Category Archives: Fitness

Getting the Most Out of Your Training Program: Part II

September 30, 2019Fitness, Life Health, Training, Uncategorizedrnagy

by Lindsey Pogson

Part 2: Trust the Process

Welcome to part two in this series on getting as much out of your custom training program as you possibly can. If you didn’t read part one (on providing detailed feedback), head on over that way now. Done? Great.

Now that you and your coach are on the same page as far as how the weights are feeling and what work you’re actually doing, you’re ready for the next step. You need to decide to put your trust in that coach and actually follow along with the program as written.

When you started with your coach – whether it’s one of us at UF, another in-person coach, or an online coach – you almost certainly had a chat about what you wanted to achieve with the program. Those goals are the backbone of your program’s design. If you came into your goal-setting meeting with the objective of losing 10lbs over the next two months, your program will reflect that. If you went in with the goal of doing your first powerlifting meet, your program will be designed to prepare you to compete in that sport. If you wanted to run a sub-20 minute 5k, your program will be put together with the intent to get you there.

Seems obvious right? Your coach puts together a program to help you reach your specific goal. So with that in mind, it’s in your best interest to FOLLOW THE PROGRAM.

At the beginning of every program, this is easy. You’re excited, you’re learning some new things, you’re fresh, it feels good. A few weeks in, things start getting a little harder. Suddenly you’re doing a lot of single-leg accessory movements and you’re bad at them so you hate them with a passion. Your coach is programming 3 minutes of rest between sprints and you don’t feel like you really NEED it and think you’d be better off resting less. You asked for a 7 day per week 2-a-day program because you want to do MORE but your coach put you on 4 days per week and you think you’ll just throw in some extra classes here and there because you sleep plenty and recover just fine. Your coach programmed a heavy single at 205 but 225 isn’t THAT far off so that shouldn’t be a problem, right?

I get it. I’ve been there too. That attitude sucks and is not helping you actually reach your goals.

There are a few hard truths we all have to swallow when striving towards big things. The first and hardest is that we don’t know everything.

On some level we understand that, since we decided to go to a professional for help in the first place! But when things come up that we don’t like, we can sometimes start to question that professional.

“No one knows me like I know myself, and I KNOW that I can handle more work than this.”

And you may very well be right! But fortunately/unfortunately, reaching a goal isn’t an exercise in running yourself into the ground. There’s some strategy involved. And often that strategy involves doing things you don’t want to do – be that training more, training less, training movements you hate and are bad at, doing more cardio, doing NO cardio, etc.

You went to a pro, so trust that pro. But know that you can ALWAYS ask questions. And you should! If your coach can’t give you a thoughtful reason for what they programmed, they’re not doing their job.

Hard truth number two: to reach one goal, you need to put all the others on the backburner.

If you go into your goal-setting meeting and tell your coach that your primary objective is to lose 30lbs by the end of the year, expect your program to actually reflect that over everything else. That means strength gains are NOT the priority, and will NOT be the focus of that program. Your coach will likely want to maintain your strength but isn’t going to push you to test for new maxes.

Conversely, if you go in saying you want to hit a 1000lb total by the end of the year, you’d best expect to see verrrrrry little cardio on your programming sheet.

Changes like these can be uncomfortable. It sucks to not be able to “do it all.” But it’s really more accurate to say that you just can’t do it all RIGHT NOW. Take 4 months to prioritize weight loss, then take a break from your deficit and the hard supersets and spend 2 months really working on strength while eating to maintain. If you can do that instead of trying to half-ass everything, you’ll be ahead of the game.

Hard truth number three: you’ll be tempted to go off track. You get to choose what’s more important – instant gratification or actually achieving your long term goals.

I can guarantee one day you’ll be in the gym doing what you’re supposed to do and someone will suggest you throw it all by the wayside and max out that day. Sometimes that will be a training partner or someone else in class, but often it’s that little voice in the back of our head asking “Is this actually working? Am I actually stronger/faster, or am I just spinning my wheels?”

At that moment, you have a choice. You can go for instant gratification – test a new bench rep max, or finish your long slow run as fast as you possibly can. You’ll feel good in that moment, with proof that you CAN do that thing. But consider now that you just did something extremely taxing, that requires recovery. You did it at a point in your training cycle that didn’t ACTUALLY make much sense and may make the other things you need to do that day/week/month a little bit harder. You might have a competition coming up, an event where you really needed to be peaked and ready, but that max attempt threw your schedule off a little.

