The gym can’t replace therapy, but it’s a damn good release when you’re dealing with a tough day at the office or a stressful family affair. Running can be meditative and yoga can be relaxing, but if you need to blow off steam, you need to lift—and lift heavy.

When your temper is high and you’re frustrated beyond belief, throwing some weight around is an incomparable release. Here are four heavy-lifting routines to help you blow off steam.
Anger Management: Best Heavy-Lifting Workouts to Blow off Steam
Workout 1: Locomotion
Equipment needed: Turf space, loaded sled, heavy dumbbells
1. Farmer’s Carry — 6 x 50m: Stand tall with a weight in each hand. Maintain a “proud” chest, pull shoulder blades down and back, and walk forward using short heel-to-toe steps. Aim for your body weight equivalent to be carried. If you can’t find dumbbells that can equate to this, try loading a trap bar to that equivalent instead. Rest 90 seconds between carries.
2. Sled Push — 6 rounds x 50m: Stand behind the sled with arms straight and flexed, body leaning forward. Drive the sled using a fast yet controlled pace. Again, aim for bodyweight equivalent to be pushed. Rest 90 seconds between pushes.
3. High Box Jump — 5 x 6 reps: Squat down to just above parallel and bring arms back behind hips. Explode with a strong forward-arm swing, tucking your knees after you’ve fully extended your legs. Land softly in the same squat depth you started with. Stand up tall, locking hips to finish the movement. Rest as long as needed between jumps.
Workout 2: Upper-Body Power Play
Equipment needed: Slam ball, bench, pullup bar, dumbbells
1. Med Ball Slams — 5 x 15 reps: Keep the weight relatively light (15 pounds) but move explosively to blow off steam and torch calories. With feet shoulder-width apart, reach to full extension with the ball overhead (try not to bend your elbows). With your full force, slam the ball down between your feet. Pick the ball up and repeat. Rest 60 seconds between rounds.
2A. Dumbbell Bench Press — 10 reps: Go heavy. Sit on end of bench, holding dumbbells resting on thighs. Lie back, guiding dumbbells over chest with legs, then plant feet to start. With dumbbells angled in and thumbs over collarbone, squeeze shoulder blades together and down. Press weights over chest to a wide V shape, then return to start.2B. Plyometric Pushups — max reps: Don’t clap your hands during the pushups. It’s an easy way to catch a finger and be out with a silly injury. Just explode up from the bottom position so hands come off the floor, then immediately drop into the next rep.
Directions: Perform 4 contrast sets of bench press and plyo pushups, resting 90 seconds between rounds. Contrast sets comprise a heavy lift followed by an explosive movement that mimics the mechanics of that lift. These trick your muscle fibers into exploding even more than they normally would since the body is duplicating the loaded pattern during the second set.
3. EMOM Chinups — 10 x 5 reps
Directions: EMOM stands for every minute on the minute. Start your clock and perform the first 5 reps with the clock running. It should take you around 15 seconds, give or take. The remainder of that minute (the next 45 seconds) is your recovery. Once the next minute begins, you should be starting your first rep of set 2. Repeat until you’ve completed 10 sets in this fashion.

Workout 3: Leg Day From Hell
Equipment needed: Squat cage, barbell, kettlebell, leg press
1. Paused Back Squats — 5 x 3 reps: In a squat rack, grasp the bar as far apart as is comfortable and come under it. Step back and stand with feet at shoulder width and toes turned slightly out. Inhale, then bend your hips and knees to lower your body using a slow negative. Pause at your full depth (you shouldn’t lose the arch in your low back). Extend through hips and push knees out to stand. Nothing beats standing under the heavy bar when you’re on your last nerve. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
2. Romanian Deadlift — 5 x 8: Grasp the bar at shoulder width, holding it in front of your thighs. Bend your hips back and lower your torso, allowing your knees to bend only as needed, until you feel a stretch in your hamstrings. Focus on a hovering RDL, rather than touching the floor with the barbell. Extend your hips to come back up. If your back begins to round, you’ve either gone too heavy or descended too low. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
3A. Kettlebell Swing to Squat Swing x 12 reps: Perform a typical kettlebell swing, but at the top of the swing, use the weight of the bell to counter your balance as you squat, then rise to go into a swing. It may take a couple of reps to get the rhythm down.3B. Barbell Split Squat x 8 reps each side: Load a barbell and rack it in the back squat position. (Use a power rack, or clean and press barbell and rest it on shoulders.) Stand tall with feet hip-distance apart, knees soft. Step right foot back two to three feet so torso is equidistant between feet. Plant the ball of back foot on ground and keep heel raised to start. Lower right knee toward floor until left knee is bent at a 90-degree angle and shin is perpendicular to the ground. Press through left heel to rise and return to start. Do all reps with right leg back, then switch sides.
Directions: Perform 3A and 3B as supersets, performing 3 total rounds. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
Finisher: Heels-Elevated Leg Press x 2 min: This is a maniacal finisher that’ll torch the quads, helping you blow off steam and then some. The goal here is to match your body weight on the leg press machine, and perform continuous reps until the 2 minutes has elapsed. You can’t rack the weight, but you can rest-pause when needed with straight legs. Focus on the quads by keeping a narrower stance that’s lower on the platform, allowing the heels to raise off the platform at the bottom end ranges. You’re only doing one killer set of these, so make it count.

