Top Fitness Guide

In recent years, spin classes have taken off as one of the most popular workout classes out there. People swear by spin, SoulCycle, and many other variations of indoor cycling. If you’d like to try spin but aren’t sure what exactly to expect, here is everything you need to know. What is Spinning? Spinning is done on a special stationary spinning bike . You can control the resistance on the bike and difficultly level of the class from your seat. Spin is more than just riding a stationary bike. An instructor walks you through a full body workout on the bike. Many classes also use fun lighting and upbeat music. Where To Spin There are spin-specific studios, such as SoulCycle, that focus primarily on spin. Many standard gyms now also offer spin as a part of their regular class schedules. Space is limited to the number of bikes in the room, so you typically have to sign up in advance or get there very early. Even if you do sign up online, you need to get there at le...

Do you want to be a healthy person? Someone who is in shape, without being on a diet or some crazy routine all of the time? Do you want to make fitness a permanent part of your lifestyle? Most people do. Creating a lifestyle that fitness fits into is the key to long term success. You cannot be on a diet forever – but you can generally default to eating healthy foods. You can make working out a few times a week a habit that you enjoy and look forward to. How do you get there? How do you get over the hump and go from a fitness routine being something you are consciously doing, to part of who you are? The key is to change your habits. To get to the stage where you are doing the things you need to do, without thinking about it. No motivation or accountability is required – you just do it. If you look at the four stages of learning, many of you will be yo-yoing between conscious competence (making yourself do the right things, following a diet, getting yourself mo...

The world was introduced to “cupping” as a practice in the 2016 Olympics, where the tell tale marks were easily visible on elite Olympic athletes that are using the practice to reduce pain and improve performance.   While it may have been little known to the general public, cupping has been around as a form of alternative medicine for thousands of years, traditionally practiced by acupuncturists and eastern medical practitioners, and now practiced by a number of more modern therapists including physical therapists and massage therapists. Cupping works by using a flame to heat the air inside a glass cup, causing the air to expand.   The cup is then placed on the skin, where the air inside the cup rapidly cools and creates a vacuum with the skin, causing a pulling sensation that stretches the skin and underlying structures.  The Origins and Theory of Cupping From an Eastern perspective, the theory behind cupping is similar to the theory behind acupunctu...

Guys… Who doesn’t want big arms? Every man wants a set of bulging biceps to show off his physicality and strength. It’s a body part that you see getting the most attention in the gym, from guys young and old. Unfortunately, a lot of people suck at arm development, because their training is all wrong. So, let’s look at how to train the arms for sleeve-tearing effectiveness. Not Just Biceps The first mistake a lot of guys make is only doing curls. Dozens and dozens of sets of curls. The biceps are important, and curls are an important part of any arm routine, but the arms are not just biceps. In fact, the triceps at the back of the arm are bigger in surface area than the biceps, meaning developed triceps give the look of much bigger arms. For a fully developed arm, you need to train the biceps, triceps and forearms. It’s easy for your arms to look big when you have a vest on, but if you want to show your strength in a t-shirt,...

They say that strong people are harder to kill. I’d add that they’re also less likely to get injured, in any capacity. Strength is the foundation of a body fit for anything. Be that running, team sports, obstacle races, or just daily life. There’s a right way to do strength training in this context. The 220lb bodybuilder might well be as solid as a rock – but he’s not particularly athletic or mobile. Fortunately, you can be strong; without being huge and un-athletic. In this post I’ll lay out the key do’s and don’ts for getting not strong and bullet-proof; but also faster, more agile and flexible. Free weight training for stability Free weights are going to challenge the bodies stabilizing muscles where machines will not. Machines will make the primary mover stronger, but not the supporting muscles. This actually increases the injury risk in many cases – assuming separate work is not done to strengthen the supporting muscles that are not active during the machine ...

Statistically the third week of January is when most people ‘fall off the wagon’ on their New Year’s resolutions and fail in their fitness goals. For a couple of weeks you might have been dedicated and disciplined; hitting the gym before work and strictly eating a healthy diet. After a couple of weeks, you will naturally start to crave foods you are missing, as the initial surge of motivation starts to deplete. The gym becomes less and less appealing. What do you need to do to keep it up? To stick with your healthy lifestyle for more than 2 or 3 weeks, and finally make this the year that it sticks and you achieve your goals? The first thing we must do is define what failure is and isn’t. What is Failure? Failure is not eating one meal that isn’t on your diet plan, or missing one gym session. We have to move away from the thinking that anything other than 100% perfection is a failure. You’re a human being, life happens and you are never going to get everythin...