Were you really doing that for yourself and your goals? Or did your ego need a boost? That’s your call.

Ultimately, it’s your program. They’re your goals to achieve. Your coach is there to put together a guide to help you get there, using all of their knowledge and training. You can choose to trust that guide or continue doing what you’ve always done. Know that it’s a choice, and the choice is yours.

Curtis’ September Training Log

September 27, 2019Fitness, Training, Uncategorizedrnagy

Getting to this point in my training has been an interesting, journey. I am currently 6 weeks out from my first full powerlifting meet since the first annual Iron City Open in June of 2018. Since then, I have battled with a few injuries that have been just enough of a burden to keep me from being able to train consistently. For a quick recap: this past January I strained my glute at the beginning of a meet prep. In March, 3 weeks out from that same meet, I partially tore my hamstring and was unable to fully compete. After going through 8 weeks of recovery afterward, I got back into training consistently with the goal of getting back on the platform this November. Then, 2 months ago, I strained my IT band while squatting immediately after a long car ride back home to Maryland. I was frustrated, confused, and didn’t really know what direction to take. After getting some help and guidance from a few close friends, including my mentor Casey Williams, I have been able to fix and correct many of the underlying issues that were the cause of these injuries. I am currently feeling and moving better than I have in a very long time. This past week was a good week for me, both physically and mentally. It was my first week getting back into the competition lifts, and adding some decent weight to the bar. Here’s a breakdown of this past week of training.

Saturday:

Competition squats: Worked up to 625×2.

Paused belt squat: 6 plates per side: 3×8

45 degree back extensions: 3×12 with red band

Alternating fatbell reverse lunges: 3×10 each leg with 30s

Weighted planks: 3×30 seconds with 45lbs.

Monday:

Fat bar bench press: 3×3 @ 335lbs + 80lb chain

Flat bench dumbbell press: 2×20 with 115s

Tricep skull crushers: 4×12 @ 95lbs

Chest supported row: 4×10 @ 100lbs

Cable tricep extensions: 4×20 @ 80lbs

Band pull aparts: 4×25

Wednesday:

Competition deadlift: 2×3 @ 635 & 655

Barbell RDLs: 3×8 @ 315

Bent over barbell rows: 3×8 @ 275

GHR: 3×10

Weighted planks: 3×30 seconds with 45lbs.

Thursday:

Dynamic effort bench: 8×3 @ 175 + doubled red minis & 1 chain

Incline Dumbbell press: 4×10 with 100s

Standing single arm overhead fatbell press: 3×10 each arm @ 60lbs

Fatbell tricep extension: 4×20,15,12,10

Cable face pulls: 4×25 @ 70lbs

Seated fatbell shrugs: 3×15 paused with 50s

Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays consist of light stretching, mobility, and a few Physical Therapy exercises courtesy of my good friend Jared Caroff.

Although it’s been frustrating at times, I’ve enjoyed the ups and downs of getting to this point. I’ve learned a lot (both about my body, and myself as a person) and am looking forward to the road ahead. With every challenge comes a new opportunity to learn and to grow.

Curtis’ Health Maintenance Tips

September 23, 2019Fitness, Life Health, Training, Uncategorizedrnagy

When it comes to taking care of our bodies, most of us put a good amount of time and effort into making sure that we are checking off all of the boxes. We do our best to make sure that we exercise regularly, eat balanced meals, stay hydrated, and get adequate sleep, just to name a few. These are without a doubt necessary for living a healthy life. But what if I told you that there are other areas that you may be missing out on? Areas that most people will overlook until it’s too late, and then they become necessary in order to get back to their previous level of health. Let’s take a look at a few areas that can improve upon your health and keep you strong and active for years to come.

I will begin by mentioning that I have personally used all of the services which I am about to discuss, and I have found each of them to be beneficial in their own way. I am in no way stating that it is necessary to use these services in order to live a healthy life. I’m simply giving my personal opinion and insight on a few things that I have found to be beneficial towards my overall health and performance.

Below are 5 professional services that I think every individual, regardless of age, level of fitness, or personal goals, could benefit from.

