Mayday!! Mayday!!

Summer bodies are made in the winter apparently – but what if you didn’t and now the first warm bank holidays of the year are upon us? As you peel off the layers an internal distress call might be going off in your mind – “Mayday! Mayday! Emergency body buffing needed!”
It has been such a long, cold and wet winter, it was easy to get complacent and hide away under warm jumpers and bulky coats but now it’s time to do some catch up work and quickly!
So how does your body respond to exercise and in what time frames?

Within just 10 minutes of beginning exercise your heart rate will increase, supplying blood to the brain and around the body, making you more alert and blocking pain receptors. After 1 hour of exercise, the body will have supplied blood to the active muscles. The body is designed to conserve energy, so there are different types of energy systems it draws from, so which one will depend on the type of exercise being performed i.e. aerobic work or resistance training.
Recovery will then begin as the body tries to return to it’s pre-exercise resting state within an hour after exercise.
1 – 2 days after exercise you may experience DOMS or delayed onset of muscle soreness, due to the micro damage exercise causes to the muscles. Collagen and nutrients come to the site to repair the damaged muscle and this is how it grows and strengthens. 3 days after exercise the metabolism can still be elevated, this is great news for burning calories even at rest.

After only 1 week of exercising, significant changes can already be experienced, including improvements in mental wellbeing, particularly in lifting symptoms of depression.
From 2 to 4 weeks of regular exercise you can expect to see measurable changes, including weight loss, increased muscle strength and improved cardiovascular fitness. It really doesn’t take long to change your physical status, so panic over – Roger!

– This article has been published in the May edition of Life Magazines – http://www.lifemagazines.co.uk