Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Yes…we are.
There is much going on here behind the scenes. It’s kind of cool.
I had much on my mind when I wrote the Power of Ten article a few weeks ago and much of it is coming to fruition:
Joanna, as you know is going behind the scenes. She is helping us with the much needed re-design of MP4 and the development of our affiliate companies. Who is coming to forefront will be announced tomorrow. Just know, great things come in small packages.
MP4–and the rest of our affiliate companies–are going live in 2011. (Wait for that info…you will like it when you hear it.) And when it does, there will be more MP4 staffers coming out of the wood work! Very excited.
Our blog is getting a face lift and with the addition of our new blogger and MP4 staff member, we will take on a more refined approach to the information we provide for you.
All of the programs mentioned on the blog thus far will be released in 2011. They will enable you to reach your goals, both weight loss and performance, in an organized, affordable manner. Your food will be done for you, your weight training, functional and supplementation schedule laid out for you. Short of it working out for you, it is complete!
Heather is moving to the Northeast. Oh wait, did I say that? Ok…she’s not, but I tried. Haha! Wishful thinking.
The sister company to MP4, for those of you who want what MP4 has to offer but are not prepping for an athletic event, is on the way. This has been the number 1 request of 2010. “I love what you have done for me and my ‘fill in the blank’ is not getting ready for anything, can she still work with you?” Up until now we have said no. But not anymore. Many are hounded when they are in the gym by folks wanting to know ‘who they are training with’ because our programs are so fun and unique. If you are tired of the same old weight routine that looks like it was plucked out the back of a magazine, just know that there is more to working out than a four day split. Or if the power/Olympic lifting thing is not quite for you, just know again that there are options out there that get you to the same place without you having to learn a clean and jerk.
Have patience with us as we unfold everything over the next 3 months. Email us at info@modelper4mance.com because many things will be in place before you see it on the site so keep in touch. Although I will say, there are lots of you who are doing that already and we thank you for your support! Hang tight!
Thursday, October 7th, 2010
No. Not that season. And to be honest, I dread the beginning of that season which I swear now starts as early as July in some stores.
No…it’s THAT season. The season of change.
Living in New England makes us privvy to weather changes. We go from Winter to Spring/Summer (I swear spring is 2 days long now), Summer to Fall/Summer (Indian summer anyone?) and finally Fall to Winter again. Each time this occurs, there seems to be an overall “feeling” that comes with each season.
Winter brings commitment. We tend to hunker down and disappear during this time. We’re hoping to find the energy and resolve we need to do the offseason justice.
Spring brings renewal. We become engergized and want to either clean out our house or go for a hike. Depends on the day.
Summer brings carefree fun. Who cares about work or that house we just cleaned. All we’re thinking is ‘bring on the deck with the drinks’.
Fall brings a distinct feeling of change. You’re not quite sure of what you want, you just know it’s about change. I have spoken about this before when I touched upon being put back into a “diet box” and so on. Suddenly, we feel the need for structure, sweaters (even if it is warm out) and different food/exercise combinations. It’s wild. Everyone I talk to right now needs a change and it is because of fall.
Here are 2 things you need to be aware of to weather the change of fall:
Nutrition:
Lose the green veggies as a staple. I know I love them and push them on folks like a winter coat in a storm, but you need to break out the winter squashes again. Now is the time for a good soup like a butternut squash soup or a protein source like bison, liver or sardines to come out again. (I do want you to know I slid the sardines in there and have laughed my head off because of it.) Fish varieties should be changing if you buy your fish from a fish market and not a supermarket. Warm foods like oat bran and quinoa come back to life now. You may have been rocking quinoa cold in a salad before but now it’s time to heat it back up.
Suddenly, there is this sense of needing to be cozy. Quiet. Contemplative. With that our food should soon follow with healthy casseroles becoming more appealing, crock pots coming back to the counter and salads disappearing overnight. We need to keep up with the change of the season by rotating the same old staples that we have in the diet. Look for chili recipes and stratas–make it lively because it is easy to fall into the winter blues before it’s even winter.
