Like most parents, March likes the idea of his kids, ages 7 and 9, getting out to play in the neighborhood. And like most parents, he has his reservations about letting a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old roam too far. If they could only play outside, but close to home, he thought. The answer came to him when he read a post on this blog in May: “Recreational paradise … in your own backyard.” The post was based on a story in the New York Times about UCLA’s CLEF project. The Center on Everyday Lives of Families was created in the wake of September 11 to take an in-depth look at the lives of middle class Americans. Among their findings: Our houses are crammed with stuff, save for our yards, which go virtually unused. That post and a subsequent one looked at turning your backyard into the aforementioned recreational paradise. March wrote asking for advice. He was particularly intrigued by climbing holds we had anchored onto the supports of our second-floor deck. “I’d like to do a climbing wall or climbing net but I’m not sure how I could do it.”

GGNC’s Recreational Consulting Team decided to pay a visit. As we pulled into the March neighborhood, it was immediately apparent that this would either be a piece of cake or we would keep on driving and pretend we couldn’t find their place. Half the houses “I hope their house backs up to the forest,” my stepson/creative assistant Ben observed.

Fortunately, it did.

Hammer plywood to this end support, paint it something colorful, attach holds and you'g got your own personal climbing wall.

The March home is ideally situated. It’s on a relatively small lot, good for minimizing maintenance. And it backs up to a heavily-wooded greenspace that screams “play in me!”

“Do your kids bike?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “On the sidewalks, in the neighborhood..”

I laid out my plan for an off-road trail network that would wind through this backyard forest dominated by young pines. With a rake and a shovel (and perhaps a mattock to remove stubborn rocks and the occasional root) I described how he could create a short, fun trail network that would let his kids ride their bikes in the much more entertaining woods, sans car traffic. We even discussed throwing in minor obstacles, such as a log stack or a low-lying skinny.

“I like that,” he said.

March had already been busy in the forest. Two hammocks were strung between pine trunks, there was a new chin-up bar and a tire swing that had met with mixed reviews. “It tends to be more of a spinning device than a swing,” he said. A tetherball pole had gone over well until it wobbled itself out of the ground.

Still, he was taken by the idea of a climbing set-up.

“What about a low-ropes course?” Ben suggested. He went on to describe a low-lying — about a foot off the ground — web of cargo netting and cable that the kids could climb on jungle gym style.

“Is there a playground supply store around here where I could get some cargo net?” March wanted to know.

“You’re probably better off finding it on the internet,” Ben said, noting that it would likely be much less expensive.

We turned our attention to the deck off the back of the March home. Their house is built on a slope, a slope dropping significantly from the street to the back property line. Thus, while the deck comes off the main level, it’s a significant drop to the ground — too significant to anchor climbing holds to the supports like we’ve done at our house. At our place, if you drop, you fall a little more than a foot. Here, you’d be looking at a three-foot fall, four if you’re a typical 7-year-old.

I noticed Ben checking out the substantial corner support system, which consisted of braced 6-by-6 support posts about four feet across.

“Plywood?” I asked.

Indeed, the two sides could be covered with half-inch plywood six- to eight feet up the supports. Climbing holds could then be anchored into the plywood, which is how it’s done at many neighborhood climbing gyms. March was intrigued by the idea, but it was tempered by that tell-tale look of reservation at the prospect of tacking up plywood to the outside of your house.

“It could be done very creatively,” I said. “You could paint the plywood, and the holds come in some pretty cool shapes and colors.”

Don't forget that the backyard should also be an adult paradise.

We kicked around some more ideas, but it was 100 degrees in the shade (literally) and March seemed content — for now — with the trail, the low ropes course and the climbing wall. He’d have his hands full, his weekends accounted for, for a little while. He seemed genuinely motivated to turn his sedate suburban backyard into an outdoor playground. Still, we weren’t about to let him off the hook.

“Sound good?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I think we’ve come up with some good ideas here.”

“Great,” I said. “We’ll be back in a couple months to see how you’ve done.”

We’ll report back in a couple months to see how March has done.

