ab roller

How Core Strength Effects Athletic Performance

Alyssa Bialowas What is Core Strength? Your core is a complex series of muscles that extend far beyond your abs and is incorporated in almost every movement of the human body. Strong core muscles act as isometric or dynamic stabilizers for movement; transfers force and can initiate movement on its own. Why is Core Strength

Weight Training Techniques: Benefits of Unilateral Training

Weight Training Techniques: The Benefits of Unilateral Training

Alyssa Bialowas Unilateral exercises are single-leg or single-arm movements. The primary benefit of including unilateral exercises in your training programs is that the exerciser is using both sides of the body equally. Unilateral training results in the following benefits – Helps to avoid overtraining or overusing the dominant side Helps to isolate and correct muscle

Improve Aerobic Capacity: Tips and Tricks

How to Improve Your Aerobic Capacity – Tips & Tricks

Alyssa Bialowas Cardiovascular exercise improves the ability to both move oxygen and nutrients to working muscles and to remove metabolic waste, which allows muscles to continue to perform a particular activity. Your fitness level depends on how effectively you can use oxygen at any given point in time during exertion.   Exercise scientists previously thought

Exercising in the Heat

Exercising in the Heat

Alyssa Bialowas As temperatures continue to soar in the summer, it’s important to be cognizant of the effect that exercising in the heat has on your body. Intense exercise and a failure to modify the types of exercises and activities you participate in while in the direct sun can result in a rise in core

Glute Exercise

The Best Glute Exercises: How to fire your glutes!

Alyssa Bialowas About Your Glutes – The gluteus maximus is located in the buttocks and is connected to the coccyx/tailbone. This muscle is responsible for the movement of the hip and thigh, and also serves crucial body mechanics in sport and physical activity.   The glutes have three mains functions – Force production – Running,

Probiotics and Prebiotics

What Are Probiotics and Prebiotics?

Alyssa Bialowas In response to the current cultural nutrition trend surrounding probiotics and supplements, pharmacies and health food stores are stocking increased amounts of probiotic supplements. Is this just the latest health and nutrition trend or should you increase your consumption of probiotics and start to take probiotic supplements? Also, what are the benefits of

3 benefits of CrossFit

3 Benefits of CrossFit

Alyssa Biawolas CrossFit remains to be one of the most popular and most controversial fitness trends. It focuses on varying functional movements in a high-intensity setting (for a full definition see here). In the article, you will learn 3 benefits of CrossFit.  HIIT challenges people to improve their fitness by building their strength and enhancing their

downhill skier

4 Ways to Overcome Sports Performance Anxiety

Alyssa Bialowas Competition anxiety is common in athletes, especially if they struggle to deliver performance. It’s the feeling of stress and pressure right before a competition that can be harmful to athletes and if it’s bad enough, can even lead to an athlete dropping out of a competition altogether. With the high amount of pressure

people jumping

3 Benefits of Exercise and Mental Health

Alyssa Bialowas The Mental Benefits of Exercise While the physical benefits of exercise are well documented, there are numerous mental health benefits of exercise. If you’ve ever left a workout feeling on top of the world, you’ve experienced the mind-body link, but did you know physical exercise can also improve your mental health? Approximately one

Vegan athlete eating an apple

3 Important Things Athletes Should Consider Before Going Vegan

Alyssa Bialowas The vegan diet is becoming increasingly popular among the general population and is gaining momentum among athletes as well. While traditionally athlete diets have been rich in meat and animal byproducts such as eggs and milk, veganism turns the omnivorous athlete diet on its head. Veganism is a way of living that eliminates

Heavy ropes exercise

5 High-Intensity Interval Training Mistakes Athletes Make

Alyssa Bialowas High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is one of the hottest fitness trends right now, and because of this, many people have put their own spin on it to try and make it their own. When this happens, you don’t always reap the amazing benefits of HIIT and may end up doing more harm than

women up close working out

Sleep Deprived? Try This Type of Exercise.

A Review by Alyssa Bialowas Sleep deprivation is becoming more and more prevalent these days and unfortunately can have major health implications. Sleep influences everything from your mood to your weight to the sensitivity of tissues to insulin, and a lack of sleep can result in insulin resistance (De Souza et al. 2017). On top