There is an inverse relationship between the onset of winter and attendance at gyms. As it gets colder, fewer people can remain motivated enough to hit the treadmills or the weight racks. While that is a boon for dedicated gym rats-shorter queues for the machines or the dumb-bells-it is a curse if you're not driven enough not to miss your regular workouts. But winter isn't the only disincentive to head for the gym. Very often it is the bleakness of your workout routine that can make it easy for you to skip a session or two or 10! I've heard many people complain about how their workouts have become stale and they've hit a plateau in terms of results that they get from their sessions at the gym.

Here's a way you can jumpstart your workouts by doing something new. I'd like to call it the Double Pyramid Workout. Now, the common way of doing weight training sets is to increase the weight you lift in every additional set (and, consequently, do fewer repetitions for each subsequent set). In other words, if you are bench pressing and do 12 reps in the first set using, say, 90 lbs, in the second set you may increase the weight to 110 lbs but lift it only 8-10 times. And so on. By set number 4, you'd probably be lifting 130 lbs but only for 5-6 reps. In other words, the commonest method of weight training involves increasing weights as you do more sets, while your repetitions taper down.

Here's what can add some more spice (as well as some muscle soreness on the following day!) to your workout. Do the normal pyramid training as described above but instead of stopping there begin your climbdown. Do a fifth set where you actually reduce the weight a bit and do as many sets as you can and then a sixth where you take another bit of weight off and do your reps and, then, finally add a seventh one with even lesser weights. What you have effectively done is that you've first subjected your muscles to increasing weights (and decreasing reps) and then decreasing weights (and increasing reps). If seven sets are too much, do five or six but do the pyramid followed by the inverted pyramid. Let me explain with an example. Suppose you're doing bench presses. Here's the pattern you could follow:

Set 1 - 12-14 reps using light weight
Set 2 - 10-12 reps using medium weight
Set 3 - 8-10 reps using heavy weight
Set 4 - 10-12 reps using medium weight
Set 5 - 12-14 reps using light weight

Subjecting your muscles to stress in the manner described can help them grow faster in volume as well as strength. But here's a warning: the Double Pyramid Workout (DPW) is not for beginners-do it only if you're experienced; also, it's a strenuous method so you can't do too many exercises per session if you're following this method (my suggestion: do just two or three of them per muscle group per session-i.e., if you're working your chest muscles, you could do the DPW for just flat bench presses and dumb-bell flyes, that's it).

-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.

FIVE STEPS TO CUT CALORIES

Shaving calories here and there is easier than you think. Follow these easy tips and reduce your calorie intake.

What's your cuppa choice? Just a minor change in your daily coffee routine can cut thousands of calories per month from your diet. Says Dr Anoop Misra, Senior Consultant, Fortis Hospital: "If you must have a frappuccino drink, order a low fat one in the smallest size cup and get it without the whipped cream on top." Alternatively, try drinking plain old drip coffee.

Snap out of temptations: Calories in regular food are more difficult to avoid. Cut your meat portion by half and double your vegetable portion. "Eat a baked potato instead of French fries. Eat whole grain toasts for breakfast instead of a doughnut or pastry. Also, choose a low-calorie dressing for your salad," says Dr Misra.

Say no to soda: Trade one regular soda each day for no-calorie flavoured sparkling water. Make an effort to drink eight large glasses of water every day. Always carry a bottle of water with you so it's handy when you're driving, running errands or socialising. You can flavour the water with a squeeze of lemon, orange or lime.

Just jog. Says Dr Misra: "Jog for 40-45 minutes a day. Warm up first with either a fast walk or a slow run, followed by some light stretching." Gradually build up to a pace that's comfortable for you.

What's in a label? You'll be surprised at how many calories some foods contain. Check out the amount the whole package contains and think about how much of it you would normally eat. Says Dr Misra: "Choose brands with less sugar."

-Manu Kaushik

FLOTSAM
It's a Phone, It's a 'Berry But It's Very Sexy!
With Pearl, BlackBerry is trying to hook not the suits but the hip, the young and the cool.

