Latest news with #personaltrainer
BBC News
4 hours ago
- General
- BBC News
Newcastle A1 police car crash driver detained
A personal trainer who caused a pile-up of police cars after fleeing from them while driving home from a first date has been sentenced to 14 months in a young offenders officers were injured and five police cars damaged in the crash caused by 20-year-old Mazyar happened on the A1 near Denton Burn, Newcastle, at about 02:30 BST on 9 from Stanley in County Durham, previously admitted dangerous driving and driving again in the days after the crash despite being given an interim ban. Newcastle Crown Court previously heard how Azarbonyad sped away from officers who tried to stop him in Swalwell, Gateshead, after they noticed a defective rear light on his the time he only had a provisional driving licence, had no car insurance and had only paid for three driving was also banned from driving for three years. Follow BBC Newcastle on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
I did 20 military presses every day for a week — here's what happened to my shoulders
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. I was recently cleared for exercise after having a baby, so I've been very eager to dust off my favorite dumbbells and get back to work. Despite my enthusiasm, I knew I'd have to rebuild my deep core strength first before attempting most of my pre-pregnancy routine. However, I did feel strong enough to incorporate some upper-body exercises into my postpartum program. I was doing military presses consistently both before and during my pregnancy, so I decided to kickstart my return by doing 20 military presses every day for a full week. While this felt like a doable challenge for me, you should always check in with your medical team before trying a new workout, especially if you're postpartum. Meeting with a certified personal trainer is also a good idea to ensure you're moving correctly. The military press, also called an overhead press, is a compound exercise that targets multiple muscles in the shoulder. This move will work the anterior, lateral, and posterior deltoids along with your triceps, serratus anterior, and rotator cuff muscles. Military presses also require core engagement. Your transverse abdominis and internal obliques keep your torso stable and your spine neutrally aligned as you press the weight overhead. You'll need a pair of dumbbells, a barbell, or a curl bar for this exercise. If you have any lower back issues, you may also want an adjustable weight bench so you can sit while performing the movement. Stand with your feet hip-width apart, holding a dumbbell in each hand. Bring the dumbbells to your shoulders with your knuckles facing behind you. Engage your core and maintain neutral spine alignment. Press the dumbbells towards the ceiling. Slowly lower the dumbbells back to your shoulders. Continue for the desired number of reps. If you're using a barbell or curl bar, align the bar with your sternum, with your hands placed slightly wider than shoulder width apart. Engage your core and press the bar overhead. Return to the starting position with control. Since I was returning to exercise after a long absence, I split 20 reps into two sets of 10. Here's what I found after my week-long experiment. Pregnancy really does a number on your core, and I've noticed the lack of strength and stability in my abs even during the simplest of moves. Knowing that I was dealing with some serious core strength deficits, I decided to perform the exercise seated with back support for the first few days. This was the right choice, as even seated, I could feel the muscles in my back trying to overcompensate for my weak abs. Dropping the dumbbell weight alleviated this problem, and the exercise still challenged my shoulder muscles. Keep this in mind if you've got lower back issues or compromised abdominal muscles. Doing the exercise seated takes a lot of the core work out of the equation, but sometimes that's necessary to ensure proper form and prevent injury. Even though I was seated, I still made sure to engage my abdominals throughout the movement. By the time I got to the fifth day of the week, I felt like my core muscles were conditioned enough to try the military presses standing. It was much easier to keep my spine aligned without letting the low back arch. I finished out the week standing, which was more taxing for my core, but in a positive way. I was starting to see the benefits from military presses combined with my postpartum core routine. Military presses are primarily a shoulder exercise, but they're great for building abdominal stability too. My fifth day of military presses also came with a bump in dumbbell weight. Before