Archive | May, 2017

Three Energy-Yielding Nutrients

“I answer 20 000 letters a year and so many couples are having problems because they are not getting the right proteins and vitamins.”

Barbara Cartland, English novelist.

The Observer (London) “Sayings of the Week” (August 31, 1986).

There are three energy-yielding nutrients: Carbohydrates, Protein and Fats. These nutrients are written in following lines.

1. Carbohydrates. Carbohydrates usually provide the greater part of the energy in a normal diet, but no individual carbohydrate is an essential nutrient in the sense that the body needs it but cannot make it for itself from other nutrients. If the carbohydrate intake is less than 100 g per day ketosis is likely to occur.

2. Fats. With their high caloric value, fats are useful to people with large energy expenditure; moreover they are helpful in cooking and making food appetizing. Though rats need linoleic or arachidonic acids in their diet, essential fatty acid deficiency is rare in man. It has been demonstrated in patients who have been fed intravenously for long periods without fat emulsions. They develop a scaly dermatitis and eicosatrienoic acid accumulates in plasma lipids. Essential fatty acids are precursors for the synthesis of prostaglandins.

3. Proteins. Protein provides some 20 amino acids, of which eight are essential for normal protein synthesis and for maintaining nitrogen balance in adults. These essential amino acids are methionine, lysine, tryptophan, phenylalanine, leucine, isoleucine, threonine, and valine. Histidine and perhaps arginine are also needed for growth in infants.

The ‘biological value’ of different proteins depends on the relative proportions of essential amino acids they contain. Proteins of animal origin, particularly from eggs, milk and meat, are generally of higher biological value than the proteins of vegetable origin which are deficient in one or more of the essential amino acids. However it is possible to have a diet of mixed vegetable proteins with high biological value if the principle of supplementation is used. For example cereals, e.g. wheat, contain about 10% protein and are relatively deficient in lysine. Legumes contain around 20% of protein which is relatively deficient in methionine. If two parts of wheat are mixed (or eaten) with one part of legume, a food results which contains 13% of a protein of high biological value. This happens because cereals contain enough methionine and legumes enough lysine to supplement the other component of the mixture.

The usual recommended allowance for an adequate protein intake is 10% of the total calories i.e. about 65 g for the average adult. The minimum requirement is less around 40 g per day of good biological value protein for an adult.

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Compound Exercises Without Weights – Let Me Show You How to Succeed Without a Gym

COMPOUND EXERCISES WITHOUT WEIGHTS – IT CAN WORK FOR YOU

Do you want to use a proven method that’s guaranteed to add quality muscle mass to your frame while bulking you up safely, without the strength imbalances that can sabotage carelessly-constructed strength training programs?

Of course you do. You want to use compound exercises.

If you eat enough food to gain weight while using compound movements, you will build muscle and create a spectacular, powerful body that’s operating at peak efficiency.

COMPOUND EXERCISES WITHOUT WEIGHTS – NO GYM REQUIRED

No well-equipped gym? No problem.

Every good strength training program uses three main types of exercises: push, pull, and squat. You can easily get the benefits of these proven exercise variations without any equipment.

Push exercises are those in which you push away from your body. Movements like push-ups (press-ups), overhead presses, and dips are all pushing movements.

Pulling exercises are those which force you to pull towards your body. Pull-ups, rowing moves, and their variations are all pulling movements.

Squats comprise many movements which all have as their unifying concept the act of straightening a bent leg against resistance. The normal 2-legged squat is the most obvious example, but lunges and step-ups also fit into the squat category.

So, if you pick two exercises from each group — squat, pull, and push, you can get a full-body compound workout that strengthens your body as a unit.

COMPOUND EXERCISES WITHOUT WEIGHTS — SAMPLE FULL-BODY WORKOUT

You always want to start with squats, since they require the most energy. Then alternate a push movement and a pull movement. After completing each category of movement, repeat the squat, push, pull group again, using a different, easier set of exercises.

