The demand is there for those who are ready to take the plunge to start their career as a counsellor, in this article we will go through the path to get you there. Picture by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Becoming a counsellor in Australia is not an easy process, but for those with empathy and a passion for helping others, it can be well worth it. There are many opportunities for those who want to help people through their personal and professional struggles.

The demand is there for those who are ready to take the plunge to start their career as a counsellor, in this article we will go through the path to get you there.

What does counselling involve?

Counselling can involve a variety of different things, depending on the person's needs. It can involve working with people to help them understand their thoughts and feelings and to come up with a plan to deal with whatever might be troubling them.

Counsellors work with individuals, couples, families and groups, and can provide support for a range of issues, including depression, anxiety, addiction, relationship problems and bullying.

Working as a counsellor can be very rewarding, as you are able to help people work through their problems and improve their lives. It can be challenging too, but with the right education and experience, you will be equipped to take on any challenge.

The process to become a counsellor in Australia

In order to become a counsellor in Australia, there are certain steps you need to take. While some steps are not mandatory they will help you develop your craft so you can start practising with confidence. The steps include studying, personal development and accreditation.

Get qualified

Firstly, you will need to gain qualifications related to counselling, either through an undergraduate degree or a postgraduate course like the Masters of Counselling online programs which are quite popular.

Many universities, TAFEs and private colleges offer courses that provide a good foundation for your career as a counsellor. The skills you're taught will help you develop not only from a theoretical perspective but will help you in the real world too.

It is also important to gain practical experience - many employers require applicants to have at least two years of relevant experience before applying for positions. Keep in mind while it's not a necessity it's becoming increasingly common for employers to ask for this experience.

Professional development

Once you have gained the necessary qualifications and experience, you should look to complete professional development activities such as workshops and seminars related to counselling topics. If you join a professional body in order to keep up to date with the latest developments and best practices, it will certainly help. They provide constant updates to courses and seminars so what you learn is relevant to the industry.

Accreditation

These bodies provide not only professional development but comprehensive support for practising counsellors. This will also ensure that you are practising ethically and professionally, and provide clients with peace of mind when they seek your services.

How to get started in your career as a counsellor

Once you have completed all the necessary steps, it's time to start your career as a counsellor. It can be helpful to begin by volunteering or working for organisations related to counselling, such as youth centres or mental health clinics.

This will give you valuable experience and help you build a good reputation with potential employers. It is also a good idea to network and attend events in your field, as this will make it easier to find job opportunities.

Once you have gained some experience, you can then start applying for permanent jobs or look into setting up your own private practice.

You may also want to consider specialising in certain areas of counselling, such as grief and loss, stress management or addiction recovery. It depends on your preference and previous experience as many of these categories can vary, so make sure you know what field works for you.

Becoming a counsellor in Australia can be challenging but ultimately very rewarding. With the right education and preparation, you can embark on a successful career helping people through their personal and professional struggles - and make a real difference in people's lives along the way.

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What is the process for becoming a counsellor in Australia? - Glen Innes Examiner

People come to big cities in search of better opportunities and with the idea of making life better. However, there is a cost one must be ready to pay in these big cities. And it could further up in near future. According to the Economist Intelligence Units (EIU) Worldwide Cost of Living Index for 2022, the average cost of living will rise 8.1% due to Russias war in Ukraine and the pandemics lingering effects.

Here are the 5 most expensive cities in the world:

Millions of tourists from around the world travel to New York each year. It is the most populated city in the US and is also referred to as The Big Apple." New York City is divided into five boroughs, each of which is associated with a different county in the state of New York: Brooklyn (Kings County), Manhattan (New York County), Queens (Queens County), the Bronx (Bronx County), and Staten Island (Richmond County).

Singapore is a small but thriving island nation with a lot to offer in terms of lifestyle amenities and personal development. Despite being a little red dot on the globe map, the nation is ideal for growing families and children in a joyful and secure atmosphere. The city-state is on number two on the list of most expensive cities in the world

The third place belongs to Tel Aviv. The fifth-most visited city in the Middle East and Africa is situated on the Israeli Mediterranean coast. The city, which is well known for its culture, also has a lively nightlife.

