a one minute protocol to a group that did the exercise guidelines the suggested 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise and after 12 weeks the fitness of the 2 groups increased the exact same amount.
That's right it was possible for every day non athletic sedentary individuals to derive the courier spirit to read benefits of the exercise guidelines 150 minutes of continuous exercise a week with just a single minutes worth of hard exercise repeated 3 times per week your original one minute study was performed on an exercise bicycle but Martie's lab is also tested using stair climbing as an exercise in the results were both the same interval workouts can run the gamut
from funda grueling sometimes at the same time can you see yourself conducting a hit routine in your daily life yeah that's what we hope because here's this week's final task we want you to design your own airboat workout it can be as hard or as difficult as you like beginning exercisers may want to design an interval walking workout or experience fitness buffs may choose something tougher once you've conducted the workout that you've designed described it on the discussion board along with your own evaluation was it something you would recommend that others try how would you change it for others.

Next review the interval workouts that others have designed to comment on the ones you like and if you elect to give them a try let the designing learner know how you did. That's it for week 2 of hacking exercise next week Stu will tell you all about how to hack resistance training Thanks for joining us for hacking exercise for health.
On the Coursera Discussion Board: Using the interval-based principles of the workouts we've described in this video, design your own interval workout. It can be as difficult as you like. Beginning exercisers may want to design an interval walking workout. More experienced fitness buffs may choose something tougher. Once you've tried out the workout you've designed, post the workout on the discussion board, along with a summary of your own evaluation of the workout. Was it something you would recommend others try? Once you've actually conducted the workout, did you decide to change or improve it? Next, review the interval workouts that oth- ers have designed. Comment on the ones you find particularly inspirational or impressive- give them a try and let the designing learner know your take on your experiences.

On the Coursera Discussion Board: Using the interval-based principles of the workouts we've described in this video, design your own interval workout. It can be as difficult as you like. Beginning exercisers may want to design an interval walking workout. More experienced fitness buffs may choose something tougher. Once you've tried out the workout you've designed, post the workout on the discussion board, along with a summary of your own evaluation of the workout. Was it something you would recommend others try? Once you've actually conducted the workout, did you decide to change or improve it? Next, review the interval workouts that oth- ers have designed. Comment on the ones you find particularly inspirational or impressive- give them a try and let the designing learner know your take on your experiences.

I design my own interval workout routine by Using the interval-based principles of the workouts.
As I have More experienced about fitness. So i  choose something tougher.
I call the 10 by one that's basically just a minute of hard effort then a minute of rest and repeat.
until I have conducted 10 intervals add 2 minutes of warm up a 3 minute cooldown and the whole routine takes 25 minutes. I can do it on an exercise  running on a  climbing the stairs in my house building 3 times a week for 6 weeks.





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Week 3
Week 3 Video 1 - Can you hack strength training?
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0:23
This week is about strength training,
and most of it will be conducted by Stu.
He's a world authority on the topic of strength training,
which is also known by the term resistance exercise.
Weightlifting is a form of strength training.
So are body weight exercises
like push-ups, pull-ups, and squats.
This week, you're going to learn why you need to
strength-train for optimal health.
Then we'll give you a few hacks
to help you get comfortable with
strengthening exercises
that maximize your health benefits.
By the end of this week,
you'll know that whatever you call it,
strength training or resistance exercise,
it's a form of activity that's important for developing
and maintaining long-term health and fitness.
That's saying a lot, coming from a cardio guy like me.
Yeah, I guess I'm just persuasive.
The point we want to recognize though,
is that many people believe that
strength training isn't for them.
They might feel intimidated by lifting
weights because they think it's only for big,
hulking bodybuilders, and only happens in gyms.
In fact, everyone should engage
in some form of strength training,
and the practice becomes more important,
not less as you age.
Sounds like it's time for you to go to the lab, Stu.
To the lab. One of the reasons that I'm
excited by this week is that it's a chance
to fight the popular perception that it's only
with cardio exercise that we see health benefits.
If you look at just about
all physical fitness guidelines,
they suggest that people should engage in
strength training of their large muscle groups at least
twice per week to reduce the risk of
diseases like osteoporosis or soft bones,
and to help with activities of daily living as we age.
Something as simple as ascending
a flight of stairs or rising from a chair.
Have you heard of sarcopenia?
That's the term that describes
the slow loss of muscle that occurs with aging.
We're not exactly sure when sarcopenia starts,
but somewhere around age 40,
we lose an average of about one percent
of our muscle mass per year,
while our strength declines much more rapidly
at rates between 2-3 percent per year.
See the long-term trend?
As muscle mass declines,
our strength decreases, and
the regular activities of daily living become harder.
That might happen around here.
Because muscles do a lot
more than just make us look good,
it brings up a good moment for
a quick multiple choice question.
The correct answer is E. We need
our muscles everyday for
all sorts of activities of daily living.
We need them to get upstairs,
to get in and out of cars,
to lift groceries out of the trunk,
and take pots and pans and
kitchen implements out of the cupboard.
We need them to get up from a chair,
the bathtub, even the toilet.
3:02
People who lift weights fight
sarcopenia on a weekly basis with strength training.
By doing that, they push out
this point that our strength fails as we age.
They push it out so far in fact,
that some retain the ability to care for
themselves right up until the time they die.
While we're on the topic of dying,
let's also point out that
studies show that strength training
helps you avoid disease and reduce
your odds of dying prematurely.
Take this big 2017 study,
which used data for more than 80,000
English and Scottish adults over the age of 14.
The researchers found that
participating in any type of strength training was
associated with a 23 percent reduction
in all-cause mortality.
That means that people who engaged in
strength training during the time of
the study were less likely to die.
But wait, there's more.
Just 30 minutes per week of
strength training in man has been shown to provide
similar reductions in risk for
heart attack as two and a half hours of brisk walking.
Thanks to all of this good stuff,
you might be tempted to wonder
what can't strength training do?
Well, strength training can't mark
term papers or apply for research grants,
and it can't sweep your kitchen floor,
or play sports with your kids.
But hopefully, by now,
you're getting the idea that strength training is
associated with some pretty unique benefits.
You've grasped that it's an important thing to do,
particularly as you get older.
Now, for a quick series of
questions to assess what you've learned.
Before I leave you,
I want to get you thinking about
how strength training could
be important for you in your life.
Think about the activities that you do,
and then create a discussion post that describes
them in some way that being stronger might help you.
Could be anything; lifting a child,
transporting laundry from one room to another.
Then once you've described
the strength training that could help you,
seek out on another discussion post on the same topic and
reply to the ones that have
mentioned things you didn't consider.
In the next video,
I'm going to describe the precise mechanism that the body
uses when building strength which
will help you learn why it's so important.
Later in the week,
I'll provide some easy and unintimidating ways
that almost anybody can engage in strength training.


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Week 3
Week 3 Video 2 - What’s up with muscle fibre?
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So what's so useful about strength training.
Who needs to be a big bulky man or woman that can't move?
It's neither useful nor beneficial, right?
Wrong. As you learned in the last lecture,
there are a host of health benefits
associated with strength training.
But there's a stereotype when it
comes to strength building exercises.
We associate them with enormous people usually
men who build strength with enormous amounts of weights.
Weights so big that
us mere mortals would find it a
little scary and perhaps intimidating.
Many of you recognize the device
we're standing alongside.
It's a leg press. Stew, can you demonstrate how it works?
Sure.
1:10
That was great. Stew is
working with relatively light weights.
