❌

Normal view

There are new articles available, click to refresh the page.
Yesterday — 4 May 2024Main stream

How to Choose Between the Peloton Bike and the Bike+

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
4 May 2024 at 11:00

With some products, like phones, you have a myriad of options to sort through. But if you want to buy one of Peloton's spin bikes, you only have two choices: the Bike or the Bike+ (pronounced “bike plus”). That little “+” costs an extra thousand dollars, so is it really worth it? Let’s dive in. 

Overview of the important features

I’ll go over the details below, but here’s the short answer: if you just want “a Peloton,” the regular Bike is the original. It’s the one most people have, it’s cheaper, and it does the job just fine. I have a regular Bike and I’ve never felt like I’m missing out. The regular price for a Bike is $1,445, but with a good sale you can find it closer to $1,000. If you're willing to look at used models, they can often be had in the mid to high triple digits.

The Bike+ costs significantly more, so what are you paying for? The tech components are nicer, so the on-screen experience will feel a bit faster and smoother. Other than that, the big features are auto-resistance (the bike will follow along with classes without you having to turn the knob) and a swiveling screen so you can turn it to the side for things like strength workouts and guided yoga sessions. List price on the Bike+ is $2,495, with deals sometimes bringing it as low as $1,995. Refurbished and used models will, of course, cost a bit less.

What’s the same between the Bike and the Bike+

Most of the differences between the two bikes are tech-related, and we’ll get into those in a minute. But first, you should know what’s the same between the two bikes. 

First, they’re the same size. Both have the same footprint, 4 feet by 2 feet—Peloton recommends that you allow 24 inches on each side of the bike, and that you put it in an area with at least 8-foot-high ceilings. This allows even tall riders to be able to stand up and pedal. (If you don’t care about standing, or if you’re shorter, you might be able to squeeze into a tighter space. I’m 5’6” and never had an issue with my attic’s 7-foot ceilings.)

The controls and the frame are the same, with the exception that the original Bike had a seat post recall, and the Bike+ did not. (If you’re buying used, make sure that the seat post was replaced.) Both have a hard wired 3.5mm headphone jack, although it’s probably more common to use the onboard speakers or a bluetooth headset rather than plugging in a pair of headphones.  

Both flavors of bike can accommodate a rider who is anywhere between 4’11” and 6’4” and weighs up to 297 pounds. The Bike itself weighs 135 pounds, and the Bike+ weighs 140, due mainly to the hefty flywheel (with spin bikes, the heavier the flywheel, the better).

Both the Bike and Bike+ have access to the same subscription options. For the $44/month All-Access subscription, you get: 

  • Classes on the bike—these are the classic offering, with a charismatic instructor leading you through a structured workout (and often peppering it with motivational speeches).

  • Scenic rides on the bike, with “Peloton radio” for music (I usually mute it and just play my own music from my phone).

  • Lanebreak (a sort of ride-along video game) on the bike.

  • Access to classes through the Peloton app on your phone.

  • The ability to create multiple profiles for family members, so you can all share the bike without additional subscriptions.

Besides cycling classes, the bikes and the app can also provide follow-along classes for strength, stretching, yoga, and more. You can take bike classes on the phone app as well, a handy feature when you have access to a spin bike but it’s not a Peloton (for example, at a gym). 

Now that we know what’s the same, let’s dig into the differences.

The Bike+ has a swiveling screen, but don’t buy it just for that

The first thing you’ll notice about the Bike+ (and arguably its only visually distinctive feature) is the fact that its screen is on a swivel. This lets you set up a space next to the bike, perhaps with a mat and dumbbells, to do other types of workouts. Hop off the Bike+, point the screen toward your mat, and you can do a yoga class without having to crane your neck to see over the seat. 

The screen on the regular Bike doesn’t swivel, but it does tilt. This lets you adjust it for the most comfortable angle or to avoid glare while you’re riding. If you want that swiveling feature, though, you don’t have to pony up an extra grand for a whole new bike—an aftermarket swivel mount is only about 50 smackers.

The Bike+ has auto-resistance and a real power meter

If the Bike+ has a killer feature, it’s this. When an instructor tells you to set your resistance to 30, you don’t need to touch the knob—the Bike+ will adjust the resistance for you. 

You can turn this feature on or off during a ride by tapping the lock icon next to the resistance numbers. On regular rides, the Bike+ will adjust the resistance whenever the instructor announces that the resistance is changing; on power zone rides, it will adjust as needed to keep you in your power zone. 

The catch is that auto-resistance only works for rides where “target metrics” are programmed. This includes most rides from Peloton’s back catalog, but it does not include rides where you’re following along with an instructor in real time. After those live rides, Peloton will add the target metrics, but they say it can take up to 24 hours for that feature to become available for a given ride. 

The Bike+ also has a power meter built in, so that it can tell exactly how many watts your output is. (The regular Bike will show you an estimated wattage, but Bikes can become miscalibrated and the wattage may be off.) While you can calibrate a regular Bike, the Bike+ always knows how hard you are actually pedaling, and you may appreciate this extra accuracy.

The Bike+ has better quality tech in its tablet

The screen on the front of your Bike or Bike+ isn’t just a screen; it’s a whole tablet computer with its own processor, RAM, and other electronic components. An under-appreciated part of the Bike+ upgrade is just that everything in the tablet is nicer, better, and faster. The screen itself is larger: a 23.8” diagonal instead of 21.5”. The Bike+ also has:

  • 4 gigabytes of RAM instead of just two

  • A 2.5 gigahertz Qualcomm processor instead of a 2.0 GHz Mediatek

  • A 26-watt sound system with front- and rear-facing speakers instead of a 16-watt system with just rear-facing speakers

  • Bluetooth 5.0 instead of 4.0

  • A USB-C port so you can charge your devices while you ride (the regular Bike has a charging port, but it’s micro-USB, so most of us would need to get an adapter).

  • A smudge-proof, reduced-reflection coating on that big ol' screen.

There are also two features that are better on paper but that won’t matter to most of us. First, the Bike+ supports GymKit, a protocol for connecting your Apple Watch to the Bike+ for heart rate data. (They briefly stopped supporting GymKit, since there’s a Peloton Apple Watch app that does most of what GymKit does, but got enough complaints that they brought it back.)  

Second, the Bike+ has a nicer selfie camera, 8 MP versus 5 MP (and a privacy cover for said camera). Wait, the Peloton has a camera?? I hear you say. Yep, and according to Peloton its only use is for taking a selfie to use as your profile picture. (You can also just take a photo on your phone and add it to your profile through the app.) That said, Peloton users have said they’ve used the camera for video chat—but nobody seems to actually like that feature.

Ultimately, these features mean that your experience will be just a little bit faster and smoother. Some Peloton riders say that the nicer tech means that Lanebreak is less likely to have that occasional lag when you change “lanes” during the ride, and that the interface is just generally a bit more responsive.

The bottom line: Peloton Bike vs. Bike+

The Bike is a solid choice that will fulfill pretty much all your Peloton dreams. The Bike+ has some features that are nice-to-haves. 

Buy the Bike if: 

  • You just want a dang Peloton.

  • You don’t want to pay an extra $1,050 for minor upgrades.

Buy the Bike+ if: 

  • You want the fastest and smoothest tech experience.

  • You’d like the Bike to adjust itself during (most) classes.

  • You’re a numbers nerd and want to know your exact wattage and know that the bike is perfectly calibrated.

Ultimately, both are good choices. The exact price differential between the two models will depend on whether you can find your chosen bike on sale, used, or as a rental (I crunch the numbers for those scenarios here).

Here's Where You Can Return Running Shoes, Even If You've Already Run in Them

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
3 May 2024 at 20:30

There are plenty of reasons to buy shoes at your local running store instead of online or at a big box store, including a more knowledgeable staff and the fact that you’re supporting your local running community. But another biggie is the fact that many will take returns even after you’ve gone for a few runs in your shoes.

In case you don’t have a local store with this policy, it’s good to know that some larger brands and online stores will also take returns of lightly-worn shoes. Fleet Feet and Running Warehouse are among the bigger stores that offer this perk; some online running shoe stores will include it as part of a membership (like Roadrunner). But several running shoe brands offer a no-questions-asked return policy themselves, so if you know that you love (say) Nikes, you can buy from the brand directly.

Do not feel bad about taking advantage of this policy. The whole idea is that you can trust your body to tell you whether the shoes are working, rather than stressing during a brief try-on about whether you think these shoes will work for you. If you can't help but feel guilty, you can make it up by buying your next new pair of shoes from the same place. They do it because they're trying to win you as a loyal customer.

Adidas asks for shoes to be unworn for most returns, but it has a separate policy for its "performance" running shoes, which include all its popular running shoes, from the $65 Runfalcon on up.

Altra prominently advertises "30 day trial runs, guaranteed." It ships a return label with your shoes and allows returns "for any reason" during those 30 days.

Brooks will accept returns within 90 days, even if you’ve run in the shoes: "Run in it, sweat in it, inside, outside, in the rain - if it doesn’t perform the way it should, send it back."

Hoka has a 30-day return policy (60 days for members), even if you've worn the shoes. "Try them out, that's what our 30-day Guarantee is all about."

Newton accepts returns within 30 days "for any reason with as much or as little wear and tear on them" as they happen to have.

Nike will let you return shoes, even if they’ve been worn, within 60 days of purchase. It specifically says you can return shoes, including custom sneakers, "for any reason" within that time period. There are exceptions, including items purchased at Nike Clearance stores.

Please note that policies can change, and that they often vary by country. Customer service staff can sometimes help you out even if you fall outside the official policy, but don't count on it. Still, if you’ve bought shoes, run in them, and weren’t happy, it can’t hurt to ask.

Before yesterdayMain stream

When You Really Need to Replace Your Running Shoes, According to Reddit

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
3 May 2024 at 19:00

You’ve probably heard the advice that running shoes are only good for about 300 to 500 miles, and after that, the cushioning is so broken down that they’re an injury waiting to happen. But that’s not always true, and there are more ways to figure out when to throw out your shoes than just counting the miles.

How do running shoes break down?

When you put in the miles, your shoes undergo wear and tear. The first thing you’ll notice is that the tread on the bottom wears down, but that’s okay; there should be more than enough rubber under your feet to last the lifetime of the shoe.

Another place you’ll see visible wear is on the upper. Maybe you tend to get a hole in the toe box where your big toenail rubs; maybe you run on trails and tend to scuff up the sides. But these scrapes are usually a cosmetic issue, not a functional one. You can patch them up or just run in them despite the holes.

What really matters is the cushioning on the inside. It gets compressed with every step, and the more it gets squished, the less it bounces back. There will come a time in the life of every running shoe when it provides substantially less cushioning than it did when it was new. That’s when it’s arguably time to replace them.

How fast do running shoes break down?

The “300 to 500 miles” rule benefits running companies, since it requires you to replace your shoes while they still might look like new. But it’s true: 300 to 500 miles really is the range where cushioning tends to reach the end of its useful life.

That said, a lot of different factors are at work here besides just mileage—the runner's weight, for instance. If you’re a heavier runner, your shoes will wear out faster. And if you’re a lighter one, you may get more mileage out of your shoes than you’d otherwise expect.

Another factor is how the shoes are made. Some shoes are more durable and will last well beyond 500 miles. Others are light and flimsy to start with, and you might be lucky to break 300. I sometimes buy kids’ running shoes if I can find them in a size that fits me, but they tend to be less sturdy and their cushioning doesn’t last as long.

How long can you wear your old running shoes?

I remember running in the same pair of Nikes for literal years without issue. I bought them around the time that barefoot running and minimalist shoes were all the rage, and in fact I bought them because they had less cushioning than other models—so I figured that if I wanted the least cushioning possible, why would I worry about replacing shoes just because the cushioning was wearing down?

I did eventually get a new pair for other reasons, but the logic is sound: If you don’t need the extra cushioning, and your beat-up shoes are still comfortable, you can keep running in them for as long as they feel good.

On the other hand, not all shoes break down uniformly. I’ve had shoes where one sole starts to feel a bit lumpy or weird, and that can definitely lead to discomfort (or potentially even injury) over time. The most recent models of my favorite Nikes (the Free Run) seem to break down quickly. I've since switched to the Downshifter, a model that fits similarly but has more durable cushioning.

All of this is to say: just because you can keep running in old shoes doesn’t mean you should. Your experience will vary with the brand of shoe, the age of the shoe, and other factors like how heavy you are and what kind of surfaces you run on.

When do you really need to replace your running shoes?

Runners debate this issue amongst themselves, and they don't always come to the same conclusion as the running shoe companies. For example, see this discussion in a running forum on Reddit. Some people do track their miles, but they learn from experience instead of trusting a number just because they read it on the internet somewhere. One runner says, “Yep, my running shoes become lawn mowing shoes somewhere between 700 and 800 miles.” Another uses a range of 600 to 800 kilometers (roughly 400 to 500 miles). Another gives a more detailed explanation:

Theaveragemaryjanie says: "In fact, I started going off of mileage on some brands because [a gradual pain in the knee] went from it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine to oh-my-god-my-knee-how-long-am-I-out-is-this-serious. After about three scares at near the same mileage I figured it out and now replace 50 miles sooner. I would rather buy one extra pair per year than injure myself."

