10 Quirky Facts About Exercise

It’s good for your mind. It gets the endorphins on fire. It makes the jeans fit a little better. It makes your skin glow.

But did you know these 10 ridiculously bizarre facts about exercising?

• The word ‘gymnasium’ comes from the Greek word “gymnazein”, which literally means “to exercise naked”. Errr, that could be awkward.
• There are over 640 muscles in your body. How many hours in the gym would it take to build each one of them?
• When you run, your body puts 6x times the pressure on your feet (exactly why good shoes are important).
• After the age of 25, women lose minimum 0.5% muscle mass each year, that increases to 1% following menopause. Step up that weight training, ladies!
• Facts about some of the strongest muscles in your body:
  ** The glutes – the largest and most powerful, with the weight to keep the trunk in an upright position.
  ** The heart – hardest working, with the ability to beat over 3 billion times in one lifetime.
  ** The uterus – it pushes a baby out; need I say more?!
  ** The soleus (below the calf) – it pulls against the force of gravity when you walk or run; do your lunges, people.
  ** The tongue – yep! It’s tough as it constantly works even when you are asleep by pushes saliva down the throat. And it’s the only muscle that is attached at one end.

• Forward locomotion i.e. walking and running, is actually the process of losing your balance and catching your balance! Tricky!
• The longest time in a plank position ever recorded is 3 hours, 7 minutes and 15 seconds in 2013. Wowza!
• Ladies! Prepare yourself for this one – ‘coregasm’ is a side effect some women experience during an intense core workout. Experts say it’s the ‘feel-good feeling from contracting your muscles during core exercises that mimics those you use at that other time, i.e. during sex’. Ahem, any of you experienced it?
• It’s claimed that garlic can treat and cure athlete’s foot because of its antimicrobial property. Foot odour taken to another level, people!
• The ‘jockstrap’ was the idea behind the modern sports bra. A husband, jokingly, said to Lindahl (one of the developers) ‘you need a jockbra’; and that’s when they first tried stitching two jockstraps together.