Workouts:
“Non-Metered to metered”. What in Heaven’s name do I mean by metered? Summer time sends folks outside. Unless you just sit on your porch and fan yourself and then try to call it cardio, you are most likely working pretty hard. Outside workouts are bodyweight centered workouts. You must move your whole body and it’s not dependent on a piece of equipement to do it. You hike, bike, walk, run, skip, shuffle and so on. There’s direction change, scaling things such as rocks and park fixtures, level changes (ground to standing), sprinting, etc. There seems to be an endless amount of activity that we can do outside without having to kill ourselves creatively to do it. Then we come inside. Oh boy. Now we’re bored out of our minds. I would rather remove a limb with a butter knife than get on the elliptical which is where the problems begin: we’re going to forget to step up the indoor activity to match the intensity of the outdoor activity. We now have to meter our workouts by tracking time/intensity/mode etc. Do not think that just “punching” the clock of that workout is going to do the trick. Stay on it! This is how the holidays come up on us and we’re up 10 pounds without even realizing it.
Let’s avoid this catastrophe by 1) ensure variety within our workouts. Do not get on the same piece of equipment everyday even if it is your bike trainer! Vary it up. 2) Be conscious while working out. I really mean that. If you finish your workout and you don’t even remember beginning it–there’s a problem! KNOW what you’re doing right now. And 3) Try to get outdoors every once in a while even if it is monsoon wind season like it is now. Take one for the team and get either wet or cold. Who cares which–just get outside.
I have grown to love fall. I am a true summer girl, myself. I come alive in the summer and shrink back into my cave in the fall. I do enjoy a beautiful Indian summer but hate the fact that the sun goes down so early. I have thought about moving, every year about this time to be exact, but then I am reminded about bugs, hurricanes, tornadoes, mud slides and earthquakes whenever I bring up a great “warm all the time” location. I think I’ll stay right here and just learn to deal with the change.
It’s time to get ready for the offseason. I know a few of you still have events on the horizon, but for the most of us it is time to plan for the spring. Keep reading because we have lots of stuff coming along to help you get there.
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
It’s nearing the end of summer here in New England and I am already in my “mourning” mode thinking about the loss of sun, fun and freedom that summer provides. Our clients, on the other hand, are ecstatic. Let me explain…
We all love a challenge and the rush of excitement a new challenge brings with it. We also love the *end* of a challenge and look forward to a time of less constraints, more choice and the ability to do what we want when we want. That, of course, lasts for about 10 min.
If you decided to do a big event this summer, say an Iron Man, marathon or charity challenge, you most likely spent weeks getting ready for it. For some of these things you may have even invested as much as 15 to 20 hours per week training and couldn’t wait for the day of the event to come for two reasons: 1) to see how you do after all the effort you put into it and 2) to be done with it! What starts out as a welcomed challenge can soon become a huge albatross around our necks and we slowly need to see the dream come to fruition or go its merry way—whichever comes first for some. But what happens after the event is over or when school vacation starts or when your favorite bootcamp class takes a brief hiatus? (haha!) You lose your tree and yell at your coach. Well…some of you do (some of you are nice enough to talk in a sweet, loving way while stressing the need for more structure). The rest of everyone else aimlessly mills the streets looking for another “box” to hop into searching for some much needed security that a tight demanding schedule and the rigors of an unrelenting diet provide. As much we want it to be over, we love the security the “torture” gives us. Losing it is like losing a boyfriend you really weren’t into: you don’t want him but you don’t want anyone else to have him either.
You know, and your family and friends know, too, that you need a break. You are burnt around the edges and you no longer enjoy the training, the time constraints, the planning and so on. Getting up in the morning is a chore. Packing your meals is a chore. Or better, yet, it’s not so much that they are a chore as much as they have lost their excitement. You don’t dread it per se but you no longer look forward to doing it. You may be on autopilot. You may be cutting corners. You may be doing everything as diligently as you were in the beginning but you no longer smile about it. Regardless of what it is that you are experiencing, you want this to be over–then you get what you wished for and all heck breaks loose.