He could have done 20-25 reps of that fairly easily.
Yeah, no problem.
So what do you think was happening inside
my body for me to be able to do that?
Sounds like it's time for the muscle latter.
Impressive muscles Dr. Phillips.
The things I do for science.
So what's the most important thing to know about muscles?
For our purposes, it's that they can only do one thing.
They can contract.
Basically, they can pull.
So to bring your hand from your waist to
your chin requires the shortening or
contraction of this muscle, your bicep.
Similarly, if I raise my arm above
my head and then straight my arm,
I'm pushing against gravity to raise
my hand but what's happening is that
my tricep muscle shortens rate
here contracting to pull my forearm up.
Muscles are only ever able to contract and relax.
They can pull and let
go even when you're pushing something.
Take the leg press.
My legs are pushing against the press,
but in order to make that happen,
the various muscles in my legs and
my quadriceps and my glutes
are contracting and shortening.
That contraction happens because
our muscles are made up of hundreds of
fibers that employ proteins to
contract basically to pull.
Each of the fibers tend to be slightly different.
They vary in numerous ways.
Do you know how muscle fibers differ?
Take a moment to think about that and
write your ideas in the text box.
Okay, now you've thought about it,
I'll tell you the answer.
Muscle fibers differ in three ways that are
significant to us right now: One,
by the amount of force the fibers are able to generate.
Two, by the speed that they're able
to contract, and three,
the number of times that the fibers
are able to contract without fatiguing,
or what we call endurance.
Each of these qualities are actually related.
The more force the fibers are
able to generate in general,
the fewer number of times they're able to contract
without fatiguing and the opposite is also true.
The more times a muscle fiber
can contract without fatiguing,
the less force it's able to generate.
For convenience sake, physiologists
tend to group fibers into two major categories.
Some people call them slow and fast twitch fibers.
Others call them type one or type two fibers,
which is the way we refer to them in week two.
Are you going to get to the difference between them?
I was just about to do that.
Type one muscle fibers are those fibers
that are part of the slow twitch motor unit.
These muscle fibers are the ones that are
able to contract many times.
They are the fibers we use when we walk,
jog, run, swim, or cycle for long distances.
So when Stew was conducting
those raps with the lightweights,
a lot of the fibers that we're contracting in
his leg muscles were the type one fibers.
Many of the type two fibers
weren't doing much of anything.
Essentially, they were just
sitting around and waiting to be
used if needed but that need never arose.
The type one fibers got the job done.
That's right. Marshaling those high force
producing type two fibers requires a lot more effort.
4:21
Nice job, type two muscle fibers.
So how many, and what type
of muscle fibers are required to lift a given weight?
This is something that our bodies learn
instinctively through the course of our lives.
It's something that experience teaches us.
So what happens to increase strength.
Most of us think it's all about getting bigger muscles,
but that's only part of the story,
particularly when we first begin strength training.
When untrained people start to work out,
they develop a lot of strength quickly.
A lot of that initial increase in
strength comes from the interplay between the brain,
the nervous system, and the muscle.
It turns out that untrained people aren't all that
great at marshaling all of
their muscle fibers to cooperate at the same time.
5:11
Neither Martin nor I can lift this weight by ourselves,
because we're not cooperating well.
We're pulling at different times.
But if we're able to sync our efforts, you're ready?
On three, one, two, three.
5:27
No problem.
Something very similar is happening in the body
when someone first starts out strength training.
A lot of the strength gains that
happen initially come from
the various muscle fibers getting better
at working in a more coordinated fashion.
So at first, developing strength means that
the nervous system improves the ability of
muscles to contract at just the right moment.
Then later, as one sticks with resistance training,
more of the strength gains come from an increase in
muscle mass from
the muscle tissue actually getting bigger.
That's a process that sees the body adding contract
out protein to the individual muscle fibers.
The fibers increase in cross sectional area.
The muscle gets bigger a process called hypertrophy.
We're going to leave you with a two part assignment.
First of all, select a movement that you do every day.
It could be anything.
A push-up, bodyweight,
exercise drinking a glass of water,
or just lifting the screen on your laptop.
Then using the Flipgrid code,
upload a quick video that both
identifies the motion you've selected and
describes some of the various muscles
that are contracting to make that motion happen.
In the second part of the assignment,
select someone else's Flipgrid video
and speculate about what type
of muscle fibers they're using
to conduct the emotion they're describing.
Does lifting the cover of
a laptop require just type one muscle fibers?
Or is it a strenuous motion
that requires a lot of effort,
which means that the motion marshals type
two muscle fibers as well.
Say what you think in the comments to
your fellow learners Flipgrid video.
Next, how do we actually
prompt our muscles to grow and trigger hypertrophy?
That's what I'll explain in
our next video with the help of a special guest.







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Week 3 Video 3 - Can we actually prompt our muscles to grow?
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Week 3 Video 3 - Can we actually prompt our muscles to grow?
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We spent the first part of this week
learning about muscle fibers,
including the way the different muscle fibers fatigue.
Today, I'm here with Professor Jim Potvin,
Emeritus from McMaster University,
who was conducted groundbreaking research on
the relationship between muscle motor units and effort.
Effort is it turns out is very
important when you're trying to get stronger.
Today we're going to learn about effort
during strength training and its relationship with
muscle fatigue and then we're going to teach
you how you can use effort to promote muscle growth.
We're going to do that in a way that
doesn't involve lifting heavy weights.
First, let's conduct a little quiz.
What do you think is the optimal weight
to lift if you're trying
to elicit muscle growth
and how many times should you lift it?
Resistance training experts, tend to speak
in terms of something called percentage of 1RM,
or Single Repetition Maximum.
If you lift weights at 100 percent of your 1RM,
then you're able to lift that weight only one time.
You typically can lift 90 percent of 1RM,
about two to four times in 80 percent of 1RM,
probably 8-10 times and so on.
To understand the relationship between these concepts,
that may help to see a typical graph that demonstrates
how frequently it's possible to lift a given weight.
Now keep in mind that this graph might
change slightly depending on
the exercises you're describing.
It may be different for bench-press, a squat,
or an army crawl, but
the approximate shape is roughly the same.
You'll notice that the graph starts
up here at 100 percent,
then fall steeply first,
and then gradually moves towards the horizontal.
The heavier the load,
the fewer repetitions we can perform,
and the opposite is also true.
The lighter the load, the more
frequently we're able to lift it.
So the subject you strength is describing this graph,
can lift 90 percent of her maximum two to four times,
75 percent of her maximum 12 times,
60 percent of our maximum 20 times,
and 40 percent about 40 times.
So which is the best combination
to help regenerate strength?
Select which one you think is best.
Sorry it's a trick question,
in a way they are all right.
So long as she lists the weight
enough times with a high degree of effort,
it doesn't really matter how heavy the weight is.
That's something we've realized comparatively recently.
For years, the conventional wisdom said
that the weight hat to be heavy to build strength.
But in recent years, we've
discovered that's not actually true.
So why is that?
Why are heavy load simply
not necessary to generate muscle growth?
In 2017, Andy Fugelvand from the University of Arizona,
and some guy at McMaster named
Jim Potvin, wait, that's you, right?
Anyway, they co-authored
a landmark paper that established
a model of the way human skeletal muscle fibers
tires itself out.
Land marker?
Yeah. Absolutely, it was landmark.
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Absolutely. So one big finding was that
low force contraction sustained to endurance limits,
induce more fatigue across all types of
motor units compared to high force contractions.