Others go by feel. "I retire shoes not at a mileage but when they either don’t feel comfy to run in any more or if they fall apart," says Layric. I generally get 1,000 miles at least out of pairs. At this mileage the soles are going to be nowhere near as cushioned as when they were new but I don’t suffer any injuries keeping them going this long. I own about half a dozen pairs and rotate through them."

Rotating through a shoe collection reportedly helps to extend the life of shoes. (Pro tip: if you do this, make sure to track shoe mileage in your running app, because otherwise it will be difficult to remember how much you’ve run in each shoe.)

One redditor, MakeYourMarks, has the receipts: "The fact that you rotate them is certainly a boon to their longevity," they say. "The foam/insulation/support gets compressed from the constant banging and pressure of running. Giving them time to “rest” (fully dry out and re-expand) adds a not-insubstantial amount of life to them. I have found that I get around 500 miles of amazing cushioning out of Hokas when rotating every other day as opposed to only about 350-400 when using every day. That’s at least a 25% increase, and at $100+ for a pair of shoes, the savings add up quickly over time."

You can also combine these approaches, and rotate between an older and a newer pair of shoes. The nice thing about this approach is that you’ll be able to feel the difference between good cushioning and worn-down cushioning just by comparing the two, without having to make a trip to the shoe store. Comparing new and old shoes is my own preferred method.

Just one warning about keeping a stash in the closet: the cushioning in running shoes will break down over time, even if you haven’t run in them, so very old shoes may have a shorter lifespan from the start.

The Easiest Ways to Get More Vitamin D in Your Diet

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
3 May 2024 at 18:00

Vitamin D is hugely important to your health, and I don’t just mean bone health. Humans need vitamin D for immune function, cell growth and repair, and many other things. We get vitamin D from sunlight and from food, so let’s take a look at which foods have the most vitamin D.

You don’t have to get all of your vitamin D from food

Before I discuss food sources, I do want to address the issue of where vitamin D comes from in the first place. The primary sources are sunlight and food (and supplements), so if you get plenty of sun, you don’t need to worry about meeting your needs through food, and vice versa. 

How much sun do you need to get enough vitamin D? That depends on your latitude on the Earth and how dark or light your skin is. For a benchmark, consider this study that compared sun exposure in Miami and Boston. In Miami in the summer, it only takes a few minutes for a person with a medium skin tone (the kind that tans easily but is still capable of sunburn) to get their vitamin D for the day. In Boston in the winter, bundled up, that same person might take two hours to get the same amount of vitamin D.

Health professionals generally agree that if you aren’t sure if you’re getting enough vitamin D from food and the sun, to just take a supplement. That’s going to be safer than trying to meet all your needs through sunlight, since the vitamin-converting rays of the sun are the same rays that can potentially contribute to skin cancer.

Getting more vitamin D through food is also an option—so let’s dig in.

How much vitamin D do you need in food each day? 

There isn’t a ton of agreement on how much vitamin D we need, but the U.S. National Institutes of Health have decided that 600 IU (international units) is enough for pretty much everyone aged 1 to 70. If you’re older than 70, you should get 800 IU.

The daily value on nutrition labels is based on a target of 800 IU (the recommendation for elderly folks) so most of us can actually get away with just 75% of the daily value, instead of making sure we hit 100%. 

Those international units exist because there are different forms of vitamin D found in food, and some have a stronger effect on the body than others. In general, 600 IU is equivalent to 15 micrograms of vitamin D, but using IU means you don’t have to keep track of which type of the vitamin is present in food. 

Oh, and the recommendations of 600 or 800 IU assume that you are getting minimal sun exposure—they’re for the bundled-up person in Boston, not the sunbather in Miami.

Easy ways to add vitamin D to your diet

Eat more fatty fish

Fish carry tons of vitamin D in their fat, so fatty fish like trout and salmon tend to be great sources of the vitamin. 

If you'll allow me a small rant: Cod liver oil always tops lists of vitamin D sources, as if people are buying cod liver oil and taking spoonfuls of it like in old cartoons. (Maybe people do. If this is you, you can stop reading now.) I am going to proceed with my list as if cod liver oil did not exist. That said, if you really want to get your vitamin D this way, by all means, buy some one Amazon. 

If you'd rather enjoy eating the fish you're consuming, here’s how much vitamin D is in different types of fish. All of these listings are from the USDA, and indicate the levels in a three-ounce portion of cooked fish.

  • Trout (rainbow, farmed): 645 IU

  • Salmon (sockeye): 570 IU

  • Tuna (light, canned): 229 IU (or 460 IU for a small can)

  • Tilapia: 128 IU

  • Fish sticks: sadly, only 1 IU

Other animal products that are good sources of vitamin D

Several land animals also make enough vitamin D to be worth considering as a good source of vitamin D. 

  • Chicken eggs: 37 IU each (the vitamin D is in the yolk)

  • Beef liver: 48 IU in a three-ounce cooked portion

Milk is famously a good source of vitamin D (the carton often says “vitamin D milk”). There is some vitamin D naturally present in the milkfat, so skim milk doesn’t usually have much vitamin D, but whole milk does—and it’s often fortified to bring those levels up even more. 

  • Whole milk: 124 IU per cup

  • Heavy cream: 19 IU per ounce

Eat more fortified foods

A food is “fortified” with vitamins if those vitamins have been added to the food. A lot of people don’t drink milk, so several similar beverages are sold with vitamin D added. 

  • Fortified plant milks: Check the label, but it’s often similar to whole milk. here’s a Silk brand soy milk with 120 IU per cup.

  • Fortified orange juice: Check the label, but here’s Simply Orange with 200 IU per cup.

  • Fortified cereals: Check the label, but even a sugary cereal like Cinnamon Toast Crunch has 240 IU per serving.

You get the idea. Plant-based foods don’t naturally have much vitamin D, but many common items like these are fortified. Between food, sunlight, and the “I don’t want to think about it” approach of just taking a vitamin D supplement, it shouldn’t be too hard to meet your needs. 

The Best Way to Keep Mosquitoes From Breeding in Your Yard

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
2 May 2024 at 18:00

Mosquito season is coming up—and maybe it's already here if you live in a warmer place. We've already explained how to keep mosquitoes from biting you (DEET or other effective spray for your skin and a box fan for your porch or deck) but let's talk about preventing them from buzzing around in the first place. You need mosquito dunks.

Mosquitoes need stagnant water to breed. Their babies start out as little worm-like creatures that breathe through their butts and eat algae and bacteria until they are ready to become the biting, flying nemeses we all know so well. This is why you’re supposed to cover or dump out any containers that collect water weekly. But what about puddles, potholes, and containers like rain barrels that can’t easily be covered or dumped? That’s what mosquito dunks are for.

What are mosquito dunks?

Mosquito dunks are doughnut-shaped pellets that you can float in standing water. (You can also run a string or stake through the hole, if you need a way to keep it in place.) As the dunk dissolves, it releases bacteria that mosquito larvae will eat. So far, that sounds great for the mosquitoes.

But the bacteria in the dunks are Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti), which are harmless to people and most animals, but poisonous to baby mosquitoes. You can safely use them in fish ponds or birdbaths, and the EPA notes that while Bti will also kill the larvae of black flies and gnats, it does not affect honeybees or most other insect species.

Here are some mosquito dunks to consider:

  • These dunks last 30 days and treat 100 square feet of water surface. (You can break a dunk into pieces to treat smaller areas.)

  • Mosquito bits are the same idea as dunks, but in smaller pellet form.

  • Have a lot of mosquito-breeding areas? Buy dunks in bulk.

Do mosquito dunks actually work?

Unlike a lot of mosquito-repelling yard hacks, mosquito dunks are legit. Both the CDC and EPA recommend them for standing water you’re unable to cover or drain. This could include ornamental features of your yard like koi ponds and bird baths, or places that collect water by accident, like gutters or ditches that fill up with water, or unused swimming pools. (For swimming pools that are actually in use, the chlorine is enough to keep mosquitoes out.)

Note that dunks prevent mosquitoes from breeding, but they don’t kill existing mosquitoes. This means you shouldn’t expect an immediate reduction in their numbers from using a dunk. But their life cycle is short, running from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the species and the climate. That means if you eliminate the places that larvae can thrive, you’ll likely notice reduced numbers of mosquitoes later on this summer.

If you’d like to speed up the process, you can try using a dunk to create a “Bucket of Doom.” This is a trap for mosquito mothers to lay their eggs in a nice, swampy bucket—which you happen to have treated with a dunk.

These Are the Best Cardio Workouts

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
2 May 2024 at 16:30

Cardio is incredibly important for all of us. It’s the bedrock of the physical activity guidelines for health, and if you already strength train, adding in cardio will make you healthier in general and better at the stuff in the gym that you care about. (And no, it won’t kill your gains.) 

So where should you begin if you’re starting (or re-starting) a cardio habit? The simple answer is that you can do anything that you enjoy, so if your favorite exercise isn’t on my list below, but it meets the definition of cardio, you don’t need my approval—just go do it. But if you want some more information about your best options, read on.

What counts as cardio?

Cardio exercise is generally understood to be exercise that: 

  • Uses most of your body, or at least several large muscle groups (cycling “only” uses your legs, but it absolutely counts).

  • Is rhythmic and repetitive—think of the footsteps in jogging, or the arm strokes in swimming. 

  • Can last for 10 minutes or more. It’s fine to do cardio in shorter bursts, but we want to draw a distinction between things like jogging (which people often do for 30 minutes or more) and strength exercises like squats (which might be done for a set of 8 or 12 reps, and then you need to rest before you do more).

  • Is intense enough you feel like you’re working. A leisurely stroll isn’t cardio, but a brisk walk could be.

Cardio machines you might see in a typical gym include the treadmill, elliptical, exercise bike (all kinds), rower, and stair climber. Those all count as cardio. Strength training work doesn't count--it's still good for you, but it's a separate thing.

How much cardio should I do?

The American Heart Association, the World Health Organization, the CDC, and many other organizations have settled on a guideline that says your baseline should be 150 minutes or more of moderate cardio per week. (They often say “exercise” but if you read the fine print, they are referring specifically to cardio. Strength training is separate.) Specifically, they say you should do: 

  • 150 minutes of moderate cardio per week, or 

  • 75 minutes of vigorous cardio per week, or

  • Any combination of the above (adding up to 150, with each minute of vigorous cardio counting double), or

  • If you’re already meeting that baseline easily, you should aim for 300 minutes of moderate/150 minutes vigorous.

What does 150 minutes per week look like? Here are some examples: 

  • A 30-minute jog every weekday at lunch, or

  • A 50-minute session on a spin bike three times a week, or

  • 22 minutes of brisk walking every morning (even weekends)

How hard should a cardio workout feel? 

If you’re out of breath, feel like you’re dying, and can’t wait until it’s time to stop, you’re going harder than you need to. Moderate cardio is basically the same as “zone 2” cardio. It should feel like work, but not torture. You’ll be breathing a little heavier than at rest, but you could still easily speak in full sentences. These workouts are easy to recover from (you don’t need rest days in between them) and you’ll generally feel better at the end than you did at the beginning. 

Vigorous cardio includes everything harder than that, from sprints that have you pooped in five seconds, all the way down to tempo runs where you’re pushing the pace but you’re able to keep going for the length of a whole workout. You may feel exhausted at the end. You may not be able to do this kind of workout every day. Vigorous cardio is good for you, but it’s often best in small doses. Endurance athletes (like runners) often aim to keep this stuff to 20% or less of their weekly workouts. 

While heart rate tracking is popular, I don’t recommend using heart rate to tell the difference between your moderate and vigorous workouts. The heart rate zones that are built into your watch are inconsistent from device to device and they use a formula that is often wrong. Judge the difference from your breathing and your perceived effort. Moderate cardio is about a 3, maybe 4 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Does it matter what kind of cardio I do? 

Honestly: not that much. Sometimes people seek out cardio that uses their full body, or that targets specific body parts, but that’s not actually very important when it comes to the health and fitness benefits. A rowing machine uses your arms more than a spin bike, but both can provide a great cardio workout. If you want to build muscle in your arms, you’re better off doing some strength exercises for your arms rather than worrying about whether your cardio workouts include your arms.

The best cardio workout is whatever you’ll do, so the most important factors are how available the workout is to you (is there a rower at your gym?) and preference (do you like rowing?).

With that huge caveat out of the way, I’ll give you guys my favorite cardio workouts, and some tips for working each into your routine. 

The cheapest cardio workout: running (or run/walk)

Let’s start with what is, for many, the most accessible cardio workout of them all: stepping out of your front door and putting one foot in front of the other. (Nothing is perfect for everybody, of course, so if outdoor workouts don’t fit your life, skip to the next section.) 

You’ll need a pair of shoes that feel reasonably comfortable when you run (they do not have to be expensive running shoes) and many of us will need a sports bra. Then, just add some athletic clothes, and you have the essentials. You’ll need the same basic gear for most other exercise, anyway. 

You do not need a running watch or a heart rate monitor. You don’t need to track your mileage or pace at all, although you may find it useful to be vaguely aware of how long your workouts are taking and to track how often you do them. That can be a note in your phone (“30 minutes jog Monday”) rather than buying into an app or device ecosystem. 

