Saturday, August 14, 2010

Which sports have the highest exercise values?

The following is an English translation of my old note made almost 30 years ago of an article in Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (China Youth Newspaper), March 22, 1981, issue#3689. The article is titled "Which sports have the highest exercise values?". It has no information on what methods they used to create this table and what medical science research was behind the numbers. But for what it's worth, it looks interesting, and seems to be consistent with our common sense.


jogging bicycle swim-
ming
skating hand-
ball
basket-
ball
tennis gymnas
-tics
walking softball
heart/lung
endurance
21 19 21 18 19 19 16 10 13 6
muscle
endurance
20 18 20 17 18 17 16 13 14 8
muscle
strength
17 16 14 15 15 15 14 16 11 7
flexibility 9 9 16 13 16 13 14 19 7 9
balance 17 18 12 20 17 16 16 15 8 7
weight
control
21 20 15 17 19 19 16 12 13 7
muscle
building
14 15 14 17 11 13 13 18 11 5
digestion 13 12 13 11 13 10 12 11 11 8
sleep 16 15 16 15 12 12 11 12 14 7
sum 148 142 140 140 140 134 128 126 102 64


The word "gymnastics" is actually "柔软体操" in Chinese, or "flexibility gymnastics" literally, and "walking" is "散步" or "slow walking", not vigorous walking as in modern day health advice. Needless to say, the sports in the table are to be treated as sports, not leisurely activities. For instance, swimming does not mean you immerse your body in the pool for a whole afternoon and swing your arms once every few minutes, and biking is not slowly cycling around a beautiful lake in a family outing. Have you heard of people say they gained weight by "swimming"? Now you know why.