Health n Care Blog

Warming up and cooling down is a vital part of exercise, as it prepares your body for the pressure it is about to come under before a workout and then helps to slow your body down for resting afterwards. Without these important procedures, you could put your body under undue stress and cause yourself discomfort or even injury. It only takes 5 minutes, so don’t rush into working out without it!

Always gradually increase the pace and resistance of your workout, never rush straight into an intensive training session. It’s good to vary the pace sometimes within a session, but you always want to make sure the beginning and end are gradually built up and then slowed down again.

Warming Up
Warming up helps the blood flow to your muscles, which helps to prevent injury to your ligaments and joints, amongst other risk factors. Gym instructors at leading gyms in Nottingham say you should start with some light cardio just to get your heart rate up and get moving, so some jogging on the spot should do followed by some stretching, all of which shouldn’t take longer than between 5-10 minutes. It should all be within your comfort zone and shouldn’t overstretch yourself or cause discomfort.

Cooling Down
The aim of cooling down is to prevent you from just stopping after an intensive workout, which would shock your muscles and more than likely cause you extreme stiffness the following day. To prevent this, simply jog on the spot as you did during your warm up, gradually slowing down as you go until you get your heart into the resting level. Then follow this with some light stretches too.

Then the next day when you wake up you shouldn’t have as much stiffness, which can be extremely uncomfortable and doesn’t need to happen if you follow these simple exercises!

Other Top Tips
- Stay hydrated. Always have a water bottle nearby during your workout so that you make sure you drink enough as you will become dehydrated otherwise.

- Have a nice relaxing shower afterwards. A warm shower will also help to relax your muscles after they’ve been working hard contracting during your workout and you will feel rested afterwards.

- Make sure you have supportive footwear. If you don’t have adequate training shoes then your body will be put under more pressure and your posture won’t be right or properly supported, so having good footwear will ensure you have a comfortable workout too.

Even if you are very new to the growing taller community, chances are that you’ve already been told to improve your posture. And you will hear it even more. As a matter of fact, you should even tell yourself several times a day to check on your posture. As a test, you should check your posture right now and adjust it accordingly. It’s just so important that you cannot pay enough attention to this. A good posture makes all your exercises, which you do to grow taller naturally, more effective. Moreover, a bad posture could even destroy the progress you’ve made. A good posture keeps your spinal column aligned so that it is more susceptible to stretching exercises. When you sleep, you should lie flat on your back so that your spine is straight and completely relaxed.

However, let me ask you the following question: Have you ever tried to keep a good posture all day long, even while sleeping? See, it’s not that easy to have a good posture. For me, it’s actually one of the hardest things to do. Sure, I can adapt my posture from time to time, but to always stick with the right posture is hard. That’s why I have developed three tricks that can make keeping a good posture much easier.

1. Family, Friends and Co-Workers

When I realized that I by myself will never be able to always pay attention to my posture, I needed a way to remind myself constantly. First, I started to carry a little note in my pocket. Then, I had notes near my laptop, desk and night desk. That’s why family, friends and even co-workers started to see that I cared about my posture and some of them started to remind me, jokingly at first, whenever I slouched again or wasn’t sitting straight. Only then I realized how powerful this is. All I had to do was let my family, friends and colleagues know that I am working on my posture for health reasons. Moreover, I haven’t met one single person who didn’t show understanding when I asked for this favor. Ever since it has become so much easier for me to keep a good posture, because I am being constantly reminded.

2. Yoga

If you have strong core muscles, it is much easier to keep a good posture. Doing yoga exercises your core really well, thus I can only suggest learning some basic exercises. Getting good at a few basic yoga exercises is enough to improve your overall posture. Moreover, it becomes easier and thus more enjoyable.

