Anatomy:

Your back (spine) is made up of vertebrae (bones) that make up 5 spinal regions: cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacrum, and the coccyx. Between each vertebrae sits a shock-absorbing disc that allows movement and provides flexibility.

The purpose of your spine is to protect your spinal cord. Nerves from the spinal cord pass through the intervertebral foramen to the body, allowing messages to be transmitted to and from the brain and the periphery (e.g., your limbs).

The spine is supported by ligaments such as the anterior longitudinal ligament, the posterior longitudinal ligament, and the ligament flavum, and the core muscles such as the transversus abdominis and the multifidus. The unique and complex structure of spine allows humans to move with great freedom, but also requires coordinated interactions between vertebrae, vertebral discs, ligaments, and supporting musculature in order to achieve healthy function.

Not making much progress in losing weight, or on a slow train in attaining your strength and fitness goals? You think you have problems? Take a look at someone who could have had plenty to complain about, but took a different approach: David Weir, the British and World Champion Paralympic champion who won this year’s London Marathon for the fifth time and won last year’s New York Marathon and took triple gold in the World Championships in Christchurch New Zealand.

He is described as Britain’s top wheel chair athlete and one of the best in the world.
So how did he get there, given the significant disability of being born paraplegic? Self-perception seems to be the secret, or at least a large part of it. “I have never seen myself as disabled. I have always been treated as normal,” says the 34 year old from South London who has an 8 year old daughter from a previous relationship and now has a new-born son with his current partner.

He has been a full time athlete for the last thirteen years.

The continuous advancement in medical tests has been a major contributing factor to the increased life expectancy of our generation (among with a better and healthier diet and of course fitness). With advancements in medical science, medical abnormalities can now be detected earlier and with greater accuracy. Picking up changes early is vital to ensure that you can treat the condition or changes appropriately. As a result, exercise physiologists are playing an increasing role in the treatment and prevention of many lifestyle diseases.

Whilst medical testing is a meticulous science, it does rely on each individual to request the appropriate tests from their GP. At various stages of your life, the tests that are suitable will change. The following graphic provides you with succinct summary of medical tests that are appropriate through your lifespan. If you haven't had a medical check up in the past year and you are over the age of 30, you know what to do! A medical check up could save your life!

In the last decades many different theories about salt or sodium have come to light.

Weight gain and retention have many origins as well as supposed solutions. However, one common food item with a significant impact on body weight is salt, or sodium.

Food manufactures add a lot of salt to foods, deadening our over-stimulated taste buds, and to increase product shelf life. Salt is in virtually all commercially produced foods and drinks including diet soda and even some supposedly organic products. We get used to the taste and then find products with less or no salt not to our liking.

When taking up an exercise such as jogging, more serious running or just about any physical activity that pushes your body beyond its comfort zone, you’ll need an appropriate pre and post exercise warm up and wind-down routine if you want to avoid injuries. In addition to this you should always remember to avoid eating at least one hour before you exercise.

It’s all part of the process of getting fitter faster while listening to your body’s needs and respecting its capacity.

A common area for problems when running is the foot and ankle region which is where most of the impact occurs and blood pressure increasing during training. Keeping your calf muscles flexible can help you avoid tendonitis and plantar fasciitis by softening the shock as your foot hits the ground. One popular injury preventive training method which focuses on flexibility and strength is the Wharton Performance Model.

Push ups offer a great upper body workout, by using the body to work the deltoids, pectorals and triceps. However, this workout can put too much strain on your arm joints, especially those in the wrist. Modifications to your usual routine may help alleviate the pressure.

Ball press-up

Using a stability ball changes the position into a wrist-friendly, albeit more challenging exercise that targets the mid-chest area, triceps and abdominals. Hold your body horizontally with your toes on the floor over the ball. Hold the ball, grasping it to stop it wobbling. Your hands should be placed just under your shoulders. Bend your arms to at least 90° with each rep.

