Podcast 16

Is It Safe to Wear a Mask While Exercising?

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SHOW NOTES

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not wearing a mask during exercise is a safe thing to do. Amy and Brian breakdown the studies and science behind wearing a mask and oxygen intake, and reveal why The Exercise Coach program makes wearing a mask a minor detail in the pursuit of fitness results.

• Covid has made wearing a mask much more common but a lot of people are wondering if it’s okay to wear a mask while exercising. At the beginning of the pandemic the Exercise Coach committed to following the various guidelines, and that includes requiring masks.
• Generally speaking, wearing a mask is not going to hamper your workout. A good example would be how athletes have been using altitude training masks to increase physical performance for years.
• They don’t strictly simulate being at a higher elevation, but they do increase the effectiveness of your lungs and breathing capacity.
• At ground level, we get all the oxygen we need to perform optimally. When we feel wiped out and exhausted from exercise, it’s not due to a lack of oxygen. Even with a surgical mask, you have more than enough oxygen.
• Studies have been completed that show there isn’t an impact on physical performance when wearing a surgical mask. They looked at the effect on blood pressure, heart rate during exercise, oxygen saturation, and carbon dioxide levels.
• If you have a chronic lung disease talk to your healthcare provider before performing exercise while wearing a mask. For healthy people, wearing a mask during exercise is not harmful.
• The Exercise Coach has seen thousands of clients over the past year and they are still getting results despite the mask. Many of the clients are actually surprised at how little impact a mask actually has.
• The fact that the program is brief and the studios are kept cool and well ventilated makes the workout experience quite enjoyable, even with a mask on.
• The workouts are still intense and effective, and since they emphasize the lowering portion of the training they net better results than traditional strength training while reducing the requirement for your body’s cardiorespiratory output to increase.
• Eccentric training produces more force and gets you more benefits. An emphasis on the lowering portion is an advanced training technique, yet it’s more comfortable.

Based on our understanding of some pretty basic exercise physiology, we thought we predicted yes, wearing a mask would be safe, it would not hamper your performance.

Welcome back to the strength changes everything podcast. I’m Amy Hudson. And today my co host Brian Sagan, CEO and co founder of the exercise coach are going to answer the question, is it safe to wear a mask while exercising? This is a super popular question as we’ve been going through 2020 and the start of the pandemic that we have all experienced. We have come to realize there’s been a new normal out there of mask wearing and mask mandates and things like that. And so when it comes to exercise, is it safe to wear a mask while exercising?

Hey, Brian, let’s hear your thoughts on this question.

Okay. And as you said, Amy, in 2020 and 2021, this is something that we’ve had to contend with. And at the Exercise Coach, we just committed early on in the pandemic to just following the various guidelines and requirements that existed across the country. Those varied and have varied sometimes from region to region, from time to time. But it has meant that for going on the last year, for almost that entire time, for almost All of our clients at all times, they have been wearing masks in our studios at the exercise coach. And right at the beginning of the pandemic, we started to get questions like this, questions about the safety of wearing a mask while exercising.

And based on our understanding of some pretty basic exercise physiology, We thought, we predicted, yes, wearing a mask would be safe. It would not hamper your performance. But not everybody has training in exercise physiology and was able to think about it through that lens. And so it was a really valid question. I just remember it was interesting right before the pandemic hit, something that was getting really popular was the wearing of masks during really intense workouts by athletes and exercisers. And they were wearing these masks, not like a surgical mask or an N95 mask, but a training mask, a mask called an altitude mask.

And so athletes and exercisers were actually wearing these and they were doing so because they believe that they will increase performance. And so I just remember thinking how ironic that right before this, just all over the social media feed, I’m seeing these masks on everybody. Everybody’s wearing masks, but now we’re asking, is it safe to wear a surgical mask while I’m exercising? These altitude masks. I’ll actually say are a little bit of a misnomer. In fact, I’ve got a quote here from Sean Arndt, who is the director of kinesiology at Rutgers University.

He says that these training masks do not simulate elevation or altitude training. And others think that they do have a more significant effect, but what they’re really improving when these athletes wear them is the ability of your breathing muscles to perform. They’re really strengthening your breathing muscles. And so there might be something to them, but they don’t exactly simulate being at elevation. Another thing I thought about was I remembered back to when I was in school and I remember learning many years ago that the oxygen tanks on the sidelines at the football games didn’t really work, that they didn’t really make a difference. And the reason for that is during the

circumstances, we are just getting plenty of oxygen in our bodies, if we’re healthy, to be delivered throughout our body for all the work that we need to perform. When we feel wiped out and exhausted during a football game or during exercise, it’s not because we’re not getting enough oxygen from the air to deliver the oxygen to our bodies. And so breathing 100 % oxygen or more oxygen actually isn’t going to make a difference. We always have plenty of a reserve of oxygen to draw on. And these things have informed what I thought about wearing a surgical mask during exercise. I thought, We will have plenty of oxygen.

