Hey everyone,

Today I wanted to chat about smart training.

This morn­ing, I subbed a mus­cle class for another instruc­tor, at a club where I don’t nor­mally teach. From the very first set of shoul­der presses, I could see that this crowd was used to a much less intense, rou­tine, close-​my-​eyes kinda work­out. Now it’s not that these women (it was an all-​female group) had never taken a class before, or were true begin­ners. Not at all. They had just never actu­ally pushed them­selves to the point of fatigue or at least mild dis­com­fort. In fact, one lady very gen­tly said to me, after we com­pleted sev­eral sets of a vari­ety of box squats (squat butt all the way down to the step and back up again) that she needed to be able to sit tomor­row at work with­out being in any pain. News flash every­one — you SHOULD feel mus­cle sore­ness after a work­out! That’s your body telling you, good job!!!

Hey everyone,

This blog was sup­posed to be posted yes­ter­day but life just got in the way.…

Happy Sunday!

Wish I were feel­ing as bright and sunny as this beau­ti­ful June day in the city. Unfor­tu­nately, my damned foot still hurts like hell and I’m not sure what I can do about it other than to take some time off and let it heal. Of course, you all know that rest is NOT an option for me. I haven’t been run­ning at all but to say that I’ve been tak­ing it easy, would be a bit of a lie.

Hi everyone,

Sorry I’ve been so incon­sis­tent with my blogs lately. Yes, I could say that I’ve been really busy with work, kids etc. but truth­fully, who isn’t these days? Excuses are just that — excuses, and they’re also the num­ber 1 rea­son why peo­ple gen­er­ally get lazy and quit their fitness/​workout pro­grams. How many times have I heard from my clients and poten­tial clients that they’re just too busy to train or they’re not really morn­ing folks (who is?), or they’re so tired or.…need I go on? My point is that we all make excuses for the things we just don’t want to com­mit to fully. If reach­ing your fit­ness goals (what­ever they might be — weight loss, strength, energy…), were easy, we’d all look like the fit­ness mod­els on the cover of Oxy­gen mag­a­zine. But, you and I both know that look­ing and feel­ing your absolute best takes a ton of hard work, unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and NO EXCUSES. Summer’s just around the cor­ner every­one, so get out there, put as much effort as you can into your work­outs, throw on your best bikini and rock it!!!!

On another note, I’ve been read­ing a bit about an inter­est­ing nat­ural sup­ple­ment called maca root. I’ve started adding it daily to my shakes and will promise to weigh in on it in the next few weeks. It’s said to help bal­ance hor­mones, reduce stress, increase energy and improve libido. I’m all in in, if it actu­ally does all of these won­der­ful things. We shall see. Here’s a link for more info on it. Cool stuff!

http://​www​.vega​-licious​.com/​m​a​c​a​-​r​o​o​t​-​p​o​w​d​e​r​-​p​r​o​p​e​r​t​i​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​b​e​n​e​f​i​t​s

It’s my daughter’s 17^th birth­day today (I couldn’t pos­si­bly have a daugh­ter whose that old!), so I gotta fly and get cook­ing. I also picked up her favourite cheese­cake for dessert so the diet’s tak­ing a bit of a hia­tus this evening! Hope it’ll be worth it!!

Have a good one, everyone!

Hi everyone,

Hope you’re all enjoy­ing this beau­ti­ful weather! It’s amaz­ing how peo­ple seem to smile more when the sun’s shin­ing and the tem­per­a­tures are warm and comfy.

I for one, am lov­ing get­ting out on my bike and putting all of my hard win­ter train­ing to the test. I gotta tell you though, that first out­door ride can be very hum­bling. Although I spin and train con­sis­tently and intensely through­out the cold win­ter months, there’s just noth­ing like being on the road, bat­tling the wind and hills. Don’t despair though; it only takes a few rides to get back in the sad­dle, so to speak.

Hi everyone,

Just thought I’d share an expe­ri­ence with you from this morning’s spin class. I guess you could say it really threw me for a loop. I’d love to get your feed­back so please if you have an opin­ion, one way or another, I’d love to hear it.

So, the class got off to its nor­mal start, with a nice, easy warmup, as per usual. I scanned the room to do my daily head count and I noticed a woman who I’d never seen before, tex­ting, while rid­ing the bike. I could see the other mem­bers look­ing at her and kind of shak­ing their heads but she remained obliv­i­ous. I decided to tell her in a very light hearted man­ner that it was time to put the phone away. Expect­ing a gig­gle from her, she instead mut­tered some­thing under her breath (I’m sure it wasn’t very kind), picked her­self off the bike and pro­ceeded to march out of the class. Not exactly the reac­tion I was hop­ing for. I felt ter­ri­ble because I didn’t in any way want to insult or offend her.