Thank-You for a Wonderful Morning!

What a fantastic Saturday morning!

As usual the Get Fit NH family stepped up big time for our “Training for a Cause” this morning, and subsequently raised over $1100 dollars 🙂 for the Boston Children’s Hospital “Mighty Metabolites” in support of the Leung Family.

Howie, Colleen (and Kai) wanted to make sure you all know how thankful they were for your generosity and willingness to share both your time and money. You guys rock!

Wanted to share some photos from this morning’s event – it was a blast!

Recovery Week and July 4th Schedule Reminder

“Train the athlete as much as necessary, not as much as possible” – Henk Kraaijenof

Good Morning Team!

Just wanted to give you a heads up on some goings on around here over the next couple weeks.

This Saturday June 14th we will be having a fundraiser to benefit Boston Children’s Hospital “Might Metabolites” and the Leung Family. You can read all about it here. We would be very grateful if you would share some of your time with us this Saturday!

June 23 – 27 is our next recovery week (Stifle all the moans and groans). This is part of your training program, and is a necessary deload to keep you healthy and moving forward. Those who follow the training plan, including this part of it, are the ones who make the most progress. Those who ignore it are much more likely to get injured and not be at their best. I have seen it over and over again. Deload is a necessary part of the training cycle.  Take some time, read these articles, and remind yourself why. You’re welcome! 🙂

Recovery, Deload, and Getting Better

“I HATE Recovery Weeks!”

Minimum Effective Dose

Recovery Is Where The Magic Happens

Rest, Recover and Regenerate, It’s Not Optional

Last but not least you will want to note our schedule change for Friday July 4th. We are going to be having an “all family” training session at Get Fit NH Concord from 8:00am to 9:30am. This will be our only training time of the day, so come on in, get an incredible training session in, and then enjoy the day and weekend with your family.

That’s it for now guys.

You want it, you gotta Make It Happen!

Coach Dean

What Do You Expect?

What Do You Expect?

The other day you should have seen a post about The Get Fit NH Difference. If you missed it check it out here. I started thinking more about how we are different and thought I’d let you in on what’s been stirring up inside my head.

• I’m sure you already knew this, but we’re more than a gym membership. We’re a training facility with a purposeful training program written for all levels of athleticism. Expect to be held accountable. We will notice if you’re not here 🙂

• When you walk in the door you should expect to be greeted with your name not “what’s your member number?”

• You hired coaches to help you meet your goals. Expect to get what you asked for

• We do not have members, we have students. The training floor is our classroom. Expect to learn and do not expect to always get it on the first try.

What I am trying to say is that we expect you to have high expectations and we want to exceed them!

We want you to be all in. What do I mean by that?

• We want you to hit your goals
• We want you to push yourself and accept a challenge. Whether that is on the training floor or in the kitchen.
• We want you to fuel your body with nutritious food
• We want you to keep learning. We offer seminars and workshops monthly to help you get even better.
• We want you to measure success.  Get your body composition monitored regularly.

There is always room to improve. Your coaches don’t have it all figured out, you know?

I go to Coach Nancy’s nutrition seminars and I learn something new every time! Something helpful that I can apply to my routine. I train in the afternoon and guess what? I get coached and often challenged! We don’t have it all figured out. Each of your coaches has room to improve and so do you. We are all in this together to lose fat, build muscle, and feel better!

Make it happen,

Coach Meagan

The Get Fit NH Difference

What makes Get Fit NH different? There are a bunch of training facilities in the Concord area, so why us?

We get this question a lot and it is important to us that you know and understand how we are different. As a coach I am passionate about educating my students about fitness and health and to warn against potentially harmful exercise practice.

Allow me to go a little deeper…

Olympic and power lifts are not meant to be done in sets of 30 or for time. They are highly skilled movement patterns and are meant to be explosive and powerful over short periods of time with plenty of rest. Subjecting your muscles to extremely high stress repetitively is not always appropriate, and  can set you up for injury.

As I am sure many of you have noticed, we are form sticklers here at Get Fit NH. We take coaching very seriously and our entire staff hold several certifications. We are required to and also take pride in constantly continuing our education. Our number one rule is to keep you safe during your hour. If you get hurt that often means you will not be able to train and while you are not able to train you are not able to effectively work toward your goals. The Functional Movement Screen is our extra preventative measure to keep you safe and training hard.

Everything we do has a purpose! As one of our mentors Martin Rooney says, “We don’t do something for nothing.” There is a reason and functional translation behind everything we do. When programming your training we take into consideration what is called risk versus reward benefit. Is the risk of injury greater than the intended benefit of the exercise? That is yet another preventative measure we consider to keep you safe and training hard.

