Exercising is a treasure trove, making one achieve optimum health, among other benefits. With daily exercise, one can also expect better concentration and a massive energy boost to last throughout the day. The best part? One does not have to pay for a gym membership to access these benefits. Workouts can be simple and highly effective, even when done at home. So, here are some easy at-home exercises one can add to their daily routine:

Squats
Squats boost one’s core strength and lower body flexibility. One can start by standing straight, with the feet slightly apart. Then, they will need to brace their core and bend their knees as if they were sitting on an imaginary chair. While bending down, the chest and chin must be up, and the hips must be pushed back. The knees must not be outward or inward, and the thighs must be parallel to the ground. After holding this pose for a second, one can rise and repeat.

Dumbbell rows
Useful for the back and other upper body muscles, this exercise involves holding a 10-pound dumbbell in each hand and bending forward at the waist, with the back at a 45-degree angle with the ground. The back and neck should be straight as an arrow, and the arms should hang down. Then, one can gently pull the dumbbells up by bending one elbow and stopping just below the chest. One can follow the same steps on the other hand and alternate between the two.

Planks
Planks help tone the abdominal muscles and stabilize the abs without straining the back. Here, one should first plant their toes and hands on the floor while keeping their back straight, parallel to the ground, and their abdomen tight. For beginners, the plank position should be held for 20 seconds, with each subsequent one held for longer durations as the strength increases.

Push-ups
Push-ups strengthen the chest, triceps, shoulders, and core trunk muscles. First, one should get down on all fours and place their hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. After straightening the arms and legs, they can lower their body until their chest almost touches the ground before lifting themselves back up.

Walking
Walking helps burn calories, strengthen the heart, and improve blood flow. Gentle walking or rapid, brisk walking can be great warm-up exercises as well.

Whether you want to buy a fitness tracker for yourself or to give it as a gift to someone close to you, pick one up during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. These sale would help you find the best one with the most features at an affordable price. Here’s a list of the discounts on fitness trackers that were available on Cyber Monday last year, so you know what to look forward to this year.

Fitbit Charge 5

This fitness tracker is one of the best on the market. It is water resistant and has a battery life that can last up to a week. It also has a GPS and various health sensors. It is lightweight, which makes it easy to wear, and you can easily read the information you want from it even in direct sunlight. On Cyber Monday, this device was available for around $130 on Amazon.

Garmin Instinct Solar

You could get $150 off this fitness tracker on Cyber Monday last year if you bought it at BestBuy. This device gets its power from the sun, and hence, you never have to worry about the battery running out. The Garmin Instinct Solar has an amazing GPS feature and provides you with the necessary notifications you might need when on the go.

Amazfit Band 5

You could find these Amazon-brand fitness trackers at discounted prices last year on Cyber Monday. Among them is this device the can measure blood oxygen levels and monitor the heart rate. The Amazfit Band 5 is compatible with Alexa and has a 1.1-inch easy-to-read AMOLED display. Ut was priced at just $30 during the mega sales event, which was probably one of the most affordable.

TicWatch GTH

Combing the features of both a smartwatch and a fitness tracker is this device that was available on Amazon at a low price. This device has long battery life with plenty of health tracking features, including a skin temperature sensor.

Fitbit Luxe

Despite the Fitbit Luxe’s original price of nearly $150, this device was available on Amazon, Best Buy, and the brand website at less than $100. It has many functions and is sleek and stylish enough to pass off as a smartwatch. Look for a price drop this year too.

Gramin Vivosmart

Another device that saw its price drop to less than $100 on Best Buy and Amazon was this done. Although it does have a step tracker, sleep tracker, and heart rate monitor, it lacks GPS. Moreover, some users might find the screen a tad small.

Xiaomi Mi Band 6

This band is great for those just starting on their fitness journey. It is simple and easy to use and has excellent features, including water resistance and long battery life. It was available at quite a reasonable price last year, and the same is expected this year too.

Apple Watch Series 5

This watch is water resistant which makes it good for those that love swimming. It also has a built-in GPS, which is perfect for running, hiking, and walking. It was available on Amazon for just around $460, the original price was about $750.

