If it pains you, work out again

By ChulucanasGym

Art by Franklin Juárez – Exclusive for ChulucanasGym

Is anything worse for a guy who has dedicated a good part of his life to intense physical activity? Yes, there is. And we’re not talking about not to do it often or anymore, but the consequence after a long or short period without activity – pains in muscles and joints. Depending on the type of training that you have done, the annoyance uses to appear besides the neck, the shoulders, the arms, almost all the back (especially the lower part), the upper side of the gluteus (and its lower zone, eventually), the thighs, the knees, and the calves (look at the figures).

It’s true that the massages help, but if is the pain recurrent? Many followers told us that they have started to feel back pain particularily, and all focused in the lower part. That brought our attention, so in the process to research  the background of physical activity, we found in all cases that you did weights, aerobics, dance, and even football.

Every person who asked us don’t meet each other nor live in the same location, but we had the reference of the intense physical activity, so we asked what would happen if they retake it. The ones who did it experienced a gradual remission of the pain at the point to disappear.  “It pained even when I rested, but when I played football again, it was giving up,” Franklin Juárez, 32, told us in Tambogrande, Peru, who contributed us to illustrate this article too.

What is the principle behind the relief? When we do intense physical activity in a periodical term, we submit the body into a constant renovation of muscular tissue, getting it ready for conditions of stronger moves than the simple walk or shaking arms and legs. Then, we program our body to do that renovation in a continous way due to every fiber suffers from a atrophy process or modification, that makes the work we do much efficient.

If we leave to do it, that atrophy reverses slowly because the muscular tissue is elastic. And as we are not doing the voluntary process of pushing it and pulling it yet, this ends to retract, sending a switch to the brain that is interpreted as pain. Remember that the same happens when you build muscle – as the fiber breaks up, it inflamates, and it uses the same alert system for notifying that something is modifying inside there.

So our choices are keeping stopped or keeping to move. If we decide the first one, it’s probable the pains continue until the muscular atrophy reverses; if we go for the second one, the muscular atrophy continues and the brain holds the programming to have the body ready for the type of activity that we do.

And what about the overweight that is experienced when you leave to do an intense physical activity? Because of our body programs to assimilate more glucose, which we use as energy for the muscular work, as we don’t use it anymore like a kind of fuel, we trend to accumulate it as fat tissue. However, health specialists who reviewed our  report denied a relation between pain and overweight.

Nevertheless, many of you who retook the intense physical aactivity have reported that as you lost weight, the pain resumed even to disappear. The specialists explained us that sensation is rather because we have reactivated the atrophy process for that we had programmed our body, as we told up before.

In conclusion, if you did intense physical activity, you leave it suddenly for a few or a long time, and the muscles start to pain, try to work out again like before. And it’s probable that annoyance resumes. Don’t forget to ask your doctor if this seems to involve other organs of your body, and never prescript yourself. While we follow to report, share your experience on the comment box right below or on our Twitter account.

Let's Return To Nature

By Ronald Benites

There is a place where all the effort and sacrifice we display at the gym is tested - the natural mean, outdoors, right there where electtricity and technology are limited use, where we are among the Creation.

Very few of us remember, or want to remember, that much before wireless and smartphones existed, human beings had to be in-shape for going amid the forests, the mountains, and the water, looking for our livelihood. It was necessary to be well fed but also having strong and flexible muscles for moving forward fastly, sagaciously, successfully. Despite it, surviving was impossible.

Inclusive when we were setting down as human settlements as towns or first cities, constant physical activity was basic to sustain our life.

As our knowledge allowed the technology developed muchly, we also were losing the connection to tat mean where we encourage or were encouraged to survive. In some sense, the confort of a roof or the immediacy of a click have been taking off our ancestral spaces, and altough we try to recreate few yards away our homes or inside them, it's not the same.

So, for who works out hard constantly at the gym or a sportscenter, the return to Nature must not be considered as an extravagant but necessary activity, not like an extraordinary milestone but a frequent habit.

The reason is so simple as the contact to Nature revitalize us when breathing pure air, forcing to be in constant physical activity, solving our lacks with creativity, getting amazed by the processes and interactions of living beings to the landscape... because we came from there and we have to return there as often as we can for cleaning our soul.

