Thursday, November 18th, 2010
Boy was that dramatic. And far be it from me to be dramatic!
BUT! I feel when we, as fitness professionals, make things short, sweet and to the point, we see better adherence. I also feel that when we put a certain ‘fear of death’ or in the case of this blog ‘fear of weight gain or per4mance loss’ y’alls hear us and heed our advice more than if we write a long, emotional blog about it. A shame, yes, but necessary none-the-less.
The holiday season starts this Sunday. You can say it starts next Thursday but that’s not true, it starts Sunday. This is because on Monday when you go to work, you know and I know that your mind is not thinking about work and neither is anyone else. This means you will be off of your schedule; your normal everyday routine. Once you interrupt routine, you inject uncertainty into life, and once you inject uncertainty into life…all hell breaks loose. So let’s get a handle on the next 6 weeks from a practical standpoint, shall we?
This is not going to be a long post today for a reason: I want you to do it.
THREE THINGS THAT BRING ON HOLIDAY ARMAGEDDON:
Lack of planning: I don’t mean on a micro level. I mean on a macro level. You should know what you want to look like, perform like and so on by the end of the year. If you decide right now that you want to maintain, then make sure that that happens. If you want to get better, get on it right now. If you know you want to go to hell in a handbasket, then don’t do anything because you are on your way now. But do not decide on maintenance as a goal and then decide 3 weeks in that you want to “lose a few pounds” because you feel fat one day. Stick to your overall plan the whole way through or you will drive yourself crazy!
Unrealistic goal: This ties in with Yield from last week. Honestly, if you know you will be traveling for the next 6 weeks, you have 2 weddings, 3 holiday parties, a term paper due and a big proposal at work, do not set a weight loss goal for #1. Use your brain. Not only are you maintenance, you are crazy! I would be Caron Crankypants by the time January rolled around and the only thing I would want to set is my behind on a piece of cardio for some stress relief. Hang tight if this is you…we’ll be thinking of you.
Self fulfillment: Really what I mean here is you are full of yourself. That’s it. Nothing else. Every time you think yourself and your program over the next 6 weeks, instead of getting stressed over it or upset about your progress (or lack thereof), donate that time to an organization or cause that needs a helping hand. This is the best way to curb self indulgence. Here’s what happens: we go into this season in denial mode. We deny every cookie, candy, delicacy and so on. By doing this we obsess over it. We hunt down healthy recipes and tips on how to drink and not get fat and so on and so on. This takes a ginormous amount of time; time that could be used elsewhere. If you find yourself migrating to yourself, yet again, clock that time and keep track of it. Some of you will owe an organization like Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly a whopping 20 hours by the time the holiday season is over and think of how much better they and you will be when your self indulgence is over.;)
Ok…that’s it for today. I am off to work on our new home coming in January–oooo, did I say that
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
Something is in the air…and I don’t mean the scent of that BFI trash truck you are following on the highway. (Blech!)
I cannot explain it, but you can feel it.
There are two cool things about this month that I think are noteworthy: we just had 10/10/10 occur over the weekend and this month has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays in it. We have not had that for a looooong time.
If you know anything about me, I love stuff like that because they really do have meaning. Now I’m not going to get all weird on you, because I can (suddenly I feel Amy, Seanna and Heather saying to themselves, “Oh Lord, where is she going with this.”), I promise I will keep this on the straight and arrow. Today will be short, sweet and to the point. I say that more for myself than for you because honestly, I can go off on a tangent that 2000 words later is still not fully defined. I won’t do that today. Instead, I’ll focus on the 10/10/10.
So I have already alluded to the fact that there is something in the air. A sort of “wait” in the air, if you will. Everyone seems to be on the cusp of something or waiting for something to clear so they can move on. I know of no one who is just “there” right now; who is just hanging out and enjoying life. It’s more like people are “waiting” for this injury to heal or “looking forward” to normalcy in their lives from some big project they have going on or “wanting stability” in their hectic lives because they have had some huge shift in their personal day-to-day schedule. It’s wild. I know of many people who are unemployed, between goals, getting it together because they just lost a close family member… I know of so many people who are frustrated because their situation has been going for a long time but can feel the “breakthrough” coming and just do not have the patience for it. Trust me when I say this, it’s because of the number 10.
