Muscle Building (Credit: Canva)
Building muscle mass offers more than just aesthetic benefits—it can help you achieve more balance, improve blood sugar management and boost mental well-being. However, the ease of gaining muscle can vary depending on your body type. If you've struggled to bulk up despite consistent effort, then probably you are mesomorph.
Body types, or somatotypes, are generally classified into three categories: mesomorphs, ectomorphs, and endomorphs. Mesomorphs, in particular, are known for their athletic build, with broad shoulders, narrow waists, and a natural propensity for muscle growth. According to personal trainer Phil Catudal, who spoke to a leading fitness publication, mesomorphs are easily identifiable by their proportions—if your waist and hips are about the same width, you might fall into this category.
Beyond physical appearance, mesomorphs have an edge in muscle-building due to their naturally higher muscle mass and lower fat levels. This implies that they can gain significant results from moderate workouts, making them well-suited to activities requiring strength and stamina.
The mesomorphic advantage lies in their ability to build muscle quickly and maintain it. This is because they have a balanced composition of muscle and fat, which allows mesomorphs to achieve results with less effort than other body types. Unsurprisingly, many athletes possess mesomorphic traits. However, mesomorphs aren not immune to weight gain. While they may gain fat as easily as muscle, they can shed excess weight effectively by combining a healthy diet with exercise.
Ectomorphs are the body types that are characterized by their lean frames and they often struggle to gain weight. Therefore, it is tougher for them to gain muscles, despite accurate exercise and diet.
On the other hand, endomorphs tend to carry more body fat, which can obscure their muscle mass and make workouts more challenging.
However, it is not impossible to gain muscles for these two body types. Tailored workouts and diet is the answer. Ectomorphs benefit from high-calorie, nutrient-dense diets and strength training with heavier weights, as the International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) advises. Endomorphs, meanwhile, may focus on calorie control, muscle-building exercises, and high-intensity cardio to improve endurance and shed fat.
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Regardless of the body type, there are a few exercises that help muscle gain. They include squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses and pull-ups.
1. Squats: A foundational exercise that targets the lower body, improving leg strength and core stability.
2. Deadlifts: A compound movement that strengthens the back, glutes, and hamstrings while enhancing overall power.
3. Bench Presses: A key upper-body exercise that builds chest, shoulder, and tricep muscles.
4. Overhead Presses: A shoulder-focused lift that also engages the core for stability and balance.
5. Pull-ups: A bodyweight exercise that develops upper-back, bicep, and grip strength.
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Your pelvic floor muscles do much more for your sexual health than most people realise. These deep muscles support the bladder, uterus, and bowel, but they also play a big part in pleasure, performance, and confidence during intimacy.
Whether you’re healing after childbirth, managing incontinence, or simply aiming to feel more connected with your body, training your pelvic floor is a natural way to improve sexual wellness.
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5 Pelvic Floor Exercises to Boost Sexual Health
3. Deep SquatsHow to do it:
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Football, the world’s most popular sport, may come with an invisible cost: brain health. While players are celebrated for their stamina, skill, and longevity on the pitch, research shows that elite footballers are more likely to develop dementia and related neurodegenerative diseases later in life compared with the general population.
The main factor? Heading the ball.
A major cohort study, published in The Lancet Public Health in 2023, followed 6,007 male footballers who had played in Sweden’s top division between 1924 and 2019. Their health outcomes were compared with 56,168 men from the general population.
Surprisingly, footballers had a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.
But the most striking finding was the difference between player positions. Outfield players, who head the ball regularly, showed a 50% higher risk compared with the general population, while goalkeepers, who rarely head the ball, showed no significant increase in risk.
This position-based difference strongly suggests that repetitive head impacts, even those not causing concussions, play a central role in long-term brain health risks.
These Swedish results echo a 2019 Scottish study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which found that former professional footballers were 3.5 times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease compared with controls. That study also highlighted that defenders, who head the ball most often, were at the greatest risk.
