This week’s top gym tips

Resident ECR fitness expert, Lisa Raleigh, shares her top five tips for this week…

If you think you're too busy to exercise, try this experiment: For one week, schedule in time to work out each day and then stick to it – even if you only end up exercising for 10 minutes. At the end of the day, ask yourself if you were any less productive than usual. The answer will probably be no—and your favorite excuse will be gone.

To build forearm strength for tennis and racquetball, crumple newspaper. Lay a newspaper sheet on a flat surface and, starting at one corner, crumple it into a ball with your dominant hand for 30 seconds. Repeat the process with your other hand, then work your dominant hand again.

When doing lat pulldowns, don't wrap your thumb around the bar. Instead, place it on top, alongside your index finger. This decreases the involvement of your arm muscles, so you'll work your back harder. This works well for pull ups too.

If you hurt your right arm, don't stop exercising your left arm. Research shows that people who train only one arm for 2 weeks still manage to increase arm strength in their non-exercising arm up to 10 percent. Exercising one arm still stimulates the muscle nerve fibres in the opposite arm, so you don’t have to fall too far behind.

If you’re hitting it hard in the gym, count your repetitions backward. When you near the end of the set, you'll think about how many you have left instead of how many you've done, and be motivated to finish


Catch Lisa Raleigh on Wellness in the WorkZone every day, Monday to Friday