We could say that unfortunately our urban spaces drown our natural spaces much more everytime, but we are responsible in some sense about that process when we refuse to propose an ordered growing and a more rational exploitation of the environment, and the manner we live.

So it's desirable that we must incorporate the respect and conservation of our natural spaces where we can intervene preventively for our physical, mental, and even spiritual health, also demanding our basic services to be correctly implemented and satisfied. Spaces where we can practice physical activity and sports, meditate, produce healthy food, and even follow therapies of diverse kind too.

Our actual or aspirant authorities have there a straight interesting agenda item they must not skip but promoting, managing and defending.

Personally, I enjoy a lot being in contact to Nature. I feel I clean my soul, and there are fortunately many spaces around Chulucanas, my city, where I can reload myself after going some minutes up by walking, running, or biking (actually, the pictures of myself on this article were taken in this place).

But I confess  I have a big predilection by the mountains, abouth those I am going to feel ever wondered.  You know. Maybe become living there some day further, eating tasty and healthy, working out my body and soul while listening to the animals or the creeks' water in the background... in the end, returning to that space where the human learned once upon a time to be human.

Why you should fall in love of physical culture

As Luis Rodríguez told it to ChulucanasGym

I realized a little time ago many things about the physical culture, things I didn’t know absolutely there were. That’s why the history is important. I’m currently attending to an International Federation of Fitness and Bodybuilding, the IFBB, course for improving myself as a personal trainer. The IFBB is in over 160 countries, including Peru.

Among the coaches illustrating us with their lessons, is Jorge Montero, an expert in millennial physical culture. I should call this subject as History of Physical Culture, that goes back to the 15^th century with the Marcet Rouet’s French School, when the first training center with barbells made of cannon balls was created, and other apparel that we continue to use today, and one of the things I ever confirm in classes is that nothing has been invented about physical culture. There was everything, already.

Now, to my criterion, the physical culture represents a move. The human body is designed to move, to be active, and it’s something to be fundamental in our lives. And a thought comes to my mind from the Father of Physical Culture, Hipolito Triat, that “you have to grow the body and the spirit as well, at the same time, because both are driving, like two horses, to the man” And I ever have it in mind.

For me, the physical culture turned in something fundamental. I do bodybuilding since I was 15 years old. I did mainly because I didn’t feel well being too thin. I was 110 pounds, I was skinny. I have ever fought with my weight. I’m ektomorphe somatotype, badly complicated to gain muscular mass. But I fell in love of the results, of forgetting everything for 45 minutes. It’s because just training demands you much brain capability: you connect through breathing, pushing, pulling. You have no mind for anything else!

It’s already currently a part of my life. I don’t know what I would do not doing physical activity, because I’m not only a weight-lover but everything about physical activity: running, trail, swimming, climbing, extreme sports, obstacles circuit (InkaChallenge, SpartaRace). I like adrenalin and the satisfaction of reaching goals. I think the life’s about that.

Amazing Benefits

• Anti-aging: I’m 32 years old  but I look like 25. Well, that’s what they say me and  I believe so. Honestly, I feel that age.
• Inmuniiefficience: Doo you know how many times I get sick through the year? How many times I get cold? Once or twice at the most.
• More sexual power: My testosterone levels are ever high due to the power workout. This means more vigor, more cardio-vascular exercise when I make love.
• Exfoliation: My skin is ever clean because when we sweat, we release toxins, and we regenerate tissue later.
• Happiness: Due to endorphins, serotonins, and other hormones of happiness and pleasure. Surely, all this ggoes combined to agood feeding because it’s the perfect balance.

How should you motivate?

First, think of health andwellbeing words, then, ask how I want to live my old age. We just discussed about that topic in clases, and it’s the fact that the society links the old age term to multiple factors those downgrade our life quality (motor weakness, sarcopenia, and a infinity of deplorable conditions for the human being). So it was currently proved that that all these old-age typical conditions can be eliminated, to reach an age, like 60 years old, active. And believe me, I have seen it and lived it: gentlemen in their 60s lifting the same weight than me. I see them and I see myself later. They’re my pride.