Fitbit Versa 2
This tracker is one of the most popular wearables and with good reason. It not only tracks your fitness and health but can also give you news, information, and more by connecting to Alexa. You can also easily control your smart home devices.

Fitbit Ace 3

This can be a good choice if you’re trying to encourage your child to be healthier. It can not only be used to track sleep and activity but also remind them of chores that need to be done. It might be available for about $30 on Cyber Monday.

Fitness trackers can make the perfect gifts for the holiday season. So ensure that you don’t miss out on any of the deals and discounts that are offered on Cyber Monday.

A fitness tracker will be on many Black Friday shopping lists this year. While it is on November 25, multiple deals are expected to pop up from early September to late October. Whatever your fitness mantra, high-tech fitness trackers can help you achieve your goals. And getting them at a discounted price is the cherry on the cake! Let’s check out some amazing Black Friday fitness tracker deals for the year 2022.

Fitbit Versa 3
Continuous heart-rate monitoring, SpO2, support for NFC payments, a microphone for taking phone calls, and Google/Alexa assistance are some of the many incredible features offered by this tracker. Plus, unlike its previous variants, Versa 3 provides a built-in GPS for navigation. During the sale season, you might also find it priced under $200.

Fitbit Charge 5
Fitbit Charge 5 delivers many upgrades to cater to your needs. Many online platforms offer it for under $150 for a limited period. Its features, like the bright OLED screen, electrodermal activity sensors, contactless payments, notifications, sleep tracking, heart monitoring, and timers, make it one of the most highly dependable fitness trackers.

Garmin FENIX 7 Series
A week’s worth of battery, topographical maps, touch screen, military-grade standard, up to 10 ATM water resistance, insightful training guides and programs, solar charging, and astonishing real-time stamina feature are the traits that make the 7 series an absolute hit. This series starts at $699.99, but you can get it for better deals during the Black Friday sale.

Apple Watch SE
Built-in GPS, cellular activity, contactless payments, and fall detection are the noteworthy features this watch provides for a sale price under $279. However, this mid-tier watch lacks features like EKG, always-on display, and SpO2. But it still offers abnormal heart rate alerts to keep your health in check.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4
If you are a Samsung phone owner, purchasing this watch for full-fledged fitness tracking is a decision you won’t regret. The Galaxy Watch 4 also provides a 3-in-1 sensor for body composition analysis and its upgraded sleep tracking system. During the sale season, you can get this stunning fitness tracker watch for under $250.

Amazfit Bip S
This tracker might not be glamorous, but it does have many engaging features you wouldn’t expect for a price under $100. For instance, sleep tracking, heart-rate monitoring, two weeks of battery life, and always-on display. You can enjoy features like editing watch faces, receiving notifications, and controlling music.

Oura Ring Gen 3
As the name suggests, Oura Ring isn’t worn on the wrist but a finger. Since it doesn’t have a screen, it cannot provide notifications. However, it can still offer a range of features like heart-rate monitoring, period predictions, and SpO2. This tracker can be purchased for under $300 during the holiday sale.

Garmin Vivo Move Sport
Your search for hybrid analog fitness trackers has ended, as Garmin Vivo Move Sport is exactly the tracker you were looking for. Unlike its other variants, this discreet tracker watch is extremely affordable. For $180, you also get quick access to push notifications and Garmin’s fitness tracking program.

Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra G
The latest Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, sturdy structure, in-depth sleep tracking, and many other fitness-focused features make this android tracker your best bet. During the Black Friday sale season, you can get this watch for under $250.

Whoop 4.0
For elite athletes needing an in-depth analysis of their sleep and recovery patterns and a flexible design, Whoop 4.0 is the right choice. You can easily track the heart rate, blood oxygen level, skin temperature, and respiratory rate in one view. However, the catch here is that the hardware is free, but you need to pay $30 every month to become a member and access its features.