1) Massage Therapy: This is the most popular and well known out of the group. Massage Therapy is a type of treatment in which a professional manipulates the soft tissues of your body including muscle, connective tissue, tendons, ligaments and skin, using varying degrees of pressure and movement. The benefits of massage therapy include:

reduced muscle tension and pain
improved flexibility and range of motion
injury prevention
reduced recovery time from physical activity
improved connective tissue healing
increased sleep & relaxation.

The most popular forms of massage therapy are:

Swedish massage: This is a gentle form of massage that uses long strokes, kneading, deep circular movements, vibration and tapping to help relax and energize you.

Deep tissue massage: This massage technique uses slower, more forceful strokes to target the deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue, commonly to help with muscle damage from injuries.

Sports massage: This is similar to Swedish massage, but it’s geared toward people involved in sport activities to help prevent or treat injuries.

Trigger point massage: This massage focuses on areas of tight muscle fibers that can form in your muscles after injuries or overuse.

Here at UnionFitness, we are fortunate enough to have a great group of Massage Therapy professionals on hand who each specialize in their own unique approach while doing a great job of accommodating to each individual’s specific needs. Contact us today to set up your appointment and see the benefits for yourself.

2) Physical Therapy: Physical therapy is a branch of rehabilitative health that uses specially designed exercises and equipment to help patients regain or improve their physical abilities. Although this is often thought of as a method used primarily for those who are injured and/or elderly, there are many benefits for individuals who are young, healthy, and active. Those benefits include:

Assess & address movement deficits and musculoskeletal pathology
Prevent and/or address muscular imbalances
Decrease pain without use of medication
Improve balance and coordination
Help to identify other underlying health-related issues

I am very fortunate to have a good friend named Jared Caroff who is a great Physical therapist, as well as an employee here at Union Fitness. He has recently helped me to diagnose some issues I was having in my right hip and ankle for over 2 years and has helped me get back on the Powerlifting platform. You can find him covering the front desk in the mornings from 5am-7am.

3) Chiropractics: This is a system of diagnosis and treatment based on the concept that the nervous system coordinates all of the body’s functions. Chiropractic includes manipulation and adjustment of body structures, such as the spinal column, so that pressure on nerves coming from the spinal cord may be relieved. The benefits of chiropractics may include:

reduced back and neck pain
improved mental clarity
reduced joint pain
improved organ function
surgery prevention

4) Acupuncture: Acupuncture is a complementary medical practice rooted in traditional Chinese medicine that entails stimulating certain points on the body by using a needle lightly penetrating the skin in order to alleviate pain or to help treat various health conditions. These needles are inserted into points along meridian lines. These lines represent the body’s organs, and they are based on ancient Chinese medicine that includes balance and restoring proper flow of energy throughout the body. The main benefits of acupuncture include:

Reduced Stress
Reduced Back Pain, Neck Tension and Relieve Joint Pain in the Hands and Arms.
Relief from Headaches.
Improved Immune System
Enhanced Mental Clarity and Increased Energy.
Relief from Digestive Conditions.
Allergy Relief.

5) Dry needling: Dry needling is a skilled intervention that uses a thin filiform needle to penetrate the skin and stimulate underlying myofascial trigger points, muscular, and connective tissues for the management of neuromusculoskeletal pain and movement impairments. This differs from acupuncture in the sense that the needles are inserted into trigger points or tender bands of muscle located within larger muscles. When the needles are inserted into the trigger points, they elicit a response that releases the trigger point, therefore restoring normal function. The benefits of dry needling include:

Relief from muscular pain and stiffness.
Improve flexibility and increase range of motion.

Although this practice is not legalized for use by Physical Therapists in the state of Pennsylvania, I was fortunate enough to have access to it while living in Maryland. This was one of the most beneficial procedures that I have found for recovering from muscular injuries, along with increased mobility and range of motion.

In short, be sure to take the time and do your research to see which of these services are right for you. We only get one shot at taking care of our bodies. Invest in it, and it will be good to you for years to come.

Cayt’s Training Log

September 20, 2019Fitness, Training, Uncategorizedrnagy

It’s that time of year again for a handful of us at Union Fitness, including myself. That time being meet prep season and, specifically, the end of prep as we are (already!) 7 weeks out tomorrow. During the training phases of my first few powerlifting meets, I didn’t have a whole lot going on aside from school, giving me the ability to truly devote my time to training and recovery. That has not been the case this meet prep and it has truthfully been a challenge for me. However, I am confident that everyone reading this can relate to my current situation and not the few fortunate times I had in the past.

