Latest news with #kinesiology
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Health
- Irish Times
How hard do you have to work to build muscle?
You're sweaty and sore, and just hoisting your gym bag on to your shoulder makes you groan. The workout was exhausting, but was it effective? Many trainers and athletes have long believed that lifting to failure – the moment when you can't complete another repetition of an exercise – is the best way to build muscle. But recent research has challenged that idea, suggesting that training at a slightly lower intensity can produce similar results. 'The question I ask people is: 'Are we getting better or are we getting tired?'' said David Frost, an associate professor in the kinesiology department at the University of Toronto. If you're new to lifting, it can be tough to know how hard your workout should feel. Learning what failure feels like – and understanding when you should push that far – can help you build a sustainable strength-training routine and allow you to safely progress as you get stronger. READ MORE Training to failure? There are two types of failure in strength training. 'Technical failure' is when you can't do another repetition with proper form and control, so you may have to rely on other muscles and joints to lift the weight. 'Muscular failure' happens when your muscles are so fatigued that you can't lift the weight at all. Although you can build muscle mass by training to failure, some experts say the risks may outweigh the benefits. 'If you push yourself to failure and damage your muscles to a very extreme degree in a single workout, that's going to impair what you can do the next day and the next day,' Frost said. Pushing yourself to lift with poor form can also increase your risk of injury. [ Should you push through exercise pain? Opens in new window ] What matters more is that you're working hard each time you step into the gym. Challenging your muscles creates microdamage in the tissue, which is what makes them change. When you rest, that tissue repairs, grows and gets stronger. 'You don't need to necessarily be pushing to failure, but a high level of effort is required over time,' said Brad Schoenfeld, a professor in the exercise science programme at Lehman College in New York who studies how different methods of resistance training affect muscle growth. How much to lift? When you're starting out with strength training, perform new exercises with just your body weight first so you can learn proper form, said Elizabeth Davies, a strength coach in Kent, in England, who works primarily with women who are relatively new to lifting. Once you're ready to add weight, start by picking up a weight that feels light to you. Focus on moving with good form rather than trying to do as many repetitions as possible. You can use what's known as the reps-in-reserve, or RIR, scale to find out how much weight you can handle for a full set. When you perform an exercise, estimate how many more times you could lift the weight – your RIR – before feeling maxed out. You want to choose a weight where at the end of your set, you feel like you have a few repetitions left in the tank. The RIR method lets you adjust your workouts for how you feel – which can vary based on everything from sleep and diet to hormonal changes and stress – rather than sticking to a set amount of weight. Working to build muscle As a new lifter, your muscle tissue will generally adapt quickly to training, so you can stop when you feel like you have five or six RIR and still see progress, Davies said. As you get stronger, research suggests that stopping two or three repetitions before failure can be ideal for maximising muscle growth. Once you're able to complete the same number of repetitions in a given set for two or three weeks in a row, add a bit more weight and see how that changes your sense of effort, Frost suggested. When you're familiar with an exercise and can practice it consistently with good form, it can be worthwhile to occasionally train to failure to refine your sense of how hard you need to work. After all, 'if you don't train to failure, you don't know how far away from failure you are', Dr Schoenfeld said. When your body is pushed beyond its limits, it will also try to adapt to meet that challenge more easily next time, he said. [ Fitness: Is it better to eat before or after exercising? Opens in new window ] If you really enjoy the feeling of hitting your maximum effort, failure can have an occasional place in your workouts. Davies gives her clients that opportunity on single-joint moves such as bicep curls that won't leave them too exhausted and hinder their progress, she said. The key to getting the most out of strength training is stacking up hard work over time, Frost said. On most days, that means aiming to push yourself a little bit more than you did the day before. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times
New York Times
5 days ago
- General
- New York Times
4 Ways to Trick Yourself Into Taking a Walk