3. Standing Instead Of Sitting

I don’t know about you, but I have found it much easier to keep a good posture when I am standing and harder when I am sitting. Besides, in certain places it can look a bit awkward if you are sitting there with a straight back. A good example is the train or subway. If you were to sit there with a completely straight back, you’d stand out quite well and you might feel self-conscious. That’s why I always try to stand and not sit, whenever I can. If you are like me, I think this last trick is going to help you a lot already.

Fitness and exercise are an important part of leading a healthy life. People who exercise regularly have healthier hearts, and are less prone to problems related to obesity as well as depression and other mental illnesses. Read on to find out how you can set up your own fitness program and start to feel great!

Setting your alarm a little early to make time for a fifteen-minute walk, can get you ready for a more ambitious early morning exercise routine. Many people will tell you that first thing in the morning is the best time for working out. This can be tough for a non-morning person. A brief, brisk walk will accustom you to early morning exertions and prepare you for more ambitious fitness activities.

A great fitness tip that can help you lift more weight is to start developing your weaker muscles. Sometimes it’s your weaker muscles that are preventing you from increasing the weight you can lift. By developing these weak muscles, you’ll be surprised at how much more you can lift.

If you are on a fitness plan, you should try to incorporate a healthy diet. This may be hard for some, but it can be easier if you have friends around you. Friends are there for you when you need them. They can help you stay on track with your fitness goals.

Stretch before changing exercises when you workout to improve both your flexibility and your strength! When you are performing one motion for an extended amount of time, some of the unused muscles may stiffen up. Stretching simultaneously – warms up muscles you have not been using, while cooling down others – that have just experienced a demanding workout.

If you do not have time to get to the gym during the course of the day, purchase dumbbells that you can use at home. This will save you time, money, and can help you tone your arms, legs and core. Use quality dumbbells to improve your fitness results.

When doing resistance training for fitness, choose a good weight that challenges you. The right weight will allow you to perform about ten to twelve repetitions of the exercise motion before you become too fatigued to do it again. Too heavy and you risk injury, too light and you won’t gain maximum benefit from your workout.

Find a fitness partner. Whether it’s a family member, friend or work colleague, the one thing that will help you to keep on your fitness routine is a partner. You can share ideas, help each other to exercise, and most importantly, offer encouragement and motivation. When you have someone to keep fit with, you will find that it is that much easier to keep to the routine.

To maintain your fitness level for life, you must find forms of exercise that you enjoy. If you have to force yourself to exercise, you are very unlikely to exercise on a regular basis or to maintain your fitness level for the long term. By participating in enjoyable forms of exercise such as swimming, cycling, hiking, dancing, and playing enjoyable team sports, you can be fit and stay fit for life.

People suffer from many ailments that are caused due to their sedentary life style. Most of these are due to the desk jobs that not only stress you out but also leave you with physical ailments that can be caused due to bad posture or just by sitting at one place for hours at a stretch.

Instead of relying on any vitamin supplements or hgh pills to find a solution, the stressful signs showed by your mind and body can only be relieved by doing the following yoga postures at your work place:

1.  Konasana – All you need to do this pose is a wall. Stand straight facing the wall, feet apart and place your palms on it at the same height as your shoulders.  Move you feet back till they are beneath your hips and the distance between the feet should be hip-width. Move your palms on the wall with fingers pointing up bending your hips simultaneously, till your arms and shoulders are in one line.  When the posture is correctly formed, your legs will be perpendicular to your upper body. Your upper body and the floor will be parallel to each other.  This exercise stretches out your back and loosens the muscles on your legs.

2.  Deep Breathing – Deep-breathing is one of the best known ways to relieve stress and calm mind. However, doing it correctly ensures that you get the best results. Sit cross legged with your back straight and stretched without putting undue pressure on your spine. Inhale and exhale through your nose. Inhale so that the breath flows into your belly and your torso expands. Follow your breath as it moves inside your body. Exhale deeply so that your belly, chest and lungs release the breath. Do this for a few minutes initially and then extend the duration.