pregnancy, I was doing military presses with 20 pounds regularly, so I decided to jump back in a bit lighter — 15 pounds. The first few days were harder than I expected, but I started to find my groove by day three. By day four, I barreled through all 20 reps without stopping. I knew that meant I was ready to up the ante, so on day five, I grabbed my 20-pound weights. I was able to increase my dumbbell weight pretty quickly because my body was used to the movement. If you're trying military presses for the first time, be wary of increasing your weight too quickly. Doing so could result in injury. Since the dumbbells were starting to feel easy, I swapped them for a curl bar on the last day of the week. Curl bars look similar to a barbell but are much shorter and lighter, making them accessible to almost anyone. I selected a 35-pound curl bar, which wasn't as heavy as the dumbbells I'd been lifting. The weight displacement on a curl bar is much different than dumbbells, though, and that threw me off a bit. I even developed some slight shoulder pain on the last few reps, and could feel my abdominals working hard. I had to rest before I got to the end of my sets. Doing military presses with different pieces of equipment, like curl bars or kettlebells, could add some much-needed variety to the movement. I'm a personal trainer — here's 3 hip-opening exercises to reduce stiffness and boost lower-body mobility This routine is designed to improve your lower body's range of motion, increase blood flow, and enhance joint mobility Personal trainer shares a five-move mobility routine to unstick tight hips and shoulders using your bodyweight.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Camper's warning to Aussies after deadly discovery near tent: 'Holy crap'
Most Aussie adventurers will know that even the best-laid camping plans can hit a few curveballs along the way — be it equipment mishaps, road problems or wild weather. Now, outdoorsman Jamie has issued a warning to Aussies to be extra aware of their surroundings in wet conditions after making a deadly discovery near his tent on a recent trip. Jamie and his brother, from Sydney, were setting up a campsite in Turon National Park near Lithgow in NSW in the pouring rain, at night, when they came across a tiny critter. The male funnel-web spider was spotted crawling around beside the tent they had just pitched. The arachnid species, which is endemic to Australia, is widely considered the world's deadliest spider due to its "highly toxic" and "fast-acting" venom. In all of the fatalities where the gender of the spider was confirmed, the males were responsible. They're commonly found in eastern Australia, particularly throughout NSW. "We were setting up our camp and my brother spotted it," Jamie told Yahoo News. "I thought 'holy crap'." Jamie and his brother, who have been camping since childhood, have seen the spiders before and said they knew what they were looking out for. He explained that the male funnel-webs are more slender and shiny while the females are "fatter". Jamie, a personal trainer, believes it was likely a male on the move looking for a female mate. But surprisingly, he said he "wasn't too worried" about the discovery and decided against moving his campsite, arguing that they are "everywhere" in the bush. "You've just got to be aware," he urged Aussies. "Make sure your gear is in the car, don't leave your shoes out and check them before you put them on. We made sure we had our swags and tents zipped up and just guided it along to get it out of our camp, and we were fine from there," he said. "If you leave them alone, they will leave you alone." 🕷️ Venomous spider warning after 'perfect storm' of extreme weather events 🕸️ Aussie teen lucky to survive after waking up to burning pain in his arm 🥰 Millions amazed by man's 'special' encounter in rural Australia Jamie told Yahoo he sees "a lot" of different animals while out camping in Australia's bush. On his most recent three-day trip, while fishing for trout, they came across snakes, spiders, kangaroos, as well as invasive species including pigs, wild cats and even goats. "Goats are everywhere," he said. When it comes to avoiding deadly spiders, Jamie suggests Aussies looking for a good campsite should "stick to flat ground" and "try not to go out in those rainy and most environments", when spiders are most active. "You don't have to be scared of them, they're not out to get you. They're always going to be out there, and just be aware," he said. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@ You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
The deadlift difference: is this the exercise you need for an active and pain-free future?