Black Friday is the best day to buy new workout equipment. Many businesses offer deals, discounts, and price drops online that frequently last longer than just that a day. Gone are the days when you had to stand outside a store and race hundreds of frantic buyers to get the best items. Listed below are fitness equipment, right from essentials to expert-level equipment, that you might be able to get at great prices this year.

Rowing machine

The LCD monitor with the Sunny Health & Fitness Magnetic Rowing Machine Rower shows time, count, calories, total count, and scan. The easy scan mode shows your progress to help you keep track of all your fitness objectives. You may adjust the eight levels of magnetic resistance with a simple twist, keeping your workout tough and productive. Last year, it was available for a stunningly low price, so definitely keep your eyes on it.

Treadmill

On the ProForm Pro 5000 smart treadmill, engage in dynamic, high-intensity exercises with top personal trainers in the world. You can turn your treadmill into your personal home exercise center with the complimentary 30-day iFIT subscription. Your treadmill’s pace and slope will automatically adapt to conform to local terrains and trainer recommendations, thanks to Automatic Trainer Control. This holiday season, Best Buy might offer it at $200 off.

Stationary bike

The stationary VeloCore exercise bike, which leans left and right as you sprint toward the finish line, will awaken your body and mind. It’s a vigorous diversion that gives you the freedom to move at your own rhythm. You can explore 200+ breathtaking virtual courses at your own pace. At Bowflex.com’s Black Friday sale, you might be able to get it at a more reasonable price.

Dumbbells

Want to begin weight training but are unsure of where to start? Then here’s an option for you. The SelectTech® 552 adjustable dumbbells save you time and space. It is simple to change from one workout to the next with this equipment. This Black Friday, don’t pass up the opportunity to get this on offer.

Fitness tracker

The Fitbit Luxe is a stylish fitness and wellness tracker that motivates you to give your body and mind the proper boost. Luxe is a fashionable bracelet with on-wrist tracking, in-app insights, and sophisticated styling. With a Fitbit Premium subscription, the experience is improved even further thanks to personalized insights, in-app exercises, meditations, and other features. At Best Buy, you might be able to save around $30 on it.

Elliptical

This Black Friday at Best Buy, you could get a 50% discount on the HIIT H14 elliptical trainer. For a total-body, immersive training experience and a tremendous workout that can be achieved from the comfort of your home, this piece of equipment is a great buy. It comes with 26 resistance levels and a 5-inch elliptical path.

Massage gun

You can get the deep muscle treatment offered by professionals with this intelligent percussive therapy gadget that is in a class of its own. You can speed up muscle recovery, relieve stress and tension, and reduce discomfort. If you visit the official Therabody website on Black Friday, you might be able to purchase it for $100 less.

Recovery tool

The Hypervolt Go 2 helps you to let go of tension and stress by loosening up tense muscles. You can feel refreshed and regain your full range of motion with just a few minutes per day. This Black Friday, you might be able to purchase it for $169 from the official Hyperice website.

Under desk elliptical

With this industry-leading, ergonomic micro elliptical, you can exercise while sitting at home or at work. To enhance desk workouts as you build strength, you can vary between eight resistance levels on its smooth gliding action. Additionally, it is quiet enough not to interfere with your work. Buy it at a great discount this holiday season.

Wave roller

The Wave roller offers the most potent, effective full-body foam rolling experience by combining vibration treatment and a novel wave texture. With this vibrating foam roller’s Bluetooth® connectivity, you can use the Therabody app to create customized rehabilitation routines that will help you relax and regain. This Black Friday, you might be able to purchase this for an extremely low price.

If you are planning to convert your garage or any room into a personal gym, then look out for deals and discounts on these and other fitness equipment on Black Friday.

Pulled hamstrings are common among athletes but are painful and require treatments to ease the pain and cure the pulled tendons. This condition occurs when the tendon of thigh muscles get stretched beyond their stretching capacity. While it can happen when you are running, or playing football, or skating, there are things you can do to avoid getting a hamstring injury.