1 Lunges

2 Chin-ups

3 Divebomber Push-Ups

4 Squats

5 Jumping Pull-Ups

6 Regular Push-Ups

There you have it! A full-body compound workout without any weights required. Some of you are probably shouting “Wait! What about arms?” That’s the beauty of compound movements: you can work your “small” body parts while also hitting the more massive parts like chest and back. Unless you work your body as a single unit, you will never develop the sort of size that’s possible with a full-body compound workout.

Of course, if you add a set of dumbbells, you can add many more movements to your full-body workout. You’ll find it easier to perform overhead presses and rows, but it isn’t necessary for beginners or anyone who wants to keep in shape to use weights. Bodyweight exercises are great, especially compared to doing nothing!

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Dwight Howard Vertical Jump and Strength Workout

Dwight Howard is 6″11 and weighs 265 pounds, but he wasn’t always this powerful. Since he came into the NBA he has hit the weights hard and gotten much stronger. In fact, since his rookie year he has increased his bench press from 185 to 360. That is almost double!! So what is Dwight Howard’s workout routine? Let’s find out…

Dwight Howard has to give a lot of credit to his personal trainer, Joe Rogowski. Joe has given Dwight a workout routine that has helped him gain muscles mass and explosive power. Joe Rogowski does an excellent job at mixing up Dwight’s workout routine. One day he will lift very heavy weight to gain strength and power, the next he focuses on plyometrics routines for speed and agility. Below are a few of the key exercises that Joe has Dwight Howard perform…

Bench Press – Dwight mixes this up using the straight bar and dumbbells. Rogowski likes to have Dwight perform the pyramid routine. The pyramid he uses is 10-8-6-4-2.

Leg Press – Joe prefers to have Dwight use the leg press machine over free weight squats. Dwight has back hyperextension and Joe doesn’t want to put Dwight’s back at risk. The leg press machine is a safe exercise and it allows Dwight to go with very heavy weight.

The Perfect Push Up – One of Dwight’s favorite exercises is the push up. He performs many of his push up routines at his home. In fact, he integrates his push ups into video game sessions. For example, when he’s playing a boxing game (his favorite), Dwight does a set every time he knocks someone out. Role-playing game? Every time he dies, he pumps out as many push-ups as possible.

Dwight Howard has an impressive 39″ vertical leap. Joe Rogowski incorporates plyometric exercises and speed drills into Dwight’s workout routine as well. This keeps him flying above the rim so he can continue to throw down those impressive SUPERMAN DUNKS! A few of his favorite exercises to increase his vertical leap include box jumps, sprints and the jump rope.

If you would like more information about Dwight Howard and his vertical leap check out the links I have below:

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Overtraining is Overtraining

I receive this so often that I thought it was important to reiterate it again. If you are having an impasse in progress, if you are feeling tired, lethargic or your metabolism is slowed… your body is trying to tell you something and that something is that you may very well be in an over trained state, a deep over trained state or nearing an over trained state! It may require a layoff, long layoff, a change in volume and frequency or all of the above. Overtraining is overtraining people! Please try to get this as this is the deadliest mistake a high intensity training bodybuilder or athlete can make.

The theory of high intensity training was brought about by Mike Mentzer, an Olympian Champion, bodybuilder and trainer. Mike was the thinking man’s bodybuilder… who spent a great deal of his career and life testing and researching the theory of high intensity training. He did this both in the gym, his phone clients and personally. Mike’s contributions to bodybuilding and the understanding of anaerobic training were great, but the most valuable thing he taught me was how to think!

I recently was in a High Intensity Training forum and a member had questions about training with a technique called Rest Pause. This technique is one that allows for a maximum contraction on every rep, while resting seven to ten seconds between each rep. Reps are normally no more than four or five and only one set is employed. The just of the post was that after doing rest pause training, this athlete felt tired for a good many days and wanted to train more often for the experience of training… he liked it and had an emotional attachment to it! He reasoned that if he waited longer between reps where he could do each rep without using assistance or dropping the weight and not training to failure, it would be easier on his system and he would not feel so tired. This was just a by product of a very important point that I will discuss below which was my answer on to the HIT athlete.

Mike Mentzer Said….