Fat never goes out of fashion at least not the numerous approaches to getting rid of it. How it gets there is generally well documented usually under the headings of an unbalanced diet and lifestyle. Of course, getting rid of just about anything is always going to be harder than if we’d simply avoided it in the first place, but here we have a recent study that looks at making a cure for too much fat from one of the main culprits: namely dairy products.

It is a truth generally acknowledged that one of the main causes of obesity is a diet high in dairy fats. However, it has been discovered that diets high in low-fat dairy calcium in fact helped burn off more fat than low calcium diets mainly because calcium plays an important role in regulating body weight and fat metabolism.

Although better known for maintaining bone density and strength, calcium also lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, and has been shown to increase weight loss. A recent study found an increase in dietary calcium intake to 1200 1300 mg per day together with a normal intake of protein increased fat and energy excretion by about 350 calories per day.

Different physical activities have differing energy requirements, as one might expect. However, these energy requirements rely on a variety of sources of fuel as well as bodily energy systems to supply their needs. Understanding your body’s needs and responses according to the type of physical activity you’re involved in largely determines your overall performance and success.

Take, for example, the 100 meter sprint and the marathon. The sprint is a brief high intensity event, whereas the marathon is a prolonged endurance test. Both burn up plenty of energy from different sources and by way of different bodily systems. Basic energy comes via the muscles in the form of Adenosine Triphosphate, or ATP. However, stored supplies of ATP for immediate use are limited and must be replenished and resynthesized from other sources via various metabolic paths depending on the intensity of the need.

The energy systems providing the metabolic paths are categorized as either immediate, short or long term and each is based on the resynthesis of ATP either from intramuscular phosphate PCr macronutrients, carbohydrates, lipids and protein or in some form of combination. These fuel sources use varying metabolic pathways in the regeneration of ATP.

Eating carbohydrates late at night is, as we all should know, real bad news for our digestive systems and for putting on weight – right?

The hypothesis behind the assertion that ingesting carbohydrates at night is based on the fact – well, supposed fact – that as you approach bed time your metabolism begins to slow down and thus during sleep your digestive system is also likely to be in a low power state. As you are burning fewer calories during this time your metabolic rate switches off or goes into a low power mode. At least that is the conventional wisdom.

However, research has shown there are rises and falls in the metabolic rate even during deep REM sleep – known as the sleeping metabolic rate (SMR), which often correlates with day time rates. There’s also evidence that exercise increases metabolic rates, which perhaps proves the old adage, ‘after supper walk a mile.’ Obese individuals are likely to have lower metabolic rates than the average.

Whether it’s the Christmas/New Year period or a summer season break you can put on weight faster than you get a sun burn if you relax your dietary rules while having fun. Christmas and New Year is probably the worst time for dieters as it basically celebrates gluttony, but the rules are the same for any place or time when we may be tempted to over-indulge. So here are a few ways to stay in shape.

Drinking alcohol in moderation may be difficult if everyone around is being immoderate. Alcoholic beverages especially eggnog are high in calories and the carbohydrates in Guinness are 100% sugar which can result in an insulin rush.
Although drinking water while eating is not good for digestion, having a glass before a meal will suppress your appetite as well as help avoid dehydration.

Marathons the last two decades are very succesfull. More and more people are participating either for athletic purposes either for a cause.

Let’s start with the bad news though. For those who believe running makes you healthier there are some rather depressing recent statistics. Last year Ryan Shay, aged 28, running in the US Men’s Olympic Trials in Central Park was the first world class marathon runner to die of a heart attack while competing. One day later Mathew Hardy, 50, died of a heart attack just after finishing the New York City Marathon. A month earlier Chad Schieber, 35, died in the Chicago Marathon although he’d previously been diagnosed with a heart defect.