Training, in whatever way that means at the moment, has and always will be my way to stay sane and calm. Finding what I enjoy, allowing that to change as life continues to change, and remembering why I do it are a few things that have helped me.

With that said, I have been training conjugate style for about a year now. I have enjoyed it and felt the best training this way so I decided to continue training this style throughout the course of meet prep. Louie Simmons, the founder and owner of Westside Barbell, developed the conjugate system. Conjugate training incorporates three methods including the maximal effort method: “lifting a maximal load against a maximal resistance”, the dynamic effort method: “lifting a non-maximal load with the highest attainable speed”, and the repetition method: “lifting a non-maximal load repetitively”. My most recent training split has been as follows:

Day 1: Max effort lower (heavy squat/deadlift variation and assistance work)

Day 2: Max effort upper (heavy bench variation and assistance work)

Day 3: Dynamic effort lower (speed squats and pulls using lower percentages of bar weight progressively increasing in the 50-70% range).

Day 4: Dynamic effort upper (speed bench also with lower percentages also progressively increasing in the 50-70% range).

Dynamic effort work has been extremely challenging for me – I move sloooow. Because of it being the hardest, it is also my favorite. Feeling faster and more athletic is an exciting feeling and will continue to be a goal of mine moving forward.

My training split will remain the same leading into the meet with a few alterations to bars used, volume accumulated, and the use of accommodating resistance on dynamic days.

Fitness Over the Holidays

December 17, 2018Diet, Fitness, Nutritionadmin

It’s mid-December and the holiday season is now fully upon us. What does that mean? Probably a little less time in the gym, a few more cookies than usual, and hopefully a lot more time with friends and family. Good things all around in my humble opinion.

If you’re traveling over the next few weeks, you might be feeling a little anxiety about skipping your workouts and training sessions. Here are a few quick and maybe unexpected tips to help keep you on track:

Stop stressing.

Hey you, when’s the last time you actually took a prolonged rest? Did I hear never? Well, look’s like now is your time! And what better occasion could there be to give your body the rest it needs to recover than when spending lots of quality time with your loved ones? You’ll likely be eating a little more than usual, giving your body some extra fuel to use towards recovery. When January 1 comes around, you’ll feel refreshed and super motivated to get back to your normal training routine.

You can still keep your health goals in mind.

Remember that not every meal in the month of December is a holiday meal – most of the time you’re going to be eating the normal, healthy food that fuels you. Right? If not, give that some thought. Holiday food is delicious and should be savored, and it loses its luster when you’re overindulging. Eat grandma’s famous nut roll and enjoy the hell out of, but not every night for a week. You are capable of moderation, and your body will thank you for it.

Use travel as an opportunity to try new fitness things.

One of my favorite things to do when I go home to visit family is to try out different gyms and studios. Never tried yoga? Find a local studio and rent a mat! Climbing gyms abound recently and are a ton of fun, even for casual climbers. Think spinning isn’t for you? You might be surprised.

If you’re looking for a cool place to lift, don’t hesitate to ask the UF staff! We may know a place that suits you (we’re all meatheads after all).

If you’re going to lift, consider simplifying your training.

Union Fitness is a pretty sweet spot and we have a lot of cool equipment you probably won’t find at your basic commercial gym. Be flexible in your training for these few weeks. It’ll be easier on you mentally to head into the gym and just focus on the basics. This doesn’t mean you can’t push yourself! Maybe this is the week you give try a set of 20 reps on your squats?

No access to a gym? Work out at home with Fitness Blender!

I recommend Fitness Blender to friends all the time for travel workouts. They have tons of workouts that can be done with just your bodyweight (or you can include any equipment you have access to). You can choose how long you want to work out for, what body parts, and what type of training.

When in doubt, do burpees.

They’ll destroy you no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

Happy Holidays from the Union Fitness Team!

Ryan’s Training Log

October 31, 2018Fitness, Training, Uncategorizedadmin

Training log:

Meet is coming November 17th but my back has been giving me more trouble than usual. Most of the time it is just a moderate amount of tightness but after a solid warm up the tightness fades away. A while back I pulled 495 which my back did not enjoy as much as I did.

