Japanese walking is a form of interval training that alternates between brisk and moderate-paced walking. After a 5-minute warm-up, you walk fast for 3 minutes, then at a comfortable pace for 3 minutes, repeating the cycle for about 30 minutes.

Like other high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts, Japanese walking leaves you with a sort of “after-burn effect,” Ben Yamuder, MS, CSCS, USAW-1, exercise physiologist at HSS, said. This effect means your body needs more oxygen to refuel after your exercise, so you will continue to burn more calories even when you’re done with your walk, he explained.

Read the full article at today.com.

“When you work out, your body becomes more acidic, and you have these hydrogen ions that can cause some soreness both during and after your workout,” said Yamuder. This will usually clear within an hour or so of training, but a post-workout sauna session can move things along much more quickly. 

“What happens is, you get more blood flow, and that helps to clear out some of those acidic ions in the muscle that can cause tightness and stiffness,” Yamuder continued. “If you're a pretty well-trained athlete, you can get kind of the same effect from just going on a brisk walk, but with the sauna it's more passive—all you’ve really got to do is sit there.”

Read the full article at gq.com. 

There are a lot of great things about calisthenics. They’re beginner-friendly, easy to do at home or while traveling, and highly functional—meaning, they strongly correlate to movements in daily life. But do they also qualify as strength training?

“You can absolutely progressively overload with bodyweight exercises,” said Ben Yamuder, MS, CSCS, USAW-1, exercise physiologist at HSS. For example, you can make bodyweight exercises more challenging by adding reps, performing reps at a slower pace (which increases the amount of time your muscles are under tension), or tweaking an exercise to be more difficult (for instance, doing a single-leg versus double-leg squat, or performing a push-up with your feet elevated instead of on level ground).

Read the full article at self.com. 

When you’re in your 30s and 40s, you may ‍chase strength or endurance: heavier weights, longer runs. But after 50, what your body really craves might be something quieter but just as good for you: a solid stretch.

And we all should be stretching more. Studies show that stretching can improve multiple health conditions as we age, including joint pain and balance; it may even keep us walking longer, which has its own health benefits.

A stretch studio might be a good idea if you’re not likely to stretch regularly enough on your own. “I think having an appointment to actually get yourself up and go somewhere, no matter what, is a great piece of accountability,” Yamuder said.

Yamuder also noted that assisted stretching can help if you don't have much fitness or athletic experience. 

People who are sedentary can benefit most from assisted stretching because they have the most muscle imbalances, according to Yamuder. “When you’re sitting a lot, what can happen is your hip flexors get very tight and shortened, [and] your hamstrings can shorten and get tight. And that’s why you start to see some of the hunching of the back, and you can’t fully extend at the hips.”

Read the full article at aarp.org. A subscription is required to access. 

The post-run cooldown is often depicted as a non-negotiable step—one that reduces soreness, lowers injury risk, and enhances performance in your next workout.

One true benefit of the cooldown is that it can help clear lactate—a byproduct of intense exercise—from your bloodstream. Lactate accumulation can trigger an achy, burning sensation in your muscles, and though your body would eventually clear it post-exercise, a cooldown can hasten that process. That means the cooldown can help your muscles feel better in the short-term, Yamuder said.

The research doesn’t support much physiological benefit of the cooldown, and it’s “really not harmful” to skip it, Yamuder said. But if you can spare the time?

“You should do it,” Yamuder explained. “I just know, anecdotally, that I feel better after walking for 5 to 10 minutes after I do any sort of workout or run,” he said. And that’s likely due to the lactate clearance as well as the recovery mindset it helps facilitate, he explains. Plus, in today’s fast-paced, high-stress world, the cooldown can offer a chance to intentionally unwind and relax, Yamuder added—something you may not otherwise get much of.

Read the full article at run.outsideonline.com.

“Six-pack” abs might look like a sign of fitness, but they reveal surprisingly little about your health. The true secret to healthy aging lies not in visible abdominal muscles, but in the intricate network of muscles that make up your core.

These deeper core muscles stabilize your spine, protect your back, and power almost every movement you make. Yet training with standard moves like crunches for the sake of visible abs can do more harm than good, explained Ben Yamuder, MS, CSCS, USAW-1, exercise physiologist at HSS. 

“When training in that manner, you isolate a very small proportion of muscles in the core,” Yamuder said. He added that there are 35 muscles in your abdomen, and the rectus abdominis—the muscle that runs down the front of the abdomen, commonly referred to as your “six-pack”—only consists of two of them.

Read the full article at nationalgeographic.com. A subscription is required to access. 

“This viral jump test is not a valid measure of an individual’s fitness nor biological age,” said Yamuder. 

“I would also not recommend anyone attempt this jump if they have not participated in intense and consistent resistance training for several years,” Yamuder continued.

Read the full article at huffpost.com. 

First off, long periods of being sedentary can cause an overall increase in muscle tightness, Yamuder said. Specifically, your hip flexors—the muscles at the front of your quads that help bring your knees up toward your chest—shorten up. This, in turn, leads to less hip extension, Yamuder explained.

Hip extension is what allows your legs to go behind your body, and in running, it’s crucial to the push-off phase of your stride. “If your hip flexors are super tight, you can’t get full hip extension, which means you can’t push off fully,” Yamuder explained. This can lead to an increase in stride frequency (how many steps you take per minute), which can cause people to overstride. And that, in turn, can up your risk of issues like shin splints as well as pain and instability in the hip and knee joints, Yamuder said.

Too much sitting can also tighten up your ankles and soleus, a deep calf muscle. And when these areas get tight, your knees can end up absorbing more force from running, which can overload that joint and also decrease your running economy, Yamuder said. Tight ankles can also cause the Achilles tendon to repetitively and forcefully stretch when you run, leading to microtears and inflammation in the tendon, which can cause discomfort and pain, he added.

Read the full article at runnersworld.com. A subscription is required to access. 

"I think going into four-plus days a week of brisk walking, you’re going to see improvement no matter what," explained Yamuder.

Interval walking can also improve blood glucose and insulin resistance. "Your muscles are working harder, and blood sugar gets absorbed through muscles so it's great way to kind of control your blood sugar, especially for older people," said Yamuder.

Read the full article at today.com.