More is Merrier!

Thank you to all the friends that joined us today. We had quite an impres­sive turnout with some of the nom­i­nated char­i­ties com­pet­ing for a $500 dona­tion. Jorgie clearly ral­lied her base to get three friends out there on behalf of First Book Metro Atlanta. It was enough to edge out Jenn and Atlanta Bicy­cle Coali­tion. Con­grat­u­la­tions Jorgie and First Book! Jorgie reports that the $500 dona­tion will pur­chase enough books for 20 chil­dren for an entire year.

We hope that all of our new friends enjoyed the work­out as much as we always do. When you have a moment, sign up and join us for a full month. In the mean­time, enjoy this arti­cle about the ben­e­fits of group exercise…

EXCERPT FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Whether you join a work­out group or get your own group of friends together for a work­out, here are three rea­sons more is mer­rier for earn­ing your fit­ness gains.

Moti­va­tion

Unless you’re that rare per­son that can jump out of bed at 5 a.m. and hit the ground run­ning, odds are that get­ting and stay­ing moti­vated are dif­fi­cult for you. You are not alone. The major­ity of the peo­ple I’ve worked with over the years have had the same prob­lem. That’s one of the great things about the group set­ting. Many peo­ple who attend a class will show up exhausted from the ups and downs of every­day life. But once they join the group, they become re-energized. With a friendly fit­ness instruc­tor there to light a fire under you rear, it can’t get any better.

Not only are you more moti­vated to get out of bed and exer­cise, but there’s the moti­va­tion to improve your cur­rent fit­ness level. If you work out with peo­ple who are faster, stronger or fit­ter than you, you are prob­a­bly going to get in bet­ter shape. There’s an old say­ing that goes, “The lead dog sets the pace for the rest of the pack.” Think about it.

Account­abil­ity

Remem­ber when you were a high schooler and your mom would wake you up in the morn­ing to go to school? She was hold­ing you account­able. If you were any­thing like me, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t have grad­u­ated with­out her wake-up calls. Thanks Mom! A work­out group can do the same thing for your exer­cise rou­tine. I’ve had count­less clients over the years at Gut Check Fit­ness say, “I wouldn’t be there in the morn­ing if I didn’t know that Kim, Ron, Nancy, etc. were going to give me a hard time for not show­ing up.”

The fear of group teas­ing gets them out of bed. Hey, it works!

Plus, there’s the friendly instruc­tor again that keeps track of your tar­di­ness. I take a daily roll at my classes then each week I look to see who’s been play­ing Harry Hou­dini. If I haven’t seen some­one for a week or two, I’ll gen­er­ally send them a friendly reminder with the threat of numer­ous burpees. This usu­ally does the trick.

Group Cama­raderie

Human beings are social crea­tures. Yes, a few are her­mits and recluses, but the major­ity of us love to be around other peo­ple. We love to laugh, joke and have fun. I feel this is one of the great­est prod­ucts of a group work­out set­ting. Noth­ing brings peo­ple closer quite like mis­ery and phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing. If you’ve ever done a boot camp or sim­i­lar class, you’ll under­stand what I’m talk­ing about.

Many peo­ple sign up to get more fit and along the way become friends through this mutual rit­ual. Many become life­long best friends. My classes not only work hard together, but they play hard together. We reg­u­larly have happy hours, wine tast­ings, and sports days where we do races and events together. We sin­cerely enjoy one another’s com­pany. It’s truly one of the best ways to meet peo­ple like you and develop a com­mon bond while get­ting into the best shape possible.

Join­ing a work­out group can keep you moti­vated, hold you account­able and help you develop a sense of group camaraderie.

Finally, in a world where we’ve become so depen­dent on email and tex­ting, work­ing out with a group offers that human inter­ac­tion that is slowly dis­ap­pear­ing. We can do just about every­thing today vir­tu­ally with­out ever talk­ing to a per­son. That is out­side of a group fit­ness set­ting. With group fit­ness, you have to get involved. You can try to escape to the back of the pack, but a good instruc­tor will inte­grate you into the group whether you like or not. That’s why it’s called group dynam­ics, and that’s why tech­nol­ogy will never replace the good ‘ol fash­ioned group work­out. Get out of your cubi­cle, your car or your house and go meet other peo­ple that have a com­mon inter­est just like you. You never know, you might just meet some real friends instead of the ones you find online.

