Fab Fit Squad

As I train for the Miami half marathon a good friend of mine and an amazing marathon coach, John Furey has told me the secret to running an injury free marathon is cross training and intervals.

I know interval training has been around for awhile and people have been doing them, but are you really getting out of your comfort zone! Really pushing yourself to that 9-10, when you push yourself to the limit. So.. why do we do it.  Interval training helps:

• boost performance, by making the heart become more efficient at pumping blood
• helping increasing our tolerance for lactic acid burn
• we can increase our intensity in a short amount of time without risk of burning out or injury
• most importantly we BURN MORE FAT!!!!  You read correctly… We burn more fat!!!

So I have know this for years, but have I really pushed myself to the 9-10 zone!!! Honestly speaking I think I have been hanging out in the 7-8 zone. So I have been cheating myself of all of the benefits. Okay let me be honest the benefit I really want is FAT BURNING. Okay I’m training for a half marathon, I’d like to be able to be able to cross the finish line on my own 2 feet and not be dragging ass! So.. interval training will be my friend 2x/week until January 31st.
Now my interval will be a combination of cardio machines and metabolic circuits using only my bodyweight and light weights. Check out this one below.  If you have bodyweight circuit that you would like to share tell me about it, just write below in the comments

1. How do I stay in shape? I LOVE variety. During the off-season I will workout 4-5 times per week and each day I like to do something different. For cardio workouts I will do the elliptical, stairmaster, kettlebell workouts or run outside if its nice. Also I like stringing intense bodyweight workouts together to create great interval cardio and strength training workouts. I lift 3 times a week by doing a full body workout including core training. Every 4 weeks I mix up my strength training workouts to keep my body guessing.
2. What is my fitness philosophy? I believe anyone can get fit and you don’t’ need to spend hours at the gym. Working out alone isn’t going to give you the body that you want. You need to watch what you eat. 80% of my weight results come from my diet. Also you need to commit, the perfect body doesn’t come without hard work! If you are willing to be in the work like I said anyone can get fit!
3. Supplements? Just say no!! Most women only need a good multivitamin and calcium. All weight loss supplementation should come from a good diet! Like I stated its commitment. Your perfect body does not come in a bottle!! You earn your perfect body with hard work! If you feel that you need to take something, please seek medical advice from a medical doctor.
4. How long do I work with clients? I love introducing people to fitness and helping them meet their fitness goals. I want to be clients to be independent so feel that they can workout on their own without my assistance.
5. How many times a week do I work with clients? I let me clients make that determination. When you are a beginner exercisers some need that extra push and want to workout 2xs/week while other just want a weekly touchbase to help them stay on track.
6. Why did I become a personal trainer?Like many of you I had a 40 plus hour a week job, I flew 100k miles per year, eating out 80% of my meals. Guess what I gained weight. Although worked out when I could I couldn’t get a handle on my weight. Then I meet a great personal trainer who become my mentor, Mike D’Angelo. Each training session was like a learning session , I asked him a million questions during our workouts that he said why didn’t I become a trainer. So here I am.  Taking my passion and turning it into a career.

My husband and I met 15 years ago at a Falmouth Road Race race party. A mutual friend invited us and who knew 15 years later I would be sitting here married to Philip and planning to run the Falmouth road race.  Philip and I are not sentimental l people at all, but every year we have talked about running this race when we hit a milestone in our relationship. On August 9th it will be 15 years that we have been together. Needless to say I am a little SHOCKED at how fast time goes by and he is still the first person that I want to talk to when I get up in the morning and the last person I want to talk to when I go to bed. Enough sentimental stuff… So, we have been training for the road race since mid June, slowly building up our mileage.  We have 2 weeks to go and today is a milestone run, 5.5 miles.  In 2000 I ran the Tufts 10K and that was the last time I ran for more than 20 minutes on a treadmill. So today is our first LONG run. (more…)

Source: About.com

I am in the process of completing my wellness coach certification and during this process you are to create your own wellness vision so that you can better understand what its like to create one and how to guide your clients in the process.

So you may be asking what is a wellness coach?  Wellness Coaches not only support your fitness efforts, they help you understand and take steps to embrace and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The crux of understanding how to embrace and maintain a healthy lifestyle is painting a picture of what your life would look like and how would you feel when you achieved your healthy lifestyle.  While painting this picture you will also look at what is YOUR motivation, not someone’s for achieving this lifestyle and what steps are you willing to take to make this picture become a reality. The vision helps you think about how you are going to motivate yourself to achieve your wellness vision.

