Addiction is a Nasty Thing

Yours truly used to be addicted to cigarettes. Back in my Marine Corps days the smoke pit is where I met a lot of my friends – it was a social thing and it soon became a daily habit. I set myself a “done date.” I always said I would quit the day I got out of the service. On May 12, 2012 I got out and haven’t touched a cigarette since. I didn’t even think twice when it came time to quit. I just did it. I was mentally prepared and ready. I still have days when I crave a cigarette unfortunately. Even though I kicked the habit 4 years ago the addiction still haunts me. There are a lot of reasons I don’t turn back, but a big one (and relevant to where I am going with this) is that I have come so far and my lungs are happier! I don’t get sick as often and I smell much better!

Addiction is addiction. Whether you are addicted to cigarettes or sugar, it’s an unhealthy daily habit that is haunting you. You KNOW that if you stop you will feel better, but you just haven’t been able to do it. Why is that? Let’s set you up with a “done date.” The next 21 Day Jumpstart is your answer! Are you going to have bad days- YES! The first few days will be extra, extra hard, but you have to push forward. Then you may have sporadic cravings, but you will be able to look at how far you have come and feel victorious!

You are not alone. We have 300 and some odd sugar addicts who train under our roof- you are not in this alone. We will fight this together. We will feel better together. We will have good days and bad days together and together we will keep moving forward. And when we relapse? We forgive and we pick ourselves up and keep pushing on. Addiction ain’t pretty, but you have come to the right place to regain control!

Are you ready to make it happen?
-Coach Meagan

Yesterday Does Not Determine Today

Have you ever had one of those days where you were just totally off track? You missed training, you forgot your lunch so you made poor choices to cope and since you ate like crap you might as well polish of a Ben n’ Jerry’s and call it a day? We have all had those days. Those days suck. Those days are dangerous. Having that kind of day isn’t the end of your results so don’t throw in the towel! Leaving yourself in that rut could be detrimental to your results, though. There is a saying written up on the wall (or ceiling in Epsom!) that says, “I don’t feel sorry for myself.”

I love this saying. Do you know how many days I have to tell myself this? Maybe I was compliant all week and then WHAT? The scale went up!? SCREW THIS! I’m having pizza! Your Get Fit Family and your coaches are here for you on those days where you just cannot get out of your own way and those days that you are ready to throw the towel in, because your compliance didn’t give you immediate feedback. Giving in and feeling sorry for yourself is certainly not going to take you where you are trying to go. An off day should not trickle into the next day and the next day.

Reality check time- Is there somewhere you need to improve? Have you let an off day turn into a bad habit? What bad habit are you kicking today and how can we help?

Let us help you pick yourself up and try, try again,
Coach Meagan

3 Seconds to Change Your Life

First, before I get started, I do want to say that over the past few months I have seen you all as students improve in this area (along with many other areas as well, but I’m focusing on this one today).

Are you ready for this? 3 seconds to change your life…what could I possibly be talking about?

Well here it is – the last three seconds of that round when you are here in the gym. I know many of you have heard Coach Dean talking about the most important set/seconds/rep being the last one. Here is why – it goes well beyond just getting one more rep in for the purpose of building strength, it also helps our determination in other parts of life.

Yes, of course, just from the overload principle if you get one more rep than you did last time your body will anatomically improve. That is important, but for this I am speaking specifically to a mindset.

Those last three seconds of that set where the voice starts counting down are the most important because of the will it takes to push through the finish line. Rather than stopping because you know the rest is coming, do you have it in you to see things through to the end? People think training is just about sets and reps, but the truth is that many of the principles we see in here translate outside the gym as well.

Here’s a great example, how many of you have done our S3, 21-day Jumpstart, or any other nutrition based challenge we have held? Now, how many of you have gotten down to that last day or two before the end, and even though you have been incredibly disciplined, and lost a ton of fat, go “Ehh, its over tomorrow and I’ve been perfect thus far, what’s one drink tonight really going to matter?”. In the long run, maybe you are right. What difference is one drink really going to make? But then how do you feel after? You stayed disciplined all that time but couldn’t make it the last 12 hours. Why? You made it through 37 days and on the 38th you just say “Ehh, I’m basically done”?

There aren’t many things in this world that you can say are fact, most are just theories and ideas that haven’t been proven wrong yet. Here is one thing I believe to be fact: it is in those moments when you hear the “3….2…1….” that your true character is tested. How can you truly know yourself if you don’t give it everything you have, if you have more in the tank but decide to quit early?