Then of course, back in 1984, there was the case of Jim Fixx, who is largely accredited with popularizing running with his 1977 book ‘The Complete Book of Running’, who died of a heart attack aged 54 while running near his home in Vermont.Enough to make you hang up your running shoes? Then what about Bhai Fauja Singh? Nicknamed the ‘turbaned tornado’, born in the Punjab in 1911 and now living in East London, he’s 100 years old, a life-long vegetarian who avoids alcohol, fried foods and smoking and weighs only 52 kg and is not only running in international marathons, but consistently winning them in his age group. And he didn’t even start serious competitive running until in his 80s! Kind of contradictory, no?

Present day work environments and schedules are not usually very sympathetic or flexible towards those trying to follow a healthy lifestyle or on a diet. Shift work, overtime, deadlines, family responsibilities and commuting can all wreck your fitness regime if you let them. While some compromises may be necessary the secret is to stay in control of the situation as much as possible.

Here are few suggestions to help maintain your weight loss program while also keeping your job.

Control your eating environment. Don’t let others dictate your food choices and don’t be afraid to turn down offers of unhealthy snack foods or drinks at meetings or office parties. Don’t be intimidated by other people’s views on your dieting. If necessary, explain what you’re doing and why. Be positive and assertive. Choose who you hang out with. Try to find like-minded co-workers to help give support to your health regime.

Have you ever consider what can be the relationship between bodybuilding exersices and yoga? Rushing headlong into our strength training routine without the requisite stretching and then rushing through our warm down isn't the best for your body. How conscious are you of your flexibility? Can you still touch your toes? Do you still want to be able to do this as you get older?  Yoga could be the power lifter or strongman’s new best friend and you don’t need an incense filled room to do this either.

There are a few quick and simple moves you can incorporate into your warm down that might just make all the difference.  After all yoga is no flash in the pan, it’s been around for a few thousand years and it may just extend your lifting career and improve your power lifting routine.

There are a few yoga moves that will improve the suppleness of your big muscle groups: the glutes, hams, quads, and lats.

When comes to diet doesn’t mean starving all the time. If you’re not eating enough your body goes into ‘starvation’ mode and begins to consume muscle, not fat. You need to eat enough to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose to sustain your energy throughout the day. Three meals a day will burn stored fat if you’re also exercising regularly. Regular intake of food creates a ‘thermic’ effect as your body processes the calories. This increases your metabolism.

Skipping meals is bad for your body. This applies especially to breakfast. Even if you don’t feel hungry at that time, eating and drinking something nutritious in the morning is one of the best things you can do for your body.

When trying to lose weight it’s important to know your daily caloric intake. To reduce weight safely at the rate of 1 to 2 pounds a week you need to subtract calories from your daily total.

If you are serious about developing your physical stregth, whether by competitive running, personal training, pumping iron in the gym, or even just doing yoga you’ll know there’s a whole lot more than seven potential ways in which your body can not only protest but cause some serious troubles.  Whatever your genetic strengths or weaknesses, learning to listen and respond to your body’s initial warning signs makes all the difference between a short or long recovery time and is crucial if you want to keep doing what you do well.  On this article the focus is on some of the most common injuries affecting competitive runners, but the information applies to most physical workouts and regimes.

Runner’s knee accounts for about 40% of all running injuries.  It typically strikes on longer runs, while descending hills or stairs, or after prolonged sitting.  Almost everyone is at risk.  The first solution is to slow down.  Take extra rest days and reduce your mileage, running only as far as you can without pain.  Running uphill or simulating hills on a treadmill strengthens your glutes, hips and thighs and prevents knees from rolling inwards.  Cycling is also good for strengthening your quads and swimming is knee-friendly.  If you have knee pain on waking which doesn’t ease up, stop running.

After a really heavy winter in NYC, spring is coming and many of us - especially women- have been looking for different ways to lose weight. Recently I flipped a typical women magazine at my colleague’s desk, I saw advertisements selling magic cream, magic foods, uknown slimming pills and many other too good to be true weight loss products or services. Look as if those companies are never getting tired in coming out with new products which promise easy way to lose weight. Unfortunately, customers become the victim of many of these products but seldom they learn from it. Why? Because they too continue to look for easy fast and way to achieve the ideal weight.

