Running, swimmming and cycling, the big three. Raise your heart rate to the target zone and keep it there long enough to do some good - twenty minutes or more.

I started when the book came out in 1968. I initially ran a mile, then worked up to four miles a day. What the book didn't tell you is that eventually it takes a toll on your knees. It may be better now, with well-engineered running shoes to absorb some of the impact, but after about twenty years my knees couldn't take the strain. Arthroscopic surgery, and then a switch to bicycling and a bike machine.

And... I still spend thirty minutes a day simulating 18 mph on the exercise bike, and do a lot of real bicycling and swimming in the summer. Cooper's work was with young people. My observation is that the age-based formulas for target heart rate are too conservative. Though the charts indicate a maximum just over 160 and a workout target under 130 for a guy of 65, I kept the exercise heart rate of 140-145 for decades; I never felt like I was straining myself. I conclude that the body can maintain an accustomed rate of exertion to a greater age than experts would project.

A Soviet-style joke (this will cost me "helpful" votes, but I'll live dangerously). Last summer I cycled across Kiev to a Democrats Abroad picnic. Several of the old war horses, progressives who had progressed past Social Security age, remarked on the fact that I had come ten miles by cycle. I told them to think nothing of it. Another four years of socialist progress under Obama and we will all be riding bicycles.

Absolutely five stars. This was a seminal book.

Read the original here:
AEROBICS: Kenneth H. Cooper: 9780553235463: Amazon.com: Books