* * *

Resources
Intrigued by the notion of building a low ropes course, a climbing wall or a mountain bike trail in your own backyard? Below are some online resources that will provide direction. Obligatory warning: Any of the following projects can result in injury if not executed properly. If you don’t know a shovel from a saw, find someone who does and can do the job for you.

Climbing wall. Even if you aren’t a DIYer, the Instructables web site is great browsing. Here, you can find out how to build an incredible array of … stuff, including a climbing wall. The site has several tutorials. Your best bet is visit the site, then type “build your own climbing wall” into the search engine. You’ll not only learn how to make a wall, you can learn how to make your own holds.

Mountain bike trail. A general Google search on “build your own mountain bike trail” will turn up pages of DIY sites. If you want to do it right, though, we suggested you consult the folks who set the standard for fun and enviro-friendly mountain bike trail: the International Mountain Bicycling Association. Go here and learn everything from blazing a simple trail to building a ladder bridge.

Low ropes course. Perhaps because of the liability factor, you won’t find quite as many sites with directions for building your own ropes course. One that shows you some of the more popular elements of a low ropes course is the AdventureSmith site. Check it out here.

Photo: Spence March with his tire swing. And bird house.

Actually, Sage Rountree corrects, this may be the perfect time to start thinking about goals for the fall. Rountree lives in Chapel Hill and is perhaps best known for her yoga-for-athletes books and clinics, which she conducts internationally. She’s also a coach, working with both elite and beginner athletes, and a marathoner (3:43:00 at Boston 2008), Ironperson (13:08:17, Ironman Coeur d’Alene 2009), ultramarathoner ( 5:10:45 in this year’s Frosty 50K trail race). And she has two kids.

“Picking your next goal before your race is the perfect way to channel that extra energy during the taper,” says Rountree.

While I haven’t quite begun to taper — the Roan Moan is just a week out but the Rock ‘n’ Roll half marathon isn’t until Sept. 5 — I knew what she meant. Two big goals I’ve yet to tackle, but they will soon pass. Then what? The last thing I want to do is let months of training fizzle while I ponder what’s next.

When I mentioned the Second Empire fall series, Rountree was on board.

Sage Rountree likely was thinking about her next race when she finished this one.

“Series are great,” she says. “They’re a way of sustaining a goal. In the triathlon series, for instance, it takes the pressure off any one single race. You approach it as part of a whole.”

And, she adds, you establish a sense of camaraderie. “You see the same competitors, you go up against the same people in your age group.”

I like a series for another reason. There were eight races in Second Empire’s Spring Series. In my age group (50-54), no one did every race and only two guys did seven. By my cyphering, if I had done all eight (I did one: the Second Empire 5K Classic), I might have cracked the top 10 finishers. (The No. 10 guy only did three races.) Persistence, in a series based on cumulative points, equals glory.

A series isn’t the only kind of sustained goal. Fall is when a number of 0-to-5K, walk-to-run training programs kick in. I’m a graduate of the Fit-tastic program offered through The Athlete’s Foot in Cameron Village. The 10-week program, which begins Aug. 18, takes non-runners and gradually introduces them to running. At first, you run a minute, then walk for two. Over time that ratio flips until you’ve weeded out the walking altogether and are capable of running the entire Monster Dash 5K (3.1 miles American) on Oct. 31. The program launched in fall 2008, has added a spring version, and has had 425 participants. (For more on beginner runner programs, check out this GGNC post from March 31.)

For runners, in fact, fall is the time to ramp up. Cooler weather means more races, from 5Ks to marathons. Cyclists are more likely to suffer what Rountree refers to as the “post-partum blues,” as the onset of cooler weather and shorter days causes a significant drop in planned events. But they aren’t without options, either. A century ago, pro bike racers in Europe got antsy in the off-season. So they came up with cyclo-cross racing — basically racing modified road bikes off-road — which gave them reason to train between the warm weather road events. Today, cyclo-cross racing stands on its own, and the North Carolina Cyclo-Cross Series gives Tarheel cyclists reason to keep racing throughout the winter.

