exercise – Page 3

Sex vs Exercise

Somewhere near the top of every single one of the the roughly forty-kajillion internet listicles dedicated to the “surprising,” “hidden,” and “unexpected”health benefits of sex is the not-all-that-surprising-sounding factoid that bumping fuzzies basically doubles as exercise. In reality, however, there has been very little research done to support this claim.

The few studies that have investigated the physicality of sex have typically looked at things like heart rate and blood pressure – important but arguably basic physiological measurements. They’ve also been conducted primarily in laboratory settings – which, sure, probably falls into some specific category of kink, but for most people is probably a less-than-ideal environment for sexy time. It’s not difficult to imagine, for example, how the wires from an echocardiogram, or the bulk of an oxygen-monitoring facemask, might interfere with one’s (doubtless considerable) sexual talents, thereby confounding any attempt at accurate physiological measurement.

The point being that these methodological limitations highlight a gap in the existing body of scientific knowledge raises an important question about how physically strenuous sex really is. How much energy does a young, healthy couple actually expend getting physical between the sheets? Are we talking a pastrami sandwich’s worth of calories, or a handful of kale’s? And to what extent does sex really count as exercise?

…Researchers led by Université du Québec à Montréal kinanthropologist Antony Karelis… The goal: measure the free-living energy expenditure (in calories) during sexual activity, in the absence of drugs, alcohol, or ED medications. (Study participants were also asked to forego any and all paraphilic sexual activities – i.e. nothing deemed too freaky by… well… society, we guess.) The final figures are as follows:

Mean energy expenditure during sexual activity (men)

101 kCal (the same as 101 dietary Calories), or 4.2 kCal/min

Mean energy expenditure during sexual activity (women)

69.1 kCal, or 3.1 kCal/min

So the overall average comes out to roughly 85 kCal (3.6 kCal/min) – about the same number of dietary calories in your standard chicken egg…

Robbie Gonzalez

Source

http://io9.gizmodo.com/seriously-though-does-sex-count-as-exercise-1452095982

Cardio improves memory

I’m sure you know your brain works better following exercise?

A team of researchers in Ireland made this discovery through a relatively simple experiment. They asked a group of students to watch a rapid lineup of photos.

Each photo included a name and face of a stranger. Then, after a brief break, the students tried to recall the names of the faces that had moved across the computer screen. After this initial test, half of the students were asked to ride a stationary bicycle at a strenuous pace until they reached exhaustion. The other half of the students sat quietly for 30 minutes. Then both groups took the test again to see how many names they could recall.

The group of students who exercised performed much better on the memory test than they had on their first attempt. The group who simply sat in another room did not improve. As part of this experiment, the scientists also collected blood samples, through which they discovered a biological explanation for the increase in recall among the students who exercised. Immediately after the strenuous activity, students in the exercise group had much higher levels of a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which promotes the health of nerve cells.

So make some time daily, weekly for that walk, work-out, run, hike etc.

Source:

http://khalilaleker.com/2016/05/18/your-brain-and-exercise/

What kind of habit keeps you exercising?

It’s not always easy to convince yourself to exercise after a long day of work. (Ok, it’s never easy.) But people who consistently manage to do it may be using a simple trick—whether they realize it or not—according to a new study published in the journal Health Psychology.

The most consistent exercisers, researchers found, were those who made exercise into a specific type of habit—one triggered by a cue, like hearing your morning alarm and going to the gym without even thinking about it, or getting stressed and immediately deciding to exercise.

It’s not something you have to deliberate about; you don’t have to consider the pros and cons of going to the gym after work,

explains L. Alison Phillips, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University and one of the study’s authors. Instead, it’s an automatic decision instigated by your own internal or environmental cue.
The researchers wanted to see whether this type of habit, known as an instigation habit, was better than another type of habit at predicting who stuck with a month of exercise. At the beginning and end of the monthlong study, they asked 123 university students and faculty questions that assessed how often they exercised and how strong their exercise habits were—whether they did it without thinking, for example. From these questions, they gleaned whether a person has a strong instigation habit—one where a cue triggers the instantaneous decision to exercise—and whether a person has a strong execution habit—that is, knowing exactly what kind of exercise they’ll do once you get to the gym, or being able to go through the motions of an exercise routine while being mentally checked out.

