Our 4th annual Show up, Step up and Stick it up Challenge is coming up and this year has a new twist! We run this challenge to keep you honest as we head into a challenging time of year. The fall brings on back to school, sports and that leads us into the holidays and before you know it here comes January and we are motivated to get back on the wagon. 

But imagine how wonderful it would be if you never had to fall off the wagon! Imagine if you had some extra motivation (on top of your coach) to keep you going and keep you honest...

Well imagine no more! This challenge is for you and here is how it works:

Show up: There are 59 total training chances between the September 9th and December 20th to make it into training. To complete the show up portion we are asking that you make it a certain amount in that time being:

• 4 Training Days People: 50 Days
• 3 Training Days People: 40 Days
• 2 Training Days People: 25 Days

Step up: The Fit3D! On the backside of the card there will be a monthly spot to hit up the Fit3D. You want to talk about keeping you honest? Nothing better than the good ole "truth booth" to keep you on pace. The average weight gain between October and December is TEN POUNDS! It is a lot of work to get those pounds off so let's not fall into that category. We will help keep you honest.

Stick it up: This will also be a monthly spot on the backside of your card. This is for the goals board. Each month we put up a goals board. We strive for this to be apart of our culture and this will help you build that habit and keep you working toward the bigger picture. Each month you will need a coach to initial that verifying that you did in face "stick it up"

Share It: This is the NEW TWIST for this year! On the Back side of the card a new box will be added for you to share it that needs to be completed once a month. Here are some ways you could get this box checked off:

• Bring a friend to a fun friday or charity training
• Share a Get Fit NH video on social media
• Check in that you trained on Facebook
• Refer a friend to come train with us.
• Anyway you can share the greatness and fun we have and show proof to a coach

If you fill up your card with the needed amount of attendance checks, 4 (Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec) step ups, stick it ups, and share it ups then your card will go into the magic prize jar. We will pick THREE cards to win mega awesome prizes. 

1st card pulled earns- $300

2nd card pulled earns- $100

3rd card pulled earns- $50

We look forward to kicking this challenge off and finishing this year out strong! Let's make it happen,

The Get Fit NH Team

I feel so terrible bringing up FALL already! It always amazes me how fast summer zips by us. Halloween stuff is already out in stores- YUCK! With that, I just wanted to remind everyone that as summer comes to a close the traffic in the gym starts to pick back up. Schedules and routines start to become just that again which means many of you return the classes you were registered to all along. Summer time allows us room for a lot of flexibility. Fall, winter and spring...not so much!

While this is a great "problem" to have, I would ask that you please do your very best to attend the class you are registered to. ESPECIALLY avoiding 6:10AM and 4:15PM! Those classes tend to get way over crowded with drop ins and folk who we did not account for. We want to be sure that EVERYONE gets quality the coaching they love and deserve. We understand that schedule changes happen, we  just ask that if you are not registered to 6:10 or 4:15 that you avoid that unless asking a coach.

We are happy to put you on a waiting list if you find your schedule changing. Ask as soon as you know because if I am being honest those lists are lengthy!

As always, we appreciate you and your choice to train with us. Look, I shot this video so you can see for yourself that this is totally a friendly reminder (which will start me with crazy eyes! Awkward!)

We have had an INSANE amount of fun handing out prizes over the last several months as we have kicked off a consistent referral challenge. So far we have given away a paddle board to Anne,  Nike ID shoes to Eric, a $200 gift card to EMS to Melissa and a $50 gift card to Under Armor to Melanie! When you share the good word, we reward you! Not only does EVERYONE get $50 just for referring to us, but now on top of that their name is added to a drawing to win some pretty cool stuff.

In August and September if you refer to us you will get your $50 cash and you will also get your name in a drawing to win a FREE night at Adventure Suites, Red Jacket Inn OR Great Wolf Lodge. I have stayed at all three of these hotels and they are SUPER fun for the family or with friends. 

