About Mohammed Tufail Qureshi

Certified professional fitness trainer, Mohammed Tufail Qureshi has worked with reputed gyms in the city. As a freelance personal trainer Tufail guides people in right exercise, nutrition and proper rest and recovery methods necessary to stay fit. A commerce graduate from Mumbai University he chose to work with GOQii as it’s a new concept and it intends to change the world by simply helping people change certain habits. The idea of developing good habits and motivating individuals to lead a healthy lifestyle is something which he says is very different from what he has been doing all this while as a personal trainer. Tufail is a regular weight trainer himself and works out six days a week. He strongly believes that an individual is not fit until he has developed the 5 basic components of fitness namely cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, muscular strength, flexibility and ideal body composition.

February 19, 2019 By Mohammed Tufail Qureshi 2 Comments

8 Simple & Healthy Tips For Office Workers

8 Simple & Healthy Tips For Office Workers
In the present day, our lifestyles have changed drastically. It’s not just our lifestyle but our working style as well. Being glued to a laptop or a system without moving for hours has become the current trend. We work for nearly 10-12 hours seated on a chair with minimal movement for lunch or to get fresh.

While this sedentary lifestyle is important to earn a livelihood, it comes at the cost of many health issues such as neck pain, back ache, eye problems and digestion issues from irregular eating habits, to name a few. Let’s not forget the part stress plays in our lives. The effects of being seated with no activity affects not only our physical health but our mental health as well. When at home, most people are either irregular with their workouts or do not have a fitness regime at all. Not being active at work and at home can be detrimental to your well-being.

This is certainly not a good way to lead a life. One should take some time out for themselves and give a thought to maintaining a balanced and healthy lifestyle. Introducing even a little bit of workout or walking in your daily routine can make a world of a difference. Some physical activity and slight changes in your working pattern and eating habits can help you stay healthy.

Bring about a slight change in your lifestyle by doing these 8 simple things:

1. Include a walk in between while traveling to work and back.

2. Use the stairs instead of an elevator

3. Sit with your back straight, in an erect position while seated on a chair

4. Get up after every couple of hours to stretch your back, arms and legs

5. Keep a bottle of water at your desk and drink it frequently. Don’t forget that you need to drink at least 3l of water a day

6. Keep a few snacks, fruits or dry fruits on your desk so you can munch on them when hungry

7. Keep the brightness of your system low and maintain a decent distance away from the screen

8. Do not over eat when stressed. If you have begun a fitness regime, your appetite is likely to increase. If weight loss or maintaining a certain weight is one of your goals, you should stick to your diet and not eat more than required by your body. Avoid junk food especially.

In addition, you can add a free hand workout session of 15 minutes which you can perform either at work or at home. 5 basic but effective exercises like jumping jacks, squats, push ups, crunches and planks will do wonders. Do two sets of each of these exercises with 15-20 repetitions each. This will not only improve your health but stamina levels as well, helping you concentrate better as well as relieve you of stress or any other aches and pains caused by a sedentary lifestyle.

Making these tiny changes won’t affect your routine and they are easy to squeeze into your schedule as well.

Got any more tips for office workers? Share them with us in the comments below.

December 15, 2018 By Mohammed Tufail Qureshi 8 Comments

Sleep Your Way to More Muscle

Did you know you can build muscles even while sleeping?

The three aspects of the muscle building pyramid are nutrition, training and rest. Most of us pay close attention to the first two factors but frequently ignore the third and suffer the consequences.

Sleep isn’t a luxury for the human body; it’s a genuine necessity. Extended periods of sleep deprivation can lead to amnesia, delusions and hallucinations. Shorter stretches cause forgetfulness, bad moods and irritability.

If you’re trying to gain strength, sleep becomes even more important because it’s synonymous with recovery. If your body doesn’t get to fully recuperate from a hard workout, there’s no way it will be ready for the next one.

Heavy training destroys tissues. In order for the tissue to be repaired, your body needs the proper nutrients and deep sleep. One of the key events that occur during sleep is that the body releases growth hormone which is critical for repairing the tissues, maintaining tonus in the muscles and keeping the fat in the cells. Since the body releases growth hormone only during deep sleep, the question is how do you get deep sleep?

Getting enough rest is critical to your overall health. Lack of sleep, even for a single night, can have a huge effect on your immune system. Research has shown that there’s a 20-to-30-percent drop in immune system cells that fight cancer and viruses after just one night of sleeplessness. If sleeplessness continues over several days, the percentage of decrease of immune system cells climbs drastically, but the good news is that you can bring the number of cells back to normal with a solid night’s sleep.

So how much sleep is enough? That depends on individual to individual and it depends on a great many variables. Ideally one should aim to get at least 7-8 hours of sound sleep.

Sleep is the most critical variable affecting our workouts. How well we have slept the previous night will determine how good a workout you do the next morning.

Work-related stress is one of the many reasons that most suffer from sleep deprivation. One of the best things you can do is slip in to a nap prior to your workout. You don’t want to drop off into the deeper stages of sleep before training because it will make you groggy. Twenty to 30 minutes is plenty before a workout.

