If you’re serious about lifting barbells, sooner or later you’re probably going to want a belt. Belts don’t prevent injury as people sometimes assume, but they do help you to lift more weight. This helps you to squat and deadlift heavier—thus get stronger—so they’re standard equipment for a lot of strong people.
We have a guide here to understanding what belts are for, how they work, and who needs them. But once you get the basic idea, you’ll probably still have questions. So let’s dig in.
When should you buy a weightlifting belt?
Every coach has their own opinion on when is the right time for a new trainee to buy a belt. Some might want to see you lift a certain weight first, or demonstrate a certain amount of skill at the big lifts. But the truth is, there’s no agreed-upon dividing line between people who need a belt and people who don’t. A belt is a tool that anybody can use, at any point in their lifting career. It doesn’t make up for not knowing how to brace, so it makes sense to learn how to brace first. But a belt can help you learn how to brace, since you can feel your belly pushing against the belt when you’re doing it right.
In my opinion, if you’re wondering whether you should get a belt, it’s probably time to get a belt. A lot of the good ones need to be ordered online, and some have a lead time of several weeks, so you might not actually get the belt until a month or two after you decide you’re ready—in other words, you may want to order your belt sooner rather than later.
Which kind of weightlifting belt should you get?
If you search for “weightlifting belt” online, you’ll get tons of results, many of them marketed to gym goers who want to look cool but who don’t really understand what a belt is for. Let me cut through the marketing to say: There are only a few kinds of belts that strength sport athletes commonly wear.
A velcro belt
First, there’s the 4-inch velcro belt. I’m starting here because it’s a good all-purpose belt, cheaper than the leather ones we’re about to talk about, and it’s arguably easier to adjust and wear, too. I have one from 2Pood, which is a popular brand among Olympic weightlifters and Crossfitters. These belts are 4 inches wide, they close with a velcro strap, and they have a locking mechanism around the strap so that it won’t pop open even if the velcro fails mid-lift. The velcro will wear out over time, although mine has put up with more than three years of frequent use and it’s still going strong.
Velcro belts will generally run you between $30 and $70, depending on the brand and any special features, like custom colors.
Next are leather belts that buckle like, well, a traditional belt. These look like a comically large version of a regular belt: either 3 or 4 inches wide, and made of a thick leather that is usually either 10 or 13 millimeters. The buckle is enormous to match. (When I got my first belt in the mail, I laughed. I couldn’t imagine wearing it out in public. But now I just see it as a normal piece of gym equipment.)
There are double-prong belts, which look cool, but they can be really annoying to operate. Remember, you’ll be taking it off and putting it on (or loosening and tightening it) between sets. The second prong doesn’t make the belt any more secure, but it does make it fussier to fasten.
In addition to my velcro belt, I have a single-prong leather belt as well, and mine is a Pioneer cut with offset holes. This way, instead of choosing between two holes that are an inch apart, I can adjust the belt in 1/2-inch increments.
Instead of a buckle, you may prefer a lever belt. Instead of placing a buckle prong through the hole of your choice when you put it on, you use a screwdriver to install the lever into the appropriate hole in the belt. Then you simply close the lever to lock it closed, and pop it open when you’re ready to take the belt off. The “pop” can be satisfying after a big lift—see this clip of Jessica Buettner for an example. (I do not have a lever belt. I am slightly jealous of people who do.)
These belts are available in the same common sizes as the good single-prong belts: 3 or 4 inches wide, 10 mm or 13 mm thick. Pioneer, the same company that makes my adjustable prong belt, also sells an adjustable lever that gives you a little bit of room to fasten the belt tighter or looser without having to take the lever off with a screwdriver. (Pioneer isn’t paying me to shill for them, I just happen to like their adjustable designs.) For an example of a non-adjustable, Inzer’s Forever lever is a popular and durable design.
Good quality leather belts, both prong and lever, cost more than velcro. $100 to $150 would be a typical price range, with the thicker belts usually being more expensive. (Again, custom colors and designs will run you a bit more.)
Your waist measurement will tell you the length of belt you should order; refer to the sizing chart on the belt company’s website to find the right size. If you’re between sizes, consider whether you’re likely to get bigger or smaller over time. For example, if you know you’ll be losing weight, you may want a belt that will still fit if you get a bit slimmer. On the other hand, it’s normal to gain muscle mass as you get stronger, and you may want to have the room to get bigger without having to buy a whole new belt.
When it comes to the width, 4 inches is standard. (The maximum width allowable in competition is usually 4 inches for powerlifting and 12 centimeters, or 4.7 inches, in weightlifting.) The advice I got when I was a beginner is that almost everybody likes a 4-inch belt for squatting, but that some people prefer a 3-inch belt for deadlifts. I ended up getting mine in a 3-inch size, and it fits well for both lifts. Some people prefer a 4-inch belt for both lifts, but wear it higher on their waist for deadlifts. If you’re not sure, see if you can borrow a belt to try on.
The next thing to decide, if you’re buying a leather belt, is whether to get your belt in a thickness of 10 millimeters or 13 millimeters. If in doubt, get the 10 mm. Thirteen is very thick, and many people find it makes the belt uncomfortably stiff, especially at the edges. If you are an enormous person and already very strong, you might need the 13 mm. But in that case, you will probably come to that conclusion through experience over time. If you’re reading this, that’s probably not you, and you want the 10 millimeter.
So are there belts you shouldn’t buy? Arguably, yes:
Double prong belts are fussier to open and close, and they aren't any stronger than single prong. If you want a buckle, most people will be happier with the single prong kind.
Velcro belts without a lock can pop open mid-lift. Look for one that has a locking mechanism that holds the strap in place, like those from 2Pood or Gymreapers.
Tapered belts, with a wide back and a narrow front, used to be popular among Olympic weightlifters. They aren’t used as much anymore, though; velcro belts have largely replaced them. Most tapered belts you’ll see online are lower quality ones aimed at people just trying to look cool in the gym. Fine as a fashion choice, but they wouldn’t be my first pick. That said, if you already have one, might as well use it. It will be fine.
Really cheap weightlifting belts (like the $20 ones you might find on Amazon) won’t last as long and might not perform as well, but they honestly aren’t terrible. If you aren’t sure whether you need a belt at all, I wouldn’t blame you for buying the cheap thing first and upgrading later.
With that information, you should be well equipped to buy a belt that meets your needs. A locking velcro belt or a 10 millimeter straight leather belt, depending on your preference, will be best for most people. Now, whether you want a plain black belt or a custom colored sequin design, that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself.
There’s an art and a science to picking a good starting word when you play Wordle. One computer analysis suggested that CRANE is the best starter; another landed on SALET. Recently the New York Times did its own analysis of the words people actually choose as their starters, and the situation is dire: ADIEU is the most popular starter, yet (allegedly) the least efficient.
That's not to say it's the worst word you could play first, but it is the worst out of the 30 most popular starters—ADIEU, STARE, SLATE, AUDIO, and RAISE. But if you rank the top 30 starters based on how effective they are at revealing letters in any given puzzle, the top five are SLATE, CRANE, LEAST, STARE, and RAISE, with ADIEU landing at number 30. (My personal favorite, ARISE, ranks seventh.)
Should a Wordle starter have a lot of vowels?
I’m going to teach the controversy here. The argument in favor of ADIEU is that it contains four vowels, and you know the solution will have to contain at least one vowels. Thus, knocking out four of them in your first guess is pretty smart. (O and sometimes-vowel Y are the only ones not included.)
But there’s an argument to be made that vowels don’t give you much information, in the data-science sense of narrowing down possibilities. Most words in English remain perfectly legible with all the vowels eliminated, and because every word contains them, you'll still have a lot of options on the table. Here's what I mean: If you play ADIEU and A lights up in yellow, yes, you know that there's an A in the solution somewhere. But that tells you very little about what the solution actually is!
Another strategy is to go with a consonant-heavy word at first, and worry about the vowels later. According to one local Wordle expert('s wife), “there are only five [vowels], and it’s almost never going to be a U.”
Your starter should mesh with your solving style
Scientific analysis aside, I don't think there's much point to picking the theoretically best starter word; you need to find your best starter word. The human brain does not narrow down the problem space in the same way as a computer. I like when I find vowels early, because having the vowels helps me sound out the words in my head. If I know there are vowels in the second and fourth places (say, _A_E_) I know it is probably a two-syllable word. I run through the available letters, trying them out in each position in my head. For me, a vowel-heavy starter is helpful. For you, it might not be.
When choosing a starter, consider the way you think through the possibilities when you're halfway through the puzzle. What starters will set you up for success with your preferred solving style? If your brain works best when you know the initial letters of the word, maybe choose a starter like TRASH, which gets a lot of common beginning consonants into the mix right away.
My own approach splits the difference: I think about my starters as a pair. With ARISE and TOUCH, I get intel on all five vowels and five of the most common consonants. If you play ADIEU, I think you need to be prepared to follow it up with THORN.
Don’t forget about Y, the sometimes vowel
Should you include Y in your starter? Most of us don't, but there's a good argument to be made for getting it in the mix fairly early in the game.
Y flies under the radar since it’s an end-of-the-alphabet letter. The tendency is to think it must be as rare as X and Z. But Y is fairly common (worth 4 points in Scrabble to X's 8 and Z's 10), showing up in words like FUNNY and JAZZY (JAZZY being the hardest word that appeared as a Wordle answer this year). Words that end in Y also often have a double letter—like the N and Z in those examples—so make sure to consider that as you’re narrowing down the possibilities.
You may recall from grade school that the vowels are “A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.” (You may even have learned “...and sometimes Y and W.”) That’s because Y really can stand on its own as a vowel. The ending Y in FUNNY is an example: U is the vowel for the first syllable, and Y is the vowel for the second. There are also words that contain a Y as their only vowel, like GLYPH, NYMPH, and TRYST.
So if you’re working through a Wordle and you don’t seem to have enough vowels to make a word, stick a Y in a guess somewhere—preferably at the end. LANKY or HORNY might be good picks for when you’re stumped.
When you’re new to running, or getting back into it, the last thing you need is one more barrier. Shoes, appropriate clothes, sweat-resistant sunscreen: These things are hard to do without. But those running watches that it seems like everyone has? You don’t need one on your first day. You don’t even need your phone.
It's kind of strange that fitness has become almost synonymous with tracking fitness: How many steps are you taking? How many calories are you burning? How many minutes per mile was your pace when you went jogging this morning? What was your heart rate?
But you don’t need to know any of this. You can just go for a run, and the results are recorded in the very fibers of your muscles. Your heart and lungs know how hard they worked, and they are in the process of adapting so that they’ll be able to serve you better next time. This process does not require you, at any point, to look at numbers on a screen. So do you need a Garmin, a Fitbit, an Apple Watch, or any of their kin? Absolutely not.
What a running watch provides, and how to do without
I’ve run with a variety of devices and apps over the years, and right now I’m gearing up to review a series of running apps—you can look for those articles in the weeks to come. But my little secret is that I actually prefer to do most of my running without a watch or even a phone app.
Ever since I dusted off my running shoes earlier this spring—about six weeks ago—I’ve been running multiple times each week without a watch. I have a vague idea of time and mileage, but no precise numbers. My brain is empty of thoughts except for “don’t go too fast” and “turn around when I get to the main road.” So here is the data that I’m not getting from a running watch, and how to do without it:
Distance
The watch tells you: how far you’ve gone. Want to run 3 miles? Turn around when your watch says 1.5. You can also add up your miles at the end of the week.
How to do without: Measure a route beforehand. You can use Google Maps (right-click and select “measure distance,” or just plan a walking route through the normal interface). For a nicer interface, use an app like Footpath. The free version lets you measure routes but not save them; honestly, creating a route and then taking a screenshot is good enough for our purposes here. If you’re going to pay for an app with route planning, you might as well get Strava—but more on that later.
You can plan the route before you go, and then when you’ve finished the route, you know you’ve done your mileage. It can be handy to have a few routes on hand for common distances you like to run. There’s a 5-mile loop at my local park, for example, and I know exactly where to jog in my neighborhood if I want a 2-miler.
To keep track of distance from day to day, you can keep a note in your phone, or add it to your training journal.
Time
The watch tells you: how long you’ve been running.
How to do without: In the olden days, you’d use a dumbwatch to track time, or even just look at the clock before you leave home and then again when you come back. Where a watch-user knows that their run was 32 minutes and five seconds, you are free from worrying about such minutia and can be happy to know that you were running for about half an hour.
You can also use a stopwatch on your phone to track the time, if you really want to know. You can also just estimate from your mileage: That three-mile route will take about 30 minutes if you run at a 10:00 pace.
The watch tells you: how many minutes it’s taken you to run each mile; also, what pace you are going right now.
How to do without: Go by feel. If you’re a beginner, the exact pace doesn’t matter; do easy runs at a speed that feels easy. Do faster intervals at a pace that feels challenging but doesn’t leave you gassed. The exact numbers aren’t important.
If you’re an experienced runner, use that experience! How do you feel when you’re running 10-minute miles? 8-minute miles? Run at an effort level that feels right for the programmed run, and every now and then you can run a race or time yourself on a track to recalibrate.
Heart rate
The watch tells you: your current heart rate, and maybe the “zone” you’re in.
How to do without: Honestly, if you’re a beginner, don’t use heart rate at all. Heart rate can be a useful number once you have a pretty good handle on what your personal heart rate is at different effort levels. But the way most watches and apps calculate heart rate is with an error-prone formula that often sets the zones too high or too low.
As a beginner, the only thing that really matters is that you do your easy runs at an easy pace, not a gut-busting breakneck speed that ends up being unsustainable. So, go with perceived effort here too. Do you feel like you could keep this up almost forever? Like you could talk on the phone with only a little bit of heavy breathing? That’s the famous “zone 2.” See, you didn’t need a heart rate monitor after all.
If you're an experienced runner, you probably get more use out of pace data than heart rate data, anyway—but you can always use a chest strap connected to your phone if you'd like the numbers.
Not all watches have this feature, and even among people who have running watches, not everyone uses the coaching. But yes, some watches and some apps provide a running plan, telling you how many miles, at what pace, to run each day. They may also give you guided runs, with a coach in your ear telling you when to speed up and slow down.
Without a watch, you’re on your own for this stuff. But you can also find a plan online that’s not tied to any particular app. Hal Higdon says I’m running 3 miles on Tuesday? Well then, I’ll go out on Tuesday and run (roughly, approximately) 3 miles.
