Bill Krantz spends up to eight hours a week lifting weights and doing the treadmill. Why the 27-year-old Chicago businessman does it has little to do with reasons touted by fitness and medical professionals for resistance training.
Krantz pumps for vanity and to blow off steam. Preventing problems in muscle, bone and the cardiovascular system take a backseat at this time in his life.
“The mirror motivates me,” says Krantz. The macho competition between teammates in high school more than a decade ago to bench press and lift weights stuck. Only once in 11 years did Krantz, now a partner in a moving company, lay off going to the gym. For those lazy months, he paid dearly. He felt tired, sluggish and old.
“It’s easier not to quit, even on vacation,” he said.
Doing aerobics and running are habits Christine Schmeltz carries over from high school and college. Three times a week, the 29-year-old marketing manager for an insurance company in Northbrook exercises at a health club in Morton Grove. Her routine of lifting 12- and 15-pound dumbbells for 20 minutes evolved from reading fitness magazines. Coupled with aerobic classes and weekend runs in Lincoln Park, Schmeltz feels good. The habit, she hopes, will “keep the fat off.” And results from the dumbbells don’t look bad in sleeveless clothes either.
Benefits from weight training are many and include strengthening bones and muscles, reducing blood pressure and body fat levels, improving endurance and enhancing good cholesterol (HDL) to reduce the risk of heart disease. But ask anyone peering into the mirrors in weight rooms and you rarely hear the mantra espoused by the American Heart Association or the American College of Sports Medicine.
People commit to weight machines, free-weights, lifting soup cans or milk containers, rubber exercise bands or group classes with names such as Body Pump, Sculpt, Rear Attitude, Ultimate Conditioning, you-name-it, for different reasons. All point to the fact that the muscle has the capacity to adapt and respond to training well into and beyond age 90, according to Chris Hearon, an exercise physiologist and assistant professor of exercise science at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago.
Working the major muscle groups, two to three days a week with consistency, supervision and realistic goals gets results, Hearon said.”By exposing muscles to a stress greater than that to which they are accustomed, strength gains are made. Which means you have to work,” Hearon added.
Kittie Yaseen never had the discipline of Krantz and Schmeltz, until retirement.
“I was always undisciplined when it came to fitness,” says the 59-year-old retired accountant. After she quit working, she joined a fitness class two years ago geared for senior women at Gold Coast Multiplex on North Clark Street. Making friends and creating a new social life became as life-enhancing as the program Deborah Cousino teaches four days a week. The certified personal trainer and teacher puts the women, from 10 to 20 participants, through a 60-minute routine of stretching, low impact aerobics and light weights. Yaseen’s twice-a-week commitment plus daily walks has reaped rewards.
“My posture is better,” she says. “When you lift weights, you’re always mindful of standing straight.” Though her body weight has remained constant at 145 pounds, clothes fit better and she likes how the weight is redistributed over her 5-foot-10-inch frame. Gaining strength and endurance makes walking easier. “Now, I can carry groceries five blocks without losing my steam.”
Not all of Cousino’s clients belong to health clubs. As a personal trainer she works with an 84-year-old man, an invalid, in his Chicago home. They work on muscle strength by lifting 14-ounce size soup cans. Another group at a retirement home plundered the kitchen for equipment.
“Over a 12-month period, they graduated from tomato paste and chicken noodle to milk cartons with handles and 5-pound dumbbells,” recalls Cousino. Seniors need the same regularity in exercise frequency as younger exercisers, she says. “Like any exercise, you use the muscle or lose it, regardless of age. But older people especially require more stretching and warm-up exercises before they begin their weight routine.”
When Sheryl Edwards saw Tamara Barber teach a fitness class at a dance studio on the South Side, the computer analyst from Calumet City was impressed. She and four girlfriends eventually hired the 26-year-old fitness teacher as their group’s personal trainer. Though Edwards, 40, worked with personal trainers before, she knew the group dynamic and twice-a-week commitment would fire her motivation. The women, ranging in age from 35 to 45, share goals of toning up and losing a few pounds.
They meet two evenings a week for two-hour sessions in the basement of Edwards’ home. Each is responsible for doing cardio daily, mainly walking, on their own. Barber concentrates on weight training with free-weights and several pieces of home gym equipment.
“The women at first weren’t convinced about lifting weights,” says Barber.
They didn’t want the bulging biceps and thighs of Arnold Schwarzenegger or worse, the needle on the bathroom scale to go ballistic.
“I had to explain about muscles,” continues Barber. “How making them stronger with weights helps you lose weight.”
Of all calories burned by the body, 50 percent to 90 percent are burned by muscle. The greater the muscle mass a person has, the more calories he or she will burn during a workout and afterward, according to exercise physiologists.
Strengthening muscles is especially important to people as they age. Men and women lose about a third of a pound of muscle each year after age 40. Around 50, they lose approximately 10 percent of muscle mass every decade, according to research by Robert A. Stanton, an orthopedic surgeon affiliated with Yale Medical School, New Haven, Conn. Muscle naturally atrophies with age. But regular exercising can retard atrophy. And resistance training is a weapon for women against osteoporosis. It keeps bones dense and strong.
Exercisers and trainers agree that classes in weight lifting are a boon to motivation. Research shows that the quality of the workout improves when done in groups or with a partner. And compliance increases, especially in older people, according to Chris Hearon.
“Classes get the beginner off to a safe start,” explains Lois Miller, regional fitness director for Crunch, a fitness club in downtown Chicago.
Each class is designed to hit the major muscle groups and participants don’t worry about sequence or intensity. It’s all packaged up, says Miller.
“If people want dramatic changes, they need to be realistic. You have to work out more frequently and with heavier weights,” says Miller, a former competitive bodybuilder.
“It takes time, energy and discipline to get those sculpted bodies in fitness magazines. Professional bodybuilding is a lifestyle, a job and an income. Those people get paid to train all day and diet. Who has the time?”
