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5 Holistic Fitness Routines For Those Who Hate The Gym

Tim Dempsey

If the first reaction when you think of the gym is “Ugghh, not again! Why does staying fit has to be so difficult?”, we feel you. If existence is a pain, gyms are probably the reason. If we had a magic lamp, we would probably wish to never go to the gym and yet stay in our best shapes — all our lives. But how to get fit without a gym routine?

Thankfully, there are better alternatives to staying fit. No, we aren’t making this up!

If you hate doing heavy workouts at the gym or seeing the big sweaty dudes who try flexing all the time, you can avoid them with some really cool fitness routines. These are not only easy to do but also extremely rewarding.

And if you are still adamant about going to the gym, there are some great resources to help you with your workout and healthcare routines. Don’t forget to get your vitamin supplements and proteins as they are pretty important if you want to burn fat and lose weight. And just to clear the air and trash a rumor, whey proteins and supplements are NOT steroids.

So, without further ado, let’s jump right into the facts!

Diet

When it comes to weight loss, diet is as important, if not more, than exercises. Eating healthy is the best way you can stay healthy in the long run.

Fresh and organic vegetables and fruits provide you with most of the nutrition your body needs. When it comes to your skin and overall health benefits, nothing beats this tip.

Cooking food in less oil also helps counter a lot of coronary diseases and manage diabetes. Say goodbye to junk foods which are loaded with sugars that add those extra pounds. A balanced nutritious diet is key to even counter cancer risks.

Not to forget, a good night’s sleep helps regulate a lot of things, like hormones, which help in shedding pounds.

Aerobic Exercises

If lifting is not your thing, there is an alternative which might even be better.

Aerobic exercises, also known as cardio exercises, are really good if you are planning to lose weight and get ripped. These exercises help stimulate your heart rate and breathing rate to increase and burn fat pretty fast!

With regular practice, your lung capacity increases (imagine elite athletes) and your heart pumps cleaner oxygen in your blood. Scientifically, aerobic exercises are helpful to fight against diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular, obesity, osteoporosis, and even depression.

All you need to do is go swimming, skipping, running, cycling or something similar. Start with 15 minutes first and then, with time, you can stretch it to 45 minutes per day, with breaks in between.

Yoga

get fit without a gym

Before there were weighted exercises, there was yoga. It consists of physical, mental, and spiritual practices with its roots in ancient India.

However, over the years, the term “yoga” has been diluted. It now denotes a modern form of Hatha yoga, consisting largely of postures called Asanas which are used as physical exercises.

Yogas are not just about physical exercises. They have a wide range of benefits including strengthening of muscles to improve flexibility.

Yoga helps in increasing breathing capacity, corrects posture, and increases blood flow. A lot of experts swear that yoga helps in building core strength better than most exercises. Most athletes have yoga as part of their exercise routines.

Yogas are not just great for weight loss and strength but also help in toning your body shape. You basically have nothing to lose and everything to gain with this.

See Also: Yoga Helps You Love Yourself

Walking

Looking for the easiest exercise with great benefits?

Incorporate the easiest thing that you do daily and get heaps of benefits from it. That’s right, walking can be an easy substitute to stay fit. It has been proven that walking for 30 minutes a day or more on most days of the week is a great way to improve your overall health.

Benefits of walking, a self weight-bearing exercise, include:

  • Cardiovascular fitness and reduced risks to the heart
  • Increases lung capacity
  • Improves conditions such as hypertension, high cholesterol, joint, and muscular pain
  • Strengthens bones
  • Improves muscle strength and endurance
  • Reduces body fat

Here, walking does not just mean traditional or conventional walking. It can even include taking the stairs, brisk walking or even walking up a hill. The basic point here is to involve your body as much as possible without putting too much pressure on it.

Play a Sport

getting fit without a gym

Have fun and stay in shape. We recommend a sport that involves a lot of movement. Some of our top picks are badminton, tennis, squash or football (soccer).

Sports can be incredibly intensive. It may involve strength building, endurance and stamina buildup, and cardio workup. The activities won’t make you feel like it is a routine.

Playing a sport also results in a drop in stress and depression levels. It helps you make better connections with new people. And since sports tire and exhaust you, you need a better diet and sleep to recover from all of that. With so many benefits, why would you not want to pick something up?

See Also: Three Great Reasons To Play Intramural Sports As An Adult

And that’s a wrap on our advice!