Besides the physical discomfort and having to adjust more training sessions than I like, the mental aspect is probably the most challenging. One day when deadlifts were feeling like absolute garbage I talked to a fellow member at the gym, who just recovered from a more serious injury than I have, about how to not get discouraged from an injury. He responded (paraphrasing) “You can’t go down the spiral of what you can’t do. Focus on the rehab and what you can do”.

So that’s what I am doing. Luckily I am surrounded by experienced lifters here who have been handing me all the info on their past back injuries. Which has definitely made a significant change in my back.

Today:

OH Press 145 3×3
Pull-ups 4×8
FB Incline press 3×15
Bodyweight BB tri extension 4×12
Lateral raises 3×20
Side planks 2x :30 sec each

To supplement, or not to supplement….

September 17, 2018Diet, Fitness, Nutritionadmin

One of my favorite questions- “what supplements should I take?”

Everyone from mom and dad to Ray Lewis have turned to supplements at some point in their lives. Why? Sometimes out of necessity- doctors orders. Sometimes to gain a perceived edge over their competition. And sometimes out of ignorance.

I don’t want to comment on the morals of the fitness industry- it’s a rabbit hole I’m no interested in going down for the sake of this article. The industry as a whole is “OK.” But I’m going to be critical of the supplement industry, and deservedly so.

Supplements ARE NOT regulated by the FDA. They can be made in someone’s kitchen, branded, marketed, and sold anywhere, even GNC. Of course GNC decides what to carry and what not to carry, but no matter what, NONE of the items on their shelves are FDA approved. Do I think the FDA regulations do a good job of protecting us- the short answer is no. But would ANY oversight in the supplement industry be helpful- yes.

CAVEAT EMPTOR (Buyer Beware)

Fat burners, Testosterone boosters, Weight gainers, Detox pills…the list goes on.

Fat burners raise your heart rate, period.
Test boosters lower your estrogen levels so your testosterone is higher (relative).
*FYI gents, we need estrogen just as much as we need testosterone.
Weight gainers are typically loaded with sugar.
Detox pills…how about let your liver and kidney’s do their job?

So we’re back to the question that almost everyone asks- “What supplements should I take?”

How about this- “Should I consider taking a supplement?”

A supplement is defined as something that completes or enhances something else when added to it.

Answer these questions honestly, and you can very quickly determine what, if anything, you should be taking:

Are you getting 8+ hours of sleep per night?
Are you hitting your caloric maintenance number?
(A surplus will cause you to gain weight, a deficit will cause you to lose weight- obviously goal dependent)
Have you had blood work done to determine if you may be deficient in any vitamins or minerals?

If you aren’t eating well balanced meals or are getting a lot of processed foods, you’re missing out on essential micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). If you aren’t getting 8 hours of sleep, your body’s hormones are already out of whack. And if you don’t know what, if anything, you’re deficient in, why supplement? You don’t even know what you’re supplementing.

And supplementing poor habits is a waste of money. Eat healthy. Sleep more. If you can’t take commit to those things, put your wallet back in your pocket and save your money.

Now, I realize most of you will not go through all of this before supplementing. So I’ll give you the basics, as I see them. This is not a recommendation and I am not a doctor.

ZMA
Zinc, Magnesium, B6
One of the greatest supplements ever invented. It will help you sleep and provides two minerals that the majority of the population is deficient in. *the most bang for your buck

Vitamin D3
We don’t get enough sunshine in Pittsburgh, so this is likely another area where you could be deficient. It will take months after starting supplementation to see a significant improvement in levels, but this should all be checked through blood work. Remember, it is fat soluble, so it needs to be taken with food that contains fat.

Magnesium
I prefer glycinate because it is absorbed easily with little GI discomfort. Too much magnesium will having you running to the bathroom, so start with small doses. Again, most people are deficient here. Magnesium is used in over 300 chemical reactions within the body…it’s important. And if you go to the gym regularly, you need more than the average none gym goer to put it technically.

Creatine
This is one of the most studied supplements ever. It helps with athletic performance by facilitating ATP production (ATP, if you remember from high school biology, is cellular energy). If you dose this too high, it will strain your kidneys.