3.  Cups Your Eyes – This is an essential pose for refreshing tired eyes. To do this, you have to lie down on a comfortable place on the floor. It will be beneficial if you can find a dark place. Rub your palms till you can feel heat emanating and place them on closed eyelids. Keep them till your feel the heat and repeat. Do so a few times and then slowly open your eyes. Let the light in and your eyes will gradually focus.

With these exercises, you can maintain your health even when you are at work. Practicing deep breathing keeps your mind calm and all stress related diseases away. Exercise your way to a healthy life, beginning today.

Jessica Rodrigues is a health expert and a freelance writer. Her specialty lies in posture correction. She loves arranging theme parties in her free time and suggests that you should totally browse online to buy discount party supplies.

During my weekly doses, you will often hear me refer to HIIT. So I though it was about time I explained what HIIT training is, why I use it so much, and how it keeps me fit and lean.

HIIT is short for High Intensity Interval Training. A lot of people have heard of interval training, and have probably used this form of training during their life, but have you ever done HIIT?

What is HIIT Training?

HIIT is the most efficient training method to burn fat and gain muscle simultaneously. HIIT is ideal for time poor people, like myself, as the typical workouts only need to last 30 minutes or less (some variations can be completed in as little as 4 minutes).

HIIT training consists of a series of short, high intensity intervals, followed by low intensity intervals.

How do you do HIIT?

The biggest advantage of HIIT is that it can be completed anywhere, as it can be applied to any form of cardio you can think of. It can also be designed to suit your level of fitness, anyone from a beginner to a professional athlete can benefit from HIIT.

The most common HIIT workouts employ combinations of 30 seconds intervals of high intensity cardio, followed by a low intensity interval of either 90, 60 or 30 seconds. The timing of the low intensity interval is dependent on your level of fitness. The fitter you are the shorter you need to make your low intensity interval.

What is the Difference Between a High and Low Intensity Interval?
During a high intensity interval, you should be operating at a pace where your heart rate is between 80-90% of your maximum. During a low intensity interval, you should be operating with your heart rate between 40-50% of your maximum.

The simplest way to work out your maximum heart rate is to use this simple formula:

220 minus your age = your maximum heart rate.

For me, given that I am 34 years-old the formula would be, 220 – 34 = 186.

Therefore my maximum heart rate theoretically is 186. I say theoretically as the human body is far too complex for it to be that simple. To think that every 34 year-old in the world’s actual maximum heart rate is 186, would be a little naive, but it’s a good guide.

Using my formulated maximum heart rate, I know that during my high intensity intervals, I need to get my heart rate up to between 148-167 (80-90%) and during my low intensity intervals I need to have my heart rate sitting between 74-93 (40-50%)

Putting it all Together!

To keep things simple for an example of a HIIT routine I have selected running as the mode of cardio as it can be completed by anyone around the world, for free, without any equipment.

Obviously you will need to warm-up and warm-down, but for simplicity I have only outlined the working component of the workout:

Box squats were first popularized by Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell. If you’ve never heard of him, he is one of the strongest people in the world and has squatted 920lbs at the age of 52.

From a safety and performance standpoint, box squats are superior to squats. Many coaches have replaced free squats with box squats for those reasons. Here’s how to perform box squats with proper technique:

• Sitting Back: Start by breaking at the hips and pushing your hips back. Do not sit straight down. Your knees should never move forwards when performing box squats.
• Shins Perpendicular: keep your shins perpendicular to the floor or even back. the further you sit back on the box, the further back your shins will travel. If you sit far back, you will use more of your glutes to get off the box.
• Keep your Knees Out: Keep your knees pushed out. Think of this as pushing your feet out to the outside of your shoes and do the same with your knees. You knees should never move forwards.
• Sit on The Box: Continue to sit back while pushing your knees out and control your descent on to the box. When you hit the box relax your hips for a split second and explode up. Do not bounce or rock on the box, this defeats the purpose.