Los Angeles and Hong Kong are the next two on the list. Los Angeles is a city in California, the United States, and is known for its iconic Hollywood sign and for being the official residence of many famous actors, whereas Hong Kong is a city and special administrative region of China, officially known as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China. Additionally, it serves as the countrys hub for the film and television industries.

Zurich is Switzerlands financial capital and an upscale banking city. As a result, its no surprise that its frequently referred to as one of the worlds most expensive cities. Zurich is known for its opulent lifestyles, high-end shopping, and gourmet chocolates. Despite its high cost and extravagance, it is ranked as one of the best cities in the world to live in.

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New York to Singapore; 5 Most Expensive Cities In The World - News18

In brief OpenAI has released a new language model named ChatGPT this week, which is designed to mimic human conversations.

The model is based on the company's latest text-generation GPT-3.5 system released earlier this year. ChatGPT is more conversational than previous versions. It can ask users follow-up questions and refrain from responding to inappropriate inputs instead of just generating text.

Some examples show ChatGPT won't provide dangerous advice when prompted and can try to correct wrong statements. OpenAI believes the model should be safer to use since it was trained using human feedback. After giving examples of helpful responses to random prompts the data was then ranked in order from best to worst to guide a reinforcement learning system into rewarding ChatGPT for generating good outputs.

But people using the model have already proven how easy it is to bypass ChatGPT's safety measures. Many have demonstrated very simple phrases that can guide the system to generate content it isn't supposed to, such as instructing users how to bully people or make Molotov cocktails.

ChatGPT is, unfortunately, plagued by the same fundamental issues affecting all current language models: It doesn't know what it's talking about.

As a result, it will still generate false information and can sometimes decline to answer benign questions. If you have signed up for an OpenAI account, you can play with ChatGPT here.

Researchers at DeepMind have built a neural network capable of playing the two-player war game Stratego.

Stratego is more complicated to play for machines than previous games solved by DeepMind, like Chess or Go. The number of possible outcomes and moves to play are on the order of 10535 states, larger than Go's 10360, Nature reported.

The system, named DeepNash, claims to work by solving for the Nash equilibrium, a mathematical concept that describes how to reach the optimal solution between players in a non-cooperative game. DeepNash competed in an online Stratego tournament and was ranked third after 50 matches among all human players that played on the game platform Gravon since 2002.

"Our work shows that such a complex game as Stratego, involving imperfect information, does not require search techniques to solve it," says team member Karl Tuyls, a DeepMind researcher based in Paris. "This is a really big step forward in AI."

The hype in reinforcement learning has died down a little since the release of AlphaGo in 2017. Researchers believe teaching AI the skills to play games like Stratego are relevant for helping machines make decisions in the real world, we're told.

"At some point, the leading AI research labs need to get beyond recreational settings, and figure out how to measure scientific progress on the squishier real-world 'games' that we actually care about," Michael Wellman, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, who was not directly involved in the study, commented.

The DoE is providing $4.3 million to fund 16 AI-focused projects related to high-energy physics research.

These projects [PDF] will be led by different universities across the US, and cover a wide range of research areas ranging from string theory, cosmology, to neural networks and particle accelerators. The total investment will be split over three years, with $1.3 million going out in the first year.

The DoE also recently announced a similar initiative awarding $6.4 million to AI R&D for three high-energy physics projects to be led by national laboratories. "AI and machine learning techniques in high energy physics are vitally important for advancing the field," said Gina Rameika, DOE Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics, according to HPCwire.

"These awards represent new opportunities for university researchers that will enable the next discoveries in high energy physics."

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OpenAI tweaks ChatGPT to avoid dangerous AI information - The Register

Reinforcement learning is the closest thing to human learning. These techniques are the base of all solutions, starting from self-driving cars to surgeons being replaced by medical AI bots. It has become the main driver of emerging technologies and still has plenty to offer to the tech industry. Reinforcement learning applications in various industries are shaping the future of the AI. Here, we have mentioned the top 5 applications of reinforcement learning in real life.

Self-driving Cars Trajectory optimization, motion planning, dynamic pathing, controller optimization, and scenario-based learning policies for highways are examples of autonomous driving tasks where reinforcement learning could be used.