Deep sleep at night is very important and here are some of the things we can do to get sleep fast. Some people read to help them relax. Others take long showers or soak in the tub. Some like to listen to music. Chamomile tea is used by many. A warm turmeric milk will induce melatonin, which is a sleep hormone.

A light snack can be useful in promoting a more relaxed state, but it’s smart to select foods that contain the amino acid tryptophan, which converts to serotonin in the brain, helping you to feel drowsy. Milk, yogurt, cheese, turkey and fish contain tryptophan.

Now here are some things you should not do if you want to have a good night’s sleep. Don’t overindulge in alcohol. The same goes for food. Eating a large meal before bedtime isn’t conducive to going to sleep because the food will trigger various systems, including the heart, to work harder. Also, the digestive tract may become upset and disrupt sleep even more.

Avoid stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine. Try not to have coffee, tea and soft drinks. Avoid any form of strenuous exercise or participating in a competitive sport will work against you. Vigorous physical activity stimulates the body, and it takes some time to calm you down.

Don’t take your work to bed. If you make your bedroom an extension of your office, you’re sure to carry business problems with you at night. Your bedroom should be a cool, dark, sleep chamber.

You may have to do some experimenting to find out what works for you. But if you’re having trouble getting a good night’s rest on a regular basis, make some changes in your lifestyle, quickly. The “magical one-third of your life” is a critical variable in your quest to gain strength.

August 11, 2018 By Mohammed Tufail Qureshi 1 Comment

All that you need to know about Creatine

If you regularly workout in the gym chances are that often you could get some sorts of advice in terms of what you should be eating, which is the right protein supplement that you should take etc etc..

Getting advice is one thing and but, nobody should take any supplement or put anything in their body without weighing the benefits and risks first. This goes for everything from beer to marshmallows to the amazing amino acid called Creatine.

Creatine is a combination of three different amino acids, glycine, arginine, and methionine. Creatine is a well known substance, and while it offers benefits in terms of muscle and strength gain, it can also generate an energy boost that assists muscle recovery and decreases muscle fatigue.

When you take creatine in the powder form – it is in your blood stream for about 1 – 1.5 hours. For muscle growth, the creatine must be absorbed into the muscles. If you are working out and deplete your creatine supply in your muscles and you have creatine available in the blood stream, your muscles can replenish their creatine supply from the creatine in your blood.

It is a naturally present nutrient in foods like meat, to some extent in certain types of fish but in low quantity. It gets stored in the muscle & regenerates ATP to produce explosive power output

Everyone from gym users, bodybuilders, power sports players to endurance athletes can see lean muscle gains, increased endurance, speedy recovery and improved performance with creatine

It is recommended to take creatine monohydrate with a simple carbohydrate source to help it absorb more quickly. A good time to take creatine would be right after your workout and early morning after waking up..Highly absorbed post workout and first thing in the morning.

On rest days, creatine can help muscle recovery and can be consumed early morning after waking up along with simple carbs.

Creatine draws water to the muscles, so if you are not drinking enough water, dehydration and muscle cramps occurs. Also, due to the accumulation of creatine in the small intestine, you may experience stomach pains, diarrhea, upset stomach. So drinking water and proper dosage is highly recommended.

Best taken in a cycle, 2 months on and 1 month off, 5 gms/day

August 2, 2018 By Mohammed Tufail Qureshi Leave a Comment

Role of Glutamine in our body

Many of us exercise in the gyms but, most of us are unaware of many things that are associated with workouts and our body. Glutamine is one such thing and many of us are unaware of what is its role in our body.

Glutamine is one of the 20 amino acids that are used to make protein. Glutamine can be found in muscle tissue, plasma, and in nearly every animal product you gulp down. It is found in animal-derived protein sources such as meats, dairy products, and eggs.

Glutamine is critically important to a wide range of bodily processes and our body can produce enough to meet its needs under normal circumstances but, not always. It is more essential for our body if we regularly work out.

During intense workouts, the need for glutamine is higher than the body’s capability to produce it. Apart from workouts, during conditions of stress such as illness, burns, surgery or fasting, the body’s requirement of Glutamine is so high that it cannot be met by its slow rate of synthesis. Since we use it faster than we produce it, we must supplement it in our diet. It might thus become necessary to consume dietary sources of glutamine when our body is under tremendous pressure

Glutamine increases the amount of circulating plasma growth hormone. An increased amount of the growth hormone will help you stay leaner and stronger. Lack of Glutamine or Glutamine depletion can lead to an extreme drop in IMMUNE SYSTEM function making the body vulnerable to infections.

Glutamine is also helpful for reducing muscle soreness and faster muscle recovery post workouts. Glutamine is a strong ANTI-CATABOLIC, powerfully reducing muscle breakdown caused by workout related muscle stress.

Interestingly, for years high levels of glutamine have been used for patients involved in high trauma accidents to prevent muscle loss. The same theory applies when you exercise if you supplement Glutamine, your body won’t need to break muscle and pull Glutamine out of it

The dosage of glutamine can be 10 grams on your workout days and 5 grams on non-workout days. The best times to use glutamine is directly after exercise (5 gms) and right before bed (5 grams). On rest days, 5gms can be consumed before bed.