Benefits of Box Squats

Hip Power: Box squats are an incredible way to build hip strength. They force you to start from a dead stop and build up your entire posterior chain

Proper Technique: You can’t cheat depth with box squats. You will always squat to the same depth.

Posterior Chain: Box squats are far superior to developing your posterior chain than free squats. They develop your hamstrings, glutes, and lower back much more effectively.

Where do I get a Box

You can use anything as a box as long as it it the right height. You can build your own box out of 2×4 pieces of plywood or use an aerobic step up for. There are also adjustable boxes available but these can be quite expensive.

We use a plywood box made of 2×4 pieces of wood. We add a 1? rubber mat to the top of the box if we need to raise the height.

Workout

It is ideal to have a separate day dedicated building explosive strength. Use 40% to 60% of your box squat one rep max and perform 8 sets of 2 reps. Remember, you are training to become explosive and should be as explosive as possible on each rep. it is best to stagger your explosive workout in progressive waves of three workout.

This is what a three week wave should look like:

Week 1:

• Warmup
• Squats 8 sets of 2 at 40%
• Hamstring exercise
• Lower back exercise
• abs

Week 2:

• Warmup
• Squats 8 sets of 2 at 45%

Do you use body building supplements in regular basis? Do you know that the supplements you consume can create an imbalance in your body system? Well, as a bodybuilder, you surely have noticed that many bodybuilders use bodybuilding supplements to boost muscle growth and to increase their performance. Since the supplements that you consume are from external resources, there is surely a certain respond from your body system in which the respond can cause an imbalance in your body system. Thus, it is really necessary for you to regain your balanced state because a balance state can keep you healthy and happy.

To regain your balanced state, you can simply undergo a pct or post cycle therapy. As its name, post cycle therapy is designed to help people restoring their hormone production so people who have ended their supplements will not lose what they have gained. Luckily, there are many kinds of products for post cycle therapy that can be found in the market these days. Whether you check the web or a local store, you will not have difficulties to find a post cycle therapy. If you are currently trying to find a post cycle therapy, this condition is absolutely advantageous.

However, since different product contains different ingredients and has different function, you surely have to find a product that best suits your needs and personal condition. This is really important to consider as you surely want to avoid buying and using unsuitable product. Using an unsuitable product will only promote negative side effects which might ruin your health. To know whether a certain product is suitable for you or not, you have to do a survey. You should also consider reading articles about products for post cycle therapy that now could be easily found on internet. Therefore, you had better now find a website where you can find comprehensive information about post cycle therapy.

You could be shocked to learn that the best exercise to get rid of stomach fat just isn’t what you think. Typically your first thought is going to be dedicating lots of energy into performing crunches that won’t deliver considerable weight reduction. Exactly what you’re suppose to be doing is a activity which will lessen your carbohydrate and fat intake. Once your eating habit is taken care of, you can begin looking at the simplest workout to get rid of stomach fat fast. I am going to concentrate not on one, but three stomach routines which have shown to be extremely effective.

The first thing you need to do is purchase a blow up exercise ball. You will use the Swiss ball in three different exercises that target your abdominal muscles. The three abdominal muscles that we are targeting are the rectus abdominus,the transverse abdominus,and the external oblique.

When we combine all three of these exercises, you will develop a strong core and will help you lose belly fat. You need to understand something right now. You can sit on your exercise ball and do one sit up after another and never gain the results you desire. You need to learn proper muscle contraction at the top of every repetition. Now, let’s take a look at three various motions that will truly begin to assist you to lose belly fat.

1. Lie on the ball, positioning it under the lower back.
2. Cross your arms over the upper body or place them behind your head (for more advanced).
3. Contract your ab muscles to lift your torso off the ball, pulling the bottom of your ribcage down toward your hips.
4. As you curl up, keep the ball stable (i.e., the ball shouldn’t roll).
5. Lower back down, delivering a stretch in the ab muscles, repeat for 1-3 sets of 12-16 reps.

