ALL ABOUT MOVEMENT,
NUTRITION AND YOUR BODY
Articles prepared together with doctors, nutritionists and biomechanics specialists.
LATEST
229 ARTICLESSkull Crushers and Overhead Triceps Extensions: Proper Form, How Much Weight to Use and How to Protect Your Elbows
A skull crusher is a lying triceps extension: your upper arm stays still while you bend and straighten your elbows with a bar or dumbbells. The triceps do the main work. Below: lying form with a barbell and dumbbells, seated and standing overhead extensions, the muscles worked, why your elbows hurt, what to do at home, and an 8-week weight plan for women and men.
Leg Press Form: Step by Step, Foot Placement for Glutes or Quads, and How Much Weight to Use
The leg press sits in almost every gym, and it looks simple: sit down, brace against the platform, and push. But where you place your feet, how deep you go and how you breathe decide which muscles actually grow and whether your knees and lower back stay happy. Here's the form step by step, foot placement for glutes versus quads with the research behind it, how much the sled really weighs, and the mistakes to fix.
Stomach Vacuum Exercise: How to Do It, What It Does for Your Waist and Abs, and a 4-Week Plan
The stomach vacuum is a hold where you pull your belly in toward your spine. It trains the transverse abdominis, the muscle that wraps around your waist like an internal belt: it teaches you to keep your stomach tucked, gives your back some support, and it's a skill worth relearning after childbirth. It doesn't burn belly fat and it won't carve a six-pack. Below: the technique in two versions, how long to hold it, a 4-week plan, and who should skip the breath-hold version.
Lat Pulldown Form: Step-by-Step Technique, Which Grip to Use, Muscles Worked and How Much Weight to Pull
The lat pulldown is a cable machine exercise: you sit with your thighs under the pad and pull a bar from overhead down to your upper chest. Below: the form step by step, what grip actually changes according to three EMG studies, how much weight to pull at your bodyweight, how many sets and reps to do, how to fix mistakes by where you feel them, and what to use instead at home.
Romanian Deadlift: Step-by-Step Form With a Barbell or Dumbbells, Muscles Worked and How Much Weight to Use
A Romanian deadlift is a hip hinge with weight: you push your hips back while your knees barely bend, and the bar or dumbbells stay close to your legs. The hamstrings do most of the work, with your glutes and back helping out. Below: barbell, dumbbell and single-leg form, how it differs from a conventional deadlift, the mistakes you can feel, and an 8-week weight plan for women and men.
Back Extension: How to Do It on a Machine and at Home — for Your Back or Your Glutes
Almost every gym has a padded bench for this move, and most people reach for it thinking about their lower back. In a 2021 study by Andersen and colleagues, the glutes worked as hard on this machine as they did in a Romanian deadlift, and the biceps femoris — the outer hamstring muscle — was 71% more active than in that lift. Below: form on the 45-degree machine and on a flat bench, the difference between the back-focused and glute-focused versions, at-home substitutes, reverse hyperextension, and when a bad back means seeing a doctor first.
How Long to Rest Between Sets: 1, 2 or 3 Minutes — and When It Doesn't Matter at All
One coach wants 60 seconds and a pump, another wants three minutes and full recovery, a third says it makes no difference. All three are right — each in a specific case. Here's what the studies actually show for strength, for size, and what your coach means when they say rest doesn't matter.
Barbell Hip Thrust: Form, Starting Weight and How Many Reps
The one exercise gyms bought new machines for. Your glutes work harder in it than in a squat — that's been measured with electromyography — and over nine weeks they grow just as much as they do from squatting, minus the knee and lower-back loading. Here's the form step by step, what weight to start with, how many sets and reps, and how to read your own body when something's off.
How Long Does It Take to See Results from Pilates?
\"In ten sessions you'll feel the difference, in twenty you'll see it, in thirty you'll have a new body.\" Joseph Pilates made that promise a century ago and it still hangs on studio walls. The research gives a smaller, sharper number: programmes running 5–8 weeks produce measurable change, and anything under a month mostly doesn't. Here's what shows up first, week by week.
Incline Walking on a Treadmill: How Many Calories the 12-3-30 Workout Burns
Three numbers on a treadmill panel: incline 12, speed 3, time 30. The format has been going since 2019 and refuses to die, because there is nothing in it to get wrong — it's walking, just uphill. We ran the ACSM walking equation to see what it burns at different body weights, and worked out who should start lower than 12%.