Too High, Too Hard, Too Often

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Fitness is dose specific and you can get too much of a good thing.

More than 3-4 days a week of strength training doesn’t make you leaner or more muscular. In many cases more than the recommend 3-4 days will cause you to either gain body fat or lose muscle, or both.

Keeping your heart rate in the 80’s and 90’s for the entire workout and not letting it come back down to a resting rate in between sets doesn’t make you more fit. It makes you more hungry and causes you to overeat. Which is counterproductive for weight loss.

High intensity done all the time doesn’t make your body stronger. It causes damage to all of its tissues. There is even evidence beginning to come out that those who do a lot of high-intensity interval training for years on end damage their heart.

Fitness isn’t about burning a high number of calories. It’s about strengthening and improving your body.

Fitness is a lifelong journey where slow and steady wins the race. There can be periods of increased intensity, but they need followed by periods of decreased intensity. If this doesn’t happen the body breaks down, gets injured, and burns out.

Get in three workouts per week, give about 70% effort most of the time and you will see the best results.

 

If you’d like more information about fitness coaching check us out here:

https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-fitness-kickstart/

Never Diet Again

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8 Exercises For An AWESOME Core!!

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Give these 8 exercises a try to build a strong core.

 

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https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/12-week-professional-weight-loss-guidance-program/

 

 

You Are Wonderful

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Fitness is not perfect. Fitness is wonderful.

To be perfect is not the goal of getting fit. You are already perfect the way you are. Perfection is unattainable. There will always be someone skinnier, stronger, with a nicer butt, better arms, and a perceived better life.

Chasing perfection is a no win game, because no one is perfect. We all have our imperfections and things about our bodies that we don’t like, but it’s those imperfections that make us unique and who we are.

Using fitness to try to build the perfect body shouldn’t even be the goal, but yet that is exactly what the magazines portrait that you should chase.

Instead fitness should be used to make you wonderful. It should make you feel wonderful. It should make you feel like you are a better parent because you are in shape and able to play with your kids without getting tired. Fitness will give you the ability to experience more in life and have wonderful moments. It is in these moments that life will feel perfect.

Nothing will ever make you perfect, but with fitness we are going to make you feel wonderful.

 

Need a Fitness Kickstart? Click the image below to get started.

 

Recipe of the Week – Mason Jar Chicken Burrito

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Skip Chipotle and give this Chicken Burrito recipe a try for a healthier version.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1
tablespoon lime juice (from ½ lime)
  • 2
tablespoons olive oil
  • ¼
teaspoon cumin
  • ¼
teaspoon chili powder
  • ¼
teaspoon honey
  • ⅛
teaspoon salt
  • ¼ 
cup diced red bell pepper
  • ¼
cup fresh or frozen corn, thawed
  • ¼
cup black beans
  • ½
cup cooked brown rice
  • ½
cup cooked, shredded chicken (such as rotisserie chicken)
  • 1
cup chopped romaine lettuce
  • 2
tablespoons shredded Mexican blend cheese
  • ¼
avocado, chopped into small cubes
  • ¼
cup crumbled tortilla chips

 

DIRECTIONS

Combine the lime juice, olive oil, cumin, chili powder, honey, and salt in the bottom of 1 quart wide-mouth mason jar. Stir with a fork to combine.

Add the bell pepper and tomatoes. Top with the corn, black beans, brown rice, and chicken. Add the romaine, pressing to pack it down, then top with the cheese, avocado, and cilantro. When ready to eat, pour salad into a bowl and top with crumbled tortilla chips.

Enjoy!

 

Recipe Source: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/mason-jar-chicken-burrito-bowl

 

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https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-kickstart/

PNF Workout of the Week

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PNF Met Con “Workout of the Week”

  • Battling Rope Slams
  • Box Jumps
  • Kettlebell Swings
  • Kettlebell Squat & Press
  • TRX Rows
    • 20 seconds on, 40 seconds off, 6 rounds

Enjoy and be awesome this week!

If you’d like more information about fitness coaching check us out here:

https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-kickstart/

Gluten-Free Doesn’t Mean Healthy

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A gluten-free diet is not a weight loss plan.

While some individuals have a gluten allergy and must avoid gluten from their diet, which typically results in weight loss. For those who don’t have this allergy this isn’t necessary for weight loss and can even be misleading as to making food choices.

