The 10 Best CrossFit Workouts that you can do at Home

If you are a health and fitness enthusiast, you have probably heard of the word "crossfit" before. And if you were awesome the first time you read it, don't worry, that's each person's reaction to begin with. Really, it's quite an intimidating workout.

But it is also good for your health. These workouts (usually called WODs or Workout of the Day) are essential if you are looking to build strength, strengthen your muscles, or lose some weight.

However, going to the box (as the Crossfit gyms are called) is not strictly necessary for Crossfit training. Yes, it's hard to swallow, but you can break up as much sweat in your home as you would in the box, even without equipment, by following this list of Crossfit home workouts.

Check out this article for several different Crossfit workouts that you can do at home.

Number 1: MURPH

This is the most famous of all crossfit workouts. This is named after U.S. Marine Lieutenant Michael Murphy (he was killed in Afghanistan). All crossfitters do this exercise every Memorial Day weekend.

For the time (write down the time it took you to do this workout)

Run 1 mile

100 pull-ups (or if you don't have a pull-up bar, do the same number of chair pulls)

200 pushups

300 squats

Run 1 mile

Number 2: ANNIE

For the time

50, 40, 30, 20, 10 double substrates
50, 40, 30, 20, 10 situps

In this workout, you need to do 50 reps of both double sub and sit ups. Then continue with 40 repetitions of both exercises, then 30, 20, and finally finish with ten repetitions of both.

Number 3: ANGIE

For the time

100 pull-ups
100 pushups
100 sit ups
100 squats

Angie is a full body workout that challenges your whole body and muscle strength tests your endurance.

Number 4: DEALER CHOICE

For the time

4 minutes wall sits
300 squats
250 lunges
200 sit ups
100 squats

You can cancel this training as you wish. The only condition is that you finish everything on the list. If you are unable to squat with the gun (it's not easy), do the regular squat or whatever variation of squat you like.

Number 5: CROSSFIT OPEN WORKOUT 12.1

As many repetitions as possible

Burpees for 7 minutes

This is the best CrossFit workout when you're short on time but want to teach at least some exercise in your day. With this exercise, you can train your entire body in just 7 minutes.

Number 6: DEATH BY BURPEES

Until you are exhausted

1st minute: 1 burpee

2nd minute: 2 burpees
3rd minute: 3 burpees
And so on

This exercise is a killer (I'm serious!) You can't exceed 20 minutes. Initially, this exercise feels simple and offers at least 10 seconds of rest every minute. However, by the time you hit the 10 minute mark, you will be out of breath and time. Achieving 13 or 14 minutes is a difficult task in itself.

Number 7: CINDY

Do as many rounds as possible (AMRAP) in 20 minutes:

5 pull-ups (if you don't have access to a pull-up bar, you can do five pull-ups instead)
Ten pushups
15 squats

This workout is very effective in working your upper and lower body at the same time.

Number 8: JT

For the time

21, 15, 9 handstand pushups
21, 15, 9 triceps dips
21, 15, 9 pushups

Do the 21 repetitions of all exercises, followed by the 15 repetitions and nine repetitions. This exercise targets your hand muscles.

Number 9: ACTIVE REST DAY

Do AMRAP in 18 minutes.

Five inch worms
Ten breast openers
30-second couch stretch each side

This workout is for the day when you are short of energy or when you want your body to rest. This exercise stretches your body and allows you to store energy.

Number 10: 3- PART PRESS BLAST

Run AMRAP in 10 minutes.

200 meter run
Ten pushups

Let rest for 2 minutes

Perform AMRAP in 8 minutes.

200 meter run

15 squats
Let rest for 2 minutes

Do AMRAP in 6 minutes.

200 meter run
Ten military presses

This workout is designed so that you can work your cardio while focusing on your abs and legs. Additionally, this workout will do you three cardio times, which in itself is enough to drain your energy and exercise your legs.

Active, Passive, and Earned Exercise Recovery Strategies

This article is the fourth and final installment in the exercise recovery series.

I'm finally going to cover the sexy stuff. These are not state of the art recovery modalities that will improve your training, recovery, and results, but they are the recovery methods that all work.

They're not performing as well as you'd expect from the marketing machine, but you're looking for small wins – not game changers – at this stage of the recovery puzzle.

The recovery strategies discussed in this article all have strong evidence to back them up.

I haven't covered some other recovery methods as there isn't enough evidence to be confident in recommending them.

There are two categories of recovery strategies. I will treat both:

  1. Passive recovery methods focus on silence and inactivity.
  2. Active recovery methods require activity, but in a way that promotes recovery rather than intensity.

Passive recovery

  • Hydration could fall under the umbrella of nutrition. It is undoubtedly an essential factor to consider in your overall exercise performance and recovery. Drinking adequate amounts of water is critical to your health, energy levels, gym performance, and healing.
  • Many of us are very conscious of our hydration during training and competition, but are less focused on hydration the rest of the time. If you spend the rest of the time raising awareness of your hydration status, it can greatly improve your recovery. We have roughly 60% water, so it should come as no surprise that staying hydrated is important.
  • Water supports all of our body functions. Optimal hydration levels enable, among other things, cell growth and reproduction, effective digestion, efficient nutrient uptake, oxygen supply, temperature regulation, hormone and neurotransmitter production, less stress on the heart and joint lubrication. All of these factors affect training and recovery.
  • The easiest way to check your hydration status is to look at your piss. If it's clear to a pale straw color, you are well hydrated. The darker your piss, the less hydrated you are.

A good goal for water intake is 0.04 liters per kilogram of body weight. For a person weighing 100 kg, that's 4 liters per day.

100 kg x 0.04 liters = 4 liters

Your exact needs will depend on other factors such as activity level, sweat rate and ambient temperature. Start with the recommendation of 0.04 liters per kg and adjust as needed. The following guidelines can help you stay well hydrated:

  • Drinking water is the best way to keep hydrated.
  • Tea and coffee have a net moisturizing effect, but are not as effective as drinking water.
  • You don't need sports drinks for average strength and bodybuilding training. Only drink them before, during and after strenuous exercise or competitions for a duration of> 90 minutes.

Proper diet planning will ensure adequate nutrients to benefit your workout.

  • take a nap is a bit of a deceit because I covered the importance of sleep in recovery from your last article. That focus was on improving the quantity and quality of your sleep overnight. Supplementing your nighttime sleep with naps can also be beneficial and improve recovery.
  • It's important to note that while napping can help you sleep well and better rest, it shouldn't replace healthy sleep patterns. Make a good night's sleep your number one priority. Then use the nap to optimize recovery. If you are taking a nap, it is best not to do it too close to your normal bedtime. Napping late in the day can disrupt your sleep during the night and turn into a false economy. In general, late morning or early afternoon naps work well for improving recovery without interfering with your normal sleep routine.
  • Keep naps short. Napping for 20 to 30 minutes can help improve recovery and mental awareness. Napping too long can lead to insomnia. The risk increases if you nap longer than 30 minutes or late in the day.
  • The coffee nap hack: If you feel drowsy after taking a nap, it may be a wrong economy. Napping for 20 minutes will help with recovery. However, if you feel like a zombie for the next hour, your productivity will increase and you will be right to question whether napping was a worthwhile strategy. I've struggled with this in the past.
  • One tip that worked well for me was to have a coffee right before my nap. The caffeine from the coffee hit my bloodstream, causing a short-term spike in cortisol that helped me feel awake and refreshed after napping.

Massage: While there is some evidence to support the physiological benefits of massage, the actual benefits appear to be more psychological in nature.

There is strong evidence of the psychological and relaxing benefits of massage. These factors all play important roles in your recovery and adjustment.

A deep tissue sports massage may not be the best approach as it is far from relaxing. A gentler approach may be more beneficial to recovery as you can completely relax and enjoy the experience.

Active recovery

Light days: Lighter days of exercise can potentially improve recovery time more than a full day of rest. Systematic decreases define an easier day in terms of training volume and intensity. Light days fall under good programming.

  • For strength or power goals: I find lighter days to be incredibly beneficial. You can program these every week (or several times a week) to allow for a higher frequency on tech-driven lifts like weightlifting and gymnastics. Still, allow rest and adjustment. This emphasis allows you to grease the groove of an elevator and refine the technique without creating a lot of fatigue.
  • For bodybuilding goals: I think you can use the easier days a little differently. In this case, I tend to use light days as days when smaller muscle groups cause less systemic fatigue and require less mental arousal to exercise or have a workout. I've found this to work well for handling all of the training stress over a week and means a lifter can get a productive workout while allowing a good recovery.
  • Active recovery days: Active rest days are very risky. You can certainly improve recovery, but most exercise rats struggle to resist the temptation to turn their active recovery day into a full-blown workout.
  • If the temptation is too great, just slow down recovery from your usual workouts. This slowdown defeats the Active Recovery Days object. It would help if you were honest with yourself about this. If you know that you lack the discipline to stick to your recovery day plan, stay away from the gym. Do nothing. Just take a day off.
  • However, if you can stick to your recovery day plan, you may be able to improve your overall recovery. The difference isn't dramatic, but every little bit adds up.

A day of rest increases blood circulation and relieves psychological stress.

These two things can speed up the recovery and customization process. Low-intensity activities are suitable for days of rest.

One of my favorite strategies is to take a brisk 20-minute walk outside. Walking increases blood circulation and supports regeneration, especially in the legs, but is still of low intensity. It does not affect recovery from previous training or performance in subsequent sessions.

Another correct choice is a mobility routine.

A full body mobility flow can be a productive strategy for recreational days.

The key is to remember that recovery days should include more general fitness moves in a less structured, lower-intensity training environment than regular exercise.

Avoid vigorous exercise, excessive duration or novel activity, and anything that is strenuous. Recovery day sessions should be easier and shorter than typical workouts. They should encourage recovery and not feel like a workout.

The clue is in the name – recovery!

Eke Out Exercise Recovery

This article is by far the shortest in this exercise recovery series. The reason for this is because these recovery strategies are less effective than the other factors I covered.

If you find that you are investing more time, money, and energy into the recovery methods in this article than you did in the first three installments, you are missing out on a better recovery.

However, if you've ticked off all of the other items in our exercise recovery series, you can get additional recovery capacity by implementing the strategies discussed here.

  1. Train hard, recover harder
  2. The Importance of Structured Training Programs in Recovery
  3. The Two Most Powerful Exercise Recovery Tools in Nature
  4. Active, passive, and deserved exercise recovery strategies

Active, Passive, and Earned Exercise Recovery Strategies

This article is the fourth and final installment in the exercise recovery series.

I'm finally going to cover the sexy stuff. These are not state of the art recovery modalities that will improve your training, recovery, and results, but they are the recovery methods that all work. They're not performing as well as you'd expect from the marketing machine, but you're looking for small wins – not game changers – at this stage of the recovery puzzle.

The recovery strategies discussed in this article all have strong evidence to back them up.

I haven't covered some other recovery methods as there isn't enough evidence to be confident in recommending them.

There are two categories of recovery strategies. I will treat both:

  1. Passive recovery methods focus on silence and inactivity.
  2. Active recovery methods require activity, but in a way that promotes recovery rather than intensity.

Passive recovery

  • Hydration could fall under the umbrella of nutrition. It is undoubtedly an essential factor to consider in your overall exercise performance and recovery. Drinking adequate amounts of water is critical to your health, energy levels, gym performance, and healing.
  • Many of us are very conscious of our hydration during training and competition, but are less focused on hydration the rest of the time. If you spend the rest of the time raising awareness of your hydration status, it can greatly improve your recovery. We have roughly 60% water, so it should come as no surprise that staying hydrated is important.
  • Water supports all of our body functions. Optimal hydration levels enable, among other things, cell growth and reproduction, effective digestion, efficient nutrient uptake, oxygen supply, temperature regulation, hormone and neurotransmitter production, less stress on the heart and joint lubrication. All of these factors affect training and recovery.
  • The easiest way to check your hydration status is to look at your piss. If it's clear to a pale straw color, you are well hydrated. The darker your piss, the less hydrated you are.

A good goal for water intake is 0.04 liters per kilogram of body weight. For a person weighing 100 kg, that's 4 liters per day.

100 kg x 0.04 liters = 4 liters

Your exact needs will depend on other factors such as activity level, sweat rate and ambient temperature. Start with the recommendation of 0.04 liters per kg and adjust as needed. The following guidelines can help you stay well hydrated:

  • Drinking water is the best way to keep hydrated.

  • Tea and coffee have a net moisturizing effect, but are not as effective as drinking water.

  • You don't need sports drinks for average strength and bodybuilding training. Önly dIce rink them before, during and after strenuous exercise or competition for a Duration> 90 minutes.

Proper diet planning will ensure adequate nutrients to benefit your workout.

