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5 Reasons Why You Need to Begin Weight Training Now!

weight training

We all want that lean body, six-packs and look absolutely stunning all the time. But, the one thing that always gets in the way is excess fat! It never leaves us, clinging on to the body like moss on stone. The funny part is that no matter how much you sweat on cardio, it doesn’t seem to help. Before you begin thinking there is no absolute solution, let me ask you if you’ve heard of weight training?

Before I get to telling you how weight training helps, let’s clear some misconceptions. It is a myth that weight training only bulks you up. People believe that one becomes heavy and bulky, especially women but that’s not true. Don’t worry, it won’t turn you into the Hulk. Secondly, for weight loss people often turn to cardio while neglecting weight training but that’s not the right route to go. Want to know why?

5 Benefits of Weight Training

  1. It Makes You Burn Fat: When you lift weights, you will be building muscles. Muscles require less space than fat. A person with more muscles may weigh the same as that of a person with more fat but the muscular person will definitely look much skinnier and toned.
  2. Protection From Injuries: Weight lifting makes the skeletal system strong. Not only bones, but muscles, tendons, ligaments and connective tissues as well. Strengthening these helps in preventing injuries and also reduces the risk for osteoporosis as it strengthens the bones too!
  3. Major Boost to Self-Confidence: Lifting weights improves overall physique of both men and women by building more lean muscle. It improves one’s body image. Imagine seeing a leaner and toned you in the mirror. Wouldn’t that boost your self-confidence? This in essence means you will have more energy, less stress, anxiety and depression. Indirectly, it is a good way to boost your mental health as well.
  4. Fights Insomnia: Weight training is exhausting! Once you’re done, you’ll sleep like a baby. If one is suffering from insomnia or finding it difficult to fall asleep, then weight training is the way to go! Cardio or any exercise helps but lifting weights is like a cherry on the cake. Just get up and hit the gym!
  5. Improves Flexibility, Stability and Balance: Lifting weights improves joint mobility through a full range of motion. It makes your joints flexible and strong. This in turn improves posture and provides the necessary stamina to perform basic activities such as walking, running and even performing other exercises and tasks including cardiovascular exercises.

You don’t even need a gym. You can literally lift weights at home too. If you haven’t thought of beginning your weight training journey, start now and get ready to see some positive change. To get a head start, join some online classes on GOQii Pro within the GOQii App and get the right guidance and motivation from certified experts in real time.

We hope this article motivates you to begin your weight training journey today. For more on Fitness, check out Healthy Reads. Do leave your thoughts in the comments below!

#BeTheForce

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Health Benefits of Weight Lifting You Might Not Know

weight lifting

Whenever I advise my players to include weight lifting in their workout regimes, their reactions range from, “It’s too complicated or difficult for me,” to “No! I don’t want to bulk up”. These are the misconceptions engraved in our minds from the glossy images of sculpted and chiseled bodies of men and women appearing in fitness websites and magazines!

Apart from the fact that many of these photographs are Photoshopped or Edited, they unanimously promote the sole purpose of weight lifting as ‘body building’, which defers many people who want to actually stay fit and active, from it. Weight lifting, in essence, is not just about getting toned and sculpted! The benefits of weight lifting are numerous, ranging from improving your body composition, burning fat, strengthening your bones and joints and increasing your happiness quotient as well!

Health Benefits of Weight Lifting

  1. Get Stronger and More Active: Weight lifting stimulates the growth and development of the slow twitching muscle fibers (type2 muscle fibers) which improves agility, endurance, and builds up your stamina and strength, thus, boosting your performance in doing activities of daily livings (ADLs).
  2. Boosts Resting Metabolism: When the muscles are stimulated after strength training, they need to work harder to rebuild. Hence, they utilize more calories for redevelopment and growth! Muscles are metabolically active tissues which keep burning calories even during the resting phase known as the Afterburn Effect!
  3. Strengthens Your Bones and Joints: Weight training not only strengthens your muscles and ligaments but also improves bone density. The way muscles start developing under stress, the bones also adapt by increasing deposition after consistent weight lifting. This becomes more important as one reaches the age of early 40s when we are prone to natural decline. Also, stronger ligaments and bones prevent the occurrence of injuries while performing cardio and other activities!
  4. Lower Risk of Diabetes & Blood Sugar Levels: A study funded by the National Institute of Health has found that men who added weight lifting to their cardiovascular exercise routine had a 34% lower risk of diabetes. It’s advisable for individuals with type 2 diabetes to include weight training in their workout regime as toned muscles improve insulin sensitivity and better utilization of glucose!
  5. Improves Heart Health: As weight lifting improves the lean muscle mass in the body, it improves blood flow to different body areas which put less pressure on arteries, thus improving cardiac muscles pumping capacity!
  6. Improves Posture & Balance: Weight lifting strengthens your core, tones up your muscles and improves your posture. It reduces undue stress on different bones and joints, especially the shoulders, spine and hips which are more prone to injuries because of bad posture! Weight training also promotes the development of smaller muscle sets known as stabilizers. These take care of keeping you upright and helping you balance on a slippery surface or on one foot when you are reaching out to a higher shelf!
  7. Makes You Happier: Weight training stimulates the release of endorphins in the body which are also known as the ‘feel good hormones’. They trigger the happy centers in the brain. A well-toned, lean and fit body elevates your mood and self-esteem. Weight training brings you out of your comfort zone. High intensity weight training proves the worth in persisting through uncomfortable situations – a lesson which can be applied to be successful in other aspects of life too.

