Should You Stretch Before or After a Workout?

Some coaches, trainers and textbooks recommend stretching before and after your workout because it can help your performance and reduce the risk of injuries. However, numerous research studies has shown that some types of stretching can enhance your workout while others do not improve or reduce your athletic capabilities. Exercise physiologist Len Kravitz recommends that you perform dynamic stretching before your workout and static stretching afterward.

Dynamic Vs. Static
Dynamic flexibility is often used as a warmup to stimulate your nervous system and muscles to be better prepared for the upcoming activity. It involves moving your muscles and joints repetitively within your range of motion. The movement is usually specific to the exercise or sport that you're going to play. For example, soccer players warm up by doing leg and hip swings in different directions, and boxers do a couple of standing torso and shoulder twists while working on their footwork and punches. Static stretching, which involves stretching a muscle for 20 to 30 seconds, decreases neural stimulation to the muscles and enhances relaxation. This type of stretching is usually non-sports specific, working on fixed muscle groups instead of movement like dynamic stretching. Therefore, static stretching should be performed after a workout.

Effects of Stretching
Dynamic stretching has been shown to improve athletic performance before training. A study performed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that subjects who performed dynamic stretching had significantly improved their strength and power during the vertical jump test. The other two groups in which one group performed static stretching and the other group performed no stretching showed no positive or negative effects in the test. Static stretching can decrease athletes' sprinting ability. In a study performed at Middle Tennessee State University, soccer players who performed static stretching before a bout of 30-meter sprints resulted in slower performance than those who didn't perform static stretching. Researchers concluded that athletes who are in sports that require sprinting should avoid static stretching as part of their warmups.

Sample Stretches
Dynamic stretching emphasizes full-body movements that can be performed with just your body weight or with certain tools. These include clockwork lunges, yoga series such as Sun Salutation, martial art katas, medicine ball swings and chops and standing butt kicks. Simpler dynamic stretching can also include neck rolls, shoulder rolls and jumping jacks. Static stretching include all kinds of stretches that you may recall from your middle-school physical education classes, including the seated groin stretch, standing toe touch, standing thigh stretch and lateral neck stretch. Always maintain a steady breathing rhythm in all your stretches.

Warning
Stretching too quickly and too far -- and sometimes too eagerly -- can cause your muscle fibers to contract and shorten reflexively. This reaction is called a stretch reflex, which is your body's defense to avoid tearing of your own joints and muscles. This can cause the muscle to be less responsive to length change and more sensitive to pressure and touch.

Flat Abs in Zero Time

Do this quick circuit before heading out to your holiday BBQ. The three-move routine below was created by The Barre Code, a popular training studio known for their effective exercises and motivating instructors. Repeat the entire sequence five times for firm, flat abs, stat!

1. Oblique Knee Pull

Start standing, feet hip-width apart. Step your left foot back on a diagonal and reach your arms up and to the right. Tighten your core and drive your left knee toward your torso as you pull arms down toward left knee (as shown). Repeat quickly for 30 seconds; then switch sides.

2. Side Plank Leg Lift

Start in a side forearm plank, with your right elbow directly underneath your shoulder. Lift hips away from the ground and raise your left hand toward the ceiling. Now slowly lower your right hip to the ground, keeping the left leg stacked over the right. Drive your left elbow to your waist and lift your left leg 6-12 inches above your right (as shown). Lower leg to complete 1 rep. Do 30 reps; then switch sides.

3. L Crunch

Start seated with the legs extended in front of body. Raise your right leg to 45 degrees and grab behind your right calf or thigh. Engage your core and bend right knee toward torso (as shown), then release and extend the right leg long again to complete 1 rep. Keep your chin off your chest and your gaze high and long. Do 30 reps; then switch sides.

Daily Workout Routines to Gain Muscle Without a Gym

Building muscle doesn't have to just take place in the gym -- any form of resistance training can be beneficial for building muscle. While you may never reach the level of elite weightlifter or world-class bodybuilder when training at home, you can build enough muscle mass to improve your physique, increase your strength and boost your metabolism.

Workout Routine
Most people are familiar with basic body-weight exercises such as pushups, squats and crunches, so the temptation can be to perform these every day. However, muscles need rest to help them grow and can take around 48 hours to recover after exercise, according to the American Council on Exercise. Avoid the same muscle groups on consecutive days,as it can lead to burn out and won't help you build muscle. Opt instead to work your upper-body one day and your lower-body the next.