Workout 4: Isometric Mayhem
Equipment needed: Squat cage, safety pins, barbell, and two benches
Note: The goal with isometric training is to work as hard as possible against the immovable object. If you’re not giving it your all, you’re missing the immense training benefits. This method doubles as a great way to blow off steam since, well, you’re going to zap your nervous system and every shred of pent up energy you may have had at the start of the workout. Once you give it a try, you’ll see.
1. Isometric Deadlift — 6×30 sec.: Set the pins on the squat cage to the lowest setting, and wedge the bar between the bottom of the cage and those pins. Set up for a typical deadlift, pulling the bar into the pins as hard as possible. Keep the form strict, and attempt to lift the entire machine off the ground (assuming you can’t). Rest 60 seconds between sets. 
2. Isometric Bench Press — 5×30 sec.: If you don’t have a Smith machine setup, use a bench or squat cage with pins. Set up so the racked bar is above your chest, rather than your eyes, at a low-rack position that allows you to keep elbows bent at 90 degrees. Make sure the bar is loaded to a weight far above your 1RM, and press as hard as you can into the bar for 30 seconds straight. Rest 60 seconds between sets.
3. Back Plank — 5 x 20 sec.: Set up between two benches while seated on the floor. Place elbows on the benches, and keep arms at a 90-degree angle to your body. Make fists, look at the ceiling, and raise hips off the ground by planting feet into the floor and driving elbows into the benches. Squeeze glutes and upper back to keep your body from falling below the level of the benches. Return to the floor to rest for 90 seconds between sets. 
4. Wall Sit — 3 x 1 min.: Take a “seat” against the wall with knees bent at 90 degrees. Press your back into the wall with force to engage the quads. If 1 minute is beyond your current capabilities, go as long as you can. Rest as long as needed between sets.

Lee Boyce is a strength coach based in Toronto, Canada

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This article was produced in partnership with T1.
Now that the genetic testing industry is some 15-20 years old, the medical profession and wellness industry are much better equipped with precision tools to provide customized treatments and guidance for a variety of conditions and cater to a vast range of customer needs. Among companies that offer this powerful insight into our health and general well-being, there is one that excels in “precision healthcare.” OmeCare, a San Diego, California company, stands out from the ranks of its competitors thanks to its personalized and customized deliverables.   
In a nutshell, here is what makes OmeCare so unique. The traditional and more widely used approach to genetic evaluation is based on analyzing a generic spectrum of markers—the “template.” By contrast, OmeCare uses a more focused approach; it interprets and analyzes 33,000 genetic markers to provide customized and precise recommendations for nutrition, medication, pregnancy planning, nutrigenomics, sports performance, and overall wellness. This is the case of “less is more”: the analysis that the company’s scientists carry out, though it relies on fewer parameters, is more in-depth and more accurate than those conducted by the majority of DNA companies. “DNA testing is now familiar to many but it still overwhelms people with large amounts of unsuitable and unusable health information and advice,” says Michael Druker, Chief Operating Officer. “At a time when millions of people are urgently looking to better understand and safeguard their health, our technology empowers them and their physicians with actionable insights to create personalized strategies that suit their lifestyle, genetics, and ultimately their overall health.” Based on such testing, OmeCare offers “health and wellness management methods and systems useful for the practice thereof” that are protected by a U.S. patent. 
“Out tests are done for wellness, nutrition, fitness, skincare, and macrogenomics, which means that we analyze your body and your genes, and we tell you what will work best for you,” says Dr. Michael Nova— OmeCare’s Chief of Innovations and co-founder. To explain how customized genetic testing works and what stunning results it produces, Dr. Nova uses the analogy of antidepressants that are constantly prescribed and used by patients on a trial and error basis, which proves to be like endlessly groping for the right remedy in uninformed darkness. With OmeCare’s pinpointed genetic testing, this painful and lengthy process can be foregone. Once the company’s lab generates test results, the patient—or rather a client—is provided with a precise road map to a customized fitness regimen, nutrition, skincare, and general well-being based on accurate and unique genetic markers data.  
The company provides DNA testing for both physicians and individuals. In its 12 years, OmeCare has provided over 3,000 physicians and 200,000 individuals with DNA reports. “We are among the few genetic testing companies that have both a consumer line of products and a physician line of products, and we are able to do this because we have our own lab. It is a very sophisticated, high-complexity testing laboratory with the most licenses in every state, including New York,” explains Dr. Nova of the edge OmeCare possesses. Most genetic testing companies outsource testing to third-party labs, while OmeCare does theirs in-house, which makes the company truly unique and its DNA test the most precise, reliable, and actionable in the industry. The lab possesses all requisite accreditations, including one from the College of Pathologists and CLIA (Clinical Laboratories Improvements Amendment). The San Diego laboratory recently launched a partnership with Vivera Pharmaceuticals to offer a rapid COVID-19 diagnostic testing kit. 
OmeCare’s breadwinner is its nutrition test. Some 5-6 years ago there was no data on how our genes interact with food, but in today’s health-conscious climate, such tests have grown in popularity. “Everyone should have a precision nutrition protocol that shows what is best for you from the genetic point of view,” shares Nova of the new-age recipe to physical well-being. By providing invaluable guidance to a healthier lifestyle based on each individual’s unique set of genetic data, OmeCare leads the way in the field of state-of-the-art wellness and health management. 
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Smacking snooze may keep your reflexes sharp, but University of Colorado, Boulder, research suggests getting out of bed just an hour earlier every day can make you happier. Being a “morning person” corresponds to a 23 percent lower lifetime likelihood of having major depressive disorder. Good news for those looking to mitigate depression with lifestyle tweaks.