Keep the same distance between your chin and chest at all times leading with the shoulders-your head and neck are just along for the ride.

(b) Following that is my favorite. Lie on your back and position the exercise ball between your ankles. Next slowly raise the ball toward the sky and squeeze the abs. Lower your legs and squeeze the abs once again. Repeat this as much as you can and on a daily basis and without doubt you will see results.

(c) And finally, lie on your back on the floor and position the exercise ball under your knees. Next lift your chin towards your knees keeping your hands across your upper body and squeeze your ab muscles at the top. Slowly lower your chest while maintaining the same tight ab muscles. Follow the same pattern just as routines one and two.

Following these exercises will build your core muscles, and along with proper nutritious eating habits you will no doubt find yourself looking leaner and having a healthier body.

What do you think when hearing the word ‘warrior’ ? Most people probably would think of a man figure dressed in army, black polished face, use a steel helmet, carrying a backpack and a rifle. On hearing the word ‘dance’ , I imagine someone who wears traditional clothing  moving to follow the rhythm of music.

Warriors dance is a blend of martial arts with dance. David Lader is the person who first introduced this to the United States to eventually spread to many countries.

In the warriors dance, you will be taught how to obtain your posture and warrior’s body shape as well as understand the philosophy of the warrior’s attitude. At least you can get two benefits from the warrior’s dance program :

1. Having the Ideal Body
A warrior must have a proportionate body shape and also have a strong physical to fight the enemy on the battlefield. Therefore, if you have a problem with weight or you want shape your body, warriors dance should be the main alternative.

2. Having a Strong Mental
Fought on the battlefield with their lives on course requires a high courage, strong determination and unyielding attitude. Having a strong mental will makes you survive in the face of any heavy problems.

Maybe you have heard the saying ‘in a healthy body there is found a strong soul’ . This expression is not entirely true, but if you can master the physical and mental exercises that are taught in the warriors dance it really can be combined.

What exercises is given in warriors dance? Mind, though and breath control. Deep breath with a gentle motion will have reduced anxiety and fear. As a result, you can move with full control at the same time harmonizes with the greater force out of yours.

So, if you want a physical and mental health, warriors dance is one solution.

Those are my new words to live by. Actually I have a lot of words I try to live by and these are the latest I have added to my list. I am hopeful that by doing more exercise and eating well, and reducing my stress, I will see my 90th birthday and still be sharp enough to know that it is my 90th birthday when it finally rolls around.

I want to be able to get up out of a chair, not a wheelchair, by myself, unassisted, and walk over to get my second small piece of cake (after all it is my birthday). I would like for all of my friends, at least my best friends, to “never put off exercise they can do today until tomorrow” either because I would like to still have some friends of mine around to come to my 90th birthday party. After all, what’s the point of having a party if there is no one there but me?

I have been trying to live by these words for about a month now and have discovered that my overall weekly exercise time has increased (It is so rewarding when something you try works). I am sleeping better, have lost a little weight, and am not getting sleepy sitting at my desk mid afternoon nearly as often as I was. In short, it’s working.

So what was my motivation for this idea of mine? It seems as though I am always pressed for time and getting to workout is a major priority of mine. At the beginning of each week I look at the week ahead to see when I can get in a quick 30-40 minute workout. There are some weeks when it looks like I have three days in a row that I can exercise, then two days later maybe another two days in a row. So what I have done in the past (which I now do differently) is exercise several different body parts and then save the other parts for the next day. Here’s the problem. About half of the time something comes up the next day and I don’t get to workout. Then I end up aggravated at myself for not going ahead and exercising more of my body the day before when I was already at the gym and had a few minutes remaining that I could have done it.

So now, whenever I am about finished working out and notice I have a few minutes left I will go ahead and exercise another muscle group or two. I no longer save it for tomorrow because you never what tomorrow will bring. Things come up and emergencies happen so get it done when you can. At least that is what I have been doing and so far I have been able to increase my overall exercise time. Try it.