All posts by rnagy

Getting Over the Hump

Life Health, State of the Union

Do you ever have those days that you wake up and you feel something within yourself that is off. You just don’t feel entirely like yourself; your motivation just isn’t where you want it to be. You start looking up reasons why and you’ll see articles talking about “the dangers of over training, burn out, lack of sleep, stress, etc.” You see those things and you tell yourself, “I should really take today off”, but deep inside your soul know you should train. Today, I am going to share with you my favorite tips to get over that training hump.

 

First things first, take a couple of minutes to really think about how you are feeling in general. Are you tired? Did you sleep well? Have you eaten? Go for a walk, get some sun, do some meditation, or do something that makes you feel good to get you in that mindset of training. Why do you train? Do you like it? Is it for your health? These are all good questions to ask yourself. When I used to swim, right before any practices or meets, and I wasn’t really feeling it, or really in my head about it; I would take a second to visualize myself in the water, how the water felt, how many strokes it took me to reach the wall, and the tempo of my breathing. I always felt relieved afterwards because it reminded me that I know exactly what I’m doing and what I need to do to perform my best. I know this sounds like some Karate Kid b.s but visualizing yourself doing your training and understanding why you’re doing it, will really help.

 

Another way to help yourself get into the training mindset is to give yourself a good, thoughtful warm up. I know it might sound incredibly obvious but a great warm up will get your mind and your body connected as one. Start by doing some simple cardio or hop on a bike, go on a walk, focus on getting your heart rate up just a little. Follow that with some mobility based on what you are doing that day. Finally, hit some exercises that will prepare you for the main movement and do 2-3 sets. To put it simply; get moving, focus on each movement, and make sure you breathe deeply.

 

Lastly, I believe pacing yourself is always a good idea when you’re not feeling 100 percent like yourself. As you are warming up for your main lift, assess how your body feels. Do a single rep of your set weight and if it feels like your body is not all there, decrease the weight a little – there is never any shame in decreasing your weight. As your sets progress, your mind and your body will reach that synergy.

 

My fellow coach and friend has said it best himself – “Motivation is temporary. To be your best, discipline must be permanent” – Curtis Miller

 

-Dahveed Jorge

Ham’s Training Log

Fitness, Life Health

Marathon season is over in Pittsburgh. I love seeing people come together and strive towards a goal, any goal. We at UF host numerous events each year, and we want to find ways to get you working towards your goals.  The bigger events we are known for is our powerlifting meets. As a person who came from the powerlifting world these events are near and dear to my heart. While I haven’t competed in a few years I still try to train hard. With that said, let me tell you about how I am keeping myself healthy, and strong(ish) as I try to fight father time.

 

Monday, Day 1

 

On Monday’s I bench. This used to be a squat day, yet after an adductor pull I moved days around to give myself a few extra days rest.

 

Neck and mobility. Since adding our neck harness I have been doing extra neck work. In the words of my old training partner Toan Chu, “big neck, look cool.”

 

Bench with 2 chains per side 205 5×5. I started this at 185 and have just been chipping away each week.

 

1a Arnold Press 3×10 50# I have tried to take my time and feel the muscles on this one.

1b Curls 3×10 30# I added these because I like curls.

 

2a Neutral Grip Pull Ups 4×5.

2b Lat Pull Down 4×10 Slow and big stretch.

 

3a Straight Arm Lat Pulldown with strap 3×20.

3b Cable Curl with strap 3×20.

3c Pushdowns with strap 3×20.

 

Tuesday, Day 2

 

As I stated earlier I was dealing with a small adductor strain, so I have been taking it easy on lower body work.

 

1a Deadlifts 5×5 325.

1b Box Jumps 5×3 (lowish box).

 

2a Pitshark Squats 3×10 5 & 1/2 plates .

2b Chins 3×5.

 

3a Glute Ham 2×8.

3b DB Upright Row 2×15 30#.

 

4a Blast Strap Face Pull 3×25.

4b Band Pull Apart 3×20.

 

Wednesday, Day 3 

 

Bike day. Just enjoy the world!

 

Thursday, Day 4

 

Incline press 3×10 185# I have been progressing with 10’s on this for a few weeks. I’ll move to 8’s next week.

 

Lat Pulldown 3×10 .

 

1a Lying Cable Tri Ext 2×15.

1b Overhead Lat Raise 2×10.

 

2a Partial Lateral Raise 2×10 50#.

2b Lateral Raise 2×10 25#.

 

Friday, Day 5

 

Box Squat 6×3 225 # Taking these slow and keeping my adductor happy.