A long fall hike at Crowders Mountain is an admirable goal. (Photo courtesy North Carolina State Parks.)

Your fall goal can be whatever you make it. Races are good, so are classes, and chances are your municipal parks & recreation department has a wide offering for the fall. Here in Cary, for instance, there are various levels of Taekwondo (beginner, for families, for kids as young as 4), dance classes, cardio classes, aerobic classes and yoga classes (including chair yoga), as well as assorted team sports (basketball, volleyball, softball), a tennis ladder — pert near anything you’d want to do. You can even come up with your own goal: By Thanksgiving, be able to hike the 7.2-mile Sycamore Trail at Umstead State Park, or the 6.2-mile Ridgeline Trail linking Crowders Mountain State Park west of Charlotte with Kings Mountain State Park in South Carolina, or the 5-mile Moores Wall Loop Trail at Hanging Rock State Park.

The point: Fall needn’t be a wind-down time. Start planning now and you’ll find plenty of incentive to keep working. The season may be winding down, but you don’t have to.

Cool(ing) technology: It’s 99 out and the humidity is even higher. You want to workout, you yearn to workout. On the other hand, you’re not big into heat stroke, either. Clever entrepreneurs have discovered this about you, which is why you’re starting to see an increasing number of PCDs — personal cooling devices — on the market. From the $50 Bex Runner cool pack that straps to your palm to the $189 Arctic Heat cooling vest by Cool Down Fire Up to $3,000 gizmo called CoreControl, devices abound to help you work out when it’s way hot.

But do they work? A July 20 Wall Street Journal article explores the issue. Read it here.

Hotter strategy: Even if it is 100 out and the humidity is somehow higher, you don’t necessarily need a $3,000 personal AC unit to survive. According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, the folks at the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine, a collaboration of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas, say the key is to acclimatize. Scale back your workout as the temperature rises, then slowly bring it back up to speed. “It’s amazing how well the body learns to acclimatize,” the Morning News quotes cardiologist and Institute Director Benjamin Levine as saying.

Read more about thriving in, not just surviving, the heat, here.

Buff mice, brainy mice: In the mouse world, what separates the achievers from the alsorans? A half hour on the treadmill and a few laps in the pool, apparently. From the Saudi Gazette comes news of a study at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan that mice who spend more time in the gym — on rodent wheels, on mini-treadmills (really!) — scored better on their WMTs (water maze tests). Further, according to SG, “The mice who raced on the treadmills showed evidence of molecular changes in several portions of their brains when viewed under a microscope, while the voluntary wheel-runners had changes in only one area.” Said Chauying J. Jen, a professor of physiology and an author of the study, “Our results support the notion that different forms of exercise induce neuroplasticity changes in different brain regions.”

Read more about these brawny, brainy mice here.

Compression confession? When I first saw them on elite runners, I thought the tube sock was making a comeback. Then I discovered these new-fangled knee-highs were actually pricey compression socks, used by some athletes to boost circulation and maximize oxygen flow. But do they? A pair of studies presented at the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual meeting last month suggest they may not be that effective.

Read on.

Today’s items were culled from the American College of Sports Medicine news aggregator.

Photo: That’s the fashion-conscious 1965 version of L.A. Laker’s coach Phil Jackson during his NoDak playing days.

Back in the spring, Andy Cole would have been happy to just keep up with his 5-year-old and almost 2-year-old at the local playground, let alone squat-lift 285 pounds and run two miles without stopping.

The 43-year-old Pineville resident’s slide into tubbydom was a familiar one: Participate in sports in high school (basketball and football); graduate from college; get a job; get married; have kids; gain 100 pounds.

“I went for 20 years doing no exercise at all,” says Cole, whose nearly 6-foot frame was carrying 300 pounds.

Then in April his neighbors turned him on to the magic bullet – an exercise program that did what countless gyms could not.

Sounds like the stuff of late-night TV paid programming, but in fact it dates back to the “days of the Olympic decathlons and pentathlons of ancient Greece,” according to the American Council on Exercise.