  • take a nap is a bit of a deceit because I covered the importance of sleep in recovery from your last article. That focus was on improving the quantity and quality of your sleep overnight. Supplementing your nighttime sleep with naps can also be beneficial and improve recovery.
  • It's important to note that while napping can help you sleep well and better rest, it shouldn't replace healthy sleep patterns. Make a good night's sleep your number one priority. Then use the nap to optimize recovery. If you are taking a nap, it is best not to do it too close to your normal bedtime. Napping late in the day can disrupt your sleep during the night and turn into a false economy. In general, late morning or early afternoon naps work well for improving recovery without interfering with your normal sleep routine.
  • Keep naps short. Napping for 20 to 30 minutes can help improve recovery and mental awareness. Napping too long can lead to insomnia. The risk increases if you nap longer than 30 minutes or late in the day.
  • The coffee nap hack: If you feel drowsy after taking a nap, it may be a wrong economy. Napping for 20 minutes will help with recovery. However, if you feel like a zombie for the next hour, your productivity will increase and you will be right to question whether napping was a worthwhile strategy. I've struggled with this in the past.
  • One tip that worked well for me was to have a coffee right before my nap. The caffeine from the coffee hit my bloodstream, causing a short-term spike in cortisol that helped me feel awake and refreshed after napping.

Massage: While there is some evidence to support the physiological benefits of massage, the actual benefits appear to be more psychological in nature.

There is strong evidence of the psychological and relaxing benefits of massage. These factors all play important roles in your recovery and adjustment.

A deep tissue sports massage may not be the best approach as it is far from relaxing. A gentler approach may be more beneficial to recovery as you can completely relax and enjoy the experience.

Active recovery

Light days: Lighter days of exercise can potentially improve recovery time more than a full day of rest. Systematic decreases define an easier day in terms of training volume and intensity. Light days fall under good programming.

  • For strength or power goals: I find lighter days to be incredibly beneficial. You can program these every week (or several times a week) to allow for a higher frequency on tech-driven lifts like weightlifting and gymnastics. Still, allow rest and adjustment. This emphasis allows you to grease the groove of an elevator and refine the technique without creating a lot of fatigue.
  • For bodybuilding goals: I think you can use the easier days a little differently. In this case, I tend to use light days as days when smaller muscle groups cause less systemic fatigue and require less mental arousal to exercise or have a workout. I've found this to work well for handling all of the training stress over a week and means a lifter can get a productive workout while allowing a good recovery.
  • Active recovery days: Active rest days are very risky. You can certainly improve recovery, but most exercise rats struggle to resist the temptation to turn their active recovery day into a full-blown workout.
  • If the temptation is too great, just slow down recovery from your usual workouts. This slowdown defeats the Active Recovery Days object. It would help if you were honest with yourself about this. If you know that you lack the discipline to stick to your recovery day plan, stay away from the gym. Do nothing. Just take a day off.
  • However, if you can stick to your recovery day plan, you may be able to improve your overall recovery. The difference isn't dramatic, but every little bit adds up.

A day of rest increases blood circulation and relieves psychological stress.

These two things can speed up the recovery and customization process. Low-intensity activities are suitable for days of rest.

One of my favorite strategies is to take a brisk 20-minute walk outside. Walking increases blood circulation and supports regeneration, especially in the legs, but is still of low intensity. It does not affect recovery from previous training or performance in subsequent sessions.

Another correct choice is a mobility routine.

A full body mobility flow can be a productive strategy for recreational days.

The key is to remember that recovery days should include more general fitness moves in a less structured, lower-intensity training environment than regular exercise.

Avoid vigorous exercise, excessive duration or novel activity, and anything that is strenuous. Recovery day sessions should be easier and shorter than typical workouts. They should encourage recovery and not feel like a workout.

The clue is in the name – recovery!

Eke Out Exercise Recovery

This article is by far the shortest in the series. The reason for this is because these recovery strategies are less effective than the other factors I covered.

If you find that you are investing more time, money, and energy into the recovery methods in this article than you did in the first three installments, you are missing out on a better recovery.

However, if you've ticked off all of the other items from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of our exercise recovery series, you can take advantage of additional recovery capacity by implementing the strategies discussed here.

AIR SQUATS: BENEFITS, PROCEDURE, AND MORE

Air squats, as the name suggests, are similar to squats. There is a slight difference between the common squat and the air squat, however. You can use different types of equipment to increase weight during squats. However, the squats are entirely based on your body weight. Hence, they are also known as body weight squats.

These squats are done by everyone, but are more commonly used as informal exercise programs, e.g. B. CrossFit and other exercise routines. Because they are used in formal education, they are beneficial to your health.

Benefits of squats:

There are a number of benefits to doing squats. Some of them are listed below:

● Beginner version of squats:

It is best if you treat squats as a beginner version of weighted squats. Since all you have to do is lift your body weight, it's a lot easier than carrying some weights. So, you can use the squats as a start and then gradually switch to the weighted squats.

● Increases the balance in your body:

The air squat can help you balance your body better because it requires balance when sitting and standing.

● Builds stronger muscles:

The squats tend to touch the thighs, quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. So, they help build stronger muscles.

● Engages your core:

In addition to targeting your lower body, the air squats engage your core and help you get abs.

How to do squats?

Knowing how to do a particular exercise is very important because you don't know that it can cause injury. So, as an extension of this theory, you should also know how to do squats. The following is how to do the squat correctly without injuring yourself:

  1. Stand straight with your feet shoulder width apart.
  2. You can either keep your hands by the side or stretch them out in front or sides, or you can fold them in front of you. The choice is yours as the hands are not part of this exercise. Just make sure they don't restrict movement in any way.
  3. Squat down until your thighs are parallel to the floor or until you feel like sitting in a chair.
  4. You should feel a slight stretch in your quadriceps muscle.
  5. Stay there for 30 seconds, then return to your starting position.
  6. Do these squats as often as possible. Try to do at least ten reps, then keep increasing the reps and sets.

Important tips:

Here are some key tips to keep in mind while doing this exercise:

  1. Your knees shouldn't go over your toes.
  2. Instead of dropping your shoulders forward, keep your shoulders straight and away from your ears.
  3. Your upper body shouldn't move as this exercise only applies to the lower body. So keep your upper body straight and even.
  4. It is imperative that your back be straight. This is important because many people do not focus on their back, which results in a rounding of the back. This can cause back pain.
  5. Look right in front of you. This is how you can keep your neck straight.
  6. Your lumbar curve should be maintained throughout the squat.
  7. In the squat, the hips go a little below the knees.
  8. Always keep your heels on the ground. This will help you maintain stability and balance well.

Nature’s Two Most Powerful Exercise Recovery Tools

In the first part this series, Train hard, recover harder, I explained that stress is a double-edged sword. In order to make adjustments, you have to impose stress, but too much stress affects your recovery.

Stress can be both good and bad, but your body doesn't distinguish between types of stress, and your body can only handle that much stress. Stress is good during exercise; Your ability to benefit from it depends somewhat on your overall stress level.

So you have to manage all of your life stress in order to free up as much capacity as possible for dealing with training stress. Stress management strategies can create a larger window of time for exercise stress to apply and recover.

In part two, The Importance of Structured Exercise Programs in Recovery, I discussed optimizing your exercise program as another powerful tool in maximizing recovery. By focusing on delivering efficient exercise stress, you make your recovery easier.

Intelligent program design = fatigue management

The four key factors to consider are:

  1. Volume landmarks

  2. SRA curves

  3. Stimulus: fatigue ratio

  4. Relative intensity

At this point, I am assuming that your workout is optimized and provides a reasonable incentive.

From this point on, the remaining adjustments, such as B. Increases in size and strength, from recovery, result in this simplified muscle building equation:

Stimulus + recovery = adjustment

In this third part of the series, I'm going to cover your two most powerful recovery tools and how to maximize them.

The two most powerful recovery tools available to you are:::

  1. sleep

  2. nutrition

If you focus on these consistently, you will be rewarded. With your choice of sleep, diet, and stress management, you are ready to make great strides in the gym.

The positive influence of sleep on performance

Sleep is your most important recovery tool. I have spoken repeatedly about the positive effects of sleep on athletic performance and your ability to recover from hard exercise. The harder you can train without exceeding your recovery capacity, the faster you can progress.

Sleep is the most anabolic state for your body. Lack of sleep limits your strength and muscle mass gains. It also increases your chances of losing muscle mass if you cut and absorb fat as you accumulate.

To maximize recovery and build more muscle, you need to prioritize sleep.

Better sleep will help you with this too::

In short, it makes you a fitter, happier, and more productive person.

Let's be honest; you probably already know that. Bet you don't give sleep the credit it deserves when it comes to your lifestyle choices. Most of us realize that we should sleep more. We know sleep is important. However, we do not prioritize it.

I'm pretty sure you are making this mistake because I do too. I've been guilty many times in the past. It's all too easy to stay up late to catch the next episode of a TV show or to scroll aimlessly through Instagram. Whenever I do that, I always regret it the next day.

Lack of sleep can creep up on you. You may not realize that you have been deprived of sleep. The occasional late night has little effect. The problem is when those late nights get normal.

Stay on the laptop for a long time to meet work schedules or relax before a good show. Both eat into your sleep and have a huge impact on the quality of your recovery. Over time, you will likely feel like a zombie with no caffeine in the morning, your fitness performance will begin to increase, and you will make poorer dietary choices. It all happens little by little.

They sneak up on you. I've seen this over and over with customers trying to burn the candle on both ends. They pretend they can get away with it because the drop in performance is gradual. Be warned, lack of sleep adds up and if not resolved, it can slow your progress.

My sleep deprivation experience was less gradual and more like a blunt force trauma. I had always slept well and made it a priority. Then I had children. After our son was born, it took me 18 months to feel normal again in the gym. I vividly remember the session after my first full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I felt like superman.

The sad thing is, I wasn't a Superman.

I wasn't even around. After a good night's sleep, I was just a normal Tom. My perception of what was normal had been so distorted by 18 months of sleep deprivation that I now felt amazing. You could have slept in the same situation without realizing it. Make sleep a priority for a month and I'm confident you will look better, feel better, and perform better.

The research on sleep deprivation is alarming. Studies show that for 11 days in a row with less than six hours of sleep, your cognitive abilities are roughly as high as if you had stayed awake for 24 hours.

After 22 days of sleeping less than six hours a night, your brain is functioning at the same level as someone who has stayed awake for 48 hours straight. To put things in perspective, it means your reactions are likely to be worse than someone who is over the legal limit for alcohol.

Are you more zombie than human?

Take a sleep survey on yourself and assess if you are more of a zombie than a human.

As a guide, this is what you should aim for when it comes to sleeping::

  • Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep every night.

  • Go to bed at the same time every night.

  • Wake up at the same time each morning.

  • Wake up without an alarm clock.

  • Sleep all night long – multiple bathroom trips are a sure sign of poor quality sleep (or way too much drinking just before bed).

  • Waking up in much the same position that you fell asleep (not throwing and spinning all night) is a good sign.

  • You should wake up refreshed.

How can your sleep hold up against this list? I suspect you are not ticking all of these points. In my experience, most people can't even check off a few of them. Your goal is to work towards ensuring that you can check off each of these bullet points.

Here are some practical tips to help you sleep better and longer.

  • Prepare for success: Get a comfortable bed, mattress and pillow. Bed quality can affect sleep. It can also reduce back and shoulder pain. Given that you spend almost a third of your life in bed, it makes sense to invest in a good one.
  • Establish a routine: Go to bed at about the same time and get up at the same time each day. Weekends count too. It was found that matching sleep and wake times improves long-term sleep quality.
  • Include relaxation: It has been found that relaxation techniques before bed improve the quality of sleep. Read a book, listen to a chill out playlist, take a hot bath or take a deep breath and meditate. Do whatever you can to relax and unwind.
  • Cut the coffee at 4pm: Drinking coffee is cool. I love this stuff, but having it later in the day can disrupt or even prevent your sleep. On average, the half-life of caffeine is around five hours. However, this half-life can vary massively between individuals. If you are a slow metabolizer of caffeine, you may have levels in your system that will keep you awake and will keep you awake until the wee hours if you drink it after 4pm. In extreme cases, having it within 10 hours of going to bed can be disturbing for some people. So cut yourself off at 4pm and see if it's easier for you to fall asleep. If you're still having issues, push things forward to 3pm and reevaluate.
  • Disconnect the matrix: The blue light emitted by the screens of your devices can disturb your sleep. The body's internal clock or daily rhythm is mainly influenced by the hours of daylight. Artificial lights like street lights and lightbulbs are already bothering it, but looking at screens magnifies the problem. Your internal body clock is supplied by the eye nerve, which is directly influenced by blue light. Your phone, TV, laptop, and tablet emit the same light. To improve sleep, I suggest that you disconnect from such screens for at least 60 minutes before going to bed.
  • Receive natural sunlight during the day: In these times the body needs light. Studies have found that two hours of bright light during the day increases the amount of sleep by two hours and improves the quality of sleep by 80%.
  • Sleep in the batcave: Make your bedroom pitch black, calm and cool to maximize the quality of your sleep. Remove all electrical devices.
  • Room temperature: Set the thermostats to around 20 ° C. It was found that room temperature affects the quality of sleep more than external noise.
  • Stay away from alcohol: Just a few drinks have been shown to reduce your sleep hormones. Alcohol alters melatonin production and lowers HGH (Human Growth Hormone) levels. Melatonin is an important sleep hormone that tells your brain when it's time to relax and fall asleep. HGH helps regulate your body clock, counteracts aging, and is vital to recovery.