The only factor that predicted how often a person exercised over the long-term, they found, was the strength of their instigation habit. It got stronger with time, too.

When people started exercising more frequently over the month and became more active, I saw that their instigation habit strength increased with that frequency, but execution habit didn’t really change in relation to frequency at all…

Mandy Oaklander | July 9, 2015 | Time

https://pragmasynesi.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/what-kind-of-habit-keeps-you-exercising/

How Neuroscientists Explain the Mind-Clearing Magic of Running

It is something of a cliché among runners, how the activity never fails to clear your head. Does some creative block have you feeling stuck? Go for a run. Are you deliberating between one of two potentially life-altering decisions? Go for a run. Are you feeling mildly mad, sad, or even just vaguely meh? Go for a run, go for a run, go for a run.

The author Joyce Carol Oates once wrote in a column for the New York Times that

in running the mind flees with the body … in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms.

Filmmaker Casey Neistat told Runner’s World last fall that running is sometimes the only thing that gives him clarity of mind.

“Every major decision I’ve made in the last eight years has been prefaced by a run,”

he told the magazine. But I maybe like the way a runner named Monte Davis phrased it best, as quoted in the 1976 book The Joy of Running:

“It’s hard to run and feel sorry for yourself at the same time. Also, there are those hours of clear-headedness that follow a long run.”

A good run can sometimes make you feel like a brand-new person. And, in a way, that feeling may be literally true. About three decades of research in neuroscience have identified a robust link between aerobic exercise and subsequent cognitive clarity, and to many in this field the most exciting recent finding in this area is that of neurogenesis. Not so many years ago, the brightest minds in neuroscience thought that our brains got a set amount of neurons, and that by adulthood, no new neurons would be birthed. But this turned out not to be true. Studies in animal models have shown that new neurons are produced in the brain throughout the lifespan, and, so far, only one activity is known to trigger the birth of those new neurons: vigorous aerobic exercise, said Karen Postal, president of the American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s the only trigger that we know about.”

The other fascinating thing here is where these new cells pop up: in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with learning and memory. So this could help explain, at least partially, why so many studies have identified a link between aerobic exercise and improvement in memory.

If you are exercising so that you sweat — about 30 to 40 minutes — new brain cells are being born,

added Postal, who herself is a runner. “And it just happens to be in that memory area.”
Other post-run changes have been recorded in the brain’s frontal lobe, with increased activity seen in this region after people adopt a long-term habit of physical activity. This area of the brain — sometimes called the frontal executive network system — is located, obviously enough, at the very front: It’s right behind your forehead. After about 30 to 40 minutes of a vigorous aerobic workout – enough to make you sweat – studies have recorded increased blood flow to this region, which, incidentally, is associated with many of the attributes we associate with “clear thinking”: planning ahead, focus and concentration, goal-setting, time management.

But it’s this area that’s also been linked to emotion regulation, which may help explain the results of one recent study conducted by Harvard psychology professor Emily E. Bernstein. Like Postal, Bernstein is also a runner, and was curious about a pattern she saw in her own mind after a run.

I notice in myself that I just feel better when I’m active.

She started to become really interested in the intervention studies that have popped up in recent years that suggest if you can get people who are having trouble with mood or anxiety to exercise, it helps. “But why?” she wanted to know. “What is exercise actually doing?”

To find out, she did a version of a classic experiment among researchers who study emotion: She and her colleague — Richard J. McNally, also of Harvard — played a reliable tearjerker of a clip: the final scene of the 1979 film The Champ.

Before watching the film clip, some of the 80 participants were made to jog for 30 minutes; others just stretched for the same amount of time. Afterward, all of them filled out surveys to indicate how bummed out the film had made them. Bernstein kept them busy for about 15 minutes after that, and surveyed them again about how they were feeling. Those who’d done the 30-minute run were more likely to have recovered from the emotional gut-punch than those who’d just stretched — and, her results showed, the people who’d initially felt worse seemed to especially benefit from the run. Bernstein is currently doing a few follow-up research projects to determine exactly why this works the way it does.

