Health
Noah Lyles' Ab Workout for a Rock-Solid Core
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Whether you’re looking for your fastest mile ever, itching to cook your friends on the court in pickup or pickleball, or cooking through a sprint workout on the track like an Olympian, you need a rock-solid abs.
“If you have a straight stick, and you throw its end on the ground, it’ll bounce back up; but if there’s bend in the stick, it might bounce in any direction,” says Team USA’s Noah Lyles, a favorite to win gold in the 100m at the Paris Olympics. “It’s the same thing when you’re running. If you don’t have a tight midline—a stable, well-structured core—when you make contact with the ground, you’re not using all the power you’re producing.”
Few athletes know more about building power and speed than Lyles. To create the explosive stride that’s led him to eight track and field world championship and Olympic medals—including double gold in the 100 and 200 meters at the 2023 world champs—the 27-year-old sprinter spends four days per week in the weight room, doing workouts that focus on building power: Exercises like cleans, hex bar deadlifts, front squats, back squats, and power throws.
To make sure he’s converting his power into speed with each step, Lyles also sweats through a core workout in just about every session, building that springy, power-saving stiffness in his middle that lets him unleash the power he builds through his barbell work and track sessions.
As part of his partnership with CELSIUS energy drinks, Lyles spoke with Men’s Journal to share one of the core routines he uses to help build gold medal abs. There are also some easier alternatives for each exercise for non-Olympians who need to scale down.
Try this workout at the end of your next strength training session, or as a workout on its own. For each move in this six-exercise routine, rest 1 to 2 minutes between sets.
1. GHD Machine Hollow Hold
Westend61/ Getty Images
Why It’s Effective
You may have done hollow holds before on the floor, but Lyles’ version adds an extra challenge: Instead of on the ground, this move is performed on the glute-ham developer bench. A staple in CrossFit gyms, this machine can be used for butt and leg development, as the name suggests, but is also popular for intense, full-range situps and other core moves.
How to Do It
- Get into the GHD with your feet in the foot pad area, your legs straight and your butt sitting off the GHD’s large pad, to start.
- Sit up so your body forms a 90-degree angle. Reach your arms straight up overhead (you can also gentle hold the back of your head).
- Maintaining a flat back, slowly lean back to open your hip angle. Lean back as far as you can—as close to horizontal as possible—hold your body steady by bracing your core.
- Once you’ve found the depth you can hold, maintain the hollow position for 30 seconds.
- Perform 4 x 30-second holds.
Easier Variation: Hollow Body Hold
Justin Steele
The closer your torso is to perpendicular, the easier the move will be. And if you don’t have access to a GHD machine, you can perform hollow holds on the floor.
How to Do It
- Lie on your back with your arms and legs fully extended, squeezing everything tight, to start.
- Press your lower back into the ground and slightly lift your legs and upper back off the floor.
- If you’re a beginner, hold this position. If you’re more advanced, rock forward and back—holding the shape of a banana.
2. Toes to Bar
James Michelfelder
Why It’s Effective
Toes to bar does more than just build a six-pack: Studies have shown this type of move is one of the most effective for strengthening the obliques, even when done without twisting. Lyles does the full toes to bar variation.
How to Do It
- Hang from a pullup bar with straight arms set slightly wider than shoulder-width. Draw your shoulder blades back and down, to start.
- Keeping your feet together and legs straight, engage your core to hinge your hips, raising your legs until your toes touch the bar.
- Control your descent back to the starting position. That’s 1 rep.
- Perform 4 x 7-10 reps.
Easier Variation: Hanging Knee Raise
- Hang from a pullup bar with straight arms set slightly wider than shoulder-width. Draw your shoulder blades back and down, to start.
- Bend your knees and bring your thighs up until they’re parallel with the floor.
- As you advance, move on to a straight-leg raise, where your legs are extended straight from hips.
3. V-Up
Why It’s Effective
For someone as strong as Lyles, this advanced sit-up might seem easy. To keep it challenging, he says, he’s uncompromising on form: “It has to be that V shape in the middle, and you have to be touching your toes,” he says, in order to get the full benefit.