At Get Fit NH we do appreciate competitive nature, but we are more concerned with your competition within yourself. We want you to be the best you can be, not necessarily try and  keep up with the person next to you and risk getting hurt and having poor form.

I sincerely hope you found this blog informative and helpful. If you have questions about how we are different we would be more than happy to go into more detail with you. It is important to us that you know and understand the training you have committed to.

Make it Happen,

Coach Meagan

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Did you ever consider the usefulness of that mirror you have hanging on the bathroom wall?

I mean it has the potential to save us from some pretty big embarrassments! That big smudge on the side of your face, or the spinach stuck between your teeth.

But what if you ignore what you see?  Yup it’s there, but it’s no big deal, right?

I am sure we would all agree that to see a problem in the mirror and ignore it would be silly. And even worse? We don’t like what we see to the extent we actually throw the mirror away! Who would actually do that?

Well I am afraid you might.

Here is what I mean.

We are just finishing up the first couple weeks of our Six Week Sprint to Summer. You have diligently recorded the habits and added up the scorecard, and oops, you only scored 70% (or 65 or 50). Not what you wanted at all.

There are two primary reactions you can have to getting less than you wanted.

The first (which I recommend) is to evaluate where you did well, where your challenge points are, and look to get just 1% better next week. If you got 50%, get 51% next week. Short term or defeatist thinking (eg – I didn’t do well this week so I probably won’t next week) does you no good at all.

The second reaction is to throw away the mirror. That is exactly what you are doing when you stop recording your habits because you don’t like what you see. If you don’t record the habits, you don’t have to face reality. But putting a hammer through the mirror doesn’t fix your messy hair, now does it?

As long as you have breath you have the opportunity to get better.

Are you going to take it?

Or are you going to toss the mirror?

You are responsible for the choice.

Let us help.

Coach Dean

Summer Salads and Sides

I love hot weather and the food associated with it. A bowl full of fresh picked veggies from the garden makes me smile. While salads are a summer food, you’ll find you bring the recipes from this workshop out all year round.

In “Six Week Sprint to Summer” we eat vegetables at every meal. The variety of veggies you can pack into a salad will delight the taste buds and keep your menu from getting boring.

Get Fit NH Epsom will host our “Summer Salads & Sides” workshop on June 4th from 6-7:30. I’m looking forward to spritzing up your menu with salads that make a meal and side dishes that make the plate tantalizing.

Summer Salads & Sides
Date: Wednesday June 4, 2014
Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm
Place: Get Fit NH Epsom

To Buy or Not To Buy – That is the Question

There are a lot of good reasons to choose locally grown, organic produce when possible. Those fruits and vegetables that have traveled the globe to get here usually are picked early and ripened through a chemical process. Others have to be treated so they do not spoil before reaching your grocer’s shelves. The perfectly round peaches, straight as an arrow carrots, or no blemishes on apples have to be heavily treated to avoid the pests or disease that like to eat them right before being picked.

Organic food is admittedly more expensive. If you want to maximize the good you do to your body while minimizing the cost, you could choose to purchase organic produce for the fruits and vegetables which tend to have the most pesticides in the United States. It is estimated that if a consumer avoids eating non-organically grown produce in the top 12 (“Dirty Dozen”) on this list, pesticide exposure can be reduced by up to 80%. This list was compiled by the Environmental Working Group.  Bear in mind that there are many fruits and vegetables that are not on this list — these were chosen because they are most commonly eaten.

EWG analyzed pesticide residue testing data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration to come up with the rankings for these popular produce items. All foods are listed from worst to best.   (lower number =more pesticides)

1. Apples
2. Strawberries
3. Grapes
4. Celery
5. Peaches
6. Spinach
7. Sweet Bell Peppers
8. Nectarines – imported
9. Cucumbers
10. Cherry tomatoes
11. Snap Peas – imported
12. Potatoes
13. Hot Peppers
14. Blueberries – domestic
15. Lettuce
16. Kale/ Collard Greens
17. Plums
18. Cherries
19. Nectarines – domestic
20. Pears
21. Tangerines
22. Carrots
23. Blueberries – imported
24. Green Beans
25. Winter Squash
26. Summer Squash
27. Raspberries
28. Broccoli
29. Snap Peas – Domestic
30. Green onions
31. Oranges
32. Bananas
33. Tomatoes
34. Watermelon
35. Honeydew Melons
36. Mushrooms
37. Sweet Potatoes
38. Cauliflower
39. Cantaloupe
40. Grapefruit
41. Eggplant
42. Kiwi
43. Papayas
44. Mangoes
45. Asparagus
46. Onions
47. Sweet Peas – frozen
48. Cabbage
49. Pineapples
50. Sweet Corn
51. Avocados

If cost is a concern as you start your change to healthy eating and living. Use this list. If you purchase any items from the top of the list, pick these from the organic section of your store. Better yet support your local Farmer’s markets and buy fresh right from the source. You can talk to the farmer who grew your fruits and veggies for all the information about their products. Many of these farmers will gladly help you buy the best for your family’s needs.

