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.

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.

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?

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.

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….

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.

Tucks

Steps:
Stand on a padded surface (tumbling mat) with feet slightly less than shoulder width.

It is important to practice tuck jump on a safe surface and avoid any harms.Bend your knees and use your whole foot to generate power to jump and not just your toes. Jump as high as you can. While you are in the air, tuck your knees close to your chest. Don’t let your shoulders lean out beyond your knees because this may stress your lower back.Land on the same spot with knees slightly bent to reduce the impact to your knees.

Losing fat and gaining muscle has nutritional, physical and psychological aspects. The following 15 strategies can help you reach your goals:

• Increasing your protein intake helps protect muscles when calories are low and helps release stored energy.
• Eating smaller meals more often provides a continuous flow of nutrients when calories are low. Foods high in nutrient volume but low in calories, such as spinach, broccoli and cabbage help you stay lean while feeling full. Beaten egg white expands for the same effect.
• Eat more green leafy vegetables and fresh fruits to keep your body functioning and maintain your acid balance. Starches such as sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, etc. Should be kept for post workout meals.

Hanging leg raise works the abdominal muscles, especially the lower abs.  It also trains your grip strength which you need it for many weight lifting workouts including pull up and bench press.

From time to time, people are saying they find the perfect solution to "build" your body. But what about if you don't want to become a body-builder, but just get more fit and healthy? Let's see the 5 basic rules to fit your self up the easy way:

1.  Eat five times a day at 2-3 hour intervals. This keeps you saturated with the amino acids and glycogen from protein and carbohydrate sources that you need to push abnormal muscle growth. This also prevents muscle loss due to a bodily starvation reaction to heavy workouts.

Working on your fitness can really improve your tennis game. The workout below targets each of the main areas involved in the game so you’re in top shape when you step on court. Repeat the workout twice a week for the best results, resting for 30-45secs between sets.  Start with a warm-up of marching then jogging on the spot and stretches for the upper and lower body.  

Forward and Side Jumps/hops – 2 sets.

Arrange 5 low hurdles in the floor roughly 1.5f apart (you can use cones or any other markers if necessary).  Jump over each hurdle with feet together, using your arms to add momentum, jumping again as soon as you land. Turn to your right and repeat the course, jumping sideways, leading with your left shoulder, and then repeat leading with your left. 

Lunge and Twist – 2 sets of 12 reps (6 each side)

Stand with feet together holding a medicine ball or weight level with your chest.  Take a large step forward with your right leg and extend your arms out in front of you.  Rotate your torso to the right and then back to the centre.  Bend both knees to perform a lunge, making sure your front knee is behind your toes.  Quickly straighten your legs, jumping up and bringing your left leg forward and right leg back.  Turn your torso to the left and then back to centre, lunging and jumping again.  Continue, alternating sides to complete one set. 

The health benefits and the energy It's what keeps us jogging in the sideways rain, blistering cold and slippery snow and, once you're hooked, can be as addictive as any chocolate ice cream.  But despite the array of health benefits, running is actually quite tough on your joints.
Yoga is a new method to improve running. All about restoring the muscles and joints, the class uses yoga postures to target and stretch areas worn down from pounding the pavement. Needless to say, a serious stretch is well overdue.