Moral of the story- don’t try any of these without consulting your doctor.
Sleep more.
Eat better.
Then supplement, maybe.

Good Stress, Bad Stress – What’s the Difference and How Do We Cope?

April 23, 2018Fitness, Trainingrnagy

This really goes without saying, but it’s how this article needs to start: every single person, reading this or not, has experienced stress of some kind. It’s unlikely that any of our readers have ever been chased by a bear (if you have been, please tell us all about it ASAP), but maybe you’ve had to give a speech in front of a large group of people, got a terrifying medical diagnosis, or got overwhelmed during college finals week. To your body, these events are all the same, and all produce similar reactions: an excess of adrenaline, pounding heart, stomach in knots, hyper aware of everything around you. When you’re feeling these symptoms, your body is in a sympathetic state: what we commonly call fight-or-flight mode. The good news is that this kind of stress can actually be a good thing!

Acute stressors include activities like the training you do in the gym and taking on new challenges in your day to day life. Going skydiving for the first time? You can bet you’re going to have a stress response! But in that situation, it’s a welcomed response. The sympathetic state you go into in the face of something terrifying turns off all the bodily processes that are, in that moment, unnecessary, diverting all of your energy into making your body and your mind work faster and more accurately. When you overcome your body’s urging you to STOP AND RUN in the face of a challenge, you’re not only getting to do the things you really want to do, you’re building resolve and resiliency that will carry over to all other aspects of your life. Lifting heavy weights and running long, long distances create stress on the body and localized inflammation, needed to rush blood and nutrients to the now slightly damaged tissue. In the rest period after, your body has the chance to both recover and supercompensate, so that the next time it needs to perform that task, it’s better prepared. If you never pushed yourself, you’d never get that response, and you’d never get better!

Some people take the idea of using acute stress as personal development even farther. Life coach and motivational speaker Tony Robbins uses a fairly extreme method of creating acute stress: cold water immersion. Every morning, he starts his day by plunging into a vertical pool of 57-degree Fahrenheit water for several minutes. There are lots of physical benefits to cold water immersion – improved lymphatic and cardiovascular circulation, reduction in muscle inflammation – but I’d argue the real benefit is in increased resolve at overcoming such a major stressor. If you want to give this method a try at home, give a 2-3 minute cold shower a try in the morning. It’ll definitely wake you up, take you out of your comfort zone, and prepare you to face just about anything that day.

If there’s good news, that means there’s also bad news. When you ruminate on that public speech, when the medical diagnosis leads to a long treatment plan, when you’re constantly feeling like you’re behind on your schoolwork, you’re experiencing chronic stress. With chronic stress comes chronic inflammation: a 2012 Carnegie Mellon University study found that chronic stress inhibits the body’s ability to regulate inflammation, which can lead to quicker development of disease. So now, not only is your day to day life more difficult because you’re feeling those acute stress symptoms all the time, you’re actually making yourself chronically ill on top of being chronically stressed.

Before I get into some ways to help mitigate that chronic stress, let’s look at how and why it’s happening. Cortisol, commonly known as the stress hormone, is the biggest player when it comes to chronic stress and inflammation. When your body is constantly sensing stressors (remember, to your body there’s no difference between being hunted and taking a hard test), it is also constantly secreting cortisol to help you handle those situations. Cortisol, despite its negative reputation, is a super useful hormone. As stated above, some acute inflammation is good! We need it to heal and ultimately get better. Cortisol allows that to happen when all is in working order. The catch comes when your stress never really subsides. In this situation, your body is nearly constantly secreting cortisol, and in doing so decreases your cells’ sensitivity to the hormone. What does that mean? You need more and more cortisol to regulate that inflammatory response, so that response gets out of control and there’s still tons of stress hormone hanging out in your system. Over time, chronic illness can result.

