Do Female Athletes Need More Sleep?

Do Female Athletes Need More Sleep?

Hadley Seward Do female athletes need more sleep? Female athletes face different challenges than our male counterparts. Women are more likely to sustain sports-related injuries than men . We experience hormonal fluctuations throughout the month that can affect how our bodies build or break down muscle. And, as it turns out, we have different sleep

How HIIT Changes Our Body

Evan Stevens Researchers looked at how HIIT (high intensity interval training) changed glucose metabolism in diabetic mice. We have known for a long time that exercise can be used to improve, treat, and prevent all manner of metabolic disease outside of actually curing the disease and the changes are independent of dietary factors. However, there

Improve Your Sprinting Technique & Form

John Trautmann is a 1992 US Olympian and 1- mile run World Record holder for men aged 45-49. Learn the key principles of sprinting form and technique as John demonstrates the mechanics involved: Sprinting Posture Relax your face, neck, and shoulders Run tall Keep your head up Arm Action Keep elbows bent at 90 degrees Drive

Muscles and Mind, Mind-Body

Yoga: A Mind-Body Practice That Improves the Brain

Contributed by Julia C. Basso, Post-doctoral Research Associate, New York University, Center for Neural Science Yoga: A Mind-Body Practice That Improves the Brain Yoga is an ancient Indian mind-body practice that focuses on both movement (asanas) and breath (pranayama).  It first came to the United States around the early 1900s, but it did not gain popularity

proper sprinting mechanics push vs pull sprinters

Push or Pull? Sprinting Mechanics and You

Evan Stevens One of the comments that I received after last weekend’s UWO Health and Wellness Symposium was what it meant to be a “push or pull sprinter.” This comes from a comment that Mr. Andy O’Brien made during his Developing a Body for Sport and Life about how every athlete is different – that

sleep apnea

Exercise, Airways, and Sleep Apnea Prevention

Gillian White, H.BSc., M.Sc., PhD (C) University of Toronto, Department of Exercise Sciences As previously discussed in the recent “What’s keeping you awake” article, both acute and chronic exercise has been shown to improve sleep quality. In a study using older adults (ages 50-76), sleep quality was shown to improve by 34%, sleep latency (how

Rowing Stroke

Mastering the Rowing Stroke

Dayton Kelly Mastering the Rowing Stroke or Tackling Technique on the Rowing Ergometer If you are anything like me before I started rowing, you are probably thinking to yourself, what is there to know about rowing? It’s easy, you just sit down and pull. And you would be right. It is that simple to make

4 Essential Exercises

Dayton Kelly Essential to the development of any strong training plan is the concept of muscular symmetry: following a training program that excludes certain muscle groups promotes injury and leads to a plateau in progress. This is especially relevant when strength training and is part of the reason we should lift weights. People who regularly

Health Challenges and Cleanses – A Help or Hinder?

Gillian White – MSc, PhD (Candidate), University of Toronto  Health Challenges and Cleanses – Helping or hindering for your resolutions. A personal account. I will start by saying that I am not the type of person to do cleanses, or really any particular diet for that matter. Generally speaking, I do the eat well as

Power Training for Runners

Evan Stevens This session had several talks that just went over things we’ve already heard at the conference thus far; there were only two that had some novel information and are presented here. The first talk in the session was about how power training in ‘ultra-marathon’ runners significantly improved measures of performance. In this study,

crunches

High-Speed Resistance Training

Sara Thompson – M.Sc. in Exercise Science High-speed resistance training (HSRT) is a relatively new approach to combat ailments associated with aging such as decreased muscle strength, decreased functional performance, and decreased quality of life. HSRT, which consists of fast, explosive movements, might be more effective than the more conventional low-speed resistance training in improving

Can Interval Training Help Mitigate Obesity?

Evan Stevens This session really just was in addition to all of the information we’ve already seen at the conference so far. Interval training is very important to health and can increase the palatability of exercise. The first study conducted a perceived exertion and ranked enjoyment test on continuous versus interval exercise when matched for