The Art of Aerobics

As a high school track star in Oklahoma City, Kenneth Hardy Cooper weighed 165 Ibs. and ran the mile in 4 mm. 30 sec. As a medical student at the University of Oklahoma, he ballooned to 196 Ibs. Soon after graduation in 1956, Dr. Cooper tried waterskiing. "I lasted three minutes," he recalls. "I was so out of condition that I nearly passed out from exhaustion, and I did throw up."

Now Cooper has trimmed down to 175 Ibs. He has rehabilitated not only himself and his wife but countless other Americans through the exercise system that he calls "aerobics" (literally living in air). Cooper has stretched the word to mean "promoting the supply and use of oxygen." To him, it spells vigorous, breath-taking exercise at least four or five days a week.

Four-Quart Goal. The amount of work that muscles do can be measured by the amount of oxygen they consume. Soon after Cooper entered the Air Force in 1960, he was assigned to its School of Aerospace Medicine near San Antonio. Using thousands of airmen as his captive subjects, Cooper hit upon a twelve-minute run (now recommended only for men under 30) as the basic test. If the greatest distance a man can cover in those twelve minutes is less than a mile, he is in Cooper's very poor" fitness category. If he weighs 154 Ibs. (70 kg.), he is burning less than two liters (quarts) of oxygen a minute. For a twelve-minute run of one to 1 1/4 miles. Cooper rates a man's condition as just plain "poor"; 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 miles, with the oxygen consumption up to about three quarts a minute, earns fair." "Good" is the mark for 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 miles, and "excellent" for any distance over that--which means an oxygen consumption pushing four quarts a minute.

Training Effect. Cooper was appalled by the number of presumably fit young airmen who rated "poor," and has since become convinced that only one American in five can be considered truly fit. The remedy, he decided, is sustained muscular work--and indeed overwork--to produce a "training effect." The cardinal requirement of aerobic exercise is that it must tax the person's capacity to the point where he is breathing hard and his heart is pounding at 130 beats per minute or more. Cooper grades exercises according to how fast they induce the training effect and increase oxygen use. Running and jogging rank first, followed by swimming, cycling stationary running, the handball-squash-basketball group of sports, and walking. An aerobics fan must attain a weekly score of at least 30 points on Cooper's scale. He may do this by walking three rules in no more than 41 minutes five times a week, by swimming 700 yards in 15 minutes five times a week, or by running a mile in eight minute's only twice a week. But except for those under 30, no running in the first six weeks. For women, 24 points a week are enough, with the exercises scaled down proportionately.

When his first book, Aerobics, was published three years ago. Cooper had had little experience with women's exercise needs or with the problems of the middle-aged and older male. "I made a mistake," he admits. "The twelve-minute-run test should not have been included for older civilians."

After Aerobics had sold 2,000,000 copies, Cooper brought out The New Aerobics (Bantam Books), which confidently urges older women to use the system for prolonging good looks and vitality. It also prescribes strict precautions for the out-of-condition of any age and especially for the elderly. Instead of the twelve-minute run, the exerciser now grades himself by covering 1 1/2 miles at whatever pace he can manage. This reduces initial stress. The time elapsed can be transformed into a fitness category by using the book's elaborate tables.

Track and Pool. Men or women up to the age of 30, Cooper now says may start a graduated aerobics program if they have had a complete physical examination, with a careful health history, within the preceding year. Between 30 and 40, to be safe, they must have had the physical within three months, and it must include an electrocardiogram. For people from 41 to 59, the ECG must be taken both at rest and while exercising. Over 60, all the preceding requirements must be met immediately before training starts.

With the rank of lieutenant colonel, Cooper has now retired from the Air Force and is setting up an Institute for Aerobics Research in a suburb of Dallas. On an 8 1/2-acre site, he will have half-mile and one-mile tracks and an Olympic-size swimming pool. Not yet ready to take patients, he is already swamped with applicants, many of them middle-aged men worried by the deadly statistics of heart-artery disease and premature deaths in the U.S. "I'm practicing preventive medicine," Cooper says. He believes that his measurements of heart action and oxygen metabolism under stress enable him to forecast with 80% accuracy whether a man is likely to have a heart attack within five years.

By his own criteria, Cooper is not, though he travels continually and has had no vacation in two years. Somehow he manages to get in 20 minutes of running four or five times a week. His wife Mildred accompanies him at least part of the four-mile way. With aerobics adopted at scores of Y.M. and Y.W.C.A. centers, hundreds of clubs springing up, and an estimated 8,000,000 Americans trying the system, Cooper has done much to increase the U.S. consumption of oxygen on a basis that is medically and physiologically sound.

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