I love a meandering walk, but sometimes I need a little motivation to get up and go. Lately, I've been tempting myself outside by visiting a dove that's nesting in my yard: Every morning, I check to see if her eggs have hatched. Once I've got my sneakers on and left the house, I tend to keep walking. Rob Walker, author of 'The Art of Noticing,' said that when he walks, he likes to impose a mission or build a framework around it to add a little novelty and engagement to an activity that is 'literally pedestrian.' 'Otherwise, you can easily end up on your phone, or in your head where all you do is ruminate over the deadline that you're missing or the smartass remark that someone made to you,' he said. 'And there could be dragons walking around and you wouldn't notice them.' It's worthwhile to do whatever it takes to stay on the path, because the benefits of regular walks are well-documented. Walking lowers the risk of many health problems including heart disease, anxiety and depression, and diabetes, said Stacy Imagbe, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Morehouse College. And you don't need to do 10,000 steps a day, either; even 4,000 daily steps have been shown to have benefits. If you need some motivation, here are some of Walker's more creative ways to take a walk. Get outside and tune into the sounds around you, Walker said. 'We're so visually oriented that we miss a lot of things that are happening to our other senses,' he said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Rapist energy healer who fled Australia jailed
A "predatory" holistic energy healer who sexually assaulted two vulnerable women before fleeing Australia has been jailed. Helio Taiyang Matahari, 63, who has been known by five other aliases, appeared in Brisbane District Court on Friday after being "dragged back" for sentencing. Matahari pleaded guilty to rape and two counts of sexual assault, eight years after his offending began. The court was told Matahari abused his relationship with a woman in December 2017 after being introduced to her via family, with her mother also seeing him for kinesiology treatment. Matahari digitally raped the-then 20-year-old, taking advantage of a woman who went seeking his expertise, the court heard. "She was already feeling quite uneasy … and you progressed with touching her under the guise of therapy," Judge Deborah Richards said. The woman read out a devastating impact statement to the court with her father in support. "I never in my life felt so small, so powerless, so utterly violated, as I did from the assault itself and the days that followed," she said. "But the impacts aren't just consigned to what had happened on the day. "It's about the seven years that have followed since, seven long years of waiting, hoping and having to constantly re-live the assault without the ability to finally let it go." A second woman made sexual assault allegations against Matahari in 2018. He pleaded guilty before it went to trial to both the rape and sexual assault charges in April 2021. But Matahari then changed his plea and fled Australia to Thailand in December 2021. He was eventually deported back to Australia, extradited from NSW to Brisbane in 2024. Matahari was charged with breach of bail and arraigned on that charge on Friday. "You had to be dragged back," Judge Richards said. Matahari's behaviour was "predatory and opportunistic sexual offending committed against two vulnerable women which continued undeterred", the crown prosecutor said. Matahari's defence detailed his extensive work history across multiple fields and provided character references citing his integrity. "You don't have integrity when you run away from your charges and leave victims hanging while you're basically hiding from the law," Judge Richards said. "It's extraordinary people would speak of him in these terms if they knew what he'd done." Matahari was sentenced to five years in jail and will be eligible for parole in September 2026. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
CTV News
6 days ago
- Health
- CTV News
Longer weekend workouts provide same benefits as weekly routines: study
A study from the University of Calgary found that two-day periods of high-intensity exercise provide the same benefit as regular regimens of at least four days of exercise per week. (Pexels/Victor Freitas) If you struggle to fit time at the gym into your busy schedule, new research suggests you might enjoy just as many benefits from a different routine. Scientists at the University of Calgary say that just two days' worth of high-intensity exercise – better known as a 'weekend warrior workout' – has the same fitness benefit as four-day workout routines. The results came from a study of 28 adults (14 men and 14 women), with sedentary to recreationally active lifestyles, randomly assigned to eight weeks of supervised training. The participants were either given a high frequency exercise plan over four days or a longer sessions over a two-day period. 'Over the course of our study, we saw no drop off in fitness benefits from only working out two days a week versus four,' said Dr. Martin MacInnis, associate professor at the U of C's faculty of kinesiology and lead of the study. 'The key is the intensity and volume have to remain the same.' MacInnis and his team, led by Thomas Tripp, a PhD student who is now a postdoc at Queen's University, found that if you have a busy schedule, you can 'make it up on the weekend.' The study is a 'proof of concept', MacInnis said, showing that both groups of participants enjoyed increased cardiorespiratory fitness, blood volume, skeletal muscle mitochondria content, fatigue resistance and exercise performance. Future studies aim to explore if a training on a reduced frequency is effective for populations with clinical conditions. The team's study was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.
