Taking Fitness 360 On The Road (Literally!)
Edith Lopez, Wendy Bryant, Mayra M. Carrillo, Serena Jones, Zaachila Garcia, Leticia Stock and Lurysol Olivera all competed in the annual half-marathon. (not in order)
This was everybody's first time doing this race and for some it was their first half marathon. It was a perfect day for long run. Not too hot with a slight breeze. The newbees were kind of nervous because they didn't know what to expect. Once Tony Vice said "Go" all you saw was a sea of people heading out these long country roads. You saw old as well as young people running. Everybody going at their own pace focused on just getting to the finish line.
I am so proud of all my clients!
The ones that had already done a half marathon improved on their time and as for the others; seeing their faces as they crossed the finished line made me so proud to see them accomplish something they where so unsure of. After the race we all celebrated by having some wine and relaxing on the lawn as the band played in the background. ~ Lurysol Olivera
Want It All? Of Course You Do… Here’s How To Get It
Downey Getting Some Air.
It's always been an interesting cycle for myself, and of course anyone that's wanted to be competitive in more than one physical activity. Different activities require different motions and different body types. The same build on a football isn't going to benefit a marathoner and someone that has great lateral movements on a tennis court may not help all that much on the golf course. Granted there's some crossover but I always liked to gear everything towards whatever I was playing/interested in at the moment. Summer? Went away from the lifting and quick speed of basketball season for the long distance runs of jogging. Got the itch for golf and all of a sudden is was time to build up the core to get more swing speed... and on... and on.
Time for a new theory.
It all started a few weeks ago when Danielle, a current client of Ben Mackie's at Fitness 360, suggested some tennis on an off day from the personal training. Ok. I'd never really played before but I figured I could find my way around the courts well enough to be competitive unless she was Sharapova's cousin and she was holding out on me. At least anything not to look too bad in front of her. Off to the courts we went where I caught on quick and found myself ahead early 4-2..... and..... then promptly got run off the courts as she decided I'd had enough fun and beat me 6-4. So much for the not looking bad. But I was hooked. And the next morning I was sore!
Roger Federer I aint... but wouldn't it be nice!?
Then scenerio two came about when Fitness 360's own Lurysol suggested that I take part in the Half Marathon this past weekend in Lodi, the annual run through the Vineyards. 13.1 miles? Not out of the question I thought, six or seven has always been relatively easy for me. Well six or seven ONCE is relatively easy. Double that and it's another story. I found this out the hard way when I thought a little prep work would be in order and I set off one afternoon to see if I could do it. 11 miles later and a good tour of Stockton later I found myself laid out on my shower floor taking the coldest shower possible and thinking only one thing. "Damn that Tony Vise at Fleet Feet is right! Cotten is ROTTEN!" Time to get some syntheic socks!
To be fair I was thinking two things. That Lurysol better find another running partner come Sunday morning! 
And to round out the trifecta I spent the weekend on the Delta, courtesy of a good buddy's Mastercraft boat and his summer house in Discovery Bay. Two full days of wakeboarding later the body is a little battered and bruised but not worse for the wear, (minues of course any psysiological shortcomings of spending two days in the waters of the Delta!)
But that third experience helped craft my new theory on competition and sports and fitness training in general. In summary, and I know you've waited a good 500 words for me to get to the point, is that when you have total body fitness you don't need to specialize! I could have never gone through so many different sports and activities in the last two weeks (golf, tennis, long distance running, basketball, lifting and wakeboarding) and felt this good had I not changed something in my workout routine. But looking back the only thing I've changed in my routine in the past five years is simply making Fitness 360 a priority.
Many times we'll do specific muscle group training at Fitness 360 but it's always incorporated with other areas of the body and cardio to round out our workouts. Sports and a healthy lifestyle is not about getting your legs jacked up so you can jump out of the gym or doing 1,000 crunches so you can rip through the ball even faster. It's about tuning your body so you can adapt and do everything at a higher level. It's about tweaking the little things and stetching so the big muscles work even better.
