Leaps and Bounds: Functional Training

Not me. Please. My hair is WAY shorter.

One thing I can really appreciate in the gym is functional training.  Luckily, my new trainer Justin has loads of it.  Today's workout was a perfect example of the kind of functional cross-training that is needed for...

Tri-Fit FRIDAY!

Yay! Plyometrics! 

If you're not familiar with tri-fit, its a sport that combines strength, agility, speed, and bedazzling, all of which convene in one weekend of endorphin-fueled competitions of skill and endurance perfect for ADD athletic types everywhere. You can read more here.  I suck at pretty much all of it but dang, it sure is fun!

ANYWAY, today's workout was a great tri-fit workout.  I started out with some sprint intervals, and then we moved on to some compound exercises, which was a nice break.

Then we went totally old school with a bunch of drills:

high knees

butt kicks

bounds

squat jumps

jumping split squats (I haaaaaate these)

and these little "three forward jumps, one big backwards jump" things that we did both forward and laterally. That was fun as long as I didn't look in the mirror and lose my balance.

All in all, it was a great start to the weekend!  Check out the links above and give some of these exercises a try, or visit this website for lots of good video examples of plyometric training.  If you like them, do some more!  It's just that easy, folks.  You just DO IT.

Good day!

Tri-Fit Friday: Meet Nicole!

It's Tri-Fit Friday!  That means I am focusing on another athlete from the Ultimate Fitness Challenge that inspires me in some way.  This week it is Nicole Rae Spitzack - athlete, fitness model, personal trainer, mom, and all-around nice person. 

Nicole Rae Spitzak.
FYI: This is not part of the Tri-Fitness Obstacle Course.

Nicole trains her clients in her kick-ass garage, sets up obstacles in her yard, and has what looks in pictures like a really dedicated and tight-knit training group.  I admire that, and I try to channel that can-do spirit in my own workouts.  I asked Nicole what drew her to this unique sport.

WWOP: How did you first learn about tri-Fitness?
Nicole: I saw it in Oxygen magazine and was immediately drawn to it. At the time I was a stay at home mom and military wife looking for something to dive into.  I came in contact with a girl in my area that had competed in the competition once before and she was very helpful. The more I researched the organization and started talking with other former competitors the more I realized this was what I wanted to do.

WWOP: Did you have a sports background?  Have you always been athletic?
Nicole: I played basketball in middle school and managed a soccer team in high school. I was very awkward as a student and def more of a book worm than an athlete.  I regret that I didnt get involved more in gymnastics ...that would really come in handy now! lol... I have ZERO athletic background. No gymnastics, dance, track, sports, cheerleading, etc. 

WWOP: So how did you end up in fitness modeling?
Nicole: I started fitness modeling three years ago with Con-Cret Creatine and that really opened a lot of doors for me. Then I started working expos and fitness conventions and meeting different people, networking, and making connections. I landed a gig with Power Systems Fitness Equipment two years ago and that has been really great!

WWOP: Describe a typical training day for you.
Nicole: I wake up every morning at 6 am ...whether I want to or not. I have an internal alarm clock that keeps me running. I get my workout done by 7 am and have breakfast by 7:15. I have my own gym and start training clients around 8 am thru 5 pm on most days. I workout with my husband when he gets home around 6 pm and have dinner by 7pm. Fitness hasn't always been such a huge part of my life, but I am so blessed to be able to say that I turly love what I do and there is never a bad day at work. My daughter is home with me and encouraging clients everyday in the gym! Its so awesome to see her interest in health and nutrition already at the age of 4. I workout 5 days a week with one day of outdoor activity (mow lawn, yard work, etc.) and have one day of rest.