How I train without a running watch
Putting all of this together, here’s what it looks like for me. First of all, I started my running habit this year by getting consistent with my morning walk (30 minutes, so about 1.5 miles.) Over the course of a week, I started adding some bits of running to my walk, slowing down when I got winded or uncontrollably itchy, and after about two weeks, I was running pretty much the whole 1.5 miles in relative comfort. The following week, I started adding a little mileage—doing 2 miles most morning instead of 1.5.
This worked beautifully as a gentle re-introduction to running, and honestly? I don’t think I would have done it this way if I were wearing a watch. It would have been demoralizing to see that my “running” pace was so much slower than what I was logging last year. But once I was in the habit, it was easy to add mileage.
These days, I have a few neighborhood routes in mind. I put on my sun visor and headphones when I go out with the kids to wait for the bus, and as soon as they leave I turn and head off on one of my 3-mile (usually) routes.
I keep track of my mileage in a notebook. Three miles, five times a week, is 15 miles. If I miss a morning or if I want to add more time on my feet, I’ll add another run in the evening or on a weekend day. I’ll usually head to a nearby park where I know the mileage of my favorite trails and roads. If I’d like to try a new route, I’ll pick an album that is about as long as I’d like my run to be (many are around 45 minutes, which is perfect) and take note of which song occurs at the halfway point. When I hear that song, I turn around. That’s a 45-minute run in the books—in the ballpark of four miles or so.
You sure can! If you’re looking at that list above and thinking “aww, I wish I had that data,” wish no more! There are tons of running apps that can track distance, duration, and pace in real time, even speaking up through your headphones to let you know your split times each mile.
Pros of phone based running apps:
No need to buy special equipment like a watch.
Numbers are available anytime you want to pull your phone out and look at them.
You’re probably bringing your phone anyway to listen to music.
You’ll get a map of your run after the fact (thanks to your phone’s GPS).
The app will keep track of your mileage over time.
Cons of phone based running apps:
You may not want to see all those numbers, especially if the thought of logging a “bad” average pace makes you rush warmups or skip walking breaks.
GPS tracking on phones is not as accurate as the tracking on watches.
GPS tracking tends to run a phone’s battery down faster than if you weren’t using the GPS.
I enjoy the guidance I get from running apps if I’m doing a specific workout—like one I tried recently that involved segments of 0.6, 0.5, and 0.35 miles. No way was I going to track that manually, but the pleasant voice in my ear told me exactly when to start and stop each interval, and cued me to speed up or slow down if I was getting off pace.
If you do decide to get a running watch later on, they’ll have the same features as the phone apps, but with better battery life and an easier way to view the numbers.
What are the best running apps to use if you don’t have a phone?
The classic is Strava. In fact, if the community aspect of a running app or watch is what’s most important to you, you’ll definitely want to get on Strava. People who log their runs on a Garmin or another device will often upload to Strava so they can have everything in one place. But you can also “record” a run from the Strava app directly, no extra device needed. Just beware that the social features can end up revealing your location, so dip into the privacy settings to make sure you aren’t sharing more than you intend.
How do you track mileage when running without a watch?
Measure or estimate the length of each run, ideally by measuring on a tool like Google Maps or Footpath. (In the olden days, we would sometimes drive a route and use the odometer.)
Add up your mileage over time by keeping notes on a calendar (paper or digital), a notebook (paper or digital), or any other way you’d keep track of a running tally.
How do you pace yourself when running without a watch?
By paying attention to your body. For an easy or “zone 2” pace, you’ll want to feel like you’re breathing easy and like you can keep going forever. Faster paces might feel harder, but they’ll still be sustainable enough that you can make it the entire distance you intend, without collapsing into a heap by the end. You’ll learn over time what each appropriate pace feels like.
On guided runs, offered by many running apps, the coach or narrator will help you figure out the right effort level. They might ask you to aim for a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, or they might describe in words how your body should feel when you’re at a given pace.
Do I need a watch to run a marathon?
You don’t make it to the start line of a marathon without having a decent amount of running experience under your belt. And these days, when you’ve been running regularly for the amount of time it takes to build a base and then train for a marathon…you’ll probably have already given in to the temptation to buy a running watch.
But it’s not necessary in any way. You can do your training by mapping out routes ahead of time, gauging your pace based on how you feel, and writing down your weekly mileage in a notebook. This is how almost everybody trained until running watches became more accessible about 10 or 15 years ago. The race organizers are keeping track of your time (there’s a chip in your bib, usually), and they’ll post mile markers along the course so you know where you are.
On race day, you probably won’t want to use your running app; it drains battery, and you’ll be out there a long time. Instead, you can pace yourself by wearing a basic stopwatch and comparing your time at each mile marker with pre-calculated split times. Sound complicated? It’s not—just grab one of these temporary tattoos that has them all calculated for you.
I’m a cheap traveler, which means I’m often packing light. When I took a five-day trip to Paris a few years ago, on a budget airline that charges a fee to bring a carry-on, everything had to fit in a small bag under the seat in front of me. Friends, I did it. You can, too.
I first wrote about this trip right when I returned, in 2017, but I can say now that I still use these techniques (except packing dress shoes for a casual trip—what was I thinking??). We’ll get to the specifics of what I packed and how, but this is a feat that’s more about the planning than the execution. Here’s what I mean.
Measure your bag
The space under the seat in front of you is pretty roomy: It’s big enough for an average-sized backpack, or an overstuffed messenger bag. But don’t eyeball it! If you misjudge, and you can’t quite wedge your bag into that space, the crew will ask you to put it somewhere else. That could mean another fee, or depending on how crowded the plane is, you might even need to hand it over to be gate-checked.
Avoid this minor nightmare by actually checking the airline’s bag measurements. On my trip, the carrier (the now-defunct(?) Wow airlines) allowed 17 by 13 by 10 inches for personal items, including handles and wheels, and with a weight limit of 22 pounds. Check your airline’s website, and then whip out a tape measure and verify. (If your bag is soft-sided, make sure to measure it when it’s fully packed.)
To really be prepared, though, you also need a Plan B. Maybe you’ll buy a few too many souvenirs, and need to check your bag. Or sometimes on domestic flights, you’ll end up in a tiny airplane that doesn’t have any space under the seat, and you’ll have to gate-check your stuff. Here’s your insurance policy: Pack your in-flight essentials in a small purse or packing cube that you can tuck in the seat back pocket. This way, if you have to give up your bag, you’ll have the important things with you.
I don’t have a magical spell to fit a suit or a formal dress or a sleeping bag into a carry-on. The one-bag approach only really works for people with simple needs who are going on simple trips. I didn’t bring a laptop or any workout gear. I did bring a few changes of clothes, essential toiletries, a sketchbook, and a phone charger.
I didn’t bother with soap or shampoo, since I knew I could buy those at my destination. (Showering with French soap made my stay in France feel just a little more authentic.) My husband bought a six-pack of electrical outlet adapters, and I caught him shoving the whole thing in his bag. “Wait, how many plug-in things are we bringing?” I asked. Just two: his phone charger, and mine. So we left four of the adapters at home.
I packed fresh socks, shirts, and underwear for each day, and planned to wear a dress once and my shorts and pants twice each. (If I were more hardcore, I would have packed just two outfits and washed one in the hotel sink each night.) I resisted the urge to pack a skirt “just in case.”
To winnow the “just in case” pile, ask yourself, what would I do if I needed this but didn’t have it? Without the skirt, I would just wear my dress or shorts instead. That’s fine; the skirt stays home. But if I got sore feet and didn’t have my packet of blister bandages, I’d have to walk the streets of Paris looking for a place to buy some. The bandages came with me.
Dump out your bag, so you’re not bringing any detritus from a previous trip, and then begin to pack it wisely. A few tips:
Choose the smallest item that will do the job. Bring the travel-size toothpaste, even if the full size is technically small enough to get through security. Compare your jackets and sweaters, and bring the thinnest one that’s still warm enough—or perhaps you’d prefer a lightweight scarf that you can wear as a shawl?
Roll your clothes. Rolling is the most compact way to pack. Put socks and t-shirts on the inside of the roll, and carefully smooth your wrinkleable items on the outside. Know how you will remove any surprise wrinkles: Does your room come with an iron? Will you steam the clothes while you’re in the shower?
Use packing cubes. It wasn’t until after the Paris trip that I discovered just how much time and trouble packing cubes can save. They don’t save space, but they make a tightly packed bag so much easier to pack and unpack.
Wear the biggest items. You’ll have more room in your bag if you wear your jeans and pack your shorts than vice-versa. You can also wear your travel pillow on the flight, and strap it to your bag while you’re trekking through the airport.
Make sure everything is accessible. You’ll be miserable if the interior of your bag is a random jumble. This is where the packing cubes come in, or you can at least arrange your rolls of clothes to divide up the space as needed. Make good use of pockets, too: flat things in the laptop compartment, for example, and your passport and phone charger in whatever pocket is easiest to reach.
You do, eventually, have to bring everything back. If you brought travel-size toiletries, maybe you can finish them off and throw them out before you come home. You also don’t have to worry as much about keeping your clothes unwrinkled. These tweaks can gain you a few cubic inches.
If you’re serious about bringing home souvenirs, consider bringing a collapsible duffel from home, or buying a cheap bag on the road. Then you’re only paying the bag check fee in one direction, not both. Also compare the bag check fee with the cost (and time delay) of mailing things home.
But if you won’t have much room for souvenirs, keep an eye out during your trip for things that pack light. I picked up a French-language cooking magazine for my mom, and translated the tastiest recipes on the flight home. Foreign snacks also make great gifts, and are easy enough to tuck into small spaces. Photos, videos, and good old-fashioned memories make great souvenirs, and they don’t take up any physical space at all. (You could even get a photo book printed when you return, or write down your thoughts in a journal, to make them more tangible without encroaching on your underwear.)
What I actually packed
A top-down view of my bag. In the back pocket (top of photo): book and sketchbook, flattened purse, printouts of documents. Middle pocket: Clothing rolls, sitting on top of carefully packed/stuffed shoes. Front pocket: toiletries, art supplies, wallet, battery pack. In pockets not shown: charging cable, passport, ziploc bag of liquid toiletries.Credit: Beth Skwarecki
OK, time to prove that this is for real. Here’s what I did.
The bag: I used an Eddie Bauer hybrid messenger bag/backpack that I bought many years ago; it’s now discontinued. We have gone on many one-bag trips, this bag and I. My husband, who packed equally light, used a Swiss Gear backpack similar to this one.
Large and unwieldy Items: My one extravagance was a pair of heeled t-strap leather shoes. I stuffed my socks and underwear inside of them, so they held their shape, and then wrapped them loosely in a plastic bag so they wouldn’t get the rest of my items dirty. I also had a travel pillow, strapped to the handle of my bag.
Clothes: For a four-night trip, I brought four shirts, one dress, one pair of shorts, and five sets of socks and underwear. I wore sneakers, a jacket, and a shirt-and-pants outfit.
Toiletries: I had a small zippered pouch with the likes of lipstick and deodorant, and a Ziploc with just a few liquid-phase personal items like moisturizer and toothpaste.
Electronics: All I need for a non-work trip is my phone, a charging cable, and a battery pack. (My husband prefers an electric toothbrush and razor at home, but made do with analog versions for this trip.) We also brought a headphone splitter and a pair of earbuds for each of us.
Fun stuff: A book for the plane; a sketchbook and a small pack of art supplies; Clif bars; wallet, passport, etc.
In hindsight, I only made a few mistakes. I should have left the fancy shoes behind, and either gone without or brought a pair of plain flats instead. I didn’t need the jacket that I wore in the airport, although I’m glad I brought it. And that’s about it; this is one of the most perfectly calibrated trips I’ve taken.
I’ve had a rough time in the past, though. I can think of two trips where I ended up freezing because I didn’t want the bulk of packing warm clothes. In one of those cases, my mistake was that I only had skirts to wear; a pair of fleece-lined tights would have only taken up a tiny amount of space in my bag, and would have been a lifesaver. On a few trips, I forgot to pack a purse, because somehow in my mind the messenger bag was my purse. It is much better to have a real purse (or tote bag, or laptop bag) for your daily excursions instead of having to dump out all your clothes on the hotel bed to make do with your carry-on.
Now, I visualize each day’s activities when I write my packing list, and this helps me remember things like purses. And I apply the “just in case” test to all of those “just in case” items. And now I’m the person who hops off a plane with just a small backpack, breezes past the baggage claim, and takes the Métro to her Airbnb. It’s a great way to vacation.
Traveling with medications is easy enough: Whether pills or liquids, keep them in their original pharmacy containers, or pop over-the-counter meds into a pill organizer. But what about supplements? How do you carry those mini scoops of creatine or several shakes’ worth of protein powder without looking like you’re trying to smuggle something illegal?
You have the TSA’s blessing
We’ll get to specific tips in a minute, but first, some peace of mind: Airport security is 100% fine with you bringing your protein powder along with you. There are no special requirements for how it must be labeled or packaged, either. That said, there are things to keep in mind if you want to avoid delays at the scanners.
The things to know about carrying protein powder, creatine, or other “protein and energy powders,” as the agency groups, them are as follows:
If you have more than 12 ounces of the stuff in your carry-on (like an entire tub of protein powder), place it in a separate bin when you go through security.
They may not care at all; anecdotally, I and many people I know have traveled with protein powders without a TSA agent testing them, or even questioning them at all.
But if they notice your supplements and get curious, they may need to open the container and test what’s inside. (The Instagram post shows an agent doing this.) The testing is quick and you’ll be on your way.
If you don’t want to deal with those possibilities, it’s entirely reasonable to simply leave the stuff at home. On a short trip, you’ll be fine without your creatine or protein for a few days. But if you’ll be at your destination for a few weeks, you might as well buy a fresh supply while you’re there.
Determined to bring your whey or collagen with you? Here are some handy ways to do that.
Snack-sized baggies are great for single servings of whey or collagen powder. I write “protein powder” on the outside, and stuff the baggies inside my shaker cup. I like these 3"x6.5" bags, which have the seal on the short side. They’re a lot easier than standard sandwich baggies to pour into a cup without spilling.
Some supplements come in doses too small for the baggies to be convenient. For example, I have a powdered supplement that requires about a teaspoonful per serving. For those, these screw-top tins are perfect. I put one serving in each tin, and pack the tins with my toiletries.