In plain language, that means it
lifting lower weights can tire out
the muscles as much if not
more than high weight repetitions.
The study suggests that relatively
low weights can still provide
a potent exercise stimulus
for muscle adaptation and health benefits.
To really simplify things,
we've learned that there's a trigger
in the body is switched,
let's say that needs to get
flipped for the body to know it has to build
strength and a given muscle and it
turns out that the switch is
flipped whenever the muscle
is worked with a high degree of effort.
Regardless how heavy the weights are that you're lifting.
Not just when you're lifting
heavy weights as was previously thought
Scientists have proven this
and numerous academic studies.
For example, back in 2012,
we published a study in the Journal
of Applied Physiology,
that among other things compared muscle hypertrophy
and untrained athletic young men, not weightlifters.
One group lifted heavyweights
until they couldn't perform anymore wraps,
while the other group lifted
lighter weights until they couldn't lift the weight
anymore and the muscle grew
the same degree in both groups.
People kicked up a storm, if I recall.
Yes. They said something had to be wrong with the study,
and most pointing to the fact that
these were novice lifters,
and so these were gains that always happen in novices,
what people call, "Noob gains."
But there are many other labs
that have replicated your results.
Yes. That's exactly right.
All of which has contributed to a new understanding of
what needs to occur to make muscles expand in size.
The research backed by James Model,
shows that it doesn't matter how you
fatigue all of the fibers in the muscle,
whether you do it with heavier loads
or with lighter loads.
Whether you conduct three raps at 95 percent of 1RM,
or 30 raps of 40 percent of your 1RM.
So long as you're lifting that load until
you have a hard time lifting it again,
then the same training adaptation
happens and your muscles grow.
You become stronger.
There is one caveat for competitive athletes or
weightlifters who really are serious about
maximizing muscle size and strength.
Lifting heavy weights is necessary.
But most of us aren't competitive athletes,
for us mere mortals,
If you're just looking to spur muscle growth and becomes
stronger than lift weights enough times,
you have to spend a high degree of effort at the end.
Lifting of loads that require anywhere
from three to 20 repetitions,
or 90 all the way down to 30 percent of 1RM.
We're talking about an exertion that's
about eight or nine out of ten.
So lifting lighter weights makes strength training
a lot less intimidating for a lot of people.
Go ahead and select
a lighter weight that you feel comfortable with.
Keep in mind there's a lower limit.
You're not going to get bigger or
stronger by lifting a weight that's so light,
you can do it 60 or 70 times.
That's just too light.
Try not to go above 30 repetitions.
So now we've dealt with
a lot of material up to this point.
If you have questions consider
asking them directly to us on Twitter.
Now, what about strength training across the lifespan?
Coming up we're going to talk about
protein and aging, and later in the week,
I'll describe some workouts
that allow us to use lightweights
to build strength more
effectively than you ever thought possible.
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Week 3
Week 3 Video 4 - What does protein have to do with muscles?
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Week 3 Video 4 - What does protein have to do with muscles?
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Let's go.
[MUSIC]
0:24
So clearly you've just finished a workout.
>> That's right. And boy am I hungry.
>> That's great because we're going to talk about food and
the way that diet can play a role in building muscle.
>> Talk about food, let's eat some food.
[LAUGH] Yeah, you can eat the food after.
For now, let's talk about that there is one particular macronutrient that can
help stimulate muscle growth.
>> Fine, fine.
>> [LAUGH] Yeah, let's put it in a bit of a qualification here.
By far the best way to increase strength and build muscle is through consistent
practice of resistance exercise with reasonably high degree of effort.
>> But if you're looking to you your diet to help you become stronger and
build muscle mass, then eating enough protein can help.
>> That's right, protein's unique.
Unlike fat and carbohydrates, the body can't store protein.
>> And protein is important for your muscles because outside of water,
the macronutrient forms the biggest component of our muscles.
>> In fact, if you were to break it down, 75% of the muscle is water.
Most of the rest is protein followed by small amounts of fat and carbohydrate.
>> Foods that are high in protein content include meat and poultry, tofu,
nuts like almonds, dairy food like yogurt, cheese and milk and
pulses like lentils and chickpeas.
>> Now to introduce a new term, muscle protein turnover,
that term describes how the competing processes of muscle protein synthesis and
protein breakdown work to ensure that the protein in our muscle is functioning well.
>> To visualize the process, think of a brick wall.
At some point bricklayers were required to build the wall.
In the muscles those bricklayers control the process of muscle protein synthesis,
which is adding bricks to the wall.
>> And an opposite process is happening constantly in the muscle as well.
That's muscle protein breakdown and that's a good thing,
imagine that the wall is damaged by the wear and tear of contraction,
breakdown is the way that we get rid of those damaged proteins and
we need it to remove the damage to keep the muscle working well.
>> So on one side you have these bricklayers,
the muscle protein synthesis building up the wall.
And on the other, you have the repair team removing bricks and
breaking down muscle protein.
>> So to build muscle, muscle protein synthesis has to happen at a greater rate
than muscle protein breakdown.
When we lose muscle, it's the opposite.
>> That's the weird thing, after strength training, both processes get faster.
>> Muscle protein breakdown happens at a greater rate because the training has
damaged the muscle tissue and we need to remove those damaged bricks.
What increases the muscles' mass however is the fact that protein synthesis
also increases.
>> But it actually doesn't get any faster than break down until something else
happens.
And what do you think that is?
The answer is C, supply the bricklayers with more bricks.
>> In other words, consume protein.
In the muscles,
scientists refer to this as creating a state of positive net protein balance.
And we do that by eating food that contains protein like any of the foods
that you see before me here.
>> The next natural question is if consuming protein helps to spur
the training adaptation, then exactly how much protein is enough and
how much protein maximizes the training response?
>> In fact over the last 20 years or
so, that's been one of the things that my lab has been attempting to figure out.
Here's what we found, a review of all the studies showed that daily protein
intakes that were higher than one point six grams of protein per kilo per day
were not associated with greater gains in muscle mass than intakes below this level.
>> Why is that Doctor Phillips?
>> It's because of something called the muscle full effect.
According to the muscle full effect,
there's a limit to how much protein your muscle can use and the limit for
most people tends to be no more than about 1.6 grams per kilo per day.
You can't put more protein into the muscle.
>> To sum up, we know what to eat to maximize protein synthesis, protein and
we know how much 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
The last question is when, when is the best time to eat that protein?
>> My studies would suggest that the best time to get your protein is in steady
doses for about 24 hours after a hard workout.
Now that doesn't mean that you have to get off the weight bench and
sprint to the fridge to gobble up the chicken beef or tofu.
>> Remember, your body can't store the protein.
>> So after a hard workout, to aid muscle protein synthesis, you want to be taking
doses at regular intervals for about 24 hours every 4 hours let's say,
some weight lifters even take the protein right before bed.
Try to make sure it all adds up to about one point six grams per kilo per day.
>> For example, I weigh about 80 kilos.
To calculate how much protein I need, multiply 80 kilos by 1.6 and
you come up with 128 grams of protein per day.
Now, let's assess what we've learned in a quick in video quiz.
>> So remember to eat your protein, your muscles need it.
One final thing before we go, add a post on the discussion board, write out
the process by which you can calculate the maximum amount of protein that your body
could use in a day, using one point six grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
>> Next, create a protein meal plan on your post that shows what foods
you'll eat to consume that much protein.
>> Lots of sites out there to provide the protein content of foods,
one that we like is located at the following link.
>> Once you've posted your protein meal plan,
visit other learners plans on the discussion board, a comment on two or
three that you find particularly well thought out.
