BEGIN

  Pack your bags, get your energy drinks and grab your toothbrush along with it because you are about to go spend your entire day at the gym. That means 24 hours of exercise, resting, eating, probably a lot of social media scrolling and then back at it again! Just imagine the amount of workouts you could fit into a day if you were able to just hang about at the gym, with all your other necessities with you. If you think you would be leaving the gym the next day looking like The Rock with your crazy pump, you are definitely mistaken. Let’s assume you start your 24 hour journey with a great back workout, around 1 hour taken, and then you of course decide to rest and eat. Maybe you get a bit bored after your break and decide you’ll start working out a different muscle group, after all you have 24 hours at the gym. But wait, you feel pretty dumped. Even though you are about to train something different, and you have already eaten and rested, you still feel something hollow about this w...

  Is it a bird, is it a plane? Wait, it's raining gym equipment. Treadmills, exercise bikes, a rowing machine?! This is probably a beginner gymmer’s dream, to have the best of the best, that too at home!  Take it all inside, make some space, because now you’re about to change your body forever. No, not really. You will soon find out that these machines follow a formula. They make you sweat, they make you use your body and they fatigue you. Okay, so what does going on a run do? Pretty much the same right?  This is not to put down these items, they are amazing at what they do, and definitely more efficient than having to go on a run. However, the point I aim to make is that at its core, they exist to make the user’s life a bit easier, add some convenience to their lives by using technology to do what other physical activity will do. This efficiency comes at a pretty hefty price tag though. In Pakistan’s economy, investing in a 1.5-2 lac treadmill, or 2-3.5 lac exercise bike...

  Yes, Superman is real for today, and he wants to go to the gym for a good workout. Let's just skip over the 20’s, 40’s, where are the 100 kg dumbbells for a guy like Superman? Surely that's enough to give him a good workout- Nope! He's juggling them. Who cares? It just goes to show how crazy strong he is, but there's a catch. As muscular and huge as that character is, we now understand one thing. He simply would not be able to make progress in the gym. The answer as to why is pretty easy, for him 100 kilos is nothing short of a bottle of water. For a guy like Superman, what might challenge him is lifting the weights of two countries, as dumbbells of course. Now because such a thing challenges him, tests his body, and eventually leads him to failure, that is a sign that he would hypothetically grow in mass and strength if he were to use this as a workout. All this fun discussion has been to reach this point of the topic, what does it really mean if you can lift heavy? ...

  Your House becomes your Personal Trainer. Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide, and the only place to go becomes the Gym. What do you do? ‘If these walls could talk’ is about to have a whole different meaning. Imagine yourself, deciding to skip the gym today even when you don't really have a reason to (something we all have done), peacefully lying down on the couch, confidently texting your gym buddy ‘I'm feeling kinda sick today bro, i'll be there next time”.  Perfect, you've ninja-ed your way out of the gym, maybe it's time to sleep- “What do you think you’re doing?” says your Couch.  “Why is my Couch talking?”, you think, while your Couch thinks you are a lazy slacker skipping the gym for no reason, which it is right about. “Go grab the dumbbells rotting away in the corner before I do something I'll regret” warns your Coach- I mean Couch, well, what's the difference anymore. If your furniture, your walls and your ceiling suddenly started taking interest i...

  Along came 2020, the year that changed everything from our education, to our entertainment, our way of interacting with each other and socialising, nothing was safe from change, for better or for worse. It is almost hard to remember what life was like before 2020 as a 21 year old now myself, considering the vastly different habits and routines that young adults would adopt now. When we talk about what good could have possibly come out of the rampage of COVID-19, it is a fascinating result of this obstacle that ended up indirectly starting a wave of fitness and active lifestyles in Pakistan and across the world. Lockdown brought a pause in social gatherings, and the closures of many such spots where communities would form and interact, even the gyms around us. But what came from such an event, was the insurgence of online communities, trainers and influencers who took it upon themselves to use the disadvantage the pandemic brought to their own lifestyle and weaponize it, generatin...

  “Every morning, I go on my run for at least 2 hours, before I do my daily circuits of burpees and jumping jacks, and you won't find a single sweet treat in my diet, I'm basically doing all I can to get in shape!” No, you are not. It is a common misconception that losing weight equals a balanced diet and cardio, and that gaining weight and muscle equals lifting weights. Both these cases are definitely true, but what gets missed out most often in this discussion is the fact that we completely dismiss the other side of lifting weights. The purpose of this article will be to spread awareness to beginners and people seeking to lose weight, on how they need to start incorporating weightlifting in their routines to truly get the maximum value out of their efforts. The fact is, cardio definitely burns more calories in one session as compared to a workout consisting only of weightlifting. However, an interesting result of weightlifting is that consistently lifting increases a person’...