7 Tips To Turn Resolutions Into Results

New Years is TOMORROW! Where did THAT year go?

Are you in "Resolution Mode"? Is this going to be "your year"?

I hope ALL your resolutions, dreams and wishes come true in 2017, and we are here to help you.

But how do you keep the focus and resolve you have on January 1st through the whole year?

Here are some helpful tips to keep you on track. Remember most of our New Year’s Resolutions were not something we can attain quickly but over time. Lets keep on fighting for our dreams.

1. Get quality sleep

You’ve heard us say it many times but sleep is important. Getting 6-8 solid hours of sleep is essential for your body to rejuvenate, replenish, and repair itself. Your body is doing a lot while you sleep. Beyond the health benefits, think how much happier, smoother, and relaxed your day goes when you wake up ready to tackle the activities of your day.

2. Surround yourself with people that encourage you.

Most people are hard on themselves to begin with. We blast ourselves for not being perfect. Perfection in our diet, looks, actions, talk, relationships, and work will not happen. We need to be our best but don’t beat yourself up for a failure; learn from it and move on. The last thing we need to do is spend time with people that are critical toward us or people that are always bleak and downhearted. Spend time with people who see you and value you for who you are. They are the ones who make you feel like you can accomplish anything.

3. Exercise regularly

Exercise raises your serotonin levels. You know, the stuff that make you just feel good! The physical challenges you overcome in your training will boost your confidence outside of the gym as well. Exercise sends you a message that you are worth the time and effort you make for yourself.

4. Eat a clean healthy diet

Eating clean healthy food is another way of sending a message to yourself that you are worth it. You are worth the best foods, the time to plan your meals and prepare them. Avoid processed foods. Focus on foods fresh fruits and vegetables and a variety of protein. Remember a healthy diet keeps your hormones in balance, which helps activate the cycle of a happier, healthier you.

5. Finish what you Started

Something motivated you to start each and every action you do each day. A boss can motivate you to be on time each day to work, and your paycheck can be a motivation for you to show up to work at all. There are also motivations to do laundry, plan meals, and make training each time you are scheduled. Once you start something you will soon find there are often obstacles that get in our way. Laundry might be put on hold while dealing with a sibling dispute, dinner might be late on the table because an unexpected phone call interrupted your prep time. Each time you overcome an obstacle and succeed by finishing your task it adds to your sense of accomplishment. Taking the obstacles seriously will enable you to focus on it and then get back to your plan. It is a great feeling to start something and cross it off your daily list. It is even a bigger boost to cross things off your weekly or monthly to do list.

6. Eliminate “Can’t” and “But” from your vocabulary

Those obstacles that get in your way when working toward a goal will come. How we handle those obstacles define our success. When we start allowing those obstacles and life to get in our way we often start making excuses. You’ll start off by saying “ I can’t get the laundry done today because the kid were acting up.” “I didn’t eat to support my goals but I didn't eat the whole cake.” Those words are self-defeating. Turn those two little words into possibilities. You can do anything you truly set your mind to.

7. Focus on your strengths

All of us were created differently with special talents and abilities. They define us, they give us character and personality. We all have something we are really good at. Focus on those things. I’m not saying we shouldn’t stretch our selves in our weaker areas but comparing ourselves to others is unfair. You are unique. Enjoy that part of you that makes you special.

While we write our goals down on January 1st many of us will dream those dreams for a long time. The dream to be better/change is worth the fight. You have already encountered some challenges. When we look back over the first half of the year; our goals and dreams will still be blossoming and growing. Don't be in it for the sprint but for the marathon.