Check out this video- at the end I'll give you some tips to get your friends in here! 

This is in some ways a follow-up blog to my why Wednesday video.  What does the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” mean?  It means that doing things to prevent a problem or issue in small parts preventatively is a lot easier than trying to make major changes after an issue has arisen.  As an example think of a credit card, an ounce of prevention would be things like using your credit card sparingly and paying it off monthly, or at least in a timely fashion.  Which is much much easier, and more manageable, than continually charging things you aren’t able to afford at the moment to a credit card and then trying to pay off high amounts of credit card debt.  For anyone that has experienced this you know how unbelievably difficult it can be.  

The same is true of the body, very simply the best way to stay active and moving, is to….you guessed it, stay active and moving, training, ect.  It's a lot easier to maintain an active lifestyle for 10 years, than it is letting yourself become sedentary for ten years and try to rewind the clock.  Realistically you could probably maintain a relative level of fitness and mobility with just being physically active for 15-20 minutes a day in a pinch.  That seems a lot less daunting than being 10 years older and trying to train 6 days a week to make up for lost time.  

With all that being said I fully realize that this is a hard thing to picture, this is maybe our most difficult thing as coaches to convey because people tend to have trouble understanding something they have yet to experience.  Myself included, it’s very hard to consider back pain prevention (most often hip mobility) as a priority, until you hurt your back. Pressing overhead doesn’t seem like a big deal right now, until you have to do months of PT and waiting for your frozen shoulder symptoms to go away.  This is just something you have to trust me/us on. Keep yourself healthy now, to be able to hold up when things get challenging down the road, the reverse is EXPONENTIALLY harder.

Many years ago, when I was at a training conference I first learned of the word “Sawubona”. It is an African Zulu greeting that means “I see you”. In Western culture, we often say “Hi, how are you?” but so often people never wait for the others response. In contrast, Sawubona means “I see you and you are important to me and I value you”.

Recently during a training, I asked a Get Fit NH Family member “how are you doing?” Her
response was “I am here”. I told her “that is a step in the right direction!” I knew from
previous conversations she has been under a lot of stress for various reasons. I did not take it lightly that she made it to training. I know it was an achievement. For some of you, training is just part of your day, no questions asked and that is fantastic! For others, it is a struggle just to walk through the doors. I want you all to know that we never take it for granted when you make it to training! We love “seeing” you! You are so much more than just a body working out. While we may not greet you with “Sawubona”, we see you and you are all incredibly important to us. Your value is beyond measure! When you are a part of the Get Fit NH Family it means you are seen and valued! Thank you for not only training with us but also sharing your lives with us.

-Coach Erin

Happy Monday and first day back from recovery week! 

I hope everyone is feeling energized and ready to get back into some great training! I thought it would be helpful to write this blog about important things to remember coming back from recovery week and how you might feel starting off:

1. Start Slow! If you remembered we deloaded our training the two weeks before recovery week and then had recovery week. The purpose of that we to let our body recover and rest after spending a lot of time training with heavy weights. There is a good chance that you may not be able be able to lift the same weight as you could before recovery week but that's ok because you will build that strength back and then some!
2. Embrace The Training! You are all rock stars when it comes to training! You all always crush any challenge we throw at you which makes programming so much fun for us! A thing to remember in the first couple of weeks is that we are focused on getting the body moving again so that at the end of the training phase you are performing the best you can!
3. Wellness Is Peaks And Valleys! People will ask us why we would deload if it makes us weaker for a short amount of time. The answer is because your body needs it! Not even professional athletes train 7 days a week 365 days a year, they take time to deload and rest too! As awesome as it would be our bodies can't handle the stress of lifting heavy all the time. It needs rest and recovery so it can grow more especially as we get stronger and need more energy to keep getting stronger!

We are super excited about this training phase and to see all the progress everyone makes! Welcome back and remember to keep making it happen!