Those last three seconds are when your will power is the lowest, when your determination is the lowest, but where the meaning is the highest. If you can push yourself to make it through those last three seconds without quitting early, then you broke through your own wall and often its easier and easier to push all the way after that.

Those three seconds where you see the light at the end of the tunnel but stay disciplined and don’t try to get there early are the most important in your life. You may think I’m being over dramatic, but here’s a question – are you normally someone who quits when they hear that last three seconds counting down? If yes, do you also find yourself bingeing just before the end of S3? Do you find yourself stopping for unhealthy food when you are 15 minutes away from healthy food at home, because you are hungry and don’t want to wait another 15 minutes? If I were a betting man, I would say that is probably the case.

So make those last three seconds count! Prove to yourself that you have the determination to finish what you started. It will translate in here as well as out there. Don’t stop, push through, and make it happen!

-Coach Adam

Which 74 Do You Want to Be?

The other day I came across this picture on Facebook. This image is so powerful and it speaks 1,000 words with just one quick glance.

Why do we train?

Being a healthy weight is important, being strong has undeniable benefits, and looking and feeling good make us happier. Those are all great reasons to train. When we’re healthier, we’re happier and there is no doubt this world needs happier people! But when we reach our strength goals, weight goals, bodyfat goals, body image goals, etc- what keeps us going?

How about that picture? When I am 74 I want to look like the woman on the left. I want to put my grandchildren to shame one day with my deadlifts. I want to do pull ups in my seventies. In every single success session, I say, “Training is forever.” There is no end date for training. The day I stop training is the day I die and that should be your mindset. Don’t settle for less or else you will be the woman (or man!) on the right looking out the window thinking about what you could have done.

Raise your hand if you want to age more gracefully than that woman on the right. Raise your hand if you want to walk on your own two feet with no assistance from a cane, walker, or wheel chair for as long as possible. In most cases, the choice is yours. Make every second count. Train hard, eat well, recover and don’t skip days and weeks at a time!

Make it happen,
Coach Meagan

Give Up Already!

I saw this list the other day and I thought it was so relevant to experiencing success both inside and outside of the gym. Just for overall health, really. Here is the list and then of course I had to add my 2 cents on each of them – it’s the coach in me :). Here are 5 things you need to give up to experience true joy!

•    Complaining
We all do it. I think it is unrealistic to say I am going to stop complaining, but I think it is realistic to be more aware of it. There is a quote on the wall that says you have it better than 99.9% of the world. That is so true. While it is easy to complain about an injury, complain about how results are too slow, complain about time…. those things are petty. Embrace those things you can control and celebrate all the great things in life. Coach Dean does Grateful Tuesdays. Write down 5 things you are grateful for each week and put your energy into that rather than the other way around.

•    Blaming others
You could blame genetics or your upbringing or an injury or whatever for your current situation OR you could take responsibility, take control, and make a change today.

•    Negative self-talk
No, you don’t suck. You are not stupid. You are not fat. You are not weak. You are not a wimp. If you call yourself something long enough you will start to believe that it who you are and that is not okay. YOU are a winner and you need to talk yourself up today. Ready, set, GO!

•    Dwelling on the past
The past does not define your future. You know this, so let it go and move forward. Your sugar addiction does not control your results- YOU control your results.

•    Resistance to change
You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Are you insane?

Just give those things up already! I bet it makes a significant difference in your results and in your life. You CAN do it!

Here to help you make it happen,
Coach Meagan

Don’t Let Your Environment Make Decisions For You

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” –Frank Costello

Listening to a radio program recently I was reminded of this quote from “The Departed”. While I love this movie, it had been a long time since I had seen it last, so suffice to say I had forgotten about it some. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the movie is about two men in the Boston police force. One is an informant for the mob imbedded within the Boston police force. The other is the opposite, an undercover police officer giving information on the mob. It is a great movie but no need to go into many more specifics than that in terms of the plot.

The quote above comes from the character Frank Costello (played by Jack Nicholson). He is essentially supposed to be an homage to Whitey Bulger. Obviously when talking about individuals to model yourself after, Bulger is not someone I would suggest. However, I love the way this quote was written. It is far too easy to become a product of your environment. If you just let your environment make your decisions for you, then what would that require of you? To be constantly busy, eat junk, and not have time to improve yourself. We are constantly bombarded by things we need to get done, by quick easy nutrition-less foods that you can get on the run, and worrying about everyone but yourself.