>> Next, we'll walk through several different ways to strength train, one for
beginners of all ages, another for
more experienced athletes who are ready to begin designing their own workouts.
So are you ready to eat or?
>> [LAUGH] Absolutely, I'm famished.
[MUSIC]









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Week 3
Week 3 Video 5 - How does one hack strength training?
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Week 3 Video 5 - How does one hack strength training?
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We've heard a lot about strength
building exercises so far.
We've also heard that such exercises are important for
good health and how to maintain functional abilities.
So how do we perform these exercises?
One option which we're calling a hack is to
build strength by lifting
weight that you feel is manageable.
Gym workouts also require answers to a lot of questions.
For example, how many sets should I do?
One or three?
How long should I rest between sets?
What order should I perform
the exercises in, free weights, machines?
It's confusing and perhaps a little intimidating.
Most strength training happens up around here.
But today, we're going to exercise down around here.
We're going to employ a lighter loads,
which allow learners to conduct
around 20 reps until they're
exerting an effort that puts them in
about eight or nine out of 10.
Even though there are lighter weights,
lifting them builds muscle and lets us gain
strength and results in meaningful health benefits.
Plus, you'll get a real sense of
mastery over the strengthening exercises.
So let's start with one of
the simplest routines possible.
If you haven't done any strength building exercise
before even if you just do this once per week,
you'll still be building strength.
Because it all goes back to
the hack that we discussed in the first week.
Something is better than nothing,
while more of something is better.
So that twice a week is better for you than
three times a week is better still.
At some point, the returns do diminish.
The important thing is to set goals that are
realistic and that you can do.
Please share your experiences with setting
exercise goals on the discussion board where you can
discuss with other learners a few strategies to set
achievable goals and ways to use
goal-setting tactics to motivate you.
This workout it's going to have
four elements: an upper body, push exercise,
a pull exercise, or core
exercise and something for your legs.
I feel ridiculous.
But you look great or at least anatomically correct.
Push exercises work the chest or
pectoral area on the back of the arms or the triceps.
They help with any action in which we have to push
something like a door or getting yourself out of a chair.
Pull exercises build strengthen in
the back muscles and everyone's favorite, the biceps.
These exercises help you lift things off
the ground or any activity if
they requires a pulling motion.
The core, describes our trunk muscles,
the link between the upper and the lower body.
We're weak as a whole if our core is weak.
Finally and maybe most importantly,
leg exercises benefit your quads,
your gluts, and even your calves.
Building strengthen your leg muscles helps you get
yourself from a sitting position to climb stairs,
to get in and out of a car.
So now we're going to put all of these together.
Here's how you might structure
a routine that will build strength and
the most important major muscle groups and
feel free to perform the same movements as we do them.
But first, a bit of a wardrobe swap.
That's better.
I like the other unfit to be honest.
First, I would do the squat since it's the
most important to your functional movement and
since arguably it's working more of your muscle tissue in
the legs where 60 percent
more of your muscle mass exists.
Most Beginning strength trainers will get
a great workout simply by
performing what's known as air squats,
which is a squat that simply uses your own body weight.
3:49
Many people particularly beginning exercisers
will start to feel burning in their quads before
they hit 10 reps. Do as many as you can do until you're
exerting yourself to about an eight or nine out of 10.
You'll be doing well if you can perform
20 or 25 air squats without a long stop.
Keep your back straight as you go up and down.
You can place less strain on
your back by squatting onto something at
a height that allows your thighs to sink
parallel to the ground like a weight bench.
Or if you're not in a gym,
feel free to use whatever is available like a chair,
a bed, or a couch.
Nice form Dr. Kabbalah.
Years of practice.
Next, you do a push or pull
exercise but I'll go with a push exercise first.
We're going to work towards a full push-up.
Since our emphasis on accessible with lots of reps,
we're going to stay away first from
the push-up used by coaches everywhere as punishment.
That's why so many people despise push-ups.
Yeah. We're going to start with
something we call the inclined push-up.
Find something stable and heavy that
you can push against, a wall works.
5:07
You can use anything,
even a chair, lean against it,
try to keep your body straight from
your feet to your shoulders and try to
use an angle that allows you to do
20 repetitions before you're tired.
Once this feels easy, try knee push-ups.
Once you're able to do 25 knee push-ups,
you can graduate to the standard push-up
which sees you use your toes as the hinge.
Now for the pool exercise, like the push,
the pool has a standard form that
can be difficult for beginners.
That's the pull-up or a chin up.
But few beginning strength trainees
can even do a single pull-up or chin up.
It's something to aim for down
the road just like the standard regular push-up.
We're going to show you three variations
for effective pool exercises.
One is the bent over row.
We're going to use a standard dumbbell
as the weight but you don't have to,
anything heavy will work like
a few books in a grocery bag.
Find something that's the right height.
A good stable table for example.
6:07
The keys are, try and keep your back
nice and straight as you pull up.
6:17
You could actually perform rose in
any number of ways at home using
resistance bands that are widely
available or be creative,
find something that allows you to
pull to exercise your back.
Once you feel stronger,
another at-home body weight hack to
exercise your pulling muscles,
is to get yourself under a sturdy bar like
this one and perform a reverse
push-up using your arms to pull yourself up
while keeping your body
straight from your heels to your shoulders.
The bar can be anything you like.
The last of the important exercises
is something that works the core.
The contemporary standard here is the plank
which comes in all forms and difficulties.
One of the best ways for beginners,
is to get down on a soft surface.
Using your knees as the fulcrum,
raise yourself up on
your elbows and forearms and hold it.
Keep your body straight
from your shoulders to your knees.
Try to hold it for as long as you can,
20 seconds is a good start a minute is better.
Once you can do more than that,
consider increasing the difficulty by using your toes as
the fulcrum coming into what we
call a contemporary full plank.
Did you know that the world record for
holding a plank is more than eight hours.
That's just crazy.
Now, how many sets of each exercise?
At first, if you haven't ever resistance strain,
you can feel great about yourself
knowing you're getting a ton of benefit,
even if you're just getting in one set.
Yeah. Most of the training adaptation and
health benefits happen as a result of the first set.
Once you've gone through the workout
several times in a row,
consider adding sets until you're
performing three sets of each exercise.
Do you have any great ideas for push, pull,
core or leg exercises that you can do at home?
Demonstrate your exercise in a video on Flip grid.
If you don't post a video,
please go to the discussion board
and describe your exercise.








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Week 3 Video 6 - What should I consider as I design my own workouts?
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Week 3 Video 6 - What should I consider as I design my own workouts?
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We've gone through a lot of different
hacks in this course.
In this video, we're going to discuss
some things to remember as you grow stronger.
I've referenced the sponge before.
Remember the water you get from the sponge
represents the benefits you're getting from exercise.
Actually, working out is the first ringing
of the sponge, doing the exercises.
You get the most benefit from the first time you do it.
The next challenge is sticking with it,
doing it every week consistently.
You can boil it all down to
an acronym known as the FITT principle.
What do you think FITT stands for?
The acronym describes three or perhaps four
of the most important things that
have to do with strength training.
In the text-box provided,
type out the four words that you think FITT stands for.
What did you guess for the F, fierce?
For the fierce expressions you make when you exercise?
No, that's not it.
The first letter F, stands for frequency,
how often you exercise.
If you want to continue progressing,
you have to be going through
a program a few times a week.
The second letter I, stands for intensity.
Remember when I talked about this in week two?