How to Start Your Weight Training Journey?

The simple mantra is just ‘go ahead’. Simply enter a gym or put on a video to see how you can take your journey forward. Start with minimum weights and gradually increase. Make sure to start under the guidance of an expert to avoid injuries or wrong postures or techniques. Keep setting challenges and targets which will keep you motivated to push harder.

You can even subscribe to GOQii’s Personalized Health Coaching to seek guidance from your GOQii Coach, tackle myths and get the right information about weight training.

Push past your limits to the extent that your toughest workout now, becomes your warm up later! If you hit a wall, simply climb over it. What stops you from hitting the gym? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

#BeTheForce

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Best fat loss exercise for Indian women

In India, most women have only one fitness goal – WEIGHT LOSS.

From my experience as a fitness coach, most young girls/women have similar goals – flat stomach or that thigh gap or those toned arms.

One of the biggest mistake women make in their fitness pursuit is that they are chasing “weight loss” when they really should be chasing “fat loss”.

Young girls and women have a very clear picture of their fitness targets. But, too many women are misinformed about the CORRECT way of achieving those targets.

KEY: CARDIO will not get you to your goals fast.

Losing WEIGHT by purely starving yourself and doing exhaustive cardio workouts, but neither is good for your overall well being, nor is it the most effective means of burning fat.

Let’s break it down. When you do any form of CARDIO exercise. Running, jogging, even some hipster cardio exercise like some form of dance or martial arts, you’re burning calories. You’re burning off the fat that is stored in your body and using it for energy.

So it is burning fat but, keep in mind that the fat burns only WHILE you’re doing that particular exercise. Once you go home, your body enters a period of rest and things are normal.

Now let’s consider what happens to your body during and after WEIGHT TRAINING.  So weight training is like any other EXERCISE. In order to go through with it you need to exert your body. You need to spend calories.

While you’ve undergone resistance training, while you’ve done squats or push ups or a bicep curl, your muscles are made to fight against that resistance. In doing so, your muscles undergo a number of minute tears.

After your exercise, when you go home, and you’re resting, these tears in your muscles are repaired by your body. In order to repair them, your body spends calories, and continues to burn fat even when you’re on your couch, watching TV and even when you’re asleep.

SIMPLE CARDIO – Burn calories only while you exercise.

RESISTANCE TRAINING – You’re burning calories while you exercise AND you’re burning calories even after the exercise, while you’re chilling at home.

The added advantage of resistance training is the lean muscle you put on in the long term. The more muscle you put on, as a woman, the more fat you’ll burn.

The other big issue I’ve seen in India, is that many women are afraid to take up weight training because they think they’ll end up looking like a “bulked up bodybuilder”. They don’t wanna get “Bulky”. You need to know that these overly bulky women have taken a LOT of steroid injections to make their bodies turn into THAT.

Many of them have used testosterone, the male hormone. The testosterone is what makes those women bulky and it’s also what makes mens’ muscles bigger.

Rest assured you won’t become like that UNLESS you take testosterone injections. As a woman, your natural biological make up will make you look beautiful always, it will make you look “girly”, unless YOU mess around with it.

Priyanka chopra, Bipasha Basu, Alia Bhatt. All these women lift weights and have been lifting weights for a long time. They aren’t bulky by any means.

If you still aren’t convinced about this, I urge you to at least try it out for a couple of months. Go to a good gym, get a good trainer, see the results for yourself. As a woman, especially if you’re someone who has never tried resistance training, you owe it to your body to give it a shot. You have only one body, its time to maximize its potential.

THIS IS THE FASTEST WAY TO BURN FAT.

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 ‘It is not about losing weight but, it is how you manage it’

Shobha Kunju                                                                                             Shobha Kunju

We are celebrating Women’s month and also women’s health. Here is another inspiring story of a woman who with her sheer grit and determination has been able to reverse her illnesses and get on a health path never to turn back.

It is said that it’s never too late to start if you have the right intent and the determination to do it. Shobha Kunju, 58, a mother of two grown-up children is a fine example of the above statement.

Shobha underwent several health issues between 2010 and 2015. She was first diagnosed with thyroid then she had a hysterectomy, and finally diagnosed with diabetes and put on a very high dosage of medications for both thyroid and diabetes. Apart from illnesses, she was also battling weight issues being on the heavier side. No amount of regular walks and exercises helped but, she was active. A ray of hope knocked on her door when her son introduced her to GOQii in 2015. Her eating and exercise habits bettered and she started targeting her step counts. On an average, she started clocking 10000-13000 steps daily. On weekends she goes for long walks -10 km. with better eating habits, exercise and sleeping better helped her in resolving her weight issues. Her weight reduced from 86 kgs 2 years ago to the present 78 kgs, in addition, she has also witnessed drastic inch loss around her waist. Shobha’s determination, self-motivation and discipline have helped her immensely to reverse her ailments and reduce medications. She is free from all medical issues thanks to her active lifestyle. She finds the idea of exercising on a Sunday morning together with other like-minded and motivated individuals very interesting and fun. Currently, she follows a regime of regular 5km walk in the morning with alternate day’s strength training and HIIT workout. Her message to one and all is: “Be disciplined and self-motivated to achieve your health goals”.

 

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