But there’s another big mental benefit to gain from running, one that scientists haven’t quiet yet managed to pin down to poke at and study: the wonderful way your mind drifts here and there as the miles go by. Mindfulness, or being here now, is a wonderful thing, and there is a seemingly ever-growing stack of scientific evidence showing the good it can bring to your life. And yet mindlessness — daydreaming, or getting lost in your own weird thoughts — is important, too. Consider, for example, this argument, taken from a 2013 article by a trio of psychologists in the journal Frontiers in Psychology:

“We mind wander, by choice or by accident, because it produces tangible reward when measured against goals and aspirations that are personally meaningful. Having to reread a line of text three times because our attention has drifted away matters very little if that attention shift has allowed us to access a key insight, a precious memory or make sense of a troubling event. Pausing to reflect in the middle of telling a story is inconsequential if that pause allows us to retrieve a distant memory that makes the story more evocative and compelling. Losing a couple of minutes because we drove past our off ramp is a minor inconvenience if the attention lapse allowed us to finally understand why the boss was so upset by something we said in last week’s meeting. Arriving home from the store without the eggs that necessitated the trip is a mere annoyance when weighed against coming to a decision to ask for a raise, leave a job, or go back to school.

Just because the benefits of losing yourself in your own thoughts are not easily measured doesn’t mean they’re not of value, and there are few ways I know of that induce this state of mind more reliably than a long run. A handful of recent studies have tried to answer what every runner, whether pro or hobbyist, has no doubt been asked by friends and family: What on earth do you think about while you’re out there for so many miles? This, as the writer Haruki Murakami noted in his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, is almost beside the point. Sometimes he thinks while on the run; sometimes, he doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter.

I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.

April 21, 2016 12:51 p.m.

By Melissa Dahl

https://madridjournal.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/how-neuroscientists-explain-the-mind-clearing-magic-of-running/

How to postpone aging

I recently attended an all day event at the USC Campus, specifically at the USC Davis School of Gerontology to learn about the latest science on healthy aging from several of the world’s top aging experts. I feel inspired to share with you all what I learned. Many of you may have come across the information that I am about to share, but in case you have not, it’s never too late to learn something new!

1) One of the “hottest” question presented was “Does caloric restriction extend lifespan?” Answer: only sometimes. But if you compare a low fat diet versus a Mediterranean diet (which includes nuts and olive oil), the Mediterranean diet wins! It was shown to prevent cognitive decline and heart problems.

2) Sitting is the new smoking! Incredible to believe but the more hours you spend sitting on a daily basis decreases your health span. It is important to use your break time to get away from your workspace. And if you don’t get any breaks? Get up and take a walk to the bathroom every hour or two. Sitting can cause a multitude of heart problems, whereas smoking can cause lung problems/lung cancer. I guess you pick and choose your poison, or avoid them altogether.

3) Ovaries removed after normal menopause lessens a woman’s risk for dementia. Ovaries removed before normal menopause increases a woman’s risk for dementia.

4) A low protein, high carbohydrate diet is recommended for everyone below 65 years of age. Once you reach 65 and older, moderate (not low!) protein intake is recommended.

5) If you want to live longer and spend your later years without getting a disease or being disabled in any way, adhering to a plant based diet that includes high levels of legumes, vegetables and healthy fats (olive oil, other monounsaturated fats, nuts) is recommended. Waist goals for men to have should be less than 40 inches, and less than 35 inches for women.

6) Take care of your teeth! Get regular dental checkups! Edentulousness (having no teeth) is directly related to nutritional issues and health problems.

7) Watch the BBC video: The Men Who Made Us Fat.
8) Recommended weight loss programs are: weight watchers and TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly).

9) Create your own individualized diet/meal plan that takes into consideration your age, gender, weight, and activity levels.

http://foodhabitat.com/2016/04/24/healthy-aging/

The Pyramid Of Muscle-Building

Courtesy of http://www.bodybuilding.com

Stack the most critical training and nutrition factors in your favor to optimize muscle growth. Learn to build a solid, sustainable approach to fitness—along with a stellar physique!

You’ve seen the food pyramid—now meet the muscle-building pyramid! This simple structure lays out the essentials of what you need to do to add lean mass to your frame, while also providing the structure you need to prioritize them.

Each level of the pyramid builds off the next. What does this mean? Leap to the upper tiers without establishing the bottom two, and you’ll end up sore, burned out, and confused. If you stick to the base, you can go a long way, but you’ll be left wondering about your true potential.

With help from EAS athlete Jason Wittrock, you can start at the base of the pyramid, and build your way—and yourself—up!

