Adirondack Sports April 2020

10 Adirondack Sports
HEALTH & FITNESS
PUSH BACKS ON ALL FOURS
SINGLE ARM PULL DOWN
Exercise for the Immune System
SIDE STEPS
BAND PRESS
By Andrea Henkel Burke
Physical activity is a key element when
we want to maintain and improve our
immune system. We can take care of
having the best nutrients in our diet (and we
should), but our built-in healthcare system
is not complete, without moving our muscles
and exercising frequently. You probably
are reading Adirondack Sports because
you are an active person. When I’m talking
about athletes in this article, I mean basically
everyone, whether you’re running or
biking daily, or walking on a regular basis.
I want you to know how different exercises
affect your immune system in different
ways. With this knowledge, you can design
your workouts or activity depending on your
situation, desire and goals.
Cardio workouts – While moving our
muscles, we activate natural killer cells,
which keep working a couple of hours after
our workout ends. The more natural killer
cells that get activated, the better our
immune system is able to fight any illness,
including viruses. Activating these cells
does not happen with every workout. In fact,
depending on the intensity of our exercise,
it also can suppress our immune system.
When our training plan or exercise mood
is asking for a high intensity anaerobic session,
we need to be aware that our immune
system will not be in its best condition after
those workouts.
Professional athletes and athletes with
high performance goals, need those high
impact workouts sometimes, as they need to
stress their system in different ways in order
to improve performance. The immune system
of those athletes might be more often
compromised than enhanced by this high
impact training. That’s why they often, especially
in competition season, use hand sanitizer,
avoid big crowds, cinemas, and skip a
party, no matter if there is a virus around or
not. Over the years of training, they still created
a better immune system, but it doesn’t
show up all the time as virus protection. It
often is busy with recovery from heavy workouts
or big training blocks.
Even when not racing, it’s healthy to trigger
different metabolic systems by exercising
the whole spectrum – from very slow/easy to
very fast/hard. Slow and easy should still make
up the majority of workouts. In the fitness
world, you often see much less of a variety in
training. I know, it doesn’t sound logical that
slow or easy training sessions can improve
performance, people often view them as a
waste of time. Physiologically, slow sessions
make a lot of sense and I highly encourage
you to include those sessions for better performance,
well-being and overall health.
We all can use the time right now for setting
up, improving or maintaining a great fitness
foundation. I am obsessed with building
and maintaining a solid base. You also
would not start building a house without
pouring a foundation. You probably heard
before that our muscles can produce energy
(ATP), with or without oxygen, also called
aerobic or anaerobic. To build up our fitness
base, and enhance our immune systems, we
need to do aerobic sessions. Aerobic sessions
are done at a lower intensity. In this
training zone, our muscle cells use fat and
carbohydrates to produce the energy we
need for the workout.
As soon as we switch into the anaerobic
zone, fat is not getting burned anymore, and
PULL DOWN
our muscles rely only on carbohydrates to
keep us going. This happens at high intensity.
Depending on how well our aerobic system is
trained determines when we enter the anaerobic
zone. Those anaerobic sessions lead to
stress for the body, which is wanted in some
cases, but doesn’t support the immune system.
I am not saying you should not work out
in this zone at all, but right now it’s important
to know that different training affects our
ability to fight pathogens differently.
We are able to train and extend our aerobic
zone or fat metabolic system to support
our immunity. Unfortunately, I cannot provide
you with a formula, because everyone
has their own metabolic system and everyone
is able to change this system in six to
eight weeks. Because of that, I usually offer
a test, called Aeroscan, which shows specific
and individual workout zones. Aeroscan
accomplishes this by measuring how much
fat and carbohydrates we are burning at
a certain speed and heart rate. Some athletes,
even trained ones, show very short fat
burning zones, others have a very good fat
burning metabolism, and can run relatively
fast, while still supporting their immune