When Mike Mentzer said overtraining was not just something sort of negative and that it takes sometimes weeks to recover, you better believe it is the truth…. I have seen it in the gym and with my phone clients… although they don’t like to hear it and usually not until we go through a thorough phone coaching session their negative results so far can usually be linked to overtraining, not high intensity stimulus… but not resting long enough to allow the increase to occur after high intensity training.

You have to check your logic here… become emotionally unattached…because if you think clearly about it, you stated that RIGHT NOW…you are the strongest and most muscular you have ever been and you have been training in high intensity fashion. IF you continue to train within a specific spectrum of rest, and I find this very often…you are going to lose the battle. WHY? Because your strength can increase some 300% while your recover ability may increase only 50%! If you do the numbers you will see the seesaw tilting to one side. The only way you can compensate for the affect of growing larger and stronger is taking more rest time.

It takes time for the body to recover. I can’t begin to tell you how important that is. If the body doesn’t recover… it can’t go to the next step of laying down muscle. I have trainees that train every 10-14 days and not until then… do they compensate let alone overcompensate for the exhaustive affects of the workout. It is genetics. There are those that can train every other day and recover… (however not forever either….) and those, and I have had clients like this… who have had to take a straight six months off before they began to train again because it took that long for them to fill the ditch… this is true guys!! High Intensity, Heavy Duty (Mike Mentzer’s trademark), R U Serious, you call it what you will is extremely demanding and thus extremely productive. If you have a thorough understanding of the theory, there is no guessing.

This is the way to think through it…

OK, you are training intensely, with an intense contraction to stimulate muscle growth, to turn on the growth mechanism.

You are training briefly, not using too much of recover ability and leaving as much possible there … being aware not to dig too deep of a ditch…

***Question….Are you really training briefly or do you need to cut back farther? Remember, training is always a negative, we are talking VOLUME….

If you are still tired after a week or two or three, your body has not compensated for the exhaustive affects of the exercise, let alone over compensated…. more rest is required. Not everyone is using recovery enhancing drugs etc so it will take time, but the wait is well worth it…. we are talking FREQUENCY

Read about Lethargic….

Lethargy or Lethargic- deficient in alertness or activity; “bullfrogs became lethargic with the first cold nights” [ant: energetic] … is lack of energy… energy is something we are, everything is energy… when we expend it… it must be replaced. The body recovers systemically and replaces energy as such.

Have you ever noticed how when you are sick or over tired, you do not even feel like eating? Animals are the smartest…when they are ill, they waste no energy on eating, their body saves all its energy to fight off the STRESS, and sickness is a stress…. See… it is all stress related… the body doesn’t know the difference…

So if your metabolism seems sluggish, you feel lethargic etc, chances are you have allowed yourself to move into a state of overtraining and continuing so just digs a deeper hole. A sluggish metabolism or lethargic is the first symptoms I use, along with a slowing of progress, to analyze the beginning of the overtraining condition. If you are active and healthy and not over trained… you should feel energetic. If done properly, you should never reach a condition of overtraining.

If we realize there is one valid theory of high intensity training, if we really understand anaerobic exercise, then the answer is not changing routines, not going to the volume approach, not dropping the intensity, the answer to the problem or question can be found in one of the two elements of this training… that is in volume or frequency or both…. who says that you have to train every so many days? Who says that your workout has to be one, two, three or five sets? Who says that those abbreviated workouts have to be all large compound movements? Stick with the theory and you will find the answers to the question.

This really has to do with being 100% for your next workout. I personally could not imagine at this moment, another Rest Pause Leg Workout, which is my next workout. I am scheduled to train again tomorrow and I got news for you, I will reassess where I am next Monday…I have already taken eight days off since my last workout, tomorrow will be nine. I will add five days and if I am 100%, I will be there, 14 days later… if not, no problem. I am after the result not the experience so the less I am in the gym; the better as it gives me more time to live, play and enjoy the result, a strong, muscular and energetic body…

Always use logic in working out these similar problems and you will find the answers precisely.

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Clean Eating Is The New Normal

Perhaps you have been wondering what all the talk about clean eating is really all about. What is clean eating and what is not clean eating? Do I need to give up my favorite foods to live a clean eating lifestyle? And why are there so many food plans being touted right now?