 

Barbell RDL/Row 3×10 145#.

 

1a DB Pullover 3×15.

1b 45 Degree Hypers 3×15.

1c Sit Ups off stability ball with a band 3×25.

 

Other than running 2-3 times per week and biking 3-4 times this is my basic set up. As my hip and adductor progress my lower body training will become more intense and I’ll add volume. Yet, I have learned, jumping too early in load or volume is never a good thing so be patient.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby Steps

Fitness, Life Health, Training

I don’t know about you, but I often have an all or nothing personality when it comes to new things. It’s a theme I’ve also recognized in others when it comes to fitness and nutrition. Often times new clients want to hit the ground running with training sessions, improving their diet, and altering their schedules. It’s awesome to see the eagerness and drive people have, but at the same it’s important to remember that these big changes don’t happen overnight.

 

When your mind and body take on something unfamiliar it takes time to adjust. Therefore, it is important that you start small and build from there. Why is this important? Why can’t I just go for it? Well, you absolutely can just go for it but if you want to have a sustainable routine and long-term success, I believe it’s best to build up to those things.

 

For example, let’s say you would like to start weightlifting 5 times a week, but you currently have no training regimen in place. Where should you start? I would recommend that you start by picking two days out of the week. This way it gives your body time to recover from the sessions and adjust to the implementation of a new task. After you’ve done this for a couple of weeks, and you don’t have to put much thought into doing it because it’s now a part of your routine, then add in a third day. From there, you would just repeat this process until you have successfully worked up to that five days a week goal.

 

The same thing goes for implementing healthy changes into your diet. If you go from eating fast food every day to trying to eat salads every day, you won’t be able to keep up because your body is so unfamiliar with it. Start by choosing two days out of the week to make food from home instead of eating out and go from there. Again, once your body has adjusted to that new habit and it becomes something you don’t have to put much thought into, then you can continue to build upon that.

 

All in all, it’s so important to set yourself up for success in a sustainable way. If you put your mind and your body into overdrive, it’s very possible you will get overwhelmed easily and discouraged when you fall short on one of the many tasks you have given yourself. Start by taking baby steps. Be patient and kind to yourself and you will get far!

 

April

Meet the Interns – Amelia

State of the Union

Hey everyone!! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Amelia Bogovich and I am part of the Front Desk staff here at Union Fitness. I am a junior Exercise Science major at Chatham University, and I have played volleyball there since I transferred in 2021. This time last year I wrote a blog introducing myself as a staff member, but now that I am completing my internship, I figured it was time we catch up!

 

Working here has taught me a lot about myself and fitness. I am lucky to be surrounded by such a knowledgeable staff and all of you who consistently show up and put in hard work! I always knew I wanted to work in the fitness realm, but I wasn’t sure if I would be a good coach because I have always been kind of shy. Now I am not the loudest person in the room, but I have gained the confidence that I could be a good coach one day, so I’m hoping to begin that chapter once I graduate this upcoming December. I have already learned so much here just being in the gym environment, so I am excited to see where this internship takes me! Some of my current goals are to continue finding my voice to grow more comfortable coaching and to learn more about different types of exercise programming.

 

Looking forward to working with you all this Summer!

 

Amelia

The Best Exercise You Aren’t Doing

Fitness

In the world of exercise, fitness, and strength there are too many exercises to think we could know all exercises. One easy way to help with this is to create a menu of exercises. What I mean by this is list all exercises that work your legs the most, then ones that are full body, arms, chest, etc. If you do this then you can grow your menu and pick and choose what works best for you. Today, I am going to pick one exercise out of my full body menu that is underutilized. The Single Arm Overhead Farmer Walk.

 

SA Overhead Farmer Walk.

 

How do you perform this exercise?

 

Grab a Dumbell and press it overhead, then go for a walk. It is really this simple, yet here are some tips.

  1. Do not let the weight twist you. This is an anti-rotation exercise.
  2. Do not let the weight pull you forward or backward. This is also and anti-flexion and extension exercise.
  3. Do keep a steady gate. Try to walk as normal as you do everyday.

 

There it is in all its glory. The exercise you should be doing but, probably are not. There are many reasons why I believe this exercise is so underrated. First and foremost, this exercise uses all three planes (transverse, frontal, and sagittal). Second this exercise makes us bipedal. One thing we know is that humans should walk more, so walk. Last point I’ll make is that this exercise uses almost all of our muscle tissue.

 

How do you program SA Overhead Farmer Walks?

 

I would put this exercise in two places and for different reasons. Use it as a warm up or a finisher.

