Benefits of Resistance Bands During Exercise

1.Incredibly Cost-Effective

Resistance bands are inexpensive and can be purchased for under $10. Even more extensive kits, which may include DVDs and other exercise equipment, can be found for under $40.

2.Adaptable for Multiple Fitness Levels

Whether you're a beginner or an expert, resistance bands are for you. They come in a variety of resistances, including light, medium and heavy, and you can further adjust the intensity of your resistance-band workouts by giving the band more or less slack. You can even use multiple bands at once to increase the challenge.

3.Used with Familiar Exercises

You can often use familiar strength training moves with resistance bands, which means you don't need to learn a complicated new routine. For instance, resistance bands can replace the weights you use for biceps curls, or can increase the intensity of your push-ups. 

4.Whole-Body Exercises

Resistance bands can be used for a comprehensive, full-body workout that challenges virtually every major muscle group in your body.

5.Save on Storage Space

Resistance bands take up virtually no space to store them, which means you can use them at home even if you have very little extra space. When your workout is done, simply stash them in a drawer until your next session.

6.Excellent for Traveling

Resistance bands are lightweight and easily portable. You can stash them in your suitcase when traveling and use them to get a good workout right in your hotel room.

7.Add Variety

Your muscles quickly adapt to movements you do often, which is why adding variety to your workouts is key for challenging your muscles. Resistance bands can be alternated with free weights and exercise machines for ongoing variety.

8.Easy to Use Alone

It's not a good idea to lift heavy weights without an exercise buddy, but resistance bands can be safely used on your own. They're ideal for exercising any time, at home or on the road.

9.Can Be Combined with Other Equipment

Resistance bands are so versatile that you can even use them along with weights, allowing you to get the benefits of two types of exercises at once.

10.An Effective Workout

Resistance bands are incredibly simple, but they're also extremely effective at working your muscles. Additionally, resistance-band training can help you boost stamina, flexibility, range of motion and more.

6 Causes of Fatigue

1. Diet

A balanced diet of real, whole foods plays a huge role in maintaining proper energy levels. The most common dietary issues that cause fatigue are:

• Food sensitivities

• Histamine reactions

• Caffeine and sugar 

To optimize your diet and identify the foods that are triggering your fatigue, I recommend completing an elimination diet to determine which ones you are sensitive to.

2. Nutritional Deficiencies

Iron-deficiency and B-12 deficiency are fairly common causes of fatigue.

You can combat these nutritional deficiencies with a diet high in quality animal protein and colorful vegetables. I also recommend adding in iron or  B-12 supplements.

Furthermore, if you have one or more MTHFR mutation, your ability to convert B12 to its active form is reduced, I recommend a Methylation Support supplement. 

3. Infections

Gut infections such as Candida, parasites, and SIBO can all be underlying causes of fatigue. Other systemic infections, including reactivated Epstein-Barr or Lyme disease, can suppress the immune system and interfere with energy levels. If you have or suspect that you have one of these infections, you should treat them as soon as possible. 

4. Hashimoto's or Thyroid Dysfunction

Your thyroid powers every cell in your body through the hormones it produces and plays a huge role in your energy levels, body temperature, and metabolism.

So, as you can imagine, if you are low in these all-important thyroid hormones, you’ll experience fatigue and low energy.

The most common form of thyroid disease is Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune condition where your immune system attacks your thyroid, causing it to underproduce its hormones.

If you know or suspect Hashimoto’s may be causing your fatigue, check out the 4 Secrets to Beat Hashimoto's Symptoms that Your Doctor Will Never Tell You. 

5. Stress

In stressful situations, your body releases cortisol and a cascade of other hormones in order to help you overcome the stressor.

However, if you experience chronic stress you can deplete your stores of these hormones, putting you in a state of adrenal fatigue. And a side effect of adrenal fatigue, is actual physical fatigue.

To combat the effects of stress and adrenal fatigue I recommend practicing daily stress relief techniques, whether it’s meditation, yoga, or simply going on a walk or taking a relaxing bath. I also recommend taking an adrenal support supplement to relieve your symptoms while you restore healthy adrenal function.

6. Toxins

Having a high toxic burden is a strain on your body period, which can cause fatigue.

Here are four steps you can take to minimize your exposure to toxins on a daily basis:

• Filter your air

• Filter your water

• Buy clean food

• Buy clean body products (or make your own!)

Hit A Training Plateau? Try Negative Training

What Is Negative Training?

Negative rep training focuses on the negative, or eccentric, part of an exercise. It's the phase of the move where you are lowering the weight, not pressing it. An example is the stage of a squat when you're bending your knees and coming down to the bottom of the move or after you've pressed the barbell up in a bench press and are lowering it to your chest. This phase of the exercise should be slower and more controlled as you should being supporting and resisting the weight and not pushing it.