There you have it, your comprehensive guide to better sleep. You have no excuse now. You know sleep is crucial. You can also rate your sleep based on the standards listed above. If you come up short, you have nine tips to improve your sleep.

As you improve your sleep, everything else improves too. Try to improve your sleep before you worry about investing in other recovery modalities.

Neither of them can hold a candle to sleep, and sleep is free.

Your caloric intake and energy balance

Your second most powerful recovery tool is your diet.

By properly fueling your body, you can take advantage of the stimulus generated by your exercise. Training creates the incentive to build muscle, lose fat and increase strength. Your recovery will determine whether or not you will achieve that potential.

When it comes to nutrition, there are several variables that you can manipulate. The most important variable when it comes to nutrition for recovery is your caloric intake and energy balance.

What is a calorie and what is energy balance??

A calorie (Kcal) is a unit of energy. Our food contains calories and fuels us with energy to lead our daily lives. Everyone needs different amounts of energy per day depending on their age, size and level of activity.

Calorie budget refers to the number of calories you consume compared to the number of calories you burn.

If you eat excess calories, you will gain weight. If you eat a calorie deficit, you will lose weight. While eating high calorie food in the process of maintenance, it means that you are maintaining the weight. When it comes to physical change, calories are king.

When consuming a calorie surplus, maximizing regeneration is easier to manage than when consuming a deficit. You have an abundance of calories available to meet your macro and micronutrient needs. When it comes to diet and you have an excess, keep things simple. Hit your macros, distribute your protein intake fairly evenly between 3-6 meals a day, and eat a variety of fruits and vegetables.

When you are calorie deficit, the details of your diet are more important in maximizing recovery as less energy is coming in. The basic principles still apply, but you need to take better account of your low calorie eating habits to ensure that you meet both your macro and micronutrient needs.

Meal timing, food quality, and micronutrition are more important when you are in a deficit, but none of them outperform achieving a reasonable calorie deficit.

Energy balance and macronutrients are the two most important factors in your diet in terms of body development and strength gains.

How to set calories for individual results

If you have an excess, I suggest that you eat enough to gain between 0.25 and 0.5% of your body weight per week.

A quick strategy to estimate your daily needs is to multiply your weight in pounds by 15.

This formula generally gives a good approximation of the calories needed to maintain your weight. An excess of 500 calories per day equates to roughly a pound of weight gain per week. If you weigh 200 pounds, this is right at the upper end of your weight gain target. An excess of 250 calories a day will result in you gaining roughly half a pound a week. An excess of between 250 and 500 calories would be adequate for a 200 pound lifter.

If you are in deficit, I recommend losing between 0.5 and 1% of your body weight per week.

If you maintain a faster rate than this for an extended period (say, more than four weeks), you run the risk of adversely affecting your fitness performance and muscle loss.

Similar to the excess example, you can estimate maintenance calories by multiplying your weight in pounds by 15 calories.

From this point on, you need to subtract calories in order to achieve a deficit. A 500 calorie deficit will give you one pound loss per week. For our 200 pound example, an ideal rate of fat loss is between 1 and 2 pounds per week. Consequently, a deficit of 500-1,000 kcal per day is the area to look out for in order to achieve this.

Macronutrients

There are three types of macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. All of these provide energy and therefore contain calories. Here's how to establish and establish your macronutrient needs and goals.

The calorie content per gram of each macronutrient is listed below::

  • Protein: Four calories per gram

  • Fat: Nine calories per gram

  • carbohydrate: Four calories per gram

This information is useful in the practical step of creating your diet with the appropriate proportions for each macronutrient.

Protein is essential for survival

Protein comes from the Greek word proteios, which means "of primary importance".

  • Protein is involved in almost every process in your body.
  • Proteins are vital and healthy.
  • They play an important role in athletic performance and body composition.
  • Muscle mass consists mostly of protein.
  • Protein helps you recover from your workouts.
  • It preserves lean tissue on diets.
  • It will help you build more muscle as you build.
  • It has the greatest effect on satiety, or feeling comfortable, of any macronutrient.

To build muscle, consume protein in the range of 1.6 to 2.2 g / kg lean body mass to stimulate the MPS for the day.

Recent research supports the high end of this range.

I generally recommend eating 2 g of protein per kg of body weight. This formula is easy to remember, easy to calculate, and conveniently covers your needs. From a practical point of view, I've also found that it is a crowd that satisfies most people's appetites and eating habits.

Take away key– Eat 2 g of protein per kg (0.9 g per lbs) of body weight per day.

Never eliminate fat from your diet

The consumption of dietary fat is important for regular hormonal function, especially testosterone production.

You should never remove fat from a diet.

There is not so much an optimal amount of fat to consume, but a minimum

0.2-0.5 g / kg / day for normal hormonal function. There have been compelling arguments in favor of consuming between 20 and 30% of calories in fat to optimize testosterone levels.

However, when 0.6 g / kg / bw is reached, no significant benefit for the hormones can be seen.

How Much Fat Should I Consume?

I prefer a minimum of 0.6 g / kg / kg per day.

  • If there is an excess, this is enough to optimize hormonal function and generally equates to around 20% of the calories.
  • Since hormone function has little benefit after a calorie surplus after 0.6 g / kg / bw, there is no physiological need to increase this number as you go through your mass phase.
  • Even if the total calories are adjusted upwards to keep gaining weight, there is no physiological need to exceed the fat content of 0.6 g / kg / bw. In my experience, however, many people find it easier to stick to their eating plan when the fat is slightly higher as the total calories increase.
  • I generally find anything up to 1g / kg / bw is effective.
  • If there is a deficit, I suggest a range of 0.6-1 g / kg / body weight.
  • The risk of hormonal disorders is higher with a chronic calorie deficit.
  • While many clients have performed well and had exceptional results at the low end of this range, I tend to be conservative and start at the high end when a phase of fat loss begins.

From this point on, I take a results-based approach based on loss rate, customer feedback, and gym performance.

Take away key– Consume at least 0.6 g of fat per kg (0.3 g per pound) of body weight.

Carbohydrates affect hormones

Carbohydrates, like fats, have a positive effect on hormones. The carbohydrates you eat are converted to glucose and stored in the liver or released into the bloodstream. However, most of this glucose is actually taken up and stored by the muscles as glycogen. Despite this storage, glycogen is at the bottom of the body's list of priorities.

Glucose is used in a hierarchical order.

Cells in need of energy are the priority for the incoming glucose. Only when the majority of the cells' energy requirements have been met does the carbohydrate consumption increase blood sugar. When blood sugar levels reach a reasonable level, glycogen synthesis in the liver is the next priority.

Only then does the synthesis of muscle glycogen begin to a significant amount. When muscles absorb blood sugar, they can use it for activity or repair. This is important for muscle repair, recovery, and growth.

Carbohydrates are the dominant source of energy for the central nervous system (CNS) and physical activity.

They promote strenuous training and regeneration by replenishing muscle glycogen. Stored muscle glycogen is the primary and preferred source of fuel for high-intensity exercise. Carbohydrates are a great benefit for people who train hard.

During the diet phases, keeping carbohydrate levels very low has become very popular. This is not entirely unfounded, as cutting down on carbohydrates can help create a calorie deficit. I suggest you resist the temptation not to consume carbohydrates.

To get the most out of your workout, you need to do overloaded workouts. Eat enough carbohydrates to do this. They also help you retain muscle mass even as you lose body weight.

When you're low on glycogen, you risk suppressing the anabolic response to weight training. Eating enough carbohydrates allows for higher exercise intensity, higher exercise volume, faster recovery between sets and between sessions, and anti-catabolic and anabolic effects.

"How Much Carbohydrates Should You Consume?" Short answer:

"The rest of your available calories"

More protein preserves muscle mass and saturation

While you're in excess of calories, hitting your macros is likely to get 80% of the benefits of your diet from a recreational standpoint.

Factors such as nutrient timing, micronutrition, food variety, and quality all contribute to optimal results, but they make little difference.

When you're in a deficit, those tiny gains are yours to deal with as you don't have the safety net of an abundance of calories to do the heavy lifting for you.

Here are some tips on how to squeeze the most out of your diet for maximum recovery while cutting:

  • If you are in a calorie deficit, consuming the high end of the protein guidelines given earlier (2.2 g / kg / bw) is a great idea.
  • High protein intake has been shown to preserve muscle mass.
  • Anecdotally, high protein intake also appears to regulate appetite. This scheme is useful when cutting calories.

Protein timing

Several studies have shown that a 25-40g serving of protein is enough to maximize muscle protein synthesis (MPS). To give you a more specific recommendation, I suggest that you aim for 0.4 g / kg body weight per meal. If you weigh 65 kg, that would be 26 g, while a 80 kg man would have 32 g of protein per meal.

The current literature shows that eating a mixed whole meal results in MPS lasting approximately three hours and peaking for 45-90 minutes. While protein shakes / amino acid supplements typically only last two hours and peak earlier. Then MPS begins to subside.

Research shows that these peaks and valleys are beneficial in MPS for maximum muscle growth.

Based on the scientific evidence available, 4-6 servings of protein per day, 3-4 hours each, is the best choice to maximize MPS.

If you are calorie deficient, fine-tuning your eating plan to maximize MPS is the best option to avoid muscle wasting.

The holy grail of nutrient timing?

We've all heard of the post-workout anabolic window. Post-exercise diet has long been considered the holy grail of nutrient timing. I think this is a mistake. Pre-workout nutrition is just as important, if not more important, than post-workout nutrition, in my opinion.

As mentioned earlier, it takes the body several hours to digest a meal. For example, suppose you have a balanced meal before you exercise. In this case, your body will continue to receive a constant supply of nutrients throughout the session and even in the post-workout window.

Many people overlook the critical consideration that the important nutrient timing factor is that the nutrients are in your bloodstream, not when you eat them.

The nutrients from your pre-workout meal are in your bloodstream during and possibly after your workout. This means that you can immediately supply nutrients to the working muscles. If you only focus on the post-workout meal, there is a significant delay in the amount of nutrients getting to the muscles where you need them.

With this in mind, a few points should be noted here::

  • Insufficient carbohydrates can interfere with strength training.

  • Consuming carbohydrates in the pre-workout meal can improve performance in the workout session.

  • Consuming carbohydrates while exercising in sessions longer than an hour can improve performance at the end of the session and prevent muscle wasting (especially when combined with a quickly digestible source of protein).

  • By consuming carbohydrates after exercise, muscle glycogen is replenished more effectively than at other times. This post-workout window is much longer than the much touted anabolic window of 20 to 30 minutes. The 4-6 hours after the workout when consuming carbohydrates replenishes the optimal muscle glycogen.

As you build up, your carbohydrate intake is likely high enough that you don't have to worry too much about postponing your eating for one time or another.

If you distribute the carbohydrates evenly throughout the day, you are in good hands.

Calories and carbohydrates can be very low during a diet. IIn this situation, it is more important to consider your specific carbohydrate intake timing to aid in quality exercise and recovery.

It is wise to make sure that you consume carbohydrates at least during meals before and after your workout.

After that, you can just spread it fairly evenly over the other meals you eat during the day.

Eat the rainbow

Choosing nutrient-rich, low-calorie foods is a wise decision. This choice will help you stay full, which means you will be more likely to stick to your diet.

It also means you are getting all of the micro-nutrition you need to support a good recovery from exercise. A wide variety of vegetables is a smart decision when cutting calories.

An easy way to get a wide range of micronutrients is to eat fruits and vegetables in as many different colors as possible.

Avoid pseudosciences

While it is tempting to reach for the expensive recovery tool backed by pseudoscience, it is better to pluck the low hanging fruits of improving your sleep and diet to aid your recovery.

These two factors will have a far greater impact on your recovery and results than any other failed recovery method.

Use the guidelines I have provided to get a massive recovery benefit and keep those silly recovery fashions for less informed lifters.