That’s all well and good until you look in the mirror one day and say, “Woah…who is that?”. You have no energy, you are out of shape, you just feel crappy, but you know the next 12 hours are dedicated to everyone but yourself. You think, “Well, this is just the way it has to be”. Guess what? No, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Of course there are going to be practices, or meetings, or other things that you can’t change. I am not so naïve as to think my situation and your situation are identical. I fully realize that as parents and business owners and the like, your lives are more hectic and more rigid than mine. I fully realize and understand that, however, this is also the reason that it is even more dependent on YOU! You are the one that can make the change and make your environment a product of who/what you want to be. If you can’t have junk in the house without eating it, it’s as simple as DON’T BUY IT. Right there you are affecting your environment. If there is always cake in the break room and you just can’t not eat it, DON’T GO TO THE BREAK ROOM. If you are running for fast food 3 times a day, stop taking the time to do so, get your work done, and use that free time (and extra money saved on gas) to make real food.

There are a thousand other possibilities to change your environment to suit the person you want to be/need to be. Just accepting that you are “too busy” is never going to get you anywhere. You are letting yourself become a victim of your environment. Make your environment one that works for you, instead of against you.

Make it Happen!
-Coach Adam

Always Battling Some Kind of Bug?

Are you constantly battling some kind of bug? Maybe it’s the stomach bug or a nasty cold or flu that you just can’t seem to fight off?

That’s not cool! You shouldn’t have to live your life with a tissue box and hand sanitizer under your pillow or mapping out where the nearest restrooms are everywhere in town. Your body should be able to fight these things off, but it can’t do that if you’re not giving it what it needs. Germs are everywhere. Believe me, I know. I work in a GYM! Germs are unavoidable. I touch sweaty people (that’s how much I love you) all day long. I am around you and you are around kids and kids are around sick kids…the germ chain goes on and on and on. It’s life.

Guess how often I get sick? Never. I honestly don’t know the last time I was legitimately sick with even a cold. And that is because I have built a strong immune system and continue to give my body what it needs to fight off the funk. I say all of that to encourage you to think about how often you get sick. If you are constantly not feeling well- even if it’s a constant headache or stomach ache or the sniffles- then it’s time to look at your plate. What are you putting into your body and how is that affecting your health? A lot of times we think our plate only affects how we look and we justify by saying we’ll work harder, but it goes so much deeper than that.

When you are healthier, you are automagically happier- wouldn’t you agree the world needs more happy people?

Coach Meagan

Turn Focus Periods Into Habits

With S3 in full swing, I wanted to go over something that I think it is important to talk about. That thing is focus. Now, focus is something just like willpower. It has its ebbs and flows, its highs and lows. If you try to be super focused on something for long periods of time (I’m talking for more than a few months) – what ends up happening? You lose that focus and end up stumbling, correct? If you think, “I’m going to eat perfectly for the next year!”, one or two things will happen, for sure. One – you do great for 3 months, and then you fall off and are so depressed with yourself that you only made it three months that you fall off big time and drop right back to where you were. Or, two – you think, “Ehh I have a year, I’ll start next month…. oh wait maybe next month” and before you know it you have wasted 6 months without putting things in place because “well, I have a whole year to do it”.

So this is where S3 comes in to play. Its 39 days. Its a focus period, a time where you can say “I can live without my sweets for 39 days, I can live without cream and sugar in my coffee for 39 days, I can rearrange some stuff and make it to training every day for that period”. Before you know it, you have done the things you wanted to do and achieved the goals you set because you focused up and you gave yourself a realistic time frame to keep yourself engaged.

However, here is the extra part that you may not have thought about. So much of what we talk about is building habits and figuring out ways to set yourself up for success. So who’s to say after 39 days of little to no sugar or cream in your coffee, you don’t actually start to like it that way? We can pretty much all agree that a large coffee with 7 mocha flavor shots and 7 creams (which is essentially a milkshake) is better tasting than a large with 2 cream and 2 Splenda, but you have adapted to drinking your coffee without all that added sweetness already, right? You still drink it, right?

It’s the same thing with habits during a focus period. Often what we find is that when we are forced to make things happen, suddenly we start finding ways around problems we previously thought we couldn’t. After 39 days, “my work schedule absolutely will not allow me to get to training” turns into you finding all kinds of different strategies and ideas to rearrange your time so you can make it to training. Those lessons and strategies shouldn’t be forgotten. You just were pushed to find a solution, which will help you further down the road. So get focused and make it happen!

-Coach Adam

Pick Up Something Heavy!

A while ago I read a book called, “The New Rules of Lifting for Women: Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess”. This book was written by some of the finest coaches in the industry – Lou Schuler, Cassandra Forsythe, and Alwyn Cosgrove. There is a quote in the book that I think of often when I am coaching:

“Your body’s goal is to reach stasis so it can stop making adaptations to the stresses you impose on it.  Your goal is to keep imposing new stresses so your body keeps making adaptations.”

