Ram Tiwari

We all have had conflicts at some point in time about whether we should take up jogging or running for fitness and then resort to daily walking! But what we may not have realized is that walking and running both have very different sets of benefits. One does not cancel out the need for the other. Some may enjoy one more than the other and there is no loss or anything wrong with that. But let us understand what benefits each has and then you can make the decision what to do for your fitness journey.

Best Way to Achieve Fitness

Fitness has never been one size fits all. what may work out for your gym buddy may not work out for you and until you have tried a few things you wouldn’t know about it. Walking is ideal for beginners on a fitness journey since it is a low-intensity workout. On the other hand, running is more intense and can be beneficial for quicker results and more calories to burn.

Benefits of Running

Running is often an intense exercise and comes with benefits which include:

• Improved Cardiovascular Health- Improves blood flow, circulation, and heart health
• You end up burning more calories in a short period of time by doing intense activities like running.
• Faster weight loss- You can lose weight faster and more effectively if you practice running.
• Running can help your muscles get fitter and stronger.
• A runner’s high is what you experience after running because your body releases endorphin, the happy hormone.
• By keeping the bones well-oiled and used, you can avoid the possibility of having osteoporosis.

Running and Weight Loss

If weight loss is your primary goal, running is your best bet. This is because it could offer quicker results due to the higher calorie burn. A 30-minute run once a day can burn more calories than a 30-minute brisk walk. This helps you lose fat faster. Running also helps with metabolism which is a key element in maintaining weight. Even while you are at rest your body will keep burning fast when you indulge in running regularly.

While running is more effective, you need to start from somewhere and therefore, walking can be a good way to start slow and build on it with consistency if you want to lose weight healthily.

Benefits of Walking

If the running benefits haven’t already swayed you, walking benefits will definitely sweep you off your feet, Some of the perks of walking daily are:

• It is less intense but more fruitful
• Your heart health gets better significantly
• Helps in digestion especially when you go for a walk right after your meal.
• Helps you declutter your mind and gives you more focus and clarity
• Helps lose weight by burning a few calories.
• Helps maintain the weight.

How to Make this More Fun

What is the most important part of your fitness journey is whether you are enjoying it. The benefits of either walking or running are null if you are not having fun. Here is how you can spice up your daily walks or runs so you don’t get bored with monotony

• Explore New Routes: Find new paths to go on a walk or run on. You may encounter some good surprises along the way as you check out more of your neighborhoods.
• Music & Podcasts: Make sure you have carried your earphone and have a playlist to get you in the mood for some workout. You can also listen to podcasts or audiobooks during this time.
• Track Your Progress: Use apps or fitness trackers to set goals and celebrate small victories.
• Join a Group: Make your workouts social by joining a walking or running group.
• Set Challenges: Challenge yourself with goals, such as increasing your pace or covering more distance.

Takeaway

Whether it is running or walking both have their set of benefits and it is on you what is more comfortable with your timing, your goals and your lifestyle. You have to start from somewhere and this is your starting point. To make your workouts better you can try having gainers to maintain body mass. You can also have some electrolytes handy when you are on a longer run to help you stay hydrated and make up for lost minerals. Whatever you choose make sure to have fun on the way and find your peace to align with your goals.

When we embark on our fitness journey we end up feeling all over the place with no understanding of right or wrong. When we start for the first time, we tend to mix up a lot of exercises together without much structure. But in this case, pairing muscle groups for more balanced workouts can go either way depending on the way we approach it. It could either enhance the workout or throw us off the course. Let us understand how to pair muscles correctly and why it matters.

Balanced Workout: The Key to Long-Term Progress

A balanced workout is all about making sure that every muscle group gets the attention it needs. This way, you can approach them without the fear of overtraining a single muscle group or undertraining the others.

To understand this better, think of pairing your chest muscle workout with triceps. Similarly, you could also pair back with biceps. But pairing back with the chest could put a lot of strain on your torso.

Achieving balanced workout routine means making sure you pair muscle groups but keep the upper and lower body days separate. This tip can improve balance. This way you can ace the single-leg squats, lunges, or shifts and also add a layer of stability to your workout.

Intensity Workout: How Hard Should You Go?

The intensity of your workout can make or break your progress. The first and most important step is understanding your strength and endurance so that you do not overexert yourself. Whether you engage in high-intensity training or strength training. 