Chemical Vs. Mineral Sunscreen: What’s The Difference?

You need daily sun protection to keep your skin healthy and looking youthful. But what type of sun protection should you choose? Sun protection generally falls into one of two categories: chemical and mineral (physical). While both provide sun protection, chemical sunscreens and mineral sunscreens differ in their active ingredients, as well as the way they protect against UV radiation. Read on to learn the difference and discover the benefits of a mineral sunscreen.

Chemical Vs. Mineral Sunscreen

Sunscreens are important to protect the skin from the dangers of sun exposure, including sunburn. Sun damage and melanoma. It is also beneficial to minimize the aging effects of UV rays such as fine lines and wrinkles, rough skin, and hyperpigmentation.

Chemical sunscreens are often referred to as "absorbers". Its active ingredients are organic compounds (based on carbon) that absorb UV rays. Through a chemical reaction, these chemical compounds convert UV rays into heat and transfer this heat to the skin.

Mineral sunscreens, on the other hand, are "reflectors". Their active ingredients include zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, which act as physical blockers. These minerals form a protective barrier on the skin and reflect harmful UV rays before they come into contact with the skin's surface.

Chemical or mineral sunscreens infographic

What is zinc oxide?

Mineral sunscreens typically use zinc oxide as a physical sunscreen for UV rays. Yes, the same zinc that your parents put on your nose and cheeks in the 80s. Zinc oxide has come a long way since then and is now found in Lightweight, layerable formulas that offer the same sun protection but have a natural-looking finish. Here's a look at the many benefits of zinc oxide for the skin.

Zinc oxide keeps the skin cool

Unlike chemical sunscreens, which trap UV rays and convert them into heat, zinc oxide keeps the skin cool and lets it breathe. It reflects the heat and energy of the sun's UV rays away from the skin, thus maintaining the skin temperature. For this reason, mineral sunscreen is particularly beneficial in minimizing the skin Inflammation and redness associated with acne, rosacea, and skin sensitivity.

Zinc oxide provides physical sun protection

While zinc itself occurs naturally, zinc oxide is actually created by combining the mineral zinc with oxygen molecules. When these two elements are evaporated and condensed, they form a fine powder that sits on the skin and provides a protective barrier against UVA and UVB rays. In addition to being a physical blocker, zinc oxide acts as a mirror to reflect UV rays before they can penetrate the skin's surface.

Lilikoi Mineral Defense Collection

Supports collagen production

UV radiation is the number one cause of premature aging. Sun damage exposes the skin to harmful free radicals that break down and destroy collagen, a protein important in keeping the skin firm, plump, and elastic. Zinc serves as Co-factor in collagen synthesis by activating protein collagenase. This protein triggers collagen production to build and repair connective tissues like your skin.

Helps in treating acne

Zinc oxide is also beneficial in treating acne-prone skin tones. Studies show that zinc is effective at reducing skin levels Inflammation, inhibits the growth of acne-causing bacteria and regulates the activity of the sebum glands. It also has astringent properties that narrow pores and minimize their appearance.

Mineral sun protection benefits

If you're new to the superpowers of zinc oxide, there are a few more reasons to add a mineral sunscreen to your daily skin care regimen.

Reef friendly

Mineral sunscreens are more environmentally friendly – zinc oxide and titanium dioxide protect the sensitive coral reefs on our planet. They are a preferred choice for beach vacationers and destination travelers visiting seaside resorts.

Suitable for all skin types

Mineral sunscreens are hypoallergenic and non-comedogenic. With their anti-inflammatory properties, they are gentle enough for the most sensitive skin types. And they're free of pore-clogging silicone, making them a better option for those who are prone to failure.

Broadband UV protection

Mineral sunscreens reflect both UVB and UVA rays from the surface of the skin. Cause UVB rays Sunburn and uncomfortable symptoms such as redness, dryness and itching. UVA rays, which penetrate deeper into the skin, are responsible for premature aging and play a key role in the development of melanoma.

Which purely mineral sun protection suits you?

Protecting your skin from sun damage is one of the most effective ways to slow down the visible signs of aging and keep your skin looking and feeling healthy. Now that you know the benefits of using mineral sunscreens, you can have ours All SPF mineral moisturizers.

Our range of four unique, daily mineral moisturizers with sun protection factor have been specially developed for the face and neck. Each formula is silicone-free and full of active ingredients to achieve targeted skin benefits and prevent sunburn.

Red Currant Protection Moisturizer SPF 40

This matting The daily moisturizer contains a Youth Shield Antioxidant Complex and SPF 40 mineral protection. This SPF moisturizer provides sun protection and helps with the appearance of wrinkles. Red currant is a source of vitamin C, an antioxidant with added bioflavonoids that improves the appearance of fine lines.

Tropical Vanilla Day Cream SPF 40

Sometimes scents can take us to a dream destination, and that Tropical Vanilla Day Cream SPF 40 does just that with its fresh, tropical scent. This purely mineral sunscreen contains vanilla, shea butter and SPF 40, all mineral sunscreens to revitalize the skin and prevent sunburn. Shea butter is a moisturizing ingredient that is high in triglycerides and fatty acids. This makes the cream an effective emollient for skin that needs more moisture.

Lilikoi Daily Defense Moisturizing Cream SPF 40

This all-in-one lightweight every day The moisturizer is made from Cocoa Seed Extract, Satsuma Mandarin Peel, and SPF 40, all of which protect minerals to improve the appearance of skin exposed to blue light stress and pollution. If you've been exposed to blue light in front of electronic devices all day, this moisturizer is for you. Cocoa seed extract is included in this formulation, a blend of cocoa peptides, saccharides and polyphenols to improve the appearance of skin exposed to blue light stress.

Bright Skin Moisturizer SPF 40

This lightening daily moisturizer contains a Natural hydroquinone alternative and SPF 40 all mineral protection. This SPF formula targets the appearance of dark spots and prevents sunburn. The natural hydroquinone alternative will help fade the appearance of dark spots and create a smooth, even complexion.

Learn more about our mineral SPF moisturizers and how to use them in this video:

(embed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkVMaiUeToY (/ embed)

In addition to our SPF moisturizers, we recommend our Lilikoi Mineral Defense Sport Sunscreen SPF 30 for protection from head to toe. This easy-to-use sports formula for the face and body is non-greasy and water-resistant for up to 40 minutes.

Do you add mineral or chemical sunscreens to your skin care regimen? Let us know in the comments below and join the conversation on social media. Experience our mineral SPF moisturizers and Lilikoi Mineral Defense Sport Sunscreen SPF 30 at an Eminence Organics Spa partner near you.

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Red Currant Protection Moisturizer SPF 40

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This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for accuracy and completeness. .

Nature’s Two Most Powerful Exercise Recovery Tools

In the first part this series, Train hard, recover harder, I explained that stress is a double-edged sword. In order to make adjustments, you have to impose stress, but too much stress affects your recovery.

Stress can be both good and bad, but your body doesn't distinguish between types of stress, and your body can only handle that much stress. Stress is good during exercise; Your ability to benefit from it depends somewhat on your overall stress level.

So you have to manage all of your life stress in order to free up as much capacity as possible for dealing with training stress. Stress management strategies can create a larger window of time for exercise stress to apply and recover.

In Part Two, Good Recovery Starts With Good Programming, I discussed optimizing your exercise program as another effective tool for maximizing recovery. By focusing on delivering efficient exercise stress, you make your recovery easier.

Intelligent program design = fatigue management

The four key factors to consider are:

  1. Volume landmarks

  2. SRA curves

  3. Stimulus: fatigue ratio

  4. Relative intensity

At this point, I am assuming that your workout is optimized and provides a reasonable incentive.

From this point on, the remaining adjustments, such as B. Increases in size and strength, from recovery, result in this simplified muscle building equation:

Stimulus + recovery = adjustment

In this third part of the series, I'm going to cover your two most powerful recovery tools and how to maximize them.

The two most powerful recovery tools available to you are:::

  1. sleep

  2. nutrition

If you focus on these consistently, you will be rewarded. With your choice of sleep, diet, and stress management, you are ready to make great strides in the gym.

The positive influence of sleep on performance

Sleep is your most important recovery tool. I have spoken repeatedly about the positive effects of sleep on athletic performance and your ability to recover from hard exercise. The harder you can train without exceeding your recovery capacity, the faster you can progress.

Sleep is the most anabolic state for your body. Lack of sleep limits your strength and muscle mass gains. It also increases your chances of losing muscle mass if you cut and absorb fat as you accumulate.

To maximize recovery and build more muscle, you need to prioritize sleep.

Better sleep will help you with this too::

In short, it makes you a fitter, happier, and more productive person.

Let's be honest; you probably already know that. Bet you don't give sleep the credit it deserves when it comes to your lifestyle choices. Most of us realize that we should sleep more. We know sleep is important. However, we do not prioritize it.

I'm pretty sure you are making this mistake because I do too. I've been guilty many times in the past. It's all too easy to stay up late to catch the next episode of a TV show or to scroll aimlessly through Instagram. Whenever I do that, I always regret it the next day.

Lack of sleep can creep up on you. You may not realize that you have been deprived of sleep. The occasional late night has little effect. The problem is when those late nights get normal.

Stay on the laptop for a long time to meet work schedules or relax before a good show. Both eat into your sleep and have a huge impact on the quality of your recovery. Over time, you will likely feel like a zombie with no caffeine in the morning, your fitness performance will begin to increase, and you will make poorer dietary choices. It all happens little by little.

They sneak up on you. I've seen this over and over with customers trying to burn the candle on both ends. They pretend they can get away with it because the drop in performance is gradual. Be warned, lack of sleep adds up and if not resolved, it can slow your progress.

My sleep deprivation experience was less gradual and more like a blunt force trauma. I had always slept well and made it a priority. Then I had children. After our son was born, it took me 18 months to feel normal again in the gym. I vividly remember the session after my first full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I felt like superman.

The sad thing is, I wasn't a Superman.

I wasn't even around. After a good night's sleep, I was just a normal Tom. My perception of what was normal had been so distorted by 18 months of sleep deprivation that I now felt amazing. You could have slept in the same situation without realizing it. Make sleep a priority for a month and I'm confident you will look better, feel better, and perform better.

The research on sleep deprivation is alarming. Studies show that for 11 days in a row with less than six hours of sleep, your cognitive abilities are roughly as high as if you had stayed awake for 24 hours.

After 22 days of sleeping less than six hours a night, your brain is functioning at the same level as someone who has stayed awake for 48 hours straight. To put things in perspective, it means your reactions are likely to be worse than someone who is over the legal limit for alcohol.

Are you more zombie than human?

Take a sleep survey on yourself and assess if you are more of a zombie than a human.

As a guide, this is what you should aim for when it comes to sleeping::

  • Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep every night.

  • Go to bed at the same time every night.

  • Wake up at the same time each morning.

  • Wake up without an alarm clock.

  • Sleep all night long – multiple bathroom trips are a sure sign of poor quality sleep (or way too much drinking just before bed).

  • Waking up in much the same position that you fell asleep (not throwing and spinning all night) is a good sign.

  • You should wake up refreshed.

How can your sleep hold up against this list? I suspect you are not ticking all of these points. In my experience, most people can't even check off a few of them. Your goal is to work towards ensuring that you can check off each of these bullet points.

Here are some practical tips to help you sleep better and longer.

  • Prepare for success: Get a comfortable bed, mattress and pillow. Bed quality can affect sleep. It can also reduce back and shoulder pain. Given that you spend almost a third of your life in bed, it makes sense to invest in a good one.
  • Establish a routine: Go to bed at about the same time and get up at the same time each day. Weekends count too. It was found that matching sleep and wake times improves long-term sleep quality.
  • Include relaxation: It has been found that relaxation techniques before bed improve the quality of sleep. Read a book, listen to a chill out playlist, take a hot bath or take a deep breath and meditate. Do whatever you can to relax and unwind.
  • Cut the coffee at 4pm: Drinking coffee is cool. I love this stuff, but having it later in the day can disrupt or even prevent your sleep. On average, the half-life of caffeine is around five hours. However, this half-life can vary massively between individuals. If you are a slow metabolizer of caffeine, you may have levels in your system that will keep you awake and will keep you awake until the wee hours if you drink it after 4pm. In extreme cases, having it within 10 hours of going to bed can be disturbing for some people. So cut yourself off at 4pm and see if it's easier for you to fall asleep. If you're still having issues, push things forward to 3pm and reevaluate.
  • Disconnect the matrix: The blue light emitted by the screens of your devices can disturb your sleep. The body's internal clock or daily rhythm is mainly influenced by the hours of daylight. Artificial lights like street lights and lightbulbs are already bothering it, but looking at screens magnifies the problem. Your internal body clock is supplied by the eye nerve, which is directly influenced by blue light. Your phone, TV, laptop, and tablet emit the same light. To improve sleep, I suggest that you disconnect from such screens for at least 60 minutes before going to bed.
  • Receive natural sunlight during the day: In these times the body needs light. Studies have found that two hours of bright light during the day increases the amount of sleep by two hours and improves the quality of sleep by 80%.
  • Sleep in the batcave: Make your bedroom pitch black, calm and cool to maximize the quality of your sleep. Remove all electrical devices.
  • Room temperature: Set the thermostats to around 20 ° C. It was found that room temperature affects the quality of sleep more than external noise.
  • Stay away from alcohol: Just a few drinks have been shown to reduce your sleep hormones. Alcohol alters melatonin production and lowers HGH (Human Growth Hormone) levels. Melatonin is an important sleep hormone that tells your brain when it's time to relax and fall asleep. HGH helps regulate your body clock, counteracts aging, and is vital to recovery.