Active Expert, Joe Decker isan ultra-endurance power ath­lete and renowned fit­ness trainer who hashelped thou­sands of peo­ple get into shape. He has com­pleted many of theworld’s tough­est endurance events, includ­ing the Bad­wa­ter 135, and the­Grand Slam of Ultra­Run­ning. In 2000, Joe broke the Guin­ness Worl­dRecords® Twenty-four-hour Phys­i­cal Fit­ness Chal­lenge to help inspire and moti­vate peo­ple to get fit. He is rec­og­nized as “The World’sFittest Man.” Visit his web­site at www​.joe​-decker​.com.

The Official Compendium of Burpees

Please enjoy this re-post from last year!

BY TRACY

Results from our very sci­en­tific and non-biased poll con­firm that Burpees are the least favorite activ­ity among boot campers.

The Burpee is defined by the Oxford Dic­tio­nary as “a phys­i­cal exer­cise con­sist­ing of a squat thrust made from and end­ing in a stand­ing posi­tion”. Accord­ing to the highly-regarded and rep­utable Wikipedia, the Burpee orig­i­nated “in the 1930s for Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist Royal H. Burpee, who devel­oped the Burpee test. Con­sist­ing of a series of the exer­cises per­formed in rapid suc­ces­sion, the test was meant to mea­sure agility and coor­di­na­tion. It is not clear whether the exer­cise itself was invented by Burpee, or if his test merely pop­u­lar­ized it.”

I have com­piled an offi­cial list of var­i­ous Burpee forms:

• The Pain-Free Burpee – if the “burper” (ath­lete per­form­ing the burpee) devel­ops knee or back related pain while per­form­ing the burpee, the burper can do the same num­ber of frog jumps and push-ups.
• The Facil­i­tated Burpee – the burper does not per­form a push-up at the bot­tom of the burpee.
• Dou­ble Burpee – Instead of the burper doing one pushup, they do two in a row to can­cel the drive from land­ing after the jump. This also makes the next jump harder.
• The Sully Burpee (aka the one-armed Burpee) – the burper per­forms the entire exer­cise using only one arm.
• The Mary Ellen and Daniel “Cir­cus” Burpee – dur­ing the act of the kick­ing his/her feet back, prior to the push-up, the burper kicks their feet up as high as pos­si­ble (one at a time). This is a very fluid motion and should only be per­formed by tal­ented and expe­ri­enced burpers.

Do you have any new Burpees ideas? Get your Burpee form added to the offi­cial list by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post!

REFERENCE: Wikipedia​.org
IMAGE CREDIT: <a onclick=“javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/www.cafepress.com/+i_love_burpees_light_tshirt,317919475′);” target=“_blank href=“http://www.cafepress.com/+i_love_burpees_light_tshirt,317919475″>Cafe Press

4 Stages of Motivation to Stay Fit

FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Keep your fit­ness momen­tum going with these four stages of motivation.

Stage One
The first type of moti­va­tion we all expe­ri­ence is based on an emo­tional feel­ing. The emo­tion could be pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive that kick-starts our desire. Per­haps you read a suc­cess story about a per­son los­ing a hun­dred pounds and because you res­onated with the inspi­ra­tion it evoked, you felt moti­vated to start your weight loss jour­ney too.

Often peo­ple feel sud­denly moti­vated when they hear bad news from their doc­tor. When the doc­tor drops the bomb-news, “You have dia­betes” or “You are at risk for a heart attack or stroke”, we are fear­ful of what the future may hold and we spark up the fire to do some­thing about it.

Both of these types of moti­va­tion are only tem­po­rary. The ini­tial burst of energy dis­si­pates, and is not sus­tained by the inspi­ra­tion or wake up call. Per­haps you’ve been there?

Your eager­ness to over­come and suc­ceed must con­tinue in order to keep the wheel rolling in a pos­i­tive direction.

Stage Two
Another type of moti­va­tion already exists within you. You can be moti­vated to watch tele­vi­sion instead of run­ning the neigh­bor­hood. You can be moti­vated to eat a bowl of ice cream instead of prepar­ing a health­ier snack.

A client, who is on our weight loss pro­gram, came back from lunch with a bag of fast food. When asked what moti­vated her to make an unhealthy choice, she answered, “Because I was mad at my husband.”

When we are moti­vated to pro­duce neg­a­tive actions, there is always a rea­son behind it. In this case, sab­o­tag­ing foods would not mend the issue. Proper com­mu­ni­ca­tion would have been a bet­ter choice.

Be mind­ful of where you point your moti­va­tion. It’s pow­er­ful. Begin to cre­ate aware­ness of what moti­vates you to make wrong­ful deci­sions for your health and well being. Con­sciously rec­og­niz­ing your ‘trig­gers’ will help you to laser focus your moti­va­tion towards health­ier goals.