The harder you work your muscles,
the more effort you're putting in,
the more benefits you're going to
get from those workouts.
Workouts with good effort allow
you to gain muscle and get stronger.
The final two letters stand for time and type.
I differ from a lot of people because,
I think the first one here Time,
matters a whole lot more than the second one or Type.
In terms of the FITT principle,
it's my take the first
three letters are really important.
Frequency, Intensity, which I call effort and Time,
and it's true as Marty said in his earlier videos,
if you amp up the effort,
you can get away with less time.
But the point is, you have to do it.
Precisely what you're doing,
that is the Type in our view is far less
important than whether you're doing something at all.
Some people get so caught up in
figuring out the absolute best way to work out,
they get paralyzed for many novices,
they're afraid to do strength training at all.
Our takeaway, get out there and do it.
Start slow so you don't get hurt,
you'll see results and with time,
you can do a full exercise plan.
But in the beginning you have to just do it.
Finally, I want to talk
about something else that people really
associate with gains and
lean mass, and that's supplements.
You can see them everywhere these days,
in special franchise store or even in your pharmacy.
Or all over social media sites.
I was recently one of
25 authors across the world who put together
a consensus statement called dietary
supplements in the high-performance athlete.
The review was on behalf of
the International Olympic Committee and it was
the first time the IOC ever took a stand on supplements.
We found that only a few supplements
actually had evidence sufficient
enough to say that they worked.
When you go into your local mall or supplements store,
there are lots of products that make bold claims.
Like branch chain amino acids are
fat burners and there's
no evidence that they actually work.
Even the ones that do work caffeine, creatinine,
sodium bicarbonate, protein, and nitrate,
only provide a small amount of benefit.
Unless you're competing at
a college national or professional level,
don't bother with supplements.
Instead, use the time that you would think about
those supplements to figure out a time
that you would get out and exercise.
The analogy I like to draw is an ice cream Sunday.
I like Sundays.
Yes.
Do they enhance performance?
Just bear with me a minute.
To a kid, the important stuff in
an ice cream Sunday is the ice cream,
the whip cream, and the chocolate sauce,
but supplements are like the sprinkles on top.
Nobody really cares about the sprinkles.
Yeah, in the same way
your body doesn't really care about supplements.
Okay, so I guess the hack
here for getting serious about strength training is,
that where supplements are concerned,
there is no hack, or it's a very small hack.
Instead, concentrate on getting
out there and working out and expanding the effort.
That's right. The other thing is to
remember the FITT principle,
frequency, intensity, time, and type.
The important stuff for me is, the first three.
Frequency get out there,
intensity the effort that
you're putting into your exercise,
and time the amount of minutes and
hours that you devote to physical activity.
What about type?
Well, that's kind of like
the chocolate sauce on the Sunday.
It's a bit of an extra.
Frequency, intensity, and time.
Now, we'd like you to
design your own strength training workout.
Feel free to use some of the exercises we described in
this week's video five or incorporate your own.
It should have a push exercise,
a pull exercise, a core exercise,
and a leg exercise.
Then using the fit principle,
creative a plan for the week that specifies how
frequently you'll do the workout in
a given week and for how long.
Then, once the week is up,
use the flip-grid code to upload
a video that shares your workout,
your plan and whether you achieve the goal that you
set for yourself in terms of
the number of workouts per week.
Next, view videos from other learners and
comment on the ones that you find particularly inspiring.
Lastly, remember that you can
always send us questions via Twitter.







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Week 4
Week 4 Video 1 - Which is better: cardio or strength training?
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Welcome to the final week of hacking exercise for health.
At the beginning of this course,
we pose a question. Do you remember?
Which is better for you cardio training which builds
cardio-respiratory fitness or strength training
which sees you gain muscle mass and strength?
Do you want to be current marathon World Champion,
Dennis Kimetto or Mr. Olympia, Phil Heath?
Current women's marathon world record holder,
Paula Radcliffe or Miss Olympia, Juliana Malacarne?
What do you think? What's the better option
for long-term health and fitness?
Make your choice at the following poll.
Wait, wait. Hold on just a second Dr. Gabbalah.
Isn't this a false choice?
I mean, people have other options besides just
performing cardio or strength training, right?
Like what?
You could do both.
You could also do nothing.
Yeah. That's the choice
a lot more people make than I'd like.
Okay. So let's provide four options for this poll.
What's better for your health?
Is it cardio training?
Strength training?
Performing neither of them?
That is doing neither cardio nor strength training.
Or the final option, doing both?
Performing at some point
both cardio and strength training.
Choose one of the four options.
Great. Now that you've made your pick,
we'll tell you what the science says.
The science suggests the answer is both.
The best thing for your health to
ensure that you live a long and healthy life
is to regularly perform
both strength and cardio training.
The best thing for you isn't cardio or strength training.
It's cardio and strength training.
In this video, we'll tell you
about the science that proves this.
Then in the next several videos,
we'll teach you some workouts that will help you to do
both in less time than you ever thought possible.
We'll also teach you to design
your own workouts to
combine cardio and strength training.
We'll discuss some unexpected benefits of
exercise and we'll make
some predictions on the future of physical fitness.
Finally, we'll leave you with the top 10 tips
and tricks for how to become a lifelong exerciser.
Now let's get to the science.
My favorite part. One March 2018 study
used UK data on about 80,000 unique participants.
Regular people who researchers
followed for years to track their health,
their cardio and strength fitness,
whether they died and if so, how?
Now as you might expect,
higher cardio-respiratory fitness was
associated with a smaller risk of
dying from either all-cause
death or cardiovascular disease or cancer.
The more in shape you were,
the longer you live basically.
Something similar happened to
people the stronger they were.
The strongest people tended to also be the ones
least likely to die from all-causes.
But the people who were least likely
to die from all-causes as well as
cardiovascular disease were the ones that were
both in shape and strong.
The point is that strength and
cardio fitness both were important.
The same results have been replicated time and time again
in different sorts of studies
called randomized controlled trials.
For example, a 2012 Australian study put
several groups of overweight and obese people
through 12 weeks of training.
One group did all cardio,
one did all strength training
and the third group did a combination.
The combined group saw greater benefits for weight loss,
fat loss and cardio-respiratory fitness.
Another Australian study found that
combining strength training with aerobic training
featured something of a multiplier effect
in populations with coronary heart disease.
Essentially, the finding was,
cardio will make you fit and strength training will
make you strong and both cardio
and straight training together will make you
even more fit and strong than either alone.
We began this course with something of a false question.
Which form of training is better for you?
Cardio workouts,
strength training and the answer is a little of both.
The best thing to do is both.
Stewart and I do both ourselves.
But we recognize that the prospect of doing
both might sound difficult to a lot of people.
We expect the beginning exercisers
might have all sorts of questions.
How exactly do you do both?
Should you go running while bench pressing?
Swimming with barbells?
Cycling while conducting upright rows?
No. If you have questions that occur to you,
feel free to tweet them at
the hashtag hacking exercise for health.
Meanwhile, note that lots of ways exist
to conduct both strength and cardio together.
We'll discuss some of the ones that
we like best in our next video.
But before we get to that,
we'd like you to think about the practicalities of
combining strength and cardio
into your exercise routine.#
That's right. Spend some time
coming up with a weekly plan
that combines elements of the two types of exercise.
Describe it in a video that you
record and post it on our Flipgrid space.
Later this week, we'll ask you to reassess your plan.

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Week 4 Video 2 - What does a cardio & strength training workout actually look like?