There you have it, your comprehensive guide to better sleep. You have no excuse now. You know sleep is crucial. You can also rate your sleep based on the standards listed above. If you come up short, you have nine tips to improve your sleep.

As you improve your sleep, everything else improves too. Try to improve your sleep before you worry about investing in other recovery modalities.

Neither of them can hold a candle to sleep, and sleep is free.

Your caloric intake and energy balance

Your second most powerful recovery tool is your diet.

By properly fueling your body, you can take advantage of the stimulus generated by your exercise. Training creates the incentive to build muscle, lose fat and increase strength. Your recovery will determine whether or not you will achieve that potential.

When it comes to nutrition, there are several variables that you can manipulate. The most important variable when it comes to nutrition for recovery is your caloric intake and energy balance.

What is a calorie and what is energy balance??

A calorie (Kcal) is a unit of energy. Our food contains calories and fuels us with energy to lead our daily lives. Everyone needs different amounts of energy per day depending on their age, size and level of activity.

Calorie budget refers to the number of calories you consume compared to the number of calories you burn.

If you eat excess calories, you will gain weight. If you eat a calorie deficit, you will lose weight. While eating high calorie food in the process of maintenance, it means that you are maintaining the weight. When it comes to physical change, calories are king.

When consuming a calorie surplus, maximizing regeneration is easier to manage than when consuming a deficit. You have an abundance of calories available to meet your macro and micronutrient needs. When it comes to diet and you have an excess, keep things simple. Hit your macros, distribute your protein intake fairly evenly between 3-6 meals a day, and eat a variety of fruits and vegetables.

When you are calorie deficit, the details of your diet are more important in maximizing recovery as less energy is coming in. The basic principles still apply, but you need to take better account of your low calorie eating habits to ensure that you meet both your macro and micronutrient needs.

Meal timing, food quality, and micronutrition are more important when you are in a deficit, but none of them outperform achieving a reasonable calorie deficit.

Energy balance and macronutrients are the two most important factors in your diet in terms of body development and strength gains.

How to set calories for individual results

If you have an excess, I suggest that you eat enough to gain between 0.25 and 0.5% of your body weight per week.

A quick strategy to estimate your daily needs is to multiply your weight in pounds by 15.

This formula generally gives a good approximation of the calories needed to maintain your weight. An excess of 500 calories per day equates to roughly a pound of weight gain per week. If you weigh 200 pounds, this is right at the upper end of your weight gain target. An excess of 250 calories a day will result in you gaining roughly half a pound a week. An excess of between 250 and 500 calories would be adequate for a 200 pound lifter.

If you are in deficit, I recommend losing between 0.5 and 1% of your body weight per week.

If you maintain a faster rate than this for an extended period (say, more than four weeks), you run the risk of adversely affecting your fitness performance and muscle loss.

Similar to the excess example, you can estimate maintenance calories by multiplying your weight in pounds by 15 calories.

From this point on, you need to subtract calories in order to achieve a deficit. A 500 calorie deficit will give you one pound loss per week. For our 200 pound example, an ideal rate of fat loss is between 1 and 2 pounds per week. Consequently, a deficit of 500-1,000 kcal per day is the area to look out for in order to achieve this.

Macronutrients

There are three types of macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. All of these provide energy and therefore contain calories. Here's how to establish and establish your macronutrient needs and goals.

The calorie content per gram of each macronutrient is listed below::

  • Protein: Four calories per gram

  • Fat: Nine calories per gram

  • carbohydrate: Four calories per gram

This information is useful in the practical step of creating your diet with the appropriate proportions for each macronutrient.

Protein is essential for survival

Protein comes from the Greek word proteios, which means "of primary importance".

  • Protein is involved in almost every process in your body.
  • Proteins are vital and healthy.
  • They play an important role in athletic performance and body composition.
  • Muscle mass consists mostly of protein.
  • Protein helps you recover from your workouts.
  • It preserves lean tissue on diets.
  • It will help you build more muscle as you build.
  • It has the greatest effect on satiety, or feeling comfortable, of any macronutrient.

To build muscle, consume protein in the range of 1.6 to 2.2 g / kg lean body mass to stimulate the MPS for the day.

Recent research supports the high end of this range.

I generally recommend eating 2 g of protein per kg of body weight. This formula is easy to remember, easy to calculate, and conveniently covers your needs. From a practical point of view, I've also found that it is a crowd that satisfies most people's appetites and eating habits.

Take away key– Eat 2 g of protein per kg (0.9 g per lbs) of body weight per day.

Never eliminate fat from your diet

The consumption of dietary fat is important for regular hormonal function, especially testosterone production.

You should never remove fat from a diet.

There is not so much an optimal amount of fat to consume, but a minimum

0.2-0.5 g / kg / day for normal hormonal function. There have been compelling arguments in favor of consuming between 20 and 30% of calories in fat to optimize testosterone levels.

However, when 0.6 g / kg / bw is reached, no significant benefit for the hormones can be seen.

How Much Fat Should I Consume?

I prefer a minimum of 0.6 g / kg / kg per day.

  • If there is an excess, this is enough to optimize hormonal function and generally equates to around 20% of the calories.
  • Since hormone function has little benefit after a calorie surplus after 0.6 g / kg / bw, there is no physiological need to increase this number as you go through your mass phase.
  • Even if the total calories are adjusted upwards to keep gaining weight, there is no physiological need to exceed the fat content of 0.6 g / kg / bw. In my experience, however, many people find it easier to stick to their eating plan when the fat is slightly higher as the total calories increase.
  • I generally find anything up to 1g / kg / bw is effective.
  • If there is a deficit, I suggest a range of 0.6-1 g / kg / body weight.
  • The risk of hormonal disorders is higher with a chronic calorie deficit.
  • While many clients have performed well and had exceptional results at the low end of this range, I tend to be conservative and start at the high end when a phase of fat loss begins.

From this point on, I take a results-based approach based on loss rate, customer feedback, and gym performance.

Take away key– Consume at least 0.6 g of fat per kg (0.3 g per pound) of body weight.

Carbohydrates affect hormones

Carbohydrates, like fats, have a positive effect on hormones. The carbohydrates you eat are converted to glucose and stored in the liver or released into the bloodstream. However, most of this glucose is actually taken up and stored by the muscles as glycogen. Despite this storage, glycogen is at the bottom of the body's list of priorities.

Glucose is used in a hierarchical order.

Cells in need of energy are the priority for the incoming glucose. Only when the majority of the cells' energy requirements have been met does the carbohydrate consumption increase blood sugar. When blood sugar levels reach a reasonable level, glycogen synthesis in the liver is the next priority.

Only then does the synthesis of muscle glycogen begin to a significant amount. When muscles absorb blood sugar, they can use it for activity or repair. This is important for muscle repair, recovery, and growth.

Carbohydrates are the dominant source of energy for the central nervous system (CNS) and physical activity.

They promote strenuous training and regeneration by replenishing muscle glycogen. Stored muscle glycogen is the primary and preferred source of fuel for high-intensity exercise. Carbohydrates are a great benefit for people who train hard.

During the diet phases, keeping carbohydrate levels very low has become very popular. This is not entirely unfounded, as cutting down on carbohydrates can help create a calorie deficit. I suggest you resist the temptation not to consume carbohydrates.

To get the most out of your workout, you need to do overloaded workouts. Eat enough carbohydrates to do this. They also help you retain muscle mass even as you lose body weight.

When you're low on glycogen, you risk suppressing the anabolic response to weight training. Eating enough carbohydrates allows for higher exercise intensity, higher exercise volume, faster recovery between sets and between sessions, and anti-catabolic and anabolic effects.

"How Much Carbohydrates Should You Consume?" Short answer:

"The rest of your available calories"

More protein preserves muscle mass and saturation

While you're in excess of calories, hitting your macros is likely to get 80% of the benefits of your diet from a recreational standpoint.

Factors such as nutrient timing, micronutrition, food variety, and quality all contribute to optimal results, but they make little difference.

When you're in a deficit, those tiny gains are yours to deal with as you don't have the safety net of an abundance of calories to do the heavy lifting for you.

Here are some tips on how to squeeze the most out of your diet for maximum recovery while cutting:

  • If you are in a calorie deficit, consuming the high end of the protein guidelines given earlier (2.2 g / kg / bw) is a great idea.
  • High protein intake has been shown to preserve muscle mass.
  • Anecdotally, high protein intake also appears to regulate appetite. This scheme is useful when cutting calories.

Protein timing

Several studies have shown that a 25-40g serving of protein is enough to maximize muscle protein synthesis (MPS). To give you a more specific recommendation, I suggest that you aim for 0.4 g / kg body weight per meal. If you weigh 65 kg, that would be 26 g, while a 80 kg man would have 32 g of protein per meal.

The current literature shows that eating a mixed whole meal results in MPS lasting approximately three hours and peaking for 45-90 minutes. While protein shakes / amino acid supplements typically only last two hours and peak earlier. Then MPS begins to subside.

Research shows that these peaks and valleys are beneficial in MPS for maximum muscle growth.

Based on the scientific evidence available, 4-6 servings of protein per day, 3-4 hours each, is the best choice to maximize MPS.

If you are calorie deficient, fine-tuning your eating plan to maximize MPS is the best option to avoid muscle wasting.

The holy grail of nutrient timing?

We've all heard of the post-workout anabolic window. Post-exercise diet has long been considered the holy grail of nutrient timing. I think this is a mistake. Pre-workout nutrition is just as important, if not more important, than post-workout nutrition, in my opinion.

As mentioned earlier, it takes the body several hours to digest a meal. For example, suppose you have a balanced meal before you exercise. In this case, your body will continue to receive a constant supply of nutrients throughout the session and even in the post-workout window.

Many people overlook the critical consideration that the important nutrient timing factor is that the nutrients are in your bloodstream, not when you eat them.

The nutrients from your pre-workout meal are in your bloodstream during and possibly after your workout. This means that you can immediately supply nutrients to the working muscles. If you only focus on the post-workout meal, there is a significant delay in the amount of nutrients getting to the muscles where you need them.

With this in mind, a few points should be noted here::

  • Insufficient carbohydrates can interfere with strength training.

  • Consuming carbohydrates in the pre-workout meal can improve performance in the workout session.

  • Consuming carbohydrates while exercising in sessions longer than an hour can improve performance at the end of the session and prevent muscle wasting (especially when combined with a quickly digestible source of protein).

  • By consuming carbohydrates after exercise, muscle glycogen is replenished more effectively than at other times. This post-workout window is much longer than the much touted anabolic window of 20 to 30 minutes. The 4-6 hours after the workout when consuming carbohydrates replenishes the optimal muscle glycogen.

As you build up, your carbohydrate intake is likely high enough that you don't have to worry too much about postponing your eating for one time or another.

If you distribute the carbohydrates evenly throughout the day, you are in good hands.

Calories and carbohydrates can be very low during a diet. IIn this situation, it is more important to consider your specific carbohydrate intake timing to aid in quality exercise and recovery.

It is wise to make sure that you consume carbohydrates at least during meals before and after your workout.

After that, you can just spread it fairly evenly over the other meals you eat during the day.

Eat the rainbow

Choosing nutrient-rich, low-calorie foods is a wise decision. This choice will help you stay full, which means you will be more likely to stick to your diet.

It also means you are getting all of the micro-nutrition you need to support a good recovery from exercise. A wide variety of vegetables is a smart decision when cutting calories.

An easy way to get a wide range of micronutrients is to eat fruits and vegetables in as many different colors as possible.

Avoid pseudosciences

While it is tempting to reach for the expensive recovery tool backed by pseudoscience, it is better to pluck the low hanging fruits of improving your sleep and diet to aid your recovery.

These two factors will have a far greater impact on your recovery and results than any other failed recovery method.

