Michael Pollock was one scientist who didn’t hide behind theory. Intent on providing practical advice and information for average people, Pollock sweated the small stuff.
Perhaps this country’s most influential exercise scientist, Pollock died of a cerebral aneurysm in early June. He suffered the fatal dilation of a brain blood vessel while in Orlando, attending the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, an organization he helped found.
Pollock, 61, a professor and researcher at the University of Florida since 1986, wrote the original exercise guidelines for the American College of Sports Medicine back in 1978. Twenty years later, he is still the lead author on this year’s update, which recommends cardiovascular training three to five times per week for 20 to 60 minutes each session.
Continuous exercise is preferred, but 10-minute bouts are acceptable for reaching lower-level fitness goals. People should work at 50 percent to 85 percent of maximum heart rate (calculated as 220 minus the person’s age); less fit persons should start at the 50 percent range. Suggested physical activities include walking, hiking, running, cycling, cross-country skiing, rowing, rope-skipping, stair climbing, swimming, skating and aerobic dance/group exercise — the key is working the large muscle groups of the body.
The current report also advises weight training (or some form of resistance workouts, such as elastic bands or isometric exercises that use your own body weight) two to three times per week. One set of 8 to 12 repetitions (at weight amounts that allow you to lift only the number of repetitions in this range) is appropriate for most individuals, though more frail people 50 and older might better opt for 10 to 15 reps at lower weight amounts. Flexibility workouts are strongly urged two to three times weekly at a minimum.
Pollock’s legacy threads throughout the organization’s guidelines. Back in the early 1980s, when most people thought turning 50 was one more step toward the easy-chair lifestyle of retirement, Pollock was studying elite athletes in their 40s, 50s and 60s at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee. When he measured their heart rates and VO-2 maximums (a measure of lung capacity), he found that the cardiovascular and muscular degeneration widely associated with aging — losses averaging 1 percent each year past 50 — could be halved with appropriate exercise. That he discovered this turnback of the aging process even in older people already in peak shape was good news for the predominantly unfit population of middle-aged Americans. They could make even greater proportional gains.
“The idea is logical in the late 1990s but seemed ludicrous in the early 1980s,” said Curtis Pesmen, who first featured Pollock’s research in his 1984 book “How a Man Ages” and revisits the findings in an upcoming book for Rodale Press about men turning 40.
Pollock was an early advocate of weight training for older people, conducting studies that showed dramatic improvement in bone density, oxygen uptake, body fat composition and muscle strength among research subjects.
He supported the notion of substituting shorter bouts of aerobic exercise during the day for 30 minutes of continuous activity, but only because he was alarmed at the obesity statistics among Americans. He figured something was better than nothing for the one-third of U.S. adults who are 20 percent heavier than their healthful body weight and the more than half of Americans who are overweight to some degree.
“We have some good, hard data on fitness benefits derived from 30 minutes of moderate-intensity or vigorous activity” and some research for doing the 30 minutes in 10-minute chunks, Pollock said last summer during an interview. “But the research gets wishy-washy on the health benefits gained from doing shorter bouts than 10 minutes.”
Before his death, Pollock designed a study and received a large grant from the National Institutes of Health to study such smaller doses of exercise — even a few minutes at a time. His boss and friend, Patrick J. Bird at the University of Florida, said the research project will continue under the direction of Pollock’s colleagues.
“Mike provided the details about exercise all of us want to know,” said Bird, dean of the school’s College of Health and Human Performance and a fellow graduate student at the University of Illinois in the 1960s. “He set fitness goals for people. He practiced what he preached. He worked out several times a week” despite a painful case of arthritis.
Perhaps that desire to help people get fit best explains a highly practical 1996 study by Pollock and colleagues showing that doing one set of weight-training exercises is basically as effective (and far less time-consuming) than a more traditional three sets. The three-set individuals tested only 4 percent stronger.
“One set is enough,” said Pollock, “but you have to work hard.”
“Mike wasn’t a self-promoter,” said Bird. “He was so well-known and respected in his profession. People knew he got the nitty-gritty done when it was needed most. That was enough for him.”