To Your Best Health,

Coach Nancy

6 Years of Dodging a Well Deserved Spotlight

Steven Meier! I don't know how he has managed to slide under the radar for 6 years, but it stops now! You need to hear what he has to say and I have to share with you how wonderful this man is. Now, Steven is a humble dude, so I am probably going to embarrass him a little, but that's okay. I know he can take it! Steven is an absolute pleasure to coach and be around in general. His attitude is ALWAYS positive. If he is having a bad day, you'd never know it. He smiles anyways. He encourages others and he works hard 100% of the time. I have never seen Steven quit before the end of a set and I have never seen him turn down a challenge. Here is what Steven has to say about the last 6 years with Get Fit NH...

What was your biggest challenge prior to starting Get Fit NH? / Why did you seek out Get Fit NH?

About 6 years ago I had gotten sick during the winter and was not going to the gym. In addition I was having lower back pain. I was constantly using the excuse of feeling under the weather and not wanting to make my back any worse. This pattern went on for about 6 months. At the time I was working with a woman who was attending Get Fit in Epsom who would come in every day touting the benefits of the gym (gee hard to imagine someone from Get Fit with so much enthusiasm). She knew that I had been going to the gym consistently up until that winter and kept bugging me to join. Finally I bit the bullet and contacted Get Fit.

What changed after joining?

After the first week or so when I thought I wouldn’t make it thru the first 2 weeks of free training, I began to see a change in my body. I had put on a number of pounds over the winter and actually went up a waist size. Just when I started at Get Fit, the S3 Challenge was getting under way. I really am not a proficient cook but made a concerted effort to watch what and how much I ate (with the help from my friend at work). Within the first month or two I had lost 12 pounds and dropped 2 waist sizes. I also noticed my muscle tone was vastly improved from when I was attending my former gym.

How long have you been with Get Fit NH?

This spring will make it 6 years that I have been coming to Get Fit NH.

What specific results can you share?

Besides the things mentioned above I also noticed that my stamina was much better than I ever remember. You’ve got to love the metabolic exercises. I also have been keeping at a consistent weight within a pound or two for quite some time.

What would you say to somebody on the fence about joining?

Many people I have spoken to about Get Fit NH will use the excuse that they are in too poor a shape and too overweight to attend a gym like Get Fit NH. My answer to them is the session that I attend has both men and women, older and younger, some overweight and some not. The program is not set up for competition with others (ell except Fun Fridays sometimes). It is set up to compete with yourself to get in better shape and lose the weight that you wish to lose. I think that the concept of timed periods of exercise with no expectations is perfect. You do the number of reps or lift the amount weight you can do at any one time. The only stipulation is that you work to increase your reps and weight.

I think that Dean has put together an amazing program and has a group of coaches that makes me want to have perfect attendance every month. Besides the coaches, the members are part of what makes Get Fit NH so great. Friends just don’t understand on a day off why I would get up for the 5AM class when I could sleep in and go later. You 5AMers do though right?

So there you have it! If Steven didn't show up to train I would be concerned until I heard from him. I can always count on him being there at 4:40 AM to get his people their foam rollers and give me a hard time. I can always count on you!

Keeping making it happen,
Coach Meagan

Sometimes Darkness Can Show You the Light

I was listening to a song by the band “Disturbed” on YouTube last week. After that song was finished, a new song I had never heard before automatically loaded and started playing. The name of the song is “The Light”. The main chorus of the song is “sometimes darkness can show you the light”. The entire song is about when bad things happen, sometimes it is a path to something better. As far as the band goes, the message was something that I was not expecting but something that I certainly agree with.

We all have had/will have hard, dark times. It is difficult to ever think of those things as positive, and I am not suggesting you do. However, I think we can all agree that no matter how down and out we felt, how awful, how hurt, how beaten down we felt at the time… looking back, it made us stronger, more able individuals. It’s an unfortunate part of life that there will be dark times, there will be times when you feel that you are buried so deep that you will never dig yourself out. And then you do. It may take a long time, it may take as much effort as you can possibly muster, but when you get there, you are stronger than you were before.