Ten denotes a level change. It means you completed one level and are now going to the next. It means promotion from whatever situation you are in. For us, that’s a great thing. If you are struggling right now, stop. If you are confused right now, relax. You are not going crazy. Having 10/10/10 occur in history means that just about everybody is in flux. There truly is a “wait” in the air. Only that wait is not a negative–it’s a positive. So we want to be ready for the blessing when it comes and to keep this in the context of the athletic realm, here are some things that you can do to move this elevation along faster:
I find that as I age (like fine wine, I might add) I see more of the things that are just a way of life that literally stymied me when I was younger. I am not sure I would have listened to someone back then if they told me to accept it, embrace it, yadda yadda…I wasn’t much of a listener then. But if you are a listener, hear me when I say, “This too shall pass.” You will heal. You will reach that weight loss goal you have your sights on. You will get better on the bike. You will get a job and be able to afford that big race you have planned next year.
Stay focused. Stay strong. And rely on the power of ten to get you there. Relief is just around the corner.
Friday, September 24th, 2010
A few weeks ago Ashley Kumlien was our ModelPer4mance Athlete of the Week. Remember when we spotlighted her?
She’s the incredible woman on the 3,200 mile run across the United States to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis.
Well guess what?
She’s still running.
She has less than 100 miles to go until she reaches her finish line in New York.
I know we have a lot of MP4′ers in the New England area so if you get a chance, track her down.
Go out and cheer her on. Run a mile or 10 with her.
Or just pop over to her blog and leave her some MP4 love.
Just prepared to be inspired.
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
I swear everything we did when we were kids was so much better than now that we are adults.
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. — Herbert Henry Asquith
But we didn’t know what we had when we had it. We wanted to grow up over night and live like we were 20 something when we were only 13. We knew it all. We had it all. And the best of all: we weren’t responsible for a thing. No, that was left to our parents. That was their job to worry over the bills, make sure we were safe, drive us to Palace on Route 1 at 10 o’clock at night b/c we had a cute outfit (er…or was that just me?). Our parents were saviors and menaces all at the same time. Take me where I need to go but don’t ask me where I’m going! What’s wrong with that picture? Haha
I am in a state of reflecting (and flux, tbh) right now because the rock of my life, that I did not seem to give such credit to, had a very traumatic thing happen to him last week. My dad, the smartest man I have ever met besides his brother Bruce, went in for a routine medical procedure that for the average person would have been an hour to two hour procedure with a bit of monitoring to follow to make sure he was ok. Instead my dad, while sitting up and fully aware, proceeded to have a stroke and a heart attack all at the same time on the table. Yes, he is alive. Yes, he is out of the woods. No, he’s not the same and never will be again—and it is so hard for me to type that.
I know I have said this before and I truly do mean it: there are worse things than dying. Living less than who you are or who you know yourself to be is sheer hell in and of itself. Value the gift of movement because it is fleeting at best. At any time life can take something as precious as that from you and you cannot do anything about it. Obviously this is why we work out the way we do and why we care about how we look and function. My dad is in there somewhere and he cannot get out. How frustrating must that be? More importantly, this was all preventable if he lived in a different generation. Health was not important when he was in his prime and it definitely was not when he passed it. All we can do is sit back and watch our parents choose to live in ways that make US now sit on the edge OUR seat waiting for THEM to come home.
I do miss the old days.
“Sometimes when a man recalls the good old days, he’s really thinking of his bad young days.” Anon
Not because it was better in terms of my life or circumstances (I am so truly blessed with some of the best people I could ever ask for in my life—please refer to the MP4 team), but because exercise was fun and not something I had to do to stay in shape. I know someone is going to say I love to exercise and I am going to tell you to go fly a kite. And honestly, even if you do, you do not love it now like you did when you were a kid. Now exercise is a fad: crossfit, p90x, parkour and so on. Back then…it was life; it was fun.
Running
Is what you did because you could. Whether you ran to your girlfriend’s house two streets over in your jelly shoes or you ran to the park to make sure everyone was there in your tight Jordache jeans, running was purely acceptable. No one wore heart rate monitors. No one bought books on running. Very few kids back then were heavy. We ran everywhere. Spontaneously. In any clothing. In any footwear. And we’re still around to talk about it.
