27 March 2018 Author: Peter Rana
The most debilitating physical problem encountered during adulthood is the gradual loss of muscle. According to Ben Hurley, Professor of Exercise Physiology at the University of Maryland, “Women in their 40s and men in their 60s lose muscle strength at a rate of about 12% per decade".
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20 March 2018 Author: Peter Rana
Water accounts for about 60% of our body weight and plays a pretty darn important role in making sure our body functions normally. But there are a few myths about hydration that need clarifying.
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12 March 2018 Author: Peter Rana
Why it is that two individuals of a similar height and weight can have very different sized bodies?
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29 January 2018 Author: Peter Rana
Muscle cells, like any other cells of the body (liver, kidneys, skin, etc.), require energy to perform their normal function at rest; that is to say, the energy expenditure used outside of physical exertion. This is what is referred to as our Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR).
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22 January 2018 Author: Peter Rana
Why are we so committed to delivering supervised strength training to our members? Because we’ve always known it makes the difference between achieving or not the promises of a properly performed strength training programme. And now, a new study* from a team of researchers at Southampton Solent University in the UK has proven it - scientifically.
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30 October 2017 Author: Peter Rana
In a 2017 study*, researchers from the Universities of Potsdam (Germany), Heidelberg (Germany) and Groningen (The Netherlands) conducted a review of multiple studies to look at the difference supervised resistance training made to measures of balance and muscle strength compared to unsupervised in healthy older adults.
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11 September 2017 Author: Peter Rana
Your body composition plays a significant role in your metabolism.
Muscles have a large capillary system chiefly to meet their daily metabolic processes and to supply the high level of nutrients they need to function. This means that kg for kg muscles burn more calories than fat.
24 August 2017 Author: Peter Rana
One of the most common misconceptions about exercise is that it’s necessary to spend hours on end sweating up a storm to obtain worthwhile benefits like weight loss, muscle growth or the stamina of a marathoner.
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19 June 2017 Author: Peter Rana
Recently I had the good fortune to participate in a Biomechanics of Function workshop in America led by Dr Paul Juris, a noted kinesiologist specialising in motor skill development, sports performance enhancement and rehabilitation.
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15 May 2017 Author: Peter Rana
Not all fat is created equal. Whereas white fat has been known to store calories and be linked to weight gain, another type of fat - brown fat – burns calories to generate heat. Unfortunately, brown fat, found mainly in small mammals and human infants, diminishes with age.
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27 March 2017 Author: Peter Rana
In the 1950s cardiac patients were told that rest was the key to recovery. From the late 1960s to the turn of the century, the benefits of aerobic exercise were espoused – conditioning the heart to do work with less effort.
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13 March 2017 Author: Peter Rana
There’s no shortage of evidence around the effectiveness of high intensity strength training – you may have experienced the remarkable results for yourself. But to get the most reward from your efforts in the shortest amount of time, there are some rules you should lock in.
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27 February 2017 Author: Peter Rana
Most people associate strength training with getting ‘bigger’ as opposed to ‘smaller’. They perceive that strength training builds muscle and increases body weight, whereas cardiovascular training burns calories and decreases body weight.
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6 February 2017 Author: Peter Rana
A brand new, landmark research study conducted by Harvard scientists and published in the journal ‘Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise’ in 2016 reveals the REAL reason women should engage in strength training.
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1 August 2016 Author: Peter Rana
You might want to read this email while standing up. Or perhaps while taking the stairs at work or walking to lunch. Why? Because it’s possible to extend your exercise regime daily beyond your scheduled BodyTech Gym workouts.
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14 June 2016 Author: Peter Rana
When the late, great Muhammad Ali was asked how many sit-ups he did, he responded, “I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts. That’s what makes you a champion.”
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30 May 2016 Author: Peter Rana
One of the most common misperceptions about exercise is that it’s necessary to spend hours on end sweating buckets to obtain benefits like weight loss or muscle growth. So it’s easy to justify skipping a workout because you “don’t have enough time” to make it worthwhile. But the truth is, working harder rather than longer using short bursts of high-intensity exercise gets results.
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18 April 2016 Author: Peter Rana
Last year I was fortunate to attend the Resistance Exercise Conference (REC) in Minneapolis and to hear the keynote presenter, British researcher and sports science lecturer James Fisher. His message: "Resistance training reduces the risk of all-cause mortality." Or to put it another way, resistance training reduces our risk of dying from all causes.
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30 September 2015 Author: Peter Rana
International research wholeheartedly supports this. it teaches us that for the average man and woman to gain more muscle, strength, endurance and metabolism in a progressive strength training programme, the sessions need to be supervised.
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24 August 2015 Author: Peter Rana
The fact is, training effects are specific to the type of exercise used during the training. Or to put it another way, running may increase aerobic fitness measured during running, but aerobic fitness measured during swimming, even after significant running training, would remain unchanged unless you practiced swimming.
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13 May 2015 Author: Peter Rana
With aging, muscle becomes weaker for several reasons. Firstly, muscle fibre size decreases resulting in smaller, weaker muscles. Secondly, the number of fast muscle fibres (fibres that help us move quickly and powerfully) decreases causing both strength and power loss. Finally, we lose the ability over time to activate muscle ‘motor units’, a nervous system phenomenon, so that the fibres that remain in the muscle are not used.
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20 April 2015 Author: Peter Rana
We’ve all been sold on exercise as a ‘no sweat’ proposition; a little frequent effort is said to produce large benefits. While that’s great if it gets you off the sofa, the truth is it’s only the beginning if you want to significantly improve your health and vitality.
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12 April 2015 Author: Peter Rana
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been shown to significantly reduce fat, especially deep abdominal fat, as well as total body mass.
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28 August 2014 Author: Peter Rana
Following on from his popular seminar on high intensity strength training, BodyTech Gym founder Peter Rana answers in more detail some of the questions raised by attendees.
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1 February 2014 Author: Peter Rana
Swiss balls, balance boards, tilt disks, foam rollers and pads, inflated rubber disks and BOSU® Balance Trainers are all objects conspicuously placed around the floors of virtually every gym. Collectively, they comprise a class of exercise known as unstable training.
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1 January 2014 Author: Peter Rana
Coaches and athletes acknowledge that traditional strength training can increase muscular strength and endurance. But the truth is, “just going for it” without adequate supervision will deliver less than half the strength results.
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