WARNING: Tough Love Alert

 “Motivation? Here’s your motivation, GET YOUR BUTT IN THE DOOR!”

I was thinking earlier today about a lack of motivation. As it tends to happen, my mind wondered in different directions… from remembering students saying similar things, then to where this “lack of motivation” comes from.

See, for me in high school, being someone who was out of shape, the motivation was what you can imagine for most teenage boys… girls. No need to get into it, but the point is that it was about training to try to look better. That was even the prevailing thought going into college. Only recently did I realize that I wanted to train for more performance based reasons.

Here is the motivation that I think very few of us consider when we make our decision. We think too reactively, and not proactively. That has been one of the staples of western civilization compared to eastern for some time now, especially in terms of medicine. We typically don’t go to the doctor for regular checkups, we only go when something is wrong. We only start exercising when we start feeling lethargic or overweight. We only start eating right when we can’t stand what we see when we look in the mirror every morning. We take pills to get rid of symptoms of an underlying condition we could have prevented if we had just taken control earlier in our life. We don’t start worrying about our heart until we: A) have a heart attack or a scare, or B) we lose a friend or loved one to a heart attack.

This is a little bit of tough love for you, but it’s just that, love (yeah yeah yeah, corny, I know) because I care about you all. Motivation is NOT an excuse. If being healthy and living well so you don’t have to deal with major health problems isn’t enough, then find yourself a race or an event to train for (again, proactive, not reactive, see what I did there?). The fact is – guess what – the human body was made to move. It was made to run and jump and pick things up. It wasn’t made to sit in a cubicle answering calls or typing up reports. If you are having trouble getting in the door and it’s because you don’t know “why” you are training, or you are trying to figure out why you started training, or you need a reason to resume training… well, there it is, that’s the key. Maybe you don’t want to be Mr./Mrs. Olympia, maybe you aren’t an athlete or don’t plan on running a race or anything. But you are still meant to move. You’re meant to run, jump, and climb. There is your reason for coming to training. Yes, work is tough, and yes, life is tough. It’s true, but if you are using that to deter you from coming, then where are your priorities?

So start acting proactively. Don’t wait until you have a heart attack or can’t walk up a flight of stairs to get back in here. Get in here so you CAN walk up a flight of stairs and aim to NEVER have a heart attack. Or, here’s something for you from another angle. Don’t wait until you are rejected by that person you want to be with, or until you hear that offhanded comment from someone you know. Get your butt in here, work hard and keep it from EVER HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Both of those things have happened to me several times. It’s not fun and it’s not okay, but it happens. Here’s your motivation, here is what it comes down to – you can’t control everything, but what you can control is how you eat and how often and how hard you exercise. YOU have the power to look the way you want to look and live the way you want to live, so stop saying you don’t have the motivation or you don’t have a reason for training. There is always a motivating reason you can find. Stop letting the fact that it’s cold, or you don’t feel like getting out of bed, or you had a busy day at work outweigh that motivating factor. Maybe a few times that’s the case, but on the whole, your health is the one thing in this world you can actively control. If that’s not motivation enough, then I don’t know what is.

Make it happen!
-Coach Adam

Making Time for YOU

Time is money and a lot of us don’t have enough of it! At some point or another, you have probably found yourself wishing you had more hours in the day. Maybe finding enough time to do all the things you want/need to do in 24 hours is discouraging.

Chances are you prioritize all the needs and then fill in the wants as you see fit. Here is my question: where are YOU on that list? You are important and without a healthy YOU, then needs and wants can quickly become and issue. Obviously, you probably need to work, but are you living to work or working to live? We all have our own struggles. Some of us struggle with the training piece while others struggle with the nutrition piece. The number one excuse is time. And time really is an excuse. We all get the same 24 hours per day and if something is important enough to you, then you make time and find a way.

You and I both know a woman who works well over 40 hours per week, homeschools 3 children, eats like an adult, and trains like an athlete. Who am I talking about? Coach Nancy. If you thought she twiddled her thumbs in between training hours, then you are mistaken. This woman is a prime example of someone that makes time for what is important to her and her family.

The only person who can create time to get to where you are trying to go is YOU. So on your calendar, pencil in whatever it is that you need to work on and make it happen.