People must think of that, not of losing weight for the summer and forgetting it further. Think of how you want to end your days. And please, that nobody comes to me with the excuse that there’s no time. The day is 24 hours -8 hours sleeping = 16, -8 hours of worktime = 8 hours, and only 45 minutes are enough to train.

Currently there are thousand ways to workout: parks, home professional personal trainers, which must be health generators instead of aesthetics. So, get motivated. Take the first step. That’s how you start, and when you do once, and you realize it’s a spirit matter rather than anything, you’re going to fall in love of the physical culture. And I leavetake with an amazing thought which confirms everything what I say: “You have to strengthen the body health because the dominion of the spirit depends on it.” (Plato: Republic, 597B)

Workout with Luis Rodríguez – Look for him asLR Fit Plan.

Fit to save lives

Looking for perfection in sports to serve the people owing nothing in return.

By ChulucanasGym

Many people, even you, could transcend through the sports as a goal, what means to be prepared consciously, compete and win.  However, there are who set up to perfectionate in a sport for stepping ahead different but no more no less important - helping the people. And we're not talking about teaching a sport or discipline for the rest to practice and spread, butserve the community after making the sport as one of your ways of life.

That's the case of Lima-based businessman David Villanueva, 44, who used to be a sportsman his whole life, becoming a soccer player in a second division team even. The gym became an usual space for him, that he also looked for it everytime he traveled around. 

 "I do it because I like it," he explains trying to give a reason that motivates him to be in constant physical activity.

But the issue goes beyond a simple like. Last months, his whole vision of life changed when he decided to postulate in Peru's Volunteer Firefighters General Corps, one of the most loved, misunderstood and sometimes mistreated institutions in the country.

"The firefighter's job is saving lives," he comments, so the training that David had along his life (cardiovascular, specifically) is key in terms of stamina and power, what is under proof during rescues.

Each firefighter must incorporate a physical routine activity in addition to the theoretical learning, that allows to be eveready everytime the emergency breaks. In David's case, there are no limits about routine types more than being in constant physical activity.

Why does a very talented,skillful dude suddenly fall fascinated  by the chance to serve the people? The most approppriate answer is vocation, what means the will to do what we like much for getting the people's wellness, owing nothing in return but the satisfaction of feeling useful.

Many people look for that state in proffessional, religious life as well because the simple propose to transcend, go beyond. Some sportsmen use to do it through charity, giving their gains for the people to live better in other words (and there are hundreds of examples). 

But David's goes in a closer, more practical way impacting directly the people's life - saving each one at a time. Hey! This is not about the way David acts to be better or worst but it can be a choice you could consider to make sense for those hours you worked out hard, sweated, disciplined and achieved. 

"It's not easy because you even have to sacrifice time as you spend with your family, weekends, parties or friends," David stresses, and it's part of the whole kit you accept enthusiastic, especially if we have in mind that the firefighters in Peru are not remmunerated for their work (that's why they're volunteers).

If you go up through that way, talk directly to David, look for information at 127 Salamanca station or the fire station closer to you.

Oh! And never forget to have the emergency number available to use it when a real emergency breaks.

 

A medicine called rythm

Why shouldn’t just a dance morning be… just a dance morning?

By ChulucanasGym. Photos Courtesy Fuerza de la Juventud.

Last July 10th, a Group of boys and girls called Fuerza de la Juventud (Youth Power) summoned Piura City’s population to spend dancing in the  morning .

Their objective was to get the people involved into a healthy activity but they didn’t go deep more reasons. However, they got 50 men and women joined the idea. They also got Bodytech accepts to monitor it.

That’s the possitive, but we believe that Fuerza de la Juventud responsed much by spontaneity for ‘doing something’, according to one of its spokesman talked to us, before articulating a possibly beneficial project for a population with high levels of heart disease, diabetes, overweight, depression and anxiety.

In fact, since they joined, they follow isolated initiatives muchly fed by entusiasm –what it’s not bad- instead of strategic planning.

But, as they are a group just stepping on, they can adjust , correct and take ideas, specializing in some in particular. And dance is one of the best  they could have and they should continue in an articulated, plannedd way, with sequential goals… as dance and the whole physical activity are by definition.

Teaches, avoids, heals

Physically, diverse works take care to separate pedagogical, preventive and therapeutic aspects of dance.