Here’s a sample workout, if you don’t know where to get started: 

  • Walk for the first 5 minutes, as a warmup. Start slow, and by the end, try to be at a brisk pace.

  • Speed up a bit; try a jog or a fast walk.

  • If you start to feel tired, slow down just a little bit. Don’t return to a slow walk unless you truly have to.

  • Speed up again when you feel ready, and repeat.

Over time, work toward keeping up a steady pace. A slow, steady jog is better (for most of your training) than sprint-and-walk intervals. That said, interval training is a fun thing to sprinkle in. If you’re worried that running is boring, try these tips to keep it fun.

Easiest on your body: indoor cycling

If I had to crown a best all-around cardio workout, it would probably be spinning. There’s a smoother transition between speeds, rather than the distinct categories of “walking” and “running,” so it’s easier to find the right intensity for a given workout. There’s not much bouncing or impact, so you may not need a sports bra and you may find it easier on your knees and shins at the start. And you can do it with a water bottle and a fan within reach, which makes logistics a bit easier—no need to carry everything with you. 

(Outdoor cycling is great, by the way. But that requires a helmet, a bit of mechanical know-how, and street smarts to safely mesh with, or avoid, traffic. I’m sticking with indoor cycling for my recommendation here, but if you love taking your bike to the streets, by all means enjoy!)

There are also tons of options for indoor cycling workouts. You can aim for a straight steady-state workout, perhaps watching a favorite show while you do it on the gym’s TV or even your phone. Or you can follow along with a video or audio workout that guides you through intervals while distracting you with music and chatter. Use an app like Peloton or Aaptiv, or find videos on YouTube. Here’s one to start you off: 

Best for no equipment at home: put on some music and dance

I really debated this one. There’s a lot to be said for jumping rope (even though technically that is “equipment”) but the pros and cons are similar to jogging. There’s a lot of bouncing and impact, and it can be pretty exhausting at first, until you learn how to pace yourself. 

Then we have the staples of bodyweight “HIIT” videos, like air squats and jumping jacks. These are fine! But they lend themselves better to intervals, and when we’re doing cardio it’s good to have options that let us move continuously. That said, I’m going to put in a quick plug for the most underrated no-equipment cardio move out there: the old school four-count burpee. (I describe it in more detail here.) No jump and no pushup. You’re welcome.

But ultimately, if you want to get a good cardio workout in your home without having to buy equipment or clear a big space, just put on some music and dance. And don’t tell me you “can’t dance,” because you don’t need to impress an audience here. Put on something that makes you happy, and shift your weight from one foot to the other. Swing your arms a little. Look! You’re dancing! It may not look stylish, but you’re getting a workout and you’re probably enjoying it a lot more than burpees or squat jumps. 

Obviously, there are so many directions you can go from here. You can simply bop along to whatever is on the radio or shuffle your Spotify. You can work on building your skill as a dancer, learning new moves and stringing them together—don’t these goofballs look like they’re having fun dancing the Charleston? You can look up dance cardio videos where an instructor leads you through a workout. Or you can just pick any style you like and have fun with it.

Why Now Is the Best Time to Find Running Shoes on Sale

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
1 May 2024 at 12:30

Running seems like a cheap sport (you just need shoes!) until you actually go shoe shopping. Basic models are well over $100 new, and their cushioning breaks down after a few hundred miles. It’s not unusual to go through a few pairs a year if you run a lot, and all of that adds up. So how can you save a few bucks on running shoes?

Of course, you can search for deals at any time—there's usually something being discounted no matter when you look, as RunRepeat points out in their calendar analysis. But runners have often noted that, if you want a specific shoe on sale, it's worth watching the schedule of new releases. New shoe models tend to be introduced in the spring, making right now an excellent time to snag discontinued models.

Save money by buying last year’s model

Just like cars, running shoes come in a make (Asics), model (Gel Nimbus) and, well, there is usually a number at the end of the name instead of a model year: Asics Gel Nimbus 26. Shoes are updated every year or two, depending on the model; the long-running Nike Pegasus is up to version 40.

And just as with cars, you can often snag a deal at the end of the model year when sellers get rid of their old stock to make room for the newcomers. You can follow websites like Runner’s World or Sole Review to check out which models are being updated and when they are scheduled to launch. But an even simpler way to keep up on shoe seasons is just to check the “new arrivals” section on your local running store’s website, or sign up for their newsletter.

For example, since the Asics Gel Nimbus 26 was just released for $160, you can bet that the Asics Gel Nimbus 25 is available much more cheaply. At the time of this writing, most of the color/size combinations are going for around $120—that's a 25% discount.

That’s a pretty typical bargain, but you can do even better if you shop around—and if you don’t mind choosing your shoes based on the cheapest price rather than the prettiest colors.

By the way, that issue of selection is a good reason to shop now rather than waiting. As the summer wears on, you may find deeper discounts on last year's model, but you'll also have fewer options. Sizes sell out, too. Here's a perfect example: the Asics Gel Nimbus 24 (that's two models back) is going for just $84.95. The catch is that you have to wear either a men's size 8 or 10, and you have to find the neon tie-dye spatter pattern with palm trees (?!?) charming, or at least tolerable.

Here are some more deals on popular running shoes

There are too many running shoes to list all the deals, but I'd like to highlight some prime examples where a shoe was recently released, causing the previous version to go for a much cheaper price. (Release dates below are based on what companies or publications announced earlier this spring, and may or may not be the actual release date. You get the idea, though.)

  • The Hoka Mach 6 was released in March for $139.99, and you can now find the Hoka Mach 5 for $109.99 (women's) or $111.99 (men's).

  • The Brooks Glycerin 21 was released in February for $160, and the Brooks Glycerin 20 is now available for $99.95 in some sizes and styles (women's, men's).

  • The Brooks Ghost 16 was released in May for $140, and the Brooks Ghost 15 is now available for $109.95 (women's, men's)

  • The Saucony Triumph 22 was released in May for $160. I'm already seeing the Saucony Triumph 21 go for around $120-$130, and even lower for some colors. Here are listings for a women's model at $115.95 and a men's model for $92.56.

But beware shoes that are too old

If you’re going to shop discontinued models, there are a few pitfalls you should know about. One is that the foam in a pair of shoes will degrade while it sits on the shelf. This isn’t a problem if you’re buying a model that was just discontinued—those should be fine. But if you find shoes that are two or three model numbers back, they probably won’t last as long as new ones. (The price might still make them worthwhile even with the shortened lifespan, but consider yourself warned.)

The same concern applies if you’re buying last year’s model as a backup, and planning to stash it in your closet until your current shoes break down. Consider how long it will be until you actually use the shoes, and decide accordingly. While you’re at it, apply the same logic to any gently-used shoes you might find on eBay or Poshmark.

TikTok Myth of the Week: Freezing Bread Makes It Healthier

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
29 April 2024 at 16:30

According to TikTok, freezing your bread makes it healthier. I’m told by various creators on the platform that “something great happens when you freeze your bread,” that “diabetics should freeze their bread,” and even that freezing your bread makes it “keto friendly.” There’s a grain of truth to the idea, but the people promoting it are missing some big caveats.

What the TikToks say

According to several health-focused TikTokers: 

  • Freezing your bread changes the structure of the starch in the bread (true) . 

  • This in turn reduces the glycemic index of the bread by 31%, or 39% if you also toast it (true for homemade bread but not store-bought, according to one study). 

  • A lower glycemic index is considered to be better for people with diabetes (true but not the whole picture).

  • Therefore, freezing bread lowers your risk of metabolic disorders (potentially sort of true but not really supported by existing literature) or prevents you from gaining fat (not supported at all).

Different TikTokers each have their own take on why freezing bread is good for you: some focus on blood sugar management for diabetes, some on weight loss, and so on. The guy claiming that freezing bread makes it “keto friendly” made me chuckle, because it’s still bread and still mostly made of starch, whether you freeze it or not. 

What is resistant starch, anyway? 

The main macronutrients in our diet are carbohydrates (carbs), fats, and protein. The category of carbs includes sugars, starches, and fiber. Starch is the main component in the foods you think of as carbs. White bread, potatoes, and white rice, to name a few, are mostly made of starch.

Starch is made up of chains of glucose, and glucose is a sugar. It breaks down pretty quickly into glucose when we eat it. But there isn’t just one type of starch: there are many. And some of those starches are called “resistant starches” because they take a little longer for our body to digest. We can’t always break them down in our stomach or small intestine. Instead, we have to wait for the bacteria in our large intestine to break them down and produce nutrients we can absorb. (This also arguably makes resistant starch a type of fiber, and a prebiotic.) 

So where does freezing come in? Well, when starch is cooked in the presence of water, it changes shape and becomes gelatinized. After cooling, it can become retrograded. This retrograded starch doesn't have the same structure as the original starch, and it’s considered to be resistant to digestion (making it, specifically, resistant starch type 3). 

Frozen bread isn't the only food that contains resistant starch. Cooking and cooling rice or potatoes can produce it as well; many starch-containing foods also have some resistant starch naturally.

What is the glycemic index? 

The TikTokers often focus on the effect that resistant starch can have on your blood sugar, and they'll point to studies that measure the glycemic index.

The glycemic index is a number that scientists can give a food based on how much it spikes people’s blood sugar when they eat a small portion of just that food. To be clear, this isn’t a test of people eating sandwiches or dinners or breakfasts. Instead, they’ll eat (for example) 50 grams of bread, and their blood glucose measurements will be compared to the blood glucose measurements when someone was given 50 grams of a reference material (either pure glucose, or sometimes they’ll use white bread as the reference food). 

If you’re interested in keeping your blood sugar at a more even level, as many people are if they have diabetes or other blood sugar issues, you may want to avoid big spikes of blood glucose. That’s where knowing the glycemic index of different foods can help. Brown rice has a lower glycemic index than white rice, for example. 

There are, indeed, studies showing that resistant starch can reduce the glycemic index of a food, and there are studies showing that freezing bread can increase the level of resistant starch in the bread. So what are the TikTokers missing? A couple big things, it turns out. 

This may not even happen in store-bought bread

The biggest caveat on the advice in the TikToks is that the study they all quote, the one that found freezing bread reduces its glycemic index by 31%, only found that reduction in homemade bread. 

The researchers also tested store-bought bread, and found that freezing it didn’t significantly change its glycemic index. Toasting it did reduce the glycemic index by about 18%, though. 

Those researchers speculate that the lack of an effect for store-bought bread is due to dough conditioners and improvers, additives that are used in factory-produced bread to help them mix better and keep from going stale. Those additives might be preventing the formation of resistant starch as a side effect. That said, they only tested one homemade recipe and one type of store-bought bread, so there could be other differences due to the type of flour or other factors.

The TikTokers promoting this hack aren't specifying that it's for homemade bread. Often they talking about freezing while they point to a loaf of bread that looks store-bought.

The difference is still very small

Sometimes freezing your bread is recommended as a way of reducing the calories in the bread. If you can’t fully digest it, you’re getting fewer calories out of it, right? That’s technically true, but it’s not likely to make much of a difference. 

In this study, for example, resistant starch made up 1.1% of the dry weight of fresh rolls, and 1.3 to 1.6% of the dry weight of frozen rolls. In a typical slice of white bread, that would correspond to a difference of 0.1 gram of carbohydrate. Carbs are generally understood to contain 4 calories per gram. So you’re saving less than one calorie if these numbers are representative. 

There are better ways to manipulate glycemic index

Remember when I mentioned, above, that the glycemic index is calculated in a lab scenario, not in actual meals? If your goal is to cause less of a blood sugar spike, you’re better off thinking about what you’re having your bread with than whether the bread itself was frozen or not. 

For example, here’s an international table of glycemic index values. Relative to pure glucose, a French baguette has a glycemic index of 95. But a French baguette with chocolate spread has a glycemic index of 72. In other words, you can reduce the glycemic index of bread by 25% just by adding chocolate spread!

I say this not to seriously argue that chocolate spread makes bread healthier, but to point out that lowering the glycemic index doesn’t automatically make a thing healthier or better for you. And if your goal is, specifically, to lower the glycemic index of a food, then you can do that by adding other foods to the meal. Bread with butter, for example, would be expected to spike your blood glucose less than bread alone or bread with jam. 

To take an even bigger-picture perspective on this, I’ve often said that when you’re comparing two very similar things (like which vegetables are healthiest) you owe it to yourself to step back and ask if there’s a bigger choice worth paying attention to. Are you eating that bread as part of a PB&J, or a grilled chicken sandwich with vegetables? That’s a much bigger difference than a few granules of resistant starch.

Does It Really Matter Which Side You Sleep On?

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
26 April 2024 at 18:00

I’m one of those people who can’t get comfortable at night until I’ve rotated through every possible sleeping position, ideally twice. But when I was pregnant, I kept hearing the message that we’re all supposed to sleep on our left side, specifically. On the other hand, there’s research suggesting the right side may be better for people with certain health conditions. Let’s consider all the factors and see whether there’s an optimal side for you. 

Is it good or bad to sleep on your side? 

If you have a sleeping position that is comfortable, and you don’t have any medical issues suggesting that you should change it, you’re probably fine to sleep any way you want. 