This latest exercise phenomenon? Cross-training, or simply not doing the same exercise over and over until you’re tired, bored and on the verge of debilitating injury. Cross-training is, for example, walking or running one day, doing yoga the next, maybe lifting weights the day after that.

In Cole’s case, he enrolled in a rapidly growing international network of gyms built on the fundamentals of cross-training: CrossFit. In Charlotte, CrossFit has grown from two gyms two years ago to eight.

“The workouts vary from day to day; it’s pretty much never the same thing,” says Brandon Cullen, who owns CrossFit Ballantyne, the gym where Cole works out. “We stress full-body functional movements. We’re not working on machines; we’re not lifting in front of mirrors. We’re not reading Us Weekly on the elliptical.”

CrossFit Ballantyne is in an abandoned warehouse, so you might get the impression that cross-training is for aspiring Navy SEALS. It’s not, says Cullen. Unless you want it to be.

If a workout calls for pull-ups, Cullen says, a veteran exerciser might do unvarnished pull-ups, while a newbie could use big rubber bands to lessen the load.

That was critical for Cole when he first walked into CrossFit Ballantyne in April.

“I was a 300-pound guy who hadn’t been exercising in 20 years,” he recalls. He needed that giant rubber band (“I couldn’t do one pull-up”), and that day’s two-mile run involved more walking than running.

But the environment was supportive – classes are small and victories of all sizes are reported on the gym’s blog and Facebook page – and not knowing what he’d be doing when he walked in the door every day kept his interest. Three months have passed, Cole has lost 35 of those 100 post-college pounds, he can squat-lift 285 pounds and he’s more like the Andy Cole he was in high school.

“I can see my body firming up, my chest [and] my arms are stronger and my midsection is tightening up,” Cole says. He’s also doing a better job of keeping up with his energetic kids. All of which contributes to his ultimate endorsement of cross-training and CrossFit.

He says, “I’m a happier person than I was three months ago.”

It helped Josh Handest train for a half marathon. It was even more instrumental in getting him into shape to keep up with his preschool sons.

“My 4-year-old likes being picked up and tossed around,” says the 36-year-old North Raleigh resident. “And the 5-month-old is in a car carrier that gets heavier and heavier to get in and out of the car.”

Functional fitness for daily living and a workout regimen that helps runners and other competitive athletes perform better – all in one! Sounds like the stuff of late-night TV paid-programming, but in fact it dates back to the “days of the Olympic decathlons and pentathlons of ancient Greece,” according to the American Council on Exercise.

This latest exercise phenomenon? Cross-training, or simply not doing the same exercise over and over until you’re tired, bored and on the verge of debilitating injury. It is, for example, walking or running one day, doing yoga the next, maybe lifting weights the day after that.

“It’s like diversifying your portfolio,” says George Whitten, who with his wife Stephanie owns the Fitness4Life Training Center in North Raleigh. “You need to have that balance.”

Fitness4Life embraces the cross-training ethos, offering classes, from cardio kickboxing to karate to XFit to boot camp. Clients pay a monthly fee of $49 and can attend any class – and as many classes – as they want.
Handest signed on when he started having joint pain while training for a half marathon. Mixing in regular cardio kickboxing and boot-camp-type classes improved his overall body strength and allowed him to cut back on pavement-pounding miles. The real plus, though, was the extra energy and strength for surviving his boys.

“I can tear around with them now,” Handest says.

Katy Hijack of Raleigh dabbled with personal trainers and gyms to help with her running. The former proved too pricey, the latter, with traditional classes, didn’t seem to help. When she ran her first marathon last fall – the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington – she felt awful. Her takeaway from the race:
“If you run 26.2 miles, it’s not just about your legs,” she says. “You do use your upper body.”

She joined Fitness4Life, started taking cardio kickboxing and XFit classes, both of which involve exercises for developing strength, flexibility and aerobic capacity. Already, she says, she feels better prepared for her rematch with the Marine Corps Marathon this October.