Because unless you're going to be the best around at one single activity wouldn't it be a whole lot better to be above average in a LOT of them? Feeling great and knowing you can can go out and compete and enjoy any activity that comes your way?
Although as far as the tennis and my ability goes you'll have to speak to Danielle. I'm sure she's have something to say against that!
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.
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.
The BENefits of Mackie
I decided to switch it up a little for my fourth day at 360. Ben Mackie, one of Todd’s first trainers to join the studio had an opening in his afternoon group so I jumped at the chance to get away from the balance balls and squats with the small hope that maybe we’d be getting into something that I would do well at. Having seen women twice my age (god I hope I’m right on that or someone’s going to be mad at me!) doing drills twice as good as me has left me the need to boost the ‘ole self esteem. Ben’s group was composed of a handful of his regular clients and he would pair us into teams, give us a dozen exercies to complete together. For instance we had to run three laps, 300 jump-ropes, 300 sit-ups... etc.
I could perform all 300 sit-ups and my partner, a co-ed from Pacific (thank you Ben!), would do all three laps and so on. It was a great change of pace and involved a great deal of competition against the three other groups. Finally, I thought, something I can really get into. And I did. Now I don’t know whether it was the exercies that appealed to me, the injecting of competition or simply the wanting to not look bad in front of a college girl but it was a great workout. Completely different from what Todd has previously put me through but also very, very effective. Ben’s workout had a certain degree of laid-backness to it but at the same time no one took it for granted and got after it. He, like Todd, kept everything fun but made me work to finish sets and get a little more out of myself. At the end of the day we’re all there only because we want to be there but it’s great to have someone like Ben in your corner getting you to the next level.
Just Getting Through The First Week
On The First Day…
I arrived for my first personal training session with Todd at 4:45 on Monday afternoon. The Lincoln Center studio location was busy as Ben, Lurysol and Todd all were working with a clients in various aspects of training. Ben had a group of three girls on mats working on reverse lunges as Lurysol was in the corner with a woman and Todd ran a group of four people through various circut trainings. I made my way around the gym, trying out the equipment and seeing what was available and of course comparing it to other gyms that I had worked out at. But it's hard to compart Fitness 360 in that way because it's not a gym. It's a personal training studio! I jumped rope, hit a few sets on the bench press and threw some punches on the heavy bag as Todd finished up with his 4:00 clients and called me over to join his group.
There were four of us in his group, a girl and two high school boys and myself. We started right at 5:00 and immediately got into a furious collection of jumping rope, step-ups and leg and ab exercises. We went at a good pace, doing some exercises for time like the "quick feet" and others working on perfect form and taking our own time. Todd observed all four of us at various points making sure that form was good and offering encouragement toward the end of our sets. Numerous times he came over and corrected either my posture or my balance. Having been an athlete my entire life I had done many of the exercises before but working closely with Todd helped me get the most out of them and realize that I had been doing some of them incorrectly. Our session lasted nearly an hour and I must admit I was sore but not exhausted at the end. I knew that was far from the hardest workout we would do but my goal was to simply keep good form and complete each drill without giving up or slowing down.
During the session Todd had noticed that I pronounced my left foot inward while jumping rope so following the session he said wanted to test my hip flexor and my flexability. Laying down on a mat he put me through a number of leg twists and stretches designed to help get some flexibility in my very, very tight left hip. He asked about my previous athleti history and any injuries that would cause it to be that tight - such as my ACL surgery I had while in college. Getting done with that "physical therapy" session I realized how great my hip felt in just twenty minutes of stretching it out. All in all the personal training session was great but really set Todd and Fitness 360 apart from everywhere else was the personal touch. I could have done those drills on my own but probably would not have pushed myself like he did. Observing something in my physical attributes and helping me with it was simply what sold me after one session. I wanted to continue to work out at 360 no matter what but my excitement in doing so has increased greatly with Todd's knowledge and ability to help me reach new levels.
