Health and Fitness

What size Gymball do you need

What is an Gymball ball?

Gym balls are also known as exercise balls their very versatile and can used for many different types of exercise, one benefit of using a gym ball with dumbells can be that it is a convenient, low cost and space saving way to train at home. It can also improve your strength and burn more calories than using a standard bench because you’ll be using more of your stabilising muscle for support.

Gymballs come in 3 sizes they are.

55cm

65cm

75cm

How do I choose whatGymball to buy?

It depends on your weight and height, the heavier you are the more you will compress the ball, so if you weigh more then you should buy the next size up for your height.

If you are of average weight for your height use the table below to decide which ball to buy.

55cm - 5′1” - 5′8”

65cm - 5′9” - 6′2”

75cm - 6′3” - 6′7”

They’re are balls available for people larger or smaller but this is the most popular sizes of gym ball on the market.

Since Wimbledon starts today and you’ll all be getting the tennis bug like everyone in the U.K does at this time of year I thought we’d look at Tennis elbow, you don’t have to play tennis to get it. 

Tennis elbow (medically known as Lateral epicondylitis) is a condition characterized by excruciating pain over the outer aspect of your elbow. This is one of the most prominent overuse injuries you can get. This is a misnomer; the disease can occur in other activities which also which involve extensive use of the forearm.

The main symptom of tennis elbow is recurrent pain over the outer aspect of upper limb, near to the elbow. Sometimes, the pain can radiate up to the wrist joint. The person can not lift or grasp any object; even writing becomes difficult in advanced cases. You can not extend your hand fully; pain in the elbow will restrict your normal activities.

Once started, the acute stage of pain will last for at least 6-12 weeks. It can remain for up to years in a milder form.

The cause of Tennis elbow is repeated minute tear in the tendons of the muscles. Initially the tear heals itself. But with repeated tear, the muscle and the whole tendon becomes inflamed. Collagen tissue comes out and aggravates the situation. There is formation of granulation tissue in the places of normal tendinous tissue. The friction against the bony prominence makes the condition worse.

The best way to treat a case of tennis elbow is complete rest. This will normalize the situation early. You may have to stop playing games if the condition does not improve.

Gradual stretching exercise will help in the betterment of the situation. Corticosteroids may be prescribed in refractory cases.

If medical management fails, surgical removal of the inflamed tendon and lengthening of the tendons will definitely improve the condition.

Amino acids are precursors of protein. Several different amino acids after joining by chemical bonds form a protein structure. The chemical and other properties of protein depend upon the sequence of amino acids in the chain.

There will be two separate protein molecules if the sequence of the amino acids is different, no matter if the combination of amino acids is same in two proteins.

Branched chain amino acids are non-linear amino acids containing aliphatic side chain. There are three amino acids in this category – valine, leucine and isoleucine. These three amino acids are very essential to build the skeletal and muscular structure in our body. They also produce different proteins in different combinations. At present, there is much discussion about branched chain amino acids in lowering mental fatigue as it is seen that they can reduce the serotonin level in the brain. They are also used to treat burn patients in their convalescence stage.

An essential amino acid is such that it can not be synthesized de novo, i.e. our body can not synthesize this amino acid from other resources.

Therefore, this group of amino acid has to be supplied by food. There are nine essential amino acids – lysine, leucine, isoleucine, histidine, valine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine and tryptophan.

The non-essential amino acids can be synthesized in our body. They are – alanine, cysteine, cystine, glutamic acid, glutathione, glycine, serine, taurine, threonine, asparagine and proline.

The healthy approach to weight loss involves daily workouts, adequate diet and proper sleep. There is no role of over enthusiastic dieting and crash exercise. Mother Nature has so created our body that it can not withstand fast transformations.

Suppose, you are living a really sedentary lifestyle and someday you are requested to run 100 meters sprint. You will injure yourself, if you do not break any leg bones. You will be demoralized and it will put your level of fitness further back.

Dieting also demands slow and steady reduction in the amount you eat. The diet you consume calories will supply the required energy when you are doing any exercise schedule. If you starve, your performance in the work out program will also suffer.

Lifestyle modification

Simple modifications in your lifestyle will make a huge difference. Just follow these simple steps –

If you have a pet, take him outside for regular walking.

Add 30 minutes extra to your domestic work like gardening, dusting, cleaning etc.

Engage in any hobby that demands outdoor activity like hiking.

If travelling for a short distance like to the shop for a paper, use your feet.

If you can park your car at a distance from your destination. Take a quick walk from there.

Avoid sending e-mails to office colleagues. Go and personally meet him with a smile. Your PR (Personal Relations) will go up.

Shin splints are injuries over the frontal aspect of the lower leg. It is not a disease by itself, but a combination of symptoms for which there may be number of reasons.

It is an aftereffect of an inflammation of the periosteum (covering of the bone) of the lower limb (tibia) or due to injury to the posterior peroneal tendon along with adjacent musculature. According to sports medicine, shin splints occur due to overuse of the lower limb.