Gym resolutions are overrated and include a lot of expenditure and can be boring. Instead, go for solutions that are not only easy and fun but also easily accessible without spending a lot of money. Also, gyms can be hard on your knees if you do a lot of benches. They can wear you out if you are overtraining.

So, say goodbye to all these problems with easy holistic routines that will help you stay fit in the longer run. Happy working out and may the force be with you.

The post 5 Holistic Fitness Routines For Those Who Hate The Gym appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

The Federal Reserve announces plans for a real-time payments system that will be available to all banks

Tim Dempsey

The Federal Reserve Bank announced today that it is developing a new service called FedNow that will allow all banks in the United States to offer 24/7 real-time payment services every day of the week. FedNow is expected to be available by 2023 or 2024 and will initially support transfers of up to $25,000.

FedNow will make managing budgets easier for many people and small businesses, but it also puts the Fed at loggerheads with big banks since a federal real-time payments system would compete with the one being developed by the Clearing House, which is owned by some of the world’s largest banks, including Capital One, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank.

The Federal Reserve’s board of governors voted 4-1 to approve the proposal for FedNow on August 2, with its of vice chair for supervision, Randal Quarles, casting the dissenting vote.

While Venmo, Zelle and other apps already allow users to transfer money instantly to one another, the Federal Reserve Bank described services like those as a “closed loop” because both parties need to be on the same platform in order to transfer money and they can only be linked to accounts from certain banks. On the other hand, FedNow will be a universal infrastructure, enabling all banks, including smaller ones, to provide real-time payments.

Furthermore, the traditional retail payment methods used for transferring funds not only creates frustrating delays, but can “result in a build-up of financial obligations between banks which, as faster payment usage grows, could present risks to the financial system, especially in times of stress,” the Federal Reserve Board said.

In a FAQ, the Federal Reserve Board explained that “there is a broad consensus within the U.S. payment community and among other stakeholders” that real-time payment services can have a “significant and positive impact on individuals and businesses throughout the country and on the broader U.S. economy.”

For example, real-time payments mean people living on tight budgets will have to rely less on costly check-cashing services and high-interest loans and will incur less overdraft and late fees. Small businesses will also benefit because they can avoid short-term loans with high-interest rates.

The proposal has gained the support of Google’s head of payments, Caesar Sengupta, and Democratic lawmakers including U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen and Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jesús García.

Great to see today’s news on a real-time payments system in the US! We @Google welcome the Fed’s leadership here. This is a good step toward more economic opportunity and financial inclusion for everyone. https://t.co/Slb3jxFeTF

— Caesar Sengupta (@caesars) August 6, 2019

In a statement, Warren, who is campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, said “I’m glad the Fed has finally taken action to ensure that people living paycheck-to-paycheck don’t have to wait up to five days for a check to clear so that they can pay their rent, cover child care, or pick up groceries.  Today’s Fed action will also help small businesses by making payments from customers available more quickly. I look forward to working with the Fed to ensure a swift and smooth implementation of this system.”

Comments about FedNow will be accepted for 90 days after the proposal is published in the Federal Register.

Netflix’s ‘Mindhunter’ Season 2 trailer teases teeny but terrifying Charles Manson

Tim Dempsey

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“One more thing – Manson is small. Like, really small. Try not to stare.”

The second season of Netflix’s Mindhunter sees the pioneering murder investigators Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) meeting the 5’2″ Charles Manson (as played by Damon Herriman for the second time after his appearance in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood). 

The new season tackles the infamous child murders in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981, as well as the Son of Sam killer and the return of Cameron Britton’s horribly magnetic murderer Ed Kemper.

It’s also a mini Fringe reunion, with Michael Cerveris joining the cast, as the new chief of Ford and Tench’s serial killer unit, alongside his former co-star Anna Torv. Read more…

More about Netflix, David Fincher, Charles Manson, Mindhunter, and Jonathan Groff

UrbanClap, India’s largest home services startup, raises $75M

Tim Dempsey

UrbanClap, a marketplace for freelance labor in India and the UAE, has raised $75 million in a new financing round to expand its business.

The Series E round for the four-and-a-half-year old India-based startup was led Tiger Global. Existing investors Steadview Capital, which led the startup’s Series D in December last year, and Vy Capital also participated in the current round. The startup, which has raised about $185 million to date, said some early investors sold portions of their stake as part of the new round.