Although the human being usually can move by reflexes, dance allows to organize them for make them a rhythm. This means to coordinate the ear and the muscles, eventually the eye too. When we program our reflexes to make rhythm, we develop auditive and space memory and muscles become more flexible for responsing better the next time they are stimulated to move in one or many determined directions.

Preventively, dance implies to sweat, that releases toxines. But few people realize the movement rregulates blood circulation and impacts possitively on all fluids of our body. In consequence, it reduces or controls heart conditions, improves breathing, corrects position, avoids or reduces hurts in muscles and articulations, regenerates the skin much fastly, and slows down the aging.

So, ever you have medical supervision, once those diseases have appeared, dance has shown to be a favorable therapy for recovering processes even the degenerative ones, as Parkinson’s disease.

“It helps to improve breathing because of exercises done before and during the dance, like breathing and body warm-up as arms, abs or legs, and some energy focusing exercises, something similar to meditation,” Picsi, Peru-based coach German Aguirre stresses.

An integrative activity

If physical benefits are significant, mental benefits are the equal. Since dancing is a learning process, each achieve you get contributes with much confidence, and that strengthen your self-steem. Regarding, this also implies to know better your body and its responses, what impacts on loving you more, appreciating you more.

Starting up here, when you focus your brain on dancing well, you bring it upgrade, keeping you far from any mental condition, depression especially, it doesn’t matter a diagnosis neither risky factors leading you to it. The same for anxiety.

And when dancing comes from an individual experience to a collective one, as Fuerza de la Juventud set up, and under an adequate monitoring, it improves your social skills and stimulates values as solidarity, fellowship and respect.

“Group dance has too many benefits because the persons, when joining, first have to meet for work well together so, then it helps they know much different things along the time: combined steps, lifts, maneuvers,, coach German Aguirre points on.

That’s why we consider a dancing morning can’t keep just in a spontaneous and isolated activity, but it must response to a frequent program to improve the life and health of each person, and what rebuilds us like a healthy community in body, mind and soul. The challenge is able for the vote.

Post-produced by Sheyla Benavente.

Read also:

• The dance of life
• Yoga – A Different Philosophy

Aerobics at the beach

Having so much free space and the sea in the background, why not moving your body?

By ChulucanasGym

During many time, El Toril Beach in Paita, peru, was abandoned. Adding the belonging contamination of the sand due to the solid residues, the sea in front of it has been suffering from a similar process caused by waste water emission.

The Peruvian authorities took control of the second one and started a surveillance plan that allowed to identify the companies uncontrolling  their emissions to prevent or to penalize just in case. The first one implied a citizen movement  which was joined later by the local authorities, until in the last years many cleaning journeys were hold for letting the space in acceptable conditions, at least for taking a sunbath.

El Toril Beach is attended by sports fans because it's next to Paita City, having the sea right there. People jogging, playing ball, working out someway, even swimming, meet there daily. 

For Perfect Body Gym's senior trainer Félix Oviedo, the beach is an ideal place to get balance within physical and mental health by moving the body. That's why he and his staff chose it as the right stage for  having an aerobics master class, last December 2nd.

During three hours, around 40 people summoned to learn with trainers coming from  cities around Paita.  "What we wanted was the people to take the stress away, burning fat, and enjoying the beach," Oviedo commented to ChulucanasGym.

Doing aerobics outdoors is not new but funny indeed. And it's not new because the humankind, inclusive since before it evolved such,  was in constant movement and needed agility and stamina  for moving around and getting everything  it required.

Essentially, the aerobic exercise consists into a series of moderate-impact moves with high repetitions, what inside the body, uses the oxygen to decompose the fat among the muscles, having it as fuel.

As a result, the internal and external tone of the tissues improves, heart beating regulates, cognitive capability increases, aging slows down in every level. and in a country with high levels of violence, it reduces  the stress  and  raises the wellbeing sensation.

By definition, running, biking, swimming, walking, and even doing home chores vigorously, are types of aerobic exercise. What is done at a gym class is spotting  the work on certain muscular groups, or along the body, controlling sequence and repetitions.

For the people trying to lose weight, the aerobic exercise is ideal because of the same in-muscle fat elimination process, what is good news for the ones ripping them, what means staying lean, that improves aesthetics. Remember you could have volume, but if it has no defined shape, won't look like well.