Nothing is uglier than an athlete without a goal. I would rather sever a limb off at the joint with a butter knife than be around a goal-oriented psycho who is without a goal. Talk about sheer mayhem and chaos. We work with some of the toughest clients around. Never miss a workout. Never complain. Work through injuries. Do two-a-days like it’s nothing. Plan their life down to a tee and never, ever whine…until they are goal-less. Suddenly, they are damsels in distress and need to be saved. Now hear me when I say this, this is spoken completely in the voice of love and I am not referring to one person in particular. All of us do this! I am not condemning or chastising anyone in particular nor am I calling any names here. This applies to everyone right now. Not only that, I am just stating a fact. This reminds me of myself: I will drop a 20 pound book on my foot, possibly break something serious and never even mention it to anyone. I could need hospitalization for it and I will never tell anyone; I will sit and make all my client calls from the ER, uninterrupted and on time. But let me get a paper cut or mosquito bite and you would think I was dying from the bubonic plague. Most of you ladies are the same. The bigger the challenge, the louder the battle cries, the better the results; anything less than that and we melt into a pot of sheer discombobulation that culminates into a sea of confusion.
Flash forward to now, the end of summer when many challenges have been met, we are at the tail end of the summer vacation (i.e. school vacation for us mommies is just about over) and the sweetness of the warm weather has worn off and I can show you some uptight, battle ready, angry, confused women who either need a lofty goal with iron clad structure or a good old fashioned beatdown (think bar room brawl here)—or both! They are tired of the freedom, tired of the interim schedule, burned out from the last goal but needing another for sanity purposes, lost, annoyed, antsy, feisty, combative and so on…I’m afraid to answer my phone right now! Haha Holy mother of pearl, let’s get some constraints going here!
So in the interest of empathy and love, here are some suggestions to you folks who are waiting to wear sweaters again to work:
1) Acknowledge where you are in this: Do you really need a goal again or do you need a rest from your last goal? It makes a difference. Picking the former when you really are the latter could mean the difference between you hating where you are or you only needing a few weeks to get over it.
2) Create some stability on your own: No matter what, keep up on your training. Bring it down to baseline if need be but have *something*. Stopping makes you feel like a wet noodle and it creates indifference. Not good.
3) Continue to plan your meals: Even if that means you are planning where you are eating out daily. Not thinking about your menu after having 3 months of meditating on your menu is a recipe for disaster. You may not want to pack anything right now, but you must have a plan for your time of discord. Create an easy breakfast, lunch, dinner type template that has some fun in it so you do not resent your current situation.
4) Pick a smaller, more doable goal: A 5 or 10k is a great goal to think about when you don’t want a huge goal to think about. It’s still fun and competitive, but it does not require you to give up your life to do it.
Once you have done all of this, put it into action! Do not hesitate! And make it REAL! I cannot stress that enough. Yes, us coaches at MP4 can help you out with a new goal and get you going, but if you are not presently working with us, this will help you out tremendously. Honor your inner voice with some good old fashioned stability but leave enough room for some wiggling. The summer is not over yet.
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
I know she looks sweet, but she's about to scale a bus!
Back in the day there used to be a saying that was used all the time: Puttin’ on the Ritz. It meant to dress very fashionably and there was even a movie about it, as well. We have since borrowed that saying and resurrected it for our MP4 athlete Jan Forde but we have added a bit of twist to it. See, we are prepping Jan for the 2010 Urbanathlon and she has never looked better:
“Jodi, all my friends want to know what I am doing when we all get together and train. Not only can I hang with them all athletically, but they love the way I look, too. They keep asking me, ‘Jan, who are you working with? What are you doing?’ I love it.”
Jan, like many of us, want to rock an event like we owned it and come out of it looking like we “meant to do that”. No one wants to say they rocked an event and be up 10 pounds because of it. So when we first spoke of her goal for the Urbanathlon, we had to map out a few things:
How much time can you truly dedicate to your prep? We’re the best at what we do, but we cannot work miracles. So before you begin to train for an event such as this, we need to know you have some time available. Excessive travel, crazy work schedules and endless weekend interruptions can truly hamper your ability to excel in both the event and your physique goals. We need to make sure you have time and you have thought this through to the end.
Have you ever jumped over a bus? Umm…in this case, that’s a valid question. We went over the course together and discussed the aggressive of her training and how hard she would be working. This is an advantage to the physique goal and honestly was a major draw for her.
Is there a wedding on the horizon? How about a bat mitzvah? Baby shower? Anniversary? Beuller? Basically, you are about to “be on” with your nutrition for a few months. What’s going to get in the way of your focus and can we come up with a game plan to keep you on track?