LEVEL 1 TRAINING

Muscle growth starts with quality training, so the base of the pyramid focuses on training variables linked to muscle-growth processes. These are the factors that allow you to construct an effective program and create the stimulus your body needs in order to change!

Favor free-weight, multijoint movements. Single-joint movements like leg extensions or cable cross-overs have their place, but they shouldn’t be the centerpiece of your mass-building routine. Multijoint movements (think bench and squat) recruit far more muscle mass and give your body a greater stimulus to grow. Moreover, the challenge of handling a free-weight version of an exercise improves anabolism over a machine.

Train at the right intensity. Exercise scientists have determined most people should train between 70-85 percent of their one-rep max to elicit an optimal hypertrophic response. Choose a weight that allows you to do 6-12 reps with good form before reaching failure.

Add volume. Higher-volume, multiple-set protocols have consistently been shown to be superior over single sets when it comes to building muscle. This is one reason why advanced lifters often follow a body-part split.

HIGHER-VOLUME, MULTIPLE-SET PROTOCOLS HAVE CONSISTENTLY BEEN SHOWN TO BE SUPERIOR OVER SINGLE SETS WHEN IT COMES TO BUILDING MUSCLE. THIS IS ONE REASON WHY ADVANCED LIFTERS OFTEN FOLLOW A BODY-PART SPLIT.

Don’t build up volume simply by doing the same thing with different implements. Change angles, rep ranges, and types of weights.

Train to failure some of the time. Yes, you can grow without lifting to the point of failure, and certain movements don’t lend themselves well to it. But all things being equal, if you stop short of failure—especially on isolation moves for small body parts like arms and calves—you won’t get the same anabolic stimulus as if you pursue those last few challenging reps.

Contain rest periods. For bodybuilding purposes, moderate rest intervals of about 60-120 seconds between sets maximize the hypertrophic response. Resting too long has been shown to be counterproductive to muscle gains because it reduces overall accumulated metabolic stress, a marker of hypertrophy. The smaller the muscle and lighter the movement, the less you need to rest.

Lift with proper technique. Don’t take this for granted! It supports everything else on this level. An exercise won’t work the way you want it to if you’re not doing it right. Get feedback on your form if necessary.

LEVEL 2 NUTRITION

If you get the training variables down, you’re giving your body a great growth stimulus. But without proper nutrition, good luck turning it into muscle!

Eat enough. If your goal is to add mass, you need to eat more calories each day than you’re burning. It doesn’t have to be a lot more. You can shoot for 0.5-1.5 pounds of gain in mass each week—or about 2-6 pounds a month—without adding significant amounts of body fat. That comes to an increase of about 300-500 calories daily over and above your maintenance level of calories. Check the scale regularly to determine whether your body weight is increasing within your target range.

Eat enough protein. You’ll hear a million different versions of how much fat or carbs you need. So let’s focus on what can’t be disputed: You need adequate protein to grow! Protein is essential to building and repairing damaged muscle tissue during hard training. Recommendations vary, but a time-honored amount that also happens to be the easiest to remember is 1 gram per pound of body weight daily, split into meals of at least 20-30 grams.

EAT ENOUGH. IF YOUR GOAL IS TO ADD MASS, YOU NEED TO EAT MORE CALORIES EACH DAY THAN YOU’RE BURNING.

So, how are you going to get it? “The easiest way to increase your protein intake is to make it your highest nutritional priority—which means you must always be prepared,” says Jason Wittrock. “I prepare all of my protein sources in advance and always make sure I keep my whey protein with me. When I’m sitting down eating a meal, I’m already thinking about being prepared for the next one.”

Increase your meal frequency. Consuming a higher level of calories than you burn and getting, say, 180 grams of protein a day, is pretty tough on just three meals a day. Supplementing meals with protein shakes and protein-rich snacks every 3-4 hours will help to keep rates of protein synthesis elevated while reducing protein breakdown.

Manage your excesses. You don’t have to subscribe to the “cheat meal” approach to gain muscle. But let’s face it: It’s difficult to eat clean 24/7 and gain weight, simply because the foods you’ll be favoring are relatively low in calories, and you won’t always want to eat large amounts of them. It’s OK to loosen the reins at times! Just do it on a hard training day, and make you’re still hitting your protein benchmarks.

