Fitness Archives

May 22, 2023 By Richa Doshi 1 Comment

How Chronic Cardio Could be Making You Fat

How often do you hit the gym and go ballistic on the treadmill? Quite often? We perfectly understand the need to run! Whether you’re running to train for a marathon, to reach a goal, chase a finish line, catch a departing train or bus, we understand how crucial running is… especially to stay fit!

But what happens when you go overboard? Do you actually cause more harm than good? You can literally run for your life and not even see an inch of a difference and sometimes, even the opposite – you’ve gained weight instead of losing it!

This can be a total nightmare for someone trying to lose weight. There’s a perfect explanation for it.

How Chronic Cardio Might be Making You Fat

1. Excessive cardio can increase stress in the body and increase your heart rate to increase blood flow to your muscles. When you do too much cardio, your stress hormones stay elevated. Some amount of stress can be good for the body, but when cortisol i.e. our stress hormone stays consistently high, it can create a lot of issues.

Stress can cause insulin resistance to circulate more glucose in the blood to supply energy for stress management. Insulin resistance not only means that you have more sugar in your blood than required, it also means that you store fat more easily as insulin promotes fat storage.
In stress, your body shuts down or slows down to fight stress effectively. Your thyroid function slows down, the levels of TSH is reduced in the body, which again promotes weight gain.
In women, stress can also disturb the menstruation cycle. Thus creating hormone imbalances in the body, thus promoting weight gain.
Chronic stress also promotes the storage of fat in the linings of our organs i.e. visceral fat, as a protection to our organs from stress. This again starts a vicious cycle of excess belly fat, insulin resistance, and more fat storage.

2. Chronic cardio can take a toll on our muscles. Chronic cardio not only burns fat, it burns muscle as well. Your muscle mass determines your metabolism and Basal Metabolic Rate. If you have more muscle, you burn more fat. So when you lose muscle, your metabolism drops and you do not burn as much fat anymore.

So, how do we get the most of our workout? Do a combination of cardio and weight training to promote muscle growth and fat burn. Also indulge in yoga and meditation on a regular basis for better stress management, better sleep and preventing the issues listed above.

We hope this article helps you and keeps you from going overboard. Remember that anything in excess is bad! Stay moderate and stay healthy!

If this information helped, let us know in the comments below. You can find more articles on fitness here. To level up your workouts and get the right guidance and motivation, you can join live, interactive sessions conducted by experts on GOQii PRO. Book a class via the GOQii App now.

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May 15, 2023 By Nilakhi Nath Leave a Comment

4 Reasons Why Rest Is As Important As Training

Our world is becoming healthier with people opting for a healthier lifestyle that involves clean eating and staying active. The first attempt to keep ourselves healthy begins by being active. However, being active also means taking good rest after any physical activity. Our body requires a rest period between our workout days. But, there are a few who tend to overdo it. You may see this group of people working out all seven days intensely without a rest day.

Why Is Rest So Important?

Rest means a state when the body is inactive. Inactivity helps the body relax and gives it time to recover strength after any kind of exertion. Our body requires rest because every time we workout, we are tearing our muscles and continuous workout without a rest period may cause further injury to the muscles.

Why Is It Important To Rest After Training?

Resting your body helps in repairing and healing of the torn muscle fibers and enhances the performance. If you don’t rest, you could be prone to facing any of the issues below:

Injuries & drop in performance: Muscle sustains tiny tears when we workout. Rest after training helps in healing those tears. When we do not give rest to the muscle and over-train, it then it leads to serious injuries. What happens when you do not sleep for more than 24 hours? You are drowsy, concentration drops and so does your performance. This is exactly what happens with your body when you over train it. The performance drops due to injuries and inadequate rest of the muscles.
Longer recovery time: Due to over training of a muscle, the amount of time taken for recovery increases. If you are working out 4-5 days a week and taking rest for 2-3 days, the time taken to recover is shorter. Whereas, when you do not take rest, the body needs extra time to repair the damages caused by over training. Bigger the damage, longer the recovery time. You can keep your rest period short by taking adequate rest in between your training sessions.
Loss of motivation to train: As you over train the muscles, the performance drops and it also affects your motivation level. Due to inadequate rest, the muscle loses the capacity to grow and instead bear severe injuries. These negative changes in the body affect a person’s motivation levels and leads to loss of interest in the training program. With low interest, one might feel forced to do the workout instead of looking forward to it.
Immunity: When your muscles are over trained and injured, the energy reserved for the proper functioning of your immune system is directed towards the repair of the damaged muscles and bones. As a result your immune system doesn’t function optimally.

To train at your optimum level, take a break and relax your muscles. If this article helped you, let us know your thoughts in the comments below. You can find more articles on fitness and training here. You can also speak to our experts to develop a training schedule as per your needs by subscribing to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

Train Smart and #BeTheForce

May 8, 2023 By Farhat Khan 13 Comments

Active Rest For Muscle Building

Yes, you heard it right. Rest is an essential part of any training program. Even when it comes to classes or work, we recognize that a few days leave can be recharging and renewing. For athletes, this can be harder, as they may feel guilty for taking a day, a week or a month off their training plan. Whether you are training for a competition or feeling extra motivated, more is not always better. Rest days are just as important as exercise. In fact, a successful fitness regimen isn’t complete without rest days.