Here’s the thing about feeling as though you have hit rock bottom, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It allows us to look back and reflect on the decisions you made that brought you to that point, and analyze the ways to make sure it will never happen again. For this to work, you have to allow yourself to think of it that way. Often at our lowest point the last thing we want to do is think positively. However, at that point you have an opportunity - to look at your situation and say, “this is how I got here, these are the decisions I made, how do I get out of this situation?” or “what can I do to make sure I am never in that situation again?".

Dark moments can have powerful, profound effects on us as humans; they often cause us to re-evaluate our own lives in ways that can change us for the better. While dark moments are awful to go through, they are negative, they are stressful, they hurt… just remember, as cliché as it might be, without darkness there can never be light.

-Coach Adam

Soak Up the Sunshine Vitamin

Vitamin D, also known as the sunshine vitamin, has been a hot topic in the nutrition world. Notorious for its role in bone health, recent research has and is continuing to explore countless additional roles vitamin D plays in health. As winter rapidly approaches and daylight hours decrease, our need for vitamin D is increasing. Nonetheless, today I am sharing why vitamin D is so important to include in our nutritional defense.

What exactly is Vitamin D and why is it important?

One of the four fat-soluble vitamins, along with A, E, and K
Needed for absorption of calcium and phosphorus - hello strong bones!
Plays an important role in muscle and cardiac function - increased training performance
Associated with mental functioning and mood disorders through hormone regulation
Linked to decreased inflammation and increased immunity
Potentially reduces risk of cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid & osteoarthritis, diabetes, and some cancers

I eat a balanced diet, so why am I deficient?

Vitamin D comes from 3 different sources:

Food - salmon, sardines, mackerel, tuna, shiitake mushrooms, egg yolk
Sunshine
Supplements (including multivitamins)

It has been found that vitamin D has a high prevalence of deficiency worldwide. Specifically, vitamin D was identified as an “under consumed nutrient” in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This means it is often difficult for us to rely on vitamin D from food sources alone. Another option for vitamin D is through synthesis of UV rays from the sun, especially UVB rays. However, those of us living above a latitude of 35 degrees (yay New Hampshire!) are unable to make vitamin D in the winter months.

Now this is where supplementation can fill some holes.

Defining deficiency and optimal intake has been proven to be difficult over the years. Vitamin D status is determined using a blood test measuring for 25-hydroxy vitamin D. According to the Vitamin D Council, deficiency is defined at <30 ng/ml, sufficiency at 40-80 ng/ml, and recommends 5000 IU per day of vitamin D3. However, the Institute of Medicine has some different defining markers: <20 ng/ml for deficiency, 20-50 ng/ml for sufficiency, and 600 IU per day of supplementation.

My recommendations would be to first evaluate your risk: How many vitamin D rich food sources are you currently eating? Are you taking any supplements that include vitamin D? How is your sun exposure (except it's winter so I can answer that for all of you!)?

Next, set up an appointment with your physician to get some blood work done to see if you're deficient. Truly knowing your current vitamin D status is much better than guessing or assuming. Dependent on what your status is, it can be determined with the help of your healthcare professional what level of supplementation is best for YOU.

Remember, vitamin D goes beyond just bone health. Based on your vitamin D status, interventions such as dietary, supplementation, and lifestyle can be made!

BONUS: remember the SFH Omega-3 Natural Fish Oil I mentioned last week that we carry in our Get Fit NH coolers? Along with the omega-3 fatty acids, this fish oil includes 1000 IUs of vitamin D3!

Eating for Health Every Day,
Coach Kristen

What Certifications Do the Coaches Hold?

This is week #2 of special requests!

Certifications are a great thing to add to our tool box. We are required to continue our education in order to keep our certifications. It is crucial to do so in a field that is constantly changing and no scenario is the same. The different certifications teach us how to coach different situations, different age groups and in different ways. The training certifications are important and the nutrition piece is just as important. I will go down the list for each coach and list their education/certification background.

