When Should You Increase the Weight When You Weight Train?
Weight training has a sweet spot, a point where the load is heavy enough to make gains but not so heavy as to cause injury. Your muscles need enough of a challenge to grow, but you don’t want to grab a weight you can’t handle, pump out reps using bad…
Are There Downsides to Wearing a Fitness Tracker?
More and more people are wearing fitness trackers these days and the number will likely continue to grow. Remember pedometers? Although they’re still around, they now have major competition from trackers that measure everything from the steps you take, how long you sleep, your heart rate at various times of…
Can Having More Muscle Strength Lower Your Risk of Type 2 Diabetes?
Being strong has perks! We need muscle strength to carry out the functional movements we do every day and to help us maintain a healthy body composition. One reason people get old physically is they lose muscle strength and mass. But, being strong has other positive health bonuses as well.…
How Physically Fit You Are May Be a Better Predictor of Longevity Than Other Common Risk Factors
You’re probably familiar with the recognized risk factors for cardiovascular disease, the most common killer of Americans. These include chronic health problems, like high blood pressure, obesity, elevated blood sugar, and abnormal blood lipids. Plus, lifestyle habits, like smoking impact the risk as well. But, according to a recent study,…
5 Reasons You Keep Getting Hamstring Strains
Hamstring strains are painful and inconvenient. But, if you’ve exercised for many years or played sports, you’ve probably had one at some point in your active life. Compared to other muscle groups, hamstring strains are more likely to be recurrent and they can take a significant amount of time to…
How a Short, Daily Nap Is Good for Your Heart
A nap sounds like a luxury, doesn’t it? You might take a short one on days when you didn’t sleep well the night but taking a daytime snooze might not be part of your daily agenda. However, about one-third of Americans confess to taking a nap on most days of…
8 Possible Reasons Your Workouts Feel Harder Than They Should
Have you noticed how some days a workout feels easy while other days even a little movement feels tough? Ebbs and flow in motivation and exercise performance happen naturally based on your energy level, mood, stress level, and how fueled you are before your workout. No one always feels 100%…
Is Muscle Strength and Muscle Size Directly Correlated?
When you weight train, your goals might be two-fold: to get stronger and to increase the size of your muscles. If you don’t want to boost the size of your muscles, you at least want to reduce the age-related loss of muscle tissue. However, muscle size and muscle strength are…
3 Keys to Preserving Muscle Mass When You Lose Weight
When you lose weight, the composition of that weight loss matters. Ideally, you want to lose fat while retaining your muscle but that’s not the way it typically happens. Along with fat loss, you usually lose varying amounts of skeletal muscle. How much fat you lose relative to muscle depends…
Belly Fat May Be a Stronger Risk Factor for Breast Cancer Than BMI
You may have heard that being overweight or obese increases the odds of developing breast cancer. Studies do show a correlation between higher BMI with a stronger risk of developing breast cancer, but only in post-menopausal women. In pre-menopausal women, carrying extra body fat is somewhat protective and leaner women…