Build Mass

Negative rep training is useful for those who want to increase their muscle mass.  The technique overloads the muscles, helping to achieve hypertrophy. By overloading a muscle, you create small tears in its fibers and they rebuild larger each time, building up bigger and bigger muscles every time you challenge them.

Build Strength

When you use negative training at the beginning of your workout, you take advantage of your existing strength and rested muscles by pushing them to lift more. In his book on muscle and strength, James Stoppani notes that a lifter can resist 130 percent of his 1RM (the maximum amount of weight he can lift in one rep) when using negative rep training. By challenging your muscles in this way, you'll call upon more fast twitch muscle fibers to work through the lift. Your muscles will respond by rebuilding more and stronger fast twitch muscle fibers so that it can meet the challenge next time, building up your strength overall -- including the positive and concentric phase, not just in the negative portion of your exercises.

How to Negative Rep Train

If you want to give negative training a try, do it on the days when you have a lifting partner, someone who can help out during the positive phase of your exercises and be there to spot you during the negative phases. Typically negative training is accomplished by 1) adding manual resistance on the lowering phase of any lift 2) adjusting the weight lifted and lowered when using a selectorized plate machine (lighter when lifting and change to heavier when lowering), or 3) assisting your lifting partner through the concentric (lifting) phase with an amount of weight they could not lift on their own, and allowing them to lower the weight during the eccentric phase without assistance.  

You should do three or four sets that include negative reps, then perform two more sets of the same exercise reducing the weight to 75 percent of your 1RM while completing 10 to 12 reps.

Cautions

Negative rep training is extreme, providing an intensity that you'll enjoy but also one that you'll feel in the days following your training. Give your body the rest it needs both between sets and between negative training days. Between sets, allow yourself about three minutes of rest before hitting the weights again. Rest periods between negative training workouts should be a full week -- that's right, an entire seven days. Be prepared for the muscle soreness you'll experience from negative training to be just as intense as the workouts are. You will eventually get used to them and the severity of the discomfort will decrease, Also, don't push yourself to train if you're not feeling 100 percent. Negative training after a viral infection can compromise your health, too.

Benefits of Superset Workouts

What is a Superset?

A superset is simply the action of performing two exercises back to back with no rest period in between. This increases the intensity of your workout since you’re going from one move to another without resting first. You might choose to do two exercises that work opposing muscle groups (biceps/triceps, hams/quads) or exercises that target the same muscle group. There are also “giant sets” which typically involves doing 3 exercises back to back. 

The Benefits

1. Speed up workout time. While not the most important benefit, it is nice to be able to speed up a workout, particularly when you’re crunched for time. Supersets allow you to get through your workout very quickly without skipping exercises.

2. Burn more calories. When doing supersets, you’re essentially doing double the work in the same amount of time that it would take you to do a straight set but you’re working through the usual rest period. With supersets you rest only after the superset is completed (not in between 2 straight sets). The intensity of your workout is increased which will help you burn more calories.

3. Raise growth hormone levels. Women do not carry as much testosterone in their bodies as men. This is the biggest reason why men typically have more muscle mass and why women tend to have more body fat. Men and women rely on growth hormones for muscle growth and recovery though women rely on them much more heavily. Increasing muscle mass is what will help your body to burn more fat and get lean. The GH levels increase following a weight training workout and actually increase even further following superset workouts. GH will trigger the release of fat cells which then travel to the muscles to be burned and used as energy. The perfect recipe for fat loss.

4. Great for cardiovascular health. While supersetting during strength training workouts shouldn’t be a replacement for cardio, it definitely brings the cardio into weightlifting!

Tips for Successful Superset Workouts

To get even more from your superset workouts there are some important things to know. These tips will help you get the most from your supersets.

• You may need to drop the weight. If you’re used to lifting heavier, you might need to decrease the weight used if you’re doing supersets. Your muscles are going to tire more quickly and may not be able to lift as much as when you do straight sets.

• Increase rest period. Although you aren’t going to rest until a superset is completed, you’ll need to rest a bit longer than you normally would. This will give your muscles the time they need to replenish the energy required to perform the supersets successfully. Aim for no more than 1 to 2 minutes of rest.

• Change the order. It’s important to change the order in which you do the superset exercises. For example, if you’re doing a superset with opposing muscle groups (say, the hams and quads), don’t always do the hamstring exercise first.  Alternate and do the quadriceps exercise first from time to time to balance things out a bit.

• Minimize time. When you’re performing a superset you should move from one exercise to the next with no rest. The only “rest” time you’ll experience is the time it takes you to go from one exercise to the next. After you’ve completed the superset, then it’s time to take a little rest. The faster you’re able to switch from one exercise to the other, the more benefit you’ll get from utilizing the superset training technique.

