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by Patrick Gustowski

Does Step Count Really Matter?

It’s been a long time since the myth ‘cardio kills your gains’ was debunked from fitness professionals and the health space in general, but in the increased popularity of generalised fitness information on social media, fad workout plans and the popularity of getting as big as possible for younger guys, does the myth hold any truth? And is it time to revisit some previously closed cases of fitness myths? How Does The Cardiovascular System Work? Firstly, it’s important to understand how the cardiovascular system actually works, and how training it effectively can do a lot more for you than just running for longer. The cardiovascular system is made predominantly up of the heart, blood and blood vessels, this also includes your arteries, veins and capillaries. The obvious function of the cardiovascular system is to move oxygen, nutrients and hormones through the blood throughout your body, so when we think of the cardio system like that and the role it plays, is there anything more important than improving the rate that oxygen moves around your body? Even remembering that in terms of progressing in the gym, the cardiovascular system plays an important role in the recovery of muscle tissue. By transporting fresh blood from the heart to the damaged muscles, and removing wastes to get transported to the kidneys, easier and more powerful blood flow is a no brainer. What Is Hypertrophy? Hypertrophy training primarily focuses on building size and density in the muscles. The main focus being in the development of muscle fibers in the process of breaking them down, and recovering bigger, and stronger. Hypertrophy training mostly involves lifting moderate weight with moderate reps. So knowing what we already do about how the cardiovascular system works, and now how hypertrophy training affects the muscles, does cardio affect the body’s ability to effectively build and maintain muscle mass? Cardio Is Weight Training’s Best Friend By consistently, smartly and effectively training both cardio and hypertrophy style training, you can not only build size and mass in the muscles, but you can also recover from that training even quicker with the help of moderate cardio. An example of light to moderate cardio day to day is a respectable step goal. For people that work at a desk or live a relatively sedentary lifestyle, it may be more difficult to get to classes or do cardio after weight training, this is why setting yourself a step goal that is both reasonable and challenging is a great way to know your effectively staying in a great cardio routine. Even the small amount of exertion walking puts on the body, over time can lead to some incredible results down the road. Final Thoughts Whatever the goal may be, from strength to muscle building, a moderate cardio routine is essential in improving your recovery, heart health and general fitness level. Doing such a routine could not only improve muscle growth but add to it. It of course all comes down to your fitness ability and goals, but if you're looking for a place to start, a brisk walk may lead to some serious gains.

by Nick Hoad

Anxiety in the Gym? Let’s Fix That.

I think I speak for most people when I say the first time in the gym can be scary. The thought of walking through the gym doors can be a big struggle. From the fear of judgement, to comparison, or not knowing where to start, it can put up a roadblock and stop you in your tracks. The silver lining, you’re not alone in this struggle. There are ways to tackle gym anxiety so you can hop back on track. What Is Gym Anxiety? Ever sat in your car in the gym car park, staring at the doors, dreading the moment you walk through and start your workout? That’s gym anxiety. It can come in many different forms, from worry about judgement from others, to doing exercises incorrectly, or even working out in public. All these triggers make the gym feel more like a source of stress and anxiety, rather than motivation. Why Does It Happen? Fear of Judgment: The main fear when it comes to the gym is being judged. Whether it’s how you look or how you do exercises, it can feel like all eyes are on you and it’ll leave you feeling distraught. Lack of Knowledge: The fear of the unknown can be crippling. Not understanding the equipment, proper form and effective routines can leave you scratching your head and wanting to go home. Comparison to Others: It’s daunting to go into the gym and see others who are lifting heavier weights with ease and seem to be in better shape. The comparison you make can leave you feeling inadequate and out of place in a gym. Overcrowded Spaces: Gyms can get crowded and loud. It can be overwhelming to those who like a less hectic environment. Clanging weights, grunting people and music blasting can make it hard to concentrate on what you’re trying to do. How To Overcome Gym Anxiety The causes of gym anxiety are understandable, but they don’t have to stand in your way and stop you from getting to your goals. Here are some steps you can take to push past your fear and get confident and comfortable in the gym: Start Small: If your usual time is busy, start with ours outside of peak times. Many gyms are usually quieter early in the morning or late at night. You’ll be able to have a chance to try out the machines, get familiar with the layout and equipment, and have more space to get your workout done. Create a Plan: The fear of the unknown can raise your anxiety. Before you even set foot in the gym, having a set workout plan can help you come in more focused and prepared for the workout. It could be a specific program or just exercises that you want to get done, it gets rid of the need to figure out what to do on the fly. Focus on Yourself & Be Mindful: Everyone’s gym journey is a personal one. Instead of focusing on what other people are doing, remember why you started and take some deep breaths. Keeping yourself mindful in a stressful situation can keep the anxiety at bay and help you through the workouts. Take Small Steps: If even walking through the door can be difficult, break it down into small steps. Start by getting to the gym, getting past the front counter and making it to a treadmill or a cardio bike. This will help you get comfortable with the new environment, and over time working out will be less and less daunting. Seek Support: Working out is a personal goal, but you don’t have to do it alone. Calling on a friend, experienced or new in the gym, can help your gym sessions become less stressful, and boost your confidence. Final Thoughts Gym anxiety doesn’t have to hold you back. With a little bit of preparation, practice and patience, you’ll be able to overcome the fear and see the gym as the sanctuary for self-improvement. At the end of the day, every one was a beginner and has been in your shoes before. Focusing on yourself and winning each day will have you seeing the gym as the place where you belong.