For anything that comes in gummy or pill form, like vitamins, I like to use mint tins. Altoids tins (or a similarly sized plain tin, like these) are perfect. Just wrap a rubber band around them so that they can’t pop open en route. My favorite tins for this purpose are actually the ones from Trader Joe’s green tea mints, because the tins are small and have a little window so you can see what’s inside.
When my cheap Amazon spin bike broke, I wanted to upgrade to something better. But even though I was already following along with Peloton videos on the company's app, I thought getting an actual Peloton was out of reach. Yet as I shopped, I began to change my mind: Even a good off-brand spin bike will start in the high triple digits, and it turns out Pelotons can be rented, or even purchased used. Thus began my quest for a cheaper Peloton, and in the end, I bought a used model I’m very happy with.
Mine cost $950 through a Facebook Marketplace sale in 2022. If I had taken the time to shop around and negotiate more, I likely could have found one for less. (Used Pelotons are also a lot cheaper now than they were then.) But before I could find a Bike to buy, there were a lot of questions that needed answering. Let me take you on a tour through my shopping process.
The difference between the Peloton Bike and the Bike+
Before you start shopping, you’ll need to know if you want a Peloton Bike, or a Peloton Bike+. The Bike is what you probably think of as a normal Peloton; the Bike+ has some additional features and costs about $1,000 more (new). I knew at the start that I wanted a regular Bike, so that narrowed down my shopping.
The Bike+ has its touchscreen on a swivel, so you can do strength or yoga classes next to the bike, instead of having to stand behind it and crane your neck to see over the seat. That said, an All-Access Peloton membership also allows you to watch strength and yoga classes from your phone or another device, so this is a nice-to-have, but not a necessity.
The Bike+ can automatically adjust the resistance as you follow along with a class. With a regular Bike, you have to listen to the instructor tell you what resistance to use, and turn the knob yourself.
The Bike+ has a slightly larger touchscreen (24" versus 22") and a nicer sound system. It also has nicer components throughout, including a faster processor and more RAM.
Do you have to pay a subscription fee to use a Peloton?
Peloton’s Bikes are intended to be used with an All-Access subscription. It costs $44 per month and gives you access to spin classes of all types, scenic rides, and Lanebreak rides (Lanebreak is essentially a video game you play by riding the bike). As noted, the All-Access subscription also comes with the ability to take classes from the Peloton app using your phone or other devices.
If you don’t have a subscription, you can still use the Bike in “Just Ride” mode, which shows you a plain black screen and some basic metrics: your cadence, resistance, output, and time. So if you just want to get a workout in, but you don’t care about consuming Peloton-branded content, you can still do that without paying a monthly fee.
How much you'll pay for a used, new, or refurbished Peloton, or just renting
All of the prices I discuss in this section are current as of May 2024, and are subject to change.
Used Peloton Bikes vary wildly in price and quality. Some are gently used and come with accessories; others may be cheaper but have significant wear and tear. I’m currently seeing asking prices from $500 to $750 for the standard model Bike, and $1,000 to $1,600 for the Bike+ (subscription not included, of course).
New Peloton Bikes run $1,445 for just the Bike, or $1,650 for a “Starter” package that comes with shoes, hand weights, a water bottle, and a mat. (The Bike+ is $2,495, or $2,700 with the Starter package.) Both options include delivery and setup, and a 12-month warranty. They do not include the $44/month All-Access subscription that you’ll need to take the platform’s famous video classes.
Peloton Bike rentals run $89/month ($119/month for the Bike+), plus a one-time $150 delivery and setup fee. The rental includes a pair of cycling shoes and the subscription fee for video content. There is also a warranty for the life of the subscription period.
Peloton certified refurbished bikes are currently going for $995 for the Bike, and $1,595 for the Bike+. Both are a significant savings compared to brand-new. Otherwise, the terms are the same as new bikes: The warranty and delivery fee are included; your All-Access subscription is not.
As you’d expect, used Bikes are cheaper than refurbished, and refurbished is cheaper than new. Where do rentals fall? We need to crunch some more numbers to see.
Is renting Peloton a better deal than buying new or used?
I considered a rental before I started shopping for used Bikes. If you don’t know whether you want a Peloton at all, or if you’re planning on a move soon, the rental might be worth it. Peloton will send someone to come pick up the Bike, for free, if you decide you don’t want it anymore. Rentals may be new or refurbished—Peloton sends you whatever they have, although they promise it’ll be in good condition, even if it has a few dings or scratches. There are options to rent both the Bike and Bike+. Below, I’ll discuss pricing for the regular Bike.
What you need to know about renting a Peloton
You have the option to buy your rental at any time, and the price varies based on how long you’ve been renting. If you decide to buy the Bike the moment it arrives, it will cost you $1,295. At that point you’ll have already paid the $150 delivery fee and probably your first month’s $89 rental fee, meaning the Bike will effectively cost $1,534—similar to the full price of a brand-new Bike. (Remember that your rental Bike might be a new Bike, but it might also be a refurbished model, which sells for less.)
As time goes on, the deal stays about the same: After a year, the buyout price is just $895, but you’ll have already paid $1,218 in rental fees (including the delivery fee). That’s $2,113, but you’ve saved $44/month on the All-Access subscription all along. When you take that into account, you’ve paid the same amount, in total, as if the Bike had cost $1,585 in the first place.
That means buying a brand-new Bike at full price will run you just slightly more than renting and later buying out your rental. The calculus shifts in favor of buying new if you’re able to catch a sale on the Bike, or if you overpay for your rental because you didn’t pay attention to the buyout calendar—the buyout price is $895 anytime between 12 and 24 months into the rental, so it’s a much better deal to buy at 12 months than at 23.
If you aren’t sure whether you’ll want the Bike long term: Rent, and take advantage of the free pickup when you’re done with it. If you like it, you might as well buy it out at one of the price drops, which occur at three, six, 12, and 24 months.
If you know you’ll keep the Bike for years: Go with new, refurbished, or used, depending on your preferences.
Are used Peloton Bikes a good deal?
I ended up buying mine used, so I would say the definitely are. But it depends on a few factors.
The first thing to consider is resale price. When I was shopping for mine, $950 was an excellent deal compared to the new, rental, and refurbished prices. Since then, prices have dropped on the used market and Peloton is offering their refurbished models more cheaply than before. Sales have also been occurring more often.
For the moment, at least, prices on used Pelotons are still high enough that you'll be able to get a significant amount of your money back if you were to decide to sell your Bike or Bike+. That was a big part of my calculus: A used Peloton doesn’t depreciate instantly like a new car. That said, prices have been slowly falling. If I wanted to sell my $950 Bike now, I'd likely get $600 back at best.
Besides the price, though, you might want to consider two other factors that will affect how good a deal you’re getting if you buy used.
Used Bikes don’t come with a warranty
New and refurbished Pelotons come with a 12-month warranty that covers the touchscreen, parts (including pedals), and the labor to replace them. If something breaks, you just contact customer support and they’ll send somebody out to fix your Bike.
The warranty does not transfer to new owners. So even if the original owner has had the Bike for less than a year, you don’t get the benefits of the remaining time on the warranty. However, if the original owner purchased an extended protection plan—which can last up to four years in total—those are transferable. Only the original owner can buy this plan, and only within the first year they own the Bike; you can’t buy one yourself if you’re buying a used Bike. If you’re buying used and the owner is transferring a protection plan, make sure to get their order confirmation number, and don’t be surprised if the asking price is a bit higher than other used Bikes to account for the owner’s extra expense.
Without a warranty or protection plan, you’re on the hook for any repair costs, including labor. I had to replace the bearings on my Bike shortly after I got it, and I believe I paid Peloton around $45 to send me the part I needed. Fortunately, it was easy to install. On the other extreme, if something went wrong with the touchscreen, it would cost $375 to replace, labor not included.
Used Bikes may have wear and tear
A bike is a collection of moving parts, and if you love your Peloton, you’ll put a lot of miles on it. That means a lot of wear.
Peloton Bikes tend to be pretty sturdy, and indoor bikes don’t accumulate as much damage as something you’d ride outside. But it’s still worth considering when you might have to replace parts. If you’re buying a used bike, you’ll want to check these parts for wear:
The pedals should be replaced every year, at least according to Peloton, though most Peloton owners don’t seem to bother. (They certainly seem to last a lot longer than that, but the company is probably keeping in mind its 2020 recall in response to pedals that broke, injuring some riders.)
Speaking of recalls, the seat post on all Peloton bikes was recalled this year because it could break. If you’re buying used, make sure the owner has installed the new post.
The bearings in the center of the flywheel won’t last forever. You can expect them to endure roughly a year of regular use, although this will vary greatly. If a used Bike is a few years old and hasn’t had them replaced, that’s a repair that is probably due. When the bearings start to go, the Bike will still be functional, but it will make a rattling noise as you ride.
Cosmetic damage may also be an issue. There could be dents or scratches on a used bike, worn areas on the handlebars, and so on. Refurbished Bikes may have minor cosmetic issues; all bets are off when it comes to a used Bike.
How old a Bike is too old?
Peloton only has two models of bikes, which makes shopping easy. Both the original Bike and the Bike+ have a large touchscreen that plays videos of the workouts and shows you statistics about your ride.
The models haven’t changed much over the years, with one exception. The Generation 1 Bikes are no longer supported; the software in their touchscreens will no longer be updated. These Bikes have an orange power button at the top of the touchscreen, and were manufactured before September 2016. If you own a Bike with this touchscreen and are a paying Peloton member (even if you weren’t the original owner), Peloton will give you a $350 credit toward a new, modern touchscreen.
As long as the used Bike doesn’t have that older touchscreen, any model you buy used is going to be basically equivalent to what’s for sale now. Note that some of the Bikes in used listings may say "gen 1", but as long as their touchscreen has the gray button on the back instead of the orange button on top, they're fine.
Where to find used Peloton Bikes
There are plenty for sale on places like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, and there are also Peloton-related Facebook groups that allow members to post Bikes for sale. Check anywhere you would look for used items, like OfferUp and the local search options on Ebay.
As with any sale on these platforms, watch out for scams. When I was browsing listings to update this post, I found plenty of Bikes listed with a price of $129 and a description that glowingly praised the site where the seller had originally bought it. Yeah, that was just an ad for that site—which turned out not to sell Pelotons at all, but haha! Made you look! In any case, make sure you're dealing with a real person, and don’t pay anything until you’ve seen the Bike in person and are sure you want to buy it.
What to ask the seller of a used Bike
When you’re looking at a specific used Bike, Peloton's history tool (still in beta) may be able to tell you about the history of a Bike or Bike+ if you know the serial number. You'll have to ask the seller for the number, and then cross your fingers and hope that it's one of the Bikes included in the beta program. Besides that, here are some things to ask to make sure you’re getting a good deal.
Are you the original owner?
There’s nothing wrong with buying a Bike that has been through multiple owners, except that it’s harder to document where it actually came from. Peloton recommends you ask the owner to show you proof of the original purchase. They warn that rental Bikes aren’t supposed to be sold, and if you buy one, you won’t be able to activate a subscription on it.
This question can also kick off a conversation about why they are selling the bike, and how well it has worked for them over the years. Which brings us to...
How many rides has this Bike had?
There’s going to be a difference in wear-and-tear between a Bike that was ridden a few times, versus a Bike that gets hours of use every day. You don’t need to know the exact number, but it can be good to get a sense of how much use the bike has seen.
The bike doesn’t come with an odometer, but you can ask when it was purchased and how many rides the owner has done on it. (Their Peloton profile will tell them how many rides they’ve done, but remember that they may also have family members who ride as well.) Once Peloton's history tool is out of beta, it should be able to give you this information as well.
Have any recalled parts been replaced?
Peloton Bikes’ seat posts (but not the Bike+) were recalled in 2023. Although the rollout was slow, most people should have gotten their new ones by now. You can check whether the seat post is the newest type by looking at the bottom-most measuring line on the post.
While you’re at it, check whether the pedals have an orange Peloton logo. If so, they were part of the 2020 pedal recall and should have been replaced.
This is also a good time to ask about repairs, in general. Has anything broken, and if so, was it fixed and when? Does the Bike have any ongoing problems?
Can I ride it?
Hop on the bike (don’t worry about the shoes for now) and turn the pedals. Do they move smoothly, without clanking noises that might indicate bad bearings? Does the big red knob turn smoothly? Does the screen have any chips or cracks?
Peloton also recommends checking that the adjustment levers and screws move smoothly, and that there aren’t any signs of overtightening like cracks. Check that the power cable is in good shape, and that the bike is clean and appears well-cared for.
How to move a Peloton
If you decide to take the Bike home with you, proceed carefully. These suckers are heavy, weighing about 140 pounds. Most of that weight is in the flywheel at the front, so be aware of that when carrying it with a partner.
Peloton has a guide to moving Bikes here. Importantly, you’ll want to remove the touchscreen first. I wrapped mine in towels and put it in the front seat of my car; the rest of the Bike went in the back. They also recommend taking off the water bottle holders and the cage on the back that holds the dumbbells. Lower the handlebars and seat to their lowest position, and tighten all the adjustment levers so nothing moves in transit. I didn’t remove the pedals, but they say you should.
How to transfer a Peloton to a new owner
Peloton recommends doing a factory reset on a Bike before it changes hands. Go to Settings > System > Factory Reset. When you set your Bike up at home, follow the prompts on the screen to register the Bike and set up your new subscription.
If you already have a subscription to the Peloton app, make sure to cancel it; that doesn’t always happen automatically.
What else you'll need to buy to enjoy your Peloton
You’ll want cycling shoes. They don’t have to be Peloton brand (the standard Peloton shoes kind of suck, if we’re being honest), but they do need Delta LOOK cleats to fit the pedals. That said, you can replace the pedals with another type if you prefer. If you plan to ride a lot, padded cycling shorts are also a good idea.
Peloton’s cycling classes sometimes involve small handheld dumbbells; these should come with your bike. If you want to do the strength classes, though, you’ll want bigger dumbbells. Peloton makes its own branded dumbbells with square ends, but the workouts work just as well with any dumbbells you care to buy from the store.
You may want a mat to put under your Bike to protect your floor from dripping sweat. You’ll likely also want a towel, a water bottle, and maybe a heart rate chest strap to sync with the Bike (even my cheapo strap syncs just fine).