You know how important exercise is to leading a healthy lifestyle. You probably do cardio at least a few times a week and hopefully work on building strength and muscle, as well. One aspect of exercise that often gets forgotten is stretching. Stretching is crucial to a well-rounded workout plan. In fact, it’s just as important as strength and cardio are to your routine. Here are the benefits of stretching regularly . Better Posture If you’ve been working on building a strong core and shoulders, you should be able to stand up nice and tall. However, if your muscles are too tight, it could be causing you to hunch over. In addition to strength, keeping yourself limber will lead to better posture.   Makes Workouts More Accessible If you want to perfect your pistol squat but can’t get low enough to do it, it might not be a strength issue. Increased flexibility will make it easier for you to achieve those difficult moves. When your hips and hamstrings are loose, you...

A foam roller is an extremely versatile piece of equipment that everyone should have. They’re inexpensive (a cheap one costs around $25), portable and you can use them to do a wide variety of exercises. They can be used to help you stretch, relieve sore muscles and even build strength. Here are our favorite ways to use a foam roller . Massage Your Muscles The best and most popular use for a foam roller is for massaging your muscles, also called self-myofascial release . If you’ve been working out hard and your muscles are aching, massaging them with a foam roller can help loosen them up. It gives you a deep tissue massage that breaks up scar tissue and other tight spots. It promotes healing and speeds up the recovery process. Here are some of our favorite massage moves that can be used for both warm ups and cool downs. Be warned: it will hurt in the best way possible. Back Sit upright with the foam roller under your lower back. Place your hands on the floor behind ...

We all know that too much sugar isn’t good for you, especially the processed kind. It can lead to weight gain, make your energy levels inconsistent, cause breakouts, and increases your risk of things like heart disease and diabetes. Still, most Americans eat way too much sugar on a daily basis. For a healthy diet, men should consume at most 37.5 grams or nine teaspoons of sugar per day. Women should eat no more than 25 grams or six teaspoons. However, some studies have shown that the average American eats 76 grams of sugar per day, or the equivalent of 19 teaspoons. Thankfully, there are relatively easy ways to cut back on sugar . Read Labels Companies sneak so much sugar into products you wouldn’t expect. Jarred tomato sauce is a big culprit of added sugar, as is peanut butter. Always check how many grams of sugar per serving are in all your processed food. You should also read the ingredients list. Some foods have naturally occurring sugars, but if you see sugar ...

A relatively new treatment called “Dry Needling” is now being employed by physical therapists, and it’s becoming increasingly popular with athletes.  Though some consider it to be painful and invasive, other swear by it as the miracle treatment that resolved their chronic pain issues and allowed them to keep competing at a high level after a severe muscular injury.  Studies have shown that dry needling is both safe and effective for treating myofascial injuries, many of which are chronic and debilitating for serious athletes.   What is dry needling? “Dry Needling” is also called “Trigger Point Needling” or “Intramuscular Manual Therapy” and with those three names, you might begin to get some idea what it’s all about.  It involves sticking a small needle, the same type used by acupuncturists, into an active and often painful trigger point.  The needle works within the muscle, thus the name “intramuscular manual therapy” and attempts to resolve...

If you’ve had a long, stressful day, the last thing you want to do is head to the gym. While we obviously think you should since exercise helps reduce stress, we also wouldn’t blame you for wanted to stay home and watch TV. However, just because you’re having some TV time doesn’t mean you can’t exercise. Here are a few ways to get a workout in while watching the tube .   Do Exercises During Commercial Breaks You can focus on the show while it’s on, and then use the commercials to do your workout. If you have stairs, running up and down them for a few minutes will give your lower body a workout while raising you heart rate. You can also do a set of basic but effective exercises (see below) right on the living room floor.   Work Out During the Show If the characters in your regular show always do certain things, use that as a cue to do a specific exercise. For example, in the show The Office, the character Jim always gives the camera a specific look. If you’...

Hindsight is beautiful, isn’t it? I’ve been in the fitness game for over 10 years now, training myself under some of the best coaches in the world, and working with hundreds of clients as a personal trainer. I’ve learnt a fair bit about training in that time, and there is a lot of things I wish I had known back when I started. Lucky for you, I can tell you what you need to know, to save you finding out the hard way like I did. Use Your Muscles, Don’t Lift Weights Stop focusing on how much weight you have on the bar, and on getting it from A to B. Instead focus on the strength of contraction and how hard you can feel the muscles working. Tension drives muscular growth. You will have more tension on the muscle when you focus on using the muscle, rather than bringing in other muscles to cheat the movement and lift more weight. Supplements Are Supposed to…SUPPLEMENT Back when I first started training I wouldn’t work out if I didn’t have a protein shake. I genuinel...

The bench press is a mighty exercise that every guys wants to be good at. The most common question people ask when talking about the gym is, “how much do you bench?”. After reading this post, hopefully your answer will be slightly more impressive than before. I’m going to give you tips and techniques to both immediately increase your bench press, and also lead to more progress over the long term. Let’s get started. 1. Set Up Strong A strong bench press comes from a strong set up. You need to be rigid and stable, allowing you to put as much force as possible into the bar. Before you even touch the bar, you should lay down and create as much tension in your body as possible. This will be a platform that allows you to display the strength that you already possess. Have your feet flat on the floor, wide and making a solid triangle with the bottom of the bench. Squeeze your butt muscles and abs as hard as you can, pin the shoulders back and down against the bench ...

