I can't even count the number of badly-written or misleading fitness/health articles I've printed off the Web and stuffed into my "blog this" folder. One I've been carrying around because it's such a prime example of irresponsible editing was published February 4, 2010 by LiveScience on msnbc.com and was titled, "Is exercise worth your time? Genes tell."
On one level, I'm grateful that fitness/health articles get written at all. But knowing that the majority of news consumers are not critical readers or thinkers - that is, people are predisposed to believe what they read, not to assume they need to consider the context, authorship, or veracity of what they're reading (that is, not skeptical like me) - I just wish that writers and editors would not go out of their way to put a bias on news pieces.
In this case, what primarily offends is the title. "Is exercise worth your time? Genes tell." Someone glancing at that title might think, great! Another excuse to not work out. Or they might think, great! Another reason my workouts aren't doing any good. But this article is about only one measure of fitness, and perhaps more to the point, a measure that is of concern mostly to elite athletes: the VO2 max, or aerobic capacity. As the article says in paragraph 2, "This is a measure of how much blood your heart pumps and how much oxygen your muscles consume when they constrict to, say, move your legs on a treadmill."
VO2 max, then, very simply is a measurement of total blood volume moved, and total oxygen transferred, by the heart through the blood vessels to the muscles during exercise. It is not a measure of any other potential effect of exercise. It doesn't account for calorie burn, weight loss, strength gain, muscular remodeling, blood lipids or blood sugar management, agility, flexibility, balance, bone mass retention or gain, organ function (aside from cardiovascular), or any of the other things exercise is known to improve. And it's not even something that the average person can measure.
Most people don't train to reach a maximum blood volume/oxygen transfer. Most people train to look and feel well, to improve their sports performance, to lose weight, or just because they enjoy it. The article, which references a study in the Journal of Applied Physiology, does say that "exercise has benefits, regardless of whether or not a person can improve aerobic capacity." But the study is looking at genetic factors that may minimize the effectiveness of training to improve VO2 max, specifically. And these factors do exist.
Does this mean that exercise isn't worth your time? OF COURSE IT DOESN'T. So why would they even put that question in the article's title? I'll tell you why: to draw eyeballs. The editors don't care if you read the whole thing. They don't care if you understand the difference between VO2 max and general fitness. They just want a click through on the headline for their page-view count.
VO2 max is just like maximum extensibility, which I've written about before. It is a maximum level of a physical capacity, that is determined in part by physiological genetics - the instruction booklet for your body's assembly - and in part by your activity level and health in childhood. If you have polio, your maximum extensibility will be affected; if you have pneumonia or pertussis, your VO2 max will be affected. If you're completely inactive as a child, both will be affected.
This is NOT, however, to say that these capacities - or any other physical capacities - are impervious to renovation. Plenty of studies show that people well into their 80s can improve stamina, flexibility, agility, balance, and strength - and mental function. While your maximum limits of achievement in fitness may be to some extent predetermined, your potential for improvement is not.
Most of us never even approach our maximum achievement, for any physical (or mental) capacity. Most of us coast through life using a mere fraction of our potential.
So please, don't use the latest sensational headline as anything more than a moment's diversion. Don't let some obscure study on some arcane measurement influence your motivation to get fit and stay fit. We feel better, we work better, we love better, we think better, when we're fit.
We have the power to get up and walk/bike/swim/dance/lift weights/do yoga/climb rocks/insert activity here. Yes, some people are compressed by their life circumstances into little tiny boxes in which they literally cannot move. But if we're honest, that's very few of us. (See: Paralympics.) If we are not fit, it is nearly always because we have chosen not to do the activities that would make us so. That means we are choosing not to have the full experience of life that we could have.
Fitness is a lifelong practice, and our approaches to it can - and should - change more or less constantly as we go through life. The one thing we cannot do, if we want to have anything approaching a full and healthy life, is nothing.
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