Stage Three
Stage three goes into effect when you dig deep and pen­e­trate the true mean­ing behind the ini­tial flame. The ulti­mate moti­va­tional coach, Tony Rob­bins, says emo­tion is the force of life. Strive to cre­ate a con­nec­tion with your emotions.

Make a list of your resources: jour­nals, books, gym, coaches, recipes, or train­ing pro­grams, and apply your emo­tional resource­ful­ness. Tap into your deter­mi­na­tion, resolve, car­ing for your­self, curios­ity and your pas­sion. Com­bine the emo­tion with the resource for a pow­er­fully fueled motivation.

For exam­ple:

• Trainer + Enthu­si­asm= Success
• Whole Foods + Desire to be health­ier= Results
• Jour­nal + Under­stand­ing = Self Love
• Knowl­edge + Curios­ity = Con­tin­ued Growth
• Hard work + Love = Life Balance

Go for full immer­sion. The best way to learn a lan­guage is to be immersed in the cul­ture. Repli­cate that phi­los­o­phy by sur­round­ing your­self with the right peo­ple that will help you grow and develop your emo­tional fit­ness. Cre­ate an envi­ron­ment around you that is fruit­ful and uplift­ing on a daily basis.

Here are some ideas:

• Do a pantry and/or fridge makeover by going through and read­ing the ingre­di­ents list. Clean out all the foods that con­tain chem­i­cals and preser­v­a­tives that you can­not pronounce.
• Join a local run­ning club that will help keep you be accountable.
• Cre­ate a blog or Face­book page to post your daily activ­i­ties, and invite oth­ers to join your page.
• Set your­self up for suc­cess. Carry an extra pair of run­ning shoes in your car, and pack an igloo to have healthy snacks on ice.

Stage Four
Liv­ing a fit lifestyle, opposed to tem­po­rary on-again-off-again habits, has an organic force that auto­mat­i­cally replen­ishes its moti­va­tion. Stage three is encom­passed in ser­vice. Liv­ing as the exam­ple can inspire friends, fam­ily and neigh­bors. When you live your truth, you become a sought-after vol­un­teer with knowl­edge, and skills to be shared. Moti­vat­ing oth­ers will con­tinue to ignite your drive and insti­gate a renewal of goals and achieve­ments of your own.

There is an impor­tant link between all four stages that must not be ignored. You can intel­lec­tu­ally know all the right foods to eat, and the proper train­ing you’ve learned through read­ing, but coura­geous action is the glue that holds your emo­tional drive and knowl­edge together. When you think with ver­ti­cal mobil­ity; always striv­ing for con­tin­ued growth and learn­ing, your moti­va­tion will always be plentiful.

3 Reasons It’s Better to Work Out With a Group

Thank you to all the friends that joined us today! We’re excited to see so many new faces that are ready for a full month. When you have a moment, sign up! In the mean­time, enjoy this arti­cle about the ben­e­fits of group exercise…

EXCERPT FROM ACTIVE​.COM

Whether you join a work­out group or get your own group of friends together for a work­out, here are three rea­sons more is mer­rier for earn­ing your fit­ness gains.

Moti­va­tion

Unless you’re that rare per­son that can jump out of bed at 5 a.m. and hit the ground run­ning, odds are that get­ting and stay­ing moti­vated are dif­fi­cult for you. You are not alone. The major­ity of the peo­ple I’ve worked with over the years have had the same prob­lem. That’s one of the great things about the group set­ting. Many peo­ple who attend a class will show up exhausted from the ups and downs of every­day life. But once they join the group, they become re-energized. With a friendly fit­ness instruc­tor there to light a fire under you rear, it can’t get any better.

Not only are you more moti­vated to get out of bed and exer­cise, but there’s the moti­va­tion to improve your cur­rent fit­ness level. If you work out with peo­ple who are faster, stronger or fit­ter than you, you are prob­a­bly going to get in bet­ter shape. There’s an old say­ing that goes, “The lead dog sets the pace for the rest of the pack.” Think about it.

Account­abil­ity

Remem­ber when you were a high schooler and your mom would wake you up in the morn­ing to go to school? She was hold­ing you account­able. If you were any­thing like me, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t have grad­u­ated with­out her wake-up calls. Thanks Mom! A work­out group can do the same thing for your exer­cise rou­tine. I’ve had count­less clients over the years at Gut Check Fit­ness say, “I wouldn’t be there in the morn­ing if I didn’t know that Kim, Ron, Nancy, etc. were going to give me a hard time for not show­ing up.”

The fear of group teas­ing gets them out of bed. Hey, it works!

