With everything that has been happening in the world, many people have tried to find out about the best ways to stay in good shape. And we have shared the most recent and most interesting studies coming from the world of sports science and nutrition.
This week, we are going to investigate some of the effects of spending more time in a chair and a type of exercise that can significantly help with ACL injuries.
How does spending more time sitting affect our mood?
Not being able to go out whenever we want has had an impact on our activity levels, and many people have been spending a lot more time on the couch or in the new work chair than usual.
Spending so much time without moving can leave you feeling a little down, but there is no reason to worry – a new study has an answer. According to recent research, replacing the time we spend sitting with sleep or light physical activity can improve our mood. 1
In addition, it was found that exchanging sedentary time for sleep is associated with decreased levels of stress and a lower body mass index. Before you go to bed all day, the investigation also found that light activities, such as cooking dinner or walking while talking on the phone, have equally positive effects.
It’s good to know that we don’t need to do an intense training session just to improve the mood. These are easy changes that anyone will be able to apply to their daily lives to feel better.
If you are feeling down, try walking from side to side while you have a phone meeting, or do some homework during the day. Likewise, going to bed early instead of watching television late may be the best way to gain new vitality.
Eccentric exercise for ACL injuries
If you hurt the LCA is not at the top of the list of problems that you don’t feel like having, we don’t know what will be. In other words, we don’t realize how much we need that part of the leg until we hurt it.
And after spending months in pain, you may be back in training, but with a much weaker leg. In fact, this weakness can itself be the source of many problems.
If this scenario is familiar to you, this next study interests you. A group of researchers found that eccentric exercises may be the solution to increase muscle mass and recover from ACL injuries. 2
Eccentric exercise (sometimes called “negative training”) consists of movements that stretch the muscle under tension. You can think of a downward walk, the downward movement of a curl of biceps, or the descent of a step.
It has long been thought that eccentric exercise is more harmful than beneficial in the field of therapy. This investigation, however, claims that this is an outdated point of view.
The study, carried out on rats, found that eccentric exercise was more effective in promoting muscle growth and limiting injuries, when compared to concentric exercise. To ascertain this, the researchers ran the rats in an upward (concentric) and downward (eccentric) motion and measured the results.
The conclusions are very promising and can have many more applications than just the development and repair of muscle tissue after an ACL injury. Since the study has so far only been carried out on rats, it will be interesting to see if eccentric movement can be a solution for muscle growth.
Final Message
What are the conclusions of this week’s studies? We believe that we should cultivate an “anything is better than nothing” attitude towards the movement – even dusting is better than being still. How about including some eccentric exercise sets in your training plan and seeing if you notice any difference?