 

When using this as a warm up there is no need to go super heavy. Grab a reasonable weight that you can easily put over head and go for a walk. Walk 10-30 yards (depending on weight), switch hands and walk back. I like to mix mobility exercises in with this one. An example would be three sets of walks doing a different mobility drill for 5-10 reps between each set. The beauty of using these as a warm up is it will get the mid section ready for heavy, dead, squats, or just add some volume before you press.

 

Using these walks as a finisher. This is just a fun way to end a lift. When I do this as a finisher I tend to go heavier. The reason I go heavier is because I am already warm and I am not worried about fatigue for my upcoming exercises. This again can be done in a superset. Add in any rehab or just some pump exercises for fun at the end.

 

Give this exercise a try to begin or end your training session. Add it in one day a week for 4-6 weeks and see how you progress and how you feel.

 

Hamer

Creating Balance

Fitness, Life Health

You have probably heard many times in your life, “be sure to find a balance” whether we are talking about health, fitness, career, relationships, finance, etc. But I like to say it is more about creating balance than finding it. The goal is to live a full life without losing yourself, and that doesn’t always look the same for everyone. So, you must create your own life with whatever the perfect balance looks and feels like for you.

 

I like to look at balance and life as a “wheel” with different components of things that we value in life, those things I mentioned before (health, fitness, career, relationships, finance, etc.), and the beautiful part is that nobody’s wheel is the same, and you can create your own to build your own life and your own happiness. And a little tip- never compare your wheel to someone else’s. You may have a larger portion of career in your wheel than others, because your career makes you happy and you love your job, and that is perfectly okay if you feel fulfilled and balanced.

 

I wish I could tell you that I have mastered my perfect balance, but truth is like many of us, I haven’t even come close, and that is okay. Because just like we ourselves are always a work in progress, so is our balance. I am constantly changing where I give my focus and time, trying to figure out what feels right. In my own life, I have several different pieces to my wheel: career, school, football, and fitness. But lately I have felt like something was missing, so I did some work on myself to try and figure out what it was. Which we must do many times in our lives. So, I tried something new and went for a hike by myself, something I haven’t done before. It brought me stillness and gave me a chance to relax from how busy my usual day-to-day is, and I realized this was what I was missing, and I am going to make room for it in my wheel of balance.

 

We are creating that balance for ourselves every day, and I hope that you can create yours to find your own happiness and fulfillment. Remember, your wheel is your own and it is always a work in progress, just promise yourself you will always keep progressing.

 

Maria

Dylan’s time is NOW!

Life Health

Do you ever feel like you lack the motivation to start something new or maybe something you started but never finished? I hope todays blog post will give you the boost to take action!

 

Wishing for things to be different or thinking about how, if you could just go back in time and make the smallest change it would make everything better. We tend to focus on the past because it’s no longer facing us eye to eye. It’s behind us and already happened, thus taking the fear away. But as The Great British American philosopher Alan Watts once said: For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere. 

 

We cannot afford to wait another second. Wonder what life would be like if the things we dreamed about happened before or in the future. It is easy to wait for an opportunity to start again. Whatever goal or aspiration you have in mind might work better if you start on a Monday. You might catch yourself saying to yourself “tomorrow” or you create the excuse of being too busy. That’s not the case. 

 

Taking a slow step towards your goals is still progress. Never let anyone tell you that you need to take massive leaps in order to obtain success. Just like making changes with yourself in the gym. You may not see your success immediately. Take 10 minutes a day, if you continue with that dedicated time towards a goal. That will amount to almost 61 hours. What will you do with that time?  

 

The best moment to start was yesterday, the second best time is now. 

UF 2023 Push/Pull

Training

Sunday April 23rd we hosted our third annual Push/Pull event. We are proud of all of our competitors. We have hosted people from the true beginner to the seasoned veteran powerlifter at this event. Below is a small break down of the meet.

 

The day began when I arrived at UF at 6:30 to begin set up. Events such as this one are a true labor of love. Seeing people become empowered to greater strength and confidence is why we all do this work. Our first competitors began arriving at 8:15 for weigh ins. All went smooth and we were happy to see all of our people ready to lift early on a Sunday morning.

 

Curtis did a great job explaining the rules to everyone and we began lifting at 10 AM. I will not talk about anyone’s specific lift as there were too many great ones to mention. One thing that stood out was the low number of missed lifts. It was great to see that most of our lifts were completed and only a few were red lighted. We ended lifting around 1:30, just in time to go see our friends at Federal Galley. Federal helped us out with drink tickets for all competitors, as part of our after lift party. Along with Federal there is a long list of people to thank for all they did yesterday.

