Featured
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Beginner gym workout plan: how to hit the ground running
Are you new to the gym and looking for a guide to help you get started? This blog covers everything you need to know, from a beginner gym workout plan to nutrition tips, motivation and practical advice to keep you...
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How To Beat The Christmas Weight Gain
Overindulged during the festive period? Don’t panic — get back to basics! It’s easy to overindulge during the festive season. Christmas is a time to relax, enjoy good food and make memories — without worrying about calories or hitting the...
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Why you should track your workouts
The first thing you do before heading on a long road trip is to program your phone with the route’s directions. You do this so that you stay on the right path and get to where you’re headed in the...
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Staying on Track During the Festive Season
Drink Water Staying hydrated during the festive season can be a challenge, especially with the abundance of tempting drinks. However, prioritising water intake is crucial for maintaining good health and avoiding dehydration. Kickstart your day with a glass of water...
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Three mistakes to avoid when tracking your calories
Losing weight is never an easy process. Even if you had a clear schedule, tons of motivation and the money to pay for a squeaky-clean diet, it’d still be a challenge to clock in on the weighing scales at a...
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Mistakes to Avoid when Starting your Fitness Journey
When embarking on your fitness journey, you may experience a whole roller-coaster of emotions, excitement to start progressing towards your goals, anxiety around going to the gym or even stress around trying to break old habits while making new ones. At MuscleSquad we are all too familiar with all these feelings, all of us in the office here started our journeys at different places and all have our own individual pursuits, from competitive bodybuilding to powerlifting to calisthenics all the way to sports specific training like football.
The aim of this blog is to get you in the right mindset and help you avoid common pitfalls that people tend to fall into when starting their fitness journey.
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Getting Back on Track: Rebooting Your Fitness Routine After Summer Holidays
The summer holidays are a time to relax, unwind, and enjoy life to the fullest. It is the season of beach trips, BBQs, ice cream cones, and maybe a few too many cocktails. While indulging and taking a break from your regular fitness routine is important, getting back on track afterward can sometimes be challenging. But do not worry; we are here to help you navigate the transition and rekindle your motivation to embrace a healthier lifestyle post-summer.
Here are 6 key things to keep in mind when transitioning back into your daily routine post summer break:
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7 Signs you are overdoing it at the gym...
Recognising the signs that you may be working out too much is crucial for safeguarding your well-being. To help you recognise when you have been taking things too far. Here are 7 signs that you may be overdoing it at the gym...
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Injury Prevention + Rehabilitation Series Part 3: Stabilising Your Shoulders
The shoulders are probably known as the main culprit when it comes to poor posture. Hours of being sat at a desk staring at screen all day tends to put us in a weird hunched over position, rounding our shoulders and potentially leading to back and neck pain. Couple that with loads of pressing motions in the gym and you may find that your shoulders are causing you a little bit of discomfort.
Many of the smaller muscles in the upper back are often overlooked in our training, as we tend to prioritise the larger muscles like the lats for example. However, by focusing on strengthening and stabilising the smaller muscles of the rotator cuff and upper/mid back, you can not only correct your posture but keep your shoulders healthy when it comes to moving weight in the gym. Here are a few simple exercises you can do with resistance bands and a kettlebell for either rehabilitation or simply warming up before your pressing.
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Injury Prevention + Rehabilitation Series Part 2: Stabilising Your Core
When someone mentions training your core, the most common thing that comes to mind is training your “abs,” but the core is made up of a few more muscles that often get overlooked. Along with the Rectus Abdominis (the six pack visible abs) and Erector Spinae (the lower back muscles) we also have the Transverse Abdominis (which is the deeper lying muscle beneath everything else responsible for stability and bracing), and the Obliques (the muscles that wrap around our sides).
In this blog we have put together a few different exercises you may want to try to target those often-overlooked areas of the core – the Transverse Abdominis and Obliques.
