We all know we need to lead healthy lives, right? Figuring out what “healthy” means to you though can end up being a little tricky. And on top of that, how do we integrate healthy living into our daily lives? Follow the tips below to begin to integrate healthy living into your daily life.

Only you can make your health a priority but our staff here at Union Fitness can always be of service! Talk to one of our coaches today to help you make your health matter.

Given the recent trend of “athleisure,” it can be hard to differentiate which workout clothes are best for a lazy Saturday and which ones will hold up to an intense sweat session at the gym.

When you are thinking about at the best workout apparel for you, there are some things to always keep in mind. The clothes should be comfortable and nonirritating. Often, if something is too tight or made of a rough fabric, it will rub and chafe. It is also important to choose a fabric that will wick moisture away from your body to keep you cool and dry. Synthetic materials or a polyester/lycra brand are often best at wicking away sweat.

Like anything else, choosing the best workout clothes and the best fit is also a matter of preference. If it works for you, it’s great! I’m here today to share my favorite brands of workout clothing. These brands fit my criteria and offer a variety of types of clothing for different sports and exercises.

Nike is a tried and true favorite. They have a wide range of athletic clothes and shoes for both men and women at a fairly reasonable price. Whether your thing is running or tennis or lifting, chances are high they will have the perfect thing for you.

Lulu Lemon is another cult favorite. While their clothing is often used for comfort rather than workouts, they are also exceptional for an intense workout. Lulu Lemon’s specialty is leggings and jackets made for running and yoga. Although the price tag is steep, their clothes are comfortable, durable, and breathable.

Gymshark is a less mainstream, but equally awesome, brand of workout clothing. They have clothing for both men and women ranging from jackets to leggings to underwear. Their items are especially good at wicking away moisture as your workout – always a good feature.

Finally, Old Navy can be a good choice for less expensive items for men and women alike. They offer a wide range of leggings, sports bras, and tanks for women that are all very reasonably priced. For men, they offer t-shirts, jackets, joggers, and more. I’ve found that their products have held up well over time, especially for the price.

Now, let’s talk shoes. With the EQT 10-miler quickly approaching, having good fitting running shoes is a must. Using the right running shoes for you can be essential in preventing injuries and hitting that new PR you’ve been aiming for. There are shops around Pittsburgh, like Pro Bike + Run or Fleet Feet, that will analyze your gait and the wear patterns on your old running shoes in order to find the best ones for you. Getting fitted for shoes is a great idea for all runners whether you are training for your first 5k or a more experienced runner working towards a longer race.

These are just some of my recommendations; there are many more great brands out there. Is there another brand you are a diehard fan of? Be sure to let us know in the comments!

Strength training has become a much more socially acceptable and heavily researched phenomenon in recent decades. As humans, we are not meant to be sedentary and our bodies crave movement! Luckily, we know there are endless positive benefits of strength training from adding years to your life to improving your mood on a daily basis. Keep reading for more reasons to pick up some heavy weight:

• Increase fat loss. Lean muscle tissue is metabolically active and the more you have, the easier it is to lose weight and keep it off.
• Improve aging. Muscle loss is attributed to brain degeneration and the more time we spend sitting the less our muscles contract and the less our brains receive signals from our muscle to help maintain cellular quality and function.
• Improve posture. Practicing proper form with exercise translates into everyday life and you will find yourself standing taller and more aware of your posture.
• Improve bone density. Just as muscles get stronger and become more dense through stress adaptations from strength training, so do bones! This significantly reduces the incidence of injury, fractures, or breaks.
• Increase heart health and decreased risk of cardiovascular and lifestyle disease. Strength training increases blood flow through the body as well as decreasing blood pressure.
• Improve balance and coordination. Body awareness improves significantly when stabilizer muscles are activated in strength training. Compound movements such as the bench press involve the pectoralis as the prime mover and the triceps and deltoids as stabilizers.
• Improve mental strength. Strength training requires you to push yourself and teaches you perseverance and discipline. Being productive and working toward goals and self improvement not only makes you look better but also feel better!
• Reduce stress and anxiety. Strength training helps regulate neurotransmitters like dopamine and seratonin in the brain which play a role in mood.

Even with all of the known health benefits, there are some misconceptions that deter some people from strength training. If this resonates with you, keep reading to gain further insight and clarification!