CNA
09-05-2025
- Health
- CNA
How hard do you have to push yourself to get stronger?
You're sweaty and sore, and just hoisting your gym bag onto your shoulder makes you groan. The workout was exhausting, but was it effective? Many trainers and athletes have long believed that lifting to failure – the moment when you can't complete another repetition of an exercise – is the best way to build muscle. But recent research has challenged that idea, suggesting that training at a slightly lower intensity can produce similar results. 'The question I ask people is: 'Are we getting better or are we getting tired?'' said David Frost, an associate professor in the kinesiology department at the University of Toronto. If you're new to lifting, it can be tough to know how hard your workout should feel. Learning what failure feels like – and understanding when you should push that far – can help you build a sustainable strength training routine and allow you to safely progress as you get stronger. WHAT IS TRAINING TO FAILURE? There are two types of failure in strength training. 'Technical failure' is when you can't do another repetition with proper form and control, so you may have to rely on other muscles and joints to lift the weight. 'Muscular failure' happens when your muscles are so fatigued that you can't lift the weight at all. While you can build muscle mass by training to failure, some experts say the risks may outweigh the benefits. 'If you push yourself to failure and damage your muscles to a very extreme degree in a single workout, that's going to impair what you can do the next day and the next day,' Frost said. Pushing yourself to lift with poor form can also increase your risk of injury. What matters more is that you're working hard each time you step into the gym. Challenging your muscles creates micro-damage in the tissue, which is what makes them change. When you rest, that tissue repairs, grows and gets stronger. 'You don't need to necessarily be pushing to failure, but a high level of effort is required over time,' said Brad Schoenfeld, a professor in the exercise science programme at Lehman College in New York who studies how different methods of resistance training affect muscle growth. HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU LIFT? When you're starting out with strength training, perform new exercises with just your body weight first so you can learn proper form, said Elizabeth Davies, a strength coach in Kent, England, who works primarily with women who are relatively new to lifting. Once you're ready to add weight, start by picking up a weight that feels light to you. Focus on moving with good form rather than trying to do as many repetitions as possible. You can use what's known as the Reps in Reserve, or RIR, scale to find out how much weight you can handle for a full set. When you perform an exercise, estimate how many more times you could lift the weight – your 'reps in reserve' – before feeling maxed out. You want to choose a weight where at the end of your set, you feel like you have a few repetitions left in the tank. The RIR method lets you adjust your workouts for how you feel – which can vary based on everything from sleep and diet to hormonal changes and stress – rather than sticking to a set amount of weight. HOW HARD DO YOU HAVE TO WORK TO BUILD MUSCLE? As a new lifter, your muscle tissue will generally adapt quickly to training, so you can stop when you feel like you have five or six repetitions in reserve and still see progress, Davies said. As you get stronger, research suggests that stopping two or three repetitions before failure can be ideal for maximising muscle growth. Once you're able to complete the same number of repetitions in a given set for two or three weeks in a row, add a bit more weight and see how that changes your sense of effort, Frost suggested. When you're familiar with an exercise and can practise it consistently with good form, it can be worthwhile to occasionally train to failure to refine your sense of how hard you need to work. After all, 'if you don't train to failure, you don't know how far away from failure you are,' Dr Schoenfeld said. When your body is pushed beyond its limits, it will also try to adapt to meet that challenge more easily next time, Dr Schoenfeld said. If you really enjoy the feeling of hitting your maximum effort, failure can have an occasional place in your workouts. Davies gives her clients that opportunity on single-joint moves like bicep curls that won't leave them too exhausted and hinder their progress, she said. The key to getting the most out of strength training is stacking up hard work over time, Frost said. On most days, that means aiming to push yourself a little bit more than you did the day before.
