Carrying a heavy load is arguably the most common strength activity we use in in life, and it is also one of the most challenging. Yet, it is highly under-rated and many do not even regard this as an exercise. When you understand just how many muscles and complex interactions are involved to perform this movement efficiently, you gain a better appreciation of how valuable this can be to use in a workout. This is an activity we use every day when we pick up the shopping bags at the supermarket, a suitcase when we go on holidays, lifting a wheelbarrow in the garden, and endless other activities at work and at home. Even in the gym itself we unknowingly require this movement whenever we need to carry our dumbbells or weight plates over to the area we intend to train. When time is designated to this as an exercise, and it is trained correctly, it can provide significant strength gains to the entire body that may protect you from serious harm in life. In this article we will show you how. 

There is tons of information about the physical benefits provided from exercise, but what is not fully explained and understood is the benefits of exercise to our mental health. It is fair to say we are becoming more aware of the need to address mental health problems, and several institutes like Beyond Blue and the Black Dog institute do a fantastic job of educating the community so we can gain a better understanding of how to treat these serious conditions. It has long been known that physical activity helps with depression, but even as countless number of studies and evidence supports this, there is inconsistency into what type of exercise is best, and how much is enough? These are some of the questions we investigated in this article and the results were very surprising. 

We all know that good posture not only looks good, but also allows the body to move with great efficiency free of pain and compensation. Modern living and technology advancement has made many changes to our lifestyle that makes things much easier, unfortunately, it has also come at a cost to our health and in particular our posture. The introduction of computers and jobs requiring us to sit for long periods and more recently IPAD’s and smart phones that people stare at all day in a flexed and hunched position has seen a rapid rise in postural related injuries. We cannot change this evolution to our lifestyle, but we can begin using exercise as a way to counter the damage created from these daily habits. The exercises to use can vary a lot from person to person as we are all unique in our own way and our postures might differ slightly, but there is a common theme to all exercises that promote good posture. And that is - they promote EXTENSION. This article we give you an example of a strength workout you could use to improve your posture and prevent the onset of injury and pain.