Three great tips to boost your weekend workout

Hello and welcome to Lounge’s weekly fitness roundup. Every week, we bring you some of the best and most informative fitness advice that is sure to take your training to the next level. For your weekend reading, we take a selection of the stories published this week and so you can access them all in one place. 

As the heat of the year is waning as winter creeps up on us, the time is perfect to start going out on long runs. With this in mind, we have two great guides for running shoes for you. We also have an important article on how to care for your shoulders. So grab a cup of coffee and get to some great fitness advice.

Also Read: Are protein bars really good for you?

Remember to take good care of your shoulders.
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Why you need to start caring for your shoulders right now

There’s no getting around the fact that your shoulders are one of the most stressed out parts of your body. Whether it is sitting for hours on a desk, typing away, or aches and pains (or more serious repercussions) because of poor workout form, the shoulders suffer a lot. As Lounge fitness writer Pulasta Dhar writes in this very informative piece, many shoulder disorders are also the result of a common lifestyle disease, dibetes. 

The main thing you should do is to take care of your shoulder joints, and the article gives you some great ways of doing that. Dhar speaks to doctors and specialists and lists the various things that you should and shouldn’t be doing to ensure that your shoulder joints remain healthy and pain-free. He also includes a couple of great videos of stretching exercises that you should incorporate into your workout.

Your go-to guide for the best running shoes.
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The Lounge guide to running shoes

As Mint journalist and running enthusiast Sohini Sen writes in her informative article, while you are running, you tend to put pressure worth about twice your body weight on your legs. As a result, you need to choose your running shoes wisely. The trick is to get a pair of shoes that provides you with adequate cushioning, but also a pair that doesn’t over do this. With this in mind, she lists four excellent new running shoes from Nike, adidas, Puma and Reebok that you should be looking at. She’s tried out each one of them, so there’s plenty of helpful advice on which pair of shoes is perfect for different activities like daily runs, race day runs, training and more.

This week, we carried a second running shoe guide. This one, written by Lounge fitness writer and marathon runner Shrenik Avlani, goes to the next level to look at Olympic grade running shoes that incorporate new carbon fibre technology. These two shoes, from Puma and Asics, were used by many athletes during the recent Tokyo Olympics, so we’re talking professional-grade running shoes here. Avlani puts the shoes through their paces and gives you great advice on what the shoes are and aren’t good for. That way, you can make up your mind better.

HIIT is a great way to train for treks. 
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Why doing HIIT is a great way to train for a Himalayan trek

Lounge writer and editor Bibek Bhattacharya went on a Himalayan trek a couple of weeks ago. While it wasn’t a major undertaking, it still involved plenty of height gain, steep climbs and equally steep descents. In this story Bhattacharya outlines how his HIIT training stood him in good stead while in the mountains.

Bhattacharya writes about the demands that a trek places on your cardiovascular system and your legs, and how HIIT is extremely well-suited for training this. He also links to two excellent HIIT training videos (one with just bodyweight and the other with a pair of dumbbells) which you should add to your training regime.

Also Read: Why you should take the stairs for a great cardio workout