For today’s executive, many fitness issues–diet, exercise, stress management–are getting whipped in the blender of sexual equality. As a response to equality issues, it represents little improvement over the past for the male executive. Most fitness programs of the past were designed for men, with much emphasis on aerobic or anaerobic exercise. Now eating, stress management and flexibility are health concerns no fitness program should be without–are included, but only as vague generalities gleaned from both sexes.
The most effective fitness program must be designed for one sex. There are obvious psychological differences that stem from different culture input and variations in the brain’s organization itself. And no two men are alike either. Though physiologically similar, men can have pronounced differences in skeletal structure and muscle development, not to mention contrasting psychological outlooks. All these point out that every man needs the knowledge to design his own fitness program.
Aerobic conditioning for the heart
The number one priority for men is to prevent heart disease. Unlike women, whose hormones protect their hearts until menopause, men must mount a defense as young adults. Long before the male’s number one killer takes his life, it robs him of his vigor and productivity. While this physical deterioration is reluctantly accepted by the average man who eyes retirement to salvage what’s left of his life, the executive is cut down in his prime. Having amassed the experience and knowledge necessary to ascend in his profession, he now finds his new limits governed by medications and fatigue. This tragedy is entirely avoidable.
Your first line of defense is aerobic exercise. What kind of aerobic exercise doesn’t matter as long as it keeps your heart pumping hard enough. This is consistent with a man’s concept of exercise, which is synonymous with a vigorous workout. Not so with a woman. Put through a strenuous workout, she is more likely to abandon it, preferring instead to exercise less intensely. Is this an advantage? Does a man’s favoring a vigorous workout improve his odds of becoming a long-term exerciser? Recent history says no.
If you push your heart rate into the heart-healthy range of 60 to 75 percent of your pulse limit, before your heart has been conditioned, before your muscles have developed endurance, you will suffer during and after the workout. This might feed the “no pain, no gain” mind-set of some men who mistake pain as their goal, but it will not drive an executive. Your downfall is in your dedication to any commitment you undertake. The pain is something you accept stoically, dues you must pay to become fit. But this dedication disappears when the first injury strikes. Injuries are the number one reason men give up exercising. But this statistic is misleading. It suggests that injuries are a fact of exercise, when they are really the result of mistakes. Yet knowing that exercise should be adopted gradually does not alter the outcome for many executives. They merely apply the tried and true risk-taking approach. But risk taking in the business environment is a means of strengthening and expanding the company in the face of fierce competition, and ultimately it translates into rewards for the executive. That is not the case with your personal fitness. The risk of pushing yourself harder and longer will not reward you; it will undermine your exercise program with injuries. Injuries are inconvenient, painful and expensive.
When you begin an exercise program, work out at intensities below the heart-healthy range, moving into its low end–60 percent of your pulse limit only after you have preconditioned your muscles. There you can get a vigorous workout without drowning in your own sweat, and there you can stay for the rest of your life. In conditioning the heart, the law of diminishing returns applies; it won’t get much stronger by exercising in the high end of the heart-healthy range. Seventy-five percent of your pulse limit is a strenuous workout. Go there only if you have a clear reason or specific goal other than your heart’s benefit. Don’t turn your workouts into burnouts. Next to knowing what intensity you should exercise at, you should know how long and how often to do it. I suggested a minimum guideline of 20 minutes, three times a week. This is an average based on the physical responses and preferences of men and women. To strengthen your heart and vascular system, you need more. How much more depends on your age. If you are in your 20s, 30s or 40s, aerobically exercise at least five days a week. For each age group, however, the length of a workout varies. A man in his 20s should work out at his target rate for 30 minutes; a man in his 30s should work out for 35 minutes; and a man in his forties should work out for 40 minutes. At age 50 or older, you can cut back to 35 minutes. But that’s only if you want to. You can, of course, keep your workouts longer, and most people who regularly exercise do.
Moderate aerobic exercise protects your cardiovascular system in another way: it improves stress
resilience. But when a big stressor strikes, cut back on your program. Under severe stress, men tend to do just the opposite, almost as if you are trying to burn the bad day or stressor out of your systems. With this response the only thing you burn out is yourself. The stressor is unaffected. No exercise program is written in stone. As with any business, it must be managed under changing conditions.