How to Do It
- Lie on your back with your legs straight and arms overhead.
- Without bending your elbows or knees, contract your abdominal muscles, fold your body up by lifting your legs off the floor and stretch your arms toward your toes. Keep your back straight. As you rise, your body will form a “V” shape, and will then close like a venus fly trap.
- Pause, then return to the starting position. Do four sets of 20 repetitions.
Easier Variation: Deconstructed V-Up
If you’re flailing and throwing your torso up and down, split the move in two: Perform the upper body portion of the V-up, doing a situp with a straight back. Then do the lower body portion, raising your legs from the ground while your upper body is flat on the ground.
4. Star Plank
sergio_kumer/ Getty Images
Why It’s Effective
This move, Lyles says, is probably the most important in his core routine because it engages the core and the glutes at the same time. Running requires front and posterior muscles to work together in balance, and this trains just that.
To help fire up your glutes in this move, try getting into the side plank in a different way: Instead of lifting your hips off the floor laterally, do so from a position where your knees are slightly bent, and your feet are a little closer to your waist than they will be in the full side plank position. As you raise your body up, squeeze your butt to press your hips forward and take the bend out of your knees. As you do this, your feet will slide a bit on the ground into position.
How to Do It
- Get into a classic side plank position: Lie on your left side with your forearm on the floor directly under your left shoulder, with your legs and feet stacked. Have a slight bend in your knees.
- Prop yourself up on your elbow, and squeeze your glutes to straighten your legs as you assume the forearm side plank position so that your body forms a straight line from ear to ankles. To make this harder, perform the move with your left arm straight beneath you, balanced on your hand instead of your forearm.
- Straighten your top arm so that your torso forms a “T” shape.
- Without letting this rigid body line slacken and without bending your knee, raise your top leg (right) up away from your bottom leg. Your arms and legs will form an “X” or star shape.
- Hold this position for 15 seconds, then repeat on the other side. Perform 4 x 15-seconds holds.
Easier Variation: Side Plank
Too hard? Skip the star shape. Stop at step 3, and perform the four 15-second holds on each side.
5. Forearm Plank
Beth Bischoff
Why It’s Effective
Don’t just hang out in a plank, Lyles says. Engage your core by drawing your belly button towards your spine. Feel your lats in your back firing. Squeeze your glutes. And grip the floor with your fingers. This, he says, will turn this “easy” move into a challenge.
How to Do It
- Assume a classic pushup position, but on your forearms: Prop yourself up so that your elbows are directly beneath your shoulders, palms facing down. Form a straight line from your head to heels.
- Engage your core, glutes, legs, and lats, and hold this rigid body line for one minute. Repeat for four total holds of one minute each.
Easier Variation: Plank From Knees
You can also perform planks on your knees. Instead of a rigid line from head to heels, maintain a rigid body line from head to knees.
6. Glute Kickback Machine
Getty Images
Note: This image depicts cable glute kickback, which is an alternative if you don’t have access to a glute kickback machine.
Why It’s Effective
“A lot of people think that this machine is about how far you can throw the weight up using your hamstring, but they’re missing the point,” Lyles says. “Your core should be more turned on than your hamstrings.”
Lyles says to concentrate on doing this move with purpose. “Go at a slower pace, and push the weight up and down with the same intent and same speed. You should feel every muscle working,” he says.
How to Do It
- Stand in the machine with your forearms resting on the pad, your hands on the handles, and one foot behind you against the plate. You should be bent forward at the hips. This is the starting position.
- Brace your core, and feel it engage as you press the weight back by using your glutes, not your hamstrings. Push back slowly.
- Return to the start, maintaining this same pace. Do four rounds of 6 reps on each side.
Health
Walmart Is Selling a $300 Power Tower for Just $128, and Shoppers Say It's 'Surprisingly Sturdy'
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Men’s Journal aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.
