ExRecord app for iPhone and iPad

What many of us dont know is that just walking will not really help improve our physical fitness. Maintaining and improving overall fitness is important to live a long life in good health*, but walking alone will not get you there. However, there is no need for hard exercise either. This app will estimate just the right intensity of exercise for you and record your daily exercise time.

What is individual exercise intensity?
It is your individual exercise intensity, just right to improve your physical fitness. While still being effective, it allows you to enjoy conversation. Not too intense and not too light either. This intensity is different for each one of us.

Why is individual exercise intensity good for you?
“No pain no gain” has long been believed to be true. The more painful, the more effective exercise was considered to be. Thats not true: actually, its been reported that overall fitness improvement is possible without hard exercise. According to various studies, unlike generally light or hard exercise, exercise performed at your individual, just right intensity results in the activation of health genes such as PGC1α. And that in turn has been proven to lead to:
1. Increase in the number of capillaries and blood pressure lowering
2. Increase in HDL cholesterol (“good” cholesterol)
3. Brain activation
It also facilitates driving blood sugar into muscles and helps insulin movements effective in diabetes prevention and improvement.

Individual exercise intensity and body movements
Individual exercise intensity is your highest intensity of aerobic exercise that doesnt lead to running out of breath, nor particularly increases your heart rate. Exceeding this intensity results in a sudden shortness of breath and a faster heart rate. Thats when the change between aerobic and anaerobic exercise occurs. Sugar and fat are both used in equal proportions as a source of energy before that point. Afterwards, it is just the sugar and lactic acid is a byproduct. As concentration of sugar in blood increases, central nerves are stimulated, the respiration as well as the heartbeat gets faster. Thats when exercise starts feeling hard. Your individual exercise intensity is the highest intensity that doesnt feel hard to you.
Individual exercise intensity will be relatively high for athletes and young people with high fitness level and low for those not particularly fit. Also, fitness increases with practice and so does your individual exercise intensity.

Individual exercise intensity measurement
Individual fitness level is usually estimated from lactate threshold, the point where lactate concentration in blood increases drastically due to increasing exercise intensity. Other than blood samples, it can be estimated from metabolic responses. The method measures the distance covered during 1-minute running that doesn’t feel hard according to the intuitive exercise intensity, a method quantifying the degree of fatigue individually felt during exercise. We recommend using this app and running at a constant intensity for 30 seconds at the highest speed that still feels easy. Repeat it 3 times to estimate your individual exercise intensity.

Intensity range setting based on your individual exercise intensity
Exercise intensity is here expressed in METs, where “1” is the equivalent of rest.
Studies have shown that estimation based on intuitive exercise intensity tends to be about 20% higher than the actual lactate threshold. Thats why in this app we will use a range of values from 5% lower to 20% higher. The time of exercise in minutes within this range will be recorded as your individual exercise intensity.

*Research Report on Exercise Standards and Guidelines by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (2013)
At the moment overall fitness is the only scientifically proven factor to reduce the risk of lifestyle diseases.