[FASTLARRY]

EXERCISE
To be a champion you must be healthy. You must maintain a proper weight. If you are now overweight eat less, eat more slowly, and eat proper food. Cut your current intake down from 25 to 30%. Half all portions. Pool is considered only mild exercise. Yes you can walk a couple miles a day and the bending over is fine. Eat incorrectly and never hit the gym and you can end up like Minnesota Fats. 300 lbs, Buddy Hall, 500 lbs, Steve Mizerak, 700 lbs. Play pool all day long, eat wrong and you get fat.

The only way to reduce or maintain a proper weight is exercise and eat less with a proper diet of good foods. The more you exercise, the better you will feel. As a pool player you need strong legs and a strong back.
Learn to go out and walk briskly right after dinner. You burn off the meal and by doing that 5 times a week you drop your risk of a fatal stroke by 40%. The way to get fat is eat late, then go lay down.

Develop a calisthenic workout. Plan to put in 30 minutes a day. This will keep you flexible and limber. Do this 6 times a week, Monday through Saturday. That is the minimum amount of exercise current studies say you need to do. 3 hours a week. You could do 15 minutes when you get out of bed, and 15 minutes when you quit work at 5pm. Everybody can work that into their busy schedules. Get some dumbbells and work some light weight training in as you go along. Drop by a gym and add some more advanced workouts on their machines and swim in their pool. Kick that amount up from 3 to 6 hours a week and watch your body begin to firm up and your weight begin to go down. It is unhealthy to reduce weight with diet alone. Exercise has to be a vital component of this. This can’t be a now and then thing, it has to become a regular thing.

Exercise:
7 benefits of regular physical activity
You know exercise is good for you — but do you know how good? From boosting your mood to improving your sex life, find out how exercise can improve your life.
You want to lose weight, simple, cut your food intake by 30% and work out. Trying to lose weight on pills without exercise rarely works.
Getting in shape stimulates hormones and keeps the endocrine system in balance. It’s good for your heart and sex life. You maintain your body’s sense of equilibrium and well being. When your hormones are in balance so is your insulin. When you lower insulin, you lose weight. The body turns fat into energy from the cells. It stimulates enkephalins or endorphins which are the feel good chemicals which are natural hormones the body makes in response to exercise.
Want to feel better, have more energy and perhaps even live longer? Look no further than old-fashioned exercise.

The merits of regular physical activity — from preventing chronic health conditions to promoting weight loss and better sleep — are hard to ignore. And the benefits are yours for the taking, regardless of age, sex or physical ability. Need more convincing? Check out seven specific ways exercise can improve your life.

1. Exercise improves your mood.
Need to blow off some steam after a stressful day? A workout at the gym or a brisk 30-minute walk can help you calm down.
Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out. You'll also look better and feel better when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem. Regular physical activity can even help prevent depression.

2. Exercise combats chronic diseases.
Worried about heart disease? Hoping to prevent osteoporosis? Physical activity might be the ticket.
Regular physical activity can help you prevent — or manage — high blood pressure. Your cholesterol will benefit, too. Regular physical activity boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good," cholesterol while decreasing triglycerides. This one-two punch keeps your blood flowing smoothly by lowering the buildup of plaques in your arteries.
And there's more. Regular physical activity can help you prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain types of cancer.

3. Exercise helps you manage your weight.
Want to drop those excess pounds? Trade some couch time for walking or other physical activities.
This one's a no-brainer. When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn — and the easier it is to keep your weight under control. You don't even need to set aside major chunks of time for working out. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk during your lunch break. Do jumping jacks during commercials. Better yet, turn off the TV and take a brisk walk. Dedicated workouts are great, but physical activity you accumulate throughout the day helps you burn calories, too.

4. Exercise boosts your energy level.
Winded by grocery shopping or household chores? Don't throw in the towel. Regular physical activity can leave you breathing easier.
Physical activity delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues. In fact, regular physical activity helps your entire cardiovascular system — the circulation of blood through your heart and blood vessels — work more efficiently. Big deal? You bet! When your heart and lungs work more efficiently, you'll have more energy to do the things you enjoy.

5. Exercise promotes better sleep.
Struggling to fall asleep? Or stay asleep? It might help to boost your physical activity during the day.
A good night's sleep can improve your concentration, productivity and mood. And you guessed it — physical activity is sometimes the key to better sleep. Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. There's a caveat, however. If you exercise too close to bedtime, you may be too energized to fall asleep. If you're having trouble sleeping, you might want to exercise earlier in the day.