• “I don’t want to get too bulky” Building muscle is a very slow process that doesn’t come easy. Being “bulky” is a look that often comes from having a lot of muscle as well as a decent amount of body fat. Being bulky (or toned) is highly dependent on your nutrition. To achieve a leaner look, paying attention to what and how much food you’re eating will be a key factor.
  • Additionally, not everyone finds a muscular build to be attractive, and that’s ok! But before you let this determine whether or not you strength train, consider how society and media shape this idea of what is attractive. Do what makes you look and feel good!
• “I’m afraid of getting hurt” Realistically, the potential for injury at any time is immeasurable and the likelihood of tripping over a rock on the sidewalk is probably higher than injuring yourself in the gym, however, proper form and technique are going to significantly reduce your risk of injury. If you’re unsure, ask!
• “I don’t want people watching me” Everyone is a beginner at some point. If you’re feeling nervous about stepping into the gym, that’s normal. Bring a friend or make friends with the staff! Most people are just focusing on what they’re doing and if anything, they might just be admiring your form and taking notes!
• “I’m too busy” We all have busy work and social lives, but prioritizing your health will become a healthy habit with time. Who knows, maybe you’ll actually learn to love it! No one wants to feel weak, fragile, or incapable. Why wait to get stronger?

Few movements we perform in the gym are as controversial as the deadlift. It is held in high esteem in the strength training community but feared by many medical and fitness professionals. I’ve had a physical therapist tell me to never deadlift again after an unrelated injury. That’s a hard line to respond to when you think about how useful it is to be able to pick objects up off the floor!

In essence, that’s what a deadlift is: picking an inert object up off the ground. In the gym, that’s usually with a barbell, but it doesn’t have to be. Do you pick up your children, your pets, or your groceries? You’re deadlifting! Working on that movement pattern as part of your regular strength training routine means that those everyday tasks you perform without thinking will only get easier.

There are myriad other benefits to performing deadlifts. They help correct common muscular imbalances between the muscles in the front and the back of the body. Most people who sit through most of the day (pretty much everyone) have overly tight hip flexors and overly stretched glute muscles. This creates postural issues and often low back back pain. To fix this issue, we utilize hip hinging movements – like the deadlift! These work to strengthen your glutes, hamstrings, and lower back, bringing them up to match your stronger quads and hip flexors. This will help straighten up your posture, and decrease your everyday pain.

For endurance athletes, deadlifting may seem like overkill, when it’s really quite the opposite! Every runner has heard that they need to strengthen their core and glutes, and there are few exercises that do a better job. In order to keep a flat back posture throughout the movement, you’ll learn to properly brace your core. This increase in strength directly translates to your running – you’ll be able to hold good posture longer, even when you’re pushing for faster times.

The benefits only continue from there. Deadlifts are great at building up your grip (so that obstacle course race you’re eyeing will be a LOT easier), building all over mass from the upper back to the lower body for those looking to get bigger, and working on the frequently ignored stabilizer muscles in your core.

At this point, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that we encourage our members to deadlift if they are able. It can be an intimidating movement if you’re only exposure to deadlifting is the World’s Strongest Man, but there are deadlifting options for everyone. We deadlift with kettlebells, barbells, medballs, Fatbells, the trap bar. Sometimes we will elevate the weight to work on good positioning, and sometimes have members deadlift from a deficit to increase the stimulus. There are single leg variations, weighted and unweighted variations, walking variations. The list is almost endless, and helps keep training interesting!

You do need to keep in mind that there is a risk to deadlifting incorrectly. This is why we encourage everyone to utilize a good coach, like the ones we have here at UF. Our personal trainers are all equipped to teach the deadlift, and will take you through the steps to perfect the movement for your body. For more information, visit our website here!

So the next time you worry that you can’t deadlift because it’s “bad for your back,” remember that you pick things up all the time! Let’s work on perfecting that everyday movement by practicing together at the gym.

Everyone is striving to find the “secret” to a happier life. If you were to say otherwise, I wouldn’t believe you. There is nothing wrong with attributing happiness to food, in fact, we should be happy as well as grateful to live in a world that we can easily provide our bodies nourishment.

Beginning from a young age in western culture it is not uncommon to give food to children as a reward for good behavior or as a means to correct bad behavior.