A quick walk through any grocery store will turn up gluten-free cookies, muffins, pancakes, pasta, bread, and yes-even beer. Just because these items are gluten-free doesn’t make them any better for you than non gluten-free counterparts.

When it comes to weight loss it is better to focus on eating unprocessed foods and not focusing on eliminating one thing.

Breads and pastas are always good to reduce or remove because they are highly processed, which is why the removal tends to lead to weight loss. Not the gluten.

Meats, vegetables, and fruits tend to keep you feeling fuller longer than processed carbs and don’t make you crave more. This results in eating less total calories, which leads to weight loss and leaning out.

Just because a food is gluten-free doesn’t make it healthy and eating a gluten-free diet doesn’t guarantee weight loss.

Weight loss and body fat reduction are the result of the quality of foods choices made, not the diet followed.

 

If you’d like more information about fitness coaching click here:

https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/

Recipe of the Week – Caprese Salad in a Jar

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Prep one of these the night before and have an easy ready to eat salad tomorrow for lunch. Add some of left-over grilled chicken from last nights dinner and you a full meal.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups of arugula
  • 1/2 cup green basil (leaves only)
  • 1/2 cup purple basil (leaves only)
  • 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
  • mini bocconcini

For the dressing:

  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • a drop of honey
  • Maldon salt
  • cracked black pepper

Directions:

One ingredient at a time, layer first the arugula then the 2 basils, tomatoes, and bocconcini in 4 jars. Set open jars in the fridge to chill. Next, whisk all ingredients of the dressing together. When you’re ready to serve the salads, take the jars out of the fridge, drizzle the dressing on top of the salads, close the lids, and shake it up to mix everything together.

Recipe Source: http://chubbyvegetarian.blogspot.com/2011/06/caprese-salad-in-jar.html?m=1

 

If you’d like more information about fitness coaching click here:

https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/

PNF Workout of the Week 2/27/17 – Kettlebell Carry Circuit

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Get your week started with this “Kettlebell Carry” workout. While the workout may sound simple, this may be one of the most challenging workouts you’ve done.

 

20yd Farmers Walk (single arm)

10 Goblet Squats

 

20yd Farmers Walk (opposite arm)

10 Swings

 

20yd Racked Farmers Walk (single arm)

10 Cleans

 

20yd Racked Farmers Walk (opposite arm)

10 Snatches

 

20yd Overhead Carry (single arm)

10 Overhead Presses

 

20yd Overhead Carry (opposite arm)

10 KB Windmills

Repeat for five rounds.

You can make this more challenging, by increasing the distance carried, carrying a bigger bell, or adding more rounds. But, no matter how you decide to do it you will get one heck of a total-body workout.

If you’d like more information about fitness coaching click here:

https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/

Fitness Over 50 Doesn’t Have To Be Chair Aerobics

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It is inevitable that as you age your body will change. Sure it would be great to go back to how you looked and felt in your 20’s, but that shouldn’t even be the goal. The goal should be to be the best version of what you can be today.

Getting older does not mean that you cannot ski, hike, workout, and be intimate with your partner well into your golden year. Fitness promotes all of those and more.

However, the way the fitness industry has approached fitness over 50 sucks! A Google search will turn up numerous articles about walking, some even with hand weights. Or worse yet, sitting in a chair lifting tiny vinyl coated dumbbells. This is 2017, not 1980.

Exercise doesn’t have to be some watered down, soft nonsense. In fact, it is stuff like this that is patronizing, rather than helpful. People can still exercise hard, lift heavy weight, and bang out push-ups and pull-ups well into their 80s. If trained to do so and not led to believe the B.S. that they can’t because they are “old”.

It is common for many of our members to bring their college and young adult aged kids with them to their workouts when they are home and have the parents who are 30-40 years older run circles around them. So much for the 20’s being the fittest years of life.

As the body ages it needs strength training more than ever and can still be trained hard. The biggest difference is in the frequency. While a 20-something maybe able to workout everyday, eat pizza, drink beer, and stay out late and not miss a beat in their workout, you just can’t recover quiet as fast when older. But, three challenging workouts per week based around strength will do wonders for the body.

Maintaining strength and mobility is the secret to aging well. Getting older is the only option we have, whether we like it or not. But, staying fit and strong with age is a choice. You can choose to look at age as only a number and challenge yourself in workouts to stay strong and mobile, or you can buy into the B.S. that someone this age shouldn’t be doing this.

Age is only a number, the way we train is a mindset.

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