Coach Meagan

Here’s how to accept your “MyZone March Madness” Invite

Accept for Madness!!!

For those of you who are participating in our Myzone March Madness Challenge, we need you to accept an invite in order to take part, it is SUPER EASY and SUPER QUICK!!

Invites will go out Friday afternoon, so be on the lookout.

Here are the instructions:

• Go to http://moves.myzone.org/
• Click “Log in” in the top right corner

• Log into your account with the Email and Password you set up.

• After logging it you will be taken to your member page where a box will pop up. Click the GREEN CIRCLE to accept the challenge.

BOOM! You are in!

Let me know if you have any questions,
Coach Adam

Challenge Yourself

Challenge yourself – a very easy principle to think about, yet often a difficult one to accomplish. I have seen a lot of this recently: being given three options and choosing the lesser of the three. I realize often those three exercise options are based on the band system we use. However, it never happens that we have a band restriction in every station with every series of exercises. Obviously, pain can be a factor – I understand and fully appreciate that.

Getting better, stronger, and healthier involves a need to challenge yourself. If you look at a set of exercises and always choose the easiest one, even when you could realistically do all three, you will not get to where you want to be very quickly, if at all. This pattern may be a sign. If you aren’t willing to challenge yourself while exercising, then you may be less willing to challenge yourself by breaking other unhealthy habits.

Make no mistake – when it comes to being healthy, there is no halfway. If you eat super healthy but never exercise, you will have problems. In the same way, if you come to training 4 days a week and go running or spinning the other 3 days of the week, but eat junk food and get no sleep , there will be issues as well.

Improving the body’s ability to exercise, whether its strength or endurance, is based on mechanics known as “progressive overload”. Not to get into the science too deeply, but it boils down to this: you challenge yourself, your body responds to that challenge for next time. If you do 2 or 3 more squat thrusts than you did last time, your body adapts to be able to do those 2 or 3 more every time (to a certain point, of course).

Let’s say you’ve been picking up 45 pounds for squats every time for the last month. Well, you aren’t progressing, your body is staying stagnant. If you step it up to 55 pounds, its going to be more challenging the first time. But your body learns how much effort it takes to lift that weight and adjusts accordingly, either by increasing the strength of the muscle fibers or by increasing the signal strength from the brain. That can’t happen if you never pick up something heavier…if you never push it a little longer…if you always leave 2 or 3 in the tank.

You are all capable of more than you give yourselves credit for. So…challenge yourself! Don’t pick the easiest exercise just because you can, even if you can only do 2 reps of the more difficult exercise compared to 10 reps of what you would normally do. The more you work on that more challenging pattern, the more you will progress and the more you will eventually gain (or lose, depending on your goal). So don’t sell yourself short. Challenge yourself and make it happen!

Coach Adam

Bright Lights are Shining on Sonia

In July 2013, when I came to Get Fit I was at my highest weight ever, didn’t like what I saw in the mirror and I was tired of feeling sick all the time. I had to keep buying bigger clothes. And then there was the acid reflux medication I was taking for the last 10 years, I didn’t want to take it any longer, for one it was expensive and two the list of side effects was scary, miss a dose or two and I was miserable for the next 2 days. Enough was enough, I just had to do something, I couldn’t stand myself anymore.

I was so nervous walking through those doors that first time, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep up or even do half of what they wanted me to do. I never participated in group sports or activities of any kind and it had been years since I did any sort of regular exercise. I was afraid I was going to walk in and see all these ‘gym’ type people, all in perfect shape. But it wasn’t that way at all, there were people of all shapes, sizes, different fitness levels. Coach Nancy and everyone else were so nice, helpful and supportive. With Coach Nancy’s help I was able to modify the exercises so that I was able to do them. No one there knew me but they cheered me on, told me I was doing great and helped when I didn’t have a clue. And they notice when you don’t show up, keeping you accountable.