Healthcare Dynamic treatment regimens (DTRs) in chronic disease or critical care, automated medical diagnosis, and other general domains are applications of RL in healthcare. Reinforcement learning (RL) uses evaluative feedback and interaction experience with the outside world to enhance a persons capacity for behavioral decision-making.

News Recommendation Because user preferences change frequently, recommending news to users based on reviews and likes may become out of date quickly. The RL system can track the readers return behaviors using reinforcement learning.

Gaming One can go from scratch to pro level in a game such as AlphaGo zero by applying reinforcement learning. By delivering a reward signal that specifies high-level goals while allowing the game character to determine the best techniques, reinforcement learning can enable game producers to create considerably more nuanced game characters than traditional methods.

Marketing and Advertising The authors propose multi-agent reinforcement learning with real-time bidding where a clustering method is used to handle a large number of advertisers, and each cluster is assigned a strategic bidding agent.

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Top 5 Applications of Reinforcement Learning in Real-Life - Analytics Insight

For more than 30,000 years we have been the only art-making species on Earth, give or take the odd paint-throwing Neanderthal or chimpanzee. Art is the oldest and most spectacular triumph of human consciousness, from Lascaux to the Sistine Chapel. But a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) art software may be about to end that. It will whip you up a Picasso or a Turner in an instant, or apply their styles to any theme you picture, from Liz Truss dancing in a supermarket to a brawl in a 1970s disco.

Stable Diffusion and competitors such as DALL-E 2 go far beyond previous claims for AI art. Easily accessible online, and in that sense open to full public scrutiny, they create precise, rich, convincing images in response to a typed-in text for example a sad cat in a mountainous landscape in the style of Turner, or whatever combination of styles, keywords and subjects takes your fancy. Or you can ask more sidelong and existential questions, such as my request for a photograph of a human, which produced a bare-chested man who could be a museum exhibit of early homo sapiens except for his mysterious earphone-like cables. For the expert there are others: Ive been experimenting in Wombo Dream, Midjourney and Google Colab/Disco Diffusion, says the artist Mat Collishaw.

Until recently, I was deeply sceptical of the idea of AI art. I saw it as hype and casuistry, and with some cause: widely publicised efforts such as Ai-Da the robot artist obviously exaggerate the independence of the machine and play on our fascination with sentient artificial beings. But now the dream is coming true, at least in art. And art is surely one of the most inimitable expressions of the human mind.

Evangelists for so-called strong AI full artificial intelligence that will replicate and exceed the human mind are fond of making analogies with biological evolution. Over millions of years, mindless cells evolved the human brain; machines are now evolving much faster so why shouldnt they become sentient soon? The evolution of AI art seems to vindicate that. In 2018, the sale of an AI generated-painting called Portrait of Edmond de Belamy at Christies for $432,500 (360,000) was the latest thing in the field yet this portrait was crude in the extreme, a pixellated blur easy to dismiss as a pathetic computerised pastiche of Frans Hals. Four years on, the detail and nuance of images produced by the latest AI art generators have grown more impressive exponentially.

What does this mean for art? Is it the end of our run as the only art-making species? Or can humans and machines work together to create something wondrous? To find out, I challenged six outstanding human artists, including three Turner prize-winners, to experiment with AI.

Gilbert and George have been flirting with post-humanity ever since they painted their faces and hands silver, like robots, for their 1969 performance-art masterpiece The Singing Sculpture. Their merging of creative identities two people, but one artist has a similar futuristic radicalism. That extends to the authorship of the Pictures they have made since the 1970s in which they appear while operating the camera and editing its images in a deliberately unexpressive way: always sharp and bright. The panel of four portraits they have elicited from AI is called Gilbert and George by AI, but firmly credited to them as artists.

These images of Gilbert and George are like them, but not. They are clearly not photographs: instead, the software has painted them from the information it has, in several efforts with various eccentricities. At the top left, Gilbert Proesch looks as if hes in a 1960s film by Antonioni or Fellini: at bottom right, both men merge into the same grumpy caricature. In all the portraits, their eyes are cold and distant and odd. This is typical of what happens when you ask a machine to portray a human.

All existing AI art platforms, from the software that stunned Christies auction room in 2018 to the disconcertingly impressive Stable Diffusion, are types of neural network that excel at machine learning. Neural networks emulate the way neurons fire off each other in the human brain: they are capable of learning when fed with ever-vaster quantities of data. The power of machine learning is seen by some as an epochal breakthrough that makes AI creative and could soon lead to artificial consciousness if it hasnt already. This summer, Google sacked engineer Blake Lemoine after he claimed its LaMDA chatbot was starting to think for itself.