When building a home gym, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the equipment options, especially when you’re working with limited space and a tight budget. But when you focus on versatile gear and hunt for deals, creating a useful setup is easily doable. Thankfully, Walmart has been slashing prices on a ton of fitness equipment, including its bestselling adjustable dumbbells and even a complete home gym system. Now, it’s reduced the price of a popular power tower by over $170, and it even ships for free.
The Pooboo Body Champ Multifunction Power Tower is on sale for $128, a 57% discount on its normal price of $300. This incredibly versatile workout station has earned nearly 250 five-star ratings from Walmart shoppers who’ve praised its “strong and sturdy” build and “quality fit and finish,” and it’s currently one of the top 5 bestselling models on the site.
Pooboo Body Champ Multifunction Power Tower, $128 (was $300) at Walmart
Don’t let the brand’s bizarre name fool you—this power tower is a well-made piece of gym equipment. It features steel construction and is rated to hold up to 480 pounds (the tower itself weighs 66 pounds). A nearly 42-inch H-shaped base gives it excellent stability, so it won’t wobble or shake when you’re exercising, and anti-slip feet on the bottom keep it securely planted on the floor. It’s also adjustable (from 71.4 inches to 94 inches) to accommodate users of varying heights. And, once it’s set up, you can use it for a huge range of exercises, including dips, pull-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, vertical leg raises, knee raises, and more.
According to Walmart reviewers, the Pooboo Body Champ stands out for its solid build and usefulness. “It’s a surprisingly sturdy piece of equipment,” a shopper said. “Everything about this fitness tower is perfect. I originally purchased this with the intention of only doing pull-ups on it, but after quickly assembling the power tower, I came to realize just how versatile it is. It has cushions for knee and leg raises, it’s sturdy, and the perfect width for dips.” Another shopper agreed, saying, “This was a much-needed addition to my home gym.”
“This thing is amazing and worth every penny,” said another, who added that it’s “easy to install and can hold a lot of weight.”
At just $128, this Pooboo power tower is a screaming deal, and it’s sure to get lots of use during your workouts. But this discount won’t last long, so grab one today before the price pumps back up.
Health
Alzheimer’s Drug May Save Lives Through ‘Suspended Animation’
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By Lindsay Brownell | Wyss Institute Communications | Harvard Gazette
Could buy patients more time to survive critical injuries and diseases, even when disaster strikes far from a hospital
Donepezil, an FDA-approved drug to treat Alzheimer’s, has the potential to be repurposed for use in emergency situations to prevent irreversible organ injury, according to researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Using Donepezil (DPN), researchers report that they were able to put tadpoles of Xenopus laevis frogs into a hibernation-like torpor.
“Cooling a patient’s body down to slow its metabolic processes has long been used in medical settings to reduce injuries and long-term problems from severe conditions, but it can only currently be done in a well-resourced hospital,” said co-author Michael Super, director of immuno-materials at the Wyss Institute. “Achieving a similar state of ‘biostasis’ with an easily administered drug like DNP could potentially save millions of lives every year.”
This research, published Thursday in ACS Nano, was supported as part of the DARPA Biostasis Program, which funds projects that aim to extend the time for lifesaving medical treatment, often referred to as “the Golden Hour,” following traumatic injury or acute infection. The Wyss Institute has been a participant in the Biostasis Program since 2018, and has achieved several important milestones over the last few years.
Using a combination of predictive machine learning algorithms and animal models, the Wyss’ Biostasis team previously identified and tested existing drug compounds that had the potential to put living tissues into a state of suspended animation. Their first successful candidate, SNC80, significantly reduced oxygen consumption (a proxy for metabolism) in both a beating pig heart and in human organ chips, but is known to cause seizures when injected systemically.
In the new study, they once again turned to their algorithm to identify other compounds whose structures are similar to SNC80. Their top candidate was DNP, which has been approved since 1996 to treat Alzheimer’s.
Achieving a similar state of ‘biostasis’ with an easily administered drug like DNP could potentially save millions of lives every year.