Dean

Dean Carlson is a Level 2 Certified Precision Nutrition Master Coach, a Certified Functional Aging Specialist through The Functional Aging Institute, and a Level 2 Youth Conditioning Specialist with the International Youth Conditioning Association. He also holds instructor certifications with TRX, Kettlebell Athletics, and Training for Warriors.

Dean is the master program designer which is why you are constantly learning new exercises and finding new ways to challenge your body. The Precision Nutrition certification is the top level nutrition certification in the industry. The course was one year long and covered everything from biochemistry to coaching specific scenarios to the why’s to case studies. Him and Nancy both completed this certification.

Nancy

Nancy Carlson is a Certified Professional Fitness Trainer with the National Exercise and Sports Trainer Association, a Level 1 Youth Conditioning Specialist with the International Youth Conditioning Association, and is a Level 2 Certified Precision Nutrition Master coach.

Meagan

Meagan Sbat holds an Associates in Exercise Science, and is a Certified Fitness Trainer, Specialist in Fitness Nutrition, Youth Fitness 1, Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach and Specialist in Senior Fitness with the International Sport Sciences Association. She is currently working on Precision Nutrition Level 1.

Adam

Adam Gray holds a Bachelors Degree in Exercise Science from Plymouth State University and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

Cari

Cari O'Shea holds a Bachelors Degree in Exercise Science from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and is a Certified Personal Trainer through the American College of Sports Medicine.

Kristen

Kristen Chulada is a Registered Dietitian and licensed in the state of New Hampshire. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor’s of Science in Nutrition and completed her Dietetic Internship through the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also a Certified Personal Trainer with the American College of Sports Medicine.

I hope this helps clear up your coaches background. We each have a very different personal story which led us to coaching. I encourage you to read our bios if you have not done so already!
-Coach Meagan

Anna is in the Athlete Academy Spotlight!

Anna LeBrun has been a part of our Athlete Academy for a little over a month now, but has been a member of Get Fit for much longer. Below are some of her short but sweet explanations of why she chose Get Fit and what she has accomplished.

"I wanted to start athlete academy this year because I wanted to improve my athleticism and I also really enjoyed it when I've been part of it in the past.

I play softball and field hockey. In softball I'm a catcher and middle infielder, and in field hockey I'm a defender and a midfielder.

Since starting at Athlete Academy, I have noticed that I am more mindful about how to keep myself healthy and try to prevent injuries. I've also noticed that I've gotten stronger in the time I've been there.

My favorite part of Athlete Academy is setting small goals and the feeling when I reach those goals. I like watching my progress and seeing my improvement. I love how the coach and the others are motivating and supportive."

I remember when I first started working here how awesome it was having Anna in class, someone who always works extremely hard, loves a challenge, is extremely positive and is always accepting of new ways she can get better. She has brought that same positive attitude, friendliness, and competitive drive to Athlete Academy and I am extremely impressed with how much she has accomplished and how hard she works every single time she comes in. Great Job, Anna, and keep it up!

-Coach Adam

New Years at NOON!

Can you believe 2016 is coming to a close? What an incredible year it has been both personally and professionally. It is truly special to watch YOU all grow and Get Fit NH family grow. I believe I have the best job in the world thanks to all of you and the team I get to work with. I appreciate you all inspiring me to be better every single day.

We are looking forward to getting 2017 off to an excellent start on Monday January 2, 2017 at NOON! Monday is the Federal New Years holiday since it falls on a Sunday, so we will honor that and ring in the new year together at noon. On Tuesday January 3, 2017 we will resume regular schedule and get 2017 started with GOALS! This will ease us back into reality after a well deserved recovery week December 26th - December 30th!

Thank you for choosing to train with us, and here's to the rest of 2016 and a GREAT start to 2017!

Make it Happen, Coach Meagan

5 Fast Facts on Fish Oil

Hey Get Fit Family!