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In the last video
we said that you
should do both
strength and
cardio training.
>> Today we're going to show you what that looks like.
>> How to do both strength and
cardio without exercise taking hours out of your day.
>> We'll also discuss methods that don't require going to a gym or
actually lifting weights.
>> Yeah, most of the workout styles we'll discuss in this video can be done
virtually anywhere, at home, a park, or a field anywhere near you,
in a hotel room, or even in the office.
>> The first method started during the Cold War, which saw the Soviet Union and
the United States locked in a nuclear stalemate.
Stationed in between the two countries in the Arctic were Canadian Air Force pilots
who had to be ready to scramble at a moment's notice in case the war erupted.
These pilots spent their winters in a remote sub zero environment where
the sun barely rose above the horizon, and their fitness suffered.
In fact at one point fully one third of the Canadian pilots were so
out of shape, they were deemed unfit to fly.
So the Royal Canadian Air Force came up with a solution.
It hired one of the first exercise physiologists who also happened to be
a former hockey player.
His name was Bill Orban, and
the workout he designed became known as 5BX for five basic exercises.
It was a workout that could be done virtually anywhere.
Because the workout was designed to keep the pilot strong and
fit you might think that it took a long time, but it didn't.
As a hockey player Orban knew that quick bursts of exercise could generate
cardiorespiratory fitness.
And the genius thing about 5BX is the way Orban asked his subjects to conduct their
training in such a rigorous manner with so few breaks that the workouts contributed
simultaneously to both cardiorespiratory and musculoskeletal fitness.
Take Chart 2, it starts with two minutes of toe touches
followed by a minute of sit-ups, a minute of front lying,
a minute of push-ups, and then six minutes of running in place.
2:28
>> I can see how that can keep people fit.
Okay, all told, each 5BX workout lasted just 11 minutes.
So fast!
Now bear in mind that the 5BX plan dates from the 50s and
plenty of the exercises included maybe aren't recommended anymore.
For example, sit-ups are today thought to place too much strain on your lower back.
So perhaps swap that out for another exercise.
>> Like what for example?
>> Like maybe a plank variation, but
the general format of 5BX can be seen in many popular programs today.
A colleague says that P90X is just 5BX without the marketing.
>> Yeah.
I think in recent years many other workout methods have employed the same strategy
that 5BX pioneered.
That is they've combined aerobic and strength training to create a potent
workout that requires just a few minutes a day.
>> For example, what's known as Tabata style circuit training.
That's a 20-second on,
10-second off workout format established back in the 1990s.
>> By a Japanese physiologist Izumi Tabata who helped to coach the country's
Olympic speed skating team.
>> Tabata's original work out conducted its sprints on exercise bikes.
The subjects pedaled all out for
20 seconds then took a 10 second break until they've repeated that for 8 times.
>> Since Tabata published an academic study employing his workout and
seeing incredible gains and cardiovascular fitness,
that style of workout has been adapted by trainers all over the world.
>> What's today known as Tabata training can include body weight style exercises
like squats, push-ups, rows, planks in a 20-second on,
10 second rest format that lasts just four minutes.
Although most trainers will extend sets of Tabatas until they've done three or
even four rounds of the exercises.
>> Another version that's all over the web has been known as the scientific seven
minute workout.
That was established by Chris Jordan of the Johnson and
Johnson Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida.
A software program based on Jordan's program became one of the most downloaded
fitness apps.
Essentially the seven minute workout uses one's own body weight to work the body
in such a way that builds both strength and cardio capacity.
In 30 second periods, the protocol runs through movements like jumping jacks,
wall sits, push-ups, crunches, squats, and planks.
>> Lots of other workouts are out there and they employ similar principles, and
when you find them post them to our discussion board.
>> Finally, we'll leave you with one final quiz.
>> Match the workout name in this first column to the description in
the second column.
5:02
In the next video, we'll provide you with the tools to create your own workouts.
>> This then is the RCAF 5BX plan for physical fitness.
You have seen how it works.
It is simple and it takes only 11 minutes a day.
The plan guides and
motivate you every step of the way to a high level of physical fitness.
5:28
This is it.
The rest is up to you.
Get fit and keep fit with 5BX.
[MUSIC]



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Week 4
Week 4 Video 3 - Can you design your own cardio & strength workout?
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[inaudible].
Hi and welcome to hacking exercise for health.
Where today, Dr. Kovala
and I are taking on the trainer role.
We're creating workouts to simultaneously boost
your cardio capacity and build strength that
one can do anywhere at a time efficient package.
Was I supposed to dress up
like this is? Is that in there?
It's my trainer get-up.
Stew, we're not supposed to be the trainers,
we're still the scientists.
We're helping the learners understand the basics
of exercise science so
they can become their own trainers.
They'll design their own workouts.
That's right. That's the idea.
Well, what if I wanted to be a trainer?
Don't be sad. Listen later,
you design a workout and I'll do it with you.
Okay. Great.
In the last video, we describe
several different styles of workouts,
each of which combine strength and cardio
elements in a time-efficient package.
Can you remember some of
the four workouts that we shared?
Take some time to select
the choices that apply to each strength
and cardio workout and then we'll return to the video.
Now that you've thought about it,
we're going to tell you what we think.
The first thing we think is important.
These workouts use the principle of combination training,
by using body-weight strength exercises
to create aerobic workouts.
The combination principle describes
the way the workouts are combining strength
and cardio training together by
conducting the body-weight exercises at a fast pace,
featuring only short rest intervals.
Second, there's the principle of variation.
That is, the designers are varying the exercises so that
the people are working
different muscle groups with each circuit.
For example, in a beginner body-weight interval workout,
you wouldn't move from squats to lunges.
Because that would feature two consecutive exercises
that both work the leg muscle group.
So when exercise that works
the legs like air squats might
be followed by an exercise that works
the upper body like pull ups.
The third thing we want to
mention is the principle of effort.
We don't want you working at a leisurely pace.
It's not a Sunday drive.
You're supposed to move fairly
rapidly through these motions with minimal rest,
so that you're placing
a demand on your cardiovascular system.
You need to push it for your cardio and your strength,
and if you're willing to push,
you can get away with working
out for shorter amounts of time.
You should be doing enough reps that by
the end of the set you're exerting yourself.
Whatever the exercise, air squats,
push-ups or some pull variation,
at the end of the 30 seconds,
you should have to exert a significant effort.
Around an eight or nine out of 10.
Next, the fourth principle we
want to discuss is progression.
After you've been exercising for a bit,
you'll find yourself getting to the point that the six
minutes of intervals that you're doing at first,
they don't tax you like they once did.
That's because your body has
undergone a performance adaptation.
The principle of progression suggests that you
should change the exercises to make them more difficult.
Make air squats more difficult by
filling a backpack with some heavy books,
and wearing that as you go through your reps.
Later, you can make your leg exercise even more difficult
by switching to box jumps or single-leg squats.
Wall push ups become more difficult as you increase
the angle until you're down doing them against the floor.
Pull up exercises grow more difficult the
closer you move to the vertical.
Now that we've discussed
the four principles that each workout employs,
we want to mention something else.
Most of these workouts feature
three main types of exercises.
Three types of exercises that
work the various parts of your body.
Can you think what they are?
Take a moment to write out your guesses.
The three types of exercises are leg exercises,
which work the muscles of your lower body
like your glutes, quads, and calves.
Push exercises, that work
big muscle groups like
your pectorals, your front deltoids,
and your triceps, and pull
exercises that tend to work your lats,
rhomboids, and bicep muscles.