LEVEL 3 ADVANCED GROWTH TECHNIQUES

You’re training right and eating right. Great! You’re on your way. Let’s consider a few more factors that could make the difference between OK results and great ones.

Incorporate progressive overload. Progressive overload simply means continually challenging your body to new levels of performance as it adapts to previous marks you set before it. You can do it many ways: lifting more weight, doing more reps, resting less, performing different movements—the sky is the limit, really. The key is to never fall into a comfort zone and never stop pushing yourself.

“Chasing your full potential is a never-ending process,” says Wittrock. “The minute you get comfortable, you stop growing. Don’t be afraid to try new things, and always stay hungry for new information. The second I feel like I’m in a comfort zone, I re-evaluate my goals. If you don’t have a big enough goal, you’ll find yourself in a comfort zone very quickly.”

Use intensity techniques. These are all ways of training past the point of failure. We don’t recommend doing them all at once or on every set, but once you’ve put in your time becoming fundamentally sound and strong in a movement, they can definitely help you take it to the next level.

Forced reps: As you reach muscle failure, your partner steps in and provides with just enough assistance to keep the weight moving for another 2-3 reps.
Dropsets: Once you reach muscle failure, quickly reduce the poundage by about 25 percent, and immediately continue on with the set to a second point of muscle failure.
Negatives: Instead of lifting a weight, lower it slowly for 3-5 seconds. Your partner then lifts the weight back to the start position. This works because you’re stronger lowering a weight than lifting it.

USE SUPPLEMENTS THAT BOOST TRAINING QUALITY. CERTAIN SUPPLEMENTS HAVE WELL-DOCUMENTED MASS-BUILDING BENEFITS, OFTEN BECAUSE THEY HELP YOU TRAIN HARDER AND DELAY FATIGUE.

Use supplements that boost training quality. Certain supplements have well-documented mass-building benefits, often because they help you train harder and delay fatigue. Here are four rock-solid choices:

Creatine has been shown to boost strength and muscle mass when used in combination with strength training.
Caffeine can delay fatigue during all types of training.
Branched-chain amino acids have been shown to help speed up recovery after a tough workout.
Whey protein should be a staple of your supplement stack as well, as it’s been shown to stimulate muscle protein synthesis and lead to greater increases in muscle mass and strength.

Time your nutrient intake. When building muscle is the goal, the meals before and after your workout are the most important. Make sure both have adequate protein, but also carbs, which are going to help you power through an intense workout and jump-start the recovery process. Fats are less important at this meal, so focus on them at other times of day.

LEVEL 4 RECOVERY

Don’t let recovery’s location all the way up at the top convince you it’s not important! It’s crucial to keep you coming back to the gym, feeling good, and preventing your training from hitting the wall. Skimp here, and you’ll feel it!

Don’t shortchange your sleep. Sleep is far more than just rest. It’s the time when your body releases hormones that enable you to heal from training and grow stronger. Most people need seven hours of quality sleep each night. Make this one of your highest priorities.

Rest from exercise. Part of this is up to your programming, but part of it is up to you!

DON’T SHORTCHANGE YOUR SLEEP. SLEEP IS FAR MORE THAN JUST REST. IT’S THE TIME WHEN YOUR BODY RELEASES HORMONES THAT ENABLE YOU TO HEAL FROM TRAINING AND GROW STRONGER.

If you’re serious about building mass, but you also play intense intramural sports regularly, chances are you aren’t doing your muscle-building efforts any favors. It’s extremely difficult to maximize muscle gains when you’re pushing yourself in other physically demanding activities.

“In order to build muscle, you must tear it down and allow it to rebuild itself,” says Wittrock. “For this reason, rest is absolutely essential. I hate rest as much as anybody, but I know it’s necessary to continue building muscle.

Supplement for recovery. Experienced lifters often take a two-pronged approach to supplementation: those that boost workout intensity, and those that boost recovery. Make no mistake: The two go hand in hand. “My key recovery supplements are glutamine, a protein supplement with carbs, and BCAAs with electrolytes,” Wittrock says.

Cycle intensity. You shouldn’t shy away from challenging workouts or programs. But training full-bore without stop for months on end is likely to do as much harm as good. Cycle in periods of lower-intensity training, and even time off from the gym, both for your physical as well as mental health.