Through its platform, UrbanClap matches service people such as cleaners, repair staff and beauticians with customers across 10 cities in India and Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The startup supports 20,000 “micro-franchisees” (service professionals) with around 450,000 transactions taking place each month, cofounder and CEO Abhiraj Bhal told TechCrunch.

Bhal said that UrbanClap helps offline service workers, who have traditionally relied on getting work through middleman such as some store or word of mouth networks, to find more work. And they earn more, too. UrbanClap offers a more direct model, with workers keeping 80% of the cost of their jobs. That, Bhal said, means workers can earn multiples more and manage their own working hours.

“The UrbanClap model really allows them to become service entrepreneurs. Their earnings will shoot up two or three-fold, and it isn’t uncommon to see it rise as much as 8X — it’s a life-changing experience,” he said. Average value of a service is between $17 to $22, according to the company.

In recent years, UrbanClap has also started to offer training, credit, and basic banking services to better support the service workers on its platform. On its website, UrbanClap claims to offer 73 services — including kitchen cleaning, hairdressing, and yoga training. It says it has served 3 million customers.

Bhal said that around 20-25% of applicants are accepted into the platform, that’s a decision based on in-person meetings, background and criminal checks, as well as a “skills” test. Workers are encouraged to work exclusively — though it isn’t a requirement — and they wear UrbanClap outfits and represent the brand with customers.

Ethics in the age of autonomous vehicles

Tim Dempsey

Earlier this month, TechCrunch held its inaugural Mobility Sessions event, where leading mobility-focused auto companies, startups, executives and thought leaders joined us to discuss all things autonomous vehicle technology, micromobility and electric vehicles.

Extra Crunch is offering members access to full transcripts of key panels and conversations from the event, such as Megan Rose Dickey‘s chat with Voyage CEO and co-founder Oliver Cameron and Uber’s prediction team lead Clark Haynes on the ethical considerations for autonomous vehicles.

Megan, Oliver and Clark talk through how companies should be thinking about ethics when building out the self-driving ecosystem, while also diving into the technical aspects of actually building an ethical transportation product. The panelists also discuss how their respective organizations handle ethics, representation and access internally, and how their approaches have benefited their offerings.

Clark Haynes: So we as human drivers, we’re naturally what’s called foveate. Our eyes go forward and we have some mirrors that help us get some situational awareness. Self-driving cars don’t have that problem. Self-driving cars are designed with 360-degree sensors. They can see everything around them.

But the interesting problem is not everything around you is important. And so you need to be thinking through what are the things, the people, the actors in the world that you might be interacting with, and then really, really think through possible outcomes there.

I work on the prediction problem of what’s everyone doing? Certainly, you need to know that someone behind you is moving in a certain way in a certain direction. But maybe that thing that you’re not really certain what it is that’s up in front of you, that’s the thing where you need to be rolling out 10, 20 different scenarios of what might happen and make certain that you can kind of hedge your bets against all of those.

For access to the full transcription below and for the opportunity to read through additional event transcripts and recaps, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free. 

Megan Rose Dickey: Ready to talk some ethics?

Oliver Cameron: Born ready.

Clark Haynes: Absolutely.

Rose Dickey: I’m here with Oliver Cameron of Voyage, a self-driving car company that operates in communities, like retirement communities, for example. And with Clark Haynes of Uber, he’s on the prediction team for autonomous vehicles.

So some of you in the audience may remember, it was last October, MIT came out with something called the moral machine. And it essentially laid out 13 different scenarios involving self-driving cars where essentially someone had to die. It was either the old person or the young person, the black person, or the white person, three people versus one person. I’m sure you guys saw that, too.

So why is that not exactly the right way to be thinking about self-driving cars and ethics?

Haynes: This is the often-overused trolley problem of, “You can only do A or B choose one.” The big thing there is that if you’re actually faced with that as the hardest problem that you’re doing right now, you’ve already failed.

You should have been working harder to make certain you never ended up in a situation where you’re just choosing A or B. You should actually have been, a long time ago, looking at A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and like thinking through all possible outcomes as far as what your self-driving car could do, in low probability outcomes that might be happening.

Rose Dickey: Oliver, I remember actually, it was maybe a few months ago, you tweeted something about the trolley problem and how much you hate it.

