and his team to minimise muscle atrophy and thinning bones.
They reconfigured his routine every week or two to emphasise
exercises that strengthen the body parts (hips, pelvis, lower
back, legs, heels) most at risk for bone-mass loss and swapped
out exercises in each routine every three days or so, mainly to
avoid boredom. They changed reps and loads daily. Finally, they
assigned him 45 to 60 minutes of cardio work on the bike and
treadmill to increase the stamina needed to do tasks such as
making repairs outside the space station.
“The biggest thing, physically, that we did in 2008 was
spacewalking,” Kimbrough says. “It’s really challenging to move
this mass — the big, white space suits we have that weigh about
135kg. Being able to control one takes strength and technique.
Every time we open and close our hands we’re fighting the
pressure of the space suit, so they get worn out. We really do
everything with our hands during a space walk and very little
with our feet.”
One big hole in NASA’s “space fit” plan for the future:
Unfortunately, it’s still designing and testing exercise equipment
compact enough to fit in a spaceship that will eventually carry
astronauts to Mars — estimated to take place around 2030.
For example, at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland,
project manager Gail Perusek and her Human Research Program
team are developing compact devices that are a fraction of ARED’s
mass and volume, while improving on performance and making
them capable of supporting both short and long missions. The
larger of them will be about a tenth of ARED’s size and suitable
for a Mars mission. The smaller will be slightly
larger than a shoebox, and support missions
will be up to 21 days. “Basically, big enough to
stand on for a wide squat, with good form,”
Perusek explains.
Crew members would be able to accessorise
the new machines, adding or subtracting
parts for different exercises, kind of like a
detachable Swiss Army knife. Its functionality
as a universal gym would remain; it would also
include a rowing-machine element that would
replace, aerobically, the stationary bike and
treadmill. The plan, according to Perusek, is to
develop an International Space Station version
and transport it there in 2020 for testing.
Unfortunately, physical decline isn’t the only
hazard of life in microgravity. Even if perfect
exercise equipment is invented and optimised
for the space station and longer missions,
unsolved and unavoidable hazards remain. On
the space station you’re exposed to 10 times
more radiation than on Earth. And the farther
out you venture, the worse the threat from
“treacherous” (NASA’s word) galactic cosmic
rays, which can increase your cancer risk,
damage your central nervous system and cause
heart disease. Case in point: Apollo astronauts
who went to the moon — the only humans who’ve flown past
the Earth’s protective magnetic shield — died of cardiovascular
disease at a significantly higher rate than astronauts who flew only
low-Earth orbit or never flew at all, a recent study found. Other
new research suggests that the radiation on a planet as far away
as Mars could even cause brain damage and cognitive impairment
similar to dementia.
Not surprisingly, it’s this radiation that could eventually turn
out to be the deal breaker — though we wouldn’t bet against NASA
finding a solution for even that. For the time being, it works to
continually improveanti-radiation shielding in the space station,
monitor crew members’ levels to keep them in the best-shielded
locations, and put them on a diet rich in antioxidants to further
reduce radiation risks.
Kimbrough, who plans to remain in the astronaut program
following his mission, is focused on the things he can control
now and in the near future. He’s an evangelist for NASA’s fitness
research findings. “All the data we get from all these people
who’ve flown have shown we need to do this full-body workout.
You don’t need to have this giant chest and nothing else. You
don’t need to have giant legs and nothing else. You need to be
well-rounded.”
Guilliams concurs. “There’s a ton of science to this,” he says.
“A lot of what we’re doing is trying to figure out the best way
to train in flight, so when astronauts do get to Mars, they can
continue to do their job. That will be part of Shane’s mission.
We hope to learn a lot from what he experiences.”■Former US Army colonel and Apache pilot Shane Kimbrough, currently a NASA astronaut.“I’ve always been
one of those guys
— I just want to do
what people think
I can’t do.”APRIL 2016 MEN’S FITNESS 91