Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through our links on this page.
Fitness
Save $25 on this unique exercise tool that provides a full-body workout
Let’s face it. A few of us aren’t reduce out to be health club bunnies, and many people don’t discover the exercise of going for a run to be a blast. However since train is so vital for our well being and most People aren’t getting sufficient of it, it’s important to discover a strategy to transfer your physique that you just take pleasure in.
Should you’ve been looking for a brand new train methodology you are able to do at house, look no additional! The Authentic Gorilla Bow is a novel strategy to give your physique a complete exercise with out climbing on a treadmill or pounding the pavement. And proper now, you possibly can take one house for simply $174.99 — $25 off the same old worth — for a restricted time.
Let the Authentic Gorilla Bow revolutionize the way in which you’re employed out day after day. It combines the basics of the traditional bow with the fashionable know-how of resistance bands to make a enjoyable strategy to attain your health targets. And it really works for everybody — from those that are model new to transferring their physique to those that are accustomed to heavy lifting and accustomed to intense exercise routines.
Construct muscle, drop extra pounds, and tone your physique with ease, whereas concurrently decreasing stress in your joints with the Authentic Gorilla Bow. It’s made from aircraft-grade aluminum that provides it a formidable 300 kilos of weight capability or stress. You’ll be able to select the depth by deciding what number of resistance bands to position in your bow — from one to 4. And relaxation assured you’ve gotten loads of flexibility, because the resistance band materials could be stretched 2.5 instances its size so you should use it for extra workout routines.
The Authentic Gorilla Bow is the winner of greatest resistance bands from Males’s Well being 2020 Health Awards and Sports activities Illustrated named it the Greatest Distinctive Resistance Band of 2022. See what all of the fuss is about by bringing one house now for simply $175 (reg. $199).
Costs topic to vary.
Fitness
Fitness: Is mindfulness the key to a more enjoyable workout?
If exercise pushes you so far outside your comfort zone that physical activity is associated with pain more than pleasure, there’s little motivation to get off the couch.
Article content
There’s no shortage of rumination about why more than half of Canadians don’t meet the recommended 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week. Lack of time is a common excuse, but there are plenty of busy people who exercise regularly. Access is another often-stated barrier, though most Canadians can safely exercise outdoors or in the privacy of their own home should other fitness facilities not be within an easy commute.
Advertisement 2
Article content
What’s often ignored is the role enjoyment plays in exercise adherence. For those who revel in a tough workout, the idea some people hate to sweat may seem strange. But if exercise pushes you so far outside your comfort zone that physical activity is associated with pain more than pleasure, there’s little motivation to get off the couch.
Once exercise becomes coupled with discomfort, getting reluctant exercisers to find pleasure and enjoyment in physical activity is an uphill battle. To help improve its appeal, researchers have been looking at the effectiveness of something called “extrinsic strategies” to promote better exercise adherence. Defined as “environmental manipulations of the exercise experience that fall outside of the FITT principles,” extrinsic strategies are more about the mental, rather than physical aspects of exercise. In short, the focus is less about the frequency, intensity, time and type of exercise, and more about the role feelings play in the adoption of a regular workout routine.
To be clear, we’re not talking about taking the effort out of exercise. Extrinsic strategies work on altering the perception of effort. Even more granular, it’s important to alter how effort is perceived during, not after, a workout. There’s a marked difference in how people feel once they wipe the sweat off their brow compared to when they’re grinding it out just hoping to finish. And while some people use the feeling of accomplishment that comes after a tough workout to motivate their return to the gym, others can’t get past the memory of how uncomfortable it felt in the moment.
Advertisement 3
Article content
One of the extrinsic strategies to improving the exercise experience is focusing on external stimuli instead of how the body feels. Music is a popular distraction, which is why so many exercisers listen to their favourite playlists. Another option is exercising outdoors where nature works its magic at diverting exercisers from the internal sensations of effort. Exercising with a friend or within a group also helps. But contrary to using external distractions to dampen the effort of exercise, is the novel idea of leaning into how your body feels during a tough workout.
Mindfulness is defined as paying attention to what’s happening in the moment while also being open to how the body responds physically and mentally to the current experience. In other words, instead of trying to disassociate from the feelings of effort, mindfulness aims to accept and acknowledge the exertion it takes to complete a workout.
The idea that mindfulness is effective at improving exercise adherence is gaining traction, with initial studies suggesting it has merit, but mostly when exercising at lower intensities. Learning to accept and become comfortable with the feelings associated with physical exertion could be a crucial first step in finding pleasure in exercise.
Advertisement 4
Article content
A recent study published in the Journal of Sports Sciences recently tested the effectiveness of mindfulness in enhancing the exercise experience. The goal of the research team was to see if mindfulness “could prove a useful pleasure enhancing strategy during exercise.”
A test sample of 34 recreationally active men and women were divided into two groups. One group was equipped with a recording taken from Headspace, a popular meditation and mindfulness app, that focused exercisers on tuning into their body and its movement. The control group was without any mindfulness tools.
