FEELING GOOD B dy Heat make some of your own. Join the JCC Health Club in January and Save $150 *50% down payment requited, balance in 90 days *This offer good January 1, 1988 - January 31, 1988 *Must not have been a health club member in past 12 months Jewish Community Center 6600 W. Maple Road West Bloomfield, Michigan 48322 661-1000, ext. 265 We now accept Visa and Mastercard The only exercise studio better than ri -inciic is ffrinciic SAVE on sale. Offer extended! ° on a series. One year unlimited is $499. New people get 8 classes for $17.99. Must purchase by January 3, 1988. (No other discounts apply. One per customer) Rated "excellent" by Monthly Detroit and "toughest" by Metropolitan Detroit. narritit 6-F EXERCISE COMPANY 555 Woodward Ave. 32480 Northwestern Hwy. Birmingham Visit our new boutique 540-2535 Between Middlebelt & 14 Mile Farmington Hills 851-3488 FRIDAY, JANUARY 1, 1988 Pounding The Pavement Continued from preceding page own pace. A good guide is to begin by walking 10 minutes at a relaxed pace, working up to 20 minutes every other day and gradually increasing to a brisk pace. Building up your level of activity gradually over the weeks to come is usually an excellent way to prevent injuries. Ask yourself whether you feel more like exercising in the morning, afternoon or evening. Consider moving other activities around your walking program so that yuo can make it a regular part of your day. A walking program can be done alone or in a group and arranged in dif- ferent ways — after meetings, during lunchtime, first thing in the morning. Teresa Freed leads a "Walk and Talk" program at Dr. Lawrence Power's Lifestyle Medicine Clinic, Southfield. Freed meets with her students twice a week for a 30 minute walk in the neighborhood around the clinic. "I found this a wonderful way to get people to exercise that have been sedantary for a long time," said Freed. "My classes usually consist of seven students, almost all of whom want to lose weight. So I teach them how to fitness walk and develop their own walking program and enjoy the efforts of good nutrition. We usually cover about two miles in our walking pro- gram!' Mall walking appears to an increasing number of people particularly during the winter. Sheila Cohen and Renee Eisenberg, both of West Bloomfield, arrive at Orchard Lake Mall in West Bloomfield just before 7 a.m., five days a week, brisk walk two and a quarter miles, and are out of the mall by seven thirty. "We walked outside for two years!" said Cohen. "But last January when the weather got bad, we heard that Or- chard Mall opened early and was available to walkers. Now we walk here all year, even in summer. That way we avoid the sprinklers as well as the dogs." "Besides everything else, walking helps maintain my weight," adds Eisenberg. "If we go out to dinner one even- ing and I splurge a little, I know I'm going to be walking again very soon and I'll get back on my diet routine!' Walking in the malls is done under ideal conditions: good weather and quiet sur- roundings — long before the mall opens its doors to other customers. It also offers level surfaces, relative safety, a chance to chat with old friends and some times the chance to make new friends. Vars Apkarian, 72 years old, also walks Orchard Lake Mall. "I've been walking for a year now and I feel a lot more energetic," explains Apkarian. "I usually do my walking with friends because it's more fun that way." Other area malls which open their doors to walkers before the mall is open for customers include Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi, the Oakland Mall in Troy, Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights, and Meadowbrook Village Mall in Rochester. Weighted walking Most experts agree that car- rying extra weight on the body while walking will in- crease the energy spent and the calories burnt, but they caution walkers to consider what part of their body is showing the extra pounds. For example, research demonstrates that to lose pounds on the torso you'd have to carry around 60 to 70 pound weights. That's enough weight to keep someone from walking at all. On the other hand, walkers with vigorous arm movement using light hand-held weights increase the energy they ex- pend by about 1/2. In fact, walkers with hand-held weights and vigorous arm movement can attain metabolic laods comparable to slow jogging. The problem is that most walkers don't jump the weights to get the desired effect. Dr. James Rippe, researcher and cardiologist at the • University of Massachusetts, found that fast walking and striding are sufficient to bring 90 percent of women and two-thirds of men to their target heart rate. When Rippe tested walkers wearing weighted vests, he discovered that carrying an extra ten percent of your body weight at 3.5 mph boots heart rate only two beats per minute. His advice is rather than us- ing eights, just speed up your walking or climb hills or stairs if you want to expend more energy. You can have fun tracking your progress by keeping a few records. Jot down you're maximum heart rate for each walk, take the average every week and keep a permanent record. Note youir distance or the time walked. You may also want to note your resting pulse rate. Many popular books on walking include a section on record-keeping, and exercise logs are available. ❑