Ready to put together an arms-and-shoulders workout? I’ve already given you the lowdown on the best bicep exercises, best tricep exercises, and best shoulder exercises. Today I’ll give you a formula to combine them, and it’s customizable so you can swap in your favorites if you don’t love mine.
We’re going to start with a heavy(ish) compound exercise that works your arms and shoulders together. Then we’ll move on to moderately heavy exercises, starting with the ones that didn’t get hit very hard on the compound. We’ll superset exercises where we can, to save time. It will look something like this:
Shoulder press of your choice - 5 sets, heavy, anywhere between 3-8 reps, with 2 minutes of rest between sets.
(optional) Rear delt work - 3 sets of 8-12 reps
Bicep/tricep superset - 3 sets of 8-12 reps each
Shoulder superset - 3 sets of 10+ reps each
(optional) Light bicep/tricep superset - 3 sets of 12-15 reps each
For a 30 minute workout, skip the optional sections and just do a shoulder press, bicep/tricep superset, and a shoulder superset. The first 15 minutes will be spent on the shoulder press and the rests between sets; the other components you can speed through with basically no rest.
To get more work in, take some extra time and do the optional sections. If you try that and find you’re recovering well, it’s fine to add more bi/tri supersets or double up on any of the components of the workout that you’d like to spend more time on.
How this fits into your week: Once a week is okay, but this workout should ideally be done twice per week. It’s also fine to do this workout once, and a different upper-body workout another time.
Note that this workout does not target your chest and back, so it’s not a full upper body workout. You could do this in a rotation that goes:
Arms and shoulders
Legs
Chest and back
(rest or repeat)
How to turn this into a full upper-body workout: replace one or both of the bicep/tricep supersets with a push/pull superset that uses chest and back muscles. We’ll discuss this when we get to that section.
Read on for more detail on each component of the workout, and the choices that you have for each section.
Part 1: the press
You can do any kind of shoulder press or overhead press here, with any appropriate equipment. Here are some good choices for the press:
Standing barbell strict press
Seated dumbbell shoulder press (upright, not incline)
Standing single or double kettlebell press
Z-press (seated on the floor with legs spread for stability)
Landmine press (my top pick for anyone with shoulder pain when their arms are directly overhead)
If you have another favorite press, feel free to swap it in. I don’t recommend push presses here; keep your knees straight on any of those standing presses. Push presses are great, but not right now.
Rest time: 2 minutes or more. This press at the beginning of the workout is meant to be a heavy exercise for strength building (we’ll do some pump work later) so make sure you’re taking adequate rest between sets.
Reps per set: about 5. Keep the reps in the single digits. You could go as low as 3 reps per set, but I wouldn’t go much higher than 8. If you want to think of this as a “5x5” routine, that may help you remember.
Weight to use: Anything that lets you get the desired number of reps. It’s okay to use a different weight for each set if you like, but try to make your last set the heaviest.
How to progress: Choose your own adventure. Look at last week’s workout, and add weight or reps to at least one set. For example:
Last week you did 50 pounds for 8 reps on all five sets. This week, go with 55 pounds for your last two sets and see how many reps you can get.
Last week you did five reps each at 20, 25, 30, 30, 30 pounds. This week, do five reps each at 25, 30, 30, 30, 35.
Sure, you could do a straightforward double progression, but I like to give myself the option to change things up based on how things are feeling. Variety is fun and can be good for us.
Your deltoids are the muscles that sit on top of your shoulder like a big 1980s shoulder pad, and they’re each made of three parts: front, side, and rear. The front and side delts get a pretty good workout from overhead pressing, so at this point in our workout the rear delts can use some extra love. Here are some good options:
Bent-over dumbbell reverse fly
Reverse fly, supported on an incline bench (lay face-down)
Band pullaparts
Face pulls on a cable machine
Reverse fly on a machine such as a pec deck
Rest time: 90 seconds or less. If you think you’ll get bored waiting, grab a pair of dumbbells and so some curls in between sets.
Reps and weight: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps. Weight can be anything that gets you the appropriate number of reps per set.
How to progress: Add weight or reps each time. If you’re using a resistance band, you’ll have to go by feel, but work toward using a stronger band or a narrower grip over time.
Part 3: bicep/tricep superset
Here’s where we get to the fun stuff! You can pick anything for these. Some classic isolation exercises for biceps:
Barbell curls (or ez-bar curls)
Bayesian curls, described here (it’s a cable curl from a stretched position)
Dumbbell curls
Hammer curls
Zottman curls
Cable curls
And for triceps:
Skullcrushers
Overhead dumbbell tricep extensions
French press
Tricep kickbacks
Cable pushdowns
If your goal today is to work only arms and shoulders, stick to those lists. But if you’re trying to turn this into a general upper-body workout that includes chest and back, go with a pull exercise instead of bicep isolation, such as:
Chinups
Pullups
Seated cable rows
Barbell bent-over rows or Pendlay rows
Kroc rows
And go with a push exercise instead of a tricep isolation:
Close grip bench press
Dips
Pushups
Incline or overhead press (choose a different variation from what you did at the beginning of the workout)
We’ll do another bis/tris superset at the end of the workout, so you can always go with a push/pull here and save the isolations for the other superset.
Rest time: As needed. Try resting 30 seconds after doing both exercises, but no rest in between.
Reps and weight: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps, with a weight that lets you complete the desired number of reps. You can go with a wider range (5 to 15?) if you prefer.
How to progress: Add reps each time, and when you can do three strong sets at the top of your rep range, add weight or change the difficulty (for example, try diamond pushups).
For this, we’re going to steal one of the two shoulder supersets from my best shoulder workouts post. The one most people will choose is the classic three-head deltoid isolation:
Dumbbell front raise
Dumbbell lateral raise
Bent-over dumbbell reverse fly
Do these in a circuit, moving immediately from one exercise to the next without putting the dumbbells down. I like to choose a different starting point for each round: maybe front/lateral/rear the first time, lateral/rear/front the second time, and so on. Don’t worry if the number of reps varies from set to set; fatiguing your shoulders is more important than counting reps.
Rest time: As needed between circuits, about 30 seconds.
Reps and weight: Aim for 10-15 reps of the first exercise, and then keep going with that weight even if it means your reps drop off (maybe 15, 12, 10 during the first round, 12, 10, 8 the second round…it’s all good).
How to progress: When you’re easily getting more than 15 reps on multiple sets, add weight.
Part 5 (optional): light bicep/tricep superset
For this finisher, we’re doing another bicep/tricep superset, but this time with lighter weight. Refer to the list of options above, but choose different exercises than the ones you did earlier in the workout. Maybe you did pushups and pullups before, so you’ll do Zottman curls and skullcrushers this time.
I’m going to give you two options for how to set this up:
Rest, reps, and weight, option 1: 3 sets of 12 or more reps. Rest at least 30 seconds between supersets. Add weight when you can do 15+ reps for all three sets.
Rest, reps, and weight, option 2: Choose a weight that you think you can handle for at least one set of 15. Set a timer for 5 minutes and do as many sets as possible, with as little rest as possible, until time is up. Expect your reps to drop sharply—maybe you do 15 at the beginning, but can only manage 3 at the end. The point is to keep moving as much as you can within the 5 minutes.
So there you have it: a full arms-and-shoulders workout, modifiable to a full upper-body workout, that you can do in as little as 30 minutes or enhance with extra sets to fill out an hour or more at the gym. Keep track of your progress in a notebook or on an app (or even a note in your phone) and enjoy seeing your arms and shoulders get stronger over time.
The iconic location for a fitness tracker is on your wrist, but not everybody enjoys wearing a watch, or is allowed to at work. (Cooks and surgeons, I see you.) Or maybe you like watches so much you’d rather wear a real watch on your wrist, and have your fitness tracker live somewhere else. Fortunately, you have tons of options.
Some are devices that are never worn on the wrist, like the ring trackers that have become popular lately. Others were designed for the wrist, but can be worn elsewhere with aftermarket bands or clips. Let’s review your options for rings, clips, bicep bands, ankle straps, and even clothing.
Use an ankle strap
If you already have a gadget you love, maybe all you need is a new strap. When I started doing a lot of kettlebell work, I managed to wrestle my Apple Watch wristband onto my ankle—something that will definitely not work for all body types. Fortunately, you can buy an extended band for your Apple Watch, or for a variety of fitness trackers. Here’s one for a Fitbit Charge 5, for example.
Besides using it on your ankle, the same band can be used on your arm. (It’s the same idea as what Whoop calls a “bicep band,” but to be anatomically correct I must note that you wear it above, not on your bicep.)
Pros: Tracks steps and can usually pick up heart rate (depending on exactly how it sits against your skin—you may need to experiment with positioning)
Cons: inconvenient to look at the watch or use any interactive features. You may need to sit down to pause your workout. Also, some models of wearables may not have an aftermarket band available.
Try a fitness ring
I’m a longtime fan of the Oura ring (it’s a tough love, but love nonetheless) so this is the route I’ve taken. Wearing a watch 24/7 drives me nuts, but I can completely ignore a ring. If Oura isn’t your style, Ultrahuman and others provide high-end alternatives. There are also a ton of budget rings on the market now, like this from Zopsc.
Pros: Easy to put on and take off. Feels like it’s not there (if you are used to wearing rings).
Cons: Can’t wear it while lifting weights. The nicer rings carry a high price point.
Clip it to your belt
Fitbit used to sell models that counted your steps from a clip on your belt or bra. (I remember loving the bra clip on a now-defunct brand, Misfit.) You can still get an aftermarket clip for some Fitbit and Garmin models, like the Inspire. Just pop it out of its wristband, and into a clip like this one.
Pros: Counts steps well, no matter what your hands are doing.
Cons: No access to heart rate data, or anything that requires the skin sensor. Might end up in the laundry if you forget to take it off your waistband.
Wear it in your clothes
Whoop’s tracker is normally worn on the wrist or bicep, but the company also has a “Body” line of clothes with little pockets you can slip the device into. The company sent me one of their bras back when the collection launched, and I was able to slip my Whoop device (minus its strap) into a little pocket in the band, under the left armpit. It was comfortable, stayed in place, and the data collection was good.
Their other offerings include shorts and underwear with a device pocket in the waistband, and even a swimsuit with the device pocket in approximately the same place as the bra. If you’re handy with a needle and thread, you could easily make your own versions of these items.
Pros: No extra straps to keep track of. You can definitely forget you’re wearing it.
Cons: The buttons and display aren’t accessible (which is why this works so well with Whoop, since Whoop has no buttons or display). You’ll need to plan ahead to have your Whoop-compatible undies on, and you’ll want to have duplicates to deal with the laundry cycle.
Memorial Day weekend is here, and for whatever reason, that means retailers are kicking off a bunch of sales on just about everything, including fitness equipment. So if you were waiting for prices to dip on gym gear, now is your moment.
Personal gym gear
A weightlifting belt can help you to lift more in the gym by providing something to brace against. The best belts run upwards of $100, but if you're not sure whether a belt is for you, I'd snag an inexpensive one and see how you like it. This four-inch, double prong belt looks like a fine one to start with.
And if you're in the market for a new gym bag, take a look at this Fila model that comes in unobtrusive black or loud '90s-style turquoise and purple. Both have multiple pockets, with a ventilated shoe tunnel for your wet or dirty gear.
Are you into pickleball? I hear everybody is into pickleball. (I plan to sit this trend out, but I'm glad you're all having fun.) Here's a good deal on a paddle and ball set, more than half off:
The walking pad market has exploded lately, and there are tons of these mini treadmills available at lower and lower price points. We have a guide here that explains the difference between these and regular treadmills. Be aware that many of them have limited walking speeds, low weight limits, and short lengths. That said, if you're looking for something to walk on while you work, a slow-paced treadmill might be just the thing. Here's a great option that is on sale this weekend:
If you'd like to pick up a regular treadmill this weekend, there are options here as well. The treadmills below can all reach reasonable running speeds, and can incline at least a little bit (some up to 15%).
Wordle became an instant classic almost as soon as it launched, but its simplicity is also the source of a new problem: what to play when you've already guessed the day's word? Fortunately, the years since Wordle's appearance have blessed us with dozens of other guessing games that borrowed one or more of Wordle’s features—five-letter solutions, or yellow and green squares, or sometimes just the concept of guessing and getting hints to narrow down the possibilities. Here are 14 of the best.
Waffle
Credit: Waffle
Let’s start out the list with a cute and friendly game. Waffle puts six different five-letter words in a grid, and you solve it simply by moving the squares around. It’s tricky to get the job done in the given number of swaps, but you’re never going to be too perplexed—all the letters you need are right in front of you.
Flagle
Credit: Flagle
I was torn on whether to award the geographical spot on the list to Flagle, which uses country flags, or Worldle, which gives you the outline of the country. I’m going with Flagle because there are two ways to win: In addition to narrowing down the location of the country, you can also reveal tiles of the country’s flag.
Hurdle
Credit: Hurdle
This is probably the last friendly, straightforward game you’ll see on this list, so enjoy it while it lasts. Hurdle gives you five Wordle-style puzzles each day. You have to solve each to get the next, and then the fifth puzzle gets pre-filled with the four previous solutions as guesses, leaving you just two chances to win the final round.
Absurdle
Credit: Absurdle
Absurdle gets its name because its premise is entirely absurd—and man, does it follow through. The secret word you’re guessing changes to evade your guesses. Its one nod to sportsmanship is that it will abide by its previous hints—so if it tells you that the word contains an R as the first letter, the solution will have an R, but everything else is subject to change. Succeeding at this game means backing the algorithm into a corner until it only has one option left; only then will it admit you won.
Heardle
Credit: Heardle
Heardle is the modern version of Name That Tune!, a game show where participants had to identify a song based on just the first few notes. The songs in Heardle are taken from popular Spotify streams, so it’s also a good litmus test for your own pop culture relevance.
Squabble
Credit: Squabble
In Squabble, we have our first competitive Wordle. (We’ll meet another in a minute.) If you think you’re good at guessing words, you now get the chance to prove it against friends or strangers in real time. Guessing wrong subtracts health from your little meter; guessing correctly refills it. The game continues, going to multiple words if needed, until all but one player has been eliminated.
Mordle
Credit: Mordle
If you like Squabble, try the massively multiplayer Mordle. Games can have up to 100 players, but gameplay is simpler because you don’t have to watch their game boards or battle them directly. Just attempt to solve the puzzle yourself, as fast as you can, and find out how many people got to the correct solution before or after you.