Often times, it doesn’t end in childhood. This behavior becomes ingrained in our subconscious and as we get older, we go to food when we are sad, anxious, or think we “deserve it”. I don’t know which example is worse, but what I do know is that they all instill positive reinforcement of food as a source of comfort and approval.

When we see food in this way, it removes the importance of its intrinsic nutritive elements. Rather than seeing food as fuel for our bodies giving us energy to function regularly in our daily lives, we see it only as a source of pleasure.

We as humans need to indulge at times. We would psychologically burn out if we never allowed ourselves a break to let go and enjoy food purely for the sake of taste or aesthetic appeal.

With this indulgence, however, there is diminishing return. Have you ever noticed how amazing the first bite of a piece of chocolate is? What about the 5th? Or the 10th? If you’ve ever even had that much chocolate at once, you’d know it’s pretty nauseating.

The idea that all things can and should be eaten in moderation is a false notion. Eating foods that compromise health and promote disease ‘in moderation’ is never better than avoiding it all together. You can have junk food in moderation, but be aware that you will also be getting clogged arteries ‘in moderation’. This is why it’s so important to make consistent conscious decisions about what you’re putting in your mouth, with the overwhelming amount of your food choices being healthy.

Think of it this way: If you were to eat only pizza every day for several days, weeks, or months, would you be very healthy or very sick? What about if you ate sweet potatoes every day for several days, weeks, or months? You might be bored of the sweet potato, but you would most certainly be reversing chronic disease by eating the sweet potato as opposed to inducing it from the pizza.

Finally, don’t rely on food to fill your happiness. Look for other ways to feel full and content in your mind and heart rather than your stomach, because, although it may be a hard truth to accept, every bite you take is either fighting disease or feeding it.

Here at Union Fitness, we like to stress that it’s not just what you do in the gym that counts. Those other 23 hours a day are pretty important too. That’s why today’s post is going to focus on workout recovery: a few things you can do to rehab your tired muscles after a hard workout and prepare yourself for your next training session as quickly as possible. As usual, I’d like to focus on the basics of recovery before moving on to more advanced methods. If you’re only sleeping 3 hours per night, a cupping session isn’t going to make up for it! So let’s start at the beginning:

1. SLEEP

The number one thing you need to do to recover from a hard workout is sleep! You should be aiming for at least 7-8 hours quality hours per night to reap the best effects. That focus on quality is key: it is during REM sleep that the circulation growth hormone production increases, which helps repair our muscles from the breakdown experience during a training session. Adequate sleep also increases mental alertness, which gives you the motivation you need to kill it at work, at home, and in the gym. Sleep is priceless and the very first thing we encourage people to work on. Do you find yourself choosing between that early AM workout and getting more than 5 hours of sleep? Choose sleep every time. In the future, you can work on getting to bed earlier to fit that workout in too, but sleep comes first.

2. Eat enough nutritious food

You can give it your all in the gym 5 times a week, but if you’re eating poorly, your progress will likely be slower than expected. Much of this is common sense. If your diet consists primarily of fast food and processed sugar, it’s time to make the switch. If you’re eating super healthy but only 1000 calories per day, you’re undercutting your ability to get stronger every day. The amount of food needed to support your training depends on several factors (height, weight, gender, age, type of training, etc) and we are here to help you figure that out. Focus on consistently eating well first, quality of food second, then the calorie math. The key: lots of nutrient dense foods that sit well with you will help you perform better.

3. Restore some mobility

Strength training and heavy cardio routines like distance running rely on tight muscles to produce the needed amount of force to overcome a weight or propel you forward. This is a good thing, to a point. If you’re noticing your mobility is becoming inhibited by your training (or your daily life), it’s time to focus on some stretching and mobility. We offer Slow Flow Recovery yoga just for this reason! The key to stretching is to do it regularly, so aim to get to class every Wednesday at 6pm and throw in some of the poses you learn there a few times a week for the best results.

4. Active Recovery, aka light cardio

At this point hopefully you’ve bought into the idea that rest is very much important to improved performance. That does not mean that you should be spending entire days fixed to the couch binging on Netflix! The next step in your recovery process is some light activity: think walking around outside enjoying the sunshine, trying a new trail in the park, maybe even some relaxed kayaking or climbing! I encourage everyone to try to get outside for cardio while the weather is nice, but a light treadmill or bike workout are just as useful. Getting your muscles moving will help deal with any soreness you have and keep your blood flowing.