by Patrick Gustowski

The Battle of Expectations in Weight Loss

If there was a list for the most common goals that people tend to set themselves going into the new year, at the top of that list it would be weight loss. Being one of the most popular and common reasons people start living a more active lifestyle in the first place, you’d think people would be more understanding of what it takes to take on such a goal. In fact close to 80% of people end up failing their new year’s resolutions by mid-February, a big portion of that being people with a weight loss goal. Maybe it’s time to start being more realistic when it comes to weight loss. The Social Media Echo Chamber There are thousands of accounts across social media platforms that are fitness and health focused, accounts that promote healthy lifestyles and boast amazing physiques. With large followings these accounts can hold a lot of influence in and around the health & fitness world, and with influence it’s very easy to reach and convince a consumer that to achieve a physique similar to theirs it’s as easy as following a crafted workout and meal plan. When your goal is weight loss, and you’ve tried every method in the book, and constantly see people who achieved incredible results, how could you not buy into another product? Maybe weight loss and specifically fat loss, isn’t about spending the most money on a plan, or comparisons online, or even following fad diets that go viral, maybe fat loss is about understanding what it truly takes to become the best version of yourself. To let go of the unattainable physique you see online that may be presented like it was as easy as following a specific gym split, and to understand that this person has most likely spent many years perfecting their craft, understanding the ins and outs of the human body, and overcoming multiple setbacks. That’s what it’s all about. You vs. You Weight loss for a lot of people involves cutting back and living a more balanced lifestyle, an opportunity to balance the foods you crave and the foods you need, and understanding how your body reacts to a caloric deficit. Every single person on the planet is going to be different in the way they react to a deficit where the goal is fat loss. People get hungry, people get impulsive, and people can struggle a lot. It’s important to remember that all of the work you do for yourself in this phase, will mostly be in the background, by yourself and with yourself. This is why comparisons to others and non-specific plans are useless when it comes to the battle of you versus yourself. Your best chance at winning the battle is by knowing what you need to succeed, and the only way to find that out is by messing up time and time again. By messing up, you gain the experience and knowledge of what you did wrong and the feeling that comes with that, and in-turn an opportunity to to know how to deal with it in the future, and to use it as a tool to better yourself. When we talk about fat loss, we talk about staying in a caloric deficit, eating nutrient-dense foods and focusing on protein and other factors that keep you feeling fuller for longer. You will mess up, time and time again, but it’s time to look at that as a positive, because a goal like fat loss is a jog, rather than a sprint. You can choose to go too quick at the start and fall flat straight away, or take the challenges and lock in for the long run. Wrapping Up There is no secret to weight loss, there is no over-complication of the science and it is as simple as this; You will lose weight, as long as you eat less than what you burn. The most important part of that though, is to remind yourself always that it is a process, a journey, and a hard one at that. So take the time to work out a rough estimate of your daily macros using an online calculator, make a plan to eat more wholefoods, remember to be balanced, not restrictive and be kind to yourself. In the battle for sustained weight loss, it’s a battle against yourself. You have the power and the tools, and you will learn how to use them.

by Patrick Gustowski

What Is Motivation?