WWOP: Okay, we all know tri-fit is awesome but what is your favorite thing?
Nicole: Definitely has to be the tri-fit "family." Al Rosen is amazing. He is so passionate about Tri Fit...I have never met anyone like him before. His fiance Bernadette couldn't be any sweeter and more genuine. Everyone is all about helping everyone! No matter who you are, where you are from, or what your capabilities are every person involved in Tri Fit is right there pushing you beyond your limits. Al has trained thousands of people on that course, but ask him what your first time was and he will be able to tell you. He sees everyones strengths and weaknesses and does everything he can to help you overcome any obstacle.


WWOP: What message would you send to someone reading this wondering if she should give tri-fit a shot?
Nicole: If I can do this ...you can do this! Never sell yourself short, never doubt your abilities or capibilities, keep pushing forward, and don't be afraid to try new things and make new friends! Right now you may be looking to be inspired .... but one day you could be the inspiration that someone else is leaning on.

Thanks Nicole!  I have to say, she is 100% right about all of that - tri-fit is one of the most supportive and encouraging fitness environments I have ever been in, and as a non-athlete, that is saying a lot.  I am motivated each and every day by seeing her workouts and experiencing the enthusiasm she has for fitness.  Thanks for being such an inspiration.  By the way, you can join her Facebook fan page and get all of that motivational goodness, too!

It just so happens that a tri-fit training camp is coming up in a few weeks in Tampa.  Check it out here (the link is to the right of the page) and consider challenging yourself by attending.  You will not regret it.

Have a great, active weekend!

Good day! :)

Itching for a Fight

Today I am overwhelmed by a feeling of pure angst...these lazy bones have been kept in captivity too long and I am itching for a fight!  A fight to the finish, that is.  I've been training, but more in a maintenance-happy zone-I'm a healthy person kind of way.  And I am bored, frustrated, and getting pretty cranky about it.

It's hard to stay super-fit when you're surrounded by other obligations clamoring for attention.  But now that my work travel, vacation, and other distractions are behind me I can turn my focus back to refining my level of fitness to one that I can have a little more respect for.

So.  Solutions?  Well, it just so happens I have several lined up:

Immediately through August: kick training back into high gear for 1/2 marathon, triathlon, and tri-fit.  That means more interval running, Plyometric Wednesdays, and swimming workouts.

September: planning another sprint triathlon with my brother, sister, brother in a law, and husband unless they wimp out on me.  

October: half marathon with my sister (and anyone else I can conjure up).

November: Tri-Fit Ultimate Fitness Challenge and local Turkey Trot 10k

How about you?  What are you doing in the next few months to get yourself into tip-top shape?  I'll see you at the starting line!

Good day!

Tri-Fit Friday! Meet Mary.

It's Tri-Fit Friday!  

The Women's Tri-Fitness organization hosted the Ultimate Fitness Challenge last weekend in Las Vegas, and that means the countdown to November (the next UFC event) is on!  Since I am cheap and lazy, competing in a locale/season that I can both drive to and not sweat in trumps flying to Vegas and exercising in 100+ heat.  So November it is!

And this year, I am counting down by featuring some of the inspirational women of tri-fit that motivate me to do things that force me to use unladylike language at the gym.   

The first of these lovely ladies is Mary Parrett, a geriatric health services manager by day and tri-fit competitor on the weekends who caught my eye at my first Tri-Fit Camp back in March 2009.  Not only is she a dynamo on the obstacle course, her positive attitude, encouragement, and can-do spirit really helps competitors remember that Tri-Fit is about competing with yourself, which is such a great experience.

And, she does it all as a later-in-life athlete in her 50s.  As someone with no athletic background whatsoever, she really serves as a lesson that we can learn new tricks at any age.

I sat down (virtually) with Mary to find out what drew her to Tri-Fit.  Read more to find out about what motivates her, how she trains, and why she chose such a unique sport.

