5 Best Ways to Improve Workout Performance

Move, sweat, eat, repeat makes for a decent training plan up to a point. But if you want to maximize your fitness gains, eventually you need to train smarter: smarter eating, smarter moving, smarter recovering.

But with the avalanche of fitness information available to the average guy these days, it’s not always clear what exactly makes for smart training, and what makes for last year’s forgotten fitness fad.

Can Sex Improve Your Running Performance?

Here’s a compelling argument for getting racy before heading out for a run: 48 percent of runners under age 40 say that having sex before a race fueled their performance, according to a new survey of 1,000 male and female runners from Brooks Running.

Okay, so it’s not like this was a scientific poll or anything. But it made us wonder—can sex give your running workout an edge? The answer is a definite yes, says sexologist Yvonne K. Fulbright, Ph.D. First, sex is like any cardio activity, getting your blood pumping and your heart rate going. But since most sex sessions aren’t crazy physically demanding (which is why sex doesn't really count as a workout), it serves as kind of a warm-up to your run, heating muscles and joints and making you more flexy.