One of the lovely things about getting older is realising there's always something more you should be doing to look after your body. Did I say lovely? Obviously I meant tedious. But how you feel about it doesn't change the facts. If you take the slightest interest in your health, and want to stay strong, mobile and pain-free in your 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, you'll have to pay attention to the exercises that many of us avoid in our 20s, 30s and 40s. Or, in my case, until you're 61¾. Like deadlifts, which help with one of life's most basic tasks – bending over and picking stuff up. Training these also involves bending over and picking stuff up – usually a barbell, but sometimes a kettlebell or pair of dumbbells. 'Here's a few things deadlifts help with,' says Laura Kummerle, a Georgia-based physiotherapist and personal trainer (PT). 'Lifting your grocery bags off the ground on to the counter, lifting your laundry basket off the ground, lifting your kid/grandkid (especially out of their crib when you can't squat), lifting a piece of furniture or a heavy rock for landscaping … They work the hip hinge, which is a fundamental movement pattern for strength training, but more importantly for daily life.' 'If I could only do one exercise in the gym ever again, deadlifts are the one I would do,' says Cali Joseph, a PT based in Walthamstow, east London. 'They're the pinnacle of weight training.' That's because even though you're lifting the weight no higher than your thighs, the way you hinge rather than squat means they work everything from your hamstrings, quads, glutes and back to your core, shoulders and arms. They also make a lot of people very happy, and not just because of some kind of lifter's high. Mira Taylor, a personal trainer based in north Wales, began focusing on deadlifts five years ago and is now a British and European deadlift-only champion. 'I think it's pathological for me at this point,' she says. 'Obviously the sense of progression and hitting or chasing personal bests is intoxicating, but it's also the fact that you have to clear your mind completely when you're lifting a heavy barbell. That's very therapeutic.' Some people will tell you deadlifts are risky, especially if you're getting on a bit, but then some people will tell you running is risky, or cycling, or picking up anything more substantial than a golf club. 'Anything can be dangerous,' says Kummerle. 'Drinking too much water can be dangerous; stepping off a kerb can be dangerous. Everything we do has risk, but the benefits outweigh the risks of deadlifts, for sure. I'm not saying everyone should be maxing out their deadlift, but loading the movement with what feels like a light to moderate weight can reduce the risk of injury in daily life. That way when you go and pick up your kid or help a friend move house, your body is used to that stimulus.' It's also useful for rehab. 'Deadlifts are good for any injury to build back general strength once you're able to do the hip hinge pattern safely,' says Kummerle. 'They can be particularly helpful for knees, hips and backs, but I can also see them being useful for ankles, shoulders and even necks.' My own physio's definitely a fan. I'm recovering from a knee injury, and she had me deadlifting less than two months after surgery for my torn meniscus. Even as a beginner, and one who's careful to take things slowly, I've been deadlifting 50kg – more than half my own weight. More experienced lifters might aim to shift double or even treble their bodyweight. Taylor, who competes in the under-60kg category (based on what competitors weigh, not their barbells), lifted 170kg at last November's World Powerlifting Congress World Championships. But the heavier you lift, the more form matters. 'The problem with a deadlift is that you can brute-force it,' says Joseph, who has agreed to help me with mine. 'If you're strong, you can just get the bar off the ground and stand up – but that's how you ended up getting injured.' She's speaking from personal experience. So off to the bar we go – all 7ft and 20kg of it. Bars come in various lengths and weights, some more suitable for home workouts, but it's this 'Olympic' size that you'll find in most gyms. When people talk about how much they lift, that includes the bar, so if you're lifting 30kg, that means you've stuck a 5kg 'plate' on either end of yours. It's important that you set up correctly, Joseph says – the first step being to make sure you're in the dead centre of the bar, hands evenly spaced and about shoulder width apart. There should be markings to help with this. This may sound basic, but it's surprisingly easy to pick up a bar off-centre, especially if you're taking it from a rack rather than the ground, as we are today. If you're new to the game, or need to warm up for a session, you'll probably want to try a few lifts with just the bar. It's still 20kg, remember. I've already warmed up, though, and this is not quite my first rodeo, so we start with two 10kg plates, making a total weight of 40kg. The bottom of the plates is just resting on the ground, but this lifts the bar enough that I don't have to bend too much to get my hands around it in an overhand grip. If I had longer legs, or shorter arms, I might have had to raise it off the ground a little. I'll be holding it barehanded as the weight is light and I have a strong grip, but if needed I could dust my hands with chalk, or use lifting straps. There's no shame in giving your grip some help if it's all that's standing between you and a personal best. Take your time over your set-up. Wherever you feel your hips should be, raise them a couple of inches First, though, my feet need to be in the right position. For conventional deadlifts – which is what we're focusing on today – that's pointing forward (it's OK for them to be turned out a little) and roughly shoulder width apart. But only roughly. 'I always say you should be in your 'power stance',' Joseph tells me. 