Use the guidelines I have provided to get a massive recovery benefit and keep those silly recovery fashions for less informed lifters.

Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook Review: Chrome at Work

Lenovo Thinkpad C13 Yoga Chromebook Review Company

ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook (13 inch) 2-in-1 laptop

“The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook fits well into the company and offers a high level of security and manageability. But consumers should look elsewhere. "

  • Solid build quality

  • Good full HD display

  • Comfortable keyboard, touchpad and pen

  • The performance is strong

  • Mediocre battery life

  • Expensive

Chromebooks have made a name for themselves in the education world. In business? There is still a lot to be done.

Part of the problem is the lack of high-end options for those who want something with a premium finish. Bringing the popular ThinkPad brand to Chromebooks should do the trick, especially if you add a powerful AMD Ryzen processor to the mix.

This is the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook Enterprise, a long winded name for a laptop that emphasizes security and performance for high-end users.

My test device was equipped with the new Chromebook-specific AMD Ryzen 5 3500C CPU, 8 GB RAM, a 256 GB PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) and a Full HD IPS anti-glare display (1,920 x 1,080). There were also a few add-ons, including a hybrid active capacitive pen and a 5MB camera with a view of the world, at a post-coupon price of $ 859 ($ 1,321 as configured).

Does the extra security and specialized AMD processor give the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook a head start?

design

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook follows the same general aesthetic pattern as the rest of the ThinkPad lineup. It's completely black with only a few embellishments (although the black isn't quite as deep and looks grayer) like the blinking LED "i" in the ThinkPad logo on the lid and the red accent on the keyboard provided by the TrackPoint nubbin .

Interestingly, Lenovo skipped the red stripes along the TrackPoint buttons, which made the keyboard deck a bit simpler than usual. The chassis lines are also a bit more complex than the ThinkPad X1 Nano, for example, with rounded backs on the lower case and lid and a more forward-facing design.

A Chromebook looks good, and I find it more noticeable than the Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise, which is a pretty direct competitor – though the Latitude is a clamshell while the ThinkPad is a convertible 2-in-1.

Like all ThinkPads, the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook made of aluminum has a robust construction. The lid, keyboard deck or lower case must not be twisted, bent or bent, and the 2-in-1 device provides a high level of safety when lugging around. You don't need to spoil this laptop.

The bezels make the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook bigger than it needs to be.

It's easily the equivalent of the Latitude 7410 Chromebook. In fact, the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook is as well built as its Windows 10 competitors including the HP Specter x360 13 and Dell XPS 13. I notice that the hinge is pretty stiff and requires both hands to open the lid. However, the display is held in place by the four modes of clamshell, tent, media and tablet.

One area where the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook falls behind is the frames. They are thin on the sides but quite large on the top and bottom and have quite a massive chin. Part of the chin size is for the 2-in-1 hinge, but overall it looks a lot less modern than the ThinkPad X1 Nano and Dell XPS 13.

The Latitude 7410 Chromebook falls somewhere in between. The bezels make the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook bigger than it needs to be. It's bigger than the ThinkPad X1 Nano, though that's no big surprise given the laptop's smaller 13-inch 16:10 display, and it's much larger than the Dell XPS 13 with a 13.4-inch 16: 10 display.

Lenovo Thinkpad C13 Yoga Chromebook Review Company "class =" m-carousel - image dt-lazy-no "src =" https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1015-640x640. jpg "srcset =" https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP//yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

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At 0.70 inches thick, it's also a bit chunky compared to the XPS 13's 0.58-inch and the Specter x360 13's 0.67-inch. The XPS 13 and Specter x360 13 weigh 2.8 pounds, compared to the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook at 3.3 pounds. The Latitude 7410 Chromebook is 0.67 inches thick despite its 14-inch display and weighs almost the same as the Lenovo at 3.36 pounds.

The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook includes a few features that are of interest to corporate customers. First, there are some security features like the ThinkShutter slider that covers the webcam if you want to protect your privacy and a fingerprint scanner that provides a secure (and in my experience fast and reliable) way to log in without a password.

The Google H1 security chip works with Chrome OS to prevent software and firmware version resets, log transitions between developer and normal mode, protect user encryption keys and much more. These functions could of course also be attractive to consumers.

The 2-in-1 system can also host Google Enterprise, which offers a variety of resources for securing and managing a fleet of Chromebooks. Google Enterprise features include a managed Google Play Store that allows organizations to control which apps users can install, Microsoft Active Directory integration, managed Chrome browsers and extensions, single sign-on, and more. Google Enterprise is free to configure for the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook, but comes with an annual fee of $ 50.

Lenovo Thinkpad C13 Yoga Chromebook Review Company "class =" m-carousel - image dt-lazy-no "src =" https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/olympus-digital-camera-1009-640x640. jpg "srcset =" https://www.digitaltrends.com/data:image/gif;base64,https://www.digitaltrends.com/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP//yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

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The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook offers solid connectivity. On the left side of the laptop there is a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a microSD card reader. On the right side there is another USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port and a full-size HDMI 2.0 port. Wireless connectivity is cutting edge with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.

Finally, my test unit came with an optional ($ 20) second camera on top of the keyboard deck, a 5-megapixel model that can be used as a camera with a view of the world in tablet mode. Selecting this option will reduce the number of microphones to just one from the dual microphones that are not equipped with the 5 megapixel camera add-on.

performance

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

For the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook, in this case the Ryzen 5 3500C, Lenovo opted for the latest Ryzen CPU from AMD, which is directly geared towards Chrome OS. This is the midrange CPU between Ryzen 5 3250c and Ryzen 5 3700C. The CPU is a quad-core CPU with eight threads that run up to 3.7 GHz. It is actually an APU with integrated AMD Radeon graphics with eight graphics cores.

According to AMD, the Ryzen 5 3000C series offers double to triple the performance of the previous AMD Chrome OS offering, the Athlon A6 series.

The only benchmark in our suite that we can run on Chromebooks is Geekbench 5, and the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook scored 907 in the single-core test and 2,739 in the multi-core test. This is very close to the 1,025 single-core and 2,712 multi-core rates achieved by the 10th generation Intel Core i5-10310U of the Latitude 7410 Chromebook.

The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook was very fast in everyday use.

That's also roughly half the performance you'll find on most Windows 10 laptops with core processors, but Chrome OS is of course far lighter than Windows 10 and doesn't require anywhere near the processing power to get a good experience.

Probably thanks to the generous 8 GB of RAM (for Chrome OS) and the fast PCIe SSD, the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook was very fast in daily use. I was able to open some tabs and Chrome OS apps while running some Android apps in the background without any noticeable slowdown. As with the Latitude, fans have occasionally dabbled with the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook, but that's not too high a price for great performance.

I also played a few games on the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook, including the Asphalt 9, and found the performance a little underperforming. Asphalt 9 in particular was surprisingly choppy. You will be fine with the occasional Android game, but GPU-intensive titles seem to put a little strain on the APU beyond its capabilities.

display

I couldn't test the 13.3-inch Full HD IPS display on the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook with my colorimeter. Below are my subjective results. Lenovo rates my review unit's display at 300 nits of brightness, and I would guess it comes close to that number.

It's a glare-free screen too, so working in bright environments wasn't a problem for me – although I didn't bring it outside, where direct sunlight would likely turn out to be too much for the display. Lenovo also offers a 4K display along with higher specs (16GB of RAM and a Ryzen 5 3700C CPU) for about $ 100 more.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The colors looked well balanced without being oversaturated, and they seemed accurate enough. I compared some images to some other color accurate displays (e.g. the Dell XPS 13) and they looked similar on the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook. I would rate colors as good for a premium laptop, but I can't quite say exactly how wide the color gamut is and if it's suitable for creative types. The gamma also seemed spot on, as the Netflix video didn't look too light or too dark.

The two speakers weren't something to write home about. The sound was just average, with medium volume but no distortion. Highs and mids were clear, but there is no bass to speak of. The audio works well for video conferencing and the occasional YouTube video. However, for Netflix binging or tones, I use headphones or a bluetooth speaker.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard of the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook corresponds exactly to that of the ThinkPad X1 Nano. This means that it has the same ThinkPad keycaps, the same spacing and the same spring travel and is even splash-proof thanks to the liquid drainage channels on the bottom of the case.

However, when I used the two keyboards side by side, I noticed a small difference in the mechanisms. The version of the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook was a little less fluid and had a slightly harder base than that of the ThinkPad X1 Nano.

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Maybe these are the same keyboards and all I saw was a normal manufacturing variance, but I found the Chromebook version to be a little less accurate. It's a good keyboard, don't get me wrong, and better than the one on Dell's Latitude 7410 Chromebook but not as good as the one I enjoyed on the ThinkPad X1 Nano.

It's also a step below the HP Specter line of keyboards and the Dell XPS 13, but a step above most (much cheaper) Chromebooks.

The touchpad is smaller than it could be as the two buttons support the usual ThinkPad TrackPoint node in the middle of the keyboard. The surface of the touchpad was comfortable and all the usual Chrome OS multitouch gestures worked well.

The TrackPoint worked just as well as it did on other ThinkPads and provided another way to control the cursor for those who like things like that.

Lenovo C13 Yoga Chromebook EnterpriseMark Coppock / Digital Trends

The touch display was responsive and precise. Lenovo includes a docked hybrid "active capacitive" pen that does not require an active layer, making the display thinner and less complex.

The pen supports 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, and I found it to be good for scribbling and the occasional handwritten note. Chrome OS doesn't offer the same color support as Windows 10, but whatever support works there works just fine with the optional pen (a $ 44 add-on).

Battery life

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Lenovo packed 51 Wh of battery life into the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook's case, and that's a decent amount for a 13.3-inch Full HD device. We don't have any other experiences with the AMD Ryzen 5 3500C, so I was excited to see how long the 2-in-1 battery would last.

In our web browser test, which ran through a number of popular websites, the laptop lasted 7.25 hours, which is about 40 minutes less than the Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook and Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5 with an Intel Core i3-10110U.

As the best measure of laptop productivity longevity, this promises to be almost a full working day, but not quite. It's significantly less than many newer Windows 10 laptops that will last a few hours.

Many Chromebooks have significantly longer battery life.

In our video test, which ran through a Full HD Avengers trailer, the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook lasted about 7.5 hours. That's two hours longer than the Latitude 7410 Chromebook, but not very competitive with the Windows 10 field, where 10 hours or longer is the norm.

Finally, I ran the 2-in-1 test through our most demanding test, the Basemark web benchmark (which for some reason doesn't run on Intel Tiger Lake laptops) and it took almost exactly three hours. This is an average score, but again 40 minutes less than the Latitude 7410 Chromebook.

Overall, I found the battery life to be a disappointment. Many Chromebooks last much longer thanks to the overall efficiency of Chrome OS. Either the AMD CPU is not very energy efficient, or Lenovo has tuned it more to performance than battery life. In any case, you want to have your power supply with you for longer working days.

Our opinion

The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook has a target group and for this target group its strengths. However, it's not the best performing Chromebook we've used, nor is it the most durable on a single charge of the battery. It's as well built as ThinkPads always and takes on the Latitude 7410 Chromebook – the other enterprise Chromebook we tested – with the added flexibility of a convertible 2-in-1 device.

However, being Google Think-enabled is the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook's only real claim to fame. That explains the relatively high price, which is well above what a typical Chromebook buyer should pay.

Are there alternatives?

We've mentioned the Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook a few times, and it's a comparable computer that isn't a clamshell. It's also significantly more expensive, costing $ 1,900 for a computer with a Core i5, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and a 4K display.

You can also consider the HP Pro c645 Chromebook Enterprise if it ever releases. The Acer Chromebook Enterprise Flip 13 is available now, offering the same Google Enterprise features in a 2-in-1 format for $ 1,300 – though you only get one 8th Gen Core i7 CPU. You will likely appreciate the 2,256 x 1,504 3: 2 display.

If you don't need the business features, then chances are you'll be looking at the Google Pixelbook Go, our pick as the best Chromebook you can buy. It's cheaper too, but it's also only for consumer use. As such, corporate buyers should consider one of the other machines on this list of alternatives.

How long it will take?

The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook is built to last for years, and its components should keep Chrome OS running for just as long.

However, the one-year warranty is disappointing for an enterprise-class laptop.

Should you buy it?

For the average Chromebook buyer, no. It's a decent option for the corporate Chromebook user, but there are better Chromebooks out there for the average person.

Editor's recommendations




What Is The Effect Of Blue Light On The Skin?