Plus, there’s the friendly instruc­tor again that keeps track of your tar­di­ness. I take a daily roll at my classes then each week I look to see who’s been play­ing Harry Hou­dini. If I haven’t seen some­one for a week or two, I’ll gen­er­ally send them a friendly reminder with the threat of numer­ous burpees. This usu­ally does the trick.

Group Cama­raderie

Human beings are social crea­tures. Yes, a few are her­mits and recluses, but the major­ity of us love to be around other peo­ple. We love to laugh, joke and have fun. I feel this is one of the great­est prod­ucts of a group work­out set­ting. Noth­ing brings peo­ple closer quite like mis­ery and phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing. If you’ve ever done a boot camp or sim­i­lar class, you’ll under­stand what I’m talk­ing about.

Many peo­ple sign up to get more fit and along the way become friends through this mutual rit­ual. Many become life­long best friends. My classes not only work hard together, but they play hard together. We reg­u­larly have happy hours, wine tast­ings, and sports days where we do races and events together. We sin­cerely enjoy one another’s com­pany. It’s truly one of the best ways to meet peo­ple like you and develop a com­mon bond while get­ting into the best shape possible.

Join­ing a work­out group can keep you moti­vated, hold you account­able and help you develop a sense of group camaraderie.

Finally, in a world where we’ve become so depen­dent on email and tex­ting, work­ing out with a group offers that human inter­ac­tion that is slowly dis­ap­pear­ing. We can do just about every­thing today vir­tu­ally with­out ever talk­ing to a per­son. That is out­side of a group fit­ness set­ting. With group fit­ness, you have to get involved. You can try to escape to the back of the pack, but a good instruc­tor will inte­grate you into the group whether you like or not. That’s why it’s called group dynam­ics, and that’s why tech­nol­ogy will never replace the good ‘ol fash­ioned group work­out. Get out of your cubi­cle, your car or your house and go meet other peo­ple that have a com­mon inter­est just like you. You never know, you might just meet some real friends instead of the ones you find online.

Active Expert, Joe Decker isan ultra-endurance power ath­lete and renowned fit­ness trainer who hashelped thou­sands of peo­ple get into shape. He has com­pleted many of theworld’s tough­est endurance events, includ­ing the Bad­wa­ter 135, and the­Grand Slam of Ultra­Run­ning. In 2000, Joe broke the Guin­ness Worl­dRecords® Twenty-four-hour Phys­i­cal Fit­ness Chal­lenge to help inspire and moti­vate peo­ple to get fit. He is rec­og­nized as “The World’sFittest Man.” Visit his web­site at www​.joe​-decker​.com.

Urban Hikes:
Midtown Romp

BY LAUREN

When the weather starts to warm, I get a han­ker­ing for one of my favorite activ­i­ties: hiking.

It’s always nice to find time to enjoy one of the many lovely trails we have avail­able around Atlanta. The quiet, hilly trails through wooded areas pro­vide time to reflect on life and an excel­lent car­dio challenge.

But you don’t always have to get out­side the city to find a great hike. Some of my favorite hikes are the urban hikes that high­light Atlanta’s his­tory and diverse population.

One urban hike that you intown­ers can try out this week­end is the Mid­town Romp. The Mid­town Romp tours the mid­town area of Atlanta, includ­ing the High Museum, Mar­garet Mitchell House, Geor­gia Tech, Pied­mont Park, and the Atlanta Botan­i­cal Gardens.

This hike is a 7 mile loop that begins on Atlanta’s first road, Peachtree Street. It is con­sid­ered an easy hike with very few hills. Aver­age hik­ing time is 7 hours, accord­ing to the hik­ing guide, 60 Hikes within 60 Miles — but it can be com­pleted much faster if you keep a good pace.

You will enjoy the scenery of urban land­scapes, nice, long-distance views of the city from Pied­mont Park and Atlanta Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, and of course, the springy green­scape of Pied­mont Park.

Some of the high­lights of the Mid­town Romp include:

• High Museum
• Wynn Park
• Atlanta Botan­i­cal Gardens
• Mar­garet Mitchell House and Museum
• Fox The­atre
• The Var­sity
• Bobby Dodd Stadium

Take an urban hike this week­end! Get the com­plete Trail Guide for the Mid­town Romp »

Do you know of some fun urban hikes? Share your hik­ing tips by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post.

Author’s note and Trail Guide credit: As a mem­ber of Trails​.com, I have access to Trail Guides for thou­sands of hikes in Geor­gia and beyond. The Trail Guide for the Mid­town Romp is cour­tesy of Trails​.com. If you are inter­ested in explor­ing more hik­ing trails, I highly rec­om­mend Trails​.com for accu­rate and valu­able information.