'If I said to you, 'Phil, for a million quid I want you to jump as high as you can', that's how your feet should be. You shouldn't be too wide and you shouldn't be too narrow, but the precise position will be different for different people.' You also want to be close to the bar. 'Feet in your power stance, laces underneath the bar. You want your shins to be almost touching it. We want the bar, the weight, to travel the shortest path – straight up and straight down. It's us that gets in the way or out of the way. The closer it is to us, the more easily we can control it, the more we can harness that power. 'Now,' Joseph says, getting into position to demonstrate, 'you start with a little hinge and push your bum back. Then you bend your knees as much as you need to reach the bar. For me, that's quite a lot – I've got short arms and short legs. At this point, your shins might touch the bar, but that's OK. As long as you're comfortable with that, that's fine. 'Then, when we're here, we need to build tremendous tension in our body.' And how do we do that? 'First of all I'm going to bring my shoulders towards the ceiling and lock out my arms as much as I can. Then it's chest up, shoulders back. And now my last little cue: elbows in. I internally rotate my elbows to take out the last bit of slack that I may have in my body.' This rotation has the effect of engaging your lats, or latissimus dorsi muscles, which sit below your shoulder blades and cover most of your back. That back, by the way, should be flat during your lift, or at least flattish. 'Don't get too hung up on the perfect-looking deadlift,' says Taylor. 'I used to spend hours poring over my videos trying to have a perfectly flat back. Now I'm a round-back puller. Deadlifts look different for everyone, depending on proportions.' That doesn't mean all the rules can go out the window, though. 'Take your time over your set-up,' Taylor says, 'and wherever you feel your hips should be, raise them a couple of inches. A lot of people seem to want to start too low.' And now you're finally ready for the lift. 'The only difference between when we're set up and when we're actually lifting the weight,' says Joseph, 'is the little push that we give to the ground to shift it.' The little push? Aren't we actually pulling the weight up? It might seem that way, but the conventional deadlift is a push and pull movement. It's a push from your quads that straightens your knees and gets the bar moving past them; then comes the pull, as you thrust your hips forward and your hamstrings, glutes, back and arms come into play. That hip thrust is a vital part of the deadlift, and the one that most clearly distinguishes it from the squat. But you can only thrust your hips forward on the way up if you have first thrust them back on the way down. One cue that PTs sometimes give, Kummerle says, is: 'Pretend your booty hole is a flashlight and shine it backward.' You'll also hear: 'Pretend you're pushing a car door shut with your bum.' There's no getting away from bums with the deadlift. From set-up to finish, Joseph sums it up like this: 'Bum back, bend knees, arms long, chest up, shoulders back. Then push into the ground. Push, push, push, push, drive hips forward – and that's the pull.' 'Every time you deadlift,' she adds, 'you give it your all. I don't care if it's your warm-up sets, or it's your heaviest: we lift with intent.' That's even the case when you're deadlifting a person, as she demonstrates when she picks me up for the sake of these photographs. As her human barbell, I can only say I'm glad she takes it seriously. 'Sometimes I have to have a mental battle to be in the right frame of mind to attack the bar,' says Taylor, though let's not forget that sometimes she's lifting almost three times her bodyweight. 'If you're not 100% committed to making it move, it won't. In case of emergency, banging music can help.' Once the barbell is up, you can either reverse the movement to lower it, or just drop it. If you're in a gym, you will almost certainly be using weights that are designed to be dropped. When the time comes for me to show how much I've taken in, the answer is: not as much as I should have. 'Get a bit closer to the bar,' Joseph tells me. And: 'Hip hinge … bum back, bum back!' And: 'Bend your knees, bend your knees, bend some more, bend, bend, bend!' And even: 'Tuck your chin!' At least, I think it's 'tuck' she says. It's like whack-a-mole – no sooner have I ironed out one fault than another pops up. The one that survives longest is shrugging my shoulders at the top of the lift – but even that succumbs when Joseph gets me to engage my lats properly. Apparently I need to imagine someone's trying to tickle me. Eventually I'm looking solid enough to play around with sumo deadlifts, where your legs go much wider and your arms go between your knees, rather than either side of them. It's enjoyable enough, but I feel I'm getting distracted from the conventionals just as I'm beginning to get the hang of them. So back we go to my 'power stance' and Joseph increases the weight to 80kg. This feels significant, as it's what I weigh, give or take a kilo. And as I struggle to lift the barbell, I get a glimpse of why this exercise means so much to so many people. As Taylor puts it: 'Heavy lifts feel like they take two minutes – and then you watch them back on video and it's about half a second.' However long the lift really lasts, this weird slowing-down gives you time to feel the strain, think about giving up as you push, push, push and pull, pull, pull, and decide to persevere. You have to commit and stay committed, so that when the lift works out it means something. I recently asked a few people why deadlifts matter so much to them. 'They make me feel like I own the world,' one woman told me. 'They're the first time I've ever felt strong,' said another. I think I know what they mean.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
I replaced my fitness instructor with AI. I'm now stronger, more motivated, and saving hundreds of dollars.