It is important to know which high-intensity exercise can be paired with which other high-intensity workout. You can also try to switch up your cool-down routine after an intense workout to make sure your body comes back to normal pace more slowly and harmlessly.

Best HIIT Workout Combinations

If you love HIIT, you should know how to pair muscle groups so that your workout can get more fruitful and end up with fewer chances of getting injured. The best HIIT workout combinations require you to pair opposite but complimenting muscle groups. This keeps the intensity workout at its peak without overloading any particular muscle. For example, upper body exercises like push-ups with strength training like goblet squats which target glutes.

Exercises to Improve Balance: A Must for Muscle Coordination

If your goal is to improve balance while you work you are in the right spot. By pairing muscle groups, you can totally get closer to that goal. These movements stabilize muscles. You can try balance-focused exercises to help activate smaller muscle groups. Trying out core muscle exercises like planks, side planks, and crunches can help you with your balance. Push-ups and pull-ups are more intense versions of the same.

You can also practice balance exercises by including fitness props like balance boards, hula hoops, or stability balls. You don’t necessarily need balance exercises only to prevent injury but also to enhance overall strength and performance and give some good stretch to your core. By focusing on balance, the muscle groups that you pair also end up working in better coordination with each other.

For example, if you try cycle crunches or dead bugs, you end up exercising your core while maintaining arms-to-leg coordination.

Takeaway

To conclude, pairing muscle groups can help you reach your fitness goals faster and more sustainably provided you understand which muscle groups to pair. They can bring more balance and strength to your routines. To make your fitness journey smoother, you can also dress the part by indulging in some high-quality jogger pants from MuscleBlaze to help you exercise freely. To reward your hard work and motivate yourself you can also gift yourself things that help you in this journey. It could be a new pair of shoes or a shaker bottle to make sure you are always at your best.

Hello Ziddis! Whether you are focusing on building your body, getting slimmer or becoming fitter, food plays a super important role. For athletes and fitness enthusiasts especially, nutrition is a non-negotiable. But what happens when food allergies come into the picture and restrict our dietary intake? Let us understand what food allergies are, how to understand them, and their impact on fitness better.

Common Food Allergens and Sensitivities

When discussing food allergies, some food items can trigger unfavorable reactions in our bodies. Common triggers are dairy, gluten, nuts, shellfish, soy or eggs. These allergy triggers can cause a reaction that leads to itches, bloating, diarrhoea or even choking which can adversely affect our body. This not only impacts our performance and fitness streak but also our health and well-being.

Food sensitivities like lactose intolerance, gluten sensitivity and so can are not always the main cause for the immediate allergic reaction but a trigger to cause the issues and the body to misbehave. Identifying what food causes triggers in your body is very important to make sure your sensitivities are dealt with well and do not impact your athletic performance.

How Food Allergies Impact Athletic Performance

Food allergies do not directly impact athletic performance but cause degradation on various levels.

• The allergic reactions are followed by swelling, rashes or upset stomach which can break your fitness streak
• These reactions can also affect the training
• Long-term exposure to such triggers without understanding their impact on your body can cause chronic inflammation, the need for more recovery time, loss of stamina or fatigue.
• These allergies can cause athletes to skip certain products which can enhance their performance
• The allergic reactions also reduce the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.

Food Allergy Testing and Sensitivity Management

To understand what you are allergic to you need to get tested for the allergies. This helps manage the sensitivity of those foods to your body and gives you a map of what to avoid.

Take These Steps to Understand What You are Allergic To: 

• Step 1: Take a food allergy test. You can get this done at hospitals or consult a nutritionist to guide you to a trusted source to do the food allergy test.
• Step 2: Understand the results of the allergy test. Consult a doctor if needed to understand what you are allergic to and why.
• Step 3: Understand any underlying reasons for this allergic reaction. Eg, if ice cream causes stomach issues it could be that you are lactose intolerant and would need to stop having dairy products completely.
• Step 4: Eliminate the triggering foods from your diet and home.
• Step 5: Remember those triggers and rework your diet and pantry planning
• Step 6: If those food items that trigger allergies in you are nutrition-rich, try to find their alternatives. Eg, you can have vegan milk instead of dairy or tofu instead of paneer.
• Step 7: Consult a nutritionist as to how to get more nutrition for your workout and training despite the allergies.

Strategies to Manage Food Allergies and Improve Performance

Managing food allergies is not all fun and definitely not a cakewalk. It takes a lot to still peak your performance when the food you are allergic to is the food that can give you the best nutrition. But some strategies can help.