-Coach Brian

Having a presence and being active in our community is VERY important to us here at Get Fit NH. We know together we can make a big difference and that is why we choose to host a charity training each quarter. We are lucky enough to train some fine individuals who work hard for these non-profit organizations and Fellowship Housing Opportunities has an advocate right here at this gym! 

She asked us if we would be willing to host a charity training on their behalf and we were more than happy to make a difference for this amazing organization. 

We are going to shake up this charity training, though! We usually host these trainings in the morning on a Saturday, but this time, given the nature of this organization, we decided to do a sunset training and call it "Get Fit NH Helping Concord Get Out of the Darkness"

Mark your calendars for Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 8PM! This will (weather permitting) be an OUTDOOR training! Friends and Family are welcome and we would ask for a donation of $10.

Here is some more information about Fellowship Housing Opportunities for the advocate herself!

Fellowship Housing Opportunities Inc., founded in 1966, is a private nonprofit organization located in
downtown Concord, NH. We are dedicated to promoting recovery from mental illness as a provider of high quality, affordable housing and client-centered behavioral services. Our mission is to “Provide decent, safe, affordable housing with support to members of our community who live with a mental illness. We envision a community in which people with mental illness are able to manage daily lives, be good neighbors, access resources, and find acceptance”.

Fellowship Housing Opportunities owns and maintains and manages seven multi-family properties in Concord, NH all within walking distance of downtown. These seven properties allow us to provide needed housing for over 60 individuals. Three of our independent apartment properties are subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which allows our tenants to receive government assistance in paying their rent. Our tenants receive on average about $900 a month for their disability payments. Very difficult to live in Concord on $900 a month.

Tenants in these apartments only pay 30% of their income for rent. Our three remaining independent properties are unsubsidized but housing vouchers (Section 8) are accepted and rents are below fair market value. Our seventh property is a 24-hour staffed, licensed community residence that is also subsidized by HUD. This residence houses twelve individuals who require 24-hour assistance in caring for themselves and managing their medications. Residents in this home are learning how to care for themselves and their home, how to shop for needed supplies and how to interact appropriately in public in the hopes that they will someday be able to move into one of our independent apartments where they can live with or without assistance from our staff.

Your donation to Fellowship Housing Opportunities will help us continue to provide affordable housing options to people in need in Concord and beyond. Our goal is to expand our reach in the next few years by purchasing additional properties so we will be able to help even more people.

We are so excited to bring Sarah Coulombe to Get Fit NH for a very personal and focused mobility class. Sarah is a Physical Therapist at our our favorite Chiropractic Office, Performance Health. She has helped many of our clients and Coach Adam battle some serious, chronic pain. I asked her to do a write up about the class she will be offering and her and Coach Adam took it one step further and included a video! This class will be held at Get Fit NH on Wednesday mornings from 7:30-8:30AM. Payment will be handled through Performance Health NOT Get Fit NH. So you can choose to call them and pay via credit card or write them a check directly! Here are the details from Sarah herself!

Body. Active. Mobility. B.A.M. Course

Do you wish you had more mobility and flexibility? Do you constantly feel stiff and immobile? Or do you feel very unsteady like you don’t have control over your own body? The purpose of this course is to increase body awareness through active mobility using body weight exercises and minimal equipment. Learn your joint limitations and how to best promote optimal movement and health of your joints. 

Come join Sarah Coulombe, a Physical Therapist from Performance Health as a guest instructor to bring you this unique 6-week body control class. The class is based on recent course work including Functional Range Control and Kinstretch. Due to her background as a Physical Therapist and Certified Functional Strength Coach, she can help you reach your goals!

A free introduction class will be taking place on July 24th from 7:30-8:30am at Get Fit NH. Each class builds on the previous.  If you would like to continue with the 6-week course, you will have the opportunity to register for the final 5 sessions on July 24th.  The classes will be held each Wednesday from 7:30-8:30am from July 31st - August 28th. Cost for the 6-week course is $130.