Welcome to this detailed info-graphic that will show you how everything you need to know about improving your heart health and how much influence this vital organ has over almost every part of our body. The heart beats about 2.5 billion times over the average lifetime, pushing millions of litres of blood to every part of the body. This steady flow carries with it oxygen, fuel, hormones, other compounds, and a host of essential cells. It also helps to remove the waste products of metabolism. We all know how important the heart is for when the heart stops, essential functions fail, some almost instantly. If you ever complete a first aid course and have to do CPR they teach you to never stop applying compressions for even if the person is no longer breathing you can still bring them back to life as long as their heart is still beating. It has the power to influence whether we live or die so it makes perfect sense to look after it as best as possible. Sometimes we forget to appreciate that it is a part of our body that never stops. It runs 24-7, 365 days a year and as a result it requires fuel in the form of nutrition and exercise as well as maintenance in the form of rest and recovery. Given the heart's never-ending workload, it can easily be brought down by a poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking, and illness caused by neglect to other parts of our body. This info-graphic explains very simply what you need to know about improving not just your heart health but your overall health.

If you have read any of my previous articles about core training you would know that I am not a big fan of isolated abdominal exercises. I have often stated most core training exercises and programs are highly over-rated and create more problems than they solve. However, the question that often comes up is why do I use the lower abdominal test as part of our assessment? And why do I often prescribe it as an exercise to do at home with most beginners? It seems like a complete contradiction that I often rate isolated abdominal training very poorly, yet I still use an exercise like the lower abdominal leg test. There are several reasons for this as I will explain in great detail today. But the most interesting fact with this exercise is that 90% of all clients I test in our assessment fail! And it is the reasons they fail that find this exercise very useful.

This is an article written by Jai Tadeo about the value of using a massage gun. This is something I have been regularly asked about in recent times and I am unable to comment on its effectiveness as I have never used one myself. I was curious to read this article to see what the benefits to using this versus regular massage and stretching and if the hype was all it was cracked up to be.