That said, side-sleeping is often recommended as a good thing. If you’re pregnant, sleeping on your stomach stops being an option. Sleeping on your back while pregnant may impede blood flow, since some of our major blood vessels, the aorta and the vena cava, run along the back of our abdominal cavity. Once the uterus gets big enough, it can put pressure on these blood vessels.

If you have obstructive sleep apnea, you’ll probably be advised not to sleep on your back, since people tend to have more apneic episodes on their back. Sleeping on your back is also generally understood to make snoring worse. (PSA: If you haven’t been tested for sleep apnea, but find that you sleep better when you aren’t on your back, you might want to look into getting tested.)

And if you struggle with back pain, side-sleeping tends to be more comfortable than sleeping on your back or your stomach—although this varies from person to person. 

Why you might want to sleep on your left side

The main reason to sleep on the left side has to do with the shape of the stomach. If you’re envisioning your stomach as a sort of round ball, get that image out of your head right away. Your stomach is not only smaller than you’re probably thinking, it’s also asymmetrical. The esophagus (food pipe) enters it on the right-hand side. (Here’s a diagram from the University of Rochester Medical Center showing exactly where it is and how it’s shaped.)

Because of this shape, lying on your left side means that food and digestive juices have an easier time staying inside the stomach where they’re supposed to be. If you have GERD or you get heartburn easily, sleeping on your right side can make it more likely for stomach acid to end up in the esophagus, making your heartburn worse. 

(By the way, most of us have our bodies organized this way, but every now and then somebody’s organs will be in a different position than what is in textbooks. A review in the International Journal of Internal Medicine notes that a mirror-style reversal of organs is so rare that “[e]ven a busy surgeon may expect to encounter this anomaly only once or twice in a lifetime.”)

Why you might want to sleep on your right side

When you sleep on your left side, your stomach might be happier, but your heart changes position. The heart is located slightly to the left of center in your chest, and there is a structure of connective tissue called the mediastinum that is in the very center of your chest. 

When you lie on your right side, the mediastinum keeps the heart in place. But when you lie on your left side, your heart sags and rotates slightly. That’s not a problem for most of us, most of the time, but the movement is significant enough that it can be detected from electrocardiogram readings. 

For this reason, it’s thought that the heart beats more efficiently when you’re lying on your right side than on your left. This in turn may help you breathe more easily if you have sleep apnea. And this may be why research in animals has shown that side sleeping may improve the clearance of “glymphatic” waste products from the brain—one of the important body-maintenance tasks that happens while we sleep.

What to do if the above factors don’t apply to you

First, if your doctor has advised you to sleep in a certain position, follow their advice. That said, if they want you sleeping in a position that you find uncomfortable or impractical, ask them why they recommend that position, and also how much it matters. It may be that the recommendation is just a suggestion for something that they hope will make you more comfortable, not a medical necessity. The only way to know the difference is to ask. 

For the rest of us, it’s generally fine to decide on your sleeping position through experimentation. While the shape of our hearts and stomachs may suggest that one position is better than others, we have complex bodies made of many different parts. If you have an old shoulder injury that gets aggravated by sleeping on that side, you may be better off avoiding that position. 

Ultimately, outside of certain positions for certain medical conditions, most of us can choose the sleeping position that is most comfortable—and for most of us, it really won’t make much of a difference. The Sleep Foundation advises that the best side for you “depends on your personal preference as well as the support of your mattress and pillow.” For troubleshooting, they suggest the simple rule: “If you experience discomfort or pain, try a different sleeping position.” 

How to Squat Without the Bar Hurting Your Neck

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
26 April 2024 at 16:30

The first time you do barbell squats, they can hurt. I remember using a bar pad when I first started squatting, and I couldn’t imagine doing without. These days I think nothing of getting under a bar of any weight without a pad—but I totally understand those beginner struggles. So let’s look at what you need to do differently if you find the pad-less bar is hurting your neck or shoulders.

Squeeze your shoulders together

The most important thing to know is that the barbell shouldn’t just sit on skin and bone. Your back muscles need to create a “shelf” for the bar to rest on. For high bar squats, the kind most people start with, that shelf is made primarily of your upper trapezius muscles. Shrug your shoulders and you’ll feel these muscles contracting; they are at the sides and back of your neck, where your neck connects to your shoulders.

In addition to shrugging up, you’ll find that you can also bring your shoulder blades toward each other, further fluffing up the meat pillow just below your neck. This is where the bar should rest. If you don’t squeeze your shoulders together, there’s no pillow, no shelf, and no good place for the bar.

Put the bar in the right place

You do the shoulder squeeze described above before you put the bar on your back. Get under the bar and set it on top of that meat cushion you just created. Move around a bit if necessary to find the most comfortable spot. You’ll find that the bar won’t rest on any of your neck or shoulder bones this way. If you still feel the bar against the vertebrae of your neck, you probably have it too high. Try placing the bar a smidge lower.

You can also experiment with “low bar” squats, which have the bar resting a few inches lower than what I just described. The bar will be supported by your rear deltoid muscles. Squeezing your shoulders together to create a shelf is still important here.

Keep your neck in a neutral position

For some people, the position of their neck can affect how the bar feels. If you have a tendency to look up as you’re squatting, you may find this creates pressure on your neck or encourages you to relax your upper back, which causes you to lose your shelf. If this is happening to you, try tucking your chin toward your chest, or even looking slightly downward, and see if that helps.

One common cue is to look at a spot on the ground about five feet in front of you. That said, some people do better with a cue when they think about looking up. As with many exercise cues, the important thing is whether the cue improves how you lift, not literally where you are looking. Use whichever one helps you keep a stronger and more comfortable position.

Build more muscle

You can’t make a meat cushion without meat, so if you’re a beginner who is especially skinny or bony, you may just have to weather through some hard times for a bit. This is a temporary situation. You can speed up the process by doing extra work for your upper back. Shrugs, band pull-aparts, and all kinds of rowing and pulling exercises will help. Check out my picks for the best upper back exercises here.

In the meantime, you may be one of the few people who can truly benefit from a barbell pad. These pads aren’t usually recommended, as they can make the bar feel unstable. But as a beginner, this is a fine stopgap solution. Give the naked bar another try after you’ve been squatting a while, and you’ll probably find it a lot easier.

Here's How Long You Should Rest Between Workout Sets

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
25 April 2024 at 20:00

A typical strength- or muscle-building workout happens in sets. You lift the weight a certain number of times (“reps”), then you put it down for a quick rest before going again. But how long should that rest be? The answer will depend on a few factors, including the purpose of the workout.

There are legitimate reasons for powerlifters to wait five minutes between sets of squats, or for calisthenics devotees to set a 30-second timer before jumping back up for another set of pullups. There’s also a good argument that, for many of us, rest times don’t matter that much.

Why rest times matter

The longer you rest between sets, the more recovered you'll feel. But the shorter your rests, the more work you'll be able to do in a given gym session.

Choosing the most appropriate rest time for each exercise will get you the best gains in the gym. But the optimal rest time will depend on what kind of exercise you're doing and what your goals are. So let's go over some pros and cons of long and short rest times.

When to use long rest times

Longer rests (say, three minutes or more) are best for strength workouts where the goal is to improve both your strength and your skill at lifting heavy weights. After all, you need practice at lifting heavy if you want to be able to lift heavy. After you put a heavy barbell down, you'll need several minutes for your body to be ready to do another big lift.

In the three to five minutes you might rest between sets of (say) barbell squats, the ATP in your muscles regenerates. You get some blood flow to bring oxygen and nutrients into your muscle cells, and flush away metabolic byproducts. Resting for several minutes gives you the best chance of coming back to the next set at full strength.

The longer you rest—within reason—the more fully recovered you’ll be for the next set. If you only allow yourself one minute, you’ll still be fatigued when you pick up the weight again. But if you wait longer, you’ll be able to handle more weight.

The downsides of long rest times

The main disadvantage of long rest times is time management. Your workouts will be longer if you rest five minutes between exercises instead of one or two. You may also find yourself getting distracted between sets. You scroll social media for a bit, and somehow it's been eight minutes since you last touched a weight. Setting a rest timer can help with this.

Some people get antsy during long rests, and will pass the time by doing pushups or jumping jacks. That kind of defeats the purpose of long rests. Save the supersets for your accessory work afterwards, not the main lift where you're trying to go heavy.

How long is a "long" rest time?

For an exercise where you're using large muscle groups (like a squat or deadlift), five minutes is typical once you're up to your working weights for the day. Warmup sets don't need as much time.

For exercises where you're working on strength but it's a lighter lift or uses smaller muscles (like overhead press), three minutes is usually plenty.

When to use short rest times

When it comes to muscle growth, also called hypertrophy, shorter rests can make more sense. To be clear, strength and muscle growth are related, but not the same thing. If you aren't interested in lifting the heaviest weight possible, just in making your muscles bigger or your body more "toned," you would want to pay attention to the best rest times for hypertrophy. These will be shorter than for pure strength.

Traditionally, trainers say that 90 seconds or less is a good rule of thumb. (The National Academy of Sports Medicine recommends 0 to 60 seconds; the personal training textbooks from the National Strength and Conditioning Association and the American Council on Exercise both recommend 30 to 90 seconds.)

But research has shown that short rest periods may not actually be better for muscle growth than longer ones. A 2016 study found that three-minute rest periods actually yielded more muscle growth than one-minute rests. The authors think this is because the men in their three-minute group (yep, the study was only done on men) were able to use heavier weights than the men in the one-minute group. Since the number of sets was the same in both groups, this means the three-minute group lifted more weight.

A more recent meta-analysis (not yet fully peer reviewed and published) also comes down on the side of longer rests. According to the studies they included in the analysis, the authors found that 30 to 60 seconds is likely too short. Resting one to two minutes between sets is best for muscle growth, they say. More than two minutes doesn't really help.

The downsides of short rest times

The shorter your rests, the lighter weights you'll work with. This is fine if you're trying to make do with light dumbbells, but it means you're not getting practice with heavier weights. Most of us want to be jacked and strong, so short rest times mean you're biasing yourself to the muscle size side of the equation.

Very short rest times (less than a minute) may also interfere with your ability to make the biggest gains, as the studies above noted. You may be able to make up for this by doing more sets of the exercise. If you enjoy the go-go-go feeling of short rests, that may be totally fine with you. Add an extra set or two and you know you're using your time well. For the rest of us, though, slowing down and taking a full minute between sets will be better than rushing it.

How long is a "short" rest time?

One to two minutes is likely the sweet spot, according to recent studies. That's on the higher end of the recommended 30 to 90 seconds. It's fine to do some of your rests shorter and some longer, but if you'd like me to tell you what to punch in on your timer, go with 90 seconds.

How to get the benefits of both long and short rest times

Ultimately, you may be best off using a mix of long and short rest times, which is how a lot of programs are designed. Use longer rest times for a few big compound lifts at the beginning of the workout (like squats or bench press) and shorter rest times for circuits, accessories, or isolation exercises afterward (like curls or glute bridges).

Supersets are a great way to split the difference. If you work different muscle groups in two different exercises, you can do one exercise while the other muscles rest. This isn't your best option if you truly want all your energy and focus to go toward one lift (like if you're working up to a PR on your bench press) but it's a great way to do hypertrophy work. For example, try this:

  • Do a set of pullups

  • Rest 30 seconds

  • Do a set of pushups

  • Rest 30 seconds

    In this example, if it takes you 30 seconds to do the set of pushups, you've rested 90 total seconds in between your first set of pullups and your second set of pullups.

How long to rest between sets of specific exercises

Okay, but what if you want to get stronger and grow muscle? What if you want to stop overthinking the specifics and do whatever rest period makes you look like a normal person at the gym who knows what they’re doing? Here’s a cheat sheet:

  • For pushups and pullups: If you do a small to medium number of reps (less than 12), treat them as a strength exercise and wait three to five minutes between sets. If you’re one of those people banging out 20 or 50 at a time, you probably want to take rests of about a minute so that fatigue can make your next set a bit shorter and you can finish your workout in this lifetime.

  • For barbell squats and deadlifts: These are compound lifts that use many muscles in your body. They’re pretty much always done (relatively) heavy, and it’s useful to build strength in these moves. Treat them as a strength exercise and wait three to five minutes.

  • For bench press, overhead press, chest press, and shoulder press: These involve smaller muscles and less weight than squats and deadlifts, but they still qualify as compound, strength-focused exercises. Two to three minutes will be enough, most of the time, but take up to five on heavy sets if you need to.

  • For rows and lat pulldowns: Same as the presses, for the same reasons. Two to three minutes may be enough, but up to five would still be reasonable.

  • For isolation exercises: if you’re trying to feel the burn or the pump, short rests will really help you here. Take 30 seconds between sets.

These are just guidelines, so feel free to experiment. If you want to work on your cardiovascular conditioning, take a little less rest between sets. If you’ve already done a big set of bench presses today, do the rest of your arm and chest accessories with shorter rest periods.

All your questions about rest times, answered

Let's do a lightning round, since I know rest times are a huge subject of discussion among people who are getting the hang of the gym routine. But first, a plea for you to not overthink this: if you simply rest until you feel ready to go again, you'll probably do ok.

Is three minutes rest between sets too much?

