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Reprinted from the New York Times. I really liked this article. Good info that bears repeating.
WHEN Helen Betancourt, an assistant coach at Princeton, was preparing for the World Championships in rowing in 1998, she suffered an overuse injury: stress fractures of her ribs. She competed anyway, but then had to take five months off.

Like most athletes, she did her best to maintain her fitness, spending hours cycling. Finally, she returned to her sport.

“I lost half my strength,” she said. And rowing just felt weird. “It was like I had stepped off another planet.”

Yet a couple of months later, much faster than it takes to get that strong to begin with, Ms. Betancourt felt like her old self on the water. Four months of rowing and she was in top form.

It shows, exercise physiologists say, that training is exquisitely specific: you can acquire and maintain cardiovascular fitness with many activities, but if you want to keep your ability to row, or run, or swim, you have to do that exact activity.

It also shows, they say, that people who work out sporadically, running on weekends, for instance, will never reach their potential.

This is a time of year when many people who exercised religiously for months cannot maintain their exercise schedules because they are traveling, or they have a severe cold, or simply because they are celebrating holidays with family.

That may not matter if you do not want to compete, and there is no reason why everyone who works out would want to race. But if competition or a new personal record is your goal, exercise physiologists have some lessons to impart.

Training has a pronounced effect on the heart, says Matthew Hickey, the director of a human performance laboratory at Colorado State University. Athletes develop a lower resting heart rate, their hearts beat slower during exercise, and their hearts are larger than they were before training began.

They also have a greater blood plasma volume, which allows the heart to pump more blood with each beat. One of the first and most noticeable effects of detraining is that that plasma volume is lost.

“It’s water in your plasma,” said Joseph Houmard, the director of the Human Performance Laboratory at East Carolina State University. “You just lose it. There’s no reason to keep it.”

Plasma water is lost amazingly fast, said Dr. Paul Thompson, a marathon runner and cardiologist at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.

“We once paid distance runners $10 a day not to run,” Dr. Thompson recalled. “They spent a lot of time in the men’s room urinating.” Two days into their running fast, he said, the men lost a little more than two pounds from water weight as their plasma volume fell 8 percent.

But if runners keep running, even if they cover many fewer miles than at their peak, they can maintain their plasma volume, Dr. Thompson said.

When athletes stop training, the heart also pumps less blood to their muscles with each beat. Both changes are so pronounced, says Edward Coyle, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas, Austin, that within three months of detraining, athletes are no different in these measures than people who had been sedentary all their lives.

But athletes, like Ms. Betancourt who do alternative activities still find that they lose a lot of conditioning.

It makes sense, Dr. Coyle said, because each activity trains specific muscles and the muscles change biochemically as a result.

He compares bicycling and running: Fast runners propel themselves forward, using their calves and ankles. With bicycling, the ankles barely move and the calves play little role. Instead, the quadriceps muscles at the front of the thigh power the bike.

Even exercises that seem similar are rarely similar enough, Dr. Coyle added. Some injured runners run in a pool, wearing a vest. That, Dr. Coyle said, is not the same as running on land. In fact, it is more like bicycling because it uses the quadriceps muscles to push against the water.

Training is especially challenging for people who want to compete in more than one sport, like triathletes, and have to divide their training time among different activities, exercise physiologists say. It’s also hard for people who reduce their exercise time because they are traveling or busy at work.

When training time is limited, Dr. Coyle said, “you have to decide where you will get the biggest performance bang for the hour you spend.”

The key, he found in his research, is to substitute intensity of effort for time. “A runner who’s been running doesn’t need much time to maintain his performance,” Dr. Coyle said. “But the training needs to be almost like racing.”

Dr. Rafael Escandon, a medical researcher in San Francisco, did it all wrong this summer when he trained for a September triathlon in Cancún, Mexico.

Dr. Escandon said he was a natural runner who completed 43 marathons. But he spent most of the summer cycling. When he ran, he did not push himself and he averaged at most 15 miles a week. He normally runs a half marathon in about 90 minutes.

When race day came, Dr. Escandon did great in the swimming and bicycling segments, even averaging almost 25 miles an hour when he was riding.

But running was another story. He ran the half marathon segment in 2 hours 17 minutes, “my worst ever, by far, far, far under any conditions,” he said. “I completely fell apart.”

But the good news is that it takes much less time to regain fitness for a specific sport than it did to become fit in the first place.

Even exercise physiologists are surprised at how quickly the body can readapt when training resumes. Almost immediately, blood volume goes up, heartbeats become more powerful, and muscle mitochondria come back.

Of course, researchers say, individuals respond differently and young people may bounce back faster than older athletes. But, they say, speed and strength and endurance do return, even in deconditioned athletes, some of whose lab test results look like those of a sedentary person.

Part of the reason, researchers say, is that training may elicit lasting effects that are very hard to measure, like changes in nerve-firing patterns and blood vessels. Dr. Coyle, who has measured muscle mitochondria, said that even though muscles lose mitochondria when athletes stop training, they retain more of them than are found in muscles of a person who has always been sedentary.

But another reason may be that athletes, unlike most inactive people, know how to train and how to push themselves.

Dr. Michael Joyner, an exercise researcher at the Mayo Clinic, saw the effects of detraining and retraining firsthand. He was a young man at the time (he’s now 49), a college athlete, and had been training continuously for several years, running an average of 80 miles a week.

“It was all very macho and I had a bunch of buddies to run with,” Dr. Joyner said. “Someone was always prepared to pick up the pace.”

Then he agreed to be a subject in one of Dr. Coyle’s deconditioning studies, which required him to stop running entirely for 12 weeks.

When he started running again, Dr. Joyner could hardly believe it. Running was so hard, he was so slow, he became tired so fast. But he persevered, running 30 miles a week for the first couple of weeks and then increasing his mileage.