Quordle and other multi-Wordles
Credit: Quordle
When Dordle (the double Wordle) first came on the scene, it seemed nightmarish; you’re supposed to solve two Wordles with the same guesses?! But with practice, it’s not hard at all. And so it escalated from there. Quordle is the sweet spot, in my opinion; four is the perfect number of puzzles to solve at once. But Octordle is also fun, and so are Sedecordle and Duotrigordle. Multi-Wordles appear daunting at first, but with so many grids, almost any guess is going to give you a useful hint somewhere.
Antiwordle
Credit: Antiwordle
Antiwordle is probably the most hellish of all the games on this list, and that’s saying something. The rules are the same as the rules for regular Wordle played on hard mode (where you’re required to reuse correct letter guesses). But the whole idea is that you’re trying to not guess the word. Once you get it right, you lose.
Semantle
Credit: Semantle
Word games are, for the most part, games for good spellers. If you can recognize the patterns letters commonly appear in, you’re at an advantage. So if you’ve ever wondered why word games don’t ask you to guess the approximate meaning of a word, Semantle is for you. It’s tough to even begin narrowing it down, but once you do, just aim for words with similar meanings to arrive at the answer.
WordAll
Credit: WordAll
Any time you get your green and yellow squares in response to a guess, what the game is really doing is defining and redefining a pool of words that the solution must be in. (All the words that have an E in the second position and a T in them somewhere other than the third, let’s say.) WordAll gives you a half-played game, pauses it there, and asks you to name all the words in that pool. It’s a fun brain exercise, and will probably make you a more strategic Wordle player.
Artle
Credit: Artle
We’ll back away from words for this one, an art-themed game that shows you snippets of works, all created by the same artist. It’s called Artle, and it will probably teach you things you didn’t know about your favorite artists—and help you discover new ones.
Squardle
Credit: Squardle
If you thought Waffle was cute, Squardle is its evil twin. It’s another crossword-style guessing game, but this time you have to type all your guesses in. That doesn’t sound so bad, until you start trying to make sense of the hints. Each square contains color-coded information about how the letter you guessed fits into the words of the puzzle. Like Microsoft’s Clippy, something intended to be helpful quickly turns confusing and frustrating. Winning this game requires you to use the those hints without letting their proliferation distract you.
Redactle
Credit: Redactle
One word at a time? Six words at a time? Redactle scoffs at all that. It gives you an entire Wikipedia article with most of the words blacked out, in the style of censored government documents. Your job is to guess words; when you guess correctly, those words are revealed in the article. Solving the puzzle means correctly guessing the title of the article—which could be about anything from a historical figure to a mathematical concept.
When you become part of a community (or at least lurk in it long enough), you begin to learn that community’s inside jokes. Unless you are an AI, that is, because large language models are not programmed with a sense of humor. Google’s AI overview, trained as it is on Reddit user-generated content, has begun telling people to use sex toys to lift more in the gym.
(The AI overview, which you may have noticed at the top of your search results lately, is a word salad drawn from the top results for your query. Sometimes it summarizes those results. Sometimes it gets them completely wrong. The AI overview used to be an opt-in feature, but it’s now available by default. You can turn it off (after searching) by clicking on the Web filter, or by adding udm=14 to the end of the URL.)
I search a lot of fitness-related topics, and I’ve noticed that the AI overview doesn’t always understand things correctly. It thinks a small wooden block under your heels is a replacement for a squat rack. But nothing compares to the laugh I had when I realized Google has fully bought into Reddit’s “squat plug” lore. Yes, it’s telling unsuspecting users—who are likely searching because they’re checking whether this is a joke—that people commonly prepare for a heavy squat by inserting a butt plug into their rectum.
At the risk of ruining the joke: squat plugs are a joke
A squat plug is a butt plug supposedly used while squatting heavy weights in the gym. Now, butt plugs are real. They are a type of sex toy. They are made to be inserted via the anus, and importantly are shaped in such a way that they can be easily removed. Their purpose is to provide fun and pleasure in the bedroom. We have a whole article here on how to incorporate toys into anal play. If you’re, you know, curious.
But squat plugs? This is a joke, 100% a running gag, homegrown on Reddit as far as I can tell. In recent years it has breached containment, with mentions on YouTube and other social platforms. There are two types of people who post about squat plugs:
People who are in on the joke, deadpan telling everyone that they are real.
People who are asking if squat plugs are really a thing, because they sure do sound like a joke.
Some of the people making the joke are, themselves, strong squatters who use their cred to imply that if you haven’t met anyone who uses a squat plug, it’s because your friends are all too weak to know about them. Elite lifters use them all the time. (They do not. This is all part of the joke.)
But if you need a higher authority: Here are the technical rules for USA Powerlifting (USAPL). This organization has rules for everything, including a seven-item section on exactly what kinds of undergarments you may and may not wear when you compete. (There’s also a footwear section: Crocs are specifically disallowed.) The lack of even a mention of squat plugs in the rulebook is conclusive proof that they do not exist. I promise you, if squat plugs were real, specific brands of them would be on the IPF approved equipment list.
What Google’s AI says about squat plugs
Google seems to have swallowed the entirety of Reddit’s squat plug lore. “What is a squat plug?” I asked it. “A squat plug is a device that helps keep the glutes tight while squatting,” it helpfully answers, alongside an image taken from r/GymMemes that shows fitness company logos edited onto images of butt plugs.
The AI overview continues: “Some say that squat plugs are commonplace at the elite level of weight lifting and are necessary for those who want to lift more than 600 pounds.” The sources include a YouTube video and a TikTok from people who are in on the joke, and a Quora post from somebody who is questioning it.
If you click “show more,” you get, oh god, more. “Some recommend putting the plug in all the way and bracing hard to avoid leaks and messy situations,” Google’s AI cheerfully advises. It did pick up on a redditor calling bullshit, noting as an afterthought: “However, a Reddit user says that butt plugs may cause internal intestinal injury or be uncomfortable, and that they don't help with lifting.”
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
The lore goes deep. You can ask follow-up questions, and get answers. “Can I use a squat plug for deadlifting?” I asked. At first it gave me an answer about squat briefs, which are a real thing (basically, shorts that can assist in the lift), so I put “squat plug” in quotes and got my answer: yes. In fact, Google’s AI tells me, some sources say “that a vibrating squat plug can be used for variation and to recruit more stabilizers.”
Worse (better?), it goes on to give instructions on how to use a Rogue squat plug. (Rogue manufactures strength equipment like squat racks and weights; they do not offer a squat plug.) As a source, Google’s AI helpfully links a TikTok “discover” page for “Rogue squat plugs.” It’s full of prank videos, of course, mixed with the occasional tutorial video for how to use actual Rogue branded equipment, like belt squat machines. The instructions for the belt squat are the source for the step-by-step instructions in the screenshot above.
If I ask Google straight up, “Are squat plugs real?” I get a yes. If I ask whether I can use a squat plug for overhead press, I get a yes and a warning that it can “shoot out and disrupt form if it’s not inserted all the way.”
Finally, I ask it: “Are squat plugs a joke?” It assures me they are not, but adds that “some say that squat plugs are illegal in some states and that sponsors may not want lifters to discuss them publicly.”
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
Why is this happening???
An AI is only as good as its training data. Or maybe I should say: It can never be better than its training data, only the same or worse. And a lot of the training data used for Google search results seems to come from Reddit.
Google has long realized that forums where humans answer each others’ questions are a gold mine for the stuff people actually want to find when they search the web. Reddit is one of the largest and best of these forums—arguably the only good one that still exists. People still log on every day. It’s gotten less usable and less useful over time, as its owners attempt to squeeze money out of it in ways that make the user experience worse, but it’s not dead yet.
Last year, Reddit started charging for mass access to “its” data (I put that in quotes because Reddit the company did nothing to create this data) and continued with that plan over a protest so large that it shut large portions of the site down for weeks. Reddit execs forced the protesting subs to open up again, replacing (unpaid) moderators with any (still unpaid) warm body who would agree to keep the lights on. And this February, those efforts paid off, in a sense: Google made a deal to pay Reddit for API access. Because Reddit data is that important to its AI. The announcement about the deal squeezed the word “train” into a list of things Google intended to do with the newly acquired data. It was widely understood to be a deal to obtain fodder for AI.
So maybe the shitposts are in the training data because of this deal, or maybe just because Google ranks Reddit posts highly and the AI draws from highly ranked pages. In any case, this is yet another example of how tech companies are co-opting our desire to hear more from humans, and responding to that by stuffing more AI garbage down our gullet. And if that’s hard to swallow, maybe add some cheese with glue mixed in. That’s a tip Google’s AI got from an old Reddit post. Thank you, u/fucksmith.
Electrolyte powders come in all different flavors, mineral concentrations, and sweetener options. They’re sold to athletes, to dieters, and as a hangover cure. But how many of us can actually benefit from taking electrolytes? And how many of the hydration "facts" we hear on social media are actually myths?
If you’re expecting me to say that electrolytes are useless, that’s not exactly true. I love a cold swig of LMNT when I come home from a sweaty summer run. I appreciate electrolytes’ many functions in the human body. But we have to dissect some of the claims that are popping up on social media as every influencer tries to sell you their favorite brand of electrolytes. Most of them are trying to solve a problem of their own making.
But more about that in a minute. First, let’s look at what electrolytes really do, and who can benefit.
What are electrolytes?
Electrolytes are minerals that we get in our diet, and specifically the ones that become charged ions when dissolved in water. Table salt, for example, is sodium chloride. When you mix it into water, it breaks down into a positively-charged sodium ion, and a negatively charged chloride ion.
(The “electro” in the name comes from the fact that these ions have an electrical charge. If you think of water as a conductor of electricity—like the reason you shouldn’t drop a hair dryer in a bathtub—it actually gets that conductive property from those dissolved minerals. Distilled water does not conduct electricity.)
Our body needs a variety of chemical elements to work, and those include electrolytes. We use sodium and potassium ions to make our nerves fire, and calcium to trigger our muscles to contract, among other functions. And since we can’t make chemical elements from scratch, we need to get them in our diet. When you hear about “vitamins and minerals” as micronutrients, those minerals include electrolytes. These electrolytes include:
Sodium
Potassium
Chloride
Magnesium
Calcium
Phosphate (which contains phosphorus)
Where do we get electrolytes?
Forget the supplements for a minute—we normally get electrolytes in our food. Anything with salt in it provides sodium and chloride, for example. Potassium is in plenty of fruits and vegetables—famously bananas and coconut water, but also leafy greens, potatoes, and more.
There are only two minerals where people commonly fall short, according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. These are calcium and potassium.
Sodium is also mentioned in the guidelines (and on nutrition labels), but for the opposite reason—too much sodium can be bad for you, especially if you have high blood pressure. That said, people who exercise a lot or sweat a lot may need more sodium than the guidelines indicate—which is where electrolyte supplements come in.
Electrolyte supplements may help athletes who sweat a lot
When we sweat, we lose water and sodium. A 2011 review in the Journal of Sport Sciences points out that athletes can lose four to seven liters of water per day if they’re training hard or in hot weather—that’s eight to 14 standard sized water bottles’ worth. Alongside that, a typical sodium loss may be 3,500 to 7,000 milligrams.
Compare that to the recommendations for non-athletes: most of us are advised to keep our sodium intake under 2,300 milligrams per day, or under 1,500 if we’ve been advised to keep sodium low to control our blood pressure.
While you may not think of yourself as an “athlete,” it’s not hard to find yourself in a situation where you’re losing a lot of water and sodium—and other electrolytes as a side effect. One way to illustrate this is to weigh yourself before and after going for a run in the summertime. If you don’t pee in the meantime, then any weight loss between the start and end of your run is likely to be water you’ve lost, at least some of it through sweat. If you lose two pounds, for example, that’s about a liter—or two water bottles’ worth.
The most important electrolyte to replace in this case is sodium. Trying to replenish all those fluids with plain water, without any added sodium, may lead to hyponatremia, a dangerous shortage of sodium in the body. (If you’re replacing electrolytes, you don’t want low-sodium sources. Coconut water has plenty of potassium, and that’s great, but its low sodium content makes it not a great option here.)
Electrolytes can reduce the harm of fasting or extreme dieting
I’m not going to endorse extended fasts or extreme dieting here, but something you’ll hear from fasting communities online is that supplemental electrolytes are crucial for health if you’re fasting. That’s true.
If you’re not eating food, you’re missing out on all the usual sources of minerals (including electrolytes) in your diet. While our body can handle going without most vitamins or minerals for at least a few days or weeks, electrolytes are needed more urgently.
I’m not going to give guidelines here; if you’re eating so little food that you’re in danger of an electrolyte shortage, you should really be getting your information from a medical professional, not a blog on the internet. I will say that, unlike athletes replacing losses from sweat, you need to consider more than just sodium. Please don’t assume that table salt (or Himalayan salt, or salt plus lemon juice) covers all your bases.
Electrolytes probably do nothing for hangovers
You’ve probably heard about using Pedialyte or Gatorade to prevent or “cure” a hangover; some electrolyte supplement companies market products specifically for, as Waterboy puts it, “weekend recovery.”
But hangovers result from drinking alcohol, not from dehydration or electrolyte deficiency. Cedars-Sinai reports that people with hangovers tend to have the same electrolyte levels as people who are not hung over.
And, honestly, you could have figured this out yourself. I’ve been dehydrated, and I’ve been hung over. Despite some minor similarities (nausea, headache), they’re entirely different experiences. If you’re dehydrated, a glass of water will fix you right up. If you’re hung over, that bottle of Pedialyte is just there to distract you while you wait for your liver to work through the night’s backlog.
Why everybody on TikTok wants you to take more electrolytes
So if electrolyte supplements are only really useful for athletes and in a few medical applications (like rehydrating people who have suffered a nasty bout of diarrhea), why are they all over your feed? Because they’re supplements, of course. Supplements are some of the most affiliate-marketable things out there: cheap to produce, cheap to ship, and in the case of electrolytes, they can be made into a good-tasting drink.
The electrolyte boom also builds off the escalating advice to drink more and more water. All the health-conscious girlies carry a gigantic water bottle (or Stanley tumbler, or whatever trend we’ve moved onto) and sip from it all day long. (This is not necessary.)