No. If you're trying to move a heavy weight, you probably want to rest a minimum of three minutes. If you're training for muscle size (and don't care as much about strength), you could shorten your rests a bit. Still, it's not bad to rest too long, just slightly inefficient.

Can you rest an hour between sets?

At that point I wouldn't call it a rest time, just a different workout. When you come back to the gym after that hour, you'll need to warm up all over again. I would say if it's been more than 10 or 15 minutes between sets, or if you feel like you're physically cooling down, it's worth doing some kind of exercise just to keep your body ready. This could be pushups while you're waiting for a bench to free up, for example.

How long should I rest if I'm new to the gym?

As a noob, you're probably not lifting very heavy (yet). That means you don't have a lot to rest from. Say you're doing squats: your body is still learning how to squat at all. You aren't taking 300 pounds for a ride and needing to rest several minutes to recover.

For that reason, newer people may not need to rest as much. Two minutes between squat sets? Sure, that's fine if you feel ready. The pitfall here is that if you get used to taking short rests, you could end up working with weights that are too light for you. After your first few weeks at the gym, make sure to do some of your heavier lifts with longer rest times (at least three minutes) and see if you feel fresher.

What happens if I don't rest between sets?

If you can do multiple sets of an exercise without resting in between, you're not using an appropriate weight. There's supposed to be a difference between three sets of 10, and one set of 30. If your workout says to do 3x10, you're supposed to feel tired enough after that 10th rep that you need to rest at least a minute or two before going again.

And yes, it can be awkward to be standing around in the squat rack, doing nothing or even scrolling on your phone while others are waiting. But remember: Everybody rests between sets! Or at least, they should.

It's Time to Start Taking Your Spring Allergies Seriously

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
25 April 2024 at 16:30

It’s not your imagination—spring allergy season really is getting worse every year. (Thanks, climate change.) Pollen seasons now start 20 days earlier and last 10 days longer than they did in 1990, according to research, and pollen counts are up as well. If you’ve been thinking of each spring’s season as something to just whiteknuckle your way through, it may be time to take a different approach.

Do the easy things first

If you’ve been mostly ignoring your allergies and hoping they pass quickly, let’s go over a few small changes that can help. (Veteran allergy sufferers are probably doing these things already.)

First of all, pollen comes from the outdoors. So do your best to keep it there. Instead of opening the windows on a nice spring day, keep them closed and rely on your house’s ventilation system to adjust the temperature as needed. Replace your system’s air filter with a fresh one that has a high MERV rating; we have more on choosing and changing air filters here. In the car, the recirculate button will keep outdoor air outside.

Besides blowing in on the air, pollen can also enter your house on clothes, shoes, hair, and pet fur. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America recommends the following:

  • Take off your shoes when you come inside.

  • Change and wash your clothes after you’ve been outside for a while.

  • Shower and shampoo your hair before bed.

  • Towel pets off when they come indoors.

  • Wash your bedding once a week.

Pay attention to pollen counts

To find out when pollen will be at its worst, check a site like pollen.com or your local weather forecast.

The most pollen is in the air in the early morning and around dusk. If you’re going outside during high pollen times, consider wearing sunglasses or even a mask (N95's are great at blocking pollen).

If you’re considering moving (or traveling during pollen season) you may want to take a look at the Asthma and Allergy Foundation’s list of “allergy capitals” where pollen is worst and allergy specialists are harder to find. Wichita, KS; Virginia Beach, VA; Greenville, SC; and Dallas, TX top the list. A few years ago, the rankings also included the best cities for seasonal allergy sufferers, with Fresno, CA; Phoenix, AZ; and Provo, UT emerging as winners.

In your home

With the easy things out of the way, it may be time to start looking at tougher decisions. Carpets, for example, can trap pollen. They can also harbor other allergens, like dust and dust mites. If you’re struggling with your allergies, it might be time to pull them up and switch to hardwood or other smooth flooring.

Regular cleaning also helps. Get into the habit of vacuuming frequently, ideally with a vacuum that has a HEPA filter to trap small particles. Remove things you can’t easily clean, and set up a cleaning schedule to make sure you aren’t neglecting the task.

Allergy covers on pillows and mattresses are meant to prevent dust mite allergens from working their way in where they can’t be cleaned. If you have a dust allergy, get a set of these protectors, and make sure you’re washing bedding, curtains, pillows, and other textiles frequently. (Dust mites aren’t seasonal like pollen, but if you’re allergic to both, you don’t need that double-whammy.)

Consider an air purifier as well. These devices filter allergens out of the air and some people find they help reduce symptoms.

With your doctor

Over-the-counter medications like Claritin can help to take the edge off allergy symptoms, but if you’re still miserable even while you’re taking them, it may be time for professional help. See an allergist to find out whether other medications or approaches might be appropriate for you (and to control your asthma, if you have that in addition to allergies).

If you’ve just been living with an assumption that you’re allergic to “something,” an allergy test can help narrow down exactly what your triggers are. Maybe you need to pay more attention to mold than to plant pollens, for example. The more you know, the more targeted an approach you can take.

How to Accurately Count Calories (and Why You Might Want To)

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
25 April 2024 at 13:30

If you want to start tracking how many calories you eat—whether for weight loss, weight gain, or just out of curiosity—here’s a primer. Calorie tracking is pretty easy once you’ve gotten the hang of it, but getting started can be confusing. With the right tools and the right habits, however, you’ll be on top of your own personal calorie numbers in no time.

What are calories and why do people count them? 

Calories are a measure of energy. The more exercise you do, for example, the more calories you need to fuel that activity. Everything you eat has a calorie number attached to it (whether it’s on a label or not). In general, we eat about the same number of calories we burn. 

Amazingly, our bodies can keep us at a roughly steady weight by making us hungrier if we haven’t eaten enough calories today, or making us feel full if we’ve had a lot. That said, consistently eating less than you burn results in weight loss; eating more than you burn results in weight gain. 

How do I know how many calories I should eat? 

Most of the time, you should eat roughly the same number of calories each day that your body burns. That number varies from person to person. A 4’9”, 100-pound woman who only does light exercise might burn 1,440 calories per day. A six-foot, 280-pound man who does heavy workouts twice a day might burn 4,309. Most of us are somewhere in between, in the 2,000 to 3,000 calorie range.

I discuss calorie burn a little more here. Even though food labels use a 2,000-calorie diet to calibrate their “daily values” of various nutrients, the truth is that we each burn a different number of calories, and most of us burn more than 2,000. (The average for adults was, years ago, calculated to be 2,350. The FDA ended up going with 2,000 in part because they thought a round number was easier to understand.) 

So if you would like to lose weight, you’ll want to eat slightly less than you burn. If you want to gain weight—as many people do when they’re trying to gain muscle—you’ll want to eat more calories than you burn. A good rule of thumb is to subtract 200-500 calories from what you burn, and that will be a good number for weight loss. Do the opposite if you’re trying to gain.

Now that you understand the logic, you just need a starting estimate of how many calories you burn. If you already track calories, you can probably figure this out by what you usually eat when your weight is stable. Otherwise, plug your information into a TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) calulator like the one at tdeecalculator.net. Remember that any calculated number is only an estimate, and ultimately you’ll find out whether it’s correct by noticing what happens to your weight when you eat that number. 

If you use a Fitbit or other gadget that estimates your calorie burn each day, that's also a good place to get a starting number. Just remember that this is also an estimate, and could still be off by a few hundred calories in either direction.

How do I find out how many calories are in a food? 

The easiest way to get a calorie number for a food is to look at its label. Or if your food doesn’t have a label, search for the name of the food plus “calories” and pay attention to the serving size and the source of the information. For example, when I google “apple calories,” I get a result telling me that a medium apple, about 3 inches in diameter, is 95 calories. The source is given as the USDA, which maintains a database of common food items. Here’s the entry for apples. It defaults to a 100-gram serving, but you can change the “portion” dropdown to show you the medium apple.

When you’re eating at a restaurant, calorie counts are sometimes shown next to each food item. If they aren’t, check the restaurant’s website, or search the restaurant’s name plus “nutrition information.” Often there’s a PDF hidden somewhere on their website with a bunch of calorie counts—and, often, other information like protein and carbohydrate content.

That said, there’s a simpler way that people usually use when tracking calories: You use a calorie tracking app.

What is the best calorie tracking app? 

There are tons of good (or at least not horrible) calorie tracking apps out there. Cronometer is my pick: It’s got all the features you need even in the free version, and it’s goal-neutral, so you can use it whether you’re trying to gain weight, lose weight, or neither. 

The most popular calorie tracking app is probably MyFitnessPal, which is baffling because it’s easily the worst one out there. The calorie information is often inaccurate, the interface is pretty in-your-face about weight loss whether you’re interested in that or not, and basic features like the barcode scanner are only available in the paid version. We have a roundup of alternatives to MyFitnessPal here. 

When you use a calorie tracking app, you’ll search within the app for the food that you just ate (or that you’re about to eat). At first you’ll find this practice clunky: You’ll have to choose the right item from the database, and then try to figure out how large a serving you just ate. Packaged foods are easiest to track, which adds an extra wrinkle if you’re also trying to eat more whole or homemade foods. Bear with this, though: Habits are skills, and as you develop all the mini-skills that make up calorie tracking, the habit becomes second nature.

How do I select an accurate serving size for the food I’m tracking? 

As you gain more practice, you’ll get pretty good at eyeballing serving sizes. But as you’re getting used to it, make a habit of measuring or weighing food when you can. At this point I can pretty accurately eyeball the difference between a cup of rice and a half-cup of rice, for example. I know that a three-ounce serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards, or a little smaller than the palm of your hand (depending, I suppose, on how big your hand is). A “serving” of peanut butter is two tablespoons; measure this out at least once so you can get a sense of whether your usual serving is more or less than that. 

To be more precise, you can start using a food scale. This makes your life easier in so many ways. For example, you can: 

  • Place your toast on the scale, zero it, and then spread on the peanut butter. Weigh the peanut-buttered toast, and you’ll know exactly how many grams of peanut butter you used.

  • Weigh out your desired portion of chicken, vegetables, or anything else you’re eating. 

  • Portion a meal equally by weighing the whole thing, and then weighing each portion so that it contains ¼ of the total (if you’re making a four-serving meal).

  • Place a container of, say, yogurt on the scale, and zero it. Then you can scoop yogurt from that container into the blender as you’re making a smoothie. This requires a “negative tare” feature, but it’s great for when you’re adding ingredients to containers you can’t weigh directly, like a blender or a pot on the stovetop. You just weigh the container the food is coming from. 

How do I count the calories in homemade food? 

Your calorie tracking app should have a way of  creating a recipe. Add in the ingredients, and make sure to say how many servings the recipe makes if you’re cooking for a group or making multiple servings for meal prep. Make sure to include all the ingredients, including cooking oil and condiments.

How do I count calories in a meal somebody else made? 

If you don’t know exactly what’s in something, you can guess. The easiest way is to look up a restaurant food that is similar and eyeball the portion. 

What do I do if there’s an oil or sauce with my food and I don’t eat all of it? 

Unfortunately there’s no easy adjustment to make here. Maybe you’re leaving a ton of calories behind, but it will be hard to separate that out mathematically from the other components that you did eat. In this case I just pretend I ate the whole thing, sauce and all. If there’s a ton of sauce and I’m sure I’m leaving lots of calories behind, I’ll log it as 0.9 instead of one serving.

Do I need to track everything, every day? 

There are no food-tracking police (thank god), so no, you don’t have to do anything. But if you’re trying to get a roughly accurate estimate of how many calories you eat each day, you really should log everything, as much as you can. If you snack on a cookie, put a cookie into your app. 

I’ll sometimes skip an entire day of tracking, but I won’t log a partial day. If I eat 1,200 calories before dinner, and then go to a party and eat 15 different little things that are impossible to accurately track, I might say “fuck it” and delete the whole day.  But I wouldn’t leave it at 1,200, because looking back, it will seem like that entire day was only 1,200 calories. If I know I ate more than usual and I want to make sure my tracking shows it, I'll pick a placeholder like a restaurant meal (my app actually has an entry for "Thanksgiving") and log whatever gets me, say, 3,000 calories of that.

Along the same lines, it’s tempting to not log things you think you “shouldn’t” be eating, but this backfires. In reality, if I’m eating 2,500 calories and only logging 2,000, I would look at my app and think, wow, I’m eating 2,000 calories and not losing weight. I would start to feel like I needed to eat even less than 2,000, and I might fall into one of those vicious cycles of restricting myself to smaller meals and then finding myself eating more untracked “cheat” meals. This is not a healthy way of eating, and tends to get worse over time. Instead, I log it all. If I know I’m eating 2,500 calories and not losing weight, I would be able to appreciate the fact that my body can put 2,500 calories to good use every day. I would then eat slightly less—maybe 2,200—and see if that might be a more effective and sustainable approach. 

Or to put it another way: if you log everything, you can be honest with yourself and kinder to yourself. You just have to look at the numbers as neutral data, not as a judgement on whether you’re being “good.” 

Here’s When It’s Better to Work Out in the Morning (or the Evening)

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
25 April 2024 at 09:30

Science says working out in the morning is best—no, wait, in the evening! If you’re looking for the best time to work out, you’ll find studies to support each of your options. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each choice, so you can decide what is best for your schedule.