Parkour (FreeRunning)
In the old days, Free Running is what you did when you were about to miss the school bus. See, the school bus did not pick you up in front of your house like it does now. You actually had to *walk* to the school bus. But let’s face it, you were never on time. So you had to *run* like a lost African tribesman caught out in the Serengeti alone. Unarmed. In the dark. At any given moment you would see about 20 kids come flying off the side streets onto High St. doing a buck twenty five trying to catch the bus. At least once a week there was a casualty (Someone would miss it, someone would wipe out, someone would have a wardrobe malfunction. Scary stuff.) and we’d all talk about it for months and laugh. But then there were the champs. They were the ones that would jump over cars, climb trees, dive roll, fall, roll, get up and keep running. These folks meant business. Clearly if they missed homeroom one more time, stuff was going to go down. So they mastered the art of Parkour, got older, gave it a name and started a movement. We know the true origin, though.
Crossfit
This is another form of “way too much time on your hands in the summer down at the park”. This is when you would say to someone: “I dare you to climb the slide the wrong way, jump over all the animals in the park, do 10 pullups on the monkey bars, run around the block 2 times and then lift Tony up 5 times. You do that and I’ll buy you a steak cheese.” Next thing you know, everybody goes flying off and Tony finds himself being hoisted up by 4’ 8” girls wanting a steak and cheese. Shame. Cuz now you have to pay to do this kind of stuff. And an even bigger shame is that you can’t find a good old fashioned park anymore either with dangerous things like 15 foot slides and merry go rounds that could spin faster than the earth’s orbit. But now it’s all about the deadlift, kip up and pull up with no Tony to be found anywhere.
Relivio
Probably the best form of exercise there is in the country and there is nothing else like it. Group hide and seek. At least 30 kids in the neighborhood get together and form 2 teams. One team has 5 min to disperse across a 5 street area and hide. The goal is for everyone to get back to base. Inevitably there would always be one jackass who would forget who is on his team and who is not and be captured. Then there was at least one couple that disappeared never to be found that game again. Someone would get bitten by a dog and at least 2 people would end up forgetting what was base and what was not. But you always knew a game was going down because all you could see was a bunch of kids running through the neighborhood like a bunch of cockroaches after the light’s been turned on. It was awesome. Unfortunately nowadays if you see that, it is usually called a “citywide search” and it involves handcuffs and mug shots.
Multisport
Now known as triathlons and duathlons and most involve swimming, this actually got its origin from the street lights coming on. If you were unlucky enough to be too far away from your house when this happened you were required to run, bike, sky dive, crawl, hitch rides and so on to get your behind home FAST. Do not mistake this for running or Parkour. This condition brought on athletic feats that mankind still has not reproduced. You would see 4 kids on a huffy bike (one pedaling, one on the seat with you in the back, one on the handle bars and the last in the back on the spokes) moving at the speed of light—the street light that is or cutting through yards, hopping fences, swimming through neighborhood pools—you name it, it happened here. It always involved 2 to 3 modes of movement: running, biking, praying. And it was grueling to say the least. You really never knew you made it til you made it. No time keepers. No water stops. No bike transition areas. Every so often, though, one of the cool parents in the neighborhood would provide a friendly voucher for you (“honestly, Julie, Jodi was here helping me out. She’s on the way now.” Whew!) and bought you some time, but that was about it.
OH I MISS THESE DAYS! And I miss my dad. My heart aches in a way I cannot describe and I am not one to put emotion out on the table. He may or may not “come back”. Pray that he comes back.
In the mean time…I love you all. Along with my family, you complete my life. Do not ever forget how important that last time you may see someone is. God Bless.
Friday, September 10th, 2010
Can I ask you a question?
I want you to think about it before you answer.
How are your workouts, really?
Are your workouts uncomfortably-comfortable? Uncomfortably-comfortable is when you know you could work harder. It’s when you reach for the same set of weights workout after workout, when you set the elliptical to the same setting every trip to the gym, when you take the same path on your run time and again. It’s when you’re going through the motions. Checking your workout off your to-do list or punching the clock.
Or, are your workouts comfortably-uncomfortable? Comfortably-uncomfortable is when you are indeed pushing yourself…you’re breaking a sweat, you’re feeling strong, you’re almost out of breath. On a scale of 1 to 10 you’re cranking out a 6 or 7. But. You’re still comfortable.
Or, are your workouts Uncomfortably-Uncomfortable? Uncomfortably-uncomfortable is when you’re having your Rocky moment. You’re pushing yourself harder then you ever thought possible. You’re chasing the burn instead of stopping when you’ve reached it. You’re workouts are uncomfortable but you leave comforted knowing you stepped into the seldom talked about and seldom reached: UNcomfortable zone.
Are you reaching your potential? If not, what are you going to do to change zones?