• Plan Well: When you know your allergies you can understand what to avoid and what to replace them with. Read the labels carefully for any allergy triggers in the product.
• Hydrate with Electrolytes: Hydration is important no matter your allergies but when you have an allergic reaction like diarrhoea, your body loses vital minerals. So simply hydrating is not enough, you need to add some electrolytes to the water to make sure you make up for the loss and pace up the recovery
• Incorporate Supplements: When you need to avoid certain food items turn to supplements to replace them. If you need to have more nutrition to burn fat, supplements like L Carnitine can help in fat metabolism and energy production.

Takeaway

Food allergies and sensitivities can have a significant impact on athletic performance, from causing an allergic reaction in the stomach to reducing endurance. Understanding how allergies affect your body and using food allergy testing or a food intolerance test to identify triggers is key to managing them. With the right strategies like adjusting your diet, staying hydrated with electrolytes, and supplementing allergy triggers with similarly nutritious but non-triggering food items you can manage these sensitivities and continue achieving your fitness goals without compromise.

Hello Ziddis! We all have heard about the saying walk the walk! While it means to do what needs to be done, here in the fitness world what needs to be done is exactly walking. Walking is one of the simplest forms of exercise that can change your life. It has the potential to keep you fitter and better. Most people think of 10k steps to be the magic number, this target does not always work for everyone considering the diverse lifestyle we all have. So let us understand how to get back into your walking shoes and benefit from this. But before that, pat yourself for all that you are doing to get back to health and stay on track for your fitness goals!

Health Benefits of Walking Every Day

There are tonnes of benefits to walking every day!

• Walking regularly can improve cardiovascular health
• It reduces the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes
• Walking also enhances your mental well-being by reducing stress and anxiety.

How Many Steps to Walk Per Day

Studies show that we need to hit the magic number of 10k steps every day to get all the above-mentioned benefits. But does 10,000 sound too overwhelming if you are just starting or getting back on the grid? Even if you complete your target with as few as 7,500 steps, you can see a significant improvement in your health. You can then at your own pace think of how to get better at this and increase your step count. To give you a better idea, 30 minutes of brisk walking can help you complete at least 5000 steps and that is a great point to start from.

Walking for Weight Loss

Majorly, the motivation behind walking as an exercise is for weight loss purposes. Walking does not tone your body but it helps burn lots of calories. By increasing your step count, you also increase the number of calories that you end up burning and create a calorie deficit necessary for weight loss.

The number of calories you burn while walking depends on your weight, pace and the terrain. If it is a slope you end up putting in more effort and burn more calories.

How to Set a Steps Goal

If you are new to intentional walking exercises, you can understand how much can you walk every day. this will include you taking an account the duration you can walk for, the time during which you would walk, the place and also the energy levels you would be at. 

You do not need to jump-start to 10k steps. This will only demotivate you. Remember, walking for weight loss and overall fitness doesn’t have to mean one long walk. You can break it up throughout your day by taking the stairs instead of the elevator or walking during your lunch break.

How to Track the Steps

Tracking your steps is the best way of holding yourself accountable for your own health. You can track it on your smartphones with tonnes of applications like Google Fit and Apple Health. You can also invest in a good wearable like a smart watch which does the step tracking for you. These wearables or apps also track your overall health and calories. This also gives a fuller picture of your health by understanding your heart rate.

By keeping you moving every day all day you do not realize how many steps you are unintentionally completing. By tracking your step count, you can feel motivated to push yourself.

More Ways to Increase Step Count

We know that the 10k goals we all want to reach are a big challenge in a busy life. There are plenty of ways to make sure you can squeeze a few steps into your day.

• Take short walks around your office.
• Park further from your destination if you use a vehicle and walk the rest.
• Take your calls walking
• Take stairs as comfortable
• On weekends take up a hobby class like dancing

For energy levels, you can also add in a serving of fit foods to keep you satiated, full and healthy. You can also add some electrolytes to your water and stay fresh, energetic and active by making up for lost minerals during the day.

Takeaway

Walking is one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your health. Whether walking for weight loss or simply to enjoy the health benefits of walking every day, setting a realistic step goal and tracking your progress is essential. Start small, aim for consistency, and look for opportunities to increase your step count throughout the day. With the right mindset and a little planning, you can make walking a regular part of your healthy lifestyle.