The entire team at Saltwater Athletics in Somers Point, NJ are CrossFitters who believe that physical fitness has a wealth of benefits for physical, emotional and mental health. When the CrossFit mainsite shared a recent scholarly publication from the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, published January 1, 2021, we were super interested in the results and conclusion of their research. We read the entire publication, titled “Inverse Relationship of Maximal Exercise Capacity to Hospitalization Secondary to Coronavirus Disease 2019.” It’s scientific and jargony, so we want to unpack the information a bit.
The researchers for this study noticed that there’s been significant research that highlights the link between poor clinical outcomes for patients with COVID-19 and comorbidities (ie: heart disease) or lifestyle factors like smoking/obesity, but little research that studies the link between COVID-19 complications and exercise. So that’s where they started. In explaining their study, researchers mention there’s a wealth of existing research that shows “fitness… is heavily influenced by physical activity, especially structured exercise training. In addition to improving fitness, cardiorespiratory (eg, aerobic type) exercise training improves immune function, reduces chronic low-grade inflammation, and lowers the risk of respiratory infections.” In simple terms – we already know that aerobic exercise (like CrossFit & HIIT) boosts our immune system and improves the body’s ability to fight infection, so does this mean it’s helpful for folks who contract COVID-19?
In short… yes! By using a sample of people who tested positive for COVID-19 that also had a “clinically indicated exercise stress test on a treadmill” at some point between January 2016 and February 2020, the team was able to analyze data about people’s cardiorespiratory fitness (also referred to as exercise capacity). They uncovered that folks with strong exercise capacity were less likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19-related complications. The article concluded that people should be encouraged to regularly engage in aerobic exercise. This means CrossFit, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and other regular aerobic exercise can be really helpful during a pandemic!
Some of our team members at Saltwater come from a research background, so we understand that studies can sometimes run into an experimenter bias. For example, we’re pretty clear that we believe regular physical fitness improves overall health (mental, emotional, physical). If Saltwater Athletics were to conduct a study, we’d probably have to work hard to design a way to measure “fitness” and “health” so that we don’t wind up fudging the data so support our own beliefs. The upside here? We didn’t conduct this study! The article linked above lays out their method, right down to how they quantified all the different moving parts in this study. An item to note here is that cardiorespiratory fitness has absolutely no bearing on whether or not a person contracts the virus. This research simply reveals that there are fewer hospitalizations for folks with strong exercise capacity, and we think that’s relieving for a lot of Americans!
There are plenty of ways to incorporate a structured exercise routine into your schedule, and we can do it carefully. Our team at Saltwater Athletics continues to feel hopeful and confident about our ability to safely work out together, especially as Governor Cuomo and other officials continue to release data that shows gyms have minimal spread of COVID-19! If you’re interested in getting started (or continuing!) your fitness journey, give Saltwater Athletics a call and check us out: 609-342-9974.
Here’s the link to the full research study:
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(20)31130-7/fulltext