Others say these machines are only good at the job they have been taught: DeepMinds AlphaGo cant turn its skills to Scrabble or Cluedo and self-driving cars have big problems with unexpected situations outside their learning.

The trouble AI art has with depicting eyes, not to mention how many limbs or heads a human being possesses, may back up the sceptical view. The likes of DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion have been fed huge amounts of artistic and visual information yet dont have any knowledge of, say, anatomy. They dont realise this is a problem because they dont think.

Or do they?

Elizabeth Price takes on such issues in the sequence of 40 AI images she generated from text prompts. Instead of producing a finished artwork, she treated it as an experiment, sharing the results in an apparently casual way. Only when I flicked through the sequence like a slideshow did I see that it is as unsettling as her Turner prize-winning video The 1979 Woolworths Choir. Price engages with the AI as if it were indeed sentient, asking it questions rather than giving it commands, as she tries to get the software to reveal its true self. I quickly became fascinated by how it was putting images together; how that process differed from the human mind; what it knew; what it understood; and how much we could think of its dataset and search modes as a kind of cultural memory. Price says that if this is her artwork, its one that includes the questions she put: one of the limits of AI, she points out, is that it has an unsophisticated and conservative grasp of what art is.

She asks the AI: What do you understand about love for a parent; it produces a waxily real, warm yet ever so slightly creepy vision of an embracing family. Do you understand politics in the UK? elicits a shrill picture with devastating deliberate or accidental? satirical power in which hosts of shouting heads are juxtaposed with multiple union flags. What do you understand about racial identity leads to a photographic image of two Black children, one of whom holds up a photo of a Black girl as if she is a missing person. Its striking, says Price, that the software should assume racial identity means Blackness, as if whiteness were the non-racial norm.

Such apparent racism has become a problem with other AI applications such as facial recognition, and reflects the internet data the machines are fed. Price compares the intelligence she questioned to a collective unconscious. And it can throw up some seriously weird images as it trawls through digitally archived human memories. She types in the poet Emily Dickinsons lines about her own future grave: An Island in dishonored Grass / Whom none but Daisies know. In one text prompt the daisies become beetles, and the computer depicts them as giant shiny creatures in a verdant landscape.

Some combinations of words unleash the truly unexpected from AI art generators, while others result in something flat, or incoherent. It feels as if you are searching for the right key to the vast banks of imagery that exist on the internet. AI in its current state is quite literally an unconscious mind, full of memory, but unable to make sense of it. In the early 20th century, artists and poets inspired by Sigmund Freud sought to release images directly from the human unconscious. That was the surrealist revolution. Could the AI age be fertile ground for a new surrealism in which human artists pry open the digital unconscious?

Mat Collishaw and Polly Morgan work in a studio that seems to have its own subconscious. Its a converted pub in south London, a bit of a fortress from the outside, where on the ground floor Collishaw works coolly with computers and hi-tech toys including a 3D video screen. Collishaw is fascinated by the technology of the image, from early cameras and zoetropes to AI of which he is an early adopter. But downstairs in the pubs depths, he tells me, Morgan is busy amid guts and gore, skinning snakes for her taxidermy sculptures.

Not that Collishaws art is lacking in surrealism. His current experiments with AI start with 17th-century still life paintings of flowers. He feeds them into the software, then creates text prompts to add in insects. At first, the picture looks charmingly beautiful, then you start to notice more and more insects which then turn out to be flowers in disguise. Collishaw explains that it illustrates Pouyannian mimicry, when a flower imitates an insect to attract and exploit other insects which inadvertently propagate the flowers species.

It is a metaphor for AI itself for Collishaw is no techno-utopian. Like the flowers that imitate insects to trick them into propagating their pollen, the big tech corporations attract us with social media and internet searches so they can collect our data. This in turn fuels machine learning, which adds to the digital worlds glamour. Collishaws flowers are gorgeous yet deceptive.