–Michael Super
“Interestingly, clinical overdoses of DNP in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease have been associated with drowsiness and a reduced heart rate — symptoms that are torpor-like. However, this is the first study, to our knowledge, that focuses on leveraging those effects as the main clinical response, and not as side effects,” said the study’s first author, María Plaza Oliver, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute when the work was conducted.
The team used X. laevis tadpoles to evaluate DNP’s effects on a whole living organism, and found that it successfully induced a torpor-like state that could be reversed when the drug was removed. The drug, however, did seem to cause some toxicity, and accumulated in all of the animals’ tissues. To solve that problem, the researchers encapsulated DNP inside lipid nanocarriers, and found that this both reduced toxicity and caused the drug to accumulate in the animals’ brain tissues. This is a promising result, as the central nervous system is known to mediate hibernation and torpor in other animals as well.
Although DNP has been shown to protect neurons from metabolic stress in models of Alzheimer’s disease, the team cautions that more work is needed to understand exactly how it causes torpor, as well as scale up production of the encapsulated DNP for use in larger animals and, potentially, humans.
“Donepezil has been used worldwide by patients for decades, so its properties and manufacturing methods are well-established. Lipid nanocarriers similar to the ones we used are also now approved for clinical use in other applications. This study demonstrates that an encapsulated version of the drug could potentially be used in the future to buy patients critical time to survive devastating injuries and diseases, and it could be easily formulated and produced at scale on a much shorter time scale than a new drug,” said senior author Donald Ingber, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
This research was supported by DARPA under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-19-2-0027, the Margarita Salas postdoctoral grant co-funded by the Spanish Ministry of Universities, and the University of Castilla-La Mancha (NextGeneration EU UNI/551/2021).
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This story is reprinted with permission from The Harvard Gazette.
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Health
Can Stuff in Rosemary Extract Fight Cocaine Addiction?
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Researchers have discovered that an antioxidant found in rosemary extract can reduce intakes of cocaine by moderating the brain’s reward response, offering a new therapeutic target for treating addiction.
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The study in the journal Neuron describes researchers’ focus on a region of the brain called the globus pallidus externus, which acts as a gatekeeper that regulates how we react to cocaine.
They discovered that within the GPe, parvalbumin-positive neurons are crucial in controlling the response to cocaine by changing the activity neurons releasing the pleasure molecule dopamine.
“There are currently no effective therapeutics for dependence on psychostimulants such as cocaine, which, along with opioids, represent a substantial health burden,” says corresponding author Kevin Beier, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of California, Irvine.
“Our study deepens our understanding of the basic brain mechanisms that increase vulnerability to substance use disorder-related outcomes and provides a foundation for the development of new interventions.”
Findings in mice revealed that globus pallidus externus parvalbumin-positive cells, which indirectly influence the release of dopamine, become more excitable after being exposed to cocaine. This caused a drop in the expression of certain proteins that encode membrane channels that usually help keep the globus pallidus cell activity in check. The researchers found that carnosic acid, an isolate of rosemary extract, selectively binds to the affected channels, providing an avenue to reduce response to the drug in a relatively specific fashion.
“Only a subset of individuals are vulnerable to developing a substance use disorder, but we cannot yet identify who they are. If globus pallidus cell activity can effectively predict response to cocaine, it could be used to measure likely responses and thus serve as a biomarker for the most vulnerable,” Beier says. “Furthermore, it’s possible that carnosic acid could be given to those at high risk to reduce the response to cocaine.”
The next steps in this research include thoroughly assessing negative side effects of carnosic acid and determining the ideal dosage and timing. The team is also interested in testing its efficacy in reducing the desire for other drugs and in developing more potent and targeted variants.
Scientists from the University of West Virginia and the University of Colorado participated in the study.
Support for this work came from the National Institutes of Health, One Mind, the Alzheimer’s Association, New Vision Research, BrightFocus Foundation, and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
Source: UC Irvine
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Previously Published on futurity.org with Creative Commons License
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