Tabata: Is This Workout Worth the Pain?

Tabata, a long-established exercise regimen is gaining in popularity. Jake Wallis Simons went to try it. (The interval is actually 20 seconds with a 10 second rest between, not 40 seconds with 10 seconds rest as the article seems to imply.)

You’ve got to psyche yourself up,” says Richard Scrivener, 31, an implausibly muscular health, fitness and nutrition instructor at a gym in Islington, north London. “You’ve got to give it all you’ve got, push yourself, hammer it. When I fire up the music and we’re pumped up, and I’m screaming at you, the roof will lift off. There’ll be so much energy. You’ll see, it will be great.”

Oh, reader. The things I do for you. Read more

10 Diet and Exercise Myths That Won't Go Away

Have you tried dieting and exercising with very little to show for your efforts? You may be doing it all wrong, says Joseph Mercola.

Popular misconceptions can damage your fitness plans. Yahoo Shine and CNN have collected some of the most pervasive and damaging fitness-related rumors. Here are some of them:

Myth – Strength training will bulk you up

In fact, researchers have found that working out with heavy weights increased exercisers' sleeping metabolic rate (the number of calories burned overnight) by nearly 8 percent. That's enough to lose about 5 pounds in a year right there.

Myth – All calories are equal, so it doesn't matter what you eat

Some foods take more work to eat, and therefore burn more calories while you're digesting them. Eating vegetables and lean cuts of meat can increase your calorie burn by up to 30 percent.

Myth – Eating fat will make you fat

Getting enough of the right kinds of fat in your diet is actually essential for good health. Read more

Weight Training Could Changle Your Life

Many women shy away from weight training. But Naomi Alderman says it has transformed her body.

There's a weightlifting area in my gym – not just the rows of dinky handweights by the stretching mats, but the bit with the squat cage, the bench press and the machine where, with both hands, you pull down weights the size of hefty toddlers. I haven't used it – yet – but I'm going to. I've been weight training since last year and every session takes me a bit closer to the end of the handweights and the start of serious lifting. I'm looking forward to it in a way I've never looked forward to exercise before.

Personal trainers, however nice, give me PE teacher flashbacks. I'm not co-ordinated so the group classes that others seem to find fun and sociable – "step up, touch down, change legs, grapevine, step change and shimmy" – just leave me feeling clumsy and frustrated. But I can pick up an easily graspable heavy metal object, lift it slowly and then put it down again. Not only can I do it: I find I love it. Read more