And so that’s what now the studies really have borne out. Studies have been completed now, and we can look at them and look to them for answers about performance and safety. And what they show is really whether it’s a longer, lower intensity type of work, or even in shorter, more vigorous exercise, that there really isn’t an impact on performance. And that’s even with N95 masks, let alone a surgical mask, which is what most people are wearing when they’re doing an exercise session. And so these studies have led, for example, the Mayo Clinic to say it’s safe to wear a mask while exercising for most people. And just to define what we mean by safe, in these studies, what’s being looked at are things like heart rate during exercise, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and carbon dioxide levels and just looking at the comparison of these metrics with and without the use of a mask.

They go on to say though, however, if you have a chronic lung disease, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, mesothelioma or pulmonary hypertension, talk with your healthcare provider before attempting any physical activity. a heart or a lung condition, it’s safe for them to wear a mask while performing even vigorous exercise. The CDC has an answer out there. They say for healthy people, wearing masks during exercise has not been shown to be harmful. And then they say the same thing. People with lung disease or asthma or COPD should talk to a health care provider.

And that makes perfect sense to us. But at this point, all going on about a year, we have now at the exercise coach across the country, supervised well over a half a million exercise sessions, brief high effort strength training sessions, also including much of the time interval training as well. We’ve concluded more than a half a million of these sessions. And our clients are getting stronger, losing weight, getting healthier, and they’re still coming to the exercise coach and getting great results without adverse effects. And Amy, I know you operate a studio and work with a lot of coaches and clients. Maybe you could share your experience with masks.

For sure.

Yeah, I’d love to. And what you said, I love the fact that’s true. We see and continue to see thousands of clients getting healthy, starting an exercise program, even during a pandemic, while we have to get used to a change. When we first had the masks requirements rolled out at a statewide level and then at a federal level, Per the CDC, it was something that was new to everybody. It was a change that people had to get used to. But as studios, we are following guidance on that.

And what our clients have found is that they’re actually surprised at how much it really doesn’t get in the way of their workout, how easy it is to perform the workout that we’re doing at the exercise coach in a mask. The fact that it’s brief, the fact that it’s 20 minutes, the fact that we keep our studios cool. comfortable, all help the clients to completely perform the workout fine with the mask on. And they’re just surprised at how it was a lot better than they expect, a lot better of an experience than they expect.

Yeah, I had the same experience. Personally, I just remember, okay, we’re going to be wearing masks working out. I remember running over to, you know, studio nearby as soon as I could with a mask on to go through my first workout and yeah, and found it’s a little different, but really, it’s just not that bad. bad at all. And like you said, they can perform the workout, but it’s not an easy workout they’re performing. It’s still, we call a whole effort workout.

This is high intensity strength training. It’s brief and it’s intense enough to get people the results that matter most to them with just one or two 20 minute workouts per week, but they can perform it with the mask on. And there’s probably some reasons in addition to what you said, which is perfect. It’s brief. So we’re not working out for an hour. We’re not working out in a bunch of heat, but The way that we use technology to perform strength training at the exercise coach is a little different.

We incorporate something called eccentric training. There’s a significant eccentric training component to the workouts at the exercise coach. And this just means that we’re able to really emphasize the lowering portion of strength training or the muscle lengthening portion of strength training. And what research and our experience shows is you actually get really powerful and better benefits from that part of the strength training than even only doing the lifting portion. And the really interesting physiological fact of eccentric training is this, even though you can generate more force during the lengthening phase of resistance training, there is a reduced requirement for body’s cardiorespiratory output to increase.

So eccentric training or the lowering portion of resistance training, you can produce more force, get better benefits, yet It doesn’t require your body to increase heart rate, increase respiratory rate, like the lifting portion of resistance training does. And very often we’re using a very balanced protocol where we’re really doing a good deal of both, emphasizing the lifting and the lowering portion. but an emphasis on the lowering portion is actually an advanced training technique and something that we have actually designed into the workouts at the exercise coach. And one of the really neat benefits is that now we can actually use what is technically an advanced technique yet is actually more comfortable. It’s less uncomfortable. Another thing I didn’t mention is your muscles burn less when we do eccentric emphasis work.

So it’s really fascinating. You can produce more force, get more strength benefits from eccentric training, yet you don’t breathe as hard while you’re doing it. And your muscles don’t burn as much while you’re doing it. Again, reducing the overall discomfort of effective exercise while we’re throwing the wearing of a mask on top of it.

Yeah. Isn’t that great? I think that’s so ideal. And so if you are a person who maybe doesn’t think or hasn’t thought that you’d be interested in starting an exercise program while having to wear a mask during this time, but you know, you need to get healthy that, you know, you’d like the benefits that exercise has to offer. We encourage you to give the exercise program a try at the exercise coach, visit exercisecoach . com and you can register for two free sessions to give it a try and see what you are able to do.

by restoring that muscle mass in your body and metabolic function to get healthy, to stay healthy, especially during a pandemic. We will see you next time on the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Have a great week, everyone.