Adding supersets into your workout not only gets you out of the gym faster (saving you time) but you’re also upping the intensity and benefits to your cardiovascular health at the same time.

That’s a win-win!

13 Non Toxic Ways To Keep Mosquitos Away

Homemade Citronella Candles

Citronella essential oil is one of the most effective natural mosquito repellents in the world and one of the best ways to take advantage of this wonderful oil is in citronella candles. These candles are easy to make, all natural and will release an aroma that keeps mosquitoes away. Place a few candles around your patio or garden and create a mosquito proof barrier!

Find out how to make these citronella candles here at GardenTherapy.ca

A Few Drops Of Lavender

Lavender is loved by humans all over the world, but mosquitoes hate it! To keep mosquitoes out of your home, add a drop of lavender to ribbon and place around open windows. The mosquitoes will certainly think twice about entering!

Simple Lavender Body Oil

Add 30 drops of lavender essential oil to two tablespoons of vegetable oil – such as olive oil – and rub onto exposed skin. Not only will you smell beautiful, but it will stop mosquitoes from landing on you!

Four Thieves Mosquito Repellent Spray

Four Thieve Bug Repellent works great to keep mosquitoes (and other flying bugs) away from you are your family. Best of all it has no harmful chemicals (like DEET), it’s so easy to make and uses ingredients you probably already have in your home or garden already. Spray this on your skin before heading outside.

Get the full tutorial for this mosquito repelling spray from here.

Bug Repellent Sunscreen

This sunscreen is multi-purpose – it protects from harmful UV sun rays like any good sunscreen, but it also repels bugs, including mosquitoes.

On top of that it’s all natural and contains none of the toxic chemicals found in many over-priced store-bought sunscreens.

Find out how to make this bug repellent sunscreen here.

Throw Rosemary On The Barbecue

Mosquitoes often strike while we are barbecuing, but this simple trick will turn your barbecue into a natural mosquito repellent, while also adding delicious flavor to your food!

Throw a few stalks of rosemary on the hot coals to give off a mosquito repelling aroma.

Plant Mosquito Repellent Plants

There are a number of plants that have mosquito repellent properties -  for example feverfew, citronella, catnip and lavender are four of the most effective. Plant these in flower beds or containers placed around your garden and keep mosquitoes away.

Here is a great article revealing 11 of the best mosquito repelling plants.

Eat More Garlic

Note: While this may repel mosquitoes, it may also repel fellow humans!

After eating lots of garlic, garlic oil is gently released from your pores. This garlic oil acts almost like a barrier between your skin and the mosquitoes.

Apply Neem Oil

Neem oil is a vegetable extracted from the Neem tree native to the Indian sub-continent – it is sometimes referred to as “the tree of life”.

Neem oil is a natural insecticide used on plants to keep harmful insects away, and it works the same way on humans. Apply neem oil to the skin and keep mosquitoes away.

Neem oil is available to buy from this page on Amazon.

Mosquito Repellent Drink

I’ve read a number of anecdotes which suggest that drinking apple cider vinegar is an effective mosquito repellent. Add one or two tablespoons of ACV to 16oz of water and consume. Sweeten with one tablespoon of honey to counteract the bitterness if you wish.

Further Reading: The Amazing Benefits Of Apple Cider Vinegar

Attract Bats

Bats can reportedly eat 1,000 mosquitoes per night. Attracting bats to your garden can help to significantly reduce the number of mosquitoes and reduce your chances of being bitten.

Here is a great article sharing some ideas to attract bats to your garden.

Eliminate Standing Water

Mosquitoes lay eggs in standing water. Getting rid of standing water will cut down the number of mosquitoes in the immediate vicinity. Standing water can include bird baths, puddles and pet water bowls. Make sure gutters are draining well and empty any garden items that collect water.

Make A Mosquito Trap

A homemade mosquito trap is another way to reduce the number of mosquitoes in the area. This trap uses CO2 to attract mosquitoes into a soda bottle from which they can’t escape.

Find out  this superpowered mosquito trap.

BONUS IDEA: Homemade Mosquito Repelling Incense

Make your own mosquito repelling incense. It’s a beautiful smelling incense without the toxic chemicals associated with regular mosquito incense coils. Did you know 12 hours of burning regular mosquito repelling coils is equivalent to filling a room with the smoke of 75-100 cigarettes? Instead make your own!

Get the full tutorial with step by step photos here.

There we have thirteen natural ways to keep mosquitoes away from your home, your garden, and from you this summer – and most importantly, we’ve done it without the use of any harmful chemicals!