When it comes to breaking a sweat, many people focus on bigger biceps and a trim waistline, but for some, that’s not enough motivation to get moving. Indeed, the phrase ‘exercise is medicine‘ is becoming increasingly recognized as a fundamental form of treatment for various lifestyle related diseases, including depression, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, some cancers, and hip fractures. Here are a few unexpected benefits of exercise that happen when you're active.

How did you spend your last 24 hours? How many hours did you spend sitting down compared to standing up? What type of movement did you do?

There are two main classifications of exercises: compound exercises and isolation exercises. In this post, we will cover exactly what a compound exercise is.

Are you getting enough nutrients to power through your HIIT class or do you sometimes feel like you’re running on empty? Lookout for these 5 common signs you’re not eating enough to fuel your workout.

Our skeleton is also extremely efficient, despite supporting the weight of our entire body. The dry weight of a healthy human skeleton averages only around 7% of total body mass – so blaming excess weight on ‘big bones’ is not exactly an excuse!

Hot chocolate, Netflix marathons, and warm duvets are just some of the finer comforts the cold weather brings. But a season linked to shorter days can influence how well you sleep. Here’s why cold weather makes it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings.

There is no denying that it’s more difficult to keep in shape during the winter months. With dark mornings and nights, freezing conditions, and snow and rain soaking our favorite running paths, it’s hard to get enthused about exercising or drinking cold green smoothies. So to help you out, we’ve compiled a few simple solutions for four of the most common winter weight mistakes we hear every day:

Starting a new training and eating regime often resembles the wheels of the bus. Everything is running smoothly until the wheels come off, motivation plummets and you have just finished the entire tub of Ben & Jerry’s. What next?

If you’re looking for an easy way to improve your results, the answer could be simpler than you think. Recruit a training buddy!

Here are a few benefits that you can enjoy when you work out with a friend instead of going alone.

Running is a great cardio workout and improves your overall fitness, but did you know it can also help you live longer?

No doubt you will have heard about interval training. There’s also quite a strong possibility that you haven’t yet tried it out. Horrible nightmare images of you sprinting every 30 second, gasping for breath? Visions of yourself pedalling on level 20 of your bike, legs burning and feeling like they’re probably going to drop off? Most people I speak to about interval training are put off because they think it involves sprinting like a madman, and they just don’t think they’re capable of holding out at that level of intensity, even for 30 seconds.

From a standing position, bend at the hips and place your palms flat on the floor in a short Down Dog position. Make sure your fingers are spread wide and you're pressing firmly into the fingertips. Gaze at a spot on the floor slightly in front of you. Gently rock your weight forward as you push off the balls of the feet, trying to get space between your feet and the floor. Take small hops at first to get comfortable with having all your bodyweight in your hands.

What steps do you currently have in place to ensure you become healthier, stronger and fitter each day? There are many health habits we can implement to ensure we develop both physically and mentally and find that happier more confident place. Here are four very simple, yet highly effective, healthy decisions you can start to make immediately:

Eat more Thin Skinned Fruits

Eating more thin skinned fruits will provide us with an abundance of antioxidants and anti–inflammatory effects, especially useful for athletes and committed exercise enthusiasts to help speed up and improve recovery. 

I’ve been slacking on the running front recently, but in a bid to get back into shape I’ve enlisted the help of personal trainer and ultra runner extraordinaire. Her sessions are NEVER easy but she’s been doing a lot of training recently. This means she’s got even more nasty little running tricks up her sleeve. Last week, in 90 degree heat may I add, she made me do this workout.

I nearly puked on three occasions and had to go straight to bed afterwards. It’s great for improving your overall fitness, run speed and working on pacing. The lamp post adds a touch of agility training and means you have to slow down and speed up again – making things that bit trickier. It’s also a bit of a mental challenge, you don’t think you can do it but you can (although if you really can’t maybe start by lowering the number of repeats and adding more next time).

Conventional wisdom has it that the older you get the less strength and mobility you have. This belief was strengthened in previous studies that showed people over the age of 40 typically lost 8% or more of their muscle mass with each decade, a process that accelerates after age 70. Of course, less muscle mass means less strength and mobility, which as you age leads to less independence. It has also been linked to premature mortality.

There are many ideas and beliefs about when is the best time of the day to exercise. Many people like to get up and get it done first thing in the morning and others prefer to exercise late in the afternoon or evening.

Achieving optimal health and fitness can be challenging for even the most dedicated of us. But when applied each day, these top 5 rules for improved health and fitness can help you to attain more of it, forever:

Pallof Press

The pallof press is the excellent anti-rotational exercise that puts great demand on the trunk to stop it rotating in a transverse plane. To perform, assume an athletic posture with knees bent, pelvis and lumbar (lower) spine neutral, and shoulders relaxed.

As you push the cable in front of you, focus on engaging the core, stopping the rotation of your trunk. Keep it as rigid as possible, hold for 2-5secs and pull back into your center.
You can perform the Pallof Press in various stances, kneeling, split stance on floor or off and lastly parallel.

Improving power, or explosive strength and speed is a big deal in soccer. Ask a player what he feels he needs to work on and 9 out of 10 the answer will be: "get faster and more explosive"

And they are right, these qualities are definitely very important for a dominating performance in soccer and many other sports. Note: I am not a scientist, and I do not know much about research, so I would like to simply give you my personal take on this based on experience and logic.

This advice comes straight from the trenches. Theory is good, but it has to be backed by practice, in my opinion. I do a lot of work with association football (soccer) and my approach has proven effective over and over again: for myself as many others, applying the same strategies.

So, while it may not look or feel like spring outside, it’s spring! The end of Spring when Summer should be teasing us. Bringing all the fun things you’d associate – holiday weekends, barbecues, weddings, evenings drinking outside….. all of which add up to bad news for your clean eating and training regime. We are all human though and the odd blow out is not going to have hugely detrimental effects to your overall goal if it is exactly that – occasional. If you eat cleanly and exercise regularly, nothing wrong with treating yourself every now and again. What is wrong though is allowing what should be a cheat “meal” to become a full –on blow out. So you have a glass of wine and a dessert at lunchtime…. This does not give you licence to finish the rest of the bottle over the course of the afternoon and then have a takeaway pizza for dinner and raid the biscuit tin for a midnight snack. Do not let treats become pig outs!