“My core [midsection] is stronger, my lower back isn’t sore and my legs are stronger,” she says.
Whitten says another attraction of cross-training programs is that not only do they also work for both accomplished athletes and folks coming off the couch but they allow the two populations to work out together.

“Everything we do is scalable,” he says. By that he means if a particular routine calls for pull-ups, a class veteran may do classic pull-ups while a newcomer may use a lower bar, allowing him to get a little push off the floor.

The variety and the scalability are important, Whitten says. Above all, though, he says, cross-training is fun, the way exercise was when we were using all our muscles to run through the woods, to climb trees, to swim at the neighborhood pool. A successful exercise program, he believes, boils down to one thing.

“We need to feel childlike again.”

OK, so technically, at 14 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds of daylight there’s only one second of daylight more than there was yesterday and three more than there will be tomorrow. And we won’t be seeing appreciable changes in the length of day until late August. But spiritually, emotionally, physically, it’s important to know that today you have 14 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds of daylight (or 15 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds if you count civil twilight) to work with.  Taking full advantage of that 14 hours, 35 minutes and 14 seconds, you could, conceivably:

• Take a 217-mile bike ride (basically from Durham to Winston-Salem and back) at a 15 mph pace without stopping
• Run 88 miles (three and third marathons) and a 10-minute-per-mile pace.
• Take a 58-mile hike (nearly 3 laps on Umstead State Park’s 20 miles of hiking trails) at 15-minute-per-mile pace.
• Or do whatever you love that gets your blood pumping in the 3 hours, 34 minutes and 14 seconds you’ll have this afternoon after the whistle blows at 5.

It’s the longest day of the year. Use it all.

We weren’t thrilled by this study from Indiana University that found that people with neat houses tend to be more physically active. Nearly 1,000 residents of St. Louis between the ages of 49 and 65 had their health evaluated as well as the tidiness of the interior and exterior of their homes. Finding: Those folks who kept up the inside of their homes tended to be in better shape. But was there a chicken-and-egg thing at work here? “If you spend your day dusting, cleaning, doing laundry, you’re active,” said NiCole Keith, one of the researchers. Some people may not be inclined to “take 30 minutes to go for a walk, but they’ll take 30 minutes to clean.”

Learn more here.

* * *

Occasionally, we run across a no-duh study, such as this one out of the University of Alberta, which found that the benefits derived from a “traditional aerobics program” exceed those from a walking program. Of 128 “inactive” guys and gals between the ages of 27 and 65 who were divvied up and enrolled in the aforementioned classes over a six-month period, the sweaty aerobics types “showed significantly greater reductions in”:

• Systolic blood pressure (that’s the top number in your blood pressure reading, which represents the maximum pressure exerted when the heart contracts).
• Rating of perceived exertion (your RPE represents how hard you’re working).
• Ventilatory threshold (point at which respiration becomes more difficult during progressively harder exercise).
• Peak VO2 (measure of how much oxygen your body can take in and use).

Also not surprisingly, the “adherence rate” for walkers (92 percent) was higher than for the aerobics people (77 percent). Moral: Work harder, reap more benefits but also run the risk of getting burned out and quitting.

Learn more here.

* * *

Worried that stress is stressing your cells and making them age faster? A study from the University of California San Francisco finds that as little as 14 minutes a day of vigorous physical activity can keep the shoelace tips of your DNA from coming apart and letting your genes unravel. That’s a lay interpretation, those “shoelace tips” being the “telomeres,” or ends of your DNA that can become frazzled by stress. Exercise hard and those telomeres stay the same length, keeping your genes and chromosomes stable.

Learn more here.

Crunches help measure your muscular endurance.

To do this, the Be Active Van and its swat team of health & fitness advocates put people through the 5 Components of Health & Fitness, including the one that kicked sand in my face and stole my girl.