There is only one secret to guarantee you to lose weight. This method has proved to be working well, whether it is in year 1968, 2008 or even 2048. Actually, instead of lose weight, you should lose fat to be exact. Weight can be fat, muscle and bones. What we need to get rid of is the body fat.

Overtraining is something that many people are facing nowadays. It hasn’t always been strictly hard exercise but has usually come from just pushing too hard in a few sets of just working out too frequently. Just putting too much strain on the body, going that extra unnecessary mile.

There are a few vital clues that our bodies give out when they have had enough and require some rest – or at least time off exercise all together (in the conventional sense). I believe movement and activity is always good but sometimes we need to take it easy with things like weight lifting, running, and other intense exercise.

Keep an eye out for when:

• Sleep becomes disturbed
• Digestion isn’t what it usually is
• Constant feeling of tension in neck and shoulder muscles
• Muscles feel heavy

This happens for a variety of reasons - our nervous system gets tired, and our muscle glycogen gets depleted leading us to feeling grumpy, irritable, tired, lethargic and like we don’t want to move – a sort of tired but wired feeling. Basically all the things that we do not want to feel especially when trying to look and feel healthy – the trouble is our nervous system needs a lot of time to repair, only good sleep, relaxation and food can help.

Everyone have seen the cut/bulk cycle that many people go through adding weight for the winter with the pipe dream of gaining some extra muscle and dieting the whole summer to reveal those abs…..Its not something you want to do you can look and feel great all year round by following a few rules!

- Don’t attempt to bulk!

Your body is very self regulating if you start lifting heavy weights and doing intense workouts your appetite will ramp up and so long as you stick to good wholesome food 80% of the time you will gain quality muscle and your strength in the gym will increase….
Take your time with gaining size if your getting stronger it means you are getting bigger, simply having trust in that will keep you progressing in the gym. Find new ways to challenge your body and trigger growth whether thats 100 rep body weight squats or a fully loaded leg press just keep your body guessing! You can’t force feed yourself into growth it will just leave you feeling bloated and chubby….

Before starting a personal training program you should take a fitness analysis which tests muscular strength, aerobic fitness, flexibility and body condition - and of course takes in great consideration your health problems if any.  The fitness analysis comprises the following.

Blood pressure check

It is important to test your blood pressure as high blood pressure increases your chances of strokes, coronary disease and kidney disease.

Body fat percentage check

Allows us to see what percentage of your body is made up of fat so we can get an understanding of how much muscle you have and how much fat we suggest you lose.

BMI test  Body mass index test

Estimates a healthy weight based on your height so you can get a rough idea of whether you are overweight and how overweight you are.

Intensity refers to load/weight and has been shown to have a significant impact on muscle hypertrophy and is arguably the most important exercise variable for stimulating muscle growth.  Intensity can be recorded as a percentage of 1RM and equates to the number of repetitions that can be performed with a given weight.

Repetitions can be classified into 3 basic ranges:

• low (1–5)
• moderate (6–12)
• high (15+)

These repetition ranges involve the use of different energy systems and stress the neuromuscular system in different ways.  This variation of stress impacts the extent of the hypertrophic response.The use of high repetitions has generally proven to be inferior to moderate and lower repetition ranges in eliciting increases in muscle hypertrophy.  This means that a load less than approximately 65% of 1RM is not considered sufficient to promote substantial hypertrophy.  This is because the high rep training can bring about significant metabolic stress but the load is inadequate to recruit and fatigue the highest threshold muscle fibres.Whether low or moderate reps evoke a greater hypertrophic response has been a matter of debate as both produce significant gains in muscle growth.  However, the general consensus is that the moderate rep range of 6–12 reps will optimise muscle hypertrophy.