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Why You Should Lift Weights As You Age (Key to Longevity)
Nobody really knows the exact reason why our bodies deteriorate with age; the process of aging is extremely complex and varies as to how it affects different people and even different animals. However, there are many lifestyle factors that have been proven to slow down and reverse the process of aging. In this blog we will be covering one of these factors; resistance training and going over how it allows people to maintain overall health and well-being as they go deep into old age.
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Injury Prevention + Rehabilitation Series Part 1: Strengthen Your Ankles (Achilles Tendon Rupture)
In this 3-part series we’re looking at how to strengthen the often-overlooked areas of the body to help us prevent or rehabilitate injuries. Some of us spend a lot of time sat at desks during the day, and without adequate activity can cause some discomfort in certain muscles or joints. Follow along over the next couple of weeks for some tips on how to target these overlooked muscles and help bulletproof your body.
This week’s focus is on the Ankles. We asked CJ our Brand Manager & Trainer to give us an insight into how he’s been rehabilitating his Achilles after it ruptured playing football 4.5 months ago...
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Designing your Environment to Support your Fitness Journey
When you are at work you probably regularly tidy your desk or workspace, make sure your computer is plugged in, and regularly check your emails and maybe even categorise them. You probably do not realise it at the time, but all these little tasks you do through the day without thinking, you do to help yourself perform better and avoid potential obstacles. However, the question is, do you do that for your health, fitness, and wellbeing goals?
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Keep Fit with the Family During the School Summer Holidays
The school summer holidays are the perfect time to bond with your family and create lasting memories. However, it can also be the time where people can reverse all progress that they have made on their fitness journeys. Trips abroad, days out, dinners at restaurants, takeaways etc, all while training takes a backseat as childcare is prioritised during this period.
Here are some fun and engaging activities that will help you and your family stay fit and healthy throughout the summer break to make sure you make the most of this period and continue progressing towards your goals!
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Staying fit while on holiday
Going on holiday is one of the best ways to relax, unwind and create memories to last a lifetime. Alongside the fun comes indulgence whether it be trying various foods, treats or alcohol. What if we told you that you could enjoy your getaway and keep fit at the same time, in this blog we will cover different ways you can include exercise into your holiday, ensuring you keep progressing towards your goals, help you stay energized and feeling good so you can make the most out of your break!
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How to stay consistent with your fitness
“Consistency, more so than anything else, leads to change” – Ryan Flaherty, Nike Senior Director of Performance There’s no golden ticket to achieving success, but to even enter the raffle you need to be consistent with what you do. When...
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How NEAT Can Improve Your Health and Fitness
NEAT, in the context of fitness and health, stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. It is how much energy you spend through daily activities and movements not including the energy spent on actual workout sessions. NEAT is made up from the calories burned during activities like walking, cleaning...
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Tips for Training with an Injury
Sustaining an injury and be extremely frustrating for many, and not only does it effect your training, but also your everyday life. Here are a few tips to help you gain a little bit of normality and train whilst carrying an injury.
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Tips to lose fat
If your goal is fat loss, the first step is all about establishing your start point. This involves taking measurements such as your body weight, your waist circumference, and pictures. These will be your metrics when it comes to measuring your progression. Losing body fat is going to involve a change in certain habits which will take time, it is not going to be an overnight process.
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Sleep More To Lift More – Why Sleep Is Crucial For Training And Tips For Sleeping Better
In the pursuit of weightlifting whether it is for strength or hypertrophy, we tend to focus on our training programs and nutrition. One vital factor that tends to be commonly overlooked is sleep, according to the World Health Organisation, roughly 1 in every 3 people are sleep deprived. On a fundamental level, humans cannot survive without sleep, it is an essential biological process that allows our bodies to reset, heal, recover, and maintain physical, mental, and emotional health. This article will cover 3 ways sleep can benefit your weight training and ways to help you improve your sleep.