Why there isn’t a scientifically “best” time to work out

As with any scientific question, there are many scientific answers. One recent study found that, in a group of Australians with BMIs over 30 (average age 62.2), those who got most of their aerobic exercise in the evening had lower rates of death, cardiovascular disease, and microvascular disease than people who got most of their exercise in the morning or midday. 

That’s not the only study that has ever been done on the subject, of course. Just a few months earlier, another study found that people who exercise in the morning tend to have slightly lower BMIs (25.9 versus 27.2) compared to those who exercise in the evening. 

If you start reading all the studies on exercise timing, you’ll find plenty more seemingly conflicting evidence. One study even broke out its results into groups to say that women got certain benefits from morning exercise, other benefits from evening exercise, and then men got (still different) benefits from evening exercise. Since the study population was just 36 people, I’m going to take those very specific-sounding results with a grain of salt.

Ultimately, the most important thing to know about exercise timing is what the authors of this review on exercise timing wrote in their conclusion: “It is essential to note that exercise at any time of day is of greater benefit than no exercise.” 

The benefits of morning workouts

Morning workouts are the classic sign of a motivated go-getter. The arguments in favor of a morning workout are all about productivity and time management, which are often more important than any biological benefits. 

  • You know you’ll have time to fit it in. If work gets busy, or if you find yourself tired at the end of the day, those issues won’t prevent you from doing your workout—you already got it in.

  • You may get a mood and energy boost for the rest of the day. Experiences vary, but many people find that exercising in the morning helps their mental health throughout the morning or even the whole day. 

  • Outdoor morning exercise can train your circadian clock. If your exercise is outdoors—like going for a jog—that helps you to get sunlight as well. Morning light can help your body’s clock to stay on track, which in turn can help you to feel sleepy at nighttime. 

  • You can have caffeine before your workout. Caffeine-containing preworkout powders (or energy drinks, or coffee) can help you focus better and work harder in the gym. But taking caffeine late in the day can mess with your sleep. So if you’d like to use a strong preworkout, consider doing your workout in the morning.

So if you want to improve your sleep, have more energy in the morning and throughout the day, and use caffeine during your workout, morning exercise might be the best option for you. Mornings are also great for people whose schedules can be unpredictable during the day. But don’t set your alarm early just yet—there are also benefits to evening workouts.

The benefits of evening workouts

Evening workouts make a lot of sense for many of us—including those who (like myself) have a hard time getting moving in the morning. Consider these advantages of evening workouts: 

  • You can’t oversleep and miss your workout. If you’re naturally more of a night owl, this might be a real issue. 

  • You may be able to focus better with your work day behind you. Taking the time for a long workout, or mustering the focus for an intense one, can sometimes be easier when most of the day’s obligations have already been taken care of.

  • You’ll be better fed. It can be a struggle to fuel well before a morning workout. If you work out in the evening, you may need to adjust the exact timing—snack before workout and dinner after, for example—but at least you’ll have something in your belly. 

  • Your performance may be better. Your core temperature tends to be higher in the evening, and some studies show a small performance boost in both strength and oxidative capacity (which relates to your ability to burn fuel for energy). This can mean you’ll more easily see your fitness reflected in how heavy you can lift or how fast you can run. 

So if you have a hard time waking up early, eating for a morning workout, or finding the time and focus to exercise before you start your day, evening workouts may be best for you. 

How to decide

Probably one of these options speaks to you more than the other. It may be as simple as knowing whether you’re more of a morning person or a night owl. Your decision may also be an easy one if your daily schedule only has one good time to work out. Whenever that may be—even if it’s noon or 2 a.m.—the smart schedule is whatever you’ll be able to stick to. After all, if a morning workout is ideal but you never manage to make it happen, there’s no need to feel attached to morning workouts. 

You also don’t have to consider yourself a devotee of either camp. It’s OK to work out Monday and Thursday mornings, and sleep in Tuesdays and Fridays so you can train in the evenings on those days. Or perhaps you change up your schedule with the seasons: sunrise jogs in the summer are great, but a 6 a.m. winter run is no fun with the dark and snow. Choose what makes sense for you. 

13 of the Best Exercises You Can Do With a Cable Machine

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
24 April 2024 at 14:30

Curious about those cable machines in your gym? Just as I've guided you through some of the best beginner-friendly exercises to do with kettlebells and with TRX style suspension trainers, today I'm taking a look at some of the best exercises you can do with a cable machine.

These are the machines with a handle of some sort that attaches to a pulley with a stack of weights at the other end. Many gym machines are set up this way, but today, we’re looking at the ones that are multi-purpose. You can do anything with these cables, and aren’t locked into one specific exercise. You may have a single cable, or more often, two cables, one for each hand. And you may have the choice of moving the pulley to the top, bottom, or anywhere in the middle of a vertical track. Ready to see what they can do? Let’s dive in!

Single arm row

Cable machines are great for all sorts of rowing and pulling exercises, and one of the best is a single arm row to work your lats and biceps. You’ll need to stabilize your body with your core and legs as you pull your arm back, so take a half-kneeling position. Set up the cable so that your hand comes to the side of your ribcage each time you pull the cable back.

Attachment: handle

Cable position: middle or bottom (roughly even with your hand)

Overhead tricep extension

This one works your triceps (the pushing muscles of your arms) and is a nice alternative to a skullcrusher or French press.

Attachment: rope or straight bar

Cable position: top

Pallof press

In the world of core exercises, the pallof press is a perfect example of an anti-rotational movement. It’s not really a press, because you’re not pushing the cable away from you. Instead, you move your hands in front of you while the cable tries to pull you to the side.

Attachment: handle

Cable position: middle

Cable pull-through

This is a hinge motion, making it a great accessory (or alternative) to movements like deadlifts and hip thrusts. The movement is a lot like a Romanian deadlift; you use your glutes and hamstrings to stand up and pull the cable through your legs as you do so.

Attachment: rope

Cable position: bottom

Woodchoppers

Another great core exercise, woodchoppers allow your obliques to pull down and sideways in a way that dumbbells or medicine balls can’t quite replicate (it’s supposed to be an exaggerated version of the motion of chopping wood with an axe). You can do these with the cable at the top, pulling down—or do a “reverse woodchopper” with the cable at the bottom, so you pull up.

Attachment: handle

Cable position: top (or bottom)

Cable curl

What’s a day in the gym without a bicep curl? For a great superset, get one of the machines that has two cable pulleys next to each other. Set one cable at the top with a rope for overhead tricep extensions, and the other with the EZ bar at the bottom (the wiggly one) for curls. Alternate between them. 

Attachment: EZ-curl bar, straight bar, or rope

Cable position: bottom

Crossover or chest press

If your gym has a setups with two cable machines facing each other, crossovers are a great way to take advantage of it. (You just have to wait for them both to be free at the same time. Good luck.) Pull both cable handles toward each other for an exercise that’s a bit like a dumbbell fly. Usually the pulleys are at the top for these movements, but they also work with low or middle placement.

Attachment: handles

Cable position: top

Standing or squatting row

Seated cable rows are one of my personal favorite gym machines, but they work best when they’ve got a dedicated bench and footrest attached. To do a two-handed row on a regular cable machine, you can either stand with your hips set slightly back, or go all the way into a squat.

Attachment: v-handle, rope, or straight bar

Cable position: middle

Face pulls

Many lifters swear by this pulling exercise for keeping their shoulders and elbows healthy, and it’s also a good one if you want to work on your posture. They get their name because—get this—you’re pulling the cable straight toward your face.

Attachment: rope

Cable position: top

Tricep pushdown

We already saw a way of working the triceps with your arms overhead, but you can also do a similar exercise by pushing your arms down (hence the name).

Attachment: rope or straight bar

Cable position: top

Zerchers

Some cable machines come with a long, straight bar with holes at both ends. You can attach this to both cables in a paired cable machine. The first time I saw one I tried to do back squats with it, but the cables pulled on the bar in a way that’s hard to stabilize, and I hated it. More recently I tried zerchers instead, and these I love. Get the bar in the crooks of your elbows, squat down, and stand up.

You can do these with a single cable as well, but unless you’re very small, you may find the full stack isn’t enough weight.

Attachment: double-ended straight bar

Cable position: both cables at the bottom

Straight arm lat pulldown

Most pulling exercises work the biceps in addition to the lats, but here’s one that works the triceps instead. It’s just like a regular lat pulldown (and you can use a lat pulldown machine if you like) but you keep your arms straight.

Attachment: straight bar

Cable position: top

Cable crunch

Sick of doing unweighted crunches by the dozens? Do them with a cable machine and you can add weight for low-rep sets. To set this up, kneel on the ground and hold the cable with your hands against the top of your head. Crunch down, and you’ll find it activates the same muscles as those floor crunches.

Attachment: rope

Cable position: top

Does Electrical Muscle Stimulation Really Supercharge Your Workouts?

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
23 April 2024 at 16:30

I’ve tried a lot of strange workouts in the name of science, but there was no experience quite like seeing myself in an EMS suit for the first time. It’s all black, with straps and buckles everywhere. A long wire is about to connect me to a computer. I feel like I’m suiting up to operate a spaceship or a giant robot. Instead, I’m about to do lunges and pushups while being told that I’m getting a much better workout than those suckers who just go to a regular gym. 

To try it out for myself, I accepted an offer of a free session at BODY20, a growing chain of EMS fitness studios. Its workouts are pricey, at $40 to $100 per session depending on where the studio is located and what kind of membership you sign up for.

So, is an EMS workout any better than the regular thing? Probably not. (We’ll get into the details in a minute.) But after seeing myself in the mirror, I kind of get the appeal.

What is EMS? 

Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) workouts are having a moment—not for the first time, and probably not for the last—based on their futuristic vibes and the fitness industry’s constant quest to sell you newer, cooler workouts than what everyone else is doing. 

Electrical muscle stimulation is a family of techniques and technologies that trigger your muscles to contract by passing a mild electric current through your body. You may be familiar with some of the other uses of passing electric current through your body for health and fitness purposes, so I'll describe them for comparison.

If you’ve used a TENS machine for pain relief, you know one type. You'll put sticky electrodes on your skin, and turn on a handheld machine that's connected to them by wires. TENS uses a mild current that feels like tingling, but it doesn’t make your muscles twitch or contract. The idea is that the tingling feeling interferes with pain signals. TENS stands for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, meaning that the electrical current crosses the skin and the sensation is picked up by your nerves, but it’s not designed to contract muscles. 

On the other hand, if you’ve used e-stim at a physical therapy appointment, that’s more like what’s happening in EMS workouts. When I was rehabbing after ACL surgery on my knee, rebuilding my quad muscle was a high priority. So I’d do leg presses and leg extensions, and at the end of the session, the PT would sit me down in a chair and apply sticky electrodes to my thigh. He’d slowly turn a knob and my quad would start contracting. When we hit a level that was mildly painful but tolerable, he’d leave the machine at that setting and we’d let the machine work my quad muscle for, as I recall, 10 minutes or so. 

EMS workouts are closer to the e-stim machine, but the experience is very different. When you do an EMS workout, you’re strapped into a full-body suit that applies current to multiple muscle groups at once. The current isn’t as strong as in my PT sessions, but you also won’t just be sitting in a chair—you’ll be doing workouts while the electrodes make your muscles contract harder than they would from the exercises alone.

What happens in an EMS workout? 

For my EMS workout, I showed up at a boutique fitness studio in a suburban area, next door to a veterinary clinic and within sight of a yoga studio. I had to sign a waiver that included a disclaimer recommending I not participate if I had a pacemaker, metal implants like plates or rods, or if I had epilepsy or cancer, or was pregnant. There were also items on the list that referenced dehydration, history of rhabdo, “strenuous physical exercise” in the last 72 hours, or another EMS workout in the previous five days. 

The studio manager ran me through this and explained that I’d only be able to do a fairly short workout, without weights, my first day. Over the course of several sessions, people are introduced to longer and harder workouts, although you’re never doing more than 20 minutes in a session. 

The area behind the desk was separated into two main rooms. There was a small fitness studio with mirrors and black flooring, where the workouts happen. Behind that was a room with an InBody scanner and several locker-like cubbies, brightly lit, with an XBody suit hanging in each. 

Body20 suits hanging up in cubbies under a neon sign that says "step into you"
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

(I played along and got the InBody scan, even though I know it’s not very accurate at determining body composition. It gave me flattering numbers, so I can’t be too mad.) 

I was given a set of clothes to change into, a black form-fitting shirt with three-quarter length sleeves and a similarly cropped pair of pants. 

I’d read that some EMS studios recommend not wearing underwear; at this studio, it seems you’re intended to keep yours on. Fine with me. I’ll just note, for planning purposes, that the clothes you wear under the suit will get wet. You might want to bring a change of dry undies for after.

While I put on the provided workout clothes, a Body20 staffer sprayed down the inside of the EMS suit that I would wear with water. Instead of sticking electrodes onto your body, like you might with a TENS machine, these electrodes are built into the suit. They each have an absorbent pad, and this is what she was wetting down. The water provides a conductor between the electrode and your skin. This means you’ll end up with wet patches on your biceps, your belly, your quads, your butt, and so on. 