We know it can be a lot to take in but the Paleo diet, the ketosis diet, and the gluten-free diet can all be part of a clean eating lifestyle. The basic idea of a clean eating program is to stop using processed foods as much as possible. That means giving up most canned foods, bottled foods and any other foods that have gone through a processing procedure to the point that they are no longer in their natural state.

A clean eating diet also attempts to reduce the sugar content in foods. While some recipes require a sweetener during the cooking process, refined sugar is replaced with a natural sweetener such as honey or pure maple syrup.

When you start working clean foods into your diet you want to start slowly. There are many small changes that you can make that will add up to a major change after a few weeks. For example, if you are using artificial creamers in your coffee and you don’t want to change to drinking it black, you will need to change and use a real milk product from cattle are raised on a chemical free farm. You will also want to change from the refined, processed white sugar to something like natural stevia.

Another easy adjustment is to rid yourself of candy and use fresh fruit when you want something sweet. Bananas, mangos and ripe peaches are all loaded with natural sugars. It does take a little adjustment of the mind to convince us that they should replace candy. However, with a little bit of research, we soon find out that all that sugar in those candy bars is not to make the candy sweeter but to get us addicted to eating foods loaded with processed white sugar. Once the sugar addiction gets started it is very hard to break it. Sugar is hidden in plain sight on the labels of many canned goods. It goes by many different names and often you will find corn syrup (a sugar) listed right next to “brown sugar” on a label. It is not unheard of to find three or four kinds of sugar in a processed food. Manufacturers know that once you are addicted they usually have you as a customer for life.

Those are but two small items that bring a big change from eating processed foods to eating clean healthy foods the way nature offered them to us. If you make a couple of small changes each week, within a couple of months you will be eating a clean eating diet and feeling much better about your health. The New Normal is Clean Eating so join the movement and make a couple of small changes this week.

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The Seven Principles of Resistance Training

When focusing on resistance training, and overall athletic performance for that matter, there are seven overriding principles that govern improvement. When training, try to keep these principles in mind when looking for improvement. Often people find that they reach performance ‘plateaus’, however if they review their program, they will find that they are most likely neglecting one or more of the following principles:

1. Principle of Overload

2. Principle of Progression

3. Principle of Specificity

4. Principle of Variation

5. Principle of Individuality

6. Principle of Diminishing Returns

7. Principle of Reversibility

Principle of Overload

This is one of the fundamental basics of resistance training. It basically means that if you want to get stronger or make the muscle grow, you need to work or ‘overload’ the muscle. When you overload the muscle, you are actually tearing the muscle tissue at a microscopic level. When this occurs, the body tries to over-compensate, anticipating that it needs to be done again. In doing so, more muscle tissue is laid down, causing muscle growth.

Principle of Progression

Again, this is one of the basic principles of weight training. This means that as you get stronger, it is no point continuing to lift the same weight – you need to ‘progress’ by lifting heavier weight, or pump out more repetitions. If the progression is too great, the weight will be too heavy to lift, however if there is no or little progression, there will be no performance improvement.

Principle of Specificity

The concept of specificity is that if you want to improve your performance in a certain area, train in that area. In other words, train how you play! If you want to improve athletic performance in basketball for example, there’s no use running laps around an oval – Do athletics based on basketball, such as suicide runs, ball drills etc. Resistance training is the same – if you want to improve your push-ups, do push-ups and exercises that mimic that movement.

Principle of Variation

Some people get confused that variation and specificity conflict each other. In fact, they absolutely do not! The idea of variation is that you mix up your training routine so your body doesn’t adapt too efficiently to what you’re trying to achieve. Again, using the push-up as an example, you can vary your push-up workout by changing it to incline or decline push-ups, putting a clap in the middle or moving your hand closer to make it a triceps push-up. Alternatively you can try a bench press – Biomechanically it’s nearly identical.

Principle of Individuality

The principle of Individuality covers the differences of people with the ‘X’ factor -and those athletic freaks who seem to get stronger just by looking at weights! More seriously, individuality acknowledges that all people train at different rates. This individuality can be influenced by age, gender, race, nutrition, genetic predisposition and sleep factors. This is why it is important people follow their individual training routine rather than copy what everyone else seems to be doing.