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Lifting Women - Celebrating International Women's Day
As we celebrate International Women's Day, it's important to recognize the incredible impact that women have had on the world of fitness. From trailblazers like Jane Fonda and Denise Austin who popularized at-home workouts in the 1980s, to modern-day fitness influencers like Kayla Itsines and Cassey Ho, women have long been at the forefront of promoting health and wellness. Today, we honour the strength, resilience, and determination of women everywhere who are committed to taking care of themselves both physically and mentally. In this article, we have reached out to friends of MuscleSquad to ask them about fitness and share their reasons for working out with you all. So let us celebrate all the amazing women out there who are crushing their fitness goals and paving the way for future generations!
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Meal Prep - Tips, Tricks and Benefits
When people think of the term ‘Meal Prepping’ they tend to think of extreme diets, there is probably a mental image of a fridge/freezer full to the brim with containers covering every meal one will consume for the next week. That extreme image is not a true reflection of what meal prepping is, meal prepping can be a great tool you can use to help improve your day-to-day life in many ways and aid you in reaching your fitness and health related goals. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of meal prepping and give you some tips you can apply to help you in your meal prepping journey.
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'We met at the bar..." - Find Out How This Couple Met At The Gym
In the spirit of Valentine's day, we went and spoke with friends of the Squad: Darren and Zoë who are a couple that met at the gym. Read on to see the details of how they met and their experience as a couple who train together. How did you meet? Zoë: We met at the gym just over a year ago! Darren noticed me...
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6 Ways To Beat The January Blues
The holiday season tends to be the high point of the year for a lot of people, multiple weeks of festivities, travelling, excess food, alcohol, and spending time with loved ones. With any high there is the dreaded comedown which happens to land in the month of January.
Here are some tips to help you bounce back from the January Blues:
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Change how you approach 'New Year's Resolutions'
It is that time of year, the time of new year’s resolutions. Have you kept your resolutions from last year? Will the ‘new you’ last beyond February? Regardless of your answer, we really appreciate how hard it is to stick to a new year’s resolution and make positive changes in your life, especially when it is related to health and fitness. Which is why we have created this article to help prime and prepare you to welcome the ‘new you’ and have the ‘new you’ stay as a permanent resident this time.
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Top Tips for Training in the Heatwave
It's important to make sure your workout routine doesn't become too strenuous for the heat!
We've outlined all the top tips for working out in the upcoming heatwave and when it may be too hot to carry on! Here's everything you should be aware of with how to train in the heat:
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Cheat Day - Should It Be A Thing?
"Cheat days" are they for real? Is it a good idea to have a cheat day? What does a cheat day involve? Are cheat days bad for you? We get the low down from those in the know - the MuscleSquad PTs
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15 health benefits of weight training
Weight training, of course, can improve your strength, but did you know that there's a vast array of other benefits and reasons you should take part in regular strength training? Here are 15 ways weight training, whether at home or in the gym, can improve your health.
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12 mental health benefits of weight training
Weight training will build you a buff body, but it's also proven to have numerous benefits for your mental health and wellbeing too. Here's how to unlock the most life-changing emotional benefits of pumping iron.
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Self-Care Tips To Swerve Blue Monday
Uh oh, Blue Monday is coming. But is this supposedly depressing day really all that bad? And how can you use healthy habits to take control of your January vibes?
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How To Change Your Body Composition
When people are trying to change their body composition, proper education on this topic is essential. What we want to do today is to help you understand the different approaches you should take when looking to build muscle or lose fat.
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5 Essential Foot Exercises for Strength, Flexibility and Pain Relief
If you're struggling with feet pain, simply massaging your feet isn't enough. Prevention is better than cure; you have to increase strength and mobility in that area to make sure your upper body is correctly supported.
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Overuse Injury: How to Prevent Training Injuries
Wherever you're working out; whether it's your garage or the gym, we want you to be safe. Here's how to prevent training injuries.
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How to Eat for Building and Cutting
You may have heard the phrase 'gains are made in the kitchen'. While this isn't entirely true, the way you eat plays a huge rule in your overall progress and performance in the gym.
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