Cameron: I think it’s one of those questions that doesn’t have an ideal answer today, because no one’s got self-driving cars deployed to tens of thousands of people experiencing these sorts of issues on the road. If we did an experiment, how many people here have ever faced that conundrum? Where they have to choose between a mother pushing a stroller with a child and a regular, normal person that’s just crossing the road?

Rose Dickey: We could have a quick show of hands. Has anyone been in that situation?

China’s new Nasdaq-style board for tech shares starts trading with 25 companies listed

Tim Dempsey

Trading on China’s new Nasdaq-style stock market began today, with 25 tech companies listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, operated by the Shanghai Stock Market. Called the STAR Market, the board is an initiative by the government to encourage more Chinese tech companies to list domestically by addressing concerns about governance.

Traders cautioned that initial trading may be volatile as investors buy and trade stocks, however, and that warning was borne out today with trading by several companies paused after a surge of buying triggered their circuit breakers, or measures put into place that temporarily halt buying and selling to prevent stock crashes.

Plans for the STAR Market were announced in November as part of the Chinese government’s efforts to launch capital market reforms and make listing in mainland China more appealing to tech companies by easing profitability requirements. Some of the highest-profile Chinese tech IPOs, including Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, JD.com and Pinduoduo, have taken place in New York City or Hong Kong, and the STAR Market may encourage more local stock debuts and investment—a goal that holds especially high stakes as China’s trade war with the U.S. continues.

But CNBC notes that the success of the STAR Market is far from a sure thing, since China has launched two other equity markets (the ChiNext in 009 and the New Third Board in 2013) that still receive far less attention than its two primary stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Tesla’s new V3 Supercharger can charge up to 1,500 electric vehicles a day

Tim Dempsey

Tesla has opened a massive next-generation electric vehicle charging station in Las Vegas that combines the company’s core products into one sustainable energy ecosystem, fulfilling a vision CEO Elon Musk laid out nearly three years ago.

The new V3 Supercharger, which supports a peak rate of up to 250 kilowatts, is designed to dramatically cut charging times for its electric vehicles. Tesla unveiled its first V3 Supercharger in March at its Fremont, Calif. factory. A second V3 Supercharger is located in Hawthorne, Calif., near the Tesla Design Studio. Both of these locations, which were initially used as test sites, lack two key Tesla products.

This new location in Las Vegas is considered the first V3 Supercharger. It’s notable, and not just because of the size — there are 39 total chargers in all. This V3 Supercharger also uses Tesla solar panels and its Powerpack batteries to generate and store the power needed to operate the chargers. The result is a complete system that generates its own energy and passes it along to thousands of Tesla vehicles.

The new Supercharger, located off the Las Vegas Strip, below the High Roller on the LINQ promenade, was built on Caesars Entertainment property. The site is part of Caesars Entertainment’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2025.

There are caveats to the capabilities of this Supercharger station. Only one Tesla vehicle — the Model 3 Long Range iteration — can charge at the peak rate of 250 kW. The 250 kW results in up to 180 miles of range added to the battery in 15 minutes on a Model 3 Long Range.

The company’s new Model S and Model X vehicles can charge up to a 200 kW rate.

However, even older Model S and X vehicles and more basic versions of the Model 3 will experience faster charging rates at this location because there is no power sharing, a standard practice at Tesla’s other charging stations.

Improvements to charging times are critical for the company as it sells more Model 3 vehicles, its highest volume car. Wait times at some popular Supercharger stations can be lengthy. Early adopters might have been content to wait, but as new Tesla customers come online that patience could dwindle. And as more of these V3 Superchargers come online, potential customers might be encouraged to buy the pricier long range version Model 3.

Tesla has said in the past that these improvements will allow the Supercharger network to serve more than twice as many vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today.

The V3 is not a retrofit of the company’s previous generations. It’s an architecture shift that includes a new 1 MW power cabinet, similar to the company’s utility-scale products, and a liquid-cooled cable design, which enables charge rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour. Tesla uses air-cooled cables on V2 Superchargers.

Tesla’s new V3 Supercharger can charge up to 1,500 electric vehicles a day

Tim Dempsey

Tesla has opened a massive next-generation electric vehicle charging station in Las Vegas that combines the company’s core products into one sustainable energy ecosystem, fulfilling a vision CEO Elon Musk laid out nearly three years ago.