When Morgan emerges from her bloody basement in her stained overalls, I suggest she, too, try out an AI artwork, and it arrives a few days later a taxidermy sculpture strangely transfigured. The snake in it has been cross-bred with concrete. It glistens monumentally beside a female hand whose nails are not just long, but doubled, in one of those creative slips AI can make with human anatomy. Morgan compares it to the surrealist photography of Man Ray its like a decadent remake of his portrait of Kiki of Montparnasse, her eyes closed in dreams, her hand on a carved mask. Except here, the dreamer is a disembodied hand and what it dreams of is an inorganic serpent.

Gillian Wearing uses the fantastical possibilities of AI to create a truly disconcerting image full of unease called Imagined Mask of Joan Crawford as Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. You start to laugh at the title, then stop when you realise that beneath this brutal and macabre parody of a human face, created by exploiting the inhumanity of AI portraits, is a suffering human being. This is very much a work of art by Wearing that happens to make use of AI: its the latest in a series of disconcerting and introspective works in which she has been exploring the nature of masks, and what they say about our public and private selves.

Using one of her own photographs, she has added the mask with DALL-E 2 AI so it seems to grow naturally out of her face, while being contoured to the shape of a skull all too visible under the skin. It uses the distortions that AI can create, yet within a portrait that is human and real. Wearing suggests mortality and madness in a vision of a face eaten away from inside. Its strange, spooky, funny yet like all her art it is also about the lumpen reality of being human. Even this mask morphing into two Hollywood legends is ultimately about plain sad facts. You get a sense of loneliness and anguish, crying from inside to outside, soul to soul.

So long as humans are involved, art will be all about us whatever the technology.

I asked Lindsey Mendick to try AI because she works in one of the oldest of all artistic media. Pottery was made in ice-age Europe, prehistoric China and every civilisation since. Mendick makes hilarious, lubricious ceramics that swarm with monsters and dirty jokes. What might an artist who is used to delving into wet clay make of an art form that requires you only to type a text prompt on your phone screen?

Turns out shes a natural. Typing her texts into Stable Diffusion, Mendick struck gold with the words Las Vegas, Cher and other celebrity names. She started by sending photo-style scenes of wild cavortings in a Las Vegas buffet. Then she added the term impressionist painting.

Thats how such contemporary masterpieces as Impressionist Painting of Cher and a Werewolf at a Buffet in Las Vegas and Impressionist Painting of Tom Cruise Feeling Sad Eating a Sandwich With a Werewolf in Las Vegas were born. In the funniest, most touching of her kitsch ultra-bright AI paintings of celebrities, a vulpine Leonardo DiCaprio shares a huge seafood platter with a werewolf. Man and monster break bread peacefully.

Like these collaborations between artist and machine, it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Elizabeth Price: Underfoot is at the Hunterian, Glasgow until 13 April. Lindsey Mendick in Strange Clay is at the Hayward until 8 January. Mat Collishaws AI flowers will be at Kew in 2023 and The Gilbert and George Centre opens 2023.

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Incoherent, creepy and gorgeous: we asked six leading artists to make work using AI and here are the results - The Guardian

No time, money or desire to go to a gym? Then, weve got the perfect exercise routine for you. A calisthenics workout engages all muscle groups with no cash, equipment or travel necessary.

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Youll still need to put in some time, of course, but it can all be done when you want in the comfort of your own home.

So, how do you start? Lets find out from sports medicine physician Michael Dakkak, DO.

Calisthenics exercises use your body weight as a form of resistance to perform complex, full-body exercises, explains Dr. Dakkak. Depending on the exercises, calisthenics combines strength training, resistance training and a heart-pumping cardiovascular workout.

In other words, you get a little bit of everything.

At-home calisthenics are perfect if youre just starting a fitness routine or resuming physical activity especially given that theres a very low risk of injury, says Dr. Dakkak.

But dont be fooled by the simplicity of these exercises. They can be scaled up to create an excellent workout for seasoned gym-goers and all types of athletes, too. The reason? Versatility.

You can change the exercises to make them as easy or challenging as your strength allows, Dr. Dakkak says.

Another perk? You dont need a well-equipped home gym or a bunch of machines in a pay-to-play workout studio to do these exercises. The only piece of equipment you need for calisthenics is well, your body.