Going to the gym, staying on top of a meal plan and saving money can feel at times too easy when you’re highly motivated to stay on track. Hitting your first few PB’s and seeing weight change on the scale can be the thing that makes you show up the next day, but what happens when you don’t see the scale move? Or your warm-up weight feels heavier than usual? Maybe discipline is the ultimate way of unlocking your potential. So... What is Motivation? Motivation as a term can be broken down into two different categories that shift and influence human behaviour; Extrinsic Motivation Motivation that comes from outside of the individual and often involves external rewards, in a health based example that could be praise from a peer, winning a 10-week challenge or a trophy for a bodybuilding show. Intrinsic Motivation Motivation that arises internally from within the individual, such as reaching a new personal best, finishing that gruelly block of your plan or noticing yourself in the mirror after chest. Motivation is a reward system for your body and soul, the dopamine your body releases when you are positively reinforced whether it be intrinsically or extrinsically can become addicting. It’s why it’s also so difficult to be forced to be motivated when you don’t see the bigger picture of why you do the things you do to accomplish your goals. But why does it seem so easy for others? In times of weakness we may look to comparisons of others around us that seem to be infinitely more motivated by some unstoppable force. In reality, the secret to winning may not be based on constantly motivating yourself and reaping temporary rewards, but accepting the challenges as stepping stones in a much longer, more tedious journey. Discipline: You Reap What You Sow What’s the secret then, if you can’t rely on motivation to push you each day, if plateau’s and sick days are inevitable, then what else could you possibly do? Become disciplined. Mirroring the motivation sources covered previously, specifically intrinsic motivation, being disciplined is by far one of the best skills you can learn to succeed at. When you know you’re disciplined, hitting a new personal best after pushing through a tough plateau reinforces your ability and mental fortitude to ignore temporary releases of negative emotions. Being disciplined reworks your mind to not expect or assume a feeling of positivity after completing a task, but assists you in looking to the future when you remind yourself why you started training, or eating well in the first place. Very simply, the pay off you get from eventually meeting your goal, pushing yourself through moments you find are tough and looking at tomorrow as another step into a lifetime of motivating reinforcement because you believed in yourself and stayed on track, is immeasurable. Where Do I Even Start? The River Analogy Motivation and discipline are more allies than adversaries, they can effectively work with each other and achieve more together than they ever can alone. The River Analogy is a digestible way of looking at your goals and journey in a palatable way; The Current: What is your overall goal? Is it weight loss, muscle gain or a mentality shift? That’s your Current. Something that continues to push and move forward, something with a start and an end, and with discipline you can learn to ride and control the current. The Debris: The Debris is an analogy for obstacles, seemingly immovable objects that can knock you off your rhythm. They can set you back if you can’t learn to adjust, and recalculate your direction. Sometimes the obstacles feel too big and they do temporarily knock you off. The Lily Pads: When you feel like you're sinking, when you’ve gone off track and lost sight of your current, you need a start point. You aim for the Lily Pads. This is your motivation, with its temporary boost you can set smaller more achievable goals that put you back on track and back in focus with your overall goal. Wrapping Up Motivation is good for the mind and a great tool if you can master it, discipline is essential for growth and overall well being. To put yourself in uncomfortable positions, doing things that challenge you mentally and consistently be open to learning, will change your life. The catch is that you are the only person that can start your journey.

by Brandon Verde

Top 5 Tips To Build Your Influence On Social Media

So you want to be a rock superstar? And live large. A big house. Five cars… OK slow down there Cypress Hill… we’re not promising that building your influence on social media is going to grant you celebrity status. But there’s no doubt that investing a little bit of time and effort in capturing people’s attention on social media has the potential to pay significant dividends for you. Whether you want to build a business, find a new job, meet someone special, or ask for help with something that’s important to you, you need someone’s attention first & foremost. With that in mind, here are our Top 5 tips to help build your audience, and influence, on social media. Pick The Platforms That You Like The Most & Post On Them Frequently There are A LOT of social media platforms… Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat… the list goes on. And while in an ideal world, you’d be on all of them, there’s only so many hours in the day! So pick the platforms that you resonate with the most, and then make sure you post on them frequently. Posting every day is best to ensure you align with the daily consumption habits & routines of your followers, but if that’s not realistic for you, pick a posting frequency and stick with it. Consistency is absolutely essential when trying to build real influence with your audience. If your followers are looking for your content, you need to deliver. Share Your Authentic Self We all know BS when we see it… and your followers, and potential new followers, are no different. Posting content that isn’t authentic to who you are will seriously undermine your influence. Plus you’ll miss out on sharing the parts of you that make you unique. Don’t be afraid to be your authentic self on social media… you’ll resonate with more people than you think. Treat Your Followers Like Family (Or At Least Good Friends) It’s called “social” media for a reason. So connect with people, engage with your audience and get social! Make sure you respond to DMs, reply to comments, jump into comment threads on other people’s posts that catch your eye, and just generally treat people on social media the way you want to be treated in real life. Oh, and remember that when you’re creating content, create it for your audience, not for you. Does your content help solve a problem they may have? Does it inspire them? Entertain them? Educate them? Add as much value as you can. You’ll be surprised how much it is appreciated. Don’t Freeze Trying To Create Content… Document Instead While it would be nice to be perpetually inspired to create amazing content everyday, it’s just not going to happen. So instead of falling victim to “Content Creators’ Block” and posting nothing for weeks on end because you just can’t come up with the next post, switch to documenting instead. Show your followers some of your day to day activities... your morning routine, your daily meals, your workouts, your work day… You’ll think your usual activities are inherently boring (you do them everyday, afterall!), but they’ll be new & entertaining to your audience. Sometimes documentaries outperform even the biggest blockbuster hits! Work With The Algorithms, Not Against Them Keep up to date with different trends on social media platforms and use them to your advantage. If you notice Instagram is pushing Reels over everything, create Reels. If you notice YouTube is favouring Shorts over long form videos, create Shorts. If you notice people prefer consuming Stories over Feeds, post in Stories. Don’t get caught up doing things a certain way because it’s the way they’ve always been done. Be open to experimenting with new types of content and new types of posting within different platforms. Every algorithm change is an opportunity for you to build your audience and influence. And finally, don’t be afraid to repeat the same things to different people. The way social media algorithms all work is to show your content to about 3-5% of your audience at any one time. Which means while you may think you’re being repetitive, most of your audience is always going to be seeing your content for the first time. Think of yourself like a rock superstar playing your greatest hits… oh wait, perhaps Cypress Hill was right afterall!

by Vince Lawrence

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