What Can BROWN Do For You?
I've always been up for a challenge. New sports... new city... new jobs. There's always been a certain element of excitement going along with change - so when Fitness 360's Christina Brown offered to write me an athlete-specific training program I jumped at the chance. Literally. Day One of Christina's training program consisted of working the legs. Sorry, another gross understatement. We did every leg specific thing one could do in an hour, proper stretching, movement, jumps, squats, lifts and balance exercises. Truly not a workout for the weak but CERTAINLY a workout for someone that wants to perform at a higher level in anything that they do. This afternoon was only day one; apparently I've still got tomorrow (shoulders) and Friday (biceps) to look forward to! I routinely joked everyone within a cable-pull that I was DONE after day one but it's easy to see the benefits - I sweat through both shirts, a hat and a warm-up and we didn't even broach the subject of cardio. In all seriousness there were a few exercies that I simply couldn't finish and couldn't do the proper way. I'm going to blame it on the 'ole knee injury but Christina's viewpoint was simply my weakness in certain areas.
Poor balance I may have but I'd have to give myself at least an A- for effort for a multitude of reasons. Ben's an attractive guy and all but I don't think I ever pumped out a few extra lifts just because he stood over me, smiled and asked if I could do a few more. Christina on the other hand somehow had the ability to get me to single-leg squat a weight I didn't think I could do with BOTH legs.
Comfort Level (low) Results (very high)
No one ever said that training was easy. At least not the kind of training that gets results - but I guess that's the point. If it was easy everyone would do it. Well, I'll tell you a what everyone's NOT going to be doing but what everyone SHOULD be doing. Seeing Lurysol. I'd been going at a pretty steady clip of working out with the team every morning at 6 a.m. and then coming back in around 5 to do some cardio or get another workout in by myself or with Todd. Call it a change of pace or call it a good amount of teasing by Lurysol herself but I found myself working out with Miss Olivera Wednesday afternoon. Now I had been holding my own against the college kids for the last few weeks (if not kicking some butt here and there) but yet again I wasn't ready for what I encountered with Lurysol. Abandoning the heavy weight and high reps that I was accustomed to Lurysol put me through a workout focused on balance. Something I'm greatly lacking. Having accomplished the first part of the workout we transitioned into flexibility and stamina. Another thing I'm missing a lot of. A combination of lunges, weight balanced movements and twists later and I was not only exhausted but embarrassed by my lack of ability to balance on a leg and lift a weight with my other hand. What's next? Rub a head and pat a stomach? Or was that the other way around. Regardless it was a great workout for those simple reasons - it got me out of my comfort zone and made me focus on things I hadn't done in a long time. A couple more sessions with Lurysol and there'll be something else that I'm missing more of... Weight!
Let’s Start the Insanity
We're going to explore a specific school of thought on training and getting your body in shape today. First, if you haven't played competitive basketball for a few years expect there to be a few drawbacks. Your conditioning won't be there. You can't make the same moves you once did and even though your body thinks your capable of certain things... it will fail you at times. I learned that the hard way two weeks ago as I tried to reclaim all the past basketball glory within a few hours at noon. I got a good sweat out of it. I also got a gash on my arm, a lot of bruises and a severely twisted knee. This brings me to the second school of thought. If you haven't been in the studio for two weeks DO NOT by any means start back up at six in the morning with the Pacific Golf team. The Tigers, reaping the benefits of Ben Mackie, pun intended, get after it every morning before the sun has even thought about starting to rise. This morning Ben welcomed the team back, albeit in his own former-British-Army way....
100 reps of each
push-ups | ball sits | plank | russian twists | cross over twists | lunges | bicycles
And that's only 1/4 of the the morning as you do 100 of each of those and then come back and hit it 75 times. Then 50 times. Then 25. Welcome back!
Now at Fitness 360… Yoga! with Christina Brown
Check out the newest addition to Fitness 360... Yoga. Make Life Better with Christina Brown starting this Saturday morning!
The Butt Workout
Got a chance to check out Ben Mackie in action this morning at Fitness 360. Take a look for yourself as he puts his clients through the paces!
15% Body Fat?!?!
15% body fat! At least that's what the little hand-held "body fat testing machine" told me today. For all intensive purposes I can't for the life of me understand how a little metal and plastic machine that you hold between your hands can determine your body fat percentage but that's what popped up on the digital screen after I held it for the alloted 15 seconds. To be honest this might be the first time that I can ever remember doing a body fat testing... if it's not I'm going to assume that I just purely blocked out a number that was somewhere between Lebron and Shaq's jersey number.
I spoke to Todd about this a few days prior and he pretty much allotted me around 2,200 calories a day. We figured that I run every morning for 2.5 miles, (400 calories according to my Nike Plus shoes and ipod) plus another 1,000 calories burned during our daily hour workout and a good 2,000 just based upon metabolism throughout the day. Taking all this into account you'd think I'd be a lean, mean blogging machine in just a few days but if you bother to take a closer look at food portion size and actual calories and you've got a completely different story.
For the sake of brevity I'm not even going to look into my portion sizes and how many calories I'm ACTUALLY taking in. But based upon the fact that I'm very slowly dropping weight lets assume it's not enough. I am however gaining muscle mass and definition in target areas so we'll go ahead and assume I'm keeping up with the much needed protein.