Always warm up before you start a physical activity. Even if you are going for a run, prepare your muscles for intense movements by doing basic warm exercises.
Be slow with your warm up exercises. There are incidences where people get a hamstring injury not while running but while warming up. The irony can be avoided by going slow while warming up.
Do not over train yourself. As the saying goes, too much of too good is not so good. It is true in every case including training and exercising. Over exertion can not only lead to a pulled hamstring but also fatigue. Train only as much is required.
Try glute training to avoid hamstring injuries. These can also help you in treating hamstring injuries if you get them.
Do not overload your hamstring while sprinting on each step.

If you have already had one hamstring injuries and tried several things for treating those hamstring injuries, then you should know about some causes that make hamstring injuries to re-occur. It is not uncommon for a sport injury to re-occur. But by knowing these causes of recurring hamstring injury, you can prevent them from happening.

Inappropriate pelvic position. Make sure your pelvic position is right while you are doing any physical activities. This is important because hamstring consists of three muscles and one of those muscles is attached to your pelvic muscle.
When your glutes are not supporting the muscles while you are active (i.e., moving, walking, running and playing). Hamstring, glute and lower back muscle should work together when your body is moving. When they are not in-sync, hamstring injuries and strike again and you have to try more thing for treating hamstring injuries.
When athletes do no move correctly. There are right movements for every physical activity. Paying attention to the right movements will prevent you from getting a pulled hamstring again while ignoring that will give you the opposite result ad you will get back to treating hamstring injuries which takes time.
Knowing your body more will only help you from preventing it from injuries. Instead of trying many things for treating hamstring injuries, you can learn about the things you can do to avoid them.

Have you ever wanted to work out at home and skip the hustle and bustle of to your local gym? Have you ever wanted to save time and avoid a commute to a gym? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you might prefer building your very own home gym and Littlewoods can help you with that.

Enjoy working out alone
Home gyms are convenient. You work out in the comfort of your own home, with no-one watching you. If you juggle a lot of responsibilities and like working out alone, you may find a home gym fits your needs. Sometimes the hardest part in building a home gym is avoiding buying too much. Striking a fine balance between what you use and what you don’t need is the key.

What kind of workouts do you do?
Start out by asking yourself what sort of workouts will you be doing every day of the week? How often do you workout? Consider the intensity and frequency of your workouts. Next, decide what sort of equipment you need based on your workouts. Do you need equipment for cardio or strength training? Do you need medicine balls or dumbbells? Does your equipment need to be high-tech or do you prefer basic equipment? The final part is choosing a good retailer to buy your equipment from. A good sports retailer is Littlewoods, who sell all you need, with expertise and knowledge.

High impact cardio
To get started, for cardio workouts or if you just enjoy running, try out the Dynamic T3000C Motorised Treadmill with auto incline. It features 12 versatile programs, 3 modes, and 15 incline levels. Speeds range from 0.8 km/h to 16 km/h to ensure you are always pushed you to your limits. An inbuilt speaker is provided so that you can listen to your favorite tunes while you run. You can read more about it on www.littlewoods.com.

Strength training
For strength training, you can buy the York 20kg dumbbell set. They come in black cast iron and the weights are adjustable. This can add versatility to your strength workouts, and these are great for beginners too.

Low impact cardio
You may also consider getting a Work Star Shaper Magnetic Exercise Bike for low impact cardio workout sessions. It comes with a height-adjustable saddle and the magnetic resistance is quiet and smooth. It’s a perfect gym bike for your home since it doesn’t make any noise during workouts.

Keep it simple
The most important thing to keep in mind is to start simple. Don’t buy tons of equipment; start with the golden three strength, cardio, and low-impact. Once you improve your fitness levels and feel that you need more variety, you can start adding other options. For now, this should get you started on your fitness journey.

It is important to eat healthy and keep your diet in check. It is healthy to consume 1400 calories a day. You can choose from several free diet meal plans that you can choose from. Below is a 1400 calorie meal plan, that can be tweaked a little, and personalized.

Breakfast: ½ a cup of egg substitute, or a whole egg, and 1 white egg with a teaspoon of butter (which of course is optional), makes for the most famous breakfast delight. Additionally, a cup of cantaloupe and whole wheat bread or an English muffin should do the trick.