Both sets of exercisers were asked to follow a 1.5-mile loop through a local park at a self-selected intensity they could sustain for 20-25 minutes. Heart rate was continually monitored, and study subjects were asked to check in with how they felt at two points during the walk (at 0.5 and one mile).
Results indicated listening to a mindfulness recording led to a more pleasurable exercise experience than walking the loop without. That positive response to exercise continued after the workout finished, another sign the mindfulness guided walk produced the kind of enjoyment that could encourage exercisers to walk more often.
Learning to appreciate the feelings associated with effort is an interesting strategy to introduce, especially to new exercisers who often negatively perceive the physical sensations that occur during a workout. With more practice accepting, instead of tuning out, those feelings, a greater number of novice exercisers could become more tolerant of the effort required to improve overall fitness. It’s also an interesting approach for seasoned exercisers who generally rely on disassociating from the intense feelings of a hard workout.
Acknowledging, accepting and appreciating the effort of being physically active are tools every exerciser can lean into when the going gets tough. More importantly, it could be part an improved strategy to get more Canadians enjoying the 150 minutes a week they spend working up a sweat.
Advertisement 5
Article content
Article content
Fitness
‘WH’ Editors Put These Fitness Gifts On Their Wishlist
Jasmine Gomez is the Commerce Editor at Women’s Health, where she cover the best product recommendations across beauty, health, lifestyle, fitness, and more. When she’s not shopping for a living, she enjoys karaoke and dining out more than she cares to admit. Follow her @JazzeGomez.
Mark Stock is a food, drink, and outdoors writer from Portland, Oregon. He spent years making, selling, and sipping Pinot Noir in the Dundee Hills before a full return to his journalistic roots in 2016. In addition to Men’s Health, he writes for SevenFifty Daily, Sip Northwest, The Somm Journal, The Drake, Willamette Week, Travel Oregon, and more.
Watch Next
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Fitness
This type of exercise suppresses hunger in women more than men, study proves
Find yourself with a bigger appetite on rest days than after logging your hardest workout of the week? Same. It usually takes me an hour or two to feel hunger after an intense session, and while there are plenty of existing studies that have attributed this to a decrease in the hunger hormone grehlin and an increase in the hormone peptide YY, which helps you feel fuller for longer, new research suggests women are more susceptible to this response than men.
Granted, the study was conducted on only a small sample of participants (eight males and six females), but this is the first review to have included women at all, and the findings were notable.
The method was pretty straightforward: participants were asked to fast overnight, before completing bouts of cycling at varying levels of intensity the next morning. These were then followed up with blood tests (to measure amounts of lactate) and self-reports to analyse appetite levels.
Results showed that the females had higher levels of total ghrelin (the hormone that makes you feel hunger) at baseline compared to the males, while they also had ‘significantly reduced levels’ of acylated (AG) ghrelin after intense exercise compared to males. Ghrelin levels were, in fact, much lower in both males and females after intense exercise compared to moderate exercise, meaning that all participants felt ‘less hungry’ after high-intensity exercise compared to after moderate exercise, but this was even more significant for women.
‘We found that moderate intensity exercise either did not change ghrelin levels or led to a net increase,’ the study noted. The authors added that exercise above your lactate threshold may be necessary to elicit a suppression in grehlin. Lactate threshold is the point at which lactate builds up in your bloodstream faster than your body can remove it – it occurs during high-intensity exercise.
Why is this useful to know? The author of the study, Kara Anderson, PhD, says: ‘Our research suggests that high-intensity exercise may be important for appetite suppression, which can be particularly useful as part of a weight loss programme. Exercise should be thought of as a “drug”, where the “dose” should be customised based on an individual’s personal goals.’
More fitness stories:
Cut through the noise and get practical, expert advice, home workouts, easy nutrition and more direct to your inbox. Sign up to the WOMEN’S HEALTH NEWSLETTER
Bridie is Fitness Director at Women’s Health UK. She spends her days sweating over new workouts, fitness launches and the best home gym kit so you have all that you need to get fit done. Her work has been published in Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and more. She’s also a part-time yoga teacher with a habit of nodding off mid savasana (not when she’s teaching, promise).
-
Business1 week ago
Column: Molly White's message for journalists going freelance — be ready for the pitfalls
-
Science5 days ago
Trump nominates Dr. Oz to head Medicare and Medicaid and help take on 'illness industrial complex'
-
Politics7 days ago
Trump taps FCC member Brendan Carr to lead agency: 'Warrior for Free Speech'
-
Technology6 days ago
Inside Elon Musk’s messy breakup with OpenAI
-
Lifestyle1 week ago
Some in the U.S. farm industry are alarmed by Trump's embrace of RFK Jr. and tariffs
-
World7 days ago
Protesters in Slovakia rally against Robert Fico’s populist government
-
News6 days ago
They disagree about a lot, but these singers figure out how to stay in harmony
-
News7 days ago
Gaetz-gate: Navigating the President-elect's most baffling Cabinet pick