Ironically, the marketing pitch I’m seeing most often on TikTok and the like is a response to that. Are you going to the bathroom constantly? Are you peeing almost clear? Maybe you’re “overhydrated.” The solution? Not drinking less, no no. The solution is to follow my link in bio and buy some electrolytes to add to your water.
Or maybe you’d like a DIY solution. Since lemons have magical health properties (I am kidding, okay?) we add lemon juice and sea salt to our water bottle. Some of the TikTok recipes call for a tiny amount of salt, so little we can't taste it. That would be about one-tenth of a teaspoon, providing 200 milligrams of sodium in a liter of water, according to World Health Organization data on how much sodium we can usually taste. Other recipes call for a full teaspoon of salt (2,300 milligrams of sodium) in 1 to 1.5 liters of water.
Some of the videos claim that electrolyte supplementation is necessary if you drink filtered water, but a liter of tap water only contains 2-3% of your daily calcium and magnesium, varying depending on where you get your water from, and less than 1% of other electrolytes. So you aren’t missing out on any significant sources of electrolytes by filtering your water.
Is it bad to drink a lot of electrolytes?
If you’re chugging a ton of water, adding electrolytes to some (maybe not all) of your water could be a sensible move. Just pay attention to your total sodium intake, and make sure you’re not getting astronomical levels.
For example, if you already get 2,500 milligrams from your diet (which you can track with an app like Cronometer), two packets of LMNT will bring you up to 4,500 for the day. If you aren’t doing a ton of sweaty exercise outdoors, that’s probably more than is good for your health. Pay attention to the numbers and use a little common sense.
Getting enough protein is important for our baseline health, and for supporting athletic endeavors. Calorie tracking apps like my fave, Cronometer, can help you keep track of your protein intake, but sometimes you just want to make sure you’re hitting your protein targets without putting calories front-and-center.
Why you might want to track protein
After all, tracking your macros isn’t just for weight loss. (And weight loss doesn’t require calorie tracking; that’s just one helpful tool, not the only way to do it.) Protein tracking can be helpful if:
You’re trying to gain muscle.
You do a lot of endurance sports (like distance running).
You’re pregnant or lactating.
You’re trying to eat better, and you’ve chosen protein as your focus rather than trying to improve everything at once.
Protein-only tracking is especially popular among people who are getting into the habit of lifting weights. You may need to get out of your calorie- and weight-based comfort zones, and just focus on fueling yourself.
To figure out which is the best protein tracking app, I downloaded the top four protein trackers in the iPhone App Store that are not full-featured calorie trackers. Read on to learn what I found.
All the big protein tracking apps are very simple, and similar
I suppose this is a niche market, but somehow I expected more. The App Store is full of protein tracking apps, and they all have nearly identical interfaces: a circular progress meter for the day’s protein (showing how much you’ve eaten relative to your goal), and a button to let you add the foods you’ve eaten that day. I tested these four:
Protein Tracker (which appears, after installation, under the name ProteinPlus)
Unlike most calorie trackers, though, there’s no way to search for foods for free. Two of them (Hello Protein and Protein Log) don’t have a search at all. The other two (Protein Tracker and Protein Pal) have a search, but it requires a premium subscription.
That means that most of the time, when you’re using these apps, you just have to know how much protein is in the food you’re logging. You can either check a label, Google it, or just know it off the top of your head. For someone like me who has been tracking protein for years, that’s not too hard—of course an egg has 6 grams of protein—but it seriously limits the user-friendliness for beginners.
The best for minimalists: Protein Log
Credit: Protein Log
Protein Log is one of the apps that doesn’t have a search feature. It doesn’t find the foods for you, and it doesn’t help you figure out how much protein you should be eating. It just gives you a place to say “chicken, 44 grams” and adds that to your daily total.
There is a history tab showing what you ate and how much protein each item had. You can also use the calendar to check your protein intake for any day in the past. In the Analytics tab, you can see how much protein you had each day this week, this month, and this year, relative to your target.
Runner-up: HelloProtein is also in the minimalist category, but it has a pretty huge drawback: there’s no way to edit what you ate on previous days. I logged some things yesterday, then woke up this morning and remembered that I needed to log a protein bar. Too bad—no way to add it. HelloProtein does give you an analytics page, but what good are my weekly stats if I know that Monday is missing 20 grams that I know I ate?
Protein Pal has the most features for the best price
Credit: Protein Pal
If you want something with a built in search, Protein Pal is the app you’re looking for. It also recommends a protein target for you, if you like. When you start the app, it gives you a place to enter your protein target, but there is also a “protein calculator” to help you out if you aren’t sure what number to pick. It recommended that I aim for 110 grams of protein per day, which is about 0.73 grams per pound of body weight and fits right in with the recommendations for muscle gain (which was the goal I entered).
Once you’ve decided on a target, this app behaves a lot like my minimalist pick, Protein Log. The main difference is the search, which is available under the pro subscription ($3.99/month or $23.99/year, with a 7-day free trial). You can now find foods through a text search (“powered by FatSecret,” it says) or a barcode scanner (“powered by” and then there’s a green icon I don’t recognize).
Both are a bit clunky. The barcode scanner will display results, then immediately scan its surroundings again, so you need to move the camera away from the thing you just scanned if you want to actually enter it. Disappointingly, the database is not always accurate. My favorite protein bar, Barebells Salty Peanut, registered in the app as containing 16 grams of protein when the label says it has 20 grams.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
Runner-up: Protein Tracker/ProteinPlus is a similar app with similar features; its search even gave the same, incorrect 16 grams of protein for my Barebells bar. It also gave me a 7-day free trial before charging $24.99/year, but the month-by-month cost is $9.99—a full $6 more each month than Protein Pal. (Protein Tracker has a slightly nicer looking interface for the search, but I’m not paying an extra six bucks just for that.) When I went into my subscriptions (under iPhone Settings > Apple ID) I noticed that there were two yearly options, one for $24.99 and one for $19.99. If you end up going with this app, make sure to pick the cheaper one, because paying $5 extra for no reason is just silly.
Before you ask me but isn’t her form on those exercises terrible? (and I will answer that question!) I would like to invite you to ask yourself something first.
That question is: Why is she posting these exercise videos? There are many right answers, but the way I see it, she’s using exercise as a symbol—as a way of moralizing. Consider this one, in which she’s claiming to show strength in the face of persecution (the persecution being that extremists are being labeled as extremists, and she’s one of them). Or take yesterday’s clip—the one posted after another congresswoman referred to an unspecified someone as having a “bleach blonde, bad built butch body.” The caption on the clip is about how Greene is “built and strong.” The implication here is that her fitness level makes her a better person.
But that’s all bullshit. You’re not a better or worse person—a stronger person in a moral sense—because of what you can or cannot do in the gym. Think about that for a minute. Now ask me again to critique her form. You really want to hear that she’s doing her exercises incorrectly, because that would give you a satisfying feeling of superiority: Maybe you can’t do a perfect power clean, but you’d love to hear that MTG has tried and failed. Would that make her a worse person? (Can she be a worse person?)
Let’s stop moralizing “form”
What is it supposed to say about a person, that they have terrible “form” when they do an exercise? Steeped as I am in the fitness world, I’ve heard it all. People who have bad form—that is, people who do an exercise incorrectly—are too stupid to figure out how to do the lifts correctly, or they have too big an ego to follow directions. They disregard the sacred rules of (checks notes) playing with heavy toys while thinking that they know better than the rest of us. They’re going to get hurt, and it will be their fault, and they will deserve it!
Together, these sentiments amount to a high drama policing of the tiniest actions of other people’s bodies. If somebody squats but doesn’t get their hips below their knees, who are they hurting? If a teenager picks up a weight too big to strict curl, and uses momentum to swing it into position…so what? Those people might not be training in the most effective way (or maybe they are, but that’s a bombshell for another day), but there’s no reason to feel personally offended just because it is happening next to you in the gym.
(I will now pause while everybody scrolls down to the comments to tell me why I am wrong, actually, and the form police must save such people from themselves. Never mind that there’s no evidence that “wrong” exercises or form increase injury risk. Dire warnings about the danger are based pretty much entirely on wishful thinking and a desire to dunk.)
Sometimes a person using bad form is a person who is still learning the lift. Other times they are doing a lift you don’t personally understand—for example, somebody doing kipping pullups does not have the same goal as somebody who is doing strict pullups, and both are valid exercises for different reasons. I can do 10 strict pullups. I can’t string together more than three or four kipping pullups. They’re more gymnastic skill than strength work, and both are legit forms of athleticism. Even “ego lifting” isn’t all bad—it’s okay to test your limits in the gym! It’s okay to have fun! Lay off!
But her form is terrible, right?
Look, the only thing you need to know about MTG is that she is a right-wing political extremist and professional troll who does not belong anywhere near a role in government due to her toxic views and her attempts to inflict real harm on the American public. This is true whether or not she is good at Crossfit.
And this is where I must deliver the worst news you’ll read today: She’s good at Crossfit, actually. Or at least, not any worse than the average person at your local functional fitness gym. As I told Jezebel back when Greene posted that anti-vaccine clip, her lifts, and even her butterfly pullups, are also fine.
The most recent video is of her doing power cleans, an exercise adapted from Olympic weightlifting that is a workhorse of not just weightlifting and Crossfit workouts, but also athletic teams’ weight rooms everywhere. For comparison, here’s a video of me doing the same exercise:
Since I am certified as a USA Weightlifting Level 2 coach (yes, I’m pulling rank here), I can look at her power cleans and note a few areas for improvement. She could use her legs a little more in the initial push off the floor, for example; crossfitters are notorious for a sort of forward-bouncing bar path that wouldn’t be considered ideal in the competitive weightlifting world. I think my power cleans are better, but to be totally fair, there are things I could improve as well. We both do our power cleans worse than world-class weightlifters, but better than your average high school football player.
Does knowing that change how you feel about MTG? Do you now join her in believing that the 2020 election was stolen, or that we urgently must take healthcare away from pregnant and trans people? Of course not, because none of that had anything to do with whether she was performing her power cleans correctly.
Exercise is a healthy and, one might argue, necessary part of our lives. The guidelines from public health organizations tell you to aim for at least 150 minutes of “moderate” exercise each week, and that each minute of “vigorous” exercise counts double. That raises the question: What the hell is “moderate” exercise? How do you know when you’re doing it?
It’s not really about heart rate
The short answer, which is only slightly incorrect, is to say that “moderate” exercise is the same thing as “zone 2” cardio, which I’ve previously explained. (Zone 2 is is the second-lowest intensity in a five-zone system, and you need a heart rate monitor to know which zone you’re in.)
While “zone 2” and “moderate” are both wide ranges of intensity, they do overlap a good bit. If I had to pick which heart rate zone most closely matches “moderate” intensity exercise, I’d pick zone 2. But that doesn’t mean it’s the same thing.
Science measures “moderate” and “vigorous” in terms of METs
The research that led to these guidelines didn’t use heart rate as its metric. Instead, these scientists measured exercise in terms of metabolic equivalents, or METs.
One MET is the energy expended when you’re at rest—the amount of oxygen, calories, etc that it takes to keep you alive and breathing. (We use oxygen in the process of burning calories, so officially a MET is 3.2 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute.)
Researchers can then put an oxygen mask on a person and measure how much oxygen they use while running, walking, playing guitar, etc. If an activity takes twice as much oxygen as sitting still, they say it takes two METs. Here are a few examples (taken from this scientific paper):
2 MET: washing dishes, playing croquet
3 MET: walking at 3 miles per hour (a pretty typical walking pace)
4 MET: table tennis, ice skating
5 MET: modern dance, fast-paced ballroom dance
6 MET: volleyball, singles tennis
7 MET: jogging, jumping rope
The numbers go up from there. Speed skating clocks in at 15 MET. To be clear, you will not be measuring METs directly when you exercise. The MET studies are done in labs so that we can use the information to get a sense of what MET values each common type of exercise tends to have.
Moderate exercise is 3 to 6 MET, and vigorous is 6 or more
Because METs are specific to the activity, not to how fit you are, it makes the most sense to look at METs in terms of the pace you run or the settings you use on your treadmill or other cardio machine. Here are paces and activities that have been clocked as between 3 and 6 METs:
Walking at 3-4 mph (a 15-minute to 20-minute mile)
Cycling, between 50 to 100 watts
Shooting baskets
Playing baseball
Taking a low-impact aerobics class
And these are vigorous (6 or more MET):
Race walking (5+ mph)
Walking uphill
Walking with a 12-pound pack
Jogging (a 12-minute mile is 8.0 MET; the faster you go, the higher the MET)
So how am I supposed to know when I’m doing moderate exercise if I can’t measure METs?
I’m going to say this again: Your fitness watch can’t measure METs. This is why people so often tell you to target “zone 2” instead—it’s not really correct, but at least it's an easy measurement that you can read off your watch.
In reality, this falls short in two ways: (1) different gadgets and systems use different cutoffs to define "zone 2", and (2) for most of us, zone 2 includes most moderate activities but also some vigorous activities. If you’re relatively fit, you can jog at a 12 minute-per-mile pace while keeping your heart rate in zone 2. That’s a “vigorous” activity in terms of METs, though.
The other reason heart rate isn’t accurate for this task is that your heart rate changes for all kinds of reasons. The hotter it is when you're working out, the higher your heart rate tends to be. Same goes for when you’re nervous or stressed. And as you get fitter, you’ll be able to do the same activities at a lower heart rate. Those activities might feel easier than they used to, but they’re not any less work.
Walking is moderate, jogging or running is vigorous.
Bicycling is moderate if it’s under about 12 miles per hour on the flat
Indoor cycling is moderate if it’s up to about 100 watts of power
All that said, you don’t have to overthink it. Those guidelines that mention “moderate” and “vigorous” activities aren’t asking you to monitor your heart rate or any other numeric metric. They want you thinking in terms of generalities: walking versus running, leisurely bike commuting versus sweating your heart out in a spin studio.
And honestly, if it’s easier to watch your heart rate than to worry about the above, that’s fine. For most of us, 150 minutes of Zone 2 is going to be at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise. So follow that guideline, and you’ll be an overachiever.
How cool would it be if we could prevent sunburn and skin cancer without sunscreen—just by eating certain natural foods? It’s a really attractive idea, which explains why it’s all over TikTok. Too bad it doesn’t actually work.
Can we quit it with the “sunscreen is toxic” bullshit already?