A combination of black and chrome is so sexy that it is a no-brainer. A black and chrome combo instantly adds über-sleekness to anything-cars, motorcycles, cigarette lighters, you name it. So, it is with the BlackBerry Pearl, which is indeed the sexiest BlackBerry that Research In Motion (rim) has ever put out since 1999 when it started getting white-collar users (mainly in North America) addicted to that device. To begin with, the Pearl (AKA the Blackberry 8100) is small-4.2 inches long, 2 inches wide and a mere 0.6 inch in depth-and light (just 90 grams). That makes it smaller and slimmer than most smartphones. In other words, this is one BlackBerry that doesn't look like a monkey's paw but a phone that, incidentally, works very well as a phone. Additionally, of course, there's the shiny b & c combo, which makes it look a cut and several more notches above anything that has come out of Mike Lazaridis's Ontario-headquartered wireless device company. Yet, rim has squeezed in a flat screen on the tiny Pearl that is not much smaller than the screen the older 8700 sports. And, of course, the multimedia bells and whistles make their debut on a BlackBerry-a 1.3 mega-pixel camera with flash and a media player-plus a slot inside to slip in a micro-storage card that can add gigs to its capacity.

Since the BlackBerry is essentially an e-mail device, we put to test its shrunk keyboard (qwerty but two letters to a key) by sending mail and text messages. Initial scepticism quickly vanished as the predictive writing software and the keyboard backed by SureType technology kicked in the moment we started typing a message. The software is nifty-it presents a combination of letters or words that are based on the context. True, it takes a little getting used to, particularly if you are accustomed to a traditional qwerty keyboard as in the previous models of the BlackBerry, but once you get the hang of it, it's smooth sailing.

The other big change in the Pearl is the pearl. We're referring to the little trackball below the screen. It lights up translucently and replaces the right-hand track wheel, a staple of all older BlackBerrys. Getting used to the trackball and the new 'Menu' and 'Escape' buttons (on either side of it) may take a little time but as well as being easy to use, it's a boon to left-handed users-BlackBerry's earlier positioning of the track wheel was a bit unfair to them, we think.

So, what's the Pearl all about? At Rs 24,999, is it a fashion-cum-style statement for the upwardly mobile who wants to mix a bit of fun with work? Yes and no. While adding a camera and a media player clearly indicate rim's efforts to hook more people than those in white-collar jobs, the Pearl's 1.3 mega-pixel camera isn't the best you get on phones these days (most rivals offer 2 or 3 mega-pixels routinely). The Pearl doesn't record video either and although it supports music files in various formats, the player is clunky and not a patch on what many smartphones and pure-play mp3 players offer.

Still, if you're the type who doesn't think it's hip (or convenient) to listen to music on your e-mail-cum-phone device and for whom a camera on a phone is not exactly a tool to create art, toss that old monkey's paw and get a Pearl.

-SN

The BlackBerry Pearl is currently available only for Airtel subscribers (Hutch subscribers can get their hands on it from January). Non-enterprise customers can choose between one of two data schemes on the Pearl-Rs 499 and Rs 899, the latter giving users unlimited data bandwidth and a 100 free calls.

PRINTED CIRCUIT
Really Simple RSS
How a small orange button is setting content free!

To start, we must point out that RSS (really Simple Syndication for our purposes) isn't terribly new; the format has been around since 1996. But, there are still a lot of people in India, many of them in the content business, who still don't understand RSS and how the format is revolutionising the way people consume content on the internet.

Let us do this quite simply, and without delving into the what's, why's and wherefore's of RSS. I'll even skip the bit about the three competing formats RSS 1.x, RSS 2.x and Atom, because if you're "consuming" feeds and not designing them, it really doesn't matter.

RSS allows you to subscribe to a feed from any website which updates itself on a regular basis and has a RSS "feed" embedded in its code. A "feed" is the term you use to describe the flow of information from a syndicated site. These feeds can be read using a variety of readers, either web-based or residing on your computer. Most people use web-based readers for the convenience of being able to read the feeds from any computer. Subscribing to a site allows you to scan the latest developments in a jiffy. Many sites allow users to subscribe to either full posts or briefs. How do you know a site has an RSS feed? If you are using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox, you will notice the orange RSS button (look at the top of this page) on the address bar.

How do you add a feed? If you already use a service like Bloglines, clicking on the feed button will automatically add the feed to your reader. If you use Google Toolbar (a useful download, by the way!) you will notice the RSS logo on the toolbar light up if the site has a feed; click on the Subscribe button and choose your reader to add the feed. That is why they call it "Really Simple Syndication". Using RSS feeds allows you to see and read a lot of content at one place without having to visit thirty or forty different places online, and if you use an online reader you can access it anywhere.

-Kushan Mitra