The new V3 Supercharger, which supports a peak rate of up to 250 kilowatts, is designed to dramatically cut charging times for its electric vehicles. Tesla unveiled its first V3 Supercharger in March at its Fremont, Calif. factory. A second V3 Supercharger is located in Hawthorne, Calif., near the Tesla Design Studio. Both of these locations, which were initially used as test sites, lack two key Tesla products.

This new location in Las Vegas is considered the first V3 Supercharger. It’s notable, and not just because of the size — there are 39 total chargers in all. This V3 Supercharger also uses Tesla solar panels and its Powerpack batteries to generate and store the power needed to operate the chargers. The result is a complete system that generates its own energy and passes it along to thousands of Tesla vehicles.

The new Supercharger, located off the Las Vegas Strip, below the High Roller on the LINQ promenade, was built on Caesars Entertainment property. The site is part of Caesars Entertainment’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2025.

There are caveats to the capabilities of this Supercharger station. Only one Tesla vehicle — the Model 3 Long Range iteration — can charge at the peak rate of 250 kW. The 250 kW results in up to 180 miles of range added to the battery in 15 minutes on a Model 3 Long Range.

The company’s new Model S and Model X vehicles can charge up to a 200 kW rate.

However, even older Model S and X vehicles and more basic versions of the Model 3 will experience faster charging rates at this location because there is no power sharing, a standard practice at Tesla’s other charging stations.

Improvements to charging times are critical for the company as it sells more Model 3 vehicles, its highest volume car. Wait times at some popular Supercharger stations can be lengthy. Early adopters might have been content to wait, but as new Tesla customers come online that patience could dwindle. And as more of these V3 Superchargers come online, potential customers might be encouraged to buy the pricier long range version Model 3.

Tesla has said in the past that these improvements will allow the Supercharger network to serve more than twice as many vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today.

The V3 is not a retrofit of the company’s previous generations. It’s an architecture shift that includes a new 1 MW power cabinet, similar to the company’s utility-scale products, and a liquid-cooled cable design, which enables charge rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour. Tesla uses air-cooled cables on V2 Superchargers.

Tesla’s new V3 Supercharger can charge up to 1,500 electric vehicles a day

Tim Dempsey

Tesla has opened a massive next-generation electric vehicle charging station in Las Vegas that combines the company’s core products into one sustainable energy ecosystem, fulfilling a vision CEO Elon Musk laid out nearly three years ago.

The new V3 Supercharger, which supports a peak rate of up to 250 kilowatts, is designed to dramatically cut charging times for its electric vehicles. Tesla unveiled its first V3 Supercharger in March at its Fremont, Calif. factory. A second V3 Supercharger is located in Hawthorne, Calif., near the Tesla Design Studio. Both of these locations, which were initially used as test sites, lack two key Tesla products.

This new location in Las Vegas is considered the first V3 Supercharger. It’s notable, and not just because of the size — there are 39 total chargers in all. This V3 Supercharger also uses Tesla solar panels and its Powerpack batteries to generate and store the power needed to operate the chargers. The result is a complete system that generates its own energy and passes it along to thousands of Tesla vehicles.

The new Supercharger, located off the Las Vegas Strip, below the High Roller on the LINQ promenade, was built on Caesars Entertainment property. The site is part of Caesars Entertainment’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2025.

There are caveats to the capabilities of this Supercharger station. Only one Tesla vehicle — the Model 3 Long Range iteration — can charge at the peak rate of 250 kW. The 250 kW results in up to 180 miles of range added to the battery in 15 minutes on a Model 3 Long Range.

The company’s new Model S and Model X vehicles can charge up to a 200 kW rate.

However, even older Model S and X vehicles and more basic versions of the Model 3 will experience faster charging rates at this location because there is no power sharing, a standard practice at Tesla’s other charging stations.

Improvements to charging times are critical for the company as it sells more Model 3 vehicles, its highest volume car. Wait times at some popular Supercharger stations can be lengthy. Early adopters might have been content to wait, but as new Tesla customers come online that patience could dwindle. And as more of these V3 Superchargers come online, potential customers might be encouraged to buy the pricier long range version Model 3.

Tesla has said in the past that these improvements will allow the Supercharger network to serve more than twice as many vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today.

The V3 is not a retrofit of the company’s previous generations. It’s an architecture shift that includes a new 1 MW power cabinet, similar to the company’s utility-scale products, and a liquid-cooled cable design, which enables charge rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour. Tesla uses air-cooled cables on V2 Superchargers.