 

CJ- Thanks for MCing in your own CJ way.

Toria- Thanks for keeping us organized.

Dylan-Thanks for keeping Toria on point :-).

Curtis- Thanks for being a fair and strong judge.

Jared, Zain, Justin,  & Shane- Thanks for the spotting and judging.

Ava- Thanks for the great photos.

Lifters- Thank you for showing up and having fun, this makes it all worth it.

Yinz Coffee- Thanks for the coffee hook up.

 

Finally, as always we raised money during this event for a good cause. I believe we have about $400 (after paying a few small bills associated with this event), for the Homeless Children’s Education Fund. Eddie, one of our interns set this up for us, and we thank him as well.

 

For those of you who competed, I hope you take this as a step towards even greater goals. For those of you who didn’t, let’s go! Next time we will be here for you.

 

Hamer

 

 

 

New Staff Spotlight – Jen

State of the Union

Hi Everyone! My name is Jen Norton, and I am the newest addition to the team here at Union Fitness. Although I was born in Scottsdale, Arizona, I spent much of my childhood bouncing around between different parts of the country. By the time I was starting kindergarten, my family and I had lived in 4 different cities across 3 states. I spent most of my elementary school years growing up under the Arizona sun in the suburbs of Phoenix before my family relocated for a final time. This time to the sprawling suburbia of of North Texas where I graduated from high school alongside over 800 of my fellow classmates – a class so large I remember asking myself “who the heck is that?” on more than one occasion as names were read out at our graduation ceremony. After graduating high school, I moved across the country to attend the University of Pittsburgh. A Class of Covid graduate, I earned my B.A. in political science in 2020 and have been a proud resident of Pittsburgh’s North Side and member of Union Fitness ever since.

 

Growing up, my parents put my older brother and I in just about every sport under the sun. From soccer to gymnastics to ballet to swimming to karate, I tried pretty much anything I saw my brother doing. I fell in love with gymnastics and ended up dedicating 15 years of my life to the sport before an onslaught of poorly timed injuries ended my dreams of college gymnastics at age 18. As it would turn out, coming up short of my goal would be just the stroke of luck I needed to fall in love with a new sport. I discovered powerlifting during my freshman year in college, and now 6 years later, I am still proudly obsessed with picking up heavy circles.

 

Since competing in my first meet back in January of 2018, powerlifting has introduced me to a whole plethora of kind people from all over the country and even from around the world. It has helped me form a unique connection with my body and allowed me to cultivate a passion for inclusivity in fitness spaces. I truly can’t wait to meet even more friendly community members as a staff member here at Union Fitness!

 

Here are a few random fun facts about me that I couldn’t figure out how to neatly fit into this bio:

  • I am obsessed with the Red Hot Chili Peppers
  • I am an avid home baker and like to spend what little free time I have developing new recipes
  • I love to travel and have been to 5 countries and 32 different states. My favorite place I have ever visited is Iceland!

 

Stick to the Plan

Uncategorized

Do you ever get bored in the gym? Hit a plateau? Show up with no plan?

 

Far too often, we find ourselves scrolling social media and getting caught up in influencers workouts on Instagram and tiktok. This makes us want to get up and go to the gym, which is a good thing, but it can lead to a lot of confusion. The result is you show up to the gym with no plan, just some stuff you saw on Instagram which is specific to someone else’s plan. You end up doing their workout , then the next day you do another different one, then another, the cycle continues. This leads to no linear progress in the gym and constant novelty. How can we solve this problem? How can we break strength plateaus?

 

Set a goal, one that is specific. An example would be: I want to increase my bench press by about 20lbs by the end of the month. 

 

The proper approach to this would be to set up a training block of about 4 weeks, the idea is you do the same movements for 4 weeks and get better both physically and mentally. 

 

  • Bench Press 5,3,2,1 (Set of 5, set of 3, set of 2, set of 1) (Increasing the weight every time)
  • DB incline Press 3 x 8-10  (Secondary bench)
  • BB Row 3 x 6-10 (Heavy Rows)
  • Chest fly 3 x 10-15 
  • Heavy tricep Ext. 3 x 6-10
  • Rear delts 3 x 10-15

Pick a day of the week to be your bench press day, and execute this plan for 4 weeks straight increasing the weight a small amount (5 to 10 lbs) each session! 

 

Give this a try for your bench day for at least a month, let me know if you get stronger! The same method can be applied to anything. 

 

Come to the gym prepared. Stick to the plan.

 

  • Michael Dowling 4.13.23