With many of us spending a large portion of our day, often 8 hours or more, in an office chair, it’s hard to find time to stretch and maintain flexible, healthy, pain free joints.  Over time, repetitive stress issues and back pain are bound to creep into your life without some sort of regular intervention to keep the body mobile even while confined to a sedentary position.  Here are a few quick stretches you can do throughout the day to help keep your body pain free and ready to move, even when you’re not otherwise moving.   Seated Pigeon Spending too much time in a chair, be it an office chair, air plane seat or car can sometimes cause sciatic pain in the center of the glute as the piriformis, an external rotator of the hip, becomes tight or inflamed and places pressure on the sciatic nerve.  Some unlucky individuals happen to have a sciatic nerve that runs right through their piriformis, rather than under it, making them especially susceptible to...

Most people fall into one of two camps when it comes to working out while sick. They will either call it quits the second their noses get the slightest bit stuffy, or they’ll try to power through a tough workout despite almost being on death’s door, much to the chagrin of their fellow gym goers. Just because you have a slight cold doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t work out. However, there is a line. So how sick is too sick to work out ? First, if you have a fever over 100 degrees, don’t work out. You don’t need to be raising your heart rate and core body temperature any more than it already is. If you feel nauseous or have been sick to your stomach, you are also too ill to exercise. A fever, vomiting and diarrhea all make you more susceptible to becoming dehydrated, and working out certainly won’t make that better. Stay home, rest and drink plenty of fluids. Most people are well aware of this and wouldn’t even attempt to hit the gym. Colds are where it can get trick...

Happy, healthy hip function is important to just about every part of your bodies well-being.  Asymmetries or imbalances in the hips can lead to problems in all parts of your body, including, believe it or not, shoulder pain, neck pain, knee pain and foot pain.   Long extensor muscles that run down the length of your spine can become stressed by imbalanced hips, causing stress as far away as your upper neck and base of the skull.   The latissimus or “lats”, which are more commonly thought of as dominating the “lateral” sides of the body, actually attach as low as the sacrum and extend up to the fronts of your shoulders, meaning that hip imbalances can cause pain, trigger points and issues along the whole path of that muscle, including up into the shoulder.   The knees and feet are similarly vulnerable to hip imbalances, as fascial and muscle strain originating in the hips can cause knee tracking problems and plantar fasciitis. Knowing that the h...

For most people, the knees are one of the first body parts to start feeling pain when they work out, especially as they get older. Your knees take a ton of force every day just from general walking around. Add running, lifting or some other impact-heavy exercises on top of that, and it drastically increases your risk of injuring your knees. Knee injuries are painful, difficult to deal with, and hard to recover from. Here are some tips for protecting your knees and keeping them in good shape. Free Updates Like what you're reading? Join our mailing list!  Warm Up Getting your muscles and joints warmed up before you start exercising is key to preventing an exercise-induced injury. Do dynamic stretches and warm-ups before jumping into your routine. Leg kicks, lunges, high knees and arm circles will get your muscles mo...

When it comes to building muscle, everyone wants strong legs and glutes. Not only do they make you look great, but strong legs also provide a good foundation for the rest of your body. However, it’s easy to get stuck in an exercise rut and do endless squats and lunges in an effort to build a good base. This can get pretty boring and cause you to lose motivation. It can also lead to injury if you’re doing too many squats all the time. Here are four exercises to build your leg muscles that aren’t squats or lunges . Stability Ball Hamstring Curls This is a tough exercise that works your legs, hips, glutes, and core. Lying down with your shoulders firmly on the floor, place a stability ball underneath your feet. Your body should be in a straight line with your hips off the floor and in line with your feet. Bend your knees and bring the ball closer to your body until your feet are flat on the ball. Press the ball away from you to the startin...

Whether you’re looking to lose significant weight, or just get a little bit leaner, you can make significant progress with some very minor tweaks, which don’t disrupt your lifestyle too much. Unless you want to make huge changes, you may not even need to go on a full diet. What if some simple lifestyle tweaks could bring the same results, without all of the disruption and hassles of changing everything that you do? To lose weight you must consume fewer calories than you are expending. That could mean eating less or following a specific diet, but it could also mean making some simple substitutions that minimally impact your lifestyle. Some you might not even notice, but that will reduce your overall calorie intake.  Let’s take a look at some of the points of leverage you might have in your lifestyle, and how you can use them to make changes, without changing your entire lifestyle. Coffee Do you like coffee? If you’re drinking anything ot...