Today I am back to share another supplemental secret weapon to add to the nutritional battle gear we all need to keep us healthy!

Omega-3 fatty acids, commonly known as fish oil, supplements have been boasted for their benefits in many aspects of heath for some time now. Multiple researchers have tested the powerful polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA, one of the beneficial types of fats) and there are countless research articles to back up the popular claims.

Here are the top 5 benefits of omega-3 fatty acids:

Anti-inflammatory properties
Increase in brain health
Decreased risk of cardiovascular disease
Increase in mood
Enhanced immune system

A quick educational moment on omega-3 fatty acids! These types of fats are one of the essential fats, meaning that our body doesn’t produce them and we must get them from an outside source (i.e. foods/supplements). There are three types of omega-3 fatty acids.

DHA: Fluid and flexible, these PUFAs are part of the brain cell’s membrane and are found in cold-water fish, like salmon, mackerel, sardines, and tuna.
EPA: Also found in fatty fish, EPA has been determined to play a role in reducing inflammatory processes in the brain.
ALA: Plant source of omega-3 fatty acids, like flaxseed and walnuts, which is converted to EPA and DHA in the body. This conversion is not as efficient as directly taking in EPA or DHA, therefore additional consumption of these ALA-rich foods are needed.

While fatty fish and some plant sources provide lots of omega-3 fatty acids, it is often difficult to consume enough of these foods to achieve a benefit. The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend we eat fish at least twice each week. This can be difficult for some people to do, especially those who do not enjoy the taste of seafood.

While I still challenge you to aim for weekly fish consumption and enjoy your omega-3’s through whole food sources, supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids guarantees you are getting the beneficial EPA and DHA each day to optimize your health. At Get Fit NH, Dean and Nancy have already searched out the best fish oil supplement they could find: SHF Omega-3 Natural Fish Oil. Find it in our coolers during your next training time and be sure to check their website for more information.

Remember to check in with your healthcare professional before starting any new supplement! Of special importance, if you are currently on a blood thinner (i.e. Coumadin or Warfarin), please contact your physician before starting a fish oil supplement. Omega-3 fatty acids can also act like a blood thinner, potentially leading to increased bruising and/or bleeding times.

Eating for Health Every Day,
Coach Kristen

Winter Break!

The kids are all getting a winter break, why shouldn't we!

Well, we should, snap dang it - so let's!

I hereby decree that our next recovery week is going to run from December 26th through January 1st. There, I did it! (actually it's been on the schedule for over a year, but let me have my moment, ok?)

If you want to get edumacated on why we take recovery weeks, please keep reading after the schedule part of this post - it's important!

Just a reminder of what is happening around here the next couple weeks. It's gonna be a blast, so don't miss it!

Saturday December 17th @ 10:00am: Ugly Sweater Christmas Party

Monday December 19th through Friday December 23rd: Holiday Spirit Week

Monday December 26th through Sunday January 1st: Recovery Week

Monday January 2nd: New Years at Noon All Family Training

All About Recovery Weeks

Our recovery weeks are what I would call Macro-Recovery. In other words we take a planned week off every training phase in order to let the body rest up from hard training and get ready for the next phase.

But did you know you can do even better than that? We have 22 athletes in the Get Fit NH family who participate in our Bioforce HRV monitoring program, which measures your systemic stress load on a daily basis, which allows us to fine-tune the recovery process on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. You can catch up on that by clicking here

Read on why properly planned and adequate recovery is important for you!

The Recovery Curve

I saw the recovery curve for the first time during my time with Australian physical preparation coach Ian King. His principles laid the foundation for the way we program, train and especially recover here at Get Fit NH. The principles that work with professional athletes apply to us too!

The following illustrates a “good” recovery curve:

The green line represents what we are all looking for – continual, never ending progress over time. We are getting stronger, faster, thinner, better looking (ok at least that’s what I wish for).