I was spending all this money on workout classes and clothes, but wasn't getting any fitter. I already use AI in other areas of my life and decided to try it for my personal fitness. The results have been incredible: I'm stronger, leaner, more motivated, and am saving money too. I used to feel like I needed to spend money to stay in shape — not just on the gym but also on classes, personal training, and enough Lululemon to dress a small Olympic team. I was immersed in a landscape of gymfluencers and self-improvement culture, and that combined with my own poor impulse control, plunged me into a costly cycle where I felt like my ability to stay healthy was increasingly associated with spending. However, I wasn't getting any fitter despite spending over $100 each month on a gym membership, personal training, and workout gear. What finally worked wasn't some militant app that blasted my phone with reminders or a new Apple Watch. It was self-discipline and an AI sidekick. It's been over two months since I replaced my personal trainer with AI, and I've become stronger, leaner, and saved hundreds of dollars, as a result. To be clear, trading people for algorithms wasn't my intention when I started out. After all, it was a person who got me hooked on fitness in the first place. However, I have to admit that using AI to refocus has given me back ownership of my time, money, and motivation. In my early 20s, I traveled frequently between cities, which made it hard for me to establish any consistent habits, including fitness. This lack of structure and haphazard routine came to a head when I moved to Cambridge for a master's program. Juggling full-time work with studies took its toll, and I found that the only real solution to a clean bill of mental health was exercise. I lucked out that one of the instructors running classes at my local gym was brilliant and had a knack for pushing me just beyond my natural limits. I trained with him for about a year, but when he moved on, my motivation tanked. I stayed on at the gym, but wasn't getting what I needed from other instructors and the membership bills kept coming. Testing alternative spaces with Classpass and various free trials at other gyms was fine for a while, but without consistent guidance and encouragement, I started showing up less, making excuses, and procrastinating. All the habit stacking and calendar updates in the world can't help if you just don't want to be somewhere. Bribing myself with new gym wear and post-workout treats helped me show up, but that wasn't sustainable either. The pounds were rolling away, but they were the wrong kind: sterling. I decided to make a change. I already used ChatGPT and Perplexity in other areas of my life — mostly for recipes, travel planning, and other kinds of research and troubleshooting. So, tailoring a personal exercise routine wasn't difficult to start. I used ChatGPT as a master app, entering my goals and progress each week and requesting new or updated workout routines. I also used it to explore issues around willpower and discipline. Where once I might have taken a few days to read and sift out strategies and motivation from books, now I could find solutions in real time and dig into the reasons I might be holding myself back. I even used ChatGPT to find recommendations for other free AI-powered apps. The best of these was Cronometer, a nutrition and calorie-counting app, which I began using daily. I use the free version and it helps me track water intake, macros (carbs, proteins, and fats), fiber, iron, and vitamin levels. I got curious about the results I was seeing with Cronometer and turned to ChatGPT again to learn more about nutrition. I asked it questions like: Why does protein matter so much for muscle growth and recovery? How much do I need? What's the best way to get it? Soon it was providing me with simple meal plans to boost my protein intake and better complement my workouts. I also use a free app that ChatGPT recommended, Hevy, which tracks sets of reps in real time. I also use the free version of Gymmade, which offers a catalog of resistance training exercises with step-by-step instruction and animated illustrations; it's been the perfect tool for confidently handling any free weights. I'm now seeing real results across strength, stamina, body composition, and mood. My muscle definition improved, and I doubled the weight I was lifting in a matter of weeks. Plus, the urge for expensive personal training has vanished. I dropped my gym membership and now I hit my local free outdoor gym instead. I wouldn't have made it to this point without the encouragement of that first brilliant instructor. However, what made the most difference was learning to hold myself accountable and build my own motivation and momentum without anyone's help. I didn't set out to build a DIY fitness routine, but I've stuck to it longer than anything else I've tried on my own. Read the original article on Business Insider