BUILD A NEW YOU FROM THE GROUND UP

Muscle growth requires a lot of hard work, but also a lot of forethought and strategy. Don’t negate all that quality training you’ve been doing by phoning in your nutrition or recovery. Establish a solid base, and you’ll quickly surprise yourself with what you can achieve.

By Bill Geiger

Last updated: Mar 02, 2016

Source: The Pyramid Of Muscle-Building

How to improve digestion

I want my 45mins attention….. Please!! Yours Crying Stomach

No way!!Don’t count me. I am going to take my nap after the lunch. Hey are u joining for the badminton session tonight after dinner?? What about coffee after dinner? Really????

You will thank me when you scroll down.

Digestion is the prime activity in body which needs and involves attention of almost every system and cell in the body . It should not be impaired or disturbed as it the first step of body towards various system nourishment.

There are 7 things to avoid immediate after eating meal .

Bathing :

Never bathe immediately after meal. It causes increased blood supply to extremities i.e. limbs and other body parts,it also fetch nervous system attention towards skin by water stimulation, which reduces blood flow towards stomach and can hamper the process of digestion.

Exercise :

Exercise immediate after meal can cause increased stress on cardiac activity and can also increases the blood supply towards muscles causing indigestion and also cardiovascular ailments if practiced often

Smoking:

Smoking cigarette after meal can trigger hyper acidity and indigestion. Study shows one cigarette after meal is equivalent to 10 cigarettes in terms of ill effects on body.

4 Tea/coffee/liquor :

Higher acidic contents in alcohol make protein contents in food hard which are difficult to digest and may cause habitual constipation. According to Ayurveda theories initial phase of digestion is madhur ras dominant (the sweet taste), the bitter taste of tea and coffee can impair the micro digestion and absorption of nutrients in blood.

Fruits:

Fruits immediate after meal cause meal to lie in stomach and fermentation occur due to acidic nature of fruits. Bloating of stomach, heaviness occurs. Fruits should be eaten 2 hrs before or after meal

Sleep:

Sleeping immediately after meal causes delayed digestion and absorption of nutrition. Digestion is conscious effort of body if the important system like brain is involved in sleeping activity, the cardiac rate is reduced then the digestion will be delayed causing various kaf dosha diseases due to half digested substances which are equal to toxins .

Sex:

Sex immediately after meal causes stress on cardiac activity. Cardiac circulation rate is increased during the digestion process, the sexual act further can increase the circulatory rate abnormally. Also the increased flow of blood towards the sexual organ and other peripheral muscles will hamper the both activities at a time.

Dr. Rupali Panse in General health April 22, 2016

https://drrupalipanse.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/i-want-my-45mins-attention-please-yours-crying-stomach/

7 Movements You Need For Full Body Strength

Courtesy of bodybuilding.com, 7 movements you need for full body strength. Really useful info for those who need a great general direction.

Is your one-sided program setting you up for frustration? Eradicate your weaknesses for a body that performs from any angle by mastering the fundamental human movement patterns!

So let’s dig deeper into the patterns. Different coaches categorize them different ways, but for me, it all comes down to what I call the “Magnificent Seven.” No matter your goals, these all need to be present and accounted for!

1. Overhead press

This includes bodyweight moves like handstands or handstand push-ups, but also the military press, Arnold press, and plenty more. Any exercise that requires the practitioner to press away from his or her body in a vertical plane falls under this heading.

SEATED DUMBBELL PRESS / PIKE PRESS-UP

The primary movers here are your shoulders, traps, and triceps, although there are certainly differences from exercise to exercise. For example, a wall pike press-up requires more core stability than a seated dumbbell press, but the overall movement patterns are the same, and the yields are extraordinary from both.

2. Overhead pull

Pull-ups, chin-ups, and lat pull-downs, including all their numerous grips, angles, and hand placements, are the big hitters in this category. They place the focus more on the lats and biceps, the antagonists to your pressing muscles.

Pulling in general is a fundamental component of full-body strength, which is sadly underrepresented in many styles of training. The calisthenics fanatic knows how important it is, though! You’ve simply got to train your back to be balanced, symmetrical, and truly strong, even if you can’t see it in the mirror.

Whichever modality you choose to train, be sure you’ve got a balance of pushes and pulls in your regimen.