So how do you turn a night owl into an early bird? Hit the sack 15 minutes earlier tonight and set your alarm (located across the room) 15 minutes earlier. Stick with this for two days, then bump up your bed- and wake-time by another 15 minutes. Repeat this until you’ve successfully trained your body to sleep and rise on a different schedule. Other tips: Skip the caffein after 4 p.m., use blackout shades, turn your thermostat to 65 and put away electronic devices an hour before bed.
If you’re struggling with depression, consult medical help. Here’s how to recognize the signs. 

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Even what seems like the most benign hiking trail can result in a twisted ankle, pulled muscle, or worse if you don’t prepare properly. The most effective method of readying your body for the rigors of the trail is consistent stretching.
We suggest stretching all of the main muscle groups used in hiking, but also pay attention to your particular needs, and take them into account. If you have weak ankles, make an extra effort to strengthen them. Same goes for calf muscles, tight hamstrings, and any other muscle group you may have issues with.

First up: activating and strengthening your core. Having a strong core is imperative for successful hiking, and affects every other part of your body, from your back muscles, to posture, to flexibility in the legs.
According to Popsugar, the core muscles consist of your abdomen, hips and lower back. Each of these groups plays an integral part in maintaining muscle health on the trail. Popular core stretches include child’s pose, cobra, spine rotation, and more.
The standing stretch is a staple among hikers and other athletes. Photo: Abigail Keenan/Unsplash
Second, we have what are arguably one of the most important muscle groups when it comes to hiking—the quadriceps. These are the muscles on the front of your thighs, and are responsible for most of the power generated during hiking. The quads also help extend and straighten your knee with each step, so it’s important to keep them limber.

Stretching the quads is relatively easy, and can be performed before or after a workout. If you choose to stretch prior to warming up your muscles, place extra emphasis on being as gentle as possible to avoid pulling a muscle.
We recommend the standing stretch. Stand on your right foot, and grab your left shin by bending your leg upwards behind you. Pull you shin toward your body, and hold for 30 seconds. Repeat the process on your right leg.

Next up are the hamstrings, which work together with the quadriceps to carry you forward as you make your way along the trail. Tight hamstrings can result in extreme discomfort on the hiking trail, and in severe cases, can cause pulled or torn back muscles.
This guy definitely stretched before hitting the trail. Photo: Kimon Maritz/Unsplash
To stretch the hamstrings effectively, it’s best to wait until after your workout, when muscles are warmed up. Otherwise, stretching could lead to injury. Here are six of the best hamstring stretches to maintain health of the back, legs and knees.
Last (but not least) on the list are calf muscles—a muscle group key for hiking. These powerhouses support each step, flexing and pivoting as you move along the trail.

One of the most effective stretches to prevent calf injury is the downward dog—this move targets the muscles in your lower legs for a deep stretch.
Happy trails!
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The sound of your alarm going off in the morning isn’t typically a pleasant experience. Whether it’s chimes, beeps, or talk radio, that alarm means one thing: You have to drag yourself out of bed. But new research from Australia shows that the kind of alarm tone you use might have a noticeable effect on […] More