R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What it Means to Us… Now.

By Train­ers for the Day: Julie, Kate, Jeff

I think it’s fair to say that Jeff, Kate and I all had a healthy amount of respect for the train­ers prior to our expe­ri­ence as ‘Train­ers for the Day’ Fri­day, Nov. 11. It would be hard to come out to Pied­mont Park rain or shine, bit­ter cold or swel­ter­ing heat, in the pre-dawn hours, 4–5 days a week if this weren’t the case. All that said, I believe I can speak for the three of us (which I will in this entire post, because I vol­un­teered to write it) in say­ing THAT respect has sig­nif­i­cantly increased after our expe­ri­ence last week.

Even with respect for the train­ers, we each entered into this oppor­tu­nity with one sim­ple thing in mind: pay­back. We wanted revenge, pun­ish­ment, jus­tice — it all came down to hav­ing the win­ning bid so we could enjoy watch­ing the train­ers endure what­ever form of tor­ture we could come up with in our sick, wicked lit­tle minds. We wanted them to gasp in fear when they heard their fate, to fall to their knees as bro­ken human beings when they real­ized the just couldn’t go on, to beg us to make it stop and see in their eyes the mis­er­able mir­ror of our own worst day at boot camp. We envi­sioned stand­ing above the train­ers, as they hud­dled together in tears, and laugh with gusto as our fel­low boot campers car­ried us off into the sun­rise on their shoul­ders shout­ing, ‘Viva La Revolution!’

In the end, we openly admit there’s no doubt what the train­ers do is NOT easy. The time and effort needed to develop a work­out includ­ing a proper warm up and cool down to pre­vent injury, a pre­cisely timed and well orga­nized ‘main event’ to be sure to bring value to all who rose so early to join us, yet still be unique and fun (espe­cially for the train­ers). With full time jobs, fluc­tu­a­tion in our sched­ules mak­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion tough, busi­ness travel or per­sonal com­mit­ments that sapped the energy and focus we had as the week pro­gressed — it def­i­nitely came down to the wire to get it all done.

On behalf of Jeff, Kate and myself, I want to say thank you to all of the train­ers, but it hardly seems like enough. You do this for free, you do this for char­ity, you do this with fel­low train­ers you call friends, and you do this for 30+ strangers any given month with the kind of self­less­ness I, per­son­ally, have seen very few peo­ple exhibit so freely. For your unend­ing well of encour­age­ment, for the push we often need but don’t always appre­ci­ate, for your time and energy, the smiles, the laughs, and, if we’re lucky, the build­ing friend­ships based on a mutual desire for health and well­ness, thank you is hol­low but all I can find that even comes close.

Check out all the pho­tos from Friday’s workout! →

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

A Little Less Cloudy

BY MARY ELLEN

Have you noticed that we’ve been miss­ing an instruc­tor the last few days? Due to a most unfor­tu­nate kick­ball inci­dent last week, Sarah Cloud is down for the count with a bro­ken leg. Rumor has it that the slow-mo replay is being shown on ESPN 8: the Ocho.

In typ­i­cal BC4C fash­ion, Sarah’s mes­sage to the train­ers to break the news was quickly fol­lowed by a cou­ple irrev­er­ent (not rude!) responses. Thought we’d share.

Sarah:
Looks like I will be out longer than I thought. Last night dur­ing my league kick­ball game, an over­en­thu­si­as­tic male from the oppos­ing team decided to slide right through me when try­ing to take 2nd base. He came in with such force that my fibula broke on impact (which I could hear yuck). Yes — he is a com­plete moron and if i ever see him again i will kick him in the.……

Andrew:
Do you mean “gonads”?

Andy:
That guy must be really con­fused as your fibula is nowhere near sec­ond base.

- END MESSAGES -

Sarah – we hope to see you back in the park soon!

Leave a mes­sage for Sarah in the com­ments sec­tion by click­ing “Com­ments” above!

Protein: Your Muscle’s Building Blocks

This is a re-post from June 2010. Please enjoy the 22 com­ments from last June… and add your own com­ment today!

BY TRACY

You always hear us say that you need to eat pro­tein with every meal, but have you ever asked your­self why? If you are look­ing for a quick snack it seems that there are always car­bo­hy­drates lay­ing around or hang­ing in the snack machine, but how often can you find a piece of grilled chicken to nib­ble on?