Reality Check – ain’t gonna happen. The process of changing your body is not linear, in fact what we are looking at in an optimal training environment is more of a “One step back brings me Two steps forward”.

A closer look at the chart will help explain what I mean.

The red line represents Equilibrium. This is where your body wants to stay, no matter if your goal is losing fat, gaining lean, or both. As you have no doubt found out, forcing your body to change is hard work – really hard work. When you walk into Get Fit NH, our training is designed to elicit that change. But it’s not as simple as “working out” day after day after day. In fact as I am about to illustrate, training without proper recovery is actually hurting you, not making you better.

The blue line represents the “recovery curve”. Starting at the left hand of the chart all the lines intersect. For this illustration that point is where your first training occurred – you “worked out”.

But what’s going on?

Instead of performance going up, that line is actually heading down – this is what is called Depletion. If you think about it makes sense – you have worked hard, you are fatigued, your body is depleted of nutrients – you are spent!

Don’t worry, your body will get over it, if you treat it right! This is what we call Adaptation. Your body wants to be able to handle the increased demand that was placed on it, and starts the process of getting better.

You are in charge of if and how fast that happens. A few of the factors that influence this adaptation include Recovery Nutrition (read up!), stress levels, sleep habits, supportive nutrition, age, and training history.

The recovery curve continues with Supercompensation. Here is how Coach King describes this process:

“It is only when recovery is allowed that we see the super-compensation effect, the unique phenomenon where the bodies physical capacity is elevated in response to training, in anticipation of another exposure to the same stimulus.” – King, I, 1999/2000, Foundations of Physical Preparation

In other words your body has gotten better in response to your training, a new Equilibrium is established and this state is when we will ideally train again. Our programming at Get Fit NH is carefully designed to give this the best chance of occurring, but as I hope you are discovering, you have a lot to do with this with how you treat your recovery!

As you can see, when things are clicking, this process when repeated over and over means you are getting better and better, the blue line is headed up – pretty cool!

The flip side to all this is what happens when the recovery process isn’t working so well.

This chart represents recovery gone “bad”:

When we continue to train in a state of “Depletion”, regardless of the reason, the adaptation to supercompensation effect doesn’t occur, and instead of getting better, we find ourselves in a downward cycle. This can happen when we train the same muscle groups too soon, when we haven’t taken the steps described above to recover optimally (sleep and nutrition for instance) regardless of time between training, when we train too hard coming off an illness, etc. The last thing we want to happen is new equilibrium to be established in a downward pattern – not good.

The long and short of it is your body absolutely needs to recover from hard training. Consistently training in a fatigued state results in injury and illness. Your body is an amazing machine designed to put up with a lot, but it was also designed to need rest.

Which leads us to:

Recovery Weeks!

Face it – you can get beat up anywhere. Our responsibility at Get Fit NH is to help you get better!

That includes recovery weeks. We have found that somewhere between 8 and 12 weeks of training is just about right to take a full week off and let your body recover.

That doesn’t mean that you spend your training time on the couch eating bon-bons, but if you insist on going down to PF and hitting the weights or running 10 miles every morning, your body will suffer in the long run, and perhaps even in the short term.

If you find yourself fighting this concept, ask yourself this – Is your unwillingness to take a week off a well reasoned decision based on what you know to be true, or is it that your attachment to training is so strong emotionally that makes it so hard? You will not lose all you have gained by taking the week off, I assure you! Again to quote Coach King, “…if you don’t (take time off)…most of you are going to lose it anyway!”

So now that we have established you are ready, willing and able to embrace recovery week, what do you do?

Glad you asked!

Three Steps for Successful Recovery

1.) Physical Rest and Regeneration

– Our bodies must rest and recover to prevent over-training (or under-recovering) issues so that we can come back 100% healthy and energized for the next phase of the program

– Focus on maintaining and/or increasing flexibility and tissue health by stretching and foam rolling daily. 15-30 minutes is fantastic!

