You Are Wonderful
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.
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Fitness Over 50 Doesn’t Have To Be Chair Aerobics
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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5 Strategies To Eating Healthy On The Road, Or In The Air
Another cross-country flight and yet another day spent eating meals in an airport.
You know that planning your meals is an important part of staying lean and healthy. But, how do you plan when you have lay overs, flight delays, and need to be extra early just to waste time waiting in long lines to be searched by a grumpy TSA Agent.
Here are five strategies to make the most of eating healthy when your days in spent traveling through airports.
#1. Carry and emergency stash. Stock up on a bag of nuts, beef jerky, and a piece of fruit. Pack one of each in your carry-on and then restock in the airport when one or all are gone.
#2. Meat and veggies. In those rare times when you actually get the chance to sit down in an airport restaurant for a meal, skip the burger and fries and order a piece of grilled fish, steak, or chicken with extra veggies.
#3. Be calorie conscious. Most fast-food convenience stores and coffee houses now list their choices on the menus. Look for the lower calorie options and make your choices based around those.
#4. Go easy on the pre-flight, in-flight, and layover booze. Sure a drink may seem like just what is needed after a day of connecting flights, meetings, and yet one more flight home. But, all these extra drinks will wreck havoc on your fitness goals. If you know that your business meeting with customers will most likely result in drinks at some point, then skip the airport booze all together. If they don’t then a drink or two between a connection with your meal isn’t the worst thing.
#5. Drink lots of water. Flying will dehydrate your body and a busy schedule can make it easy to forget to drink some water throughout the day. If you always keep a bottle of water with you there is better chance that you will drink more water.
Keep the above strategies in mind on your next business trip and you won’t have to worry about losing the progress that you’ve worked so hard to gain.
If you’d like more information about fitness coaching click here:
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/
Regular Exercise Is Simpler Than You Think
You do not have to spend hours in the gym everyday, or even go to gym at all to stay fit. The following are four simple ways to incorporate exercise into your life.
#1. Walk twenty minutes to thirty minutes most days. Done consistently walking will improve your cardiovascular fitness and help you shed a few pounds. Take it up a notch by carrying a 20-40 pound backpack.
#2. 50 minutes, twice a week. Hitting the gym twice a week for a good total-body workout will reward you will numerous benefits when done consistently ovetime. In a years time this is enough to see a completely different person staring back at you in the mirror.
#3. A daily bodyweight routine. Ten to twenty minutes of the following circuit will keep you fit to be able to tackle all of your daily activities.
- Push Ups x 25
- Squats x 25
- Pull Ups x 5
- Reverse Lunge x 15 each
- Front Plank x 60s
- Jumping Jacks – 25
- Repeat for as many rounds as possible in 10-20 minutes. Rest as needed.
#4. Reps on the Minute. Some days you only have time for a quick 10-minute workout. That is where the “Reps on the Minute” strategy works great. Pick and exercise, start a timer, and perform a set number of reps. Then rest the remainder of the minute. Continue for 10 rounds.
Here are a few examples:
Kettlebell Swings x 25 reps
Squat and Press x 15 reps
KB Snatch x 10 each arm
Battling Ropes x 40 slams
Regular exercise doesn’t have to take a lot of time, it just has to be consistent
If you’d like more information about fitness coaching click here:
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/
What 80/20 Really Looks Like
You may not be eating as well as you think.
Sure Monday through Friday you may do well. But, then Friday night hits. You go out for dinner and order the grilled salmon with steamed veggies and skip the bread. But, you have dessert and a bottle of wine.
Or maybe on Saturday you feel that it would be nice to make your kids a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon. You tell yourself it’s okay because “it’s for the kids” and you’ll only have a little.
Then there is that stressful day that just needs unwound with a few drinks or a bowl of ice cream.
These are the small things that by themselves are perfectly fine, but added up can wreck your progress. To get results in the gym it takes eating clean 80% of the time. For most, it ends up only being 60-70% clean.
So what does 80% look like? Or better yet, what does the 20% look like?
To stay at 80% or above means you can have roughly 3-4 cheats per week. Every alcoholic drink that is a cheat. Every dessert that’s a cheat. Every piece of chocolate or candy another cheat. Fried and processed foods, a cheat again. Chips and salsa, you get the point.
Eating clean is the missing link to getting results. And many times what we think is clean eating isn’t clean enough.
If you’d like more information about fitness coaching click here:
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/
Start Your Morning With A Bang
Alarm. Coffee. A few minutes scrolling your news feed. Shower. Breakfast. Kids out the door. And finally yourself out the door. It has already been a busy day and you have not even started work yet.
Give yourself 10-minutes every morning dedicated to exercise. Best of all you don’t even have to add this to your routine. Just replace “scrolling the news feed” with a simple bodyweight routine.
Here is one that will only take 10-minutes:
- Front Plank 30 seconds
- Mountain Climbers – 5 each
- Bodyweight Squat – 10 reps
- Push Ups – 10 reps
- Reverse Lunge – 5 reps each
- Repeat 3x
Done every morning you will find that over time you begin to feel better and have more energy. And eventually may even want to add more.
To make exercise consistent, exercise needs to become a part of your routine.
If you’d like more information about fitness coaching click here:
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/
Movement Is Life
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The body was made to thrive on movement.
Daily movement is essential for life, yet the modern lifestyle promotes being sedentary. A typical day results in an hour commute to work, eight to ten hours at a desk in front of a computer, an evening filled with running kids to activities, and then crashing down on the couch or in bed at ten in the evening to unwind with a book or TV before going to bed. Outside of walking the dog the entire day is spent sitting.
But, the body was meant to move. It is this lack of movement that causes aches and pains, poor posture, and a host health of issues. It’s also why weekend warriors get hurt skiing, playing pick up basketball, or doing yard work. The body has been sedentary all week and then it’s pushed to be physical, but isn’t prepared to handle the physicality of those activities, so it gets injured.
Finding ways to move more each day can prevent this. Go to the gym two or three days a week and do some strength training, get up from the desk every hour and do a short two minute body-weight routine, take a ten minute walk a few times through out the day, join a gym that is near the kids places of activity and go there in evening rather than sitting in the car or watching them practice, find as many ways as possible to be more active.
Movement is life.
If you want more information about fitness coaching click here:
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/
Is It Summer Yet?
Aw you are sitting in the sun, waves are crashing off in the distance, and there is not a cloud in sky. Life is good.
Then you are snapped back to reality buy the ping alert of your email and look up from your desk to see yet another cold and gray winter day. “When will the sun at least peek back out?” you ask yourself.
Summer may seem like it’s a long way away, it will be here sooner than you think. Now is the time to start a fitness program to get ready for that beach vacation, cruise, and pool season. Not two weeks before.
To get started and get a jump on summer, click here:
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/
Exercise Takes Less Time Than You Think
Exercise is simpler than you think.
You do not have to spend hours at the gym every day to reap the benefits. It is consistency that matters!
50 minutes, two times per week done consistently overtime is enough to see change. After a years time that will be 104 workouts, a couple of jean sizes smaller, arms you’ll want to show off in sleeveless tops, and a new self confidence.
Stay consistent, schedule two workouts each week on your calendar and get them done. If you decide to add a day or two great, but you don’t have to live in the gym to see improvement.
If you want more information about fitness coaching click here:
https://pittsburghnorthfitness.leadpages.co/21-day-shape-up-challenge/