WWOP: Why do you compete in tri-fitness?
Mary:Tri-fitness is an unusual event which has concrete results and allows you to compete with yourself. Very little is left to judgment. Your time is your time and only YOU can control your growth and development in this sport. The best part is the sisterhood which develops from this sport. We all cheer for each other; we all support each other; we share secrets of self-development and improvement. Tri-fitness is not about competing. It IS about believing in yourself. It IS about setting goals and improving. It IS about recognizing the obstacles in your own life and learning how to hurdle them most efficiently every time.

WWOP: What about tri-fitness caught your attention?
Mary: I learned of Tri-fitness from a girlfriend at the gym (age 38 or 39 at the time). I looked into it and went to visit Al Rosen for a private session (I was 52 at the time and wanted to private intro to be sure I didn't kill myself on the course). After an hour, I immediately joined in the Wednesday evening practice and met a handful of the girls. They were wonderful! I was so taken by the whole experience, I've been there since.

WWOP: Do you have an athletic background? If so, what kinds of sports did you play? Mary: No real sporting background... just girls phys ed in school and some intramural sports after school. Never really made too much on any teams... if I was chosen, it was for my enthusiasm and not skills!

WWOP: What is your typical training program for tri-fit?
Mary: I go to practice with Al and the girls on Saturdays to work on all the obstacles and do lots and lots of conditioning drills for speed and power. In fact, even in the gym, my weight lifting work outs are either power and strength or power and speed. Lots of explosions of power work coupled with either speed work or strength work. I have a wonderful trainer with whom I have worked since 2001. With every new thing I want he changes my training to meet the needs of the sport.

WWOP: What is your favorite part of tri-fit?
Mary: The energy created by the event... lots of cheering and positive pushes to go forward. The people are terrific! Everyone gives 110% and hopes for the best for everyone else. It's a really positive experience.

WWOP: What part of tri-fit is the most challenging for you and why?
Mary: Are you kidding? It's ALL challenging! I love it though and won't quit until I can't do it anymore!

Thanks Mary!  Find out more about Tri-Fitness and the Ultimate Fitness Challenge here or read about my experience here.  And stay tuned for more profiles of uber-inspirational Tri-Fit Ladies!

My Head Is Swimming And Soon So Will I...Be

I am pretty sure the title of this entry is rabid with grammatical mishaps. Moving on...

Okay, so I just signed up for my first triathlon, after being first politely encouraged, then pointedly asked, and finally badgered about why I had not yet done one. No reason, really. Unlike tri-fitness, endurance stuff doesn't scare me. Tri-fitness was something that I had never tried, something that I was actually pretty bad at, and a major challenge to my default settings. On the other hand, doing a triathlon looks like a lot of fun! I like each of the events individually, am competent in each, and there really is just no good reason not to do it.

So I am going to do it. I have roughly 10 weeks to get ready so I am already have a head start on procrastinating. Awesome!

A wonderful colleague of mine, one of the polite encouragers who regularly competes in endurance events, sent me her training schedule to help get me started. I opened up the document and began trying to figure out how I was going to fit this into my day. Well, okay, how I was going to fit it into my day without changing any of the other stuff I do. I googled "triathlon training programs," and found www.beginnertriathlete.com, filled with advice and sample programs for first-timers. But as I calculated the logistics of training, I started thinking maybe there was more to a triathlon than borrowing a wet suit and showing up with a bike.

I mean, I run daily. I bike daily. I used to swim 4 or 5 days a week until I got so wrapped up in tri-fit training that I ran out of hours in the day. But I only regularly run 3 miles, I bike indoors, and I swim pretty leisurely. Any swimming I've done in a lake has been with the sole intention of getting away from someone who had just announced plans to dunk me under the water, and while I do some intense bike intervals, there's a big difference between air-conditioned intervals and 15 miles of actual hills in actual humidity. So while I started my research thinking my biggest weakness in this training schedule would be over-confidence, I started to feel that confidence turn to anxiety as I added up the hours in the day and realized that most of them are already spoken for.

Now I am worried I will just not have enough time.

