EVERYTHING in moderation....including moderation!

Well here is my first post in a while. I have been in Montreal on holidays since last week visting friends in the area where I grew up. It is just great being "back home" and immersing myself in the culture, food and lifestyle of the "La Belle Province" once again. The purpose of the trip is primarily to just get away from the day to day tasks and responsibilities of being a small business owner and part of the greatest fitness team I have ever been around! While I am an incredibly proud Hamiltonian and choose to live here and raise my family here, there is something about going back to your roots. I also feel it is important for my kids to be exposed to those roots as well.

Whenever I take a break like this, I like to let things go (just a little bit) and enjoy myself. It feels like I have been living on crepes, bagels, beer and Montreal, "all dressed" pizza (That stuff in Ontario really isn't pizza!) since I have been here. I have managed to work in a little activity and spent the day on Ste. Helens Island at La Ronde, the local amusement park on the Expo 67 site with 4 kids. That is a workout I tell you! Today, we are packing up to head back to Ontario to Pigeon Lake, North of Peterborough. Before we will leave, however, my wife and I will be doing a workout in the pool and then doing the "Century" workout that we developed at The Studio for limited time and limited equipment. We are on vacation, but, don't want to lose all of our fitness in 10 days. Doing just a bit every other day can be very powerful in terms of maintaning your strength and fitness for when you are ready to get back to the real world and really hit it.

Basically, I live by the credo of "EVERYTHING in moderation, including MODERATION!" I eat healthfully, exercise and basically do all things in moderation MOST of the time, but, on New Year's Eve I will drink too much Champagne, on my birthday I will eat too much cake, when I visit my friends I will sleep too little and when I am in Montreal I will eat too many bagels, brochettes, pizzas, smoked meat sandwiches and whatever.......

Remember why we train and eat well in the first place. To enjoy LIFE! Just do it in moderation (most of the time).

Eating doesn't have to be rocket science!

The very first post I ever did for this site dealt with breakfast options and just what I might eat in a given week. People sometimes become overwhelmed when they hear about us eating 6 meals per day comprised of lean protein and two kinds of complex carbohydrates. Add in the fact that no one has time to cook and the kids don't wanna eat health food etc.... Just excuses! Getting 6 supportive meals with minimal effort is really not that hard. Here is what I ate today (including breakfast and supper with my 3 year old and 6 year old).

7:30 amBreakfast- 8 Whole Grain Bread (2 slices) with Natural Peanut Butter and low sugar jam.
1/2 Green Apple (my son ate the other half with some Natural Peanut Butter for dipping!), Coffee

10:30 am Post Workout Recovery Drink- 1/2 c. Apple Juice, 1/2 c. Water, 1 scoop Vanilla Whey Protein

1:00 pm Lunch- Sliced Turkey, Swiss Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato and mustard on Whole Wheat Kaiser. 1c. Four Bean Salad. Diet Coke.

4:00 pm Snack- No sugar, low fat yogourt, 1/2 Whole Grain Flax Bagel, Coffee

6:30 pm Supper (with family)- Brown Basmati Rice (steamed), Vegetable Pasta Sauce (Healthy Request), Lean Ground Beef Meatballs, Steamed Green, Yellow Beans and Carrotts. Low Fat Frozen Yogourt with fresh Blue Berries.

10:30 pm Snack- 1c. 1 % cottage cheese mixed with 1 low sugar, low fat yogourt.

Nothing too strange. Eat every 3 to 3 1/2 hours, stabilize blood sugar, build some muscle and move! Not too difficult really. Once you set some good habits, kids really do take to better food choices and will eat brown rice, whole wheat pasta and all the good stuff. Give it a try!

The trick is thinking ahead and keeping fridges, cupboards, store rooms or whatever stocked with the good stuff.

Fore!

Dr. Tracy McMurter of Village Eye Care in Ancaster has been training with us recently to improve her golf game! She has adapted a program developed for Annika Sorenstam. Might as well copy the best, eh? Tracy has gone through many types of training with us and recently set a personal best in the 10K at the Ancaster Old Mill Race. The challenge now is to transfer all the strength and power she has gained into her golf shot. Here is a sample of her training program:

-Stability Ball Crunches

-Single Arm Cable Rotation Movements

-"Wood Chopper" Cable Exercises (up and down)

-Barbell Squats

-Wide Grip Pullups

-Rotational/ Twisting Pushups

-Medicine Ball Swings, Rotations and Squats

-Twisting Dumbell Curls for Biceps and Forearms

-Walk/ Jog/ Run Treadmill Work

What to do, what to do.....

Sunday evening is a great time to survey your schedule for the week and figure out what is in store for the days to come. Looking at my schedule, I am excited about working with Peter from Locke St. Bakery tomorrow afternoon. Peter comes in, gets warmed up, gets it done and gets out! A great guy, but when he is with us, it's all business. Pete is in the second week of what we call a "Conditioning Phase" of training. To be able to really build muscle and become leaner, we like to start people with a style of training that they are probably unaccustomed to. For Peter, this means doing circuit style work with very little rest and emphasizing athletic moves that require balance and coordination. Following that, he will experience "Strength and Growth", "Muscle Building", "Endurance Training" and then "BURN" training to lose fat.

I am also REALLY excited about seeing Shelley Thorsen again tomorrow. Shelley has lost 50lbs. since training with us and after a little bit of a plateau is again moving in the right direction. Recently, she has experienced a couple of really neat things. She was able to walk to the top of the escarpment stairs on Dundurn St. for the first time ever (see picture above) and she performed a set of deadlifts with 175 pounds for 6 repetitions! Wow. Tomorrow will be "fun" :).