Principle of Diminishing Returns

The Principle of Diminishing Returns means that as someone gets fitter or stronger, it takes more effort to continue to get fitter or stronger. A beginner who is morbidly obese will lose a significant amount of weight when they begin, but as they lose more and more weight, it becomes more and more difficult to continue to lose the weight. Strength gains are the same. This is why world class athletes train for hours and hours every day to try and gain a 1-2% improvement!

Principle of Reversibility

This is the ‘move it or lose it’ rule. It means that exercise needs to be continued to maintain athletic and strength bases, or the results will be reversed. Generally speaking, the elderly are not as strong as when they were in their youth, partly because they are not as active as when they were young. It has been estimated that an athlete at bed-rest will lose approximately 10% of cardiovascular performance per week! This is why many sportspeople will maintain their strength and fitness in the off-season – It’s much easier to maintain fitness and strength than lose it and try to get it back.

These are the seven principles of resistance training. Try to remember these and take them into account when writing your next training program!

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Build Spring and Power in Your Legs to Increase Vertical Leap and Running Speed

I got this simple, yet effective, leg power and spring development workout from a gym member who used to play college b-ball and football. His advice was to focus on the core lifts for a good 3 months to build basic strength and power, combining it with Jumping rope. His workout:

Cycle workouts 3 days a week with a day of rest in between and 2 days off after the 3rd workout. Example – Mon, Wed, Fri, weekend off, repeat on Mon…

All exercises, 3-4 sets and 5-8 reps with increase of weight in each succeeding set and use a weight that takes you to almost failure on the last set.

**Always Warmup 15-20 minutes before and use proper form! AND IF POSSIBLE FIND A SPOTTER FOR THE HEAVY SETS!

Workout 1:

Squats, Push Press, Glut-Ham Raise, Lat Pulldown, Seated Calf raise

Workout 2:

Deadlifts, Power Cleans, Bench Press, standing calf raise

FINISH OFF EVERY WORKOUT WITH A SUPERSET OF CRUNCHES AND LEG RAISES WITH 15-30 SEC BURSTS OF JUMPING ROPE

EXAMPLE: CRUNCH (20-30 REPS), LEG RAISES (15-20 REPS) THEN MOVE IMMEDIATELY TO JUMPING ROPE for a 15-30 second burst as quick as possible alternating jumps from 2 legs to one to a double rope turnover jump knees to chest. Rest 3-4 minutes and repeat. Please be careful. If you never jumped rope, start slowly until you build your coordination.

This simple workout will add power and spring to your legs which in turn will increase vertical leap and running speed in a short time. This workout will prepare you for the more intense training programs.

**Always get permission from a Parent, Guardian, Coach, Certified Health Fitness experts when embarking on any fitness program. Use at your own risk**

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Building a High Intensity Training Workout Routine

As a high intensity training coach for strength athletes I often, and sometimes on a daily basis, get questions about how to build a workout routine, how to advance a workout routine or what the next step is in reaching individual potential. I always keep it simple stupid using the basic theory of HIT.

I wish I could say it is just experience that allows me to answer these questions but it is actually a combination of critical thinking, experience and an understanding of how people around us including athletes, differ… based on their genetic makeup. What I am saying is that although high intensity strength training is probably the most effective training ever, because of it’s efficiency and the way our bodies are designed, we still all have different genetic fingerprints and in applying the theory of high intensity training properly, is the key to the puzzle.

It is no secret that we are all genetically different, from our fingerprints to the individual differences that make us up. If you look at color we have albinos at one end of the spectrum and Negros at the other. This difference also is directly related to tolerance to sun light where an albino can tolerate very little volume of sunlight where as a Negro can tolerate much more. These are genetics! Same applies to muscles, height, IQ and a list of others.

Same can be said for tolerance to exercise, although we are physiologically the same we are genetically different. This is the reason when I build an exercise routine I customize it to the individual using it. There is no One Size Fits All totally!

