Quarter-Hour Sessions

For those of you who are really tight on time, we are now offering 15 minute training sessions with Neil. While you will miss out on some of the important exercises that normally fit into your half-hour sessions, you will still get a fairly well-rounded, beneficial workout that engages the major muscle groups and packs an added boost of strength into your life. Something is definitely better than nothing, right?

So, if you find that time is tight, try coming in for part of your lunch hour or stop by after you drop the kids off at school. The sessions will be $50, and you will be able to pay-as-you-go or purchase as many sessions at a time as you would like. Also, if you’ve been having trouble justifying coming twice a week…try one full session plus one quarter-hour session per week just to take things to the next level! Please see Hannah or Tanya if you have any questions.

If the weights aren’t getting heavier, then you’re not getting any stronger, your bones aren’t getting any denser, and your muscles aren’t growing.

Every missed workout is a missed opportunity to stimulate exercise benefits.

You accrue benefits from exercise during the rest periods between workouts.

And if you’re not eating in a manner in line with your fitness goals, you’re almost (almost) wasting your time.

If you’re walking around with uncomfortable shoulder and neck tightness, the last thing you’d likely want to do is work those muscles hard - but it’s exactly what you should do. Here’s why:

If you’re like most folks, your shoulder and neck muscles are painful because they’re doing too much contracting. Maybe your life stress is causing you to volitionally tighten your neck. Or perhaps you’ve got poor posture. Whatever the case, you’ve got achy, spasmy muscles - muscles that are constantly tight; contracted.

Muscular contraction requires energy (ATP) - not to mention a copious sprinkling of calcium ions. If we can exhaust a muscle’s store of energy (as well as stowe the release of calcium ions), muscular contraction becomes impossible to sustain. Therefore, the muscles relax.

And you get the relief (temporary as it may be) that you desire.

Over time, we seek to strengthen the muscles of the shoulder/neck complex, so that they’re better able to withstand the rigors of your everyday life (whether it involves chopping wood, lifting children, or holding your head up) as a long-term goal. Tension relief is an incidental (but not accidental) side effect of that long-term goal.

I am always amazed by how many people I talk to that do not eat breakfast on a regular basis. The two most commons reasons I hear are: 1) I don’t have time and 2) I have trouble eating so soon after I wake up.

Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. Why? Think about it this way…the last thing you had to eat last night was at 9pm. You went to bed at 11pm. You woke up at 6am. You SKIPPED breakfast. You ate lunch at 12 noon. You have just gone 15 hours without eating. During this whole time, you are depriving your body of very important nutrients. The result being a lack of energy, and possibly weakness (not what you want if you are planning on doing SLOW BURN that day), and you could become lightheaded. This fasting is also going to have a detrimental affect on fat loss. Any weight loss you see is going to be water and muscle.

If you don’t have time to make breakfast in the morning, you need to prepare ahead of time. One idea might be to boil a dozen eggs every Sunday night and store them in the fridge so that you have breakfast ready to go each morning.

If you are in a rush, try making a whey protein shake and blend it up with blueberries and strawberries and flax seed oil (protein/carbs/fat) and water  and you have yourself a complete meal to go.

So take the time to plan ahead, and start your day off on the right foot.

Not only is it important to lift weights slowly, but are you also incorporating going slow in your daily lifestyle?

We live in a world where everything that we do tends to be done fast: We eat fast, we walk fast, we talk fast, we speed date, we use high-speed internet connections and the list goes on. Our everyday committments to work, family, hobbies, exercise and whatever else is on the list, seems to be getting too stressful and our health suffers. We crowd up our lives with all these activities but do they really make us happy?

It’s important to remember that we are humans and not He-Man. So the next time you wake up in the morining feeling that you need to put on your He-Man suit, stop and look at how you are spending most of your time. Are you making time for the things you most enjoy? What’s one thing that you could do today to slow down?