No matter what’s ailing you, exercise seems to help. Ample research shows that regular workouts improve a multitude of conditions, imparting physical and psychological benefits. Now, a new paper provides compelling evidence that physical activity can help one of the world’s most prevalent mental conditions, alcohol use disorder.
Published today in the journal PLOS ONE, this meta-analysis and review presents findings on 17 randomized clinical trials that examined exercise as an intervention to help alcohol use disorder. The authors found that not only did alcohol reduce dependence on drinking, but it also improved physical and mental wellbeing. Alcohol use disorder currently afflicts millions of people in the United States alone.
The researchers, from the Institute of Physical Education at Jishou University in Hunan, China, included 1,905 patients in their analysis of these trials. Across these studies, the authors looked at changes in daily alcohol consumption, VO2 max (which measures how much oxygen your body uses while exercising), resting heart rate, depression and anxiety levels, stress levels, and other health indicators. They also measured alcohol dependence using the screening tool Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test.
They homed in on daily and weekly alcohol consumption before and after the exercise intervention. Exercise entailed aerobic activity, resistance training, and yoga, among others. The experimental groups that received the exercise intervention significantly reduced their consumption compared to the control groups that received no intervention. Additionally, VO2 max and resting heart rate indicated physical fitness improvements, which they saw consistently among experimental groups. Anxiety state also significantly improved compared with the control group.
The authors speculate that the mechanism behind exercise’s ability to reduce alcohol dependence may come about from exercise’s ability to reduce psychological stress and improve a person’s mental state. It also might come from the way exercise influences the human body’s innate dopaminergic brain reward system, which controls the release of dopamine, the brain’s “feel good” hormone. Because alcohol (as well as most drugs of abuse) activates this brain system as well, exercise might be releasing that needed dopamine that a person with alcohol use disorder might have been relying on. Other research also suggests that exercise triggers the release of endogenous opiates, which could reduce the urge to use drugs.
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Intriguingly, they found that yoga was the chosen exercise in six of the 17 trials analyzed, and it improved psychological state and alcohol dependency. The authors highlight how yoga is a mind-body exercise that incorporates breathing with physical activity, which speaks to exercise’s important influence on mental state.
The authors say they want to do and see more studies that scrutinize how different types of exercise and varying exercise intensities affect the nature of alcohol dependence. Crucially, the fact that over a dozen studies have looked at various types and intensities of exercise emphasizes how exercise of most kinds has a positive effect on alcohol use disorder. And you don’t have to go hard to see the benefits, which is a lesson anyone can take.
If you’re training for a Hyrox, then you’ll know you there are a lot of elements you need to brush up on, from strength to endurance, and power, in order to prepare you for the race’s eight workout stations. One of which is the burpee broad jumps.
In a survey carried out by Trio Fitness Training with 410 participants, burpee board jumps were voted the hardest Hyrox station (followed by wall balls and lunges). It doesn’t come as a massive shock, as having to jump as far as possible on already tired legs is pretty torturous and can lead to a lactic overload.
If you’re hammering away at your hammer curls to no avail, sports scientist Dr Mike Israetel delivers a sharp dose of reality, highlighting the top arm training mistakes we’re making.
In a recent YouTube video, he outlines five of the most common mistakes people make when training arms, from range of motion to outdated programming habits and forgetting to train our forearms. Whether you’re training your arms for aesthetics or performance, these are the principles you’ll want to revisit.
5 Arm Training Mistakes You Need to Avoid
1/ You Don’t Need a Dedicated ‘Arm Day’
The myth that biceps and triceps must be trained together, on the same day, is both outdated and unnecessary. ‘There is no distinct benefit of this,’ Dr Israetel explains. ‘In fact, if your biceps are sufficiently pumped, it actually limits the range of motion on your triceps.’
He continues to explain that the problem lies within recovery strategies: ‘Triceps get sore for like two or three days. Biceps recover in a day or two. So if you’re always trying to train them together, you’ll have to needlessly constrict the amount of effort or volume you do for triceps.’
Sure, an arm day can be fun, but ‘if you have to screw up the rest of your programme to keep an arm day in the mix, consider not doing that,’ advises Dr Israetel.
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2/ Getting Stuck in Fixed Rep Ranges
‘Sets of 5 to 8 can 100% grow your biceps and triceps really well… so can sets of 12 all the way up to even 30,’ says Dr Israetel. ‘Any rep range that works best for a while will eventually get stale, and variation will promote more growth.’ In other words, don’t be afraid to explore varied rep ranges when your current ones get easy.
3/ Not Maximising the Stretch
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‘People do cable extensions halfway down… bicep curls when they don’t ever get a deep stretch.’ And while standing curls might feel tough, Dr Israetel warns they’re often ineffective due to gravity’s unhelpful angle.
The fix for this? Lying dumbbell curls. Which Israetel says is ‘probably one of the most brutal and effective ways to train your bicep’. Why? Because ‘It stretches your bicep under its most maximum load… at that very deep part of the stretch.’
He says this is the same for exercises such as skull crushers: ‘going all the way down… you’re going to get more pumps, more soreness, more growth.’
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4/ Not Training Arms Enough
If you’re hitting your arms once a week, and are serious about increasing size, you may want to up the ante says Dr Israetel, ‘Your triceps, you can train in most cases, hard, two to three times a week. Your biceps you can train in most cases hard three to four times a week.
‘These are small muscles, they do not take one week to recover’. If your split allows for it, slot in two to four dedicated arm sessions per week – assuming recovery is on point.
5/ Forgetting the Forearms
‘Your forearms can contribute massively to how big your overall arms look,’ says Dr Israetel. If you want to really maximise how big our arms look, he advises: ‘Three to six sets of some kind of forearm curls… multiple times per week will get you notably bigger forearms.’
The fact that we lift, rather than how or what we lift, becomes increasingly important as we age. That’s the message in the latest issue of Arnold’s Pump Club, a newsletter series from none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Those thoughts were accompanied by a versatile full-body workout which I’ve detailed below, along with guidance on how to extrapolate the routine into a four-week strength-building plan.
