BAGUIO CITY – There are weekend warriors in Baguio City and La Trinidad who pound the city streets or simply trod the sidewalks. For the more adventurous, they follow mountain or hill paths or traverse winding and forgotten trails if only to keep physically and mentally fit.
Children, adolescents and adults of all ages in jerseys and sweatshirts are often spotted early mornings of weekends following consistently pre-determined routes from start of their homes, many fighting the urge to stray away from strategic paths they have charted as acquaintances they meet cajole them to veer and instead follow those inviting friends.
On the other hand, many have taken to revive expanding their chests by pedaling on arduous routes with the use of handy by bicycles. Bicycles for physical activity happen to become trendy nowadays and these are getting quite expensive.
Simply put, a big number of Baguio and La Trinidad residents attach a premium on physical activity and exercise, demonstrating basic, if not profound understanding on the merits of exercise as a springboard of maintaining physical fitness.
Unfortunately, the Department of Health (DOH) reveals only 7 out of 100 Filipinos engage in vigorous exercise at least three or four times a week, based on findings by the Food and Nutrition Institute.
In the pursuit of exercise, however, is getting hurt accidentally. Any type of physical activity or exercise, from walking to more grueling ones, carry with them risks. And age, gender and conditioning level of exercisers are factored in those risks.
Risks occur due to many reasons like increased workout, incorrect techniques, fatigue, burnout, carelessness, impulsivity or simply a predisposition to risk-taking.
When it comes to athletic activity, it happens the feet are the pair of the most important body parts enhancing mobility and power. The feet are located distal from the knees – which help us to stand, move and keep our balance.
Knees are the body’s largest joints possessing a fairly complex structure, making it possible for humans to bend, straighten up and turn inward or outward. Health experts say a healthy knee can be moved from 0 degree or completely straight and can also be moved to 150 degrees, like your calf touching the back of your thigh.
There is a limit to how quickly the joints of the knees can adapt to unfamiliar stress, according to experts of the Department of Health –Cordillera Administrative Region (DOH-CAR). What the knees can handle, say, for the present, depends on the regularity of what it can adapt to handle over preceding weeks and months.
When one starts complaining of an aching knee while squatting, chances are, the person has chronic injury. Physicians explain this as quite common among those who are physically inclined like exercisers, more so among those who often run or jog.
Pain in an aching knee can make further exercise laborious and even more difficult when the sufferer goes up and down the stairs or following an upward or downward route. Public health experts explain usual treatment for kneecap treatment includes massage, injection, physiotherapy and carefully regulated knee-bending to strengthen leg power.
Exponents of martial arts have, however, discovered long before, that standing exercises, these forms basic in martial arts, can help treat kneecap injury. These exercises play a dual role of treatment and exercise, easy to learn, needs no equipment and can be done anytime and anywhere, explain martial arts practitioners in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR).
A martial art practitioner of the Japan Karate Association (JKA), a black belt, but who declines to be publicly known, explains the standing exercise:
First, stand with feet apart at shoulder-width, toes pointing forward, upper body held upright and knees bent at an angle of 130 degrees. In a 130-degree knee bend, the knees are slightly bent and not like a half- squat position, which is more difficult.
Exercisers often mistakenly do half-squat exercises thinking it helps mend kneecap injury. But the JKA black belt explains that while half-squat exercising also helps strengthen knees, it is however primarily used to strengthen hip, spine, abdominal muscles and balance.
Performing a half squat while suffering from a kneecap injury may do more harm than good, warns public health officials. During knee injury, avoiding deep flexion is recommended to minimize magnitude of knee-joint forces.
On the other hand, exercisers doing half-squat exercises often tend to favor their legs because they hurt and such exercise to the uninitiated or beginner, often fail to produce expected results.
Keeping the standing position steady, raise arms to shoulder level with fingers spread and slightly bent. Do it steadily. If you feel tired during the first one, two or three minutes, slowly drop the arms for one or more minutes then resume the exercise.
For the first few minutes of the first day, leg muscles will feel sore. Then the ache moves to parts around the knee joints. “It indicates the vulnerable tissue in the knee joint is being strengthened,” explains the JKA black belt.
Since the load placed on both legs is not as heavy as that in the half-squat position and there is no difficulty in keeping the standing posture.
This arm posture exercise possesses a curative effect on people affected by chronic injury of the rotator cuff, explains the JKA expert.
At the end of the arm posture exercise, straighten up very slowly and stand at ease for a few minutes. Then limber up the knee joints by simply doing relaxing exercises slowly like rotating the joints clockwise and counter-clockwise, raising one foot at a time in front of you, at the back or sideways. Then gently massage the kneecap. Repeat the procedure as many times as you can but in a relaxing and lingering manner.
Practice the procedure 2-3 times a day, for about five minutes on the first day, gradually extending it to 15-20 minutes after some days then maintain it for a week or more.
In the 130 degrees standing posture exercise, the knee joints become sore and a feeling of slight trembling in leg muscles grows in intensity, including knee joint squeaks. Continue exercising and muscle tremors will follow in rhythmical upward and downward movements.
“As muscle endurance starts increasing, these rhythmical movements will slow down to be replaced by local muscle trembling. After a while the body will feel jumpy, explains the JKA black belt.”
As the muscles are in a continuous compression and relaxation, these will not become stiff as a result of the standing exercise. All these happen quite naturally and you need not exert yourself at all, “the JKA black belt reveals.
A 15-20 minutes’ session of the simple standing posture exercise results in skin temperature around the knee joints increasing, because of blood circulating around the knee joint.
Another interesting aspect is, as one straightens up from the standing posture, there is a rush of blood, forcing entry into the previously clogged blood vessels, and improving local nourishment of the affected part of the lower extremity.
Coaches and veteran sports buffs have been known to prefer this exercise not only for its therapeutic value but because it does not affect the quantity of normal training. It can be done even during sports competitions.
In fact, the standing posture exercises are regularly done by those without kneecap injury, the reason being it builds up leg power and enhances flexibility of the joints.
It can be a bit tedious for young athletes to stand up still for 20 minutes or so, raising your arms up and down with your legs slightly bent and doing the same procedure again and again, given the fact that young athletes are frisky, the JKA expert says.
But sometimes tediousness has its virtue, as in the case of the standing posture. Because people who have tried it and benefited from it say success of the exercise is the sum of small efforts, repeated.
DOH continuously advocates regular exercise in the face of a sedentary lifestyle that can lead to risks of heart diseases, stroke, lipid disorder, diabetes, obesity, some cancers and even depression and anxiety. Aside from regular physical activity is proper diet.
As DOH explains, one of the keys to good health is regular exercise as the human body is designed for motion. Daily physical activity is for everyone – from the young to the very old. In short, exercise will never go out of style, no matter how old you are.
