At the beginning of this semester I decided that I was going to keep the same passion post and continue writing about the ins and outs of running. But due to the fact that I have not run in a few weeks, I think I will discuss what I have been doing instead to keep my body from getting out of shape. This has mostly involved strength training, which is almost the dire opposite of running. Strength training is basically lifting weights and performing a variety of exercises to gain muscle. Running on the other hand is most commonly used as a method to lose weight and tone your muscles. This shift is a huge change for me because for as long as I can remember I have always been more fast than strong. Throughout middle school, high school, and now college I’ve constantly been involved with some kind of athletic team which I would run with, but recently that is no longer the case. A big difference between running and weight lifting is that running is commonly run with a group or a couple of friends, while weight lifting is almost always done alone. There are always a few people who go to the gym with one or two friends but the majority of people there are alone. This can be helpful for letting you focus more on your workout than socializing, but it can also be more dangerous, since no one will be watching you or notice if you start to lose control and end up hurting yourself on a machine.

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I think one of the major benefits of weight lifting over running is that you do not need to go every single day. While running requires you to consistently run one day after the other alternating easy and hard days with only one day off each week, lifting requires a different kind of workout schedule. According to A Workout Routine, there is no single best way to work out, but the one similarity between all of the different kinds of workouts are the amount of rest days. Out of all the workouts schedules given, not one says that you should rest for less than 3 days a week. On this rest day, the individual shouldn’t do any lifting to allow his/her muscles to recover. Greatest lists some of the problems that may surface if one does not get enough recovery. Decreased performance, elevated blood pressure, decreased immunity, disturbed sleep, and extreme soreness can result from overworking one’s muscles and continuing to work out without allowing his/her muscles the proper amount of time to heal.

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The way that your muscles grow from working out is by first causing them to tear, and then making them regrow slightly stronger than before. During the actual activity of working out, one’s body needs much more oxygen than it normally needs, up to 15 times more oxygen, according to Huffington Post. To produce this extra oxygen, the muscles surrounding the lungs must increase beating until they can’t go any faster, which is your VO2 max. In terms of physical fitness, the VO2 max is a representation of how fit a person is. The higher one’s VO2 max, the more fit that person is. There is more than just one way to determine physical fitness, and Mark’s Daily Apple lists 11 different ways than a person can evaluate him/herself. This takes into account the fact that fitness is based upon more than an individual’s running ability; basic strength and the ease at which one can perform a variety of exercises must also be taken into consideration. Some exercises could be playing a pickup game, treading water, riding a stationary bike, or doing the CrossFit baseline WOD. The CrossFit baseline WOD involves doing a 500 meter row, 40 bodyweight squats, 30 sit-ups, 20 pushups, and 10 pullups. This helps to test various muscle strengths instead of focusing on just one’s breathing ability.

One of the easiest ways people use to see how much muscle they have gained over an extended period of time from working out is by seeing how much weight they have gained. The problem with this is that there is no way to know just how much of the weight you have gained was from gaining muscle or gaining fat. The amount of fat gained can be prevented by both watching what you eat, and planning out when you should eat. It is commonly known that one must eat copious amounts of food in order to replenish his/her muscles from working out, but some foods may do more harm than good. This has a lot to do with a person’s metabolic window, or the amount of time after a workout where food most benefits his/her body. The sooner one eats after a workout, the more beneficial it will be to help his/her body recover, but waiting too long can cause your body to go into starvation mode and may make your workout worthless. For most people, the metabolic window is anywhere from 30-45 minutes after finishing their last exercise, and in this time one should eat carbs and lean protein. Heavier foods like hamburgers or fried foods take too long to digest and even eating them right after a workout may too long to fully digest, missing the metabolic window. This may be true for most people, but each individual is different and each body has different needs than any other. After reading this post, I hope anyone who was thinking about working out this week will take my advice with a grain of salt, and make sure you do whatever you can to listen to your body and stay safe.

The warm months of 2015 are long gone leaving the students at Penn State University feeling all too familiar with the cold dreary days of midwinter. While many college students feel obligated to stay inside watching movies or re-watching their favorite shows, deep down they all know the consequences associated with their decision. In the beginning it may start harmlessly with a few crackers or a couple pieces of chocolate but before one knows it he/she is 3/4 of the way through the box and the second episode isn’t even over yet. There are two options at this point, one can agonize over the fact that he/she just ate the average person’s daily allotted calories in less than 30 minutes, or one can get out of bed and head to the gym. I mentioned heading to the gym instead of working out outside because no sane person wants run five miles in below freezing weather, and although the gym is a healthy alternative, it can have some unfortunate side effects.

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The most important precaution that people tend to forget when going to the gym is stretching. In one of my posts last year I discussed the importance of stretching and its impact on both improving performance and preventing injury. Exercising on a treadmill or an elliptical may have less of an impact than running on asphalt, but it does not require less stretching. One’s body is still going through the same motions and can be injured just as easily. Some vital stretches are listed and explored on Livestrong.

I, along with what I assume to be many other people, neglected to exercise for a large portion of the holiday break. To add insult to injury, I almost exclusively ate desserts and candy around this time. After a few mere days of this, the effect was clearly visible and I knew that I had to start exercising again. As experienced of a runner that I may think I am, I still made a huge mistake. I didn’t feel too bad on my first run back so I kept on running and by the time I had finished I had ended up running 15 miles. The next day I did not feel too bad either so I once again ran too far, this time it being 10 miles. At the time I did not think that a few runs could seriously injure me but boy was I wrong. The pain slowly set in and soon I couldn’t run more than once every 3 days, and as time went on the recovery period continued to increase. Currently it has been 2 weeks since I have last run and I just hope that I did not cause any permanent damage to my knee. My advice to anyone who is in the same position that I was in a few weeks ago would to be to make sure you take it slow and thoroughly stretch before any exercise.

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The effect that foods have on your overall health is sometimes underestimated when it comes to eating to prepare for physical training. The number one most recommended food to avoid when exercising is white flour due to its adverse properties. It is one of the most commonly eaten foods in America but it causes huge amounts of inflammation.

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According to Mother Nature Network, of the top 6 inflammatory foods to avoid, white flour baked goods are the worst. This news couldn’t be much worse since the majority of food eaten over the holidays are white flour baked goods. Inflammation doesn’t sound like a terrible side effect, but over a long period of time it can be. The effects of inflammation are stated on Active.com  saying that “in athletes who train hard every day, inflammation may not be entirely resolved and muscle damage may not heal adequately between workouts. If you persist in training too hard and resting too little, you may enter a cycle of persistent tissue trauma and chronic inflammation.” These athletes are not getting the necessary amount of recovery time which will inevitably lead them to injury which may take days or even weeks to heal. The worst aspect of this is that one may be doing everything correct physically, but it is his/her diet that will eventually hurt him/her. This news is both positive and negative depending on the specific person. One can prevent injury more easily by eating healthy, but if a person does not choose to eat the right way, he/she will be more prone to injury.

To anyone out there that was feeling lazy for the past couple of weeks and has suddenly been feeling motivated to start exercising, make sure you do so carefully. There are countless ways to injure yourself, but if you continue to stretch, eat the right foods, and go back into your workouts slowly you can greatly increase your chances of staying healthy.