– Daily restorative walks are beneficial during this week. 30-60 minutes briskly walking (not jogging/running) will keep your body refreshed and active, without negating the purpose of this week. Don’t overdo it!

2.) Physiological and Psychological Rest and Regeneration

– We must normalize key anabolic hormones, refill muscle glycogen, increase caloric intake, and prevent any diet induced catabolism (losses of lean body mass) so that we can enjoy greater fat loss for the next phase of the program

– We have taken the road less traveled by being flexible eaters with a long-term approach to success and thus we will take a break from our aggressive fat loss nutrition plans. This is not a free for all, so stay away from your “trigger foods” (junk foods and sweets) that open the door to excessive calorie intake.

– Instead plan (key word) and enjoy 2 or 3 controlled "treasured meals" to reward yourself for all of your hard work, but do not overdo it!

3.) Celebrate the Fruits of Your Labor

– Take some time to reflect on how far you have come since you joined Get Fit NH in terms of improving your overall health, body composition, and performance

– Enjoy your results!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

We would just like to take the time to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of your hard work and dedication to improving your health and fitness… keep Making It Happen!

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Why the Functional Movement Screen?

A while back, my buddy Betsy asked me to shed some light on some specific topics. So the next few blogs you see by me are all by request 🙂 I hope these help and feel free to reach out to any of your coaches for additional information.

Why the Functional Movement Screen?

You may wonder why we are the only gym in Concord that requires a specific movement assessment before ever stepping foot onto our training floor. I will answer this as brief and direct as possible. The reason why we screen is because it is the ONLY way we can train YOU as an individual. If we didn’t screen you, we’d be taking a HUGE gamble. Each of you come from a different background of previous injury and current aches and pains. If we don’t assess then we guess and THAT is a recipe for disaster. You want personal training in a group setting? You’ve got it. This screen shows us how you move and based on how you move we can determine which exercises are safe for you right now and which exercises have the potential to hurt you. You may not even realize it and the screen and specific exercises may not hurt you while you are doing them, but we have to keep in mind this is a long term game. Our mission is to get you to where you are trying to go safely. If you are hurt, then there is a possibility you won’t be able to train at all. We have to weigh the risk vs. reward and be smart about how we train you.

What do the bands mean?

I will keep this brief and direct as well. Each band is associated with a different screen we took you through. 7 screens, 7 different colored bands. In a group setting any coach can look at your wrist and say that exercise is safe and that exercise is not safe. Remember, our focus is to keep you training hard, but not hurting you along the way. Wear your bands! They are to keep you safe. Don’t try and be sneaky, because you are not going to be happy when you are hurt!

What are personalized warm ups?

Each screen has an associated personalized warm up (you may have heard it referred to as corrective exercise). The purpose of the personalized warm up is to help improve that movement pattern. We do a lot of the exercises during our group warm ups, but the expectation for optimal results is to do those exercises at home as well. You can never do enough mobility and flexibility work. That’s why it is important that you get to training on time and avoid leaving early! We have videos and handouts for each personalized exercise so if you forget yours or lose it, then ask a coach and we will get that to you! If we didn’t think it was important then we wouldn’t talk about it!

How do I get out of bands?

There are several ways to do this! The first way is to do your personalized exercises, get to training on time and stay through the hour, take warm up and cool down seriously, be engaged, don’t try to sneak in exercises that are not appropriate. I will add to that last one…if you try and do an exercise that isn’t appropriate for you then you are not only taking a huge risk of getting hurt, but it does no good to load a partial range of motion (ie: squats, split squats). We need to get that full range of motion before adding load.

Should shedding bands be a goal?

Yes, absolutely. We HIGHLY recommend rescreening every 3 months (there are sign ups out each week for this). The functional movement screen is a measuring point and we want to see you shed those bands just as much as you want to ditch them!

Make it happen,
Coach Meagan

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