Pshaw. I'll find time. I love to run, I love to bike, and I love to swim. I've been craving chlorine for weeks now, and my suit, goggles, and cap are still in my gym bag from last summer. I just need to map out a plan. I've gone to work with my Speedo on under my clothes, changing in the car like a super hero on the way to the pool, and returning an hour later with wet hair and smelling faintly of chlorine. I've dedicated a drawer in my office to workout clothes and towels just in case a meeting gets cancelled unexpectedly and I can make it to Pilates or the weight room after all. Last week I said crazy was back...and I think things are about to get crazy!

In the meantime, I am entertaining any and all suggestions for first-time triathlon training, as well as manipulating the space-time continuum.

And....we're off! Race ya!

I'm Not Your Sugar Mama Anymore

Hello! I am writing to you today from my new digs: my old self. :) A couple of weeks after giving my old routine the finger, I am back in business as a lean mean cardio machine. And I must say, there are some pretty nice things happening these days in the abdominal area as a result.

I'm running intervals. I'm doing laps. I'm doing the elliptical. I'm doing the bike. I'm popping in the weight room for another round of strength before heading upstairs to Pilates. I'm downloading Jillian Michaels on DirectTV. And now that the weather is nicer, I am strapping the kiddo in the bike seat and heading out around the neighborhood looking for hills.

I am finally back on cloud nine and all it took was a ninja kick to popular thought and a return to gut-check living. Isn't that always the way? I mean, I don't want to make a big deal about it, but I was kind of right in the first place. You know, in case you were keeping track. That's two points for little old me.


So I read an article a few weeks back about how for many runners, the endorphins can actually become addictive. Cardio slaves will find themselves craving their daily fix, becoming grumpy when they can't work out, and resorting to unflattering and compulsive measures to alleviate stress, like heckling other runners from their cars as they commute to work or demanding that everyone in their office do walking lunges whenever entering or exiting the elevator, both of which seem perfectly reasonable to me. For me, endorphins are a pure example of getting out what you put in. The more I exercise, the better I feel. The better I feel, the more I want to exercise. People ask me all the time where I get the energy to exercise as much as I do and the honest and true answer is that I get the energy by doing it.

But I think something else is going on these days. I think my sudden return to civilized society has more to do with what I have removed from my life than what workouts I have added. Today, in Pilates, during a roll-up, I started retracing my steps back to a not-so-distant past when I was so tired and bitter and grumpy I could barely stand myself. I tried to determine what was different in my life/work/nutrition between then and now, and it all came down to just having a lot more energy now than I did then. At first I chalked it up to eating more complex carbs. But then it hit me - it's what I'm not eating.

Processed sugar.

I am six weeks out from my fitness challenge, so I've been making a huge effort to clean up my nutrition. I know, I know, you're wondering what I could possibly have to clean up. And, since I already eat clean, there isn't much work to do besides watch the wine and keep an eye on portion sizes. But as of the middle of August, I am 100% sweets-free. No cookies, no brownies, no candy, no birthday cake, no chocolate-covered espresso beans (I blame my husband for those). For real. None. And I could not care much less.

Like most people, I have been plagued by a sugar addiction for a looooong time and have tried to give it up time and time again. But, it was not until I finally booted artificial sweetners to the curb that I found my sweet tooth starting to disappear. At the beginning of 2009 I ditched diet soda and other fake sweeteners, and now 10 months later am realizing I have not had a baked good in two months and never missed it. Previous entries of this blog even contain praise of my weekly chocolate that I used to feel like I needed to stay sane. Well, I am sane no more! Wait, that didn't come out right. You know what I meant.

Anyway, I stopped eating crap and now I have more energy than I know what to do with. Coincidence? Maybe. But I don't think so.


Regardless, I am soaking up all of this love from the cardio gods and so glad that I connected the dots today. I love how giving up sugar sneaked up on me and caught me by surprise. I never expected that, which makes it...all the sweeter. :)

Have a great week!