What is Active Rest?

In terms of Rest days, there are 2 types of rest days

Passive Rest
Active Rest

Passive rest means a day of total rest without any physical activity, whereas Active rest means including low-intensity exercise that promotes blood flow to the muscles, helping them to recover better and faster.

Active rest is the sweet spot between being idle and training intensely. The goal of Active rest is to help your body heal from exercising by reducing the likelihood of inflammation and soreness. It allows your body to recover and repair. On your Active rest day you need to be active enough to increase blood flow, but gentle enough to allow your muscles to heal.

Benefits of Active Rest

Whenever we use our muscles for exercising, our body turns glucose into Lactic acid; this is how our muscles get the energy to perform. Once our muscles stop working, the lactic acid our body remains in our muscles and causes that dreaded post-workout soreness. Active rest helps lactic acid move out of our muscles and dissolve into our bloodstream, so it’s not around to cause us pain afterward. The increased blood flow also makes it to our joints, reducing the chance of joint and muscle inflammation. It is essential for muscle growth. Exercise creates microscopic tears in your muscle tissues. But during rest, cells called fibroblasts repair it. This helps the tissue heal and grow, resulting in stronger muscles.

Active rest is also known to improve our mood and keep us from getting the post-workout blues, while also alleviating any fatigue. Plus, it’s great for our heart since it increases our heart rate and builds endurance.

Planning an Active Rest Day

An active rest day should include a different activity from your usual workout at the gym. You shouldn’t be working at maximum effort. Rather, go slow and don’t push yourself too hard.

Examples of active recovery exercises include:

Stretching: is a simple and effective way to maintain increased blood flow and relaxation.
Yoga: lengthens our muscles and tendons, aids in their recovery, and helps our body develop better mobility and flexibility.
Meditation: is a great way to rest and refresh your mind. If sitting still for extended periods isn’t for you, there are alternative ways of meditating that keep your body busy and your mind free, such as doing the dishes or knitting.
Swimming: is a low-impact exercise that’s easy on your joints and muscles.
Walking or Jogging: is one of the best forms of Active Rest. Walking or jogging at a leisurely pace can enhance blood flow and help with recovery.
Cycling: at a leisurely pace is an excellent way to get in an active recovery. It is low-impact and doesn’t put pressure on the joints. One can cycle either on a stationary bike or on a bicycle outdoors.
Myofascial release with a foam roller: Active rest doesn’t only include movement. One also can stretch and roll a foam roller over parts of your body and get many of the same benefits. If your muscles are sore, foam rolling can help relieve tightness, reduce inflammation, and increase your range of motion.

A Word of Caution

Active rest day exercises are generally considered safe. During active recovery, make sure you aren’t working harder than about 50 percent of your maximum effort. This will give your body the chance it needs to rest. You may find that you feel less tight, sore, and even have more energy to exercise after active recovery. If you’re injured, in pain, or very fatigued, your body may need passive recovery which means total rest.

We hope this article helps you make the most of your workout and recovery. Do let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

You can find more information on muscle building here. You can also get these tips and know more about Active Rest or set up your own fitness routine by speaking to a GOQii Coach. All you need to do is subscribe to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

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May 1, 2023 By GOQii Leave a Comment

Lunchtime Workouts to Stay Fit Anywhere!

It is easy to fall prey to a sedentary lifestyle especially with a hectic schedule that revolves around work, home and stress. Somewhere, a healthy life and fitness has taken a backseat for most people. But, most people forget that staying fit and active is a mantra to being more productive at work! There may be many constraints that might prevent you from working out but there’s always a solution. We call it the Lunchtime Workouts!

These workouts can be done anywhere, including your office. They are easy and can be wrapped up within 15-20mins flat! Remember that it is recommended to aim for 2 and a half hours of moderate aerobic exercise weekly, and strength training exercises at least twice a week.

Lunchtime Workouts To Keep You Fit

Warm up with rotations of the hand and legs. End it with a cool down like stretching
4 min Tabata Workout: To get the best out of this workout, perform the following in the same order:
- Jumping Jacks – 20 seconds
- Rest – 10 seconds
- Squats – 20 seconds
- Rest – 10 seconds
- Lunges – 20 seconds
- Rest – 10 seconds
- Push ups – 20 seconds
- Rest – 10 seconds
- Repeat once more in the same order
Resistance and Stretching: Stretching can help you increase your blood circulation and bring flexibility to your body. It is also a great stress-busting method and it can ease lower back pain.
Yoga and Meditation: Yoga relieves stress and tension, helps you take a break from daily routine and makes your day more energetic! Deep breathing directly recharges your entire body!

With so many options to choose from which are way below 20 minutes, you can move away from your desk for a little while and work towards a healthy lifestyle.

You can find more articles on workouts and fitness here. You can also begin working out by joining a live, interactive class on GOQii PRO conducted by a certified expert. Book a class now through the GOQii App.

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