After the first week I knew I could keep doing this, it wasn’t easy but it was fun and more important I wanted to continue. I felt like I belonged there, like I was part of a family, everyone is looking out for each other and challenging each other. My clothes started getting looser; I could go up and down the 2 flights of stairs in my house and not be out of breath. I had more energy and wasn’t so tired anymore. I had to have my husband make new holes in my belt several times, and I still have it as a reminder of where I was. It wasn’t just about the exercise, they also taught me about nutrition and how important it is, most of which I knew but was not practicing or changing habits. It’s when I started taking part in the nutrition challenges that the weight really started to come off. Because I changed the way I was eating, by November of 2013 I was no longer taking the acid reflux medication and that was a huge milestone for me.
I’m in my third year now and I can’t imagine not coming to Get Fit every day at 6:15am. It’s the best part of my day, it’s only for me, my time to take care of myself and not worry about anyone or anything else, except of course which heavier weight I’m going to pick up next and when I can ring that bell again. Last year I signed up for The Rock & Race, The Color Run, Get Fit’s Strong Man/Woman competition, the Mudderella, to name a few. Things I never would have imagined I would or could do. I can’t wait for the next challenge.

My favorite part of coming to Get Fit is the coaches and the other members, they make it fun, we are a family and we all look out for each other. Coach Nancy challenges me to pick up heavier and she genuinely cares how I am progressing. I never thought I could be this athletic, I didn’t know I had it in me. I’m stronger and more confident, in and out of the gym, than I ever imagined. I’m so happy I took that chance and signed up for the FREE 2 week trial period. If I can do this anyone can!

Coach Meagan’s Spinach Artichoke Stir Fry

Coach Nancy is the recipe master, but today I am going to share my new favorite dinner (or lunch or even breakfast)!

For those of you who don’t know, I do not enjoy cooking. I am not one to step out of my comfort zone, because honestly I am not that great of a cook. I am impatient, boring, and my husband doesn’t eat the same way I do so I don’t have to spice things up for anyone else.

So back to this concoction I threw together the other night – I will call it Spinach Artichoke Stir Fry. It was quick, easy and so incredibly delicious. Here is what was in it – and remember I cook for one and like to have a left over from my dinners!

•    4 generous handfuls of fresh spinach (I chopped it up)
•    ½ a jar of artichokes, also chopped
•    ½ squeezed lemon
•    1 chopped garlic clove
•    3 diced chicken breasts

Now that I am reading this, I am wishing I had put some diced tomatoes in there… next time! Anyways, I baked the chicken first then chopped it up and added it to my Wok pan, then stir fried everything up with some EVOO.

If you need a quick easy dinner, then you’ve got your answer right here. It reheats beautifully as well.

Hope you enjoy it 🙂
Coach Meagan

DELAYED OPENING TUESDAY: Concord 7:25am, Epsom 9:00am

I drove the roads and they are pretty nasty, even with 4-wheel drive. We cannot prepare the lots and keep y’all safe, so we are going to delay opening this morning. Stay safe, take your time, and if you can make it in later please do so!

What Comes First – Pain or Moving Poorly?

“Are you moving poorly because you’re in pain? Or are you in pain because you are moving poorly?”  –Gray Cook

I think we can all agree that we, as human beings, are creatures of habit. Well, guess what – not only does that happen on a conscious, neurological level, but it also happens on an unconscious, anatomical level as well.

What does that mean? It means that not only do you go to the same coffee place every morning, have the same routine, use the same hair products, and often do the same things on the same nights of the week, you also bend over to pick up a piece of paper the same way, you sit at your desk the same way, and you drive the same way. After a while, those movements become engrained in you the same way. You go to the same barber for 15 years and, even if the last three times you went they butchered your hair, it’s more than likely you are going back a 4th time. If you have sat at your desk in the same position for 15 years – shoulders shrugged, hunched over your keyboard – most likely you will still sit like that in years 16 and 17 as well. Our ankles get bound up, either from years of sitting, or, for many women, from years in heels. Before you know it, every time you need to get something that falls on the floor, you either bend at the waist, stretching out those lower back muscles that aren’t supposed to be stretched, or you squat down coming onto your toes putting unnecessary compression on your knees.

Then one day you decide to make a change. You hear about Get Fit NH and you sign up. We bring you in and you have your initial assessment to check those movement patterns. All too often one of two things happens:
A) You don’t take the screen seriously, you push yourself and do patterns the screen showed you shouldn’t, and before we know it, you’re in a sling or can’t walk up or down stairs. Or,
B) You have one screen and don’t take it seriously, then when the option to rescreen presents itself, you blow it off.

