Anyone who's serious about workouts will try to get a perfectly toned mid-section. Walk into any gym and you cannot miss the number of people who're trying all kinds of exercises to tone up their middles. The commonest are crunches and sit-ups, the most basic of which are performed lying flat on your back with your knees bent and hands behind your head. But if you really want to spice up your abs workout, try something new. Add weighted cable crunches to your routine. Your abdominal muscles are like any other-they respond to weighted workouts. So if biceps curls with dumb-bells stimulate your biceps to grow bigger and stronger, weighted abs workouts do the same to your abdominal muscles. There are many different types of weighted abs workouts. Some of them use special machines with weight adjustments; others use free-weights like dumb-bells or weight plates. If you go to a well-equipped gym, you could try the Kneeling Cable Crunch.

The exercise is shown in the illustration but here's a description. Attach a thick rope to a high pulley on a cable machine. These ropes are usually commonly available at most gyms. Hold the ends of the rope in each hand and kneel down in front of the pulley (see Pic 1). Your wrists should be at the sides of your head and your hips slightly flexed. Now, from this starting position, bend from the waist so that your elbows approach the middle of your thighs (Pic 2). Then, return slowly to the starting position. That's one repetition. The key is to use a weight that puts adequate tension on your abs and to do the entire movement slowly. You may want to pause at the end of the crunch by holding the bent-over position for a couple of seconds or more. Increase the weight as reps get easier to perform. There is a precaution for people suffering from cervical problems-keep a gap between your chin and breastbone while doing this exercise.

Another point to remember: You cannot reduce fat around your waist by simply doing crunches. In fact, fat reduction in any one spot or region is not possible in isolation and depends on a combination of diet and overall exercise, including cardiovascular exercise. Genetics, sex and age also determine the way in which your body loses fat. You will often find that among most men, mid-section fat is the last to go and among women, it is the fat around the hips and thighs that takes the longest time to reduce in any weight-loss programme. Crunches, like the one mentioned above, certainly strengthen your muscles and define them but if you want to show off your six-pack, you also have to lose the fat covering those muscles.

-Muscles Mani
write to musclesmani@intoday.com

Caveat: The physical exercises described in Treadmill are not recommendations. Readers should exercise caution and consult a physician before attempting to follow any of these.

NAGGING NECK

Posture, it turns out, does matter. If you are prone to peering into your computer monitor-whatever the provocation, whether call of duty or a reckless shot at screen games-for long hours, you are literally sticking your neck out.

What Is It: The neck (cervical spine) is composed of vertebrae which begin in the upper torso and end at the base of the skull. The vertebrae along with the ligaments provide stability to the spine. The muscles allow for support and motion. However, because it is less protected than the rest of the spine, the neck can be vulnerable to injury and disorders that produce pain and restrict motion. For many people, neck pain is a temporary condition that disappears with time. Others need medical diagnosis and treatment to relieve their symptoms.

Causes: The most common causes of neck pain are soft tissue-the muscles, ligaments, and nerves-abnormalities due to injury and inflammatory joint diseases. Says Dr Pratip Mandal, Orthopaedics Consultant, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi: "Stress is considered a major cause among working population. In rare cases, infection and congenital deformity may also cause neck pain."

Symptoms: Says Dr Mandal: "Usually pain develops in the neck and may spread to the middle of the back and shoulder muscles." Restricted movement and stiffness of the neck may make the pain worse.

Treatment: A proper diagnosis-including clinical examination and blood test-is a must before any treatment. According to Dr Mandal, "treatment may include intensive muscle training, physiotherapy and acupuncture. Over-the-counter medicines may reduce the pain." Other useful tips: Keep your posture right. Ensure that you are able to tilt your computer monitor rather than having to move your neck frequently. Get up and walk around as often as possible. Try sleeping on a firm mattress with a special neck pillow.

-Manu Kaushik

PRINTED CIRCUIT

Music On The Go 2.0
Sony Ericsson Docking Station

Ericsson's Sony walkman phones started with a whimper, but have since slowly worked their magic on at least some people. Now, the company has launched "docking stations" for these phones. It's a self-explanatory description. All you have to do is plug in your Walkman phones into music desk stand speakers mds-70 or mds-60 or portable speakers mps-60 to enjoy music on the go. Track changes, volume control and other operations are controlled by a single switch on the phones. These "docks" are currently compatible with all Sony Ericsson music cellphones, like the W300i, W550i, W700i and W810i, which also offer high speed data downloads and internet access (but that's now pretty common in most high-end phones). The "docks" can also take in regular stereo input via a 3.5 mm jack, and an ac charger recharges their built-in batteries. You can also connect them to a pc if you so desire.
MDS-70/price: Rs 11,995
MDS-60/price: Rs 4,445
MPS-60/price: Rs 1,595

-Pallavi Srivastava

Data On The Move
Western Digital Passport

Not so long ago, lugging information from one place to another meant carrying those 5.25-inch flexible floppy disks that stored up to one megabyte of data. But they did tend to get corrupted. So, the entire industry moved to the 3.5-inch hard case floppies. But in the age of PowerPoint presentations, these also proved inadequate. Even the 700-MB CD and the 4.7-gigabytes DVD-R don't seem to have suffieient space to store all the data that we can't nowadays seem to do without. The answer, for a while, seemed to be to put together your own kit by taking out a hard disc and putting it in a hard case, but these were not exactly 'rugged' devices. But now there are companies that do the hard work for you. Western Digital, for example, has made the WD Passport, which I've been using for the past few days. Incredibly light and very rugged, and able to fit inside your jeans pocket, you can actually carry all your data with you always. This small box stores over 120 GB and retails for Rs 9,950. But at the rate things are going, I've got a funny feeling that in a few months time, even 120 GB won't be enough.

-Kushan Mitra

Readability Test
http://juicystudio.com/services

This is a website that analyses the readability of other websites. Just type in the URL of the website you want to measure and click on the "Calculate readability" icon, and the readability according to three different tests-Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid-flash on your screen within seconds. What are these tests? They are reading level algorithms that determine how readable your content is. Some caveats: these algorithms reward short sentences comprising small words; so it is theoretically possible to get a high readability rating for complete nonsense made up of short sentences and small words. Also, these mathematical formulae cannot determine whether the content is interesting or enjoyable. And finally, it reads every word on your website; so it includes navigation and other toolbars in its analysis. This may skew the results. Still, it's a good preliminary determinant of readability, and should be treated as such.