The food-as-sunscreen TikToks don’t always come out and say it, but they’re trading on the established myth of sunscreen being somehow bad for us. (You don’t want to know how many “akshully, sunscreen causes cancer” statements I had to scroll through while researching this article.)
As I’ve written before, this is not some kind of sensible risk management messaging. It’s complete nonsense. The harms of UV exposure are concrete and well-documented. The harms of sunscreen are unproven, mostly guesswork, and the occasional legitimate concern is on the level of “hey, it would be helpful to have more research to know if some types of sunscreen are safer than others.” This stuff is absolutely not on the level of “avoid sunscreen because it’s bad for you.”
What the science actually says about food and sun damage
The TikToks about natural sun protection give a laundry list of foods, saying vaguely that they protect from sun damage. Sometimes they’ll recommend a specific supplement. But they never go into detail about the things that are important to know when recommending a preventative treatment, like:
What dosage is needed to get the intended results?
Has this actually been tested in humans?
How much protection does the food or supplement give you, and how was that measured?
Does the protection start working immediately, and if not, how long does it take?
Does the effectiveness vary from person to person?
Does the protective ingredient break down over time, and is there a way to refresh its protection (equivalent to reapplying sunscreen)?
What are the downsides to the food or supplement when used in the recommended dosage?
For actual, FDA-approved sunscreens, there are answers to all of these questions. For the foods recommended on TikTok, there are not. Instead of this fully fleshed-out information, we just get statements like “Eat watermelons, tomatoes, walnuts, carrots…”
If you look into the research, none of it really supports the claims the TikTokers are making (or implying). For example, here is a study showing that an antioxidant found in walnuts can protect human skin cells from some of the effects of UV damage. Sounds promising, until you realize that the skin cells were not in humans, but rather are a human-derived mutant cell line (sounds weird, but it’s a very normal thing in science labs). The researchers made a walnut extract and combined it with the cells in cell culture plates, which are basically teeny-tiny test tubes. So to review: This study did not involve people, eating, walnuts (as a food), sunlight, or sunburn.
Here’s a more relevant study: Light-skinned, non-smoking volunteers ate 40 grams of tomato paste (about three tablespoons) along with 10 grams of olive oil every day. After 10 weeks, they showed less reddening of the skin in response to exposure to a UV lamp. That’s promising! Very cool! Heck, if you felt inspired and wanted to start eating tomato paste (going through a little can of it every 4 days), I wouldn’t stop you.
But pay attention to what the study didn’t find. It doesn’t tell us what results people with lighter or darker skin tones would get. It doesn’t tell us how this protection changes (or doesn’t) over time—would you get the same results at the end of the summer as at the beginning, if you used this as your only sun protection?
And, most importantly, it only found that the people who used tomato paste got less reddening of the skin. The tomato paste didn’t completely prevent sunburn. The TikTokers are talking about these foods as if they are magic potions, or get-out-of-sunburn-free cards. Even the most promising studies don’t back that up.
And of course everybody is selling a supplement
If there’s one thing wellness TikTokers love, it’s selling supplements. Supplements are cheap for manufacturers to make, easy to ship, straightforward to explain (“X is good for Y”) and anybody can throw up an affiliate link in their bio to get a cut of the profits.
And so it is with these allegedly sunburn-preventing supplements. The hot one right now is Heliocare, which of course has a “brand affiliate” program. It’s made from a fern called Polypodium leucotomos, and there is actually research (!) supporting the idea that it may help a little bit to lessen sunburn.
But, as with the tomato studies, the results are at the “hmm, kind of interesting” level. This isn’t something that will let you ditch your sunscreen if you’re being at all responsible about it. I’m looking at the graphs in the paper’s results, and honestly I’m not sure if I can see a difference in redness at the later timepoints. If the supplement only delays how long it takes for a sunburn to show up, that doesn’t seem very useful. (I might actually wonder if it’s worse, since that could lead you to stay out longer before you realize how bad a burn you’re developing.)
Again, a statistically detectable difference in redness is not the same as completely (or even mostly) preventing sunburn. It’s also worth noting that the dosage of Heliocare (one 240-milligram pill per day) is less than what was used in the study (7.5 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight, which works out to be 528 milligrams for a 154-pound person, or over two pills’ worth). If you take three pills per day, that $34.99 bottle will only last you 20 days. I’m not seeing the advantage over just applying sunscreen normally.
Sunscreen does a great job of protecting our skinfrom rays that can cause skin cancer, as well as thickening and wrinkling of the skin as we age. But it also feels kind of greasy and goopy sometimes, especially when applied to the face, leaving many of us wondering if there might not be a better way to apply it. Sunscreen powders sound like a promising development. But do they work?
Sunscreens usually come in a lotion or spray format, but you can also find them in powder form. These products often come in a container with a built-in brush (kind of like a big floofy foundation brush) and tend to be more expensive than traditional sunscreens.
They're sometimes marketed alongside makeup, so you can use them as a setting powder with the extra benefit of SPF. Sometimes they're marketed toward parents of young kids, as an alternative to getting little ones to sit still for a lotion or spray application.
The ingredients are still legit sunscreens, and are typically mineral-based, with something like zinc oxide as the main active ingredient.
Powder sunscreen isn't effective on its own
Ultimately, the problem with any form of sunscreen is that you need to apply a lot of it to get the protection listed on the label—and you need to reapply it according to the directions, which usually means every two hours. A sunscreen lotion is the easiest to apply this way, even though most of us don’t come anywhere near meeting the recommended amounts. (That’s okay, though—if the SPF is high enough, we still get decent protection.)
That brings us to the problem with nontraditional sunscreens. Are you really going to apply enough of it that it can actually work as intended? This is especially unlikely when it comes to combination products. Will you really slather on a thick layer of sunscreen-infused bug spray every two hours? How about a thick layer of SPF-containing foundation?
I think you see where I’m going. Are you going to apply enough powder sunscreen to get the protection you’re looking for, and then reapply it when it’s time? It’s unlikely, especially if the powder is your main form of sunscreen. Below is a video of chemist Michelle Wong applying sunscreen powder to her hand to show how much you would need to get the labeled SPF.
When powder sunscreens make sense
So you won't be able to get the labeled protection from a comfortable layer of powder—does that mean sunscreen powder is useless? Here I must return to the one enduring rule of sun protection: The best sunscreen is the sunscreen you will wear. Powder sunscreens are a better-than-nothing option for reapplying sunscreen over your makeup, and many people will skip reapplying if they don’t have something that works on top of makeup.
Dermatologists recommend applying a layer of normal (cream) sunscreen first, then putting on your makeup; consider powder to be a tool for touch-ups. Unfortunately, it can’t be considered a replacement for your primary sunscreen.
Similarly, for kids, if powder is truly the only way you can get some sunscreen on your squirmy toddler, then a powder is better than nothing. But there are other ways to make sunscreen application easier on little ones—so don't just buy a bottle of powder and consider the problem solved.
To lift weights at home, first you need the weights. That’s simple enough—if you’re into barbell lifts, just buy a barbell set.
But your next problem is figuring out how you squat. Squatting typically involves a squat rack, and that’s a luxury many home gymmers don’t have. THat doesn't mean you have to forgo squatting altogether though. Let’s look at your options.
Before I get into it, note that none of the options I'll be discussing include safeties, which a real squat rack would have. That’s okay, because they all assume that you are either working with light enough weights that you won’t fail your lift, or that you know how to bail out by dumping the weight if you can’t complete the rep. This is a learnable skill, and it won’t damage your equipment if you use bumper plates—keep that in mind if you’re living the no-rack life.
Get squat stands instead of a rack
A solid squat rack is an investment, so I understand not wanting to splurge on one right away. (Heck, my own pandemic home gym went without a squat rack for about a year—not because I decided against one, but because it didn’t occur to me that a squat rack might be affordable or feasible in my small garage.)
The truth is, supports for squatting aren’t nearly as expensive as you might think. You can order a pair of lightweight but strong squat stands like these for $50 to $60, or make your own out of concrete and 2x4s. I've gone on the record saying a good squat rack is worth the investment, but I also believe that makeshift stands like these are an excellent stopgap if you aren’t ready to take that step.
Pros: Cheap, lightweight, can move out of the way for storage. The only limit to the amount of weight you can squat this way is the limit of the equipment
Cons: Not free. You also don’t get to learn any strange new skills, like the options below.
Clean the weight and do front squats
Olympic lifters and Crossfitters will probably be most comfortable with this option: Instead of squatting with the bar on your back, clean the bar into a front rack position. That means you grab it while it’s on the ground, launch it upwards, and catch it on your shoulders, just in front of your neck.
The ending position of a clean is the same as the starting position for front squats, so you can then do as many reps of front squats as you like.
The main problem with this approach is that if you aren’t a weightlifter or Crossfitter, you probably aren’t very good at cleans. It takes time, practice, and ideally some good coaching to get efficient enough at cleans to be able to handle a realistic weight for front squats. If you’re committed to lifting without a squat rack, this is a skill worth learning. Otherwise, you might want to check out the other options.
Pros: Easy if you know how to do it. Lets you make the most of a small amount of weight (front squats are harder than back squats at the same weight).
Cons: Requires you to be pretty good at cleans. Also, this doesn’t give you a way to do heavy back squats.
Zercher squats
The zercher is often seen as esoteric—an odd lift only done by odd people. But it’s actually a solid option for squats, whether or not you have a rack available. Sometimes called a “low bar front squat,” it lets you go a lot heavier than a regular front squat, but you don’t need to know how to clean a barbell to get the weight into position.
How to do zercher squats:
Stand in front of the bar with your feet wider than your arms (same idea as a sumo deadlift, but you don’t have to get as wide as sumo deadlifters do).
Deadlift the bar.
Bend your knees so that you’re in a squatting position, and set the bar down into your lap.
One at a time, slip each arm between your legs and under the bar.
Now that the bar is in the crooks of your elbows, stand up. You’ve completed your first rep.
For subsequent reps, just bend and straighten your knees as you would in a normal squat. (No need to return the bar to the ground each rep, although you can if you want.)
If your first thought is “ow, that would hurt my elbows,” well, you’re right—at first. Turns out the elbows adapt; people who zercher squat regularly find that it’s not really a problem. You can always wrap the bar in a towel or barbell pad, or wear elbow sleeves for extra cushioning. If I haven’t zerchered in a while, I’ll sometimes wear a sweatshirt and slip my knee sleeves over my elbows. Anyway, you get used to it.
Pros: Free. No special skills required. Heavy weights are possible. You get to do a deadlift with every set.
Cons: Elbows might hurt. You have to do a deadlift with every set.
Steinborn squats
Alright, now this one is an odd lift for odd people. You could become one of those people, though.
To do tit, you’ll need a clear space around you, non-slip flooring, and just enough bravery and stupidity to think “sure, what the hell, I probably won’t die.” (It will not surprise readers to hear that I check all three boxes, and thus have gone on to set a national record in my weight class in this lift.)
To be fair, it’s not as dangerous as it looks. You do need a little bit of practice to know how to stabilize the bar and center yourself underneath it, but I found it easier to learn than the Olympic clean discussed above. Would this be my first pick for somebody who wants to squat and doesn’t have a squat rack? No. But is it a viable option for a person who thinks it’s cool? Absolutely.
Pros: Free. Heavy weights are possible. Impress your friends, scare your neighbors.
Cons: Requires plenty of space and nerves of steel. Scares your neighbors.
Squat alternatives I don’t recommend
The following things are not replacements for barbell squats, in my opinion:
Barbell hack lifts are behind-the-back deadlifts. They involve the quads a little more than a regular deadlift, but they’re not squats.
Trap bar deadlifts, ditto. Great as a deadlift variation, but not a squat.
Goblet squats. These are a fine exercise, but if you’re strong enough to do barbell squats, goblets probably aren’t going to cut it as a main lift.
Lifting the bar over your head and onto your back: If you can do this, the weight is too light for a heavy set of squats.
Not-quite-squat options that are still great
The following are exercises that aren’t the same as normal barbell squats, but they’ll still build strong legs and are worth considering as you explore your options.
Bulgarian split squats: these can be done with lighter weights than regular squats, so dumbbells or a relatively light barbell can do the job.
Leg press machines, any kind (I’m including the hack squat machine here). If your gym has a leg press but no squat rack, these would be my first pick for a squat replacement.
Pistol squats: I find these to be too hard on the knees to fully replace squats, but they’ll certainly give your legs a serious challenge.
Lunges and step-ups: This type of single leg work is always challenging to the quads, and doesn’t require as much weight as two-legged squats.
I’d also like to give an honorable mention to Arthur lifts. This is where you hack lift the bar until you can get it onto your lower back, then bounce it up to your shoulders. From there, you can squat it normally. Honestly, this only didn’t make the main list because I don’t personally like it. I consider it more painful than a Zercher and scarier than a Steinborn. But if you are intrepid enough to try it, knock yourself out.
When it comes to soothing sore muscles, I have two go-tos: heat, and massage. I’ve always had to enjoy those things separately, though. For a quick and easy "massage," a foam roller does the trick; and for heat, I use a heat pad or, on my way to and from the gym, the heated seats in my car. But now there’s a product that combines them, and it’s genius: the HotRock heated roller.
Technically it’s not a “foam” roller, because it’s not made of foam. It’s a hard plastic cylinder, hollow inside, that plugs into the wall. One end has a little screen (to display the temperature) and four buttons to turn it on and control it. The other end has a door, inside which you’ll find the attached power cord.
So, yes, you need a wall outlet to use this thing. (Sort of. More on that in a minute.) It’s the size of a pretty standard mini foam roller, a little under 13 inches long. The heated area, supplied by wires that wrap around it underneath the cover, is about the middle 6 inches of the roller. If you’re hoping to warm up a wide area, say your upper back, you’ll need to make multiple passes.
The outside of the roller is encased in faux leather (“marine-grade vinyl,” they call it) and it’s allegedly removable—although it seems to be a pretty tight fit. Dirt and debris wipe off, so you don’t need to remove the sleeve for cleaning.
How to use the HotRock heated roller
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
HotRock sent me a roller to test. Following the manufacturer’s instructions, I opened the little door, pulled out the power cord, and plugged it into the wall. The HotRock came with a drawstring bag that’s supposed to hold heat in while it’s warming up, so I used that as instructed.
Here’s the basic procedure:
Plug the cord (found inside the little door) into a wall outlet.
Press the power button to turn on the LCD screen.