Upper-Body Training
Base your upper-body workouts around two exercises -- pushups and chinups. Pushups may seem basic, but there are lots of variations you can perform. If regular pushups are too easy, try pushups with a resistance band around your back, elevated pushups with your feet on a bench, or one-legged and one-armed variations, advises Eric Cressey, owner of Cressey Performance in Boston. Alternatively, go for knee pushups if you can't do body-weight ones yet. You can buy a door frame chinup bar from most sporting goods stores and perform narrow grip, neutral grip or wide grip chinups. Attach a band round the bar, place your knees in the loop and perform assisted chinups if you're not too confident with body-weight reps yet.




Lower-Body Training
The body-weight squat is your first port of call -- perform all reps going as low as you can while keeping your feet on the floor and your back straight. Once you can perform 10 perfect reps, try slowing down the tempo or jumping at the top. Lunges are slightly tougher than squats as they work each leg individually, which brings in an element of balance and coordination. Lunge forward, backward or to either side. These are both quadriceps-dominant movements, so to work your hamstrings, add in glute bridge raises, where you lie on the floor and lift your hips as high as you can, either with one or two feet on the floor. You can add core exercises such as planks, reverse crunches and rollouts to your lower-body sessions, too.

Considerations
Pick four or five exercises each session. Perform all your exercises for three sets of six to 12 reps with one to two minutes rest between sets, advise the American College of Sports Medicine. Once 12 reps becomes too easy, switch to a more challenging exercise variation. To add variety and extra muscular stimulation to your program, consider purchasing a set of adjustable dumbbells, a kettlebell or some more resistance bands. Building muscle also requires an increased caloric intake, so increase the amount you're eating, particularly from protein and carbohydrate-dense foods until you're gaining around 1/2 a pound each week. You also need rest, so take one full day of rest each week to give your muscles time to repair and recover.

Unusual Tips to Lose Stomach Fat And Get Flat Abs

To lose stomach fat, you need to burn more calories than you consume. You can do this through diet, exercise or both. While you may already know many of the common-sense tips for losing weight and pulling in your tummy, you might not know the less usual, even surprising pointers that can help.

Food and Drinks that Boost Metabolism
The antioxidants in green tea have been found to reduce amounts of the body's fat absorption while stimulating metabolism. Drinking green tea every day can boost your metabolism. Chocolate also has metabolism-boosting antioxidants. Sprinkle cinnamon on your food whenever you have the opportunity, since it's been found to reduce blood glucose. If you like spicy foods, you're in luck. Eating hot peppers, as well as the spice turmeric, boosts your metabolism, and the spiciness can cause you to eat more slowly, helping you control how much you eat.

Eat to Curb Hunger
Replace starchy carbohydrates with foods high in fiber because they make you feel fuller with fewer calories. High-fiber foods also take longer to digest and burn more calories in the digestion process. Try replacing your usual breakfast cereal with bran. Snack on cucumbers and celery. They're filling, hydrating and extremely low in calories. Also, choose legumes over meat as your meal's protein if you want to lower your cholesterol and lose weight. Legumes make you feel more full because they're high in fiber, and their effect on regulating your blood sugar helps you curb hunger for a longer period.

Exercise in Intervals
You can't spot-reduce or do an exercise to reduce stomach fat alone; you have to lose fat all over to lose inches off your waist. If you're looking for the most effective, time-saving exercise for fat loss, include bursts of high-intensity intervals in your cardio exercise activity, such as running or cycling. You'll burn more calories and release more fat-burning hormones, according to physiologist Jason Talanian, PhD. Also, you'll have a longer "after-burn" period by including high-intensity intervals that really challenge your muscles, so you benefit from a metabolism boost hours after your workout.

Do Ab Exercises that Recruit More Muscle
Ab exercises strengthen your abs so flat muscles grow beneath the stomach fat as you lose it. The Pilates roll-up is 30 percent more effective than crunches in giving you a six-pack since it's a wider motion range. The abdominal hold is also a more effective exercise in training your abs because it uses your lower body rather than your upper body as resistance, causing you to recruit your lower abs as well as your upper abs and giving you more weight resistance to challenge your muscles. To do it, sit on a chair with your hands on the edge, fingers facing forward. Pull in your abs and lift your body off the chair so your feet are 3 inches above the floor. Hold as long as you can and repeat. By working your arms and legs as well, this exercise burns more fat than the typical ab exercise.