Whether we're protecting our skin from the sun or protecting it from the aging effects of gravity, it sometimes feels like our complexion is being attacked on all sides. And with the increase in screen time due to the pandemic, we can add another attacker to the list: blue light. This type of harmful light comes towards us from multiple sources – not only does blue light come from the sun, but also from the screen of your cell phone, computer, television, and most lightbulbs. In short, our skin is exposed to a potential source of damage for a large portion of your day each day. Here you will find all the information about whether artificial blue light is harmful and what you can do about it.

Man looking at laptop

What is blue light?

Blue light is simply light on that blue end of the visible light spectrum, which is within the wavelength of 400 to 450 nanometers. This is a short wavelength that has a higher energy output and, unfortunately, can cause greater damage to the skin. As mentioned earlier, blue light is not only found in sunlight, it is equally important that it emanates from electronic devices that are now integrated into most people's daily lives. According to Brian Goodwin, Eminence Organics international trainerWe are typically exposed to blue light between your mobile phone and the computer screen for more than 13 hours a day. Due to the long daily exposure times and the high potential for skin damage, blue light could be the number one enemy of our skin health.

What do we know about the dangers of blue light?

Blue light first got a bad rap when people noticed that it was related to poor quality sleep. Late night hours in bed scrolling through your phone resulted in restless nights, and scientists soon discovered why. According to Harvard Health, blue light at night, suppresses the secretion of melatonin, the hormone that affects the circadian rhythms that plan your sleep / wake cycle. With an out of whacked sleep cycle, many people don't get enough sleep and are open to health problems like depression, diabetes, and cardiovascular problems.

A good night's sleep isn't the only thing at risk. Exposure of the eyes to blue light was one of the other potential problems that professionals first pointed out. The cornea and lens do not filter out blue light, so it goes straight to the fundus. And a A study by the University of Toledo found that blue light "converts vital molecules in the retina of the eye into cell killers that damage the retina," leading to conditions like macular degeneration. Although the experiments were only performed in a laboratory and not on eyes, the potential for eye damage from blue light appears problematic.

Why is blue light harmful to your skin?

With blue light making waves in sleep and eye health, it's no surprise that potentially damaging effects on skin health have also been discovered. in contrast to others Environmental stressors for the skin – like sunlight and UV rays – there is no heat, no burns. However, don't let the lack of immediate effects fool you. Visible light, especially in the blue wavelength, has become a hot topic in skin care as there is increasing evidence to support its contribution to photoaging, including wrinkles, worsening skin laxity, and hyperpigmentation.

Visible light, especially in the blue wavelength, has become a hot topic in skin care as there is increasing evidence to support its contribution to photoaging, including wrinkles, worsening skin laxity, and hyperpigmentation.

Inflammation and free radicals

Academic studies like that The 2010 Journal of Investigative Dermatology found that exposure of the skin to the blue light we get from the sun causes more pigment, redness, and puffiness than when the same person's skin was exposed to similar UVA rays. This is supported by a 2015 study published in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, which concluded that exposure to blue light can stimulate the production of free radicals in the skin, a major cause of premature visible signs of aging. The free radicals generated create unstable molecules, which leads to inflammation that attacks the cells.
Infographic of blue light stimulated free radicals that attack a skin cell

So if we know that blue light is dangerous to our skin, how does it actually cause harm and what are the effects? When blue light puts pressure on the skin, it reacts with inflammation, which leads to swelling and redness. It also creates free radicals that damage the skin by damaging DNA and leading to weakened collagen and elastin. With compromised collagen and elastin, the skin becomes uneven, creating lines and wrinkles. Free radical damage also cause it Hyperpigmentation which leads to more signs of aging like dark spots. In summary, Brian outlines our body's alarming reaction to blue light: “The skin reacts by immediately protecting itself with inflammation that causes signs of swelling and redness. This triggers a chain of other events that cause symptoms in the skin, such as: B. Hyperpigmentation and a faster breakdown of collagen and elastin. "

How do we protect our skin when we sit in front of our devices for most of the day?

Cocoa seed extract: the blue light skin protection

Researchers have found that concentrated natural cocoa seed extract protects the skin from blue light damage by blocking the skin's blue light receptor cells. A decrease in cell activity in these blue light receptors decreases free radical damage and increases collagen and elastin production in the skin.

This unique extract contains three beneficial, naturally occurring components. These are peptides, saccharides and antioxidants that address the negative effects of blue light such as collagen breakdown, elastin breakdown and hyperpigmentation. Peptides in cocoa seed extract are a chain of amino acids that protect the skin from blue light stress and promote collagen and elastin strengthening. Polyphenols are groups of organic compounds that have antioxidant properties for the skin and protect the skin from the free radicals produced by blue light. After all, saccharides are sugars that draw water into the skin. They help prevent and treat the possible dehydration caused by blue light.

At Eminence Organics, we have formulated a range of all SPF mineral moisturizers that are silicone-free, use non-nano-zinc oxide technology, and help with environmental stressors. From our newest line of SPF moisturizers, one is particularly useful for improving the appearance of skin exposed to blue light – The Lilikoi Daily Defense Moisturizer SPF 40. This lightweight daily moisturizer contains cocoa seed extract, Satsuma mandarin peel and SPF 40, all mineral protectants to protect the skin from blue light stress and pollution.

What is most alarming about blue light? Let us know in the comments below or share with us on social media. If you want lto earn You can find more information about our SPF moisturizers in our spa locator. There you will find an Eminence Organics Spa partner near you.

Product selection

Lilikoi Daily Defense Moisturizing Cream SPF 40

Lilikoi Daily Defense Moisturizing Cream SPF 40

VIEW PRODUCT

This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for accuracy and completeness.

The Importance of Structured Training Programs in Recovery

What if I told you that by improving your exercise program, you could dramatically improve your recovery and results?

In Part 1 of this Train Hard, Recover Harder series, I explained that exercise is one of many stressors your body has to contend with, and that stress management is the key strategy to increasing your ability to train hard and recover harder .

Most of us consider stress management to be the way to deal with our grumpy boss, sloppy kids, an empty bank account, or other everyday worries. While using strategies to manage this type of stress is beneficial, I will focus on managing your exercise stress.

By focusing your attention on the input (training stress), you can increase the output (recovery and adaptation). Unfortunately, most of the people who asked me for tips on how to improve recovery have brought things backwards.

You are desperately trying to restore poorly designed exercise programs with junk volumes.

This thinking is like closing the stable door after the horse is locked. It is too late.

The principles of designing exercise programs

I believe in the importance of programming in order to achieve your fitness goals. Your progress can go from good to great if you properly understand the basic principles of programming.

I've seen this in my training and with countless customers as I've refined my approach to programming.

I've learned programming principles that I really believe will take your training to the next level during this time.

By focusing on delivering efficient exercise stress, you make recovery easier. A good recovery starts with great programming.

Intelligent program design = fatigue management

But first let me explain how you, and so many others, including my younger, dumber self, put yourself in a position where our training turns recovery into an uphill battle.

A workout based on FOMO

Many motivated, disciplined and hard training gym rats fall victim to training based on the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

This FOMO means that we try to include every conceivable exercise in our program without considering the toll that will be put on our recovery. The days off at the gym are getting shorter and shorter as we worry that a day without a workout is a day without progress.

Social media plays a major role in this.

In the past, you've only seen other people's elevators who happened to be in the gym for 60 to 90 minutes like you. We are now seeing a highlight role of people's PRs on social media. Instagram is full of hundreds of weird, wacky, Frankenstein exercises as people vie for attention.

As a result, we can compare everything we do in the gym to millions of others.

  • You see one of your favorite athletes doing an exercise.
  • You see another athlete doing a different variation.
  • You see a successful trainer extolling the virtues of another exercise.
  • You see a celebrity influencer doing another.
  • Before considering the exercises you liked in the last article you read or any seminar you attended.

You feel compelled to include all of these exercises in your FOMO program to reap the benefits of each. All of these exercises could have value in their own right.

However, if they are randomly stacked on top of each other, they will become smaller than the sum of their parts.

Some are useful and some are redundant, while others just don't suit your needs.

What they have in common is that they all eat into your recovery reserves.

When you follow a program with such a bloated list of exercises, a huge recovery trench is dug that even the most advanced recovery protocols cannot fix.

The other consequence of social media is that #NoDaysOff B.S. We have been led to believe that we must all get up at 5 a.m. to meditate before we can tackle the grind and play full #Beastmode in the gym and office.

Now I'm not knocking on hard work. It's important, but the mindless attempt to push the limits 365 days a year is a recipe for burnout and failure.

You need to have some downtime for your body to recover and adjust.

Unfortunately, attitudes toward climb and grind have led many fitness enthusiasts to follow exercise plans that require them to set up their home at the gym. Exercising seven days a week probably isn't a good idea even if it's your job, and let's face it, nobody is paying you to exercise.

Instead of feeling guilty about not going to the gym a few days a week, realize that this is what you need. This mindset requires discipline.

If you're like me, you enjoy the challenge of training. The gym is part of your routine and doesn't require motivation or discipline. However, a day off requires some discipline.

This more is better approach ends up with exercising every day doing too many different exercises with many more sets than you need to.

Your workout is full of junk volumes.

I bet you've heard the saying, "You can't overdo a bad diet."

You have likely knowingly told a friend or co-worker that they wanted to lose a few pounds and felt complacent and complacent while sharing your wisdom.

Have you ever thought about it::

  • "Can't restore a crappy junk volume exercise regimen?"
  • "That this could be exactly what you were trying to do?"
  • "Could this be the exact reason you haven't made any noticeable progress in vivid memory?"

Most people encounter this situation by continuing to hit the ground running and focus on moving forward with their recovery. They invest in all kinds of recovery modalities but never seem to fix the problem. That's because they have things backwards.

Instead of dealing with the symptoms of a poor recovery, they should target the root cause.

Train Smart to Maximize Recovery

Whatever your physical goals, you have to train to achieve them and you have to train hard. It would help if you prepared wisely too.

In other words, smart training is hard training, but hard training is not necessarily intelligent.

Training to build muscle is tiring in nature. If you plan your workouts intelligently, you can manage that session-to-session fatigue to keep moving forward.

However, if you turn on full #Beastmode every time you walk into the gym, workout to crush a muscle, and half kill yourself, the fatigue will build up very quickly – too quickly. Your body cannot recover and adapt. You dug a hole too deep.

The goal of your workout isn't just to recover. It's customizable!

Burying yourself in the gym might be the right thing to do. It may have a cathartic quality, but it will limit your results if you do it every time. Even with sleep, diet, and stress under control, there is only so much pressure you can do before you break up.

By shifting your recovery considerations to improving exercise dose optimization, you can improve them dramatically. This turnaround means better training, better recovery from training, less risk of injury, and better results.

To turn your thinking around and maximize your recovery, I want you to understand four basic principles in designing your exercise program.

These principles go a long way toward developing a program that offers the greatest potential for your high quality training stimulus and optimal recovery capacity:

  1. Your personal weekly training volume milestones
  2. Muscle-specific stimulus recovery fit curves
  3. The attraction: fatigue ratio of different exercises
  4. Relative intensity

Minimum Effect Volume (MEV) and Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)

Dr. Mike Israetel is primarily responsible for popularizing the concepts of volume landmarks. There is a continuum from the minimum effective volume (MEV) to the maximum recoverable volume (MRV).

When you train harder, there is potential for further progress as long as you don't exceed your ability to recover. Identifying your MRV is important information to know as you design your program.

Your MRV consists of two components::

  1. Your systemic MRV
  2. A body part-specific MRV

For exampleFrom a systemic point of view, you can potentially do five hard workouts per week with 16 work sets per muscle group per week.

Note. That's only an example; Please do not misunderstand it as an instruction to train five days a week with 16 weekly sets per body part.

Having a reasonable idea of ​​your MRV is crucial in developing a framework for building your week of training.

Maximize muscle stimulation

Body part specific MRVs can change dramatically. By dealing with it::

  • You can refine your program to go from good to great.
  • Some of your muscles may react differently than others.
  • Some muscles may tolerate higher exercise volumes, intensities, or frequencies.
  • Other muscles can achieve the same training effect with a lower stimulus.

Understanding this will enable you to program your workouts with an extreme level of accuracy and efficiency. You can minimize the volume of junk and maximize stimulation. This program allows for better recovery than the same treatment for each muscle group.

For example:

  • Your quads may only tolerate six sets done twice a week for a weekly MRV of 12 sets.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, you may find that your rear delts get an effective workout from six sets in one session, but can recover well from 24 sets a week.

In the meantime, your other muscle groups can drop in different places on the spectrum.

Knowing this, you can adjust the weekly volumes and frequencies for each muscle to optimize your training split.

By doing this, you've also increased your recovery capacity.

Establishing your system and muscle group volume tolerance takes time and attention to detail, but is well worth it.

Once you have this information, you can move from general cookie cutting plans to truly individualized programming. Your results will improve as a result.