Calisthenics benefits include:

A 2022 study showed that a bodyweight workout like calisthenics counts as high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Study participants who did calisthenics exercises at a vigorous pace got the same cardio benefits as interval running, sprinting and walking on a treadmill.

While the study looked at powerful calisthenics exercises like squat jumps, burpees and jumping lunges, you can also modify the exercises and perform them slower for lower-intensity interval training (LIIT).

Because many calisthenics exercises use more than one muscle group, they more accurately mimic how you use your muscles in everyday activities like lifting a box from the floor and placing it on a high shelf.

These functional exercises improve mobility, balance, coordination and flexibility, which can help prevent falls and injuries as you go about daily life, notes Dr. Dakkak.

Calisthenics are also a good way to keep your joints healthy.

A 2017 study found that eight weeks of calisthenics can improve your posture, strength and body mass index (BMI). Building muscle through strength training exercises like calisthenics can help you lose unwanted pounds and maintain a healthy weight.

A good calisthenics workout plan should leave you feeling successful yet challenged, says Dr. Dakkak. Adjust your workout based on your fitness level.

Beginners might start with three sets of five repetitions of each exercise while others might do three sets of 15 reps, he says. Aim for two to four days of strength training per week with a day of rest in between the sessions to give your muscles time to repair and get stronger.

Here are five calisthenics exercises to get you started:

Planks strengthen the core muscles that support your abdomen, spine and hips. A strong core can lower your risk of back pain and other problems.

How to do a plank:

Make it easier: Keep your knees and forearms on the floor.

Make it harder: Straighten your arms and legs.

Lunges work the muscles in your butt and hips (glutes), thighs (quadriceps and hamstrings) and abdominals.

How to do lunges:

Make it easier: Do reverse lunges, stepping backward with each leg and alternating legs.

Make it harder: Do leaping lunges, alternating legs and leaping in between each lunge.

Squats work your entire lower body from your abs down, including your calf muscles and shins.

How to do squats:

Make it easier: Use a chair to stand from a seated position, using your arms only for balance (not to push off from the chair).

Make it harder: Do a squat jump, jumping into the air from the squat position.

Push-ups work the upper body muscles in your arms (biceps), chest (pectorals) and shoulder muscles.

How to do push-ups:

Make it easier: Perform a push-up against a secured, elevated surface like a desk.

Make it harder: Clap your hands together after pushing up from the floor.

Burpees work your muscles from head to toe, incorporating different types of calisthenics exercises like squats, planks and push-ups. In addition to building muscle, burpees also get your heart rate up to provide a great cardio workout.

How to do burpees:

Make it easier: Skip the push-up and place your hands on a chair to perform the plank.

Make it harder: Do a knee tuck, jumping into the air and tucking your knees after the push-up.

If you havent been physically active for a while, Dr. Dakkak recommends seeing a healthcare provider before getting into calisthenics.

A providers OK is especially important if you have chronic or acute injuries that affect your range of motion or balance, he says. (They may recommend working with a physical therapist to ensure correct form and protect against additional injury.)

Bottom line? Calisthenics exercises are an excellent way to start your fitness journey or switch up an existing workout routine. And as you can do calisthenics at home without equipment, you can say goodbye to a sedentary lifestyle and hello to a healthier heart and toned muscles.

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What Are the Benefits of Calisthenics? - Health Essentials

IF YOU WALK into a commercial gym these days, you're likely to see a bustling section filled with free weights, complete with lines of guys waiting for their turn for the most sought-after denominations of dumbbells. Look over to another section of the space, and you're just as likely to see a nearly empty area filled with fitness machines, without a single person who looks like they know what they're doing using the equipment. Since functional training has come into vogue, using machines has become verboten in many parts of the fitness community.

Now is far past the time to move on from that workout fallacy, say Mens Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., and Mathew Forzaglia, N.F.P.T., C.P.T., and allow for the machines to rise again.

Don't get confusedour two experts don't think that using barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells aren't essential for accomplishing your muscle growth and strength goals. However, it's time to stop overlooking the benefits of using fitness machines in your trainingwhich, prior to emergence of the functional fitness phenomenon, once held a prominent position in plenty of training regimens, from bodybuilding to sports performance training.

