Stretching is one of the most misunderstood activities in fitness. Because it is mostly associated with the “bend down and touch your toes” variety of exercise its importance is frequently overlooked and the benefits it can provide are lost. As muscles grow and as they age, they change. A balanced stretching routine helps provide more…
Everyone who’s struggled to get one more rep in at the gym, or felt the desperate weakness that kicks in when muscles reach their limit as they’ve run has wondered why is it that muscles get tired and how can they be made stronger. Popular answers wrongly blame oxygen deficit, the depletion of glycogen stores…
There are still many forums, websites and even fitness instructors who use the convenience of the endo, meso, ecto classification for body types, perpetuating a myth that has no foundation in science. Our bodies are the instruments we use to connect to the world and the places we all live in so it’s worth taking…
In a perfect world all muscle would be equal. If we needed to increase strength then we would simply need to put on muscle. Unfortunately the world is not perfect and all muscle fibers are not equal. This means that when it comes to functional strength size of muscle really does not matter and quality…
Tendons, ligaments and fascia are all made of collagen. Collagen is structural protein which forms tough, durable fibers that are then used to connect up all the different muscle groups and structures of the body. By understanding what each of these groups does we begin to understand how our bodies work better, which means we…
Bodyweight exercises always recruit more than one muscle group for each exercise so it is impossible to isolate and work one muscle group specifically by doing one type of exercise. It is however possible to increase the load targeting specific muscle groups with specific exercises so that they respond the most to the challenge. The…
Breathing is easy. Because we do it from the moment we are born we barely pause to give thought to it, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no right way to do it. The rhythm of breathing we establish when we train determines the efficiency of our body’s movement which in turn determines the quality…
Physical activity requires oxygen so the muscles can work properly. We all think we know how to breathe because we do it every day, yet just like we have to learn to optimize the way our bodies move so we can become more powerful, so does our breathing technique have to be an acquired rather…
Pain experienced by the body is always a signal. Yet, never has there been so much discussion and confusion over what the pain signal exactly means than when it comes to the experience of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS for short). There’s so much about DOMS that science yet doesn’t know that it’s best to…
Fitness is the outcome of many different factors that work together to achieve it. Nothing quite shows that complexity more clearly than “muscle memory”. Because the term “muscle memory” is used in two different types of context it is worth looking at each one in turn to better understand what is going on and what…