Now, how do we avoid this? First, refer back to my no bullshit self-care guide. Tackling stress-inducing situations and events head on and early is always going to be the most effective way to mitigate chronic stress. Prevention is the best medicine after all. However, there will always be major stressors that happen suddenly and seemingly at random. Here are a few tips to help calm down, both in the moment and over time:

Belly breathing! Deep, diaphragmatic breaths have the incredible power of taking your body out of the sympathetic, fight-or-flight state, and putting it into a parasympathetic, or relaxed state. The results can be just about instantaneous. See Ryan’s article on RPR, which utilizes belly breathing first before any other methods, here.
Meditate. This one will be hard to use in the moment until you practice it a little. Meditation has traditionally been a struggle for me: I’d quickly get frustrated at how my mind seemed to work against me and just would not turn off. With some practice and an excellent app called Breathe, I’ve learned that meditation isn’t about sitting in a field of daisies with a totally clear mind. It’s about developing the ability to direct your thoughts where YOU want them to go. You don’t need to be at the mercy of your thoughts. It’s your brain, you can control what happens up there with practice. I try to meditate for a few minutes each day, with guidance from my trusty app. When I get into crisis mode, it is now much easier for me to direct my thoughts to something useful instead of careening out of control.
Practice makes perfect. Or at least it makes things easier. Like I said above, taking on some acute stress in the form of training, trying new things, or something as intense as an ice bath help you become more resilient in the face of stress. Practice handling stressful situations that are more within your control. Make those challenges harder (that’s progressive overload) over time to continue getting stronger. Life isn’t too unlike the gym, huh?

April State of the Union, Fitness

April 10, 2018Fitnessrnagy

It’s that time again. Welcome to April’s State of the Union. The weather has been unpredictable at best, but the climate inside our facility remains unchanged. The dedication has remain unchanged. The support is stronger than ever. And the attitude is #powerful.

To keep this coherent, I’ll stick to using our core values at UF to organize this information. If you’re interested in reading more about those, click here: https://unionfitness.com/about/

UF values- EPIC: Education—Passion—Integrity—Community

Education

I introduced the idea of RPR (Reflexive Performance Reset) in last month’s article. If you’ve taken any classes, you’ll notice that all of the warm ups have been initiated with RPR wake up drills. We will continue to build and integrate those into classes over the course of the next 6 weeks (8 weeks in total) until you’re tired of doing them or you love them so much that we can’t stop you from doing them. The reality of it is: the belly breathing alone will change your life. It’s subtle, but powerful.

As a staff, we will be heading back to Columbus in April to learn Level 2 of this system. Where level 1 taught us the basics, level 2 will allow us to pinpoint the root cause of issues. In turn, we will be able to spend less time on general warm ups, and give you specifics that will help YOU improve your training and daily function.

Passion

I’m going to turn the spotlight onto one of our coaches this month. Kate Lancaster came to us last year as a member who was comfortable with running, but wanted to learn about strength training. After some time in our classes, she wanted more- “How can I be a part of your team?” It’s a great feeling when someone believes so much in what you’re doing that they want to be a part of it. So we started her in our intern program and then had her take over portions of our Strength Lab classes- warm ups, metcons, etc. All the while she was studying (nervously) for her ACE certification, which she passed at the end of March! Kate is now working for us weekday mornings and helping specifically with our Fatbell and Cardio Lab classes. I’m proud of her progress but I also realize she’s just getting started. This spring, we’ll get her started as a personal trainer as well. It’s pretty incredible watching someone not only realize their passion, but commit to it. We’re excited and thankful to have her as part of our team.

Integrity

Again, our definitions: (1) the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles and (2) the state of being whole and undivided.

Robert Pennebaker, a former personal trainer at Union Fitness and a Northside resident, approached us last month about a charity event. He is now working with the American Heart Association and wanted to partner with UF for Cycle Nation- a charity ride to raise money to beat a leading killer in the United States- heart disease. Fortunately the date worked out for everyone and they’ll be cycling away on Tuesday, May 8th as part of Nova Nights. We’re thankful that Robert reached out to us and it shows that having integrity brings good things your way- more importantly the opportunity to give back to our community through our community, whole and undivided.

Community

This is my favorite story of the month. Tim Bickerton has been with us for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately for him, he locked his keys in his locker, including the key to his lock. We scrambled to get maintenance on the phone so we could borrow the facility’s bolt cutters, but they had all left for the evening. Cue Paul Werder. I walked into the locker room to ask Tim if he was able to get a ride home and if he had spare set of keys. I didn’t even get to ask because Paul was in Macgyver mode, hand sawing at the lock with a pocket file. It probably took him about 20 minutes but he sawed right through it and Tim was able to go about the rest of his night. I was amazed at Paul not only for putting in the effort to help, but taking 20 minutes to do it. This was just plain cool. Thank you Paul!