An optional menu to this would be a cup of fat free milk, ½ cup of strawberries, and a whole wheat muffin. Most people do think that stopping butter and oil will help you reduce weight. But in reality, our body needs the basic needs of nourishment, and one teaspoon of butter would work out well.

Snack: Always remember that eating more than three meals a day is necessary. Eat in small quantities, but eat more often. Two tablespoons of granola + ¼ cup fat-free milk or one graham cracker, can fill your little biscuit urges. Consume this with one cup of fat free milk with two tablespoons of chocolate syrup.

Lunch: Milk is the healthiest item we can all consume. A cup of fat-free milk, would do you best. You need some whole food to last you the entire day. Peanut butter and jelly is a good combination for a light lunch. You can eat two tablespoons of jelly or jam with two slices of whole wheat bread. In case you don’t have a full stomach, ½ cup celery sticks and ½ cup baby carrots can be a good filler. To replace the sandwich, you could make do with a roll, which should be about 2 ½ inches. Add in all your collection of fresh greens and veggies, you can add one cup of the greens, 1/3 cup carrots, 1/3 cup tomatoes, 1/3 cup cucumber, ½ cup canned chickpeas, 2 tablespoons chopped eggs, and finally 2 tablespoons of reduced calorie dressing. It would be your pick to add in any more special ingredients you would like.

Dinner: This would, as the saying goes, be your beggar meal for the day. This is the time where you eat the least. Two cups of mixed greens, with just one tablespoon of reduced- calorie dressing. A cup of whole wheat spaghetti, ¼ cup of meatless pasta sauced and two tablespoons of parmesan and chopped basil would make for a perfect supper meal. Remember, you need to eat less, but just enough to last you your sleeping hours.

Fitness and activity trackers have become quite popular, thanks to the increasing number of people choosing to keep a close watch on their fitness goals and progress. Wearers can track important information like steps taken, sleep, heart rate, calorie intake, pace, and distance traveled, etc. Though some consider them as a needless investment, a fitness tracker offers more than a few benefits for those who already work out regularly or are planning to start working out religiously.
Offers personal accountability

Face it! Deciding to work out daily is one thing, but sticking to the regimen and goals is a whole other ball game. For those who are about to start working out, even a little bit of encouragement goes a long way. In this regard, your fitness tracker acts like your very own personal motivator. It encourages you to compete with yourself, urging you to run a little more distance than the day before, to take a few more steps every day, and to sustain a peak heart rate for just a little longer every day. Studies have proven that wearing a fitness tracker has been so psychologically rewarding for individuals that it helped increase their fitness levels by at least 30%.

Does all the monitoring for you
One of the pitfalls of traditional forms of exercising is how one had to stop at several intervals in between to track, monitor and measure fitness. A fitness tracker can do all of that for you, allowing you to focus on exercising. The device does the job of monitoring and measuring your fitness levels. Better yet, it will offer you notifications of the same on a constant basis before, during and even after exercising.

Allows you to set tailored goals
One of the good things about fitness trackers is that they act as your own personal fitness trainer. They allow you to set fitness goals tailored to suit your body. In addition to helping you set realistic goals, they also provide you with tips to start exercising from scratch, gradually helping you meet your fitness goals without any discomfort and with as much ease as possible.

Helps you work out in groups without actually doing so
In addition to transforming you into your best competitor, these fitness and activity trackers allow you to join exercise groups with the same focus via links that connect fitness trackers in the same area. This way, you can post your achievements via messages and photos, workout in virtual groups, challenge others to compete with you, and vice versa, thus keeping you motivated to continue exercising.

Monitors your fitness levels while you sleep
No more sleeping inside a lab with tons of wires hooked to your body to determine your sleep patterns. The new age fitness and activity trackers can monitor your breathing patterns and the way your body moves, while you sleep in order to determine the quality of your sleep. These trackers also offer guidelines on how to improve the quality of your sleep based on your health and lifestyle habits.