5. Massage and myofascial release

Finally we have some more hands-on methods (pun totally intended). We’re lucky at UF to have access to an excellent massage therapist in Marco, so please utilize him! Semi-regular massages are a fantastic way to help increase circulation and relieve localized muscle tension. It can also be an incredibly effective way to relieve stress! If you’re looking for an even more accessible way to work out muscle tension, you’re in luck. We have a variety of tools for your recovery needs, from foam rollers and lacrosse balls to all kinds of body tempering devices. What is body tempering? Think reverse foam rolling with a friend. You place a very heavy cylinder on a sore muscle group (like the quads as pictured) and sit with the discomfort that inevitably comes with working out knotty tissue! Your goal is to slowly roll the muscle out until you find a particularly sore spot, then keep it there. Shoot for at least 30 seconds. Ask our staff to help you out with the harder to reach places like the hamstrings, calves, and back. The real beauty of these devices is they let you work on passive tissue: you don’t need to hold yourself up and stabilize like you do when you’re foam rolling. You get to lay back, feel the pain, and then experience the difference when it’s over.

These are your basics. Get enough sleep. Eat well. Stretch and do some relaxed activities. Use the recovery tools at hand, whether they’re our body tempering cylinders or our massage therapist. Recover better to perform better.

The idea of hiring a personal trainer can be really off-putting to a lot of people. You might think of the Jillian Michaels-style personal training, constantly screaming in your face and telling you you’re “JUST NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH.” Fortunately, the personal trainers at Union Fitness don’t buy into that model of training. Whether you’re new to the gym, returning after taking a few months off, or a regular gym rat looking to get stronger and meet your goals faster, our personal trainers are here to help! Here are a few reasons why we think everyone would benefit from personal training:

1. Perfecting your form
Getting a knowledgeable form check is easily the best reason to invest in a personal trainer. It can be tempting to try teaching yourself how to deadlift using only Youtube videos and perseverance, but the truth is investing a little bit in proper coaching will pay off in dividends (aka you won’t be paying for physical therapy due to poor form later). Whether you’re looking to perfect your air squat, your bench press, or your snatch, we have trainers with the credentials and experience to help. Perfecting your form early, before you settle into bad habits, will set you up for success.

2. Working on stability and imbalances
Along the same lines, people often want to jump right into heavy lifting when they start out at the gym. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the best path to success. Repetitive movement patterns and poor posture can create strength and muscle imbalances that should be corrected before loading your movements. A good personal trainer will perform movement and postural assessments before starting any new program. You’ll work on imbalances and stability and some technique work on the big lifts before moving on to load them. Again, it’s all about setting you up for long term success.

3. Programming optimized for you
While there are tons of lifting programs available on the internet, they are, by nature, cookie-cutter programs. Hiring a personal trainer means you have an expert designing a program specifically tailored to your goals, strengths, and weaknesses. If you start a new bodybuilding program with lots of benching that you found online while trying to recover from a shoulder injury from your Rec softball league, things will likely go south quickly. A trainer will help strengthen your rotator cuff AND show you how to bench properly, so you decrease the risk of re injury.

4. Learning new movements
Sometimes you just get bored doing the same old things in the gym every day. That’s ok! Our personal trainers will give you some new ways to work your body, on top of using the big movements that are proven to work. Look for them to use lots of different implements: medicine balls, battle ropes, suspension trainers, and definitely the sleds and prowler. A personal training session can definitely give you some new inspiration in training!

5. Extra accountability
Last but not least, your personal trainer is a new accountability tool. It can help to have some “skin in the game,” like investing in an expert to help you reach your goals. Your trainer will put a lot of effort into creating your workout program, and in return expects you to give it your best effort. No, that doesn’t mean being perfect and getting everything right all the time. It DOES mean showing up on time and putting in the work.

You can check out info about our coaches on our website. Personal training at Union Fitness is currently priced at a steal: $50 per session for 5 sessions, $45 per session for 10 sessions, $40 per session for 20 sessions, or the best deal we have: $400 per month for 3 training sessions per week PLUS an included Fitness Center membership. That’s just $33 per session and includes your regular membership! Contact us for more information or to get set up for a free personal training consultation.