The main rea­son you need pro­tein is because your mus­cles are made up of pro­tein, and to build, main­tain or repair them, you need to eat pro­tein. It is a good source of energy and is con­sid­ered one of the build­ing blocks of your body.

Another rea­son we ask you to eat pro­tein with every meal is because peo­ple who eat foods with high pro­tein feel full longer and expe­ri­ence fewer crav­ings. A daily intake of 1.5 grams of pro­tein per kilo­gram of body weight is con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient, and if you eat meat you are most likely get­ting more than enough pro­tein. If you fol­low a veg­e­tar­ian or vegan diet, you should pay close atten­tion to ensure you are con­sum­ing enough plant pro­tein (and the right kinds!) since most plant foods are lower in pro­tein than ani­mal prod­ucts are.

If you are look­ing for pro­tein in sources other than ani­mal prod­ucts (mean­ing meat) you can get a lit­tle extra pro­tein by eat­ing the following:

• Nuts
• Peanut But­ter
• Greek Yogurt
• Cot­tage Cheese
• Soy
• Legumes such as green lentils, chick­peas and gar­banzo beans
• Eggs

Remem­ber, you don’t need to eat an 8-oz steak every day, just remem­ber to eat a lit­tle bit of pro­tein with every meal or snack.

IMAGE CREDIT: Edupics​.com

Good for What Ails Ya

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a re-post from last year. There­fore, some of the com­ments are also from last year and may or may not be rel­e­vant to today’s workout.

BY LEIGH

After a cou­ple days at camp you may be expe­ri­enc­ing some sore­ness. While that is to be expected, espe­cially if you are new to a fit­ness regime, there are some things to con­sider to help you through it.

• Stretch: Stretch­ing through out the day helps to keep you loose and lim­ber, as well as increas­ing blood cir­cu­la­tion to the mus­cles. Increase blood flow will accel­er­ate heal­ing and over­time will increase energy lev­els due to the increased accel­er­a­tion. How­ever, If you are afraid you have pulled a mus­cle or have a mus­cle tear, do not stretch that mus­cle it will only get worse.
• Drink: Water that is. Most causes of sore­ness include a build up of lac­tic acid in the mus­cles. Drink­ing water is a good way to flush out that build up.
• Go for a soak: It might sound a lit­tle hokey and/or grandma-ish, but tak­ing an epsom salt bath can do won­ders for your sore mus­cles. You can pick up a box at any drug store.
• The cold treat­ment: Cold show­ers or ice baths get the blood flow­ing through the mus­cles to the sur­face. As men­tioned before the increased blood cir­cu­la­tion helps accel­er­ate healing.
• Don’t stop: Sore­ness should be expected after most if not all of our work­outs. It is one of many sig­nals from your body that you are push­ing your­self and get­ting stronger. By con­tin­u­ing your exer­cise reg­i­men you are rais­ing your bod­ies lim­its and over time less likely to expe­ri­ence sore­ness for the same level of exer­tion. Feel­ing a lit­tle sore should be one of your goals for every workout.

If you are expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing that feels more than just sore­ness or you have incurred an actual injury, try RICE. Though not of the brown, white, or fried variety.

• R: Rest. Take a day or two off to give your­self a break. Try to limit any activ­ity that results in pain.
• I: Ice. Apply ice to the affected area. See icing guide­lines here.
• C: Com­pres­sion. Get an ACE ban­dage and wrap the injured area. Be care­ful not to wrap it too tightly though, you want to make sure the blood is circulating.
• E: Ele­va­tion. Prop that twisted ankle up on some pil­lows. Wher­ever the injured area is, try to get it ele­vated higher than your heart.

Let us know if you have occurred an injury or if some­thing feels awk­ward. There is a good chance that one of the train­ers or even a vet­eran camper may have expe­ri­enced some­thing sim­i­lar. How­ever, none of us are doc­tors or nurses, so if you think it is some­thing seri­ous do not hes­i­tate to get a pro­fes­sional med­ical opinion.

Let us know how you’re feel­ing after Day 2. Post a com­ment by click­ing the “Com­ments’ link above this post!