First there were the Bible-based diets (remember What Jesus Ate and The Hallelujah Diet?). Now you can get fit using the Bible. Faith-Ordered Rotational Movement (FORM) is a fitness programme that integrates biblical teachings into a workout for body and soul. To set the mood, Kathryn Linehan, the FORM instructor, plays gentle music and gets participants to exercise under low lighting. “Imagine God’s arms are around your waist, pulling you up,” she begins before reciting the first line of the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Linehan says she chose this psalm because “it was almost like the stretches made me remember the words” (www.studioignite.com). The faithful can also exercise with Billy Blanks’s DVD Tae Bo Believer’s Workout: The Strength Within. See www.billyblanks.com
Using antioxidants has become a popular practice among endurance athletes, who believe that it speeds their recovery. There have been several trials — including one at Oregon State University last year — which have indicated that vitamins C and E help to prevent the usual increase in lipid oxidation (a kind of damage that can weaken cells) that results from extreme exercise. However, a new study in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports Exercise found that daily supplements of vitamins C (1,000mg) and E (300mg) for six weeks had no effect on exercise-induced muscle damage or recovery in a group of ultra-marathon runners during a 50km (31-mile) race.
Anyone looking for love as well as hoping to shed a few pounds could consider attending the Isle of Wight walking festival in May. This 16-day event, which attracted 15,500 participants last year, is the biggest of its kind in the UK. While each of the 180 walks has its own particular challenge, none quite matches the speed-dating walk that is being introduced this year. Potential lovebirds will meet at a local pub before heading off on a three-hour coastal hike, changing partners at five-minute intervals. Walkers will be advised at the finish if they have made a match.
See www.isleofwightwalkingfestival.co.uk
Up to one child in six now leaves primary school unable to swim even 25 metres (82ft), and many will not have learnt to swim by the time they are adults. They don’t know what they are missing, according to the Amateur Swimming Association (www.britishswimming.org), which is launching Everyday Swim, a £3 million campaign intended to get more adults and children to take the plunge. There are benefits peculiar to working out in water — because it is a thousand times denser than air, water provides up to 12 times the resistance that you would get from exercising on land, so every movement counts. A few lengths of any stroke will call on all the major muscles.
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Yo-yo exercisers are unlikely to lose weight and keep it off, according researchers at the University of Arizona. Professor Timothy Lohman and his colleagues followed a group of 136 women dieters while they completed an exercise programme for four months. In the short term, all the subjects lost an average of 6.2 per cent of their body weight. But those who continued exercising for a year afterwards kept it off because they were more “intrinsically motivated”.
TRAINING TIP: Whether to stretch before or after exercise is a continuing debate among exercise scientists. Some think it is essential to prepare the body for intense activity, others believe that it can be counterproductive to performance. Dr Ian Shrier, a past president of the Canadian Academy of Sport Medicine, reviewed the evidence for The Physician and Sportsmedicine journal last year and concluded that stretching immediately before a workout causes a small, temporary reduction in a muscle’s power. But stretching shouldn’t be abandoned altogether, he says — one study showed that regular flexibility exercises improve an athlete’s sprint times. Shrier suggests stretching five times a week either after exercise or at a different time in the day altogether.