THE JOOMPA JOURNAL

Women Who Lift: An Empowering Movement, Falsely Marketed

For decades, the average gym-going female was discouraged from lifting heavy weights. Then, slowly, people began to understand the connection between genetics and adaptation to training. But has the pendulum now swung too far in the other direction?

Staying Motivated for Home Workouts

In the face of a global lockdown, home workouts are more popular than ever. However, the novelty has faded a little bit as the pandemic drags on. Here are a few ways to stay motivated to keep moving, even if you're staying indoors.

Supersets & Compound Sets: Analysis & Application

If you’re at all familiar with working out and training in general, the terms “superset & "compound set" will have come up at some point. Technically though, they’re very misused.

In this article, we explore their differences - and application - in depth.

5 Must-Haves for Home Workouts

As we face another lockdown, here are five of our favourite pieces of kit that allow you to get a great home workout in. This essential equipment will ensure you get enough variety in your routine to keep things interesting and effective. Plus, staying fit physically will work wonders mentally, too.

How To (Safely) Get Juniors in the Gym: Starting Kids on Resistance Training

On the “Gym Rules” sign in most gyms, you’ll see “No children under the age of X”. This reinforces the misconception that children or teenagers should stay away from the weights room, which isn’t strictly true.

Preventing Injury While Working Out

Any exercise - any movement for that matter - presents a risk of injury. Whether a dynamic change in direction that puts stress on your knee ligaments, landing a jump and challenging your ankle, or a heavy overhead press that puts strain on your spine and shoulders, we must always exercise caution (quite literally). The simplest way to avoid injury and reduce this risk is learning how to maximise your body’s mechanics through the right movements. In this article, we walk you through the three key steps.

5 Reasons you need a PT

While there is no shortage of fitness guides and training tutorials on the internet, sometimes it can get more overwhelming than helpful to sort through it solo. Selecting which workout plan to follow, what movements work for your personal body goals, the kind of equipment required to execute them, and whether or not can you even stick to the workout plan you’ve set for yourself - it’s all very daunting.

If you can relate to even one or two of these pain points, it might be time to start working with a personal trainer. Here's why.

Mistakes to avoid when returning to the gym

If it's your first time back in the gym in a while for whatever reason, it’s almost going to be like a reset for many of you. Getting to workout around actual weights and the motivation that has usually put you in the gym can be especially exciting after month off. While the excitement is good and can give you the seemingly rare and precious "oomph" you need, there are a few things that you need to keep in mind so that you don’t injure yourself.

Unstable Fables

Here's another type of training trend that is hard to ignore - Unstable Training. Walk into a gym, and you will most likely find a variety of balance apparatus stacked neatly on a rack or strewn around the “functional” area.

Fun-ctional Training

“Functional Training” has recently gained a lot of traction for what would seem to be the right reasons. Its foundation is purposeful and context-specific exercises and it bases its ethos around taking people away from using machines to lift weights in the gym, and instead throwing around things like medicine balls, or jumping onto boxes. But let’s take a brief moment to understand the “how” and “why” behind development of gym equipment ...

Lessons on Lockdown - Training under the new MCO

<p>We are being allowed out of our homes to exercise, but indoor sports with a greater transmission risk are still off the menu. That means gym facilities remain closed. So, what does that mean for your health and fitness goals? Well, the good news is that two very important factors are now going to improve: your NEAT and your sun exposure. Another subliminal contributor to your progress that we’re also expecting to see positively affected is your mood.</p>

Lessons On Lockdown: Ramadan Training

And so the month of Ramadan begins, a month of minimalism, mindfulness and sacrifice. With strict eating and prayer windows to adhere to, it can be overwhelming to work out where one should put their day’s training to ensure no physical progress is lost in the process. During lockdown though, we’re almost lucky. Without a commute to worry about and with home-training the only exercise option, it becomes much easier to find the time to sneak training in at what would usually be awkward hours.