3 PHASE INSTANT RECOVERY PLAN FOR KNEE INJURIES

December 17th, 2009 • Recovery Series
Tags: Fatigue, Hurt, Injury, Injury Recovery, Knee, Muscle, Pain, Patellas, Pulled Muscle, Relief, Repair, Stretch, Stretching, Tendonitis

Patellas are your knee caps. A common type of injury that you will know is your knee and the back of your lower leg. It is a common injury, a painful and a difficult one to recover from completely – it’s a shame when you’re in pain as you can’t train to your full capacity. The knee joint has to support the most bodyweight, thus making it the most vulnerable to any injury sustained through training. Because of the movement and weight of your body, as well as the impact of training – especially when running – it’s critical that you know the most common ways you can injure you knee and the most common ways to repair it. The most common injury is called patellar tendonitis, an inflammation of the knee tendon that is caused by overuse.

Patellar tendonitis is common in sports that involve jumping or changing direction quickly and regularly like football and running. It can be painful in itself but has wider implications because it places additional strain on the hip and knee joints, which could lead to further injuries and more time on the sidelines. Follow this three step series of wall squat exercise to treat the problem and strengthen your knees. Read more »

5 WAYS TO GAIN WEIGHT – SO STAY CLEAR

December 16th, 2009 • Weight Loss Series
Tags: Bus, Cardiovascular, Chi and Spirituality, Depression, Endurance, Exercise, Fat, Insomnia, Jogging, Loose, Office, Pray, Praying, Run, Running, Spirituality, Treadmill tips, Weight Loss

How often are bloggers tell you ways to loose weight? I wanted a different angle and decided to talk about the most of the common things we do which can have devastating effects on us as to regards with putting on weight. Simple steps can help put a stop to quick and lasting weight loss. Gaining weight, not surprisingly is easy, we are bombarded with food adverts and tempted every single day with food campaigns from marketers and window shop menu signs. Just yesterday, I was watching My Wife and Kids on Sky and it’s the episode where Michael Kyle and his wife get together against each other for a friendly football tournament with their children – it turns nasty in the end with both parents fighting for the girls teams to win the game – the last part of the episode got to me though – Pizza. Pizza is my favourite food and I can tell you Arm-Bar.co.uk will most definitely start talking about it more and more. The quick instant glance at a team eating Pizza and soda was nearly enough for me to go out late and buy a Pizza to myself and park up on my own and – as they say “scran up”.

Let’s follow these simple five steps that put the weight on, learn them, memorise them – and then completely avoid them. If these are some of your bad habits, you may need to look at removing them. Read more »

4 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD EAT SLOWLY

December 14th, 2009 • 1 comment Eating Healthy
Tags: Better Digestion, Bloat, Bloated, Brain, Digest, Digestion, Eat, Eat Slowly, Eating, Food, humility, Less Stress, Nutrients, Patience, Slow, Treadmill tips, Weight Loss

Everyone knows we live in a modern, fast and digital world – the planet is changing, more and more people are connecting through social networking and more and more people are eating snacks from vending machines. Confused? It’s clearly true, there are more vending machines for crisps, chocolates, sweets and fizzy drinks then ever, especially in the UK. We are so busy and consumed with our daily lives we have adopted buying snacks on the move like sugar bag filled Coke-a-Cola and Sunny D that we have stopped to think about the long term effects.

Eating slowly is recommended for health. Slow eating reduces the consumption of food, as it postpones much of the meal to a time when the absorption of nutrients begin to produce physiological signals of satiety (feeling full). By taking your time eating, not only will the food you have eaten release signals to make you feel and think your full, it will help you relax, sleep better and unwind – you can appreciate your food and find “me time” to contemplate – gain patience and humility.

Slow eating will help you with chewing your food and this will result in the exercise of your jaws mixing with saliva with food, hence a complete efficient digestion taking place, food particles are cut into smaller pieces, not requiring much churning in the stomach or intestine.

“A bad stomach is the cause of the majority of the worlds problems” – Arm-Bar.. Read more »

3 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR BRAIN

December 8th, 2009 • Brain Series
Tags: Brain, Brains, Eggs, Endurance, Fatigue, Fish, Flaxseed, Goals, Isolation, Kiwis, Life skills, Omega-3, Protein, Workout

Everyone always asks about ways to keep your body in shape. Here’s three ways you can keep both your mind and body in top shape.

There’s now yet another reason to keep yourself in shape – you become smarter. The University of California (UC) conducted a research study that found people who had higher body mass had smaller brains. This included memory and planning areas of the brain.

I want to show three quick and simple ways to boost your brain, let’s face the music – if you spend 45 minutes on a treadmill four times a week, for the next 6 months – that is an average of 180mins a week which is 720mins a month which is 4320 mins half a year, which is 8640 mins of running a year. That is a 144 hours and about 6 days of running non-stop. The amount of calories you can burn, the amount of endorphins you can release is incredible. Being fit means thinking fit – I know that makes no sense, but here is a statement someone said to me at the gym: “If you look good, you feel good”. Read more »

3 WAYS TO MOTIVATE YOURSELF TO KEEP RUNNING

December 7th, 2009 • Running
Tags: Cardiovascular, Endurance, Goals, Jogging, Life skills, Reps, Run, Running, Treadmill tips

These days it’s so easy to loose yourself thinking about something. Did you know that eating food that you enjoy and have eaten before brings back those happy memories of that food? How about that sneaky chip muffin when you skipped your school lunch break to avoid school dinners?

Running is a great way to loose weight and amongst other things. We will leave the benefits of running within a different post for a different time. We want to focus on why people jump on a treadmill so eager to start running in a pool of their own sweat – only to stop and give up trying again for a long time. I think the commercials are to blame here, people think it is easy to start running a 45 minute treadmill session on level 9 and a gradient of 5% – well, it’s not. And here are some ways to make it easy for you and to motivate you to continue to run. Read more »

4 STEPS TO GO FROM SCRAWNY TO BRAWNY

December 1st, 2009 • Build Muscle
Tags: Biceps, Bodyweight, Build Muscle, Caffeine, Calories, Cardiovascular, Curls, Deadlifts, Eggs, Fatigue, Fish, Isolation, Junk Food, Kilogram, Lean Meat, Man, Men, Muscles, Nuts, Protein, Reps, Six-Pack, Stronger, Workout

You can muscle up next year after all the holiday food with some of these simple tips. Before I mention them I wanted to let you know about some cardio boosters. Cardio boosters are a way to jump your energy levels and place your brain into thinking you can work out longer. I’ll give you an example: A cup of coffee or anything containing high levels of caffeine can reduce your brains perception on how hard you think you have trained. The high levels of caffeine (Note I have not mentioned Lucozade Sport with Caffeine Boost – I find it the worst taste and I can never finish it, the Lemon Plus one) act as stimulant that interferes with the part of your brain that is responsible for dealing with pain – The University of Illinois in the US say’s that the caffeine can give you this energy boost resulting in you training for longer without mentally and physically taking note. Another cardio booster is having a warm shower before your morning training sessions – not only because it’s like -100c outside (Manchester) – but having a hot shower gets your blood pumping to your muscles and priming them for action and doubling as an effective warm-up ahead of early-morning sessions, helping you avoid strains and tweaks. Take a read of our “4 steps to go from skinny to biggy”.. Read more »