3. Horizontal push

This is any exercise in which you push your arms out in front of your chest and away from your body. Push-ups and bench presses are clearly the gold standards here, but make no mistake, they come in far more variations beyond just wide-grip, narrow-grip, incline, and decline.

PUSH-UP / BENCH PRESS

Furthermore, the choice between barbells, dumbbells and bodyweight training each have their own intrinsic distinctions. Barbells, of course, allow for maximal absolute strength. Dumbbells provide a greater grip workout, whereas unilateral and bodyweight variations train full-body coordination and muscular control.

Yes, you’re hitting primarily the chest and triceps here, but if you’ve ever done the work to achieve your first single-arm push-up, you know that the shoulders, abs, lats, and glutes also come into play to provide stability and assistance. There is no true muscle isolation, as the body always has to work together in one cohesive unit.

4. Horisontal pull

I love pull-ups as much as anybody, but I know I need my rows, too. Why? Typically, these exercises recruit more medial back muscles than the overhead pulls do, such as the rhomboids and spine erectors. If these crucial postural muscles are weak, something else is having to compensate—and that could be setting you up for trouble down the road.

AUSTRALIAN PULL-UP / BENT-OVER BARBELL ROW

So where do I get them? Australian pull-ups and suspension-strap pulls are great ways to get some volume.Dumbbell rows and bent-over rows are also classic moves here, along with the standard seated cable row.

If you want an elite row variation to aim for, try the front-lever pull-up. If you can knock out one of those cleanly, your back will show it from every angle.

5. Squat

The squat is the most foundational lower-body exercise there is, as well one of the most important movement patterns in general. You were a master of it as a kid, even though the hip, knee, and ankle range of motion you had then may have since slipped away. But it’s not too late to get it back!

Squats are unique in that both the anterior (front) and posterior (back) of the legs are employed, including the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and tibialis. Very much a full-body movement pattern, squats also recruit your hip flexors, spine erectors, abdominals, and more.

There are benefits to be gained from both bilateral and single-leg squat training, so save time for both. The foundation always has been—and still is—the simple bodyweight squat, but other worthy additions include the split-squat, walking lunges, and pistol squats, as well as the classic barbell lifts like back squats and front squats. Even theleg press is a variant of the basic squatting motion! Do not ignore this vital movement.

6. Forward flexion

Examples of this motion include all variations of sit-ups, hanging leg raises, twisting knee raises, jackknife crunches, and a vast multitude of abs and core exercises. Weighted crunch machines fall into this category, too.

Basically, any exercise where the body bends forward, emphasizing the abdominals, is part of this group. Bear in mind that although the primary movers here are the abs, many of these exercises—particularly those exercises which require you to hang from a bar—recruit additional muscles like your lats, arms, and shoulders.

7. Hinge

This group is made up of extension-based movements that balance out the immense amount of forward flexion we tend to include in our workouts and our lives. Because of the emphasis many of us place on the “beach muscles” (abs and chest, for example), the muscles you can’t see in the mirror often go undertrained. The importance of working the backside of your body cannot be understated.

You won’t be functionally strong, sound, or physically unyielding if you’re lacking in the posterior chain. There are many spectacular hinge movements, including but not limited to all forms of back bridging, the deadlift and its many incarnations, and the kettlebell swing.

BARBELL DEADLIFT / BRIDGE

Make no mistake: Although the primary movers in these exercises are the glutes, legs, upper back, and lower back, you must recruit your entire body in order to execute the hinge movement effectively. And your entire body will thank you for it.

ARE YOU TRAINING THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN?

Different people progress in different ways. A group of men and women could follow the same solid full-body training plan that hits all seven of these patterns, and each person would probably see one movement—horizontal push, for example—get stronger faster than another.

That’s perfectly normal. They key is to not let your weaknesses become your blind spots. Get stronger at what you’re lacking, stay strong at what you’re crushing, and incorporate some flexibility work to enhance your overall training.

And yes, of course I get that these groupings are a generalization. There are many activities—calf raises, wrist curls, neck harnesses, you name it—that don’t fit cleanly on this list. However, those are the dessert. These are the main course. Train the Magnificent Seven with consistency and intensity, and you will be in the best shape of your life!

By Danny Kavadlo

Last updated: Apr 20, 2016

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/7-movements-you-need-for-full-body-strength

https://ten8fitness.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/7-movements-you-need-for-full-body-strength/