Workouts critical to astronauts’ health,
Getting a workout looks a little different aboard the International Space Station,
Skipping workouts is not an option for astronauts at the International Space Station. They have to exercise in order to stop muscle and bone loss. Their space gym is equipped with a treadmill, a weight machine and a stationary bike that’s not exactly what you would see in an earthbound spin class.
“It should be a recumbent, but because of zero-G (zero gravity), it actually turns into more like a unicycle,” said Mark Guilliams, an astronaut strength, conditioning and rehabilitation specialist with NASA.
Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata
The ARED allows the astronauts to do “pretty much most of the exercise that you can do down here on Earth,” said trainer Guilliams. But because of the lack of gravity, astronauts aren’t also lifting their own body weight, as they would at home. They must pack on more pounds in order to get the same type of workout, he added.
NASA’s Sunita Williams
Without gravity, Virts wrote, the treadmill takes “some getting used to.” Astronauts are strapped into a shoulder harness with bungee cords to pull them down. “It feels like you are a robot, especially when walking,” he said. “You clunk on every step.”
Flight Engineer Terry Virts of NASA
NASA astronaut Terry Virts, who returned from a mission on the International Space Station last summer, called riding the bike “a little strange.”
“You don’t really have a seat; you just kind of pedal as you float,” he wrote in an email. “It requires coordination between your left and right foot to the pedal at the right frequency, but still keep your body steady as you do that.”
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov
Guilliams compares the treadmill space workout to running in a canoe. “If you’ve ever stood up in a little boat on the water, it kind of moves,” he said. “The treadmill does the same thing.” That’s because, like the weight equipment, it vibrates to absorb the force of the astronaut exercising. Without the vibration, “that force will get dispersed through the whole station, and that’s not a good thing,” Guilliams said.
The view from the cupola module
Instead of staring at the walls of a gym, astronauts have a breathtaking view of Earth while using the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) weight machine. It’s next to the cupola observatory’s panoramic windows. “While you were doing bench press or squats or dead lifts, if the whole module turned red, you knew you were over the Sahara or Australia,” Virts explained. “Or if there was a sunrise or sunset, the colours and brightness would change.”
Gerst with Russia’s Maxim Suraev
The astronauts exercise for about an hour and 45 minutes a day, six days a week. As for being tempted to skip workouts, as so many of us are here on Earth, “astronauts are human just like all of us,” Guilliams said.
“There’s days that you feel like doing things and days that you don’t. For the most part, they’re all really good. They all follow pretty much the schedule. If you think about it, they’re floating around the rest of the day.”