• Cardiovascular fitness. Do step-ups for two minutes at a moderate pace, wait 30 seconds, then grab a bar that measures your heart rate. The faster your heart beats, the more challenged it is getting blood and oxygen to the rest of your body. Thus, a slower heart rate means your heart is more aerobically fit and doesn’t have to work as hard. (My result: 79 beats per minute, deemed “excellent” for my age range of 50-54.)
• Muscular Strength. My aforementioned Achilles heel, this is a measure of how much force your muscles can exert in one shot. Lesley, who coordinates Be Active’s Youth Programs, further tried to calm me by pointing out that this simple hand-grip test only measures grip strength — muscles elsewhere in my body may not be below average.
• Muscular Endurance. A muscle’s ability to do the same thing over and over. “Muscular endurance is very important for people playing sports and for those who must sustain an activity for long periods of time,” according to a Be Active flier. Muscle endurance is especially important if you’re into sports (and, in my opinion, far more important than Muscular Strength). Muscular Endurance for Be Active test purposes is measured in number of crunches you can do in a minute. (I did 53, “excellent” for my age group.)
• 

  The stretch test measures flexibility.

  Flexibility. Defined as a joint’s ability to move through a range of motion. Here, that entails sitting on the ground, legs straight, and seeing how far you can stretch your hands. A flexible body is a body capable of doing more things. (My result: 10 centimeters, earning a “good” rating.)

• Body composition. “The ratio of lean body mass and fat mass,” says Be Active. Lean body mass — that would be the dread Body Mass Index — includes muscle, bone, cartilage and “other internal organs,” fat mass is just that, all the fat in your body. If you have a BMI of 18.5 or less, you’re considered underweight, normal is in the 18.5-24.9 range, you’re overweight if your BMI falls between 25 and 29.9, and people with BMIs of 30 or greater are considered obese. As for fat mass, 2-4 percent is considered the bare minimum for men, 10-12 percent for women; male athletes fall in the 6-13 percent range, females 14-20 percent; fitness buffs: males 14-17 percent, females 21-24 percent; an acceptable fat mass is in the 18-25 percent range for guys, 25-31 percent for gals; men are considered obese if their fat mass is 25 percent or higher, females who clock in at 32 percent or more. (My result: 25.9 percent on the BMI, 19.2 percent for fat mass. So actually I’m a tubby 175-pound weakling.)

But, as Lesley again reiterates, the purpose of the Be Active Van is not admonishment, but encouragement. You get a copy of your results, Be Active keeps a copy as well. The copy I got back included a blank category: “Goal/Target.”
“Come back in six weeks and see where you are,” Lesley advised.
Hopefully by then I won’t be so traumatized by where I was.

Go here for a list of scheduled appearances by the Be Active Van.

Green exercise? Really pressed for time? Is carving out 60 minutes a day to work out, as recommended by the National Institutes of Health,  beyond the pale of your schedule? Even 30 minutes broken into bite-size 10-minute segments isn’t doable? According to a study in the current issue of the American Chemical Society’s “Environmental Science & Technology” journal, just five minutes of “green” exercise a day can improve your health — your mental health, at least. Study authors Jules Pretty and Jo Barton say 10 studies involving 1,252 people in the United Kingdom found that just five minutes of gardening, hiking or other pursuits in a green setting decreases your risk of mental illness and improves your sense of well-being. Read more here.

Photo: Just five minutes a day behind the gardening trowel can lead to a happier you.

Exercise helps cholesterol. A recent study from the University of Nevada Las Vegas doesn’t come as revelation, rather affirmation. According to HealthDay TV *, 20 men enrolled in a daily 45-minute exercise class over a 20 year period all experienced lowered cholesterol. The men, all sedentary at the start of the program, experienced improvement in their LDL, HDL, total cholesterol and in their triglycerides. They experienced the most improvement during the first year of the program, but continued to witness improvement over the 20 years. The exercise class included stretching, muscle building and aerobics.

Are weight loss camps effective? Wonder if those summer camps for kids with weight issues actually work? At least one does, according to a study by the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. Dr. Nadim Kanafani, assistant professor of pediatrics at the school, studied kids ranging in age from 10 to 18 at Camp Jump Start, a residential weight-loss camp in Imperial, Missouri. The kids did physical activities, participated in group educational sessions and ate three main meals and two snacks a day, all approved by a registered dietitian. The structured environment and peer support helped the kids lose weight (eight pounds, on average), reduce their Body Mass Index (by an average of three points) and improve in various physical pursuits. Read more here.