In saying there is no one size fits all, there are exercises that are very effective which turn on the growth mechanism of the entire body. These exercises are what I call the big exercises such as deadlifts, squats, rows, high pulls, dips, bench presses and their alternatives. When building any workout, I use a cross hatch of these exercises, based on the person’s goals and augment these exercises with other effective but less stressful exercises. By using the thermometer of volume and frequency to adhere with brief and infrequent workouts, I ask a number of questions to get a read of what their genetic makeup might be. This might include:

o What they feel their weaknesses are

o What their rate of progress has been for the past 3 months

o What their energy levels are at the moment

o What their current workout frequency is

o What level of intensity are they applying

o What their diet is like and what do they tend to eat

o What is their body fat percentage at the moment

o How long have they been training

o What training have they been initiating; high volume or high intensity

o Do they include aerobics or cardio training and why

These are just a few. In asking these questions I am painting a picture of who they are genetically, and the road they have traveled, to get to the point of where they are presently. If they are searching out a workout routine and find me, in most cases, the way they have approached their goals has been unsuccessful. What I find in many cases is that they are floundering. They have gone months and years without meaningful progress due to two things.

1- Not cooperating with their genetics

2- Not applying properly, the Theory of High Intensity Training, which stated simply is that exercise must be intense, brief and infrequent.

It is no secret that you can train either hard or long but you can’t train hard and long. The theory of HIT indicates quite simply this…

1- You must stimulate muscular growth with an intense contraction i.e. going to failure or beyond…

2- Your training must be brief as to

3- Allow the body to not only compensate but overcompensate or adapt to that stimulation.

Did you know that you can increase your strength beyond 300% however your ability to recover may increase on 50%?

The body only requires you to stimulate an adaptive response once, not over and over again and because any more than is minimally required takes away from the growth and recovery process and since the body systemically recovers, then whatever is left over goes into overcompensation, laying down muscle… then your training must be brief and infrequent. And all this hinges on one thing… genetics!

I find…

A properly designed program, including one for bodybuilders is really a strength program because muscle and strength are relative.

This means that it is necessary to do only what is minimally required to stimulate an increase. Any more than what is minimally required is overtraining! This means only one set per exercise… remember, you do not have to stimulate a response over and over again. Your goal is not to do more work, leave that to the distance runners!

There is also no reason to do a number of sets and alter rep range, every rep up until the last almost impossible rep performed that turns on the growth mechanism of the body is nothing more than a warm up.

The higher the rep range, the less stressful due to the weight being employed.

Big basic exercises, as previously mentioned, should be the core of your workout routine augmented with smaller exercises like curls, laterals, pull downs, triceps extension etc if necessary.

All big basic exercises do not have to be done in each workout, rather, performing just one or sometimes two per workout is plenty along with one or two smaller exercises.

In a split routine you can have up to 4 or more split workouts with rest days between each while experiencing amazing progress. You will not loose size but gain!

Rest days in general range most effectively between 4 days all the way to 14 days, based on genetics and the level of the trainee. A very advanced trainee who can generate very intense contractions thus strength may need 7+ days of rest as would a less experienced trainee who has a low tolerance to intense exercise. Both will advance, yet at different rates.

Advanced athletes require more intense contractions to advance, along with longer rest times. Higher stress intensity techniques are required and work very well in all exercises if managed properly.

Both beginners and advanced athletes require big core basic exercises to turn on the systemic growth process of the body.

Tracking progress means tracking your strength gains. You will either gain reps or strength or both which will result at a future point as a muscular bodyweight gain.

Diet plays a major role in performance, progress and recovery. There must be quality cement in place to build the house. Macro-nutrient manipulation in many cases is very beneficial, allowing the bodies natural systems to be used most efficiently. Processed anything should be limited.

Remember, you grow outside the gym not in it! It is an ends to a means. Use these factors when building your H I T workout routine and watch your progress speed along to reaching your genetic potential.

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Exercise and Workouts – Four Tips To Make The Most Of Your Stretching Routine

Stretching is a vital part of any fitness program but sadly something many people tend to turn their nose up at. People often figure since stretching does not offer direct benefits like cardio training does, it is something they can just do without.

But, is this the case? Can you make do without your stretching routine? The answer is no. Stretching will help you…

  • relieve muscle soreness,
  • increase your range of motion, and contribute
  • to improving your overall performance

as well. Simply put, it is an absolute must.