Now despite the name of the book, this quote applies to anyone looking to get strong, get lean, burn fat and build muscle. We talk about weight selection often. A lot of times you’ll hear your coaches remind you to pick up something heavy! Let me explain to you why we stress this so much.

I will start by telling you some of the things we take into consideration when writing a training program for you to get effective results:
•    Safety
•    Efficient and effective exercise selection
•    Purposeful exercise selection
•    Purposeful timing sequences
•    Mastery
•    Exercise progressions for all fitness levels

If you have been training with us for some time, then you probably know that we have specific strength days and specific metabolic day. Allow me explain what is happening in your body on those days.

Strength Days:
I won’t get too scientific on you. I just want to educate you. The more you know about what’s going on inside your body, the more educated you’ll be when selecting your heavy weights.

These days are designed to tear into your muscles fibers and allow them the opportunity to grow and get stronger upon recovery. Let me give you a personal example:
Dumbbell Bench Press- If these are programmed into my upper body day, then I am going to start by selecting 5 pounds more than what I KNOW I can lift. You see, if in my mind I already know I can press those 35 pound dumbbells, then my body definitely knows I can already do that. If I want to see a change in my body and my performance (which I do) then I need to try something more. My muscles already know I can do that. My body has adapted to that stress already. I need to create a new stress. I need to tear into those muscle fibers and allow them the opportunity to tear, recover/rebuild and grow.

Recovery:
I know you’ve heard us explain the importance of recovery- but let me explain based on the example above. Let’s say on Monday I just did my dumbbell bench press. I need to give myself at least Tuesday and Wednesday to allow those specific muscle fibers to rebuild and recover. In your training program, we are conscience about tearing into the same muscle fibers two days in a row. You may have heard us explain how your body does its best work when you’re recovering and here is why. Those exercises require more energy to perform and consume a lot more energy as your body recovers from them. Which means after you kill it on the training floor you will continue to burn calories as your body tries to recover and rebuild those muscle fibers. Which means you’re still burning on Tuesday from your training session on Monday!

BUT- if you select a weight that your body already KNOWS it can perform, then you’re not doing yourself any favors.

Quick side note for the Ladies- Believe me, picking up heavy load WILL NOT make you bulky. That is a whole other blog in itself- but just know you do not have the testosterone in your body to create such results. Leaner, faster, stronger, healthier means kill it on your strength days- pick up something heavy!

The fitness industry is always improving. You can rest assured knowing that you’ve hired professional coaches who are consistently continuing their education to keep up with the improvements. We will continue to learn how we can help YOU get the safest results- that is a guarantee.

Until then, keep making it happen!
Coach Meagan

Follow the Plan!

Follow the plan. Don’t try to outsmart it, just follow it.

So I am finishing up a specific nutrition plan for the second time. I tried it last year. No need to get super specific, but basically it’s a 28-day nutrition “challenge” for lack of a better term. It’s designed to help get you kick started or blast through a barrier.

Let me tell you the difference between last year’s attempt and this year’s attempt. First and foremost, I did the training mentioned in the plan this year. It was planned out for me, day by day, week by week and I followed it to the T this year. Last year I tried to outsmart it. Instead of doing as much lifting, I just did our two metabolic days here and did some other stuff on the side. So I didn’t follow the plan. Last year, I also decided I was going to try my own supplements. I didn’t use several of the ones suggested in the plan, and just went out and bought similar versions of some of the things mentioned. This year, I just went straight to the source and bought the kit for the challenge. Everything they suggested, and everything I needed.

So just to recap – last year I tried to outsmart it and do it differently, and this year I followed it step by step, supplement by supplement, training exercise by training exercise, even down to the amount of rest between sets.

Here were my results (granted, I still have a week left, but still…):
Last year: lost 10 lbs and lost .5% bodyfat, almost 7lbs of muscle
This year: lost 12lbs and lost 3% bodyfat, while increasing muscle mass

So again lets recap – last year I tried to outsmart the challenge and my results…not what I wanted at all. This year, I followed it to the T, and with a week still left…almost exactly what I wanted.

It just goes to show, follow the plan. For those of you that are doing S3 especially, FOLLOW THE PLAN!!!! You guys are paying for our successes and our failures, so trust the system we have laid out for you to lose that weight, don’t deter from it, and see it through to the end. Its already thought out, poured over, hours of work and variables thrown into the mix. All you have to do is follow it and you will be successful.

Make it Happen,
Coach Adam