March Madness Round 2 was a huge success in both Epsom and Concord!! We had a lot of hard working individuals working as a team for 4 weeks. While I am sad to say there can only be one winner for each gym location, you all did an amazing job!

For Concord, team Bow Ties took the crown this year. The team made up of Muriel Hall, Sue Pribis, Cristy Bresson, and Kara Hinck will be cutting down the nets in Concord this year. Congratulations to the winners, and thank you very much for everyone in Concord who competed in the Myzone Challenge! And the prize – a sweet custom Get Fit NH tee designed by the winning team! ​I can't wait to see it worn in the gym by these ladies.

March Madness at Get Fit NH Epsom was a battle of sled pusher against sled pusher. Each training time had a team in the challenge. Their goal was to push the sled the most laps per team member than all other training times. I was so proud of each who took the challenge. Lisa, from 9am, described pushing the sled as pushing a car out of the mud. It can feel like that although not as heavy as a stuck-in-the-mud car. While we had some veterans push the 135-pound sled, others pushed for the very first time. What a great feeling to drive that much weight down the length of the gym and back. 

Our teams pushed over 631,530 pounds throughout March Madness. While the 9am Ladies only crew had the most people pushing, and 6:15 had the highest one-person score, 6pm took home the prize. They pushed an average of 183.4 laps each in a month. The prize? Take home dinner cooked by Coach Nancy. With that number they would have pushed 315 Polar Bears (each weighing 2000 pounds) back and forth in the gym. Now that is Madness.

Congratulations to all! And enjoy your dinner 6pm!

Let me tell you something that will unequivocally always be the case…if you do not believe you can do it, you won’t. It’s that simple. You may have more talent and more ability than you yourself even realize, it is just sitting dormant waiting for you to recognize it. You need to want it, and furthermore, you need to believe you can do it.

If you think you are the world’s fastest sprinter but you never work hard in the gym or at practice and tune out everything your coach says, then most likely when its time to take off from the starting blocks you are going to find yourself chasing. Sure, everyone can survive on God given talent for a time, but only those who really work hard and practice their craft will continue to advance. For every one athlete who becomes a professional, or competes at the highest stage, there are 10 others who had the ability but never put in the time or effort to achieve it.

This does work the other way, however, every person who excels at the highest level has one major thing in common, that killer instinct. They want the ball with the game on the line and 3 seconds left on the clock. They want to guard the best player on the other team. They don’t shy away from a challenge on the floor or in life.

One of my most vivid examples of this was Jeff Green, for those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, he played for the Celtics several years ago now. I watched a game where he scored 45 points against the Miami Heat at the height of their power. It, to this day, is one of the most dominating performances I have ever seen. You would have had to watch the game to know what I mean. He wanted the ball and he put it in the basket over and over and over, not from downtown, but the hard way by going into the paint. However, even with all the talent he possessed and the type of dominant game he had the potential for, he never reached his full potential because he didn’t have that instinct.

All in all, the important thing to remember is that it takes two sides to the same coin to achieve greatness. The work and time put in (the physical ability to do it) AND the mental ability to believe that you can. Make no mistake, you cannot have one without the other

-Coach Adam

One of the hardest things for us to do is to take a good hard look at ourselves. But maybe the hardest thing to do is to take a good hard look and then CHANGE what needs to be changed.

It's easier to not look.

That applies to more than our "inner" being though. There aren't a whole lot of us that like to step on the Fit3D very often either.

Sometimes it just ain't pretty.

But avoiding a problem doesn't usually make it better.

​So it goes with the "Truth Booth". And it goes WAAAAAY deeper than how we look.

We are taking charge of our HEALTH when we monitor our progress regularly, and the Fit3D is a quick, easy way to start to take charge.

The tutorial below explains why image isn't everything, and why you need to "Fit3D" on a regular basis.

More questions? Comment below.​

Here is another blog by request for you! The question: Why Myzone over Fitbit? How does it make a difference in my training?

