Free The South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for Life by Arthur Agatston, Joseph Signorile Page A

“Boomeritis: The New Epidemic!” to make sure that you’re exercising safely.

Boomeritis: The New Epidemic!

    From my discovery of baseball at the age of 5, I have always loved sports and have played just about all of them. Unfortunately, as I got older and spent more time in the office and at the hospital, pickup basketball, soft-ball, and touch football gradually faded into oblivion, except for occasional games with my two sons. My major athletic endeavor became tennis, which I played competitively in my youth and spent summers teaching. I also jogged on a regular basis (and had for years) and did short spurts of ice hockey (yes, ice hockey in Miami), karate, and Rollerblading. About 10 years ago, I gravitated to golf. I had to give up some of the more taxing sports because as I got older, I tended to get nagging injuries—particularly shoulder, low-back, and knee pain. I was not alone. Not surprisingly, the preponderance of such injuries among baby boomers like me has come to be known as boomeritis.
    About 3 years ago, I began doing core training with Kris Belding, the Pilates teacher who designed the core functional fitness part of our exercise program, and I was amazed at how much better I felt. My overall strength and flexibility greatly improved, I felt younger, and I stopped experiencing the boomeritis aches, pains, and injuries that previously seemed to occur on a regular basis. And I finally fulfilled one of my mother’s longtime admonitions: “Stand up straight!”
    While I was at home in Miami Beach, I had no trouble following my usual exercise and diet routine. But like so many people who travel a lot for business, I wasn’t always as diligent on the road and occasionally gained a few pounds during my travels. (I didn’t always follow my own advice about being prepared with healthy snacks.) Also, I found it difficult to put enough time into a cardio workout that was necessary to complement my core training.
    Fortunately, about this time, I was lucky enough to meet my collaborator on this book, Joe Signorile, PhD, who teaches exercise physiology at the University of Miami. Joe told me about the benefits of interval training and convinced me that I could burn more calories and achieve a higher level of fitness in a shorter period of time than I was currently spending on my workout. While I had heard about interval training for competitive endurance athletes, I was unaware of its potential benefits for the rest of us. I reviewed the scientific literature he suggested and was convinced that interval training for nonathletes was an important advance.
    The beauty of interval training—which, as I explained in the last chapter, involves doing short bursts of high-intensity exercise followed by an easier recovery period—is that you can do it wherever you are and adapt it to any activity.
    As fate would have it, about the same time I met Joe, my friend and patient Mel was raving about his experience with boxing. I knew that Mel had boxed as a teenager, and I was surprised to hear that at age 72, he was back in the ring, albeit with a trainer. Mel’s wife, a former professional dancer, and I had been trying to get him to do regular exercise for years, but he was quickly bored by conventional workouts. I was delighted when I heard that he had kept up with his boxing lessons for more than a year—and it showed. His energy level had increased immensely and his blood chemistries, blood pressure, and weight all reflected the benefits of his time in the ring.
    Those of you who are unfamiliar with boxing may not know that it’s one of the most demanding of all sports. In fact, boxing is possibly the ultimate in interval training, with 2- to 3-minute rounds of intense exercise followed by a rest period.
    I had always heard that boxers are among the fittest of all athletes and was curious to give boxing a try as a way to work intervals into my own cardio program. I was referred to a fabulous boxing trainer, Luis, and