Once we mapped out the preliminary things that qualify us to be able to help her prep for the event, we then dug a little deeper:
What do you want to look like at the end of this prep? This is huge! No—she’s not huge—THIS is huge! We need to see eye to eye before we have you do one burpee or jump squat. If you think you’re going to lose enough weight to qualify for a discount on luggage at American Airlines and we think you can only lose a small farm animal off your backside, we have a problem. We must be speaking the same language before this starts. For Jan, it was all about body composition (you know, tighten the booty an’ all) which is definitely doable.
Who was your first boyfriend? Ok, we didn’t dig THAT deep but we did ask some questions that help us to get to know her better like Have you been dieting for a while? Have you ever done an event such as this? Do you have any medical problems we should know of? Which do you like better, mascara that lengthens or volumizes? (Joanna AND Seanna snuck that in, those rascals!)
Once we drew her blood, took her fingerprints and scanned her iris, we were ready to go!haha We set up her program so she has weight training to support her event, cardio that takes into account what she needs for her physique goal and what she needs for her event, a functional workout that mimics the movements she will need for the Urbanathlon, nutrition that allows for her to shape up and lose a bit but still have enough energy to recover from the workouts and gave her a few lectures on listening to her body so it’s as if we are with her all the time. She is pumped and in mid prep for an event that sounds like a psycho amount of fun. This weekend we will determine if she can sneak a half marathon in the month before or not. It would be a great accomplishment for her but we’ll have to look at it in light of her physique goal, work schedule and her ability to recover. I’m not sure it’ll happen but we’ll keep you posted.
“I really want to run the half marathon but I am good for overdoing it at times. I trust you ladies completely. You really know what you are doing.” Awwwe, thanks Jan. We love working with you, too!
If you want a tight booty like Jan or you want a psycho program that mimics the Urbanathlon or if you find yourself in the middle of prepping for your 10k and the scale is going the opposite direction than you expected, hit us up. We have some exciting programs coming your way for the fall alongside more information to help you get it done on your own. We appreciate all the of the feedback you have been giving to us and we encourage you to give us even more if you can. Hang tight, there is much more to come!
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
Are you over the top with your training? Or not enough? Would you know if you were or weren't?
I get up pretty early in the morning. On normal days I get up about 4 am and on days that I sleep in it’s more like 5am. My idea of a lazy day is getting up around 6am. My normal routine is to get up and get out of the house and either head to a client’s house or head to teach one of our bootcamp classes and inevitably every time that I am out there I pass a myriad of runners. Most of them are smart enough to be traveling in pairs so I get to check them and their running partners out at the same time. It is very obvious to me that many of these are runners are ones that have chosen running to either lose weight and get in shape or get in shape even though they are not losing the weight. And although that probably started out as a valiant idea, I am sure they have found out that it is not necessarily that simple.
We have spoken about this before in other posts when we talked about making weight for your sport. How important it is to be the right weight to avoid injury and to do the best for your weight and age class. And we spoke about how it is not smart to try to use your event prep as the only means to losing weight for your event or you are asking for trouble. Whenever this happens, no matter how hard the event is, people typically end up gaining weight. Now you would think after prepping for a marathon that you lose, but you do not. You gain. So what is everybody doing wrong that they cannot manage their race/sport/event prep and their weight loss goal at the same time?
So how do you know if you are overdoing it? I am sure you have realized by now that there are hundreds of books on the shelves to help you out. And I am sure you are also thinking, ‘If I had time to read a book and understand the concept, I wouldn’t have gained the weight in the first place.’ I am hearing you loud and clear on that one. Doing it yourself is hard and time consuming and you are never sure if you are doing right or not. However, hiring someone can be expensive and for crying out loud it’s just a 10k! So what gives?
Well we have been banging our heads against a wall here at MP4 (not too much, though, b/c it messes with the hair) and have come up with a solution. Starting in September we will have a plan for you that answers all of the issues above by it being:
It is customized for you
It is simple
It will help you lose weight AND it will prep you for your event
It will answer all of your post exercise questions
AND it is NOT an ebook!
This is a LIVE plan. You will work with us, inexpensively, for your event and we will help you to make weight for it. Keep your eyes peeled for this because this is hot. You have stretches, workouts, menus, unlimited email support and the list goes on for an AFFORDABLE price and it is customized for you!
If you are tired of running nowhere, here is your direction. I look forward to telling you more about this in a few weeks. Hang tight!
