A closer glance at cardiovascular exercises

Nowadays gyms are flooded with posters of Animalpak or with posters of some famous body builder. So when someone walks into the gym, he creates a mental picture that gymming is developing muscles and we have to train hard and focus on weight training to be a man like the person in the poster. In this process when the person gets so obsessed with muscular hypertrophy, that he forgets various other important aspects related to fitness, like cardiovascular conditioning. Moreover, some guys who work out in gyms also have misconception that cardio exercise will lead to decrease in muscle mass. Furthermore, when a guy who is thin, joins gym for gaining weight thinks that cardio will make him thinner and the list of myths related to cardio exercises can go on.

Cardio workout is necessary because it helps to build our lung capacity. In another words it means that we increase our breathing capacity and hence our stamina. Enhanced lung capacity helps us to work out longer and harder with weights. Besides training our lungs, cardio exercise also trains our heart. Our heart is also a muscle, so like training other body parts, we have to train our heart for giving our hundred per cent. There are various other advantages like increase in metabolism, reduction in the the risk of osteoporosis, it makes us feel good about ourselves, keeps us active and so on but with gymming perspective the two most important benefits are that cardio exercise makes our heart and lungs strong.

It is sensible to do cardio on days we are not weight training. If we try to do intense aerobics at the end of a taxing lifting session, our body gets too burned out to get results. Similarly, if we start our workout with strenuous cardio, we’ll become fatigued, and our weight lifting will suffer. However, light cardio exercise is advantageous at the start of our weightlifting sessions. A 5-10 min cardio workout will also serve as an extended warm-up session. A little cardio is good at the end of a tough workout. It helps us to limber down, and this reflects on our workout. It’s easier on our body to gradually reduce the intensity of our workout than to go full bore and then stop suddenly.

Everyone, no matter how thin, needs to do some aerobics in order to strengthen the cardiovascular system and build endurance. Those people who join gym for fun and just want big muscles in short period of time say 5 to 6 months, for them it is fine to not to follow a workout regime for overall development but for those who want do gymming for longer period, they should not be so short sighted. Everyone is different; success in bodybuilding depends on customizing both your weight training and your aerobics program for your physique. This right blend of cardio vascular exercises and weight training can be achieved by training under the supervision of good trainer. Surprisingly many people think that they are not pro body builders and they do not require well trained trainers but in my opinion good trainer is always required even if you are not participating in some body building competition or modelling competition. Without a guided approach we unnecessarily waste our time in the hope of getting results. 


Credits- Vinayak Kaushik , Yashvir singh and Kavinder Saini

Importance of wearing gym supporters during the workouts

Gym supporter or athletic supporter or jockstrap consists of an elastic waistband with a support pouch for the male genitals and two elastic straps attached to the base of the pouch and to the left and right sides of the waistband at the hip. The biggest benefit of jockstrap is the ability to add a protective cup in the pouch.

The purpose of jockstrap is to hold the male genitals in place and suppress excessive motion. A supportive pair of briefs can also serve the same amount of anti-bouncing purpose. A hard blow without a resistive cup can end up in building of excess fluid in scrotum.

In gym when we do exercises like overhead triceps extension , one hand triceps extensions , dumbbell press for shoulders , squats for thighs etc , excessive weight around the mid-section can put undue pressure and downward pull on muscles and organs, resulting in congenitally weak spots bearing a tremendous burden, and ultimately leads to hernia.

A hernia occurs when an organ or fatty tissue squeezes through a weak spot in a surrounding muscle or connective tissue called fascia. In other words hernias result from a weakness in the abdominal wall that develops over time from excessive pressure placed on the particular region. The most common types of hernia are inguinal (inner groin), incisional (resulting from an incision), femoral (outer groin), umbilical (belly button), and hiatal (upper stomach).

In an inguinal hernia, the intestine or the bladder protrudes through the abdominal wall or into the inguinal canal in the groin. About 80% of all hernias are inguinal, and most occur in men because of a natural weakness in this area.

Personally I recommend that everyone should wear supporters while training, if you don't wear it, it can cause some serious injuries .In my view if you get injured you can bear the pain of injury but when you have to take off your pants in front of doctor that is more embarrassing.

Credits- Vinayak Kaushik , Yashvir singh and Kavinder Saini

What is wellness and how it is different from physical fitness?

Many times we say that we are not well and we also hear people repeating the same. Sometimes people say this because they are ill but actually what is this wellness, is this only limited to having fever or suffering from some disease? Does being short tempered is also a sign of not being well or getting injured or having some flu is the only criteria of being unwell? How is wellness different from physical fitness?

Wellness is the integration of all the components of health ; physical fitness , mental fitness , social fitness, emotional fitness , spiritual fitness and aesthetical fitness and ability to change behavior so as to improve the quality of life by changing habits to have proper nutrition , exercise , spirituality , smoking cessation , stress management , drug abuse control and disease prevention.

In other words wellness is the capability of an individual by which he leads a balanced life.

Now moving on to what is physical fitness? Physical fitness is ability to carry out daily task with vigor and alertness without undue fatigue and with ample energy to join leisure time pursuits and to meet unforeseen emergencies. If you come from office and are to stressed and take out your stress on your family by yelling and shouting you are not well, if you come home from college and mother says to you get something done and you do that without freaking out you are fit. So, physical fitness implies task to be performed and the individual’s capacity to perform it even when the work is unexpected.

Different people can have different points of view regarding physical fitness. For a sprinter running fast is fitness for him, but for marathon runner endurance is physical fitness, 100 kg may be too much weight for a human being but for a power lifter weighing 100 kg may be fitness for him and for a doctor, and the proper functioning of physiological systems is physical fitness. Even for the same sport parameters of physical fitness like weight and height for male and females can be different. For senior citizen walking without pains in joint is fitness for him but for a college student having energy to play multiple sports is fitness for him.  So, physical fitness varies according to the nature of work, individual’s size, shape of the body, age and sex.

So wellness is a broad term and physical fitness is an aspect of wellness.

Credits- Vinayak Kaushik , Yashvir singh and Kavinder Saini