There are no electrodes on your calves or forearms, which didn’t surprise me; they’re not high priority muscles for most people to train. It did surprise me that the deltoids (your most obvious shoulder muscles) aren’t covered by electrodes, either. This must be to allow for movement at the shoulder, but it seemed like a strange omission when these are an area that many people want to train, either for looks or for functional reasons.

The workout itself was pretty basic, and short. The suit turns on, and you do a set of exercises, like lunges or squats. Then it turns off and you get a short break—just a few seconds—before you begin again. 

Body20 offers strength and cardio classes. The strength classes are the main event, it seems, and the rules restrict you from doing them too often. Cardio workouts are done with less current going through the suit, and you’re moving around from exercise to exercise, much like those bodyweight circuit training videos you may have done on YouTube. Those workouts you're allowed to do more often. 

The staff at Body20 kept referring to rules about frequency and intensity as being set by “the FDA,” but when I asked about this in a follow-up email, I was told that the rules actually come from XBody, the suit manufacturer. The FDA does regulate EMS devices, and requires them to be cleared before use. They say they have gotten reports of shocks, burns, and other issues from devices that are illegally sold without being cleared. Bottom line, these rules from the manufacturer sound reasonable to me; I would be wary of buying any EMS equipment if you can’t verify that it’s FDA-cleared.   

What does an EMS workout feel like?

Two frames of Beth doing exercises at Body20
Credit: Shendelle Gleim

Much like my e-stim experience at physical therapy, the beginning of my Body20 session involved the trainer turning up the current and asking me to stop him when it felt strong but bearable. Too high, and it could feel painful or crampy; too low, and you might not feel anything at all. (The e-stim at PT ended up being a lot stronger than what we were going for in this session.) 

During the exercises, I could definitely feel the current making my muscle contractions stronger. Once or twice, doing a tricep movement, I felt my tricep sort of lock up. It wasn’t painful, but it felt like my arm wanted to stay straightened, almost like a mild cramp in my tricep. 

There were dumbbells in the room, but we didn’t use these for my introductory workout. Instead, the trainer had me hold balls in my hands (like stress balls) and move them as if I were curling a dumbbell or doing a tricep kickback. Because of the current, these did feel like I was doing something. 

That said, it wasn’t a hard workout. I kept hearing that I should expect to be sore afterward. Instead, I left the studio and headed straight to my weightlifting gym for my usual Monday workout (jerks, power snatches, power cleans, pendlay rows). I felt a little more fatigued than when I come to the workout fresh, but it was more like “just did a thorough warmup” than “did a whole ’nother workout first.” I was not sore the next day. 

For somebody who doesn’t fling barbells around on a daily basis, it sounds reasonable to expect some soreness. The lighter, shorter workout for the first session makes sense if you don’t know how your body is going to react. But, based on my experience, it really doesn’t feel that different from a normal strength workout. If anything, it feels like less of a muscular stimulus than a strength day at the gym. You’re just not doing that much.

Are EMS workouts effective? 

I’m a big-tent person when it comes to exercise: if you enjoy it, or if something about your chosen form of exercise gets you excited to do it and to keep coming back, then I support you, whether that’s Pilates or powerlifting or anything in between. I’m sure there are people who find it fun to do lunges in an EMS suit, but who wouldn’t bother doing lunges at home for free. If an EMS studio membership is what gets you into the habit (and you have the cash to burn), knock yourself out.

But we have to talk about something: the fact that every dang one of these studios makes a claim that EMS workouts are either better than regular workouts, or that they deliver the same results in a fraction of the time. For example, Bodystreet says you “only need to train 20 minutes per week.” Tummo says “One 20 minute session is equal to 3-4 days in the gym.” We202 says that a 20-minute class “equals 3 hours of traditional training.” Fitopia claims that its 20-minute workouts “are equivalent to 90 minutes of conventional workouts.” Body20, the place I went, is no exception: it say its classes let you “achieve results in just 20 minutes that would require hours in a traditional gym.” 

So, of course, I asked about it. The PR person who had introduced me to Body20 sent a list of studies, and pointed specifically to this 2016 study that compared whole body EMS to high intensity resistance exercise. It concluded that EMS workouts “can be considered as a time-efficient but [pricey alternative] to [high intensity]-resistance exercise for people aiming at the improvement of general strength and body composition.” 

I dug in, eager to crunch the numbers. As promised, the study included an EMS workout similar to the ones offered by Body20 and other studios. And it did find that both the EMS and non-EMS groups had similar increases in muscle mass and strength. 

But the claim that you need hours in the gym to equal one EMS workout? That was not backed up at all by this study. The non-EMS workouts were 30 minutes long. (Or, to be more specific, 30.3 minutes plus or minus 2.3 minutes.) Even if the rest of the study’s results are completely true and trustworthy and apply to you personally, you’re only saving ten minutes per workout, not hours. 

And I do have my doubts about the applicability of the study, even aside from the time issue. The study was done on 48 healthy men between the ages of 30 and 50, and all were “untrained,” so the results need to be taken with a grain of salt. Almost anything works on people with no exercise background. If you already go to some kind of gym or fitness studio, and are thinking of switching to EMS workouts, I wouldn’t expect much from EMS, to be honest. It might be just as good. It might be worse. We don’t have evidence that it would be better.

Taken together, I think the only reason to do EMS workouts would be if you think it’s a fun way to spend your money. (We all have our indulgences and our silly hobbies; maybe this is yours.) It’s not a smarter or better way to work out than going to a gym, or taking up some sporty hobby like running or rock climbing. 

How to Estimate Distance Using Just Your Thumb

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
22 April 2024 at 16:30

One of the most frustrating hobbies I ever took up was archery, but not because it’s hard to hit a target on the wall (it is, but I got pretty good at that). My problem was that one of the popular ways to go out and have fun with archery was to do “3D shoots,” where you would have to shoot at a series of statues of animals, each positioned at an unknown distance.

Estimating distance turned out to be my downfall. If you don’t have a good sense of how far away the fake deer is, you’ll end up shooting way over its back or burying your arrow under the ground beneath its feet. At the time, I assumed that estimating distance was less a learnable skill and more a gut feeling. Hence my surprise when I recently came across a quick eyeball-and-mental-math trick that allows anyone to estimate distance pretty accurately.

How the thumb trick turns a hard problem into an easy one

The technique involves some gut-level estimation, but a much easier type. You just have to guess—or know—the size of an object in the distance. (If you find yourself estimating distances often, you may want to look up the typical sizes of objects like cars. We'll use a car in our example below.)

You just need that guess, your thumb, and the ability to multiply by 10. Here’s how it works:

  1. Hold your thumb in front of you (with your arm fully outstretched), and close one eye. Line up your thumb with an object whose size you have some sense of (for example, a car).

  2. Without moving your thumb, close your open eye, and open the other one. Your thumb will appear to be in a different place.

  3. Estimate how far your thumb “moved” relative to the object you’re looking at. For example, a car is about 15 feet long, so if your thumb moved half a car length, that’s about 7.5 feet.

  4. Multiply by 10. In this example, you’d calculate that the car is about 75 feet away from you.

I tested this trick (it works)

Too good to be true? I walked around and tried it out. I also carried a laser distance-finder and a tape measure with me to verify. One thing I noticed right away is that I was tempted to measure the space in between my two thumb images; instead, you need to measure from, say, the left side of the first thumb image to the left side of the second thumb image.

  • Standing in the kitchen, eyeballing the TV in the other room, I figured the TV was somewhere between 3 and 4 feet wide, and that my thumb moved a little more than half its distance, so about 2 feet. Calculation: TV must be 20 feet away. Laser level says: 25 feet. OK, not bad.

  • From my desk to a nearby bookshelf, my thumb moved 6 inches, maybe a little more. Calculation: 60ish inches. Actual measurement: 59 inches.

  • From a spot in my driveway to a garden shed: I turned my head sideways to measure against the height of the door. Thumb distance should be about 6 feet (most of the height of the door), thus the shed must be 60 feet away. Actual measurement: around 70 feet. Not perfect, but once again, not too far off.

The reason this trick is supposed to work is that the distance from your eye to your thumb is about 10 times the distance from one eye to the other. I measured this, too. Looking into the mirror with a measuring tape in front of my face, my pupils are 2 and 5/16" apart, or 2.3 inches. The distance from the spot between my eyebrows to my outstretched thumb is 23.5 inches. That’s a factor of 10.2, impressively close to the 10 I was promised.

Bottom line: This trick isn’t going to give you a precise distance, but as a tool for estimating, it actually kind of works! And by the way, if you ever need to estimate how far away a deer-shaped statue is: a deer’s body length is roughly 5 feet.

How to Use Sleep Mode on Your iPhone

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
22 April 2024 at 15:00

The iPhone’s sleep mode has a ton of features that can help you get a better night’s sleep, from silencing notifications to enabling sleep detection with your Apple Watch. Here’s a primer showing how to turn it on and off, and how to get the most out of its features.

Why the iPhone has a sleep mode

The iPhone’s sleep mode is really a sleep focus, so it has all the features of a focus mode, plus a few special things that relate to sleep habits. 

You can use any focus mode to: 

  • Silence notifications

  • Optionally send a message to people who try to text you (“Beth has notifications silenced.”)

  • Let specific notifications through

  • Allow calls to come through if the caller tries to ring you repeatedly

  • Change your home screen and lock screen 

There are tons of great uses for focus modes, and we have a guide here to their best features. For example, by customizing your home screen, you can remove work-related apps from your home screen but allow your music and meditation apps to remain. When it’s bedtime, your phone will switch over to showing your sleep-specific home screen. The regular home screen will turn back on in the morning. 

In addition to those features, sleep focus also: 

  • Enables sleep detection with your Apple Watch if you go to sleep during this time

  • Sets an alarm (optionally) to ring when sleep focus is over

You can read more about sleep tracking in our guide to tracking your sleep with your Apple Watch. 

How to customize sleep focus on your iPhone

To set up the screens and notifications you’ll be able to see while in sleep focus, go to Settings and then Focus. From here, tap Sleep (or tap the + to create a Sleep focus if you don’t already have one). Choose your notification preferences, home screen, and anything else you’d like to customize.

How to set a schedule for sleep focus on your iPhone

Sleep focus is intended to be used on a schedule. Based on the schedule, sleep focus will turn on and off automatically. 

To set the schedule, go to the Health app, tap Sleep, and scroll to the bottom where it says “Your Schedule.” Under Full Schedule & Options, you’ll see a place to edit your schedule. You can set different bedtimes and wakeup times for each day of the week. 

On this screen, you can also toggle “use schedule for sleep focus” which tells the phone to turn on sleep focus during the times that are scheduled as your sleep times. While you’re on this screen, scroll to the bottom and set yourself a bedtime reminder, sleep results, and sleep goal (if you’d like).

How to turn on sleep focus on your iPhone

Once you’ve set up sleep mode, you can turn it on anytime—whether you’ve set a sleep schedule or not. Just go to Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone) and tap Focus. If no focus is in effect, it will have a moon icon. 

You can now choose a focus mode to turn on. Sleep should be in the list. Tap it and you’ll be in sleep mode.

How to turn off sleep focus

Screenshots of control center, focus screen, focus screen with link to edit settings
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Wake up early? You can turn off sleep focus at any time. Go to Control Center (swipe down from the top right corner of your phone) and you’ll see a button labeled “Sleep: on.” Here you can choose a new focus, like Do Not Disturb or any other focus you’ve created. To turn off Sleep mode without entering any new focus, just tap the Sleep focus and it will turn off.

To turn off or modify the sleep schedule for the future, tap the three dots on the sleep mode button. Tap Settings, and your iPhone will take you right to the settings screen where you can edit or disable your sleep schedule. 

These Are the Best Chest Exercises for Stronger Pecs

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
22 April 2024 at 08:30

We’ve worked our upper backs and our biceps and triceps, so it’s time to round out upper body day with my picks for the best chest exercises. And before you ask—these are the best chest exercises for men and women. You’ll find gendered lists out there, but the same exercises work for all genders. I’ll explain. 

What the chest muscles are and what they do

The major muscle in your chest is the appropriately-named pectoralis major—which is, literally, Latin for “the major muscle in your chest.” We call these the pecs for short. (There is also a pectoralis minor; it’s a tiny muscle that lies underneath the pec major.) 

The pecs originate on your sternum (breastbone, in the middle of your chest) and connect to your upper arm. When they contract, they bring your arms closer to your chest. If you’re giving somebody a big ol’ bear hug, your pecs are working. The pecs are also active if you’re pushing that person away, since they keep your arms in front of your chest as you push. 

With this in mind, exercises that work your chest are those that bring your arms together in front of your body, as well as exercises where you push something away from you at roughly chest level. 

Should women do chest work? 

Yes, of course—because your chest is part of your body. If you don’t train your chest, you’re neglecting a whole area of your body that could be contributing to your overall strength and health. As we’ve seen, your chest muscles help with pushing actions, and anything you do with your arms in front of you. A strong chest is part of a well-rounded, strong body.

To answer the two most common questions about this: 

  • Do chest exercises make your breasts smaller? No. You can’t make a body part smaller by exercising it. 