6. Exercise can put the spark back into your sex life.
Are you too tired to have sex? Or feeling too out of shape to enjoy physical intimacy? Physical activity to the rescue.
Regular physical activity can leave you feeling energized and looking better, which may have a positive effect on your sex life. But there's more to it than that. Regular physical activity can lead to enhanced arousal for women, and men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don't exercise — especially as they get older.

7. Exercise can be — gasp — fun!
Wondering what to do on a Saturday afternoon? Looking for an activity that suits the entire family? Get physical!
Physical activity doesn't have to be drudgery. Take a ballroom dancing class. Check out a local climbing wall or hiking trail. Push your kids on the swings or climb with them on the jungle gym. Plan a neighborhood kickball or touch football game. Find a physical activity you enjoy, and go for it. If you get bored, try something new. If you're moving, it counts!
Are you convinced? Good. Start reaping the benefits of regular physical activity today!

Just do not over do exercise and go into a Rocky type workout. Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it... Don't waste them on too much exercise…Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap. You want to keep your muscles strong and healthy.
Running can be damaging to the joints as you get older. Fast walking is better. Always try and go out and walk off dinner.

Pool requires endurance and some events have you in there all day until late at night. The stronger you are the better player you are. I ran long distance and the mile on my school track team. I jogged from age 27 to 47 because I began to entertain a lot in fancy restaurants and was beginning to put on weight. Yes, it kept the weight off. I would run 4, 5 and sometimes 6 miles, every other day and tried to stay on soft dirt and grass as much as possible and off pavement. But in time, as I aged, it began to tear up my joints so bad I had to stop and I could see the damage it was now doing.

I now know that for good heart health I include steak, eggs a couple of times a week and a glass of wine daily with each meal.
• It may surprise you to learn that cholesterol is a very poor indicator of heart disease. In spite of the drug ads you see on TV and in magazines telling you to push your cholesterol lower and lower, traditional cholesterol scores tell you very little about your real risk.
Many people with high cholesterol never develop heart problems and at least half of the people who have heart attacks have "normal" levels of cholesterol (below 200). But there's an effective new test that gives you the real story about your cholesterol.
Traditional cholesterol tests pick up only 45% of cholesterol problems. The new one identifies about 90% of them. What's more, the new test can determine whether your cholesterol is actually dangerous or if it is present in your bloodstream but harmless in terms of triggering a heart attack.

Get the Exercise Your Heart Really Needs
Even more surprising than finding out cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease is discovering that traditional exercise ramps up your risk of heart attack.
Aerobics, jogging and marathons have led you in the wrong direction. This type of long-duration activity puts stress on your heart that actually makes it shrink. When faced with long bouts of exertion, your body will "downsize" your heart and lungs to economize its use of energy. This keeps your heart going at high output for long periods. Have you ever known or been around a marathon runner, they are like twiggy, barely 100 lbs and short.
But your body wasn't designed for long-duration activity. Your ancient ancestors never ran for hours on end. Their activity was more like short bursts of intense exertion followed by rest - the kind used during hunting or escaping from dangerous animals.

Remember the first marathon runner died at the end of it, that should tell you something. These people who run these are 100 lbs and all skin and bones. A 200 lb man is not built for this.
When you stress your heart for long periods and force it to shrink, you lose vital reserve capacity. This is the extra pumping power your heart reserves for when it really needs it. If someone is chasing you and you need to get away fast, your heart will draw on that reserve capacity to pump more blood quickly and get more oxygen to your muscles. This gives you the power to get out of trouble.

The same applies for traumatic experiences that are emotional. If you find out that a loved one has suddenly died, the shock of hearing the bad news creates a demand for more oxygen, just like when you're trying to escape danger.

Losing your reserve capacity means having a heart attack when a stressful situation arises. Every year, well-conditioned long-distance runners suffer sudden cardiac death. And distance runners have much higher rates of sudden cardiac death than all other athletes. People are shocked when they read about these people dying at 35 of a heart attack. Not me, I know why and how. Jogging will not prevent a heart attack, it may will increase your risk of one, so I do not recommend this activity.

As you age you lose muscle mass. It begins to accelerate and it becomes a 1% loss every year after age 45. There is no preventing this. You can keep what you have left, strong however. Swim, that is a perfect exercise and join a good gym or health club and work all the machines there and that is all you need to do.