There was a point where you walked into a Gold's Gym. You walk into your sports club, and all use all machines and plenty of people are training on [machines], Samuel says. Then we had this whole functional fitness revolution, and suddenly, nobody's training on the machines. That section is untouched in your gym, and you're missing out when you're not getting on those machines.

Samuel and Forzaglia have some beef with the fitness machine hateso they're here to explain why you shouldn't accept the myths surrounding these training methods and how you can use machines to do more than just waste your time during your next workout.

One of the biggest knocks on using fitness machines is that you cant create adequate amounts of tension to help build muscle. This is just laziness. You're always in control of how much tension you create in your body as you're trainingsome exercises using free weights just rely on that tension more when you're performing them properly. Whether youre banging out reps on a Hammer Strength chest press or pulling through machines rows, its up to you to focus on activating your core or glutes throughout each movement.

Since most machines are fixed-movement devices (think lat pulldowns, leg extensions, etc.), pushing or pulling from Point A to B has been falsely labeled as not challenging enough, since you won't be forced to use your stabilizing muscles to shore up your form. This is, again, a you problem. If you've ever had to force a few final free-weight reps with trembling arms or other muscles, you probably know that you may be one slip or jerk away from a risk of injury. This is where machines can actually be a great finishing moves since you can still challenge yourself with heavier weight without the risk of fatigue sabotaging your work.

Quite honestly, functional training has devolved into a convoluted, confusing training term. Not every lift falls under these standards to be effective, but if youre pressing or pulling weight, no matter by machine or free weight, youre building strength you can apply in your life, albeit using different strategies, for down the road.

Heres where machines become especially useful. Instead of struggling or pushing to failure, the machines fixed movement patterns allows you to work longer sets or reps without the risk of dropping the weight. Most times, all it takes is a quick move of the pin up the weight stack to continue working the muscle for a few additional reps. In other words, the machine becomes your spotter.

What I love is that you're able to load up the weight and pile of reps and push you that's the key point love but that can you said machine actually can spot because essentially, Samuel says. When I'm on the burnout set on three dumbbell or barbell press and I have a spot behind me they're functioning like my machines techniques. The machine just does that for me.

Take a look at your gyms machine section. Youll notice certain models have may be equipped to challenge different ranges of motion or angles by the shift of a pin on the machines arms. Some lateral raise machines allow you to isolate the muscle from either top, mid-range or full range of motion, creating a different challenge to your muscles you cant always get effectively from free weights.

A fun way to challenge your training is by using machines in different ways. You can focus on the eccentric portion of presses, working under more load than you can press up, or focus on one limb at a time without balance entering the equation. Machines create a new and exciting challenge to mix things up a little bit in your routine while still allowing you to finish up your workout with intensity and without as great a risk of injury if you fail.

Learn which exercises you're better off avoiding by checking out our entire Overrated series here.

Jeff Tomko is a freelance fitness writer who has written for Muscle and Fitness, Men's Fitness, and Men's Health.

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Experts Explain Why You Should Use Fitness Machines for Workouts - Men's Health

A video of a wild brawl between twomen at a gymhas gone viral on social media after footage of the intense altercation showed the men exchanging punches before bystanders eventually jumped in to break it up.

The video, which was posted to social media Wednesday, captured two men at Fitness Connection fighting in a packed gym for nearly two minutes.

In the initial moments of the fight, the two members appeared to be dodging each others punches.One spectator can even be heard asking, Theyre playing though, right?

Thats when the man in red eventually lands one of his punches, knocking the other over.

The fight quickly took a turn for the worse with both men violently attacking one another.

A woman on the phone can be seen attempting to break up the fight, but video showed the incident lasting nearly two minutes before several gym members jumped in to finally end it.

A spokesperson with Fitness Connection confirmed to Fox News Digital Friday that the incident took place inside one of its locations Tuesday. She declined to name the exact location of the facility, citing the privacy of members.

We are aware of an incident that occurred inside one of our locations on November 29, 2022, a statement from Fitness Connection said.

As always,the health and safetyof our members and Teammates is of the utmost importance and Fitness Connection strongly condemns any acts of violence, especially within our facilities.

It was not immediately clear iflaw enforcementwas notified of the incident.