National Physical Activity Plan. We, the people, now have a National Physical Activity Plan, which was announced last week in Washington. Now, this being a bureaucratic plan it’s hard to tell specifically what the plan is. The “Recreation” component, for instance, calls for government to “Enhance the existing parks and recreation infrastructure with effective policy and environmental changes to promote physical activity.” (More swingsets?) Under “Transportation/Planning,”  there’s a call for “Local, state, and federal agencies [to] use routine performance measures and set benchmarks for active travel (walking, biking, public transit).” (Um … ) I’ll share specifics as I’m able to ferret them out. Or, do your own ferreting here.

You don’t have to be like Lance. You don’t need to win the Tour de France seven times, break the course record for the Leadville 100 or dabble in triathlons on the side to feel good about yourself. This according to a study out of the University of Florida that found that folks who don’t exercise with a major goal in mind can feel just as good about their body image as people obsessed with training. This, the study finds, as 60 percent of American adults are dissatisfied with how they look, a figure that has more than doubled in the past 20 years. Read more here.

And you won’t find Lance in the Giro d’Italia … but you will find the Big 3 Classic, which began Saturday and runs through May 30, on cable, on Universal Sports. If you have Tivo or similar recording capabilities, the Giro makes great background for your workouts — even time on the dread trainer. (If you don’t have cable/Universal, you can follow the race here.) Lance’s Team Radio Shack, btw, is next in action at the Tour de Picardie in France.

Hot flashes. Headaches. Hair growing where it shouldn’t and not where it should. A tummy that won’t go away no matter how many crunches you do. Just when women of a certain age thought it couldn’t get worse, a new study suggests it can.

This latest study, conducted by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that menopausal and perimenopausal women fight an uphill battle to stay in shape. Those already in shape and at an appropriate weight need to exercise an hour a day just to maintain their existing status, the study found. Further, women classified as overweight, which would constitute the largest segment of this age group, need to exercise two hours a day to get into shape while those women falling into the obese category need to cancel their social lives entirely because they need to hit the gym for three hours a day to get into shape.

“A study like this gets the entire female population in a tizzy,” says Mary Petters, an exercise physiologist with the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont in Chapel Hill. “Not a lot of people have time to exercise like that.”

Nor do they need to.

Petters and other health and fitness experts say the study is flawed. For one, the results were self-reported, meaning those 34,000-plus participants (average age: 54) were on the honor system to report their fitness habits over the course of the 13-year study. People may not intentionally lie in such studies, says Gerald Endress, fitness director of the Duke Diet & Fitness Center in Durham, but they have a tendency to overestimate how long they exercise and forget what they eat between main meals.

“People tend to graze throughout the day,” says Endress.

There’s also the fact that study participants were deemed fit, overweight or obese based on on their body mass index, or BMI, which can penalize people for having more muscle mass, which is heavier than fat. And diet wasn’t considered in the study, a significant flaw in the opinion of Endress.

“With fitness, you can always overeat your workout,” says Endress. “Some people feel they can eat whatever they want when they exercise.”

That said, the healthcare community believes the report does reflect a general truism: Everyone, especially women dealing with the double whammy of menopause and a slowing metabolism that comes with aging, needs to exercise more.

Menopause can be especially vexing for women trying to lose weight. As their estrogen levels drop, their testosterone exerts more influence. Because of the ensuing havoc — the aforementioned hot flashes, headaches, hair woes — a woman’s body will do what it can to retain whatever stores of estrogen it has. Alas, says Petters, estrogen is stored in fat.

But despair not, says Leigh Shipman, an instructor with the Simmons Branch of the Charlotte YMCA. She’s been been working with “active older adults” for 17 years, and she’s seen both men and women lose weight and get fit.

“The average American woman should do just fine with one hour of moderate exercise a day,” says Shipman, who is 51.