If you're only doing two or three workouts a week,
then every workout you do should include
exercises from each of these three groups.
A typical interval workout might
start with thirty-seconds of push-ups
followed by thirty-seconds of
air squats and thirty-seconds of incline rows.
If you can manage that without
expanding significant effort at the end,
progress by adding more sets until you're
exercising for a total of six minutes without a break.
Well, you don't have to do exactly what we say,
lots of different body motions
can be turned into exercises.
Find a list of suggested options in the core shell.
We've learned a lot through this module.
So now we're going to recap
and then we'll leave you with a final assignment.
Body-weight interval exercises that build strength and
cardio capacity in a time-efficient manner,
all tend to employ four similar principles.
They use the principle of combination by creating
aerobic workouts using
body-weight strength building exercises,
conducted at a fast pace and
featuring only short rest intervals.
The next principle is variation.
That means the exercises used within the workout are
situated so that you never are working
the same muscle group twice in a row.
The third principle is effort.
The idea is to push yourself.
Try to design your workouts
so that towards the end of the workout,
you're being forced to expend
about an eight or nine out of
10 on an effort scale to get in the last few reps.
Finally, the last principle
we discussed today is progression.
Beginning exercisers who conduct
these workouts three times a
week will find they get easier,
and when that happens,
you'll have to switch your workouts
to make them more difficult.
Now, in a video that you upload to Flipgrid,
we'd like to ask you to go back and reflect on
the workout plan that you created
during the first video of week four.
Knowing what you know now,
has your assessment of your plan changed at all?
Redesign the plan to improve
it and post the plan in the forums.
Once you've done that,
find another plan posted by a fellow learner and offer
some constructive criticism based
on the principles we've discussed today.
We've learned a lot today.
Yeah. Like some of us don't look good in headbands.
I'll have you know that headbands are making a comeback.
Look, in the next video,
we'll learn some of the surprising benefits
that workouts like these can provide.
Are you ready to do the workout I've designed?
Yeah. I don't have my workout gear with me.
Here, you can use mine.

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Week 4 Video 4 - How can exercise affect your mental health?
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Up to this point, we've talked a lot about
the benefits of exercise for your physical health.
But exercise has other benefits.
For example, studies have shown that regular bouts of
resistance training can improve mental health.
Issues like anxiety and depression are reduced.
Cardio exercise triggers similar benefits.
One of the pioneers in the study of the brain on
exercises is Dr. Jennifer Heisz.
The director of McMaster University is NeuroFit Lab.
Thanks Stu. I love talking about
my research in the context of an online course.
It's such a perfect setting.
One of the lab's most recent studies,
actually examine ways to maintain focus.
That's right. During educational video
much like this one,
except this is just a short video.
The one we tested was 50 minutes long and it
was an introductory psychology lecture.
So a little more boring than this one.
Well, I find psychology quite fascinating.
Yeah. Me too.
So how did the study helps students?
Well, let's demonstrate.
Essentially, we examined whether
exercise breaks helped university students pay attention.
Before I tell you the results of the study,
how about you conduct the exercise break and
determine for yourself whether you
feel like you have more focus.
So the exercise break we design
amounted to five minutes of calisthenics.
There was 50 seconds of
jumping jacks followed by a 10 second rest,
50 seconds of heel taps followed by a 10 second rest,
50 seconds of high knees followed by 10 seconds of rest,
50 seconds split jumps followed by 10 seconds rest,
and finally, 50 seconds hamstring kickers.
Now, for our learners,
why don't you try the exercise breaks yourself?
Then once you've returned,
we'll ask you to respond to a survey question.
Great. I bet they do feel better afterwards.
That's what the research showed,
our NeuroFit Lab study splits
75 university students into three groups.
A groups took three,
five-minute exercise breaks through
the course of the lecture.
Another group took three,
five-minute breaks through the lecture and
played a computer game, the Jewel.
The third group didn't conduct any breaks at all.
What did you discover?
It was fascinating.The computer
group and the no break group both loss focus,
particularly, as the session went on.
The exercise break group was
able to maintain their focus.
We also tested the students to
determine which group learned the material the best.
What was the answer?
What do you think? Let's pause for a question.
We've listed the three groups of
learners in random order.
Place a one next to the group you
think perform the best on the material,
a two next to the second group and so on.
Great. Jane, how did the three groups fair?.
In fact, the exercise break group perform
best in tests conducted immediately after the lecture.
The computer group came next,
and worse performance were for students who went
through the whole 50-minute lecture
without any breaks at all.
All learners watching may want to
take another exercise break to
better process the material we'll
share in the final part of this video.
That would be a great strategy to retain the information.
You were also involved in that study that said,
consistent resistance exercise improves sleep quality.
But the one that really fascinated me,
show that exercise training
helped change the hippocampus.
That's right. The study demonstrated that
training can help summon more complex memories.
The better your fitness gains,
the better your memory gains.
Jane, there's a rhyme that sums up those results.
There certainly is.
I can't remember. What's the rhyme?
You know what? I might need to do more exercise.
The rhyme is, sweat,
so you don't forget.
All right. Sweat, so you don't forget.
We're discovering that that's true in all sorts of ways.
Do you have any study hacks that involve exercise that is
tricks that use some form of
training to improve your learning?
Tweet them to either Marty or myself,
and we'll share the best with
other learners in the course.
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Week 4
Week 4 Video 5 - Can't you get exercise in a pill?!
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Week 4 Video 5 - Can't you get exercise in a pill?!
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Hi and welcome to hacking exercise for health.
Lately, Marty and I have been hearing people
talk about a new excuse for not exercising.
It involves something that would have been almost
unimaginable just a few decades ago.
The exercise pill.
Yeah, that's right.
A new class of drugs called Exercise memetics,
because they're designed to mimic at least
some of the effects that exercise has on your body.
All you would need is a doctor's prescription,
swallow the pill, and presto.
You get the benefits of exercise without having to
actually go and do any physical activity.
After all, we have pills for just about everything.
So why not exercise?
Some people have this romantic
notion in their heads that,
hey I don't have to bother.
Weights, cardio, whatever.
Because in a few years,
I'll be able to take something that gives me
all the great benefits of exercise, anyway.
Yeah and that's a bit of a problem.
It's a problem, because the more we learn about exercise,
the more changes we're finding
that exercise triggers in the body.
In fact, getting in a good boat of
exercise creates changes all over the body.
Not just in your muscles and your brain,
but also in your blood,
your blood vessels, your lungs, your heart,
your bones, your immune system, your digestive system.
Yeah, in so many different places.
There literally is nothing else besides exercise
that affects your body in so many different ways.
Which is why, so many people
are trying to develop an exercise pill.
In fact, former head of
the American Medical Association, Ron Davis,
once said that if exercise came in a pill,
it would be the most widely prescribed drug in the world.
It would be the single best drug of all time.
The scientists who are trying
to develop Exercise Memetics,
look at the various biochemical signaling pathways
that exist in the body.
They basically want to make
the muscle cell think that it's exercising,
that it's expanding energy,
and doing so and tricking the body into mobilizing fuel.
So the drug tells the body to burn fat. Don't store it.
The exercise memetics have names like Achar,
Compound 14, and Irisin.
Mice dosed with achar for example,
were able to run 44 percent longer than
non-drug rodents in one experimental study.
One of the best known as the substance known by
various names: Endurobol or GW50 15 16,
which tends to be abbreviated to 516,
others call it a Ppar-Delta Agonist.