Select the temperature (between 125 and 175 degrees, in 10-degree increments).
If you want to use it for more than 30 minutes, press the timer button and use the up and down arrows to set the time (up to 180 minutes).
Optionally, slip the drawstring bag around it while it warms up.
When the roller is up to temperature, take it out of the bag. You can use it while it’s still plugged in.
How long does it take the HotRock to heat up?
The HotRock is advertised as heating to 175 degrees in just five minutes, but I found it took a bit longer—around eight minutes with the drawstring bag. (The company says that it will feel like it’s up to temperature a few minutes before the internal sensor reports the same number.)
If you want a lower temperature, it will get there more quickly. I found it got to 130 degrees in about three minutes.
How hot should I set the HotRock?
The top setting of 175 was great for rolling my back through layers of clothes, but that was definitely too hot to be comfortable on bare skin. I found the lowest setting of 125 to be perfect to roll a bare leg.
There are other heated massage tools out there, like this microwaveable MojiHeat, but they don’t get as hot—MojiHeat gets up to 140 degrees for 30 minutes. If you want the higher settings or the longer time, the HotRock is a better option—but it’s nearly double the price, and you have to deal with the power cord.
Is the power cord a problem?
You would think the cord would get twisted or tangled if you use the roller while it’s plugged in, but I didn’t find that to be a problem. Usually you’re rolling it back and forth in a small area, and the cord has enough room to move to withstand that just fine. The cord is also long enough that I didn't feel tethered to the wall; nine feet is plenty.
Conveniently, the roller is big enough on the inside that you don't have to wrap or fold the cord carefully. Just stuff it in, it'll be fine.
But since not every location has a wall outlet within nine feet, I wondered if it was possible to use the HotRock after unplugging it. I heated it up to 175, then put the cord away and started a stopwatch. The roller maintained a nice level of heat for several minutes, and around five minutes it was pleasantly warm but no longer anything I’d describe as “hot.” That would be enough for a quick warmup session, if you don’t have access to a wall outlet in the place where you do your foam rolling.
Are there any health benefits to the HotRock?
It’s really just another massage tool, so the benefits are “it feels good.” The evidence on massage for recovery and health is mixed; some sources find it helps recovery or aids in mobility. Most experts would say to use heat and/or massage if they feel good to you.
My only real complaint about this type of device is that when I’m in the mood for heat on a muscle (ahh, relaxing), I’m usually not in the mood to get on the floor and move around, maintaining appropriate pressure on the body part I’m rolling (so much work!). But I know that some of you love your foam rollers, so this might be a welcome addition.
The HotRock website has testimonials from athletes, and honestly the one I found most compelling was the Crossfit coach who gets to the gym before 5 in the morning, and it’s so cold in the winter. She turns on the building heat, makes herself a coffee, and does a rolling session with her heated foam roller. That sounds heavenly.
Pros and cons of the HotRock
Pros
Combines heat and self-massage
Cord stows away easily in the center of the roller
Adjustable heat up to 175 degrees F
Auto-shutoff timer
Cons
No beep to let you know when it’s up to temperature
Need to be near an outlet to use it
Pricey compared to microwaveable rollers
Specs
Temperature settings: 135, 145, 155, 165, 175 degrees
Not everybody has the same reaction to noticing a new muscle pop up on their body. Some love it: “Great, I’m getting jacked!” Some are discouraged: “Oh no, I’m getting bulky.” But everyone should know that building muscle has its benefits, beyond looks and in spite of looks.
Here are seven ways your newfound muscle is a big plus, both for your health and your fitness goals.
Strength and muscle size go together
We’ve all met people who are stronger than they look, and vice versa. This has led to a myth that there are different “kinds” of muscle or strength, as if bodybuilders’ muscles are full of water or fat instead of contractile tissue. (I’m not sure exactly where this myth comes from, but it’s absolutely not true. Muscle is muscle.)
Think of it this way: The bigger the muscle, the harder it can contract. But what you do with that muscle is a matter of skill. Gymnasts are strong, but not every strong person can do a backflip. Boxers are strong, but not every strong person will be able to deliver a knockout punch.
If you train to build muscle size, you will end up increasing your strength. And if you train to build strength, chances are you will end up increasing your muscle size. That doesn’t mean you have to become huge if you don’t want to be; your diet is the main thing that determines whether you look “bulky” or not. But it's reasonable to expect at least a little bit of muscle gain anytime you're challenging your body to get stronger and fitter.
Muscle burns more calories
Muscle’s effect on our metabolism is one of the most frequently-cited benefits of gaining muscle mass, and honestly, I think it’s one of the least important. But let’s dive in, because I know you’re wondering about it.
Yes, the more muscle you have on your body, the more calories you burn, even at rest. Muscle is a metabolically “expensive” tissue, using a lot of your food as fuel, which means that you can eat more food, and thus get more vitamins, protein, fiber, and other useful nutrients. The more you burn, the better you can eat.
Every pound of muscle you gain will burn an extra 10 or so calories each day—so if you gain 10 pounds of muscle over the course of a few years’ strength training, you’re burning an extra 100 calories each day. This may not make a huge contribution to your daily calorie burn, but it’s something. What’s less appreciated is that the more muscle you have, the more likely you are to take on harder workouts, thus burning even more calories.
I burn about 500 more calories each day now than I did years ago, when I was sedentary, and I certainly haven’t gained 50 pounds of muscle. But the more muscle you have, the more work you can do, and that snowballs. Remember, exercise is good for your health, so the more of it your body can handle, the healthier your heart and your metabolism can become.
Muscle benefits your health even if you don’t lose weight
Losing weight is often said to benefit our health, especially for people who have diabetes, other health conditions, and/or a high BMI. Losing weight can be tough, though, and gaining muscle can help those same health outcomes whether you end up losing weight or not.
For example, this study found that having more muscle mass is associated with lower mortality rates, lower body fat, and a lower likelihood of having diabetes. People with high BMIs and high muscle mass were, in this study, healthier than people who had similarly high BMIs but low muscle mass.
So even if gaining muscle doesn’t come with reduced body fat, it’s still helping you to be healthier. The researchers also speculate that some of the health outcomes we associate with high body fat may actually have more to do with low muscle mass.
This isn’t just an issue for the grey-haired crowd: We lose 3-8% of our muscle every decade starting around age 30, if we don’t train to keep it. The rate of loss typically speeds up after age 60—but, again, people who strength train tend to hang onto their muscle. You might even build more than you had in your youth.
Even if you haven’t hit age 30, think of yourself as putting muscle in the bank that you can use later. Somebody who is strong at age 25 is building the muscle (and the habits that keep them exercising!) that will keep them from being frail at age 75.
Strength training improves bone density
Besides sarcopenia, osteoporosis (a loss of bone mineral density) also contributes to the risk of devastating fractures and to a loss of independence, especially as we age. Muscle loss and bone density loss have been referred to as “musculoskeletal aging,” and it’s at least partially preventable with strength training.
Bone grows stronger when you put stress on it, which is why “weight bearing” activities are commonly recommended for people at risk of osteoporosis. That doesn’t refer specifically to weight training, but rather to activities where you’re supporting your own weight. Walking, running, and jumping are weight bearing. Swimming is not.
But weight training does also improve bone density. Unless you’re great at walking or even jumping on your hands (which, I must note, requires a lot of strength and muscle), a good way to get healthy stress on the bones of your upper body is to do plenty of resistance training. That could include training with barbells, dumbbells, resistance machines, or other tools.
Strong muscles may prevent injury
Injury prevention is a big and nebulous topic, so it’s hard to point at specific evidence that strength training in general reduces injuries in general. But ask any good coach, or any good physical therapist, and they’ll tell you that they encourage their players and patients to build strength to prevent injuries and to recover from them when they happen.
Strength training gives you stronger muscles, bones, and connective tissue like tendons. In a sports context, stronger athletes seem to be more resistant to injury. And even in everyday life—let’s say a person who might slip and fall—being strong and agile makes it easier to avoid unexpected obstacles. You may also have an easier time catching yourself when you begin to fall.
There’s also evidence that exercise, including strength training, is a useful tool in managing back pain, arthritis, and other conditions.
Muscle makes you better at running, yoga, and other activities
Maybe you’re cool with exercise, but still a bit skeptical of the benefits of strength training specifically. You just want to run the trails, take a barre class, maybe do some yoga. Well, muscle helps with those things, too.
If you’re a runner, for example, strength training helps to prevent injuries (including those nagging “overuse” injuries like shin splints and achy knees). More muscle in your legs also means a better ability to run up the hills of those trails and dodge rocks and tree roots on the way down. Stronger runners tend to be better runners.
Or let’s say you’re more into yoga. More strength and muscle will help you to be able to do more advanced poses, to do the medium-difficulty ones more confidently, and to do the easy ones with true ease. Or to put it another way: nobody ever thinks, in the middle of a yoga class, “I wish I had less core strength.”
You get the idea. Rock climbing is more fun when you’ve got more upper body muscle. Cycling is more fun when you have powerful legs. Even outside the formal sports world, muscle helps you to carry mulch in your garden, to load your suitcase overhead without endangering your fellow airplane passengers, to help a friend move without spending the next two days on the couch popping Advil. So when you notice your body gaining a little bit of muscle, just think of all the opportunities it opens for you—not just how it looks.
Zero exercise is not enough. Going for a walk every day is probably a good thing. And if you’re training for a marathon, you’ll be on your feet for a couple hours of hard workouts every week. But what is the benchmark for a human being just trying to squeeze enough healthy exercise into their life? Let’s break it down.
The basics: 150 minutes of cardio and two days of strength training every week
At least 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity (cardio) exercise like walking or easy jogging, or 75 minutes per week of vigorous exercise like running, or a combination. (If you can easily meet that, more is better.)
At least two days per week of muscle strengthening activity, like lifting weights or doing other strength training like pushups, resistance band exercises, or even heavy manual labor like shoveling.
A previous edition of the guidelines said that you need to do your cardio for a minimum of 10 minutes at a time for it to count, but the current recommendation is to get it in however you can, even if that includes some shorter bursts here and there.
What do "moderate" and "vigorous" cardio mean?
If you need help telling these two levels apart, moderate cardio is the kind you can do continuously without feeling too tired. Vigorous cardio is the kind where you find yourself hoping that you'll get a break soon, because oh god I can't keep this up much longer. Or if you're used to exercising with a heart rate monitor, moderate cardio is often considered zone 2 cardio, and vigorous is anything harder.
When you're doing moderate cardio, you'll be a little bit sweatier or breathing a little harder than when you're at rest, but the activity is sustainable: You can speak comfortably in full sentences—think of going on an easy jog with a friend while telling them how your week has been.
Here are some examples of moderate cardio:
A brisk walk (but if this feels too easy, you may need to jog to meet the same level of effort).
Jogging, if you're able to find an easy pace. Alternating between jogging and walking also counts.
Commuting or doing errands by bike, on relatively flat ground.
Using a spin bike or other cardio machines like the elliptical, so long as you do it at a low intensity, steady pace.
By contrast, vigorous cardio includes activities where you're working hard and breathing hard. You might not be able to keep it up very long. This could include:
Running fast
Bicycling uphill
Pushing yourself to finish a Crossfit WOD with a good time
Swimming laps
Playing a game of soccer or basketball
Can I combine moderate and vigorous cardio?
You can mix and match these two intensities. The math is simple if you think about 150 minutes as your target, and consider every minute of vigorous cardio counting double. Here are some examples:
A 20 minute brisk walk every weekday morning (20 minutes x 5 days = 100 minutes moderate cardio) plus a 30-minute spin class that has you working pretty hard (30 minutes counted double is 60; add that to the 100 and you're at 160 minutes).
An hour of hiking, three days a week (60 minutes x 3 sessions = 180 minutes moderate cardio)
Three 30-minute jogs (30 minutes x 3 = 90 minutes moderate cardio) plus a workout with 10 minutes easy jogging for a warmup and then 20 minutes of hard running, followed by a cooldown of another 10 minutes easy. (20 minutes vigorous x 2 is equivalent to 40 minutes moderate cardio, plus we can add the warmup and cooldown for another 20 moderate minutes). That gives you 150 total.
Go for a 30-minute easy bike ride on Monday. Try a 45-minute water aerobics class on Wednesday. Take a short hike on Saturday. Mow the lawn for an hour on Saturday. (30 + 45 + 30 + 60 = 165 moderate cardio)
If you’re pretty athletic, the above won’t sound like much. Good news! The WHO has set a secondary goal for folks like you. It’s simple: just do double the above. So you can aim for 300 minutes of moderate cardio, or 150 minutes per week of vigorous activity. Here's what that might look like:
An intense, hour-long martial arts class three times a week (60 x 3 = 180, but this is vigorous cardio, so the minutes count double)
Run 30 miles per week at an easy pace (if you're fit enough to run your easy pace at about a 10 minute mile, that's 300 minutes moderate cardio)
Commute to work, 20 minutes each way (40 minutes per day x 5 days per week = 200 minutes moderate cardio) and play rec league soccer for two matches per week (50 minutes each game, for some combination of moderate and vigorous cardio, definitely puts us over 300).
Can you get too much exercise?
What about an upper limit on how much exercise you get? There isn’t one, from a public health point of view. More is better. (And even if you are doing less than the recommendations, anything is better than nothing.) That said, it is always possible for you, as an individual, to do more exercise than your body is ready for. Don’t jump from a life of occasional strolling to a marathon training plan. (And if you are on that marathon training plan and you’re feeling worn down, take a break already.)
Strength, Flexibility, and More
So far we’ve been talking about aerobic exercise, which is the kind where you’re continuously moving (or, perhaps, doing quick work/rest intervals) and your heart rate is up. But there are other important forms of exercise, too. The WHO and other organizations recommend two days per week of “high intensity muscle strengthening activity,” which includes anything where you’re thinking in terms of sets and reps. (Three sets of eight to 10 reps is a good structure to start.)
That activity can be anything that challenges your muscles, and where the 10th rep is a lot harder than the first: lifting weights, or resistance band exercises, or bodyweight exercises like push-ups. So if you run three days per week but have time for more, don’t just fit in extra runs; try adding two days in the weight room instead.
The strength training recommendations are for two days per week, per muscle group. If you like to work your upper body and lower body separately, that would mean two upper body days and two lower body days. If you prefer workouts that work all your muscles, you only need to do those twice a week at minimum.
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