Adjustment of stimulus recovery

Recovery is a return to baseline, and adjustment is when your body surpasses its previous baseline to an improved performance level or increased muscle size.

You don't just want to recover from exercise. You want to make adjustments.

Just as different muscle groups have different volume tolerances, they also have different SRA curves (Stimulus Recovery Adaptation). Several factors play a role in SRA curves.

The main points that you need to consider are::

  • The training frequency for each body part should depend on its SRA curve.
  • Factors such as the size of the muscle, its structure, function, the fiber type ratio, and the muscle damage caused by exercise all influence the SRA timeframe
  • Exercises that stretch a muscle a lot tend to cause more damage. This damage elongates the muscle's SRA curve.
  • Exercising with a larger ROM usually results in increased systemic fatigue, which slows the SRA curves.

The SRA curve of a muscle is relevant for determining your training frequency.

In an ideal world, you would structure your workout so that every muscle group is hit again at the peak of its adaptation curve. This structuring means that your exercise program may not be symmetrical.

The importance of structured training programs for recovery - fitness, bodybuilding, recovery, DOMS, elite training programs, adrenal fatigue, burnout, goal planning, training programs, training frequency, strength program, compound exercises, training stressors, individual training

Source: Is Lifting Heavy Weight Important To Building Muscle Size?

Exercise frequency is an important exercise variable and deserves the attention it needs to optimize your results.

Looking at exercise frequency is a good place to start::

  • Determine how many days a week you can exercise.
  • Determining how many hard workouts to do each week is a good start to managing your training stress.

It's just a start, however. I urge you to take yourself to a higher level by thinking about the frequency of training. Instead of being satisfied with the answer:

"How many days a week should I exercise?" Also, answer, "How many days a week should I exercise each muscle group?"

When you find the answer to it, then you can create the ideal weekly workout plan for you.

Your decision about the frequency to use for each muscle group should be influenced by the factors I set out in the previous bullet list. Although there are several factors to consider, the difference in the SRA curve of each muscle is relatively small.

This difference is small, but significant.

You know that intuitively. You can narrow it down to a few days. For bodybuilding training, this is usually 24 to 72 hours.

Research has shown that training one muscle 2-4 times a week is best when your goal is muscle growth. Once you can determine where each muscle fits in this area, you can unlock your growth potential by training each muscle at the perfect frequency.

Some muscles work best for two sessions a week, while others only respond when you press 3, 4, or even 5 times a week.

From years of experience with countless customers, I've created the following guidelines to give you a starting point::

  • 2 x per week: Quads, hamstrings, glutes, chest, anterior delts
  • 3 times a week: Back, triceps
  • 4 times a week: Biceps, calves, and posterior and lateral delts

Note. These are just averages based on my experience. You need to experiment a little to find your optimal training frequency.

Stimulus Fatigue Ratio (SFR) explained

I want you to look at the final concept from a program design point of view: the Stimulus Fatigue Ratio (SFR).

SFR is the amount of muscle building adjustments that exercise can give you in relation to the fatigue it creates and what it takes to recover. Some popular exercises have a bad SFR when it comes to hypertrophy.

The ideal exercise creates a high stimulus for a low rate of fatigue.

Choosing exercises that put tension through the target muscle and fit your structure is a good starting point for controlling your level of fatigue.

When evaluating a prospect's program, I often see conventional deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, and rack pulls in their plans. These are good exercises when deadlift strength development is your primary goal.

However, these exercises don't rank high if hypertrophy is the target when looking at SFR.

They have all caused significant fatigue with little muscle building stimulus::

  • You consume a lot of weight.
  • It is necessary that you expend a lot of energy to get upset
  • Need long warm-up exercises
  • Quickly drain your body's resources while creating a negative return on hypertrophy.

Traditional deadlifts involve little eccentric loading, sumo deadlifts are just one way of moving the most weight with the least amount of mechanical work, and rack and pinion trains are usually just a ego trip.

In short, they are not a great choice for stimulating muscle growth and they will tire you out so much that there is not much else you can do in your workout.

Choosing exercises with better SFR will help you build muscle more efficiently.

How to rate SFR

Exercises with a larger ROM put a lot of strain on a muscle, require great dexterity, coordination, and stability, and are more difficult to recover.

As a rule of thumb, it is harder to recover from barbell work than it is from dumbbell work.

Dumbbell movements are usually harder to recover from equivalents performed with cables or fixed machines.

Perfect doesn't exist

It is important to understand that nothing is perfect. There is no exercise that creates a muscle-building stimulus without fatigue.

  • To get results from training, you have to work hard.
  • Hard work guarantees fatigue.
  • You cannot eliminate fatigue, but you should try to maximize the stimulus for each unit of fatigue created.

Often times, when I look back on the exercises that I have identified as being featured frequently in a prospect's programs, it means choosing Romanian deadlifts over traditional deadlifts and sumo deadlifts. And the choice of rack pulls as superior for hamstring growth.

Overdressed

I strongly believe that compound barbell exercises should be the foundation of your workout. This does not mean that dumbbells, cables, machines, and isolation exercises are worthless.

We have been brainwashed to believe that the best exercises are compound barbell exercises. At the same time, these are excellent exercises. They are not always the best choice.

The best exercise is the one that best achieves the desired stimulation.

It also has to take into account your physical abilities at that moment. If you do four exercises for quads in one leg workout, doing squats, front squats, squats, and leg presses, it is brutal.

These are undoubtedly great exercises that produce high levels of stimulus but also produce high levels of fatigue.

After back squats, front squats, and mince squats, your legs are likely to feel like jelly. As a result, your leg press performance would likely be pathetic.

This fatigue negates its theoretically high irritation value.

If you are so exhausted from the previous three exercises, you may not have the psychological willpower and exertion required to create any significant stimulus for the leg press.

At this point they are an exercise to create minimal stimulus fatigue.

Even if you could overdo yourself to put a decent amount of pressure on the leg press, there is a risk that you will drive the fatigue so high that you will blow right past your quad MRV.

You would dig yourself a massive recreational ditch to climb out of before your next leg session. That makes the sets of leg presses junk volume.

By definition, when you exceed the MRV of a muscle group, you have exceeded its ability to recover. The stimulus may be high, but the fatigue is even higher.

That's a crappy SFR ratio.

This fatigue will slow your SRA curve and means your legs are unlikely to recover for the next session. The selection of these four compound lifts seems big and smart, but it isn't. You would go to tremendous effort to diminish the results.

A smarter choice in this example would be::

  1. Back squats
  2. Split squats
  3. Leg press
  4. Leg extension

These exercises still produce adequate stimulus, but the fatigue produced is less. You are also switching from complex multi-joint exercises that require high internal stability to machine-based single joint exercises that provide external stability.

Taking advantage of external stability at the end of a session when you are tired is a wise decision.

This means that you can make the target muscle the limiting factor without wasting energy on stability and coordination.

If building muscle is the goal, you want the target muscle to be the limiting factor, and not your ability to stay erect.

Too much muscle stimulation leads to unsustainable fatigue

Creating a lot of tension in the extended position of an exercise creates a strong stimulus to growth.

In a 2014 study, two groups trained with the same range of motion, but group training with longer muscle lengths not only gained more muscle, but also retained more strength and size after a training period.

The stretch is a good reason to exercise with a full range of motion. Note, however, that some exercises can have the same range of motion but different levels of tension in the stretched position.

Also, keep in mind that too much stimulus can bring fatigue to unsustainable levels. Because of this, when planning your workout, consider how much muscle damage a particular exercise will cause.

Stretching has a major impact on muscle damage under load within an exercise. Using the hamstrings as an example, you can compare Romanian Deadlifts (RDL) and lying leg curls.

The RDL puts extreme stress on the hamstrings.

For laypeople, the weight at the bottom is hardest and heaviest when the muscle is fully extended. RDLs are excellent choices, but you should be aware of the consequences of the extreme tension they create in the extended position.

The RDL is a barbell lift that is heavy to load. It also puts strain on the glutes, spine erectors, lats, and grip, causing a lot of muscle damage.

  • Conversely, the lying leg curl challenges the hamstrings in their fully shortened position, and there is relatively little stretch under load.
  • As a result, hamstring sore muscles and SRA curves are longer when exercising with RDLs than with lying leg curls.
  • Therefore, you may only be able to exercise hamstrings with severe RDLs once a week. You can increase the frequency to two or even three times a week by using lying leg curls in other sessions.

Manage the relative training intensity versus recovery reserves

The relative intensity is a measure of the effort. It's often used sentence by sentence to assess how close you have come to failure. Repetitions in Reserve (RIR) are a widely used metric to assess this. Two RIRs mean you stopped a set of two reps in reserve. One RIR corresponds to one in reserve; 0 RIR is when you couldn't do any more repetitions.

Sometimes people approach the relative intensity from a slightly different angle. They focus on the perceived difficulty or exertion of a set or training session. This is known as the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). On the RPE scale, an effort of 10/10 is a maximum effort. This corresponds to 0 RIR.

The exact terminology of RIR versus RPE doesn't matter. The point is, both are useful methods of quantifying your efforts, the difficulty of a set, and your training. This all adds to the relative intensity of your workout.

Managing your relative intensity can be a useful tool for providing an effective training stimulus without digging too deep into your recovery reserves.

Exercise occasionally to fail

Imagine the most challenging session you have ever done. Every sentence is doomed to fail. Maybe even a few drop sets and forced reps. Recall how you felt during this session.

You were probably a sweaty, broken mess that spread on the floor, wondering why you voluntarily underwent this torture.

During the session, your muscles burned and waves of nausea flooded you. In the end, you felt utterly obliterated and it took you forever to drag yourself out of the gym.

If we class this as a 10/10 attempt, I would suggest that you rarely get a 10/10 hit in order to get the best possible profits. A 10/10 session can be beneficial if done occasionally. However, it will cause you to exceed your ability to recover if done all the time.

Instead of chasing a 10 every session, you probably want to get an 8/10 most of the time. If time demands and progress dictates, dive into the 9-10 / 10 area.

Go there occasionally but don't make it your default.

When you hang out in the 8/10 range on average, you know you are posing a muscle challenge, a growth stimulus, and a stimulus to recover from.

  • Do this by bringing most sets of free weight compound exercises to 2-3 RIR.
  • Push machine-based connections a little closer to failure by usually staying at 1-2 RIR.
  • Then send the single joint exercises in full and press 0-1 RIR regularly.

Doing this is still tough training. It's smart too. It enables recovery. With recovery, there is adjustment. Adaptation can be seen as progress in this context.

Progress on the weights you've lifted, the number of repetitions, and the total number of sets you can do. Long story short, it means bigger and stronger muscles.

The benefits of a regular 8/10 workout are the benefits::

  • It provides an efficient incentive.
  • Sessions can be completed in 45-70 minutes and you can move on to your day after a quick shower and bite to eat.
  • You can exercise frequently.
  • You reduce the risk of injury.
  • You don't worry about how difficult each visit to the gym is.
  • You make substantial profits.

On the other hand, batting 10/10 usually plays out like this::

  • There is an incentive.
  • Sessions last 70 to 120 minutes, and it takes you 20 minutes to collect enough to get into the shower. The tightening happens in slow motion. Eating a meal … forget it, you still feel sick. All in all, it takes about an hour after the session to begin to feel vaguely human.
  • You can't exercise as often – recovery will take a few more days, and the debilitating DOMS mean that exercise 3-4 times a week is the vaguely sustainable maximum (even if it pushes it forward).
  • They increase the risk of injury.
  • Most of the sessions involve getting excited, using stimulants, and creating a lot of anxiety about how difficult each visit to the gym is.
  • You will likely burn out or be injured, or both.

Any workout like this is a fake economy. It takes more than there is and limits all the training you can handle.

Less overall training = fewer gains

Exercise training program design – cook to be a master chef

To create a great program that will deliver results and maximize recovery, it is important not to think in a vacuum or to look at the world through a straw. All training variables are linked and have a mutual effect. Finding the ideal mix of all variables is critical to great results.

Factors to consider when composing an exercise program::

  • Your total and muscle-specific training volume
  • Recovery periods for each muscle
  • Exercise selection and SFR
  • Relative intensity

When you consider these factors when planning a program, rather than just following a training template, it is like moving from a cook to a cook. A chef follows a set recipe, and a chef uses his or her taste and judgment to make micro-adjustments that take a dish to award-winning levels.

They understand how all ingredients complement each other and when a little more of an ingredient makes all the difference. This enables them to take the same ingredients and turn them into a Michelin star quality dish.

Understanding the training principles in this article can turn you from a training chef to a master chef. You don't have to follow program templates with crossed fingers for them to work.

Instead, you know what it takes to balance stimulus and recovery and get great results.