Fitbit features:

• Measures steps, calories and distance
• Floors climbed
• Clock/time
• Sleep tracking
• Some have GPS capability
• PurePulse Heart Rate - Fitbit brands their heart rate tech as PurePulse—calling it “the only heart rate technology to offer automatic, continuous wrist based tracking for all-day health insights and workout intensity".
• Ability to challenge friends

Myzone features:

• Measures real life beats per minute
• Measures effort (% of maximum heart rate)
• Logs time spent in each zone
• Picture food logging
• Trend graph after each training, right down to the minute
• Emailed training synopsis after each workout with graph, average effort, peak heart rate, average heart rate and time in zones
• A fantastic app to review history and progress
• Ability to challenge friends
• Data in the gym and bluetooth compatible to see effort outside of the gym
• Measurable points to challenge yourself each month

I obviously know more about Myzone from experience than I do about Fitbit. The Fitbit features were gathered straight from their website.

I am a firm believer in Myzone, or heart rate straps in general, over watches. With wrist watches you need to wear the band correctly and tight enough for the lights to be touching your skin, and intense exercise can throw off the measurements. Fitbit also suggests wearing their trackers higher on your wrist to get more reliable readings. The heart rate straps are not measuring your pulse. They are recording your actual heartbeat.

One great thing that Fitbit does that Myzone doesn’t is measure steps. That is great way to keep you moving throughout the day. HOWEVER, for training purposes that doesn’t matter. Myzone measures the percent of your maximum heart rate. Fitbit cannot show you hard you are working. Myzone not only tells you how hard you were working, but it logs and emails you how hard you were working in each zone and for how long you were working in each zone. It also provides you a graph which shows you your training trends. The graph shows you when your heart rate started to pick up and your recovery between sets. Fitbit cannot show you that important information. Myzone gives you immediate, easy to read feedback while training whereas Fitbit is just showing you a potentially flawed heartbeat.

I realize this may sound a tad biased. I don’t think Fitbits are pointless. I think they are a fantastic tool to make sure you are moving and to measure your steps, but for training purposes I do not think they serve an effective purpose.

I hope that answers the question!
Coach Meagan

​Robie has survived much more than her first month at Get Fit NH. She is just earned Hall of Fame Status in March. Congratulations and thank you, Robie.

Latest news from the Rock N' Race committee.

Please come support the Payson Center, as well as honor our friend Jim Knee and his late wife Catherine Dowd by joining our team!

Register Now and Save $5

The deadline to form a team of twelve or more individuals and receive customized team T shirts and/or a unique race day wicking shirt has been extended to Tuesday, April 18 at 8:00 am.

Register now. After May 15 the registration fee increases to $35, so sign up now and save!

All proceeds from the Merrimack County Savings Bank Rock ‘N Race are directed to Concord Hospital Payson Center for Cancer Care.

We look forward to seeing you at the starting line on Thursday, May 18 at 6:00pm.

The Rock ‘N Race Planning Committee

Let’s talk about menopause, ladies. This blog is coming to you by request. I know it is probably a little strange to have a 27-year-old woman write about this topic, but it is an important topic that no one else is talking about!

If you are still reading, I will assume this matter applies to you. Allow me to encourage you before I really get going. I sit down with literally hundreds of students just like you. I would go as far to say that the number 1 thing I hear when I sit down with a woman in a success session is that they hit menopause and all of a sudden life changed- FAST! Weight gain, mood swings, exhaustion, etc. All of these things make them self-conscious, depressed, stressed, anxious, mad…you name it. The cool part is that they came to us to make a change. So here is a little education and how training and nutrition play a critical role in how you cope.

Menopause is part of life, right? There is absolutely no dodging it, ladies. Whether you a pre-menopausal, in the fire or almost at the end let’s talk about what happens...