It's good to enlarge the fact of improving the heart beating in a big part because it makes the existent vessels wider, what reduces the heart work inclusive when you rest. Also, it holds away  the LDL-cholesterol (the bad one) and triglicerides, very related to hypertension.

Plus, it makes the vascularization more efficient, allowing  the blod to reach the parts of your body  where it made so difficult before.

If the exercise in general puts the body under  a constant renovation process, the aerobics are notable because  allows to regenerate the neurones,  your nervous cells.  And that is the explanation of improving  your cognitive levels, adding of course habits like reading , the academic study, and the memory games even.

And if this seems little, it decreases the adrenaline levels,  the stress-related hormone, increasing endorphines instead, the hormones  those give us the sensation of satisfaction.

Don't forget the aerobics improve the breathing, what increases stamina, so it allows to support the physical work for better.

If we add to all this the fact of practicing it outdoors, preferently natural, we see the benefit multiplies, and that is the intention of Félix Oviedo and  the Perfect Body staff who got involved into the beach activity.

"This is the sixth time we already do aerobics at the beach," he adds.

If you want to know when his next activity will take, you can follow him on his Facebook fanpage.

Finally, you must know that the World Health Organization recommends at least  30 minutes of daily physical activity someway, or 15 minutes per day  in intense mode at least, and before attending an aerobics class,  visit your most reliable cardiologist for determining your perfect time and rythm for you by an effort test.

So, let's go to the beach for working out?

How to reduce the pain after training

Look at Mario Kanashiro’s manga

[Exclusive] Now, the dancer and model also amaze us as a cartoonist.

 

We’ve learned about athletes or bodybuilders who serve as inspiration to artists who take them pictures, shot them on video or film, draw them, or sculpt them. We’ve learned about bodybuilders or athletes who turn artists, or viceversa, exploring the different manifestation ways. Even, we’ve shown them here.

But, what happens when bodybuilders and athletes are also artists not meaning to exclude some of those dimensions?

Speaking much deeper, art and sports share common values what you never have realized neither: looking for perfection, wishing to overcome obstacles, needing to move, satisfying to reach goals, the discipline turning the unusual into daily, the recognized achievement.

 

Then, don’t get surprised if you decide to pass from physical culture to the artistic one, or reverse, and all during a single day, and returning to someone of them, or being between them not meaning it a conflict of time or personal/professional identity.

It’s the case of our friend Mario Kanashiro in Nagoya, Japan. We’ve already told you his story by here: after learning to dance and realizing he did it very good, now he is a trainer working in the Land of Rising Sun. But, let’s also remember Mario already came from a previous artistic experience – music.

Then, to get engaged to the dance costed but it was relatively simple to go achieving. Additionally, let’s remember he worked as a model. Review Mario’s story here.

 

Nevertheless, what we didn’t know is that Mario also has got skill for drawing. “When I was in high-school, I drew for some months as hobby,”  he tells us.  But once upon a day of 2021, he decided to retake it, and since June 2022, he is practicing it much intense – inclusive, he shares it on his social media accounts.

What he mainly portrays are manga characters, the Japanese art of comic, and animé ones, that would be something like bringing manga to the animation by hand or by computer. “I like drawings, I like to design them and creating something original,” he adds.

And this is very consistent with his facet of dancer and choreographer, which creations he continues sharing on his social media. In all them, he print his personal touch, his followers love it. “Inclusive, they advice me to improve.” Coming next, we offer you a selection of the drawings Mario himself did from his whole work. What do you look them like?

 

Drawings by Mario Kanashiro.

It’s necessary to say that the drawing, as any type of art, influences positively in mental health of any bodybuilder or athlete because it allows him to deal with daily pressures, develops focusing levels much effective as he doesn’t do the same thing ever, and it increases the mood to retake the physical activity. In some cases, the physical activity itself influences the artistic inspiration as it opens the mind from the body up to other conscience state.

Have you ever tried it? Tell us in the comments below, on our Twitter account, or at chulucanasgym@gmail.com. We’ll love to know what you do, and, if you agree, share it with our entire community.

Don’t miss Mario on his social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

 

The model featured in this entryis Mario Kanashiro.