Thus far it's been a slightly irregular week of workouts as I've more than tripled up on chest and bicep exercises thanks to Todd's recommendations and have neglected agility and leg training. Tomorrow I'm switching it up with a 10:30 workout so we'll see how that goes and I'll be back to update you all this weekend!
The New IT Place
Brookside Head Professional Piper Wagner
It's officially a month into working out at Fitness 360 and if I can't already seen some major changes than I can at least feel like I'm on the right track. Todd's been putting me through the paces on average a good four times a week and we've really started looking at the areas that I'm weak and making sure that I double up on them. For instance he noticed that my bicep and chest were particularily weak and that I should get more definetiion in those areas. For that he put me on a program of incline bench, shoulder raises, lateral raises and plate lifts. No, not the dinner plate. The 45-lbs variety! He had me do this either before or after our customary workout each day for the past week. It's Thursday morning and saying that I'm feeling the burn would be a mild understatement. And that's just while I'm typing here at 6 in the morning!
It's true, I have noticed some small physical changes with my workout and my energy levels - not to mention some added muscle in the target areas. But more importantly what I've noticed at Fitness 360 isn't what's going on becasue of Fitness 360, it's going on INSIDE of Fitness 360. Now I understand 5:00 PM is a pretty peak time to workout, everyone's getting down in the afternoon with work and trying to hit the studio before they head home; however, the doors were just about busting loose last night!
Count 'em down. Lurysol had two clients in the front corner. Ben had the entire Pacific golf team join his group that was already at least a bakers dozen strong, Desmond was working out with a group of four in the back, Christina's girls were working over the heavy bag and Todd was still conducting a small group of his own. You'd think a cozy location like Lincoln Center wouldn't be able to hold everyone and it would be cluttered but to tell you the truth I think people really feed off of the energy level that comes from that type of atmosphere. You really can't afford to slack off because you're partnering up and let's be honest.... who wants to look bad when the 45-year-old-mother-of-two is kicking your butt in medicine ball slams!
Not that that is the only motivation... but it is a good one. I remember the first few times coming to the studio when it first opened and you'd be lucky to see one trainer and more than two clients. Those days are long gone; it truly has become the IT place in the 209.
Targeting Weakness
Got to the studio early today becasue I wanted to get a little cardio in before we started our workout at five. Todd had a pair of ladies working out in the time slot before my usual one and asked if I wanted to join so I thought, "what the hell, I'll double-up today". It was probably the best thing I could have done as the regiment he put them through was far different than anything that we were doing; hey, all the better to work different areas of the body. Besides, that's why I'm writing this blog anyways, so learn everything about Fitness 360 and experience it all.
We finished our session and before I started my five o'clock group Todd spent some time working with me on my "problem areas" and what I should work on and how we could tailor specific workouts for me. One thing that we looked at was that I was currently around 225 pounds, easily the heaviest I've ever been. Knowing Todd's knowledge of diets and nutrition we talked about various reasons why I was so
heavy but still managing to preform all the drills above average, jump well and run well. He surmised that I was carrying way too much weight in my torso and chest area and that toning that up by increasing muscle mass would therefore beging to burn away some of that fat.
During this past summer I had gotten done to a weight of 200 even, mostly thanks to weekends on the Delta wakeboarding and walking the golf courses and weekdays running up to 10 miles at a time. We agreed some of it was a dietary issue but also a cardio and workout thing that we would continue to look at. Todd thought that a weight of 205 to 210 would be perfect for my frame and where I already was with athletics.
The First of 2010… And Maybe The Last!
You're not going to get a lot of wisdom in these postings but here's a word to the wise, if you ever hear your trainer mention a workout called "Fight Gone Bad"... run. Very fast. I just got back from a nice relaxing weekend in Colorado. A lot of hot chocolate, big meals and good wine and then came back thinking I was refreshed and ready to roll. So when Todd suggested "Fight Gone Bad" workout for Monday afternoon the competitor in me thought I was ready for anything and said, "sure, let's do it". For the uninformed "Fight Gone Bad" is pretty much just as many reps as you can do of five exercises in 15 minuters.
First it's a minute of 12-pound medicine ball throws to the ceiling, then one minute of sumo squats with an 85 pound bar, then a minute of jumps on a bench, then a minute of push presses with that same 85-pound bar and finally a minute on the rowing machine. Then you get exactly a one minute break and do it all over again. Oh yeah... then you get another one minute break and do it for a THIRD time! It will pretty much take you to the border of exhaustion and cardiac arrest. Not only is your heartrate skyrocketted but your legs and arms burn; which I'm assuming is the point. The first set through I'll admit there was a little bit of a learning curve, trying to figure out the best way to pace myself and get as many reps as possible. Then in the second set I was exhausted but paced myself a little better, my number of reps fell off but by the final time through I was able to push through and increase my reps from the second time through.
I was proud to put up 388 my first time doing the workout. A number which I'm told was pretty good.Now if I just felt good about it when I got done! However, I can't say there's a better feeling that walking out of the studio in the evening having accomplished a hard workout and knowing you're making some progress. I felt productive but I think I'll shy away the next time someone suggests THAT workout.