Here is my 3 month wellness vision.

• To fix my muscle imbalances so that I may stay active for a long time
  • What is motivating to achieve this goal. I’m (like it or lump) getting older and still want to be as active as possible
  • My main obstacle is finding the time to take care of myself– yes you read that correctly. I struggle with that life balance, taking care of myself versus the needs of my clients, business and family. Just like you I will and can find plenty excuses to do other things, like train my clients or work or things around the house. Yes, as much as I love working out I too struggle with this.
  • My strategy around this is to put my workouts in my calendar and make an appointment with myself, this isn’t an option.

The key to achieving my wellness vision is to break my vision into small digestible goals. I will break them in what I want to achieve in 3 months and the steps I will take weekly towards achieving my goals. If you notice my goals are SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

Specific = My goal is phrased in a way that answers these questions — Who, What, How, When, Which, Why and Where

Source: Beginner TriAthlete.com

Measurable = This is how you are going to measure progress and action towards your goals
Attainable = This is where I look to you want to challenge yourself, but if there set your goals too high you may lose interest in attaining them
Realistic = The goal needs to be realistic for where you are, as stated above it should challenge and motivate you to keep moving forward, but should not kill you to achieve your goal.
Timely = You need to set a timeline, a goal without a timeline is just a dream.

3 month goal

1. To compete in the Women’s TriFitness Competition on July 10th
   
   • I will focus on the areas of the competition that I am weakness
   • I will bench press 3x/week
   • I will do the box jump 3x/week
2. I will be able to complete 10 squats with weight in good form
   • I will begin doing corrective exercises 3/week
   • I will take a yoga class 2x week to increase my flexibility and stability
3. I will rid myself of sciatica pain
   • I will make an appointment for the week of July 12th to meet with Aaron Brooks, posture specialist
   • I will stretch for 30 minutes a day
4. In the off-season, I will not exceed 10 pounds above my contest weight.
   • I will stick to the 7 day sugar shutdown program devised by my coach. This will help me with my sugar cravings, yes I do CRAVE sugar
   • I will workout 5 day/week by doing a combination 30 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of weight training

Weekly Goals:

• I will update my Falmouth Road Race training schedule
• I will review my Tri Fitness training and see how to improve
• I will read 1 chapter in my wellness coach manual
• I will make an appt with my training buddy to practice coaching
• I will update the Fab Fit Squad blog 3x/week
• I will take 1 yoga class/week

Each week, I will keep you up to date on how I progress on my wellness vision. Need help crafting yours. Let me know.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future. — Victor Hugo,  Les Miserables

Here are 5 ways to give you the kick in the butt to jump start your weight loss procrastination. The unofficial start to summer,  Memorial Day is just 4 short days away!

1. Understand your motivation: If you are planning to lose weight for someone other than yourself, it will never work. Get real around why you want to lose the weight! Do you have a summer event coming up and want to fit into that little black dress or have you signed up for a summer road race and need some motivation to get training. Step back and look yourself in the eye and ask WHY DO I WANT TO DO THIS!
2. Use your motivation to your advantage. Do you beat yourself up, each day that you don’t take steps to our goal. Use your goals as the push you need to keep going. I find that by hanging posters or motivational quotes really help give me the push in the right direction that I need.
3. Change your internal language! Instead of saying I HAVE TO or THERE IS NO WAY. Change your dialog. I want to lose 25 pounds so that I will be _____________ (insert what happens when you achieve your goals or how will you feel when you achieve goals.
4. Set goals fueled by your passion. You can’t go anyway without a road map, okay now a days GPS.  Here is where you take those goals and break them up. Your goal for this week is to lose 1 pound and develop a plan on how you are going to do that. Want to run a 10K, go to this site Need help more, shoot me an email.
5. Still not fired up to get moving on your goals, try this. Write a letter to your future self. Imagine that you have achieved your goals. What would you say to yourself, how would you feel, how would you look, what would you do. Now write a letter to yourself as if you didn’t meet your goals. Both letters will help you drive you forward.

Still need a kick in the pants, shoot me an email. Have any additional comments, just post them below.

Most of you work in a compnay that may have multiple floors. So, instead of using the elevators try using the stairs. (Provided for security measures haven’t closed them) You will burn about calories per trip up the stairs. Hold on.. before you say SO WHAT! If you took the elevator how many calories would you burn? If you had to go up and down the stairs 5 times you would burn 100 calories! Now image if you did this everyday Monday – Friday you’d burn 500 calories in 1 work week!  Now that’s something. Try this for a week and let me know how you make out.