Let us look at four points you need to think about to help make the most of your stretching routine…

1. Never Stretch Cold. The first thing you need to know is stretching cold is a “big no-no.” When you stretch cold, the muscles are tight and tense and more likely to suffer from a tear or sprain. Stretch cold, and you may do more harm than good.

A light warm-up of at least five minutes is a wise idea to help get your body prepared for stretching. Often it is ideal to do this right after your workout is completed.

If you are stretching on a non-workout day, a light warm-up beforehand can help get your body prepared.

2. Ease Into The Stretch. Next, make sure you ease into your stretch. As you go about your stretching routine, do not rush in jerking your muscle into position. Jerking the muscle will only increase your risk factor of an injury.

Go slow. Breathe as you lower yourself down and pause when it becomes uncomfortable. Take another deep breath in, pause again and then move lower into the stretch. Repeat this process until you cannot extend any longer.

3. Go For Multiple Rounds. Another tip to help you get more out of your stretching routine is to ensure you are going for multiple rounds of stretching. It is not wise to just stretch once and be done with it. Usually, on your second time, you can extend further so this is where you will make the most progress.

Try performing each stretch for two or even three repetitions for optimal success.

4. Stretch Every Day. Consider stretching every day if you can. The fact is stretching is something needing to be done on an ongoing rate if you are going to see the results you are looking for. Skip a few days here and there, and your muscles will tighten up, and you will notice you are not making progress.

If you can aim to stretch at least on five days each week, this is what will give you the best results.

There you have the facts you need to know regarding your stretching routine. Don’t overlook this critical element of your workout program.

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An In-Depth Analysis of the Benefits of Amla Juice

Amla is a well-renowned fruit which is known for decades owing to the nutritional benefits as well as endeavoring properties. This fruit is highly renowned for the different antiseptic as well as antioxidant property. This happens to be a rich nutrient product which has shown amazing benefits for resolving different skin issues. Here are some benefits of consuming amla juice on a regular basis:

Source of Vitamin C

Amlaras is considered to be a good source of vitamin C. It comprises of vitamin C, 20 times more in comparison to orange juice. Vitamin C which is present in amla ras is beneficial in the improvement of tannins which are a prerequisite for shielding light and heat. It also aids in the improvement of the texture of skin and bringing a healthy glow to it.

Purification of Blood

Amlaras after consuming with honey on a regular basis is effective in conferring relief from the complications that may arise owing to bronchitis as well as asthma. It also works in a perfect way for purifying the blood. You can intake the same mixture for saying goodbye to the problems of acidity. Pure honey can be mixed for rendering a solution to acidic issues. The antioxidant properties of amla ras aid in purifying the unwanted products from the blood and making the same healthier.

Retaining Body Temperature

Amaras, when taken in the summer season, can keep the body cool from the scoring heat of the sun. It is considered to be a shield to radiation and bestowing protection from the harmful ultraviolet rays, thereby saving the skin from harsh weather conditions and keeping the same cool and hydrated.

Enhance the Glow In Face

Intaking amla juice after addition of money during morning hours will bring a new glow to your face. Consuming this juice is helpful in making the skin free from blemishes. Amla juice works in a perfect manner for the removal of acne scars and pimples of the skin. If a paste is made from amla and applied on the skin for a time period of 10 to 15 minutes, it will be healing the spots and reducing the skin that gets affected by acne. In this manner, the antiseptic properties of amla will help in making the skin look more fresh and beautiful.

Stronger Growth of Hair

Application of amla juice after mixing it with water to the scalp will restore the energy and spirit of hair. You can add amla powder along with lemon juice for making the hair stronger. Amla oil is used for scalp massage. It will help in strengthening the hair from the roots and bringing the natural glow to the hair. A number of people consume amlaras in procuring relief from stress.

Prerequisite Source of Nutrients

Amla happens to be one of the integral ingredients which are present in chyavanaprash and Triphala. It also consists of different vitamins and minerals which are beneficial for healthy functioning of the body. Amlaras is considered to be a powerful antioxidant at the same time.

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