  • Do chest exercises make your breasts look bigger? Not really. You’ll build muscle under your breasts, but most people find this doesn’t do anything noticeable for their breast size or their body’s overall shape.

If your main concern is how you look, training your chest isn’t going to make a big difference in your appearance. It will make a difference in your strength and muscle mass. I wouldn’t skip these exercises. The more upper body strength we have, the better.

The best chest exercise to fit in with the gym bros: bench press

You probably saw this one coming: I’m crowning bench press the overall winner, and it’s already recognized as such by gym bros the world over. This is the exercise where you lie on your back on a bench, and lift a barbell by pushing it away from you, toward the ceiling. 

There are tons of variations on this lift, but a regular barbell bench press is my pick. You can load it heavier than most other versions, and honestly it’s just really fun. To do it properly, plant your feet on the floor and tuck your shoulders under your back. (A small arch in your back will likely result.) This puts your body in the strongest and most efficient position for moving heavy weight safely. 

But don’t be afraid to try other variations! Dumbbell bench press is a classic, and there are versions of bench press you can do with an inclined or declined bench to hit different parts of the muscle. Mix things up with feet-up bench, or reverse grip. 

Best isolation: machine flyes

I apologize sincerely to the English-speaking world, on behalf of all the gym bros, that there is not a good way to pluralize the exercise known as the chest fly or pec fly. Flies? No, that sounds like a bunch of insects. Flys? Doesn’t make sense. Flyes? That makes even less sense, but it’s what people call it. I’m sorry.

In any case, you’re flapping your wings like a butterfly. You can do flyes with dumbbells, lying on a bench; the trick is to do it with your arms relatively straight, rather than turning it into a bench press. You can do flyes with two far-apart cables and call it a “cable crossover,” but good luck grabbing two whole cable stacks on a busy day at the gym. 

Instead, just use a machine. Pretty much every gym will have a machine known as the “pec deck” (sometimes it can do reverse flyes too) and you can just sit in there, adjust the starting position as needed, and get your flyes in. 

Best minimalist chest exercise: dips

I featured dips in our list of the best tricep exercises, so I won’t spend too much time on them here. Like bench press, dips work both the chest and the triceps. You can make dips easier by using an assisted dip machine, a bench to rest your feet on, or a band. You can make them harder by holding a weight plate between your knees, or by chaining weights to a dip belt.

TikTok Myth of the Week: The Fingernail Test Shows Whether Hotel Mirrors Are Spying on You

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
19 April 2024 at 17:00

TikTok is full of people “discovering” spy mirrors in their hotel rooms and Airbnbs. Or, more often, they use a normal hotel mirror to demonstrate a trick that supposedly reveals such mirrors. (Phew—this one’s fine! We’re safe!) Unfortunately, these videos rely on a misunderstanding of how mirrors work. Read on and I’ll tell you why these tricks are bullshit, and an easy way of actually telling whether a mirror is two-way. (It doesn’t involve your fingernail.) 

What is a spy mirror, anyway? 

The TikToks all say they will show you a way to find out whether you’re being watched. The idea is that either there could be camera hidden behind the mirror, or the mirror might be the kind you see in interrogation rooms on TV, where the “mirror” is actually a window between two rooms. People on the other side can see right in.

These mirrors do exist. They are perhaps most properly known as “one-way mirrors” (since the mirror only works if you’re standing on one side of it) but you’ll also hear them called “two-way mirrors” (since they can act as either a mirror or a window). I’m going to call them “spy mirrors” to avoid confusion.

Now, do spy mirrors exist in hotels? I mean, I kind of doubt that Holiday Inn goes to the trouble and expense of installing a specialized form of glass in all their bathroom mirrors, when they can’t even keep the pancake machine working. But you never know. So let’s dive in to the problems with the TikToks—and then I’ll tell you how these mirrors really work, so you can spot them easily.

What the TikToks say

My favorite example of the genre is this one, a lengthy step-by-step involving Scotch tape, three colors of dry-erase marker, and one person patiently instructing another on how “a girl” can figure out whether they are “safe” when traveling. The video is three fricking minutes long, and it doesn’t demonstrate anything that putting your fingernail against the mirror wouldn’t do in seconds. 

According to TikTok, the telltale sign of a spy mirror is that you cannot see a gap between your finger and its reflection. You may hear the rhyming rule: “If there’s no space, leave this place”—the “space” being that gap between your real finger and your mirror finger.

So why not just use your finger? Good news: people simply putting their fingers against mirrors are all over TikTok, as well. Someone puts their finger up to a hotel mirror, then declares it to be either a spy mirror, or a normal mirror. (Sometimes the camera angle lets us see the gap, too; many videos make it hard to see if the person has done the test correctly.)

What the TikToks get right

It’s true that you’ll see a gap between your fingernail and its reflection in most “real” mirrors.

The most common style of mirror you’ll see in home and hotel bathrooms is made of glass. It has a thin layer of reflective material (“silvering”) that is usually applied to the back surface of the glass. This way, when you put your fingernail against the glass, you’re not directly touching the reflective part. This is called a “back silvered” or “second surface” mirror. So, yes: normally you’ll be able to see a gap. 

What the TikToks get wrong

According to the TikToks, if you don’t see a gap, then the mirror is watching you. That’s not true.

The gap just tells you that the mirror is back-silvered. Real mirrors can be back-silvered or front-silvered and still be legit, normal mirrors. What you’re looking for, if you’ve got your eye out for spy mirrors, is something that is half-silvered. That refers to the type of coating, not just where it’s applied.

The silvering on (half-silvered) spy mirrors is applied to the front, so a front-silvered mirror could be a spy mirror. But it could also be a front-silvered regular mirror. (These aren’t very common, but they exist.) 

A mirror that appears to show no gap could also be a back-silvered mirror whose pane of glass is very thin. I tested some mirrors around my house, and saw a large gap on one bathroom mirror, a smaller gap on another, and a very thin, difficult-to-see gap on a pocket-sized makeup mirror. The makeup mirror just has thinner glass than the others.

Spy mirrors work like mirrored sunglasses 

If you’ve never seen a one-way mirror in person, you might think it’s some super-secret spy technology that’s impossible to spot. In reality, if you own a pair of mirrored sunglasses, you can do your own tests. 

Mirrored sunglasses and spy mirrors work the same way. Three things make up the effect: 

  • Light from the front can pass to the back.

  • Light from the back can pass to the front. 

  • Bright light from the front reflects off the half-silvering, showing you your own reflection instead of whatever is behind the glass. 

The whole effect depends on lighting. If the room behind the glass is dark, and the room in front of the glass is bright, then people in the bright room will only see their own reflection. But if the people in the dark room were to turn on their lights, or if the people in the bright room were to turn theirs off, the effect would be lost. It’s like a more dramatic version of how your home’s windows appear at night. You can’t see outdoors because the reflections from indoor lights are brighter than whatever is shining in from outside. The half-silvering just enhances this effect.

Mirrored sunglasses, two views.
Left: normal room lighting. Right: dark room with a flashlight. Same mirrored sunglasses in both. Credit: Beth Skwarecki

How to actually spot a spy mirror

Forget the fingernail test. All you really need is to manipulate the lighting, and you can do that in a matter of seconds with your phone’s flashlight. All you need to do is: 

  1. Turn off the lights in the room, or cup your hands around your eyes as you peer in. (Same as you would do if you were trying to peek into a car window on a sunny day.) 

  2. Put a flashlight right up to the mirror, and shine it through. 

  3. If the mirror is fake, you’ll be able to see the inside of the room on the other side of the mirror (or whatever is behind there).

That’s all there is to it. This trick works because you’re shining light into the area behind the glass, and allowing it to bounce back through the glass at you. (You don’t want to shine the flashlight on the exact spot you’re looking through, but if you hold it next to your face instead of right in front of your face, that will do the trick.)

I don’t have a police interrogation room handy, but I do have a pair of mirrored sunglasses, so I took the above photos of them with normal lighting (left) and in the dark with a flashlight (right). With the flashlight trick, you can literally see right through them.  

By the way, you’ll also want to check what’s behind the supposed spy mirror, if you think you’ve found one. A mirror on a wall that is shared with an “employees only” room? Yeah, I’d be suspicious. (In that case, the flashlight trick would let you see the peeping Tom’s face, so you’d get a quick confirmation. Somebody please put that on TikTok instead of yet another “look at my fingernail” video.)  

But I’ve seen at least one TikTok where the supposed spy mirror looks like a shower door. Mirrored shower doors are a cute design gimmick: the idea is for the person taking the shower to be able to see out, without others being able to see in. (Here’s a public bathroom that uses the same trick.) Half-silvered mirrors are also what enable smart mirrors like this one to exist: when the screen behind the mirror lights up, you see what’s on the screen. Otherwise, you just see your reflection. And finally, polished metal can be reflective and would not show a gap. That’s not a spy mirror either.

How Much Opill, the Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill, Actually Costs

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
18 April 2024 at 19:00

The first over-the-counter (OTC) birth control pill was approved last year. It's called Opill, and over the past month or so, it has finally started showing up on pharmacy shelves. Finally I can answer those questions everyone was asking when it was first approved: How much does it actually cost? And will insurance cover it? 

What is Opill’s sticker price? 

The price for Opill you’ll see on almost every website is $19.99 per pack. (This is sometimes described as a “monthly” pack, but there are only 28 pills per pack; as is common with birth control. You’ll go through about 13 packs per year.)

Some sellers have single packs available for slightly less. Right now, Amazon and Walmart are both charging $18.97, saving you about a dollar.

Can you get Opill at a discount? 

You can save a few bucks by buying two or three packs at a time. The sticker price for a three-“month” pack of Opill is $49.99, or $16.66 per pack. 

If you don’t have insurance, you live in the U.S., and your household income is below 200% of the federal poverty line, you’re eligible for Opill maker Perrigo’s cost assistance program, which will provide the medication at "reduced or no cost." To find out more and to sign up, visit the cost assistance program page here. 

Will insurance cover Opill? 

Maybe! In general, the Affordable Care Act requires insurance plans to cover birth control pills as a form of preventive care. The law doesn’t specifically require them to cover this brand of pills, or to cover OTC pills, so they aren’t automatically included. 

That said, if your insurance uses CVS Caremark for its pharmacy benefits, you’ll be happy to know that CVS has included Opill on its list of zero-cost contraceptives. Contact your insurance provider for specifics on your coverage. 

Several states have also passed laws requiring over-the-counter birth control to be covered by insurance, although the details vary by state. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a rundown of state laws here. California, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Washington all have state laws that theoretically could apply to Opill. Again, check with your insurance company to find out what coverage is available for you.

Peloton's New 'History Summary' Is Like a VIN for Bikes

✇Lifehacker
By: Beth Skwarecki
18 April 2024 at 11:30

Buying a used Peloton is a smart way to get what is otherwise a pricey exercise bike. I bought mine used, and have no regrets; the seller was honest, as far as I can tell, and I saved a good $500 compared to what I would have paid if I had bought the Bike directly from Peloton. But not all used Bikes are what they seem, and it would have been great if I’d been able to check out the Bike’s history first.

Now, Peloton is launching a tool to do just that. They call it the Peloton History Summary, and it allows you to look up the history of any Bike or Bike+ from its serial number. The big caveat, for now, is that the program is still in beta and won’t return results from every Bike. 

What the Peloton History Summary can tell you

I punched in my Bike’s serial number, only to be told my Bike wasn’t included in the beta. (They’re rolling it out slowly, so yours may not be in there, either.) 

But Peloton does present an example summary on their website. It suggests that a history report might contain: 

  • Number of hours the Bike/Bike+ has been ridden

  • Whether the company has ever sent a tech out to repair it

  • Number of total registered owners, including the current owner

  • Whether the Bike/Bike+ is currently covered by a protection plan, and if so, when it expires

This is all useful information to have when you’re considering buying a used Peloton. When I bought mine, I grilled the previous owner on the Bike’s history, but there was no way to know if he was telling me the truth. My experience ended up matching what he told me: The Bike had no issues and seemed to have been gently used. The only issue was that it needed a new bearing cartridge, which is a part that is known to wear out over time. (Peloton sent me a new one for $45 and I installed it myself—an inconvenience but not a bad deal at all.)  

How to use the Peloton History Summary when buying a used Bike or Bike+

To use the history summary, you need to find the serial number on your Bike or Bike+. If you scroll down on the history page, Peloton has a guide to finding it: It may be on or behind the front fork, or behind the flywheel. (It is not on the back of the screen; the serial number there is for the screen itself, not the whole Bike/Bike+).

I found the easiest way to read the serial number from its awkward spot was to take a photo of it, then use my iPhone’s text scanning feature to copy and paste the serial number. (Double check that it copied correctly—for example that a zero didn’t get mistaken for the letter O, or vice versa.) 

When you’re buying a Bike or Bike+, you can ask the seller for the serial number and then run it through the history tool—much like doing a VIN lookup on a used car. When you show up to collect your new Peloton, make sure to check it’s the same serial number before handing over the payment. 

Peloton suggests that sellers might like to be proactive about this, getting the history on their own Bike/Bike+ and posting that in their sales listing. They also note that they’re still working out exactly what information the history will provide, so stay tuned to learn what this feature looks like when it comes out of beta.

❌
❌