Estrogen. It is an important hormone for many reasons, but one reason you may not think about until it drops is that it helps regulate metabolism. With menopause comes an estrogen dive, which means what? If you were used to eating anything and everything and living a sedentary life with a comfortable weight, you can kiss that life goodbye. Or maybe you have the training piece in your toolbox already, but you have not fully committed to that other important part (nutrition!) – now would be the time to hop on board!

You know what else estrogen does? It helps prevent bone loss and works together with calcium, vitamin D and other hormones and minerals to build bones. Thus, after menopause, your body breaks down more bone than it rebuilds. In the years immediately after menopause, women may lose as much as 20% of their bone mass. With that being said, don’t ya think a smart training program and proper nutrition can help you? Hello- osteoporosis?

I am here for you!
Coach Meagan

April 11, 2017 - Get Fit NH’s Smart Group Training is “Best of the Best” workout in New Hampshire. Get Fit NH voted “Best of the Best” Gym in NH for fifth straight year.

Get Fit NH, with locations in Concord and Epsom, won three awards in this year’s Hippo Press “Best of NH” voting. Voters have once again named Get Fit NH “Best of the Best” gym in all of New Hampshire as well as voting their “Smart Group Training” the “Best of the Best workout class” in the state. Coach Nancy Carlson earned the “Best of the Best” Fitness instructor award. This makes five “Best of the Best” nods in a row and eight “Best of…” overall for the popular training gym, well known for its unique high quality group training format. Coach Nancy’s “Best of the Best” Fitness Instructor in all of New Hampshire honor is her fourth straight and her sixth since 2010. “All of the coaches at Get Fit NH consistently work hard and take great pride in what we do for our clients. We never stop learning and finding new ways to make Get Fit NH and our clients better every day. We work hard to consistently offer the smartest and best training available so earning these awards year after year is especially gratifying to us and to our amazing team of coaches, who are deserving of all the credit we can give.” said Nancy.

Get Fit NH is built on the philosophy that if the training isn't fun, safe, and effective, clients won't come back. "Fitness technology is huge these days," Co-Founder Dean Carlson says. "It makes training interesting and helps both our clients and us see and track progress, as well as make quicker adjustments to the training program as needed." In the last few years, Get Fit NH has added new innovations at the gym such as BioForce HRV heart rate variability testing, which monitors readiness for exercise, Fit 3D body scanning for viewing and tracking progress over time, and MyZone, which allows coaches and clients to monitor degree of effort while training.

Get Fit NH is one of only a handful of gyms in the country to have earned Smart Group Training (SGT) certification. SGT is built around the Functional Movement Screen which allows personalization of the routine within a group setting to maximize each client’s results. Get Fit NH asks each new student to come in for a 2 week free tryout before joining to see if the gym, coaches and training are a good fit. These two weeks allow them the best chance to see for themselves what taking advantage of the innovative approach at Get Fit NH will do for them.

The success of Get Fit NH is due to their continuous drive to do what it takes to make their clients better. To this end they offer professional group fitness training, nutrition coaching, and seminars at two locations in Concord and Epsom. See their website at http://www.GetFitNH.com or call 344-2651 today.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a few questions on my Facebook page for some of our students to answer. I wanted to share with the world WHY our students ever walked through our doors, WHY they choose to stay and what results they are most proud of. Today's world is being taken over by obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and it is up to US to help spread the good word and change the world! Here's what people are saying...

​Brenda says: I started because I was caring for aging parents . If I can be strong and fit now, then I will go into my own senior years in a much better place than they are/were. I stay because I NEED someone to tell me to pick up more weight, do just one more squat thrust, keep going, keep going, keep going. I am not good at a gym where I'm given a program and expected to do it on my own. I NEED coaches to COACH me and motivate and encourage me! The thing I am most proud of is that I stick with it....4 days/week for 2 years now. I have never ever been this successful at a fitness routine....it's the coaching and the changing routines and the camaraderie.

Brian is here because of the Best Bar Ever- especially the cookie dough!

Real people. Real results. What are you waiting for?

Make it happen!
-Coach Meagan​

Get a head start by registering today!