“I just sort of got back with the group and started pushing it,” he said. Which, of course, is the key.

“A lot of coming back is knowing how to read your body and how to manage your suffering,” Dr. Joyner said.

But there are real rewards.

“I was back to normal again in about a month,” Dr. Joyner said.

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Let’s face it - if your butt looks good then you feel good! Of all the parts of your body you think about this is one the part that you probably aren’t happy with. We could ALL have a better butt…..with the help of the following exercises, you can have a better butt too!

1. Squats with Medicine Ball
Squats don’t just help your butt - they are a good overall cardio exercise that tones up your thighs and hips as well. With your feet planted wider than your shoulders stand upright in front of your ball. Place a 2-5 lb medicine ball between your knees. Lower down your butt parallel to the floor as you sqat.

2. Barbell/Dumbbell Squats w/Balance
Stand upright holding your barbells/dumbbells by your sides (or over your shoulders if you want a harder workout). Squat down, lowering your butt parallel to the floor. As you stand up lift one foot from the floor, place that ankle next to the opposite knee and hold until balanced.

3. Step Ups
Stand in front of a workout bench or step and then put one foot on it. Push down with the top foot to stand on the step and then return to the beginning position.

4. Traditional Deadlifts
Stand with your barbells/dumbbells held in front of your thighs. Bend from the hips (pressing your butt backwards) and lower your bells down to the floor as far as you can comfortably go.

5. Cycling
Cycling is great because you can do it in the gym or outdoors. In the gym you can join a spinning class. Outside the gym think about riding to work. Remember to get some resistance to really work your butt - find some hills!

6. Running
Running can be a great butt toner - especially if you make sure to find challenging slopes or hills. Work some sprints into your workout to up resistance as well.

7. Butt Kickers
Get down on the floor on your hands and knees. Extend one leg behind you, and bend the knee at a 45 degree angle. Lower the knee to the floor and then raise the knee back up, stopping at hip level.

8. Lunges
Stand upright with your feet shoulder width and your toes facing forward. Take a step back with one leg (the foot should almost be on tiptoes). Bend the knee of the leg that is to the front - as you do this the other leg will lower down. Stop when the back leg is around six inches off the floor and then push the front foot down to return to standing.

9. Exercise Ball Bridges
Lie flat on the floor on your back with your feet on an exercise ball. Extend your arms out to either side of your body. Your knees should be straight. Press your legs into the ball until the hips lift from the floor, roll the ball toward your butt and then return to the straight leg position.

10. Leg Presses
Set yourself up on a leg press machine. Your arms should be your sides and your back should be flat on the backrest. If you position your feet so that your heels are doing most of the pushing when you push up then you’ll add emphasis to the butt with the press.

New exercises should always be treated with care - ease yourself in rather than rushing to take on too much. You won’t get the perfect butt if you injure your back! If in doubt then a personal trainer will be able to give you the best advice.

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Working on your legs can improve your stamina, shape and overall fitness. If you don’t work on your lower body as well - you won’t see the kind of ‘whole body’ benefits that you CAN achieve and the body shape won’t be in proportion. Great leg and butt exercises are a must. Here are my current top 10 leg exercises:

1. Step Calf Raises
This exercise is great for toning the calf muscles - you’ll need a step and some dumbbells. Stand on the step and position your feet so that the heels are slightly off the edge. Hold the dumbbells to the side and push up on to your toes.

2. Lunges
Stand holding dumbbells at your sides with your feet about a hip width apart. Step forward with one foot - when the foot hits the floor bend it and lean forward so that your other leg bends towards the floor.

3. One Legged Squats
Stand sideways next to a wall and place the palm of your hand on the wall just under the level of your shoulder. Extend your arm and position your body so you feel comfortable - you’ll use the wall for balance and support. Make sure that the foot that isn’t next to the wall is at a 45 degree angle and bend the leg nearest the wall back. Keep upright and lower your body until the knee that isn’t bearing your weight is close to the floor then push back up again.

4. Hamstring Bridges
Lie down flat on your back. Keep one foot on the ground and lift the other one up and hold it there. By using your hamstrings in your leg you can lift your body and then lower it back down again.

5. Squats
Using either dumbbells or a barbell, stand with your feet a shoulder width apart and lower yourself down until your knees are fully bent at a 45 degree angle and you are squatting. Push up until you are upright again.

6. Dumbbell Step Ups
Take your dumbbells and use one leg to step up on the step. Then step up with the other leg and step down again.

7. Dumbbell Plie
Squat down with your legs around a shoulder width apart. Hold your dumbbells in front of you with the palms of your hands facing inwards. Move into a standing position whilst opening your arms in a T position.

8. Leg Presses
Sit on a leg press machine - your feet should be around a shoulder width apart. Without altering the position of your hips bend the knees to a 45 degree angle while lowering the weight, then push it back up, extending and straightening the legs.

9. One Legged Press with Exercise Ball
Sit on your exercise ball and walk/roll forward until your knees are bent. Straighten out one leg, keeping the other one bent. Use the heel of the bent leg to push up on the exercise ball and push down on the heel of the extended leg as it drags in the movement.

10. Leg Circles with Exercise Band
Lie flat on the ground with one knee bent and the foot placed flat on the floor. Then extend the other leg straight up toward the ceiling. The band should be wrapped round the foot that is pointing upwards. You need to hold both ends of the band in the hand on the side of the leg that points up - keeping your leg straight, start to make circles with your leg at the hip in a counter-clockwise direction. Reverse and switch legs.

If you are unsure about the best leg exercises for your exact fitness level then an online personal trainer or a personal trainer at your local gym will be able to give you the best advice.

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