Well, the above paragraph shows why this screen is so important. We use the screen to see how you move so that we can assess what we need to do to make sure you are exercising safely and effectively. More often than not, many of the injuries we see are not because “I just picked up too much weight when I squatted” or “Man, my arms just aren’t strong enough”. Instead, injuries happen because there is some type of restriction in that pattern. The body has become so used to doing a movement in a certain way that it starts to rely on muscle groups it shouldn’t rely on. In many cases, your body may rely on the wrong muscles more than the muscle groups it should be using. Guess what that leads too if not corrected? It leads to pain.

So which comes first – pain or moving poorly? Well, the pain has to come from somewhere. Unless there is an outside factor such as disease or severe injury, that pain is born out of improper motor patterns. Joints don’t just spontaneously combust and start to hurt randomly one morning. So take these screens seriously. Find the time to get rescreened and listen to the results. Often the root of our problems is not the pain itself, but what causes the pain in the first place.

Make it happen!
Coach Adam

Another Spotlight! This One is Shining on…

Molly Crisman!

On to my second spotlight – it is a pleasure to write about another extremely hardworking student. Molly has taken the program by storm and pushed herself to get better. Every time she is in the room, she is always pushing herself and getting as much as she can every single session. In my opinion, it is not only those who have achieved their goal, but also those who are well on the way that deserve to be applauded. It’s one thing to say you want to do something, get healthier, lose fat, gain muscle, whatever it is you desire. It is another thing entirely to come in and work your butt off every single time to get there, which is exactly what Molly does. Here is Molly’s story in her own words:

“I first started with GFNH back in October 2015 after months of my dad trying to convince me to join. With commuting to work 4+ hours a day, I always had an excuse as to why I could never join. Once I changed to a job much closer in October (and after gaining 20+ pounds), I knew it was time for me to make my health a priority. I also had the added pressure that my wedding was right around the corner, and my dress had become a little snug (a bride’s worst nightmare!). My dad has always spoken so highly of the Get Fit NH team that I figured I’d give it a shot!
 
My first few classes at GFNH were rough. I was extremely out of shape, always sore, and could barely complete the one hour workout. What has really helped me (and continues to help), is always having my dad there to keep me accountable. We motivate each other to push past our comfort zones. The coaches at GFNH have also been instrumental to my success. Each coach took the time to get to know me and continues to encourage me day in and day out. For me, the accountability of my dad and the coaches is what keeps me coming to class each day.
 
After the first few weeks of being sore (I never knew how sore I could get!), I saw some major changes in myself, both physically and mentally. I felt stronger, leaner, and my stamina had dramatically increased. I was sleeping much better and would wake up with a lot more energy. How awesome is that? Those small changes were a huge motivation to keep going.
 
After 5 months I can honestly say that working out at GFNH has been life changing. I have settled into a routine that has set me up for success. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely have days where all I want to do is sit on my couch and eat junk food, but the family environment at GFNH gives me the motivation to keep coming back. We all rely on each other for success. Here’s to hoping that dress fits me in June!”

I can tell you right now that with how hard Molly works every single training session, she will get there, no doubt.
-Coach Adam

It’s Not Too Late

We are quite a few weeks into the New Year now. At the start of a New Year, we are eager to change our ways and talk about how we are going to get better this year. How are those New Year’s resolutions working out for you? If you are still holding on strong, good for you! If your resolution is long lost, then don’t worry, you are not alone and it isn’t too late to change your ways. More good news – you don’t have to wait until next year to give it another go (phew!).

If you have successfully made the change of writing 2016 rather than 2015, then I am confident you are capable of making other small changes. At the start of a new year, most of us accidently write the wrong year, but over time it becomes second nature. That’s like any change. There will be some “oops” moments, but you fix it and you move on. No matter what your goal is, don’t let that oops moment ruin your day, your week, your month and definitely not your year. Making changes takes patience and it is a skill. Keep working at mastering that skill. We are here for you every step of the way.

Make it happen,
Coach Meagan