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Gym-goers panic after wild brawl breaks out at Fitness Connection - New York Post

6 Healthy Habits To Support Weight Loss and Achieve Fitness Goals

Weight loss can often be a confusing topic for many in the beginning stages of their fitness journey. Many beginners fall victim to gimmicky crash diets and sub-optimal workout routines that blunt their progress and often result in rebound weight gain.

This can only be avoided by a major overhaul of bad eating habits and improper lifestyle. Today, we will examine six healthy habits that can hasten the weight loss process, and more importantly, help keep it off.

People often underestimate the importance of protein in a weight loss diet. First off, they provide an anabolic environment that supports muscle growth and recovery. Secondly, they are extremely filling and help keep away hunger pangs. This will help you adhere to your diet and prevent overeating. A high-protein diet also helps in boosting your metabolism, which in turn accelerates fat loss.

Here are some practical tips to optimize your protein intake:

You need to track your weight, body fat levels, daily calories and protein intake throughout your fitness journey. There is no better motivator than watching inches come off your waist.

Use any app available on the app store to track your daily calorie intake. Make sure to track your macronutrient and micronutrient intake as well - Chronometer would be my recommendation.

Buy a measuring tape or body fat calipers to measure your body fat levels weekly. Body fat levels are often a better indicator of overall fitness and muscle mass than BMI.

Alternatively, you can use a weighing scale to regularly track your bodyweight. However, keep your focus on weekly weight loss rates, as water intake and salt retention can often lead to stagnation or perceived weight gain from day-to-day.

Adequate daily water intake is necessary for healthy functioning of the kidneys and overall metabolism. It can also help with satiety and reducing hunger pangs.

Scientists at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, California, found that overweight women who upped their water intake to more than one liter per day lost an extra 2 kg(4.4 pounds) without any change to their diet or exercise routine.

Starting your morning with a tall glass of water is a great way to kickstart fat loss. Make sure to consume one or two glasses of water before every meal to boost metabolism (by nearly 30%) and reduce overall calorie intake.

Adding lean muscle mass to your frame has a wide range of benefits:

All you need is three full-body workouts throughout the week, focusing on compound movements like deadlifts, squats, pullups, presses, rows and weighted carries. Here's an article that will help beginners with their weightlifting.

You need to sleep for 7-8 hours daily. Numerous studies have discovered that a lack of sleep may be linked to an increase in appetite. Inadequate sleep can also hinder muscle recovery and lower testosterone levels.

Keep your bedroom cool and completely dark. Switch off all electronics one hour before you sleep. Grab a book instead.

Not only is sugar intake linked to every known disease under the sun, including stroke, cancer, hypertension and diabetes, it is also an inferior carbohydrate source that causes massive insulin spikes leading to fat accumulation. They also do not provide a sustained release of energy.

Opt for complex carbohydrates with a better glycemic profile instead. Here are a few high-quality carb sources ideal for weight loss and muscle gain.

Your weight loss journey can be fast and enjoyable if you stick to the aforementioned basics. Remember, fitness is a lifestyle.

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6 Healthy Habits To Support Weight Loss and Achieve Fitness Goals - Sportskeeda

The 6th edition of the international exposition titled 'Health and Fitness 2022' and the 4th edition of an international exhibition on hospitality solutions, hotel and resort equipment titled 'HH Expo 2022', were inaugurated on Thursday at the International Convention City Bashundhara (ICCB) in the capital.

The three-day exhibitions will remain open for visitors until 3 December from 10am to 7pm.

The purpose of the exhibitions is to demonstrate new innovations, technology, products, equipment, and methods in the concerned sectors thus exploring new avenues for the participants, organisations and patrons.

Engineer Md Hasmotuzzaman, president, ASHRAE Bangladesh Chapter; Syed Almas Kabir, president, Bangladesh-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BMCCI); Al Mamun Mridha, acting secretary general, Bangladesh China Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCCI) and Badish Jindal, president, Federation of Punjab Small Industries Associations (FOPSIA) were present at the inaugural ceremony.

Under the 'Health and Fitness 2022', products like bicycle, sports and workout equipment, natural and organic products, and amusement products were put on display.

The 'HH Expo 2022' is expected to help the industry players to explore the opportunities in the fast growing hospitality industry of Bangladesh.

During the exhibitions, companies from home and abroad will display their products in more than 160 stalls.

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Health, fitness expo begins in Dhaka - The Business Standard