The pain in shin splints characteristically occurs to the frontal aspect of the shin bone (tibia) area. The pain usually comes during the initial phase of exercise and gradually reduces as the person goes on doing exercise. In the beginning, the pain is dull aching in its nature. But after some time, with continuing inflammatory process, it becomes so intense, that the affected person is forced to stop doing exercise. There may be swelling over the same area in advanced cases of shin splint.

The first and foremost thing to do in a case of shin splints is to stop doing any kind of exercise. You can apply ice over the area to reduce pain, but never massage the area. Stretching of the muscles of the lower limb is also helpful. You may try putting some shock absorbing insoles inside your shoe. Oral anti inflamatory pain killer medicine is prescribed in resistant cases.

Are you continuing your morning session of running even you are suffering from excruciating pain in the left heel? Have you ever felt a binding for treadmill running even when you are having a low grade fever? Continue to skip even when your friends have given up long before?

If anyone of these is true, you may be having some kind of exercise addiction my friend. Whereas regular exercise is necessary to keep your health hale and hearty, doing excessive exercise will cause no good, instead it can ruin your life.

How do you know that you are addicted to exercise? Let us find out –

• You feel extremely anxious if you miss any time of your daily exercise schedule.
• You continue to exercise each day, even when you are so sick that it is better to remain in the bed.
• You are missing classes, reaching late in the workplace or skipping social gathering to do some more exercise.
• If you miss any schedule, you do twice or thrice on the very next day.

If your answer is yes in any case, it is time to have a look into the deeper aspect of life as to who is driving your mind for doing exercise or how. Experts say that maintaining an exercise dairy will enable you to track the progress.

If you are progressing, there is no need to continue over exercising. It may land you in personal injury in a short time or you may become a patient of osteoarthritis at an early age.

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What happens when you exercise too much? 

Doing adequate exercise is healthy, but when a person gets obsessed with exercise, it becomes a disease. It is has multiple names – exercise addiction, exercise dependence, compulsive athleticism and exercise abuse.

This addiction will affect your career, family and other social engagements. Addiction to exercise is both physically and psychosocially damaging.

Those who are obsessed to exercising may have their own motivations. They feel a ‘high’ from doing exercise. It makes them feel they can adequately control their body weight and keep it in shape. They will do exercise even if they are injured or sick. They usually exercise alone to avoid any silly comments from others. They miss important arrangements, workplace, school, college and other social gatherings.

Recent studies have shown that, exercise addiction is also associated with other psychological disorders like bulimia nervosa. They become a serious patient of chronic fatigue syndrome. Long standing patients of exercise addiction suffer from stress fracture of long bones.

They are also a strong contender of nutritional disorders like protein deficiency, avitaminosis and others.

As they continue doing exercise even when injured, it calls for an immediate medical attention. They don’t feel like going to the doctors as they fear they will be banned doing exercise.

So you want to start your fitness regime. Most enthusiastic readers know that a fitness program consists of two things – regular exercises and proper diet. Let us discuss the things to consider when starting a fitness program.

Exercise: first of all, consult your doctor. He will tell you that whether you are fit for every type of exercises or you need to restrict some vigorous workouts. Exercise regimes depend upon the fitness level and health of each individual.

Never be hasty doing any sort of exercise. Slow but steady start is the key for optimum result. Mother Nature has created our body in such a way that it can not withstand any drastic changes in our homeostasis. Get some physical exercise equipment if you don’t want to join a gym.

Get some help from a personal trainer, this site heres some resources for you building muscle, Fat Loss, Dieting, subscribe to the Feed and read some fitness magazines. There are lots of videos for people who are new to exercise.

There is no reason for crash dieting. Experts say that skipping meals does harm rather than offering any beneficial effect to your body. When you are doing exercises, your body needs calories/energy. Otherwise, it will badly affect your work performance. You need to take fresh vegetables, complex carbohydrates, fiber and protein.

Take plenty of water. Avoid fat, junk foods, alcohol and tobacco as much as possible.

Runners Stitch What causes it? 

Are you an executive or living a sedentary life? Have you participated in sports activities with your office colleagues and felt pain over the upper abdomen?

You had a ‘stitch’.

Let’s see what stitch is all about. Classically, stitch is felt over the right upper abdomen. Sometimes it may also happen in the left upper abdomen. Or it may radiate to your back and limbs. Characteristically, stitch occurs to the novice person who takes part in exhaustive sports activities.

The stitch is caused due to insufficient blood supply to the main muscle of respiration – the diaphragm. During each inspiration, the diaphragm moves downwards and during each expiration it goes back upwards. Most of the abdominal organs are supported from the ligamental attachment from the lower surface of diaphragm. When running or doing any sort of exercise, the frequency of respiration increases.

The continuous to and fro movement causes the diaphragm to be fatigued.  Moreover, when we do exercise, there is an increased need for oxygen and other nutrients to our muscles.

If the oxygen supply to the diaphragm is less, it induces the nociceptors (pain receptors) present in the diaphragm – the stitch occurs. Stitches are most commonly felt over the right upper side due to the presence of the liver – the heaviest of all organs.

How Can you cure/relieve stitch?

You must bend over and try to touch your toes and put firm pressure over the pain areas. This will reduce the stitch. You must stop doing all activities while you feel any sort of pain as well.

It is better to ‘warm up’ your muscles before doing any kind of exercise.

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