So 516 works by telling the body
to metabolize fat rather than burning sugar.
Essentially, the drug fools the body into
thinking it was training for a long endurance race.
Telling the body to make changes as if it
were doing substantial amounts of endurance training
Mice dosed with the drug for four weeks increase
the distance they are able to run by up to 75 percent.
Not only that, all sorts of
other great things began happening in the mice as well.
They had less body fat,
they developed this muscle fibers that
only well trained endurance athletes possess,
and their blood chemistry improved.
Good cholesterol went up and bad cholesterol went down.
When a California biologist named Ron Evans
published a study about 516 and Achar in 2008,
in the closely watched journal Cell,
the world took notice.
Hundreds of media featured
Evans and the news of his drug.
"We can replace training with a drug," Evan said,
calling 516 exercise in a pill.
But then the company that developed the drug,
the pharma corporation GlaxoSmithKline
discovered something very troubling.
Mice given 516 developed
cancerous tumors all over their bodies.
The world's excitement about the drug, vanished.
The story doesn't stop there however,
because Ron Evans kept working on the problem.
He developed another exercise mimetic called MA0211.
If the pill works and are safe for humans,
than replicating the effects of exercise in
certain situations would be a great thing.
Astronauts could use the drug during
long trips in space to stay strong and fit.
The very elderly could use it to
stave off frailty and sarcopenia.
People can find a bed rest for long periods,
could instead of becoming
deconditioning and sicker, perhaps,
become more resistant to such deconditioning effects.
Exercise pill could reach the market in
our lifetimes. The problem.
Most exercise physiologists, including us,
feel that at best a drug might be able to mimic
just a few specific focused and specific effects
of physical activity.
But you're never going to get all of
these effects of exercise.
The mental health benefits, the cognitive benefits,
the camaraderie that comes with getting out
and getting in a hard workout with friends,
the psychological, self-esteem, not to mention
cardiovascular benefits that you
just can't get in a pill.
All of that is stuff that you just can't hack.
So here's hoping as the chemists and the biologists,
work on drugs that mimic
a certain set of the benefits of physical activity,
we don't lose sight of the thing that prompted
all this research in the first place,
rather than waiting around for
scientists to develop a pill,
we think you should just get out there and do it.
Yeah, it's the next video,
we'll provide the top 10 best hints for
developing great and sustainable exercise habits.












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Week 4 Video 6 - What are our top ten tips to hack exercise for health?
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Video, our final commitment.
>> Yeah, I don't think so.
>> Yeah, it's not the last one.
>> Well, maybe it will be I just don't think it's the final commitment.
I can't wait to interact with learners as they learn how cardio and
strength training improves their lives.
>> As people respond to our social media feeds you mean.
>> Yeah, that's right will incorporate questions into the course forum.
>> Yeah, that's a good point.
Or just as the discipline of exercise science develops as new discoveries
emerge.
>> Great, so what have we learned so far?
>> The first week we learned that exercise, any exercise regardless of
whether its strength or cardio is a great way to ensure your
reduce the risk of chronic disease, live longer and have a more active life.
VO2 max or max oxygen uptake is a great health marker.
Interval training provides great exercise benefits in a short amount of time.
Interval training can metabolize similar amounts of calories as moderate intensity
steady state training.
>> The second week was all about cardio training.
We learn that VO2 max or
maximal oxygen uptake is a great measure of your overall health.
One day it may be recognized as a vital sign that doctors
routinely assess along with blood pressure.
We learned a great hack, that if you want to get the greatest benefits of exercise
in the shortest amount of time interval training is the best way to do it.
And finally, we learned about because of the after-burn interval training it
can metabolize similar amounts of calories despite requiring substantially less time.
>> The main hack in week three was around the benefits of strength training.
How strength training helps you to slow some effects of getting older.
Fighting the age-related decline in muscle mass and strength and
reducing risk for developing frailty.
We learned about the various types of muscle fibers,
what they do in the fact that consuming enough protein can help you build muscle.
Finally and probably most importantly,
we learned it's possible to build strength while lifting lighter weights so
long as you perform the lifts with a high degree of effort at the end of the set.
And that it's possible to build strength with lighter weights.
Ideally,helping you open up the benefits of strength training to more people.
>> Week four amounted to an argument for
performing both types of exercise e discussed, cardio and strength training.
We considered some of the ways people have tried to do this over the decades from 5bx
to Tabata training to the scientific seven minute workout.
And we provided you with tools to help you design your own workouts
with an emphasis on body weight style exercises that can be done anywhere.
>> Now that the review is done, we want to leave you with something else.
>> That's right, some practical tips from one person to another
to keep you motivated and to keep you exercising.
>> Tip number ten, are you ready?
Put it in your calendar, schedule it,
put it in early in your calendar exercise in the morning.
Imagine you're a battery and you're fully charged in the beginning of the day,
use that energy.
>> Tip number nine, exercise with music.
Particularly, If you're doing intervals the science suggest that you work out
harder if you listen to music you like.
>> What's your favorite type of music for intervals?
>> Pink.
>> Like the pop singer Pink?
>> Right.
[LAUGH] Okay, then.
>> Get that party started, it's a really good song.
>> Hey, no judgment here.
The point is it has to pump you up.
Moving on to number eight, exercise outside in nature.
In cities this can be tough.
But research shows that when you connect with your local environment,
like on a trail walk the mental benefits are enhanced.
>> Number seven, find a buddy.
Someone who keep you accountable, someone to exercise with.
Maybe that's a trainer or a friend, anyone who gets you out of bed in the morning for
that early morning ride, swim or bike.
>> Number six, pick your favorite exercise.
Do what you like to do.
Yoga, long slow runs, uphill bicycle rides, whatever.
Because if you're going to exercise for
the rest of your life you have to do what you like.
>> Number five, mix it up.
It's the fact that humans crave novelty doing the same workout day in day out is
going to get stale after a while.
Try something different to maintain enthusiasm.
>> Number four, effort is important.
Don't hurt yourself.
But so long as you've been cleared for Hard Exercise by your doctor,
remember the more effort you put into exercise the more benefit you get.
>> Number three, try tracking.
Consider investing in an activity tracker, like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch and
start tracking the amount of exercise you're getting.
Some people really respond to the challenge.
>> Number two, make your exercise social.
It's a lesson I learned at McMasters physical activity center of excellence,
which welcomes people over the age of 55.
And where some people have been coming for decades and the people who do come for
decades of made exercise a social activity.
They know it's important.
They keep coming out week after week, year after year,
the gym is where they make their friends.
>> And the number one exercise tip we have is, do something.
It doesn't really matter what, the fact is the human body evolved for
a life style is very different from the one that most of us live today.
We're built to move, to walk, to wander around.
>> To keep that body of yours moving and healthy and to live a long life,
the biggest hack that we want to provide you at the end of hacking exercise for
health is this.
>> Do something.
>> Anything just get out there.
I think we already said that.
>> I think we've been saying that the whole time in one form or another.
>> Yeah, we both really enjoyed this course.
Now here are a couple of ways that you can help the other learners in this class.
First of all using the hashtag hacking exercise and
we invite you to tweet out your own exercise tips to Marty and myself.
>> Those tips could be anything.
We're talking suggestions for great workout songs or playlist.
Ideas to help people start or keep on exercising.
Tips for individual exercises, anything.
If you have suggestions that going to help people get out there and be active,
we want to hear them.
For now, thanks for watching.
We really hope you enjoyed the course and learn something.
>> Thanks for watching, hacking exercise for health.
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