Adds Petters, who deals mostly with people over 50: The key is finding the right exercise regimen, one you enjoy, one you look forward to doing and thus, one that you’ll stick with.

“There’s something out there for everyone,” says Petters. “You’re never too old to start.

* * * * * * *

Four for the 50s

We polled health and fitness experts Mary Petters at the UNC Wellness Center at Meadowmont, Leigh Shipman with the Charlotte YMCAs and Gerald Endress with the Duke Diet & Fitness Center to find the most popular exercise classes for women 45 and older at their facilities.

Zumba
This Latin dance workout originated in Columbia in the 1990s and emigrated to the U.S. 10 years ago. It is currently offered in just about every gym/wellness center that offers fitness classes.
Benefits: It’s a full-body aerobic workout, says Mary Petters with UNC-Meadowmont. It gets you sweating, gets your heart rate up, burns calories — and it’s fun.
Why it’s popular with the 50-plus set: Unlike other dance and aerobic routines, Zumba is  less choreographed, more free-spirited. No tricky footstep combinations to memorize.
Water aerobics / swimming
Ten years ago, says Duke’s Endress, water exercises focused on folks with arthritis and other joint issues. That’s changed. “Water aerobics has really taken off … it’s a much more vigorous exercise. … We even have an aqua boot camp.”
Benefits: Good cardio, good toning.
Why it’s popular with the 50-plus set: You may not have arthritis, but at 50 your joints still need more TLC than they did 20 years ago; exercising in water relives the pressure on your joints. Plus, such aerobics classes are typically held in warm water pools (80 to 83 degrees or warmer), which helps relax muscles.

Walking
According to the National Sporting Goods Association, walking was the preferred exercise for 24.9 million women ages 45 and up in 2009, making it by far the most popular form of exercise for that demographic (“exercising with equipment” was a distant second, with 11.3 million participants.)
Benefits: A vigorous daily walk of at least 30 minutes can, according to AARP: manage weight, control blood pressure, decrease the risk of heart attack, boost “good” cholesterol, lower the risk of stroke, reduce risk of breast cancer and type 2 diabetes, protect against hip fracture, reduce the need for gallstone injury.
Why it’s popular with the 50-plus set: It’s convenient (you can do it on your own schedule, out your front door), it’s inexpensive (all you need is a decent pair of walking shoes), and it can be social (walking groups, formal and informal, are especially popular with older walkers).

Pilates
Exercises done either with or without equipment that focus on core strength, flexibility and balance — the main areas we worry about as we age.
Benefits: The aforementioned benefits can make you leaner and stronger, but they also help people move more gracefully and efficiently, making it possible to do some of the basic functions of day-to-day life that can become a challenge as we age.
Why it’s popular with the 50-plus set: It’s adaptable. Pilates classes can be grueling enough to benefit a professional athlete or scaled back to accommodate people with less strength and flexibility.
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Tips

1. Getting started. Consult a nutritionist and a trainer. A nutritionist can help you get a handle on what you really are eating and what you should be eating, says Duke’s Gerald Endress. “People say, ‘I don’t eat a lot,’ then they start writing down all the Starbucks coffees they have,” says Endress. “They can even overeat fruit — an apple has 100 calories.” Likewise, says UNC-Meadowmont’s Mary Petters, a good trainer can help you look at your lifestyle — work, family commitments, etc. — and see what realistically will work for you.
2. Mix it up. “The body gets used to what you’re doing,” says the Charlotte Y’s Leigh Shipman, “and after a while it won’t work as hard. You need to challenge it to work the muscles differently.” For instance, you may walk on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and take pilates on Tuesday and Thursday.
3. Achieve a “moderate” pace. You need to push yourself. Not at first, says Petters: It’s good to work into a new routine. But to get stronger and lose weight your body needs to be challenged. The fitness industry has various scientific ways of determining your Rate of Perceived Exertion; Shipman relies on one tried and true measure: Sweat. “If you’re not sweating, your heart is not getting the workout it needs and you’re not burning the calories you need to burn.”