Together, these studies strengthen the link between heading the ball and higher dementia risk, adding to growing international concern about football’s long-term safety.
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Sports like boxing, rugby, American football, and ice hockey are already well-known for head injury risks. However, football is unique because concussions are relatively rare (<0.1 events per 1,000 player-hours), yet players repeatedly use their heads to control and redirect the ball.
This creates frequent “sub-concussive impacts”, blows to the brain too mild to cause immediate symptoms but capable of triggering long-term neurodegenerative changes. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition linked to repeated head trauma, has already been identified in athletes from other collision sports. Football’s heading tradition may be creating similar risks.
Experts, however, stress that these measures may not be enough. Tara Spires-Jones, professor of neurodegeneration at the University of Edinburgh, noted that the stark difference between outfield players and goalkeepers reinforces the link between head impacts and dementia. She emphasized that while sports and physical activity overall reduce dementia risk, avoiding repetitive head injury is crucial for brain protection.
One question remains: do today’s footballers face the same level of risk as those who played in the mid-20th century?
The Swedish study noted that most players diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease had careers before the 1970s. Since then, major changes have reshaped the sport:
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For people who suffer from migraines, even normal activities like concentrating on work, holding a conversation can be difficult. These are things we do not think twice about, however, simply going through these can be a major task for people who suffer with migraines.
So, what about exercising? It is an activity that requires a lot of movements, some of which require you to do movements that jerk your body like jumping jacks. Is it safe for people with migraines to work out? According to Dr Sudhir Kumar, a Hyderabad-based neurologist, the answer is yes.
Getting regular physical activity is hugely helpful for people who get migraines because it can often make your headaches happen less often and feel less painful when they do occur. While a super-hard, intense workout might seem like it would only make your head hurt more, exercising smart and making it a habit can be a very effective way to prevent future migraine attacks. However, there are some things you need to keep in mind before doing so.
To get the most benefit from working out and avoid accidentally causing a migraine, people need to be mindful of five simple rules:
It's the steady routine that pays off. Doing regular exercise at a medium effort level (moderate intensity) helps keep migraines away. On the flip side, sudden, super-tough, or "all-or-nothing" workouts—like running a marathon with no training—can shock your system and easily trigger an attack. The goal is to build a steady habit, like a morning walk or a bike ride a few times a week, rather than pushing yourself to exhaustion once a month.
Everyone is different, and certain activities might be a trigger just for you. For instance, some people find that lifting very heavy weights causes a headache, while others get one from running outdoors on a very sunny day or simply forgetting to properly warm up their muscles. The best way to understand these unique headache causes is to keep a diary of your headaches and write down what you did right before the migraine started.
Doing a very intense workout right before bed, late in the evening, can make it hard for you to fall asleep or get good rest. Poor sleep is a well-known migraine trigger, so late-night intensity can create a double problem. To protect your sleep, it's generally best for migraine sufferers to plan their workouts for the morning or during the day.
Your surroundings can put stress on your senses. To avoid this sensory strain, choose a workout spot that is comfortable. Cool, well-aired rooms with soft lighting are much better than places that are hot, stuffy, or have bright, intense lights that can make your head ache worse.
You can actually increase the headache-fighting power of your physical activity by adding calming practices. Things like yoga, deep breathing exercises, and mindfulness meditation are great because they help you manage stress and relax tight muscles in your neck and shoulders, both of which are common contributors to migraine pain.
Dr. Sudhir explains that scientific research has repeatedly shown that regular aerobic exercise—that's any activity that gets your heart pumping, like brisk walking, cycling, or swimming—is highly effective. The recommendation is to aim for a moderate effort level, for about 30 to 40 minutes, three times a week. In fact, some studies suggest that doing this type of exercise consistently can reduce the frequency and severity of migraines just as well as certain preventive medications. The very best approach combines this steady cardio with gentle strengthening and stretching exercises for your neck and shoulders.
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