I am also excited to watch Adam continue to change before our eyes as he gets ready to leave for Japan. Matteo is also fun to watch right now as he prepares to leave for a month in Europe travelling and training. He will be posting videos at his blogspot which should be cool to see. I am also looking forward to hitting the track again this week to continue running which is something I have really missed while recovering from knee surgery.

Hope you all have as much fun this week as we will be at All Canadian Fitness!

Best Workout CD...ever, Part 2!

Here is "side two" of my favourite workout songs!


You Could Be Mine- Guns 'n Roses
Not Fragile- Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Rock and Roll- Led Zeppelin
Stay Hungry- Twisted Sister
Firestarter- Prodigy
Zero- Smashing Pumpkins
Evenflow- Pearl Jam
Lose Yourself- Eminem
I Don't Wanna Stop- Ozzy Osbourne
For Whom the Bell Tolls- Metallica
Burn- Deep Purple
Whole Lotta Rosie- AC/DC

Another Week in the Can!

Well here it is....friday night! I like looking back at the week that was to take stock of what we did this past week. One of our clients (Patricia Wright) will be taking her final Black Belt grading on sunday. She stopped in on tuesday for one of her over the top, partially insane training sessions! If it comes down to conditioning, she's got it in the bag. Both Adam Higson and Sheila Fung have done masterful work in preparing her. Patricia is limited by hand and wrist injuries and Adam and Sheila figured out how she could continue to blast away without injuring herself. That is what makes them both world-class trainers!

Adam has also been a sight to behold as he gets ready to leave for Japan next week. I really pity the Japanese fighter that he will meet in Osaka. I have been around many all-world athletes in my life, but, few with the focus of Adam "The Road Warrior" Higson. He is ripped to the bone and ready to rock. Greyhound lean and Pitbull mean.

I had the pleasure of working with our small group of runners this week for the first time in a while. These ladies work hard and have fun. I gave them a mixture of athletic functional training, hurdle drills and aero-boxing work. Very cool!

Andrew has been pushing our football player, Eric Spearin to new heights as well as he gets ready to take it to the next level at Concordia University in the fall. Eric is going through monstrous workouts and is seeing a gain in his bench press literally every single workout.

As for myself, I have been running sprints for the first time in several months since having knee surgery last November. It feels awesome. Like flying. It always makes me feel free like a child when I run. I also had the opportunity to play live at a bar in an acoustic duo setting for the first time in my life! Sheila and I presented an evening of Classic Rock, New Rock and a few twists at Hooters on thursday night. We played for about two hours (see pics above) and fine tuned our set list that we will be playing in Montreal at a street festival in a couple of weeks.

Liesa (my wife and amistrative adminsistrator) has also been working very hard getting our latest employee ready to start on monday. Jen Scorniaenchi, who is a former all star client of ours, will be working at The Studio for the next month to help us develop a full time administration position before she heads back for her final year of school at Indiana University- Purdue University at Indianapolis in August.

Another week and several more lives changed for the better!................

You gotta have a hobby!

To be able to REALLY enjoy life, you have to take some time to enjoy something other than what you do for a living. In my case, I have been surrounded by sports and now health and fitness since I was 6 years old playing hockey on the outdoor rinks in Montreal. It is a part of me and what I am and what I do. Having played competitively in football, hockey, rugby, track, field, basketball, baseball, soccer, waterpolo and swimming, I have almost done it all. Nowadays, my main sports are mountain biking, running and men's league hockey in the winter. I really prefer the more non-competitive things like banging around in the woods on my mountain bike.

When I really want to get away from it (meaning health, fitness and "that" lifestyle), I immerse myself in music. Growing up a collector (my first album at age 10 was the Best of BTO!) and now an actual player, there has never been a day in my life that I can remember not involving music. For the last 2 years, I have been part of a hobby band called "Swimming to Vegas" which plays parties and occasional pub gigs. (We had a blast playing the Super Bowl party for Hooters on Hamilton mountain in January).

Today I am really excited because we just received confirmation that Swimming to Vegas will be the featured band at Baranga's on the Beach in Burlington for Lakeport Breweries "End of Summer" bash on August 24th!! This will be huge for us and a ton of fun. It's good to have a hobby.......

Try this at home!

If, like me, you find yourself incredibly rushed and short of time on the weekend in terms of getting your fitness training in, you need an "Emergency Plan"! Something you can do with little or no equipment that will get you through to your next "real" workout. Something that will challenge your body without eating up all of your time and requiring too much thought or planning. I have a backup workout for such times and it continues to serve me well when I need it. In between taking my kids to "It's Your Festival", cutting the grass, taking the kids swimming, going shopping, planning a party, having a party and then cleaning up AFTER a party, visiting family for Canada Day and then just recovering from everything, I did this workout on saturday afternoon for about 20 minutes;

You can make the intensity incredibly hard or ,easy to moderate, depending on how you feel. With limited time, I tend to move non-stop for the entire 20 minutes with almost no rest in between sets or exercises. I choose "compound" movements which focus on many muscles at once and use mostly large muscle groups. Here is the workout:

Bodyweight Squats x 20
Pushups x 20
Yoga/ Abdominal Plank 30- 60 seconds
Crunches x 20
Hip Lifts (Bridges) x 20
Triceps Dips from a bench or chair x 20

Repeat as many times as possible for 10- 20 minutes depending on time available and your particular fitness level. You can make the exercises harder by moving more quickly in terms of the squats and more slowly in the case of the other exercises. Don't be deceived, this workout will leave you drenched and breathless if you push it. You will get it done and get on with your day in no time, and still be on track to reach your goals.