To your best health,

Coach Nancy

Better Body Workshop: Optimal Shoulder Health

I am excited to announce our next Better Body Workshop – Optimal Shoulder Health, to be held Wednesday June 18th from 5:30pm-7:00pm at Get Fit NH Concord.

You will benefit greatly from this workshop if you:

• Sit at a desk all day
• Your posture could use some improvements
• You have had a shoulder injury in the past
• You ever wake up in the middle of the night with shoulder pain
• When you trained in the past Monday always “Chest Day” and you never seemed to get around to “Back Day”
• Want to maintain healthy shoulders

The shoulders are very complex and we will be exploring what allows them to function optimally.  You will  learn how posture, mobility, stability, muscle imbalances and strength  all affect shoulder health.

Do you know if:

• Your scapula in the right position at rest or do you have muscular imbalances?
• Your scapula move correctly when you reach your arm over head or are you using the
  wrong muscles to compensate?
• What a “Scapula” is? 🙂

As we know the body is intricately designed and one part affects another. You may have neck or elbow pain that is originating from your shoulder complex. You will also learn how the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine affects the way your shoulders function.

I look forward to having you join us as we look deeper into the shoulder and strive for Optimal Shoulder Health.

This Workshop Is Open To The Public, So Please Spread the Word!

Coach Erin

Better Body Workshop: Optimal Shoulder Health
Date: Wednesday June 18th, 2014
Time: 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Place: Get Fit NH Concord
Workshop Fee: $25.00

Training for a Cause in Support of the Leung Family

On June 14^th at 9 AM we will be hosting our monthly fundraiser. This time we are excited to be raising funds for The Boston Children’s Hospital’s Mighty Metabolites and Kai Leung.

Kai is the beautiful daughter of Howie and Colleen Leung who are both teachers in the community.  You may recognize Colleen as she was apart of the “Suck it up Buttercups” team that won our S3 challenge last year. Her beautiful family is pictured.  A few days after Kai was born she was diagnosed with Glutaric Acidemia, Type 1. This is a rare metabolic disorder in which their bodies cannot break down protein from the food they eat.  Howie and Colleen work closely with specialists at Boston Children’s Hospital to make sure Kai receives the care necessary to thrive, including special dietary requirements.

The Metabolic Clinic at Children’s Hospital closely follows their young patient’s with conditions like Kai’s.  Treatments and close management from multiple specialists can be very costly.  100% of the money raised at our Training for a Cause event on June 14th will go directly toward helping these children.  Our goal is not only to raise money, but to also raise awareness.

We hope to see you all on June 14th at 9 AM to get a bonus training in and support beautiful families like the one above 🙂

Please remember this is a community event. We would love to see you bring your family and friends and show them how the Get Fit NH family trains together for a GREAT cause!

See you all there,

Coach Erin

Training For A Cause
Date: June 14th, 2014
Time: 9:00am
Place: Get Fit NH Concord
Donation: $10

Cheat Your Way Through Meal Preparation

Get Fit NH Concord will host this new workshop on quick ways to make meal time easier. Cooking each of your meals every day doesn’t mean you have to spend 8 hours in the kitchen. It also doesn’t mean the food you prepare has to taste like it came from a can.

Designed especially for our Six Week Sprint to Summer nutrition challenge, “Cheat Your Way Through Meal Preparation” will give you tips and tools used to create delicious meals efficiently. Getting involved at this workshop you’ll  find helpful ways to lesson the time to put delicious meals on the table for you and your family. Coach Nancy also promises to give out some fantastic recipes to try your new found cooking techniques.

Invite a friend to join you on May 28th from 5:30 – 7 at Get Fit NH Concord.

Cheat Your Way Through Meal Prep
Date: Wednesday May 28, 2014
Time: 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Place: Get Fit NH Concord

Don’t forget about “Summer Salads and Sides” June 4th, from 6-7:30 at Get Fit NH Epsom