Casey Williams

Union Fitness Manager

Building a Healthy Relationship with Food: A Work in Constant Progress

March 19, 2018Fitness, Nutritionrnagy

When Alison suggested I write this particular blog post, I laughed.

My first thought: no one could possibly be less qualified to write about having a healthy relationship with eating than me. But after we talked about it, I agreed. I’ve struggled with my eating habits and thought processes around food for a very long time and in those struggles I’ve learned a lot. If nothing else, I’ve definitely read just about every article on the internet on about nutrition at least 3 times, so worst case scenario I could regurgitate some of that information and be done with it.

Then it came time to actually write the article, and I procrastinated. In fact, I put off writing this until the day before it was due. The topic brought up a lot of anxiety and fear that I’d hoped were behind me. I felt uncomfortable with the idea of sharing my disordered history, and more uncomfortable with the fact that I’d have to openly admit that I’m not healed yet. However, I have made progress that I’m really proud of. None of us are perfect and I think it’s important that every person who comes through the gym knows and feels that. So I’m going to share some of my history, some of the things I’ve done wrong (very wrong), and some of the things that have really helped repair my relationship with food and eating.

An unhealthy relationship with food can permeate your entire life. I understand. I wish that no one else had to deal with these issues, but I know for certain that many of you do. I really hope you can learn from some of my past mistakes and take the positive steps I’ll outline to heart.

How I got to this point

I’ll put this bluntly: I was diagnosed with non-purging Bulimia Nervosa in 2015. I’d been struggling with it for about 10 years at that point, but hit a breaking point that I couldn’t come back from alone.

My poor relationship with food started at a young age. I went through puberty early and was bigger than most of the other girls in my grade. I was super active with soccer, track, cheerleading (I know). I was usually on 4-5 different teams and at 1-2 practices every night. In response, my appetite knew no bounds. I could put away food, and I did. And at some point, a comment about my “thunder thighs” took root. I knew how I wanted to look: dainty and thin. Thunder thighs do not fit that image.

I remember my first diet: I was 12 and had a friend steal Weight Watchers materials from her mom so I could follow them. A pattern emerged pretty quickly: I’d follow that diet, eating as little as I could stand, and then one night I’d be so hungry I couldn’t sleep and I would eat EVERYTHING: a gallon of ice cream, and entire family size bag of chips, straight Cool Whip. If it was edible and readily available, it was going in my mouth. I’d wake up guilty the next day and did what I perceived to be the only logical response: I’d fast until I couldn’t anymore and try to burn off the extra calories by running extra miles.

Things progressively got worse through high school and college. There were ups and downs (in weight and mental health), but the pattern stayed: restriction, binge, fast and run.

I got into lifting when I was 22, in an unhealthy relationship, and needed something to help me feel strong and able. It worked: I got stronger, left that relationship, and found out I wasn’t too bad at lifting. Over the next few years, I got more and more serious and naturally decided it was time to dial in my nutrition. My goal body was a little different now: still thin, but muscular and lean. My binge/purge patterns were still there though, so I had to find a new way to compensate while still eating enough to get stronger.

I found a coach who specialized in concurrent endurance racing and powerlifting training, who also worked with a nutritionist. I thrive on order and planning, so I felt this was perfect for me. I knew if someone else was telling me how to eat and how to train, I wouldn’t let them down and I’d finally reach my goal body, and by extension, my goal life. I spent weeks justifying the reasoning to my boyfriend, who was rightly skeptical.

By all accounts, I did incredibly well on this system: I PRed my half marathon, my deadlift and bench progressed, and I successfully rehabbed a hip injury. Most importantly, my weight and body fat went WAY down. I went from around 142lbs to 122lbs in several months. I should have felt amazing, accomplished, disciplined. Instead, I somehow felt fat. I stopped going out socially because I couldn’t fit any restaurant foods into my diet, because then it wouldn’t be perfect. I couldn’t handle not being perfect.

Then it went off the rails on a family vacation. I was still slowly losing fat but eating a good amount: around 2600 calories per day. The problem came as soon as I let myself eat something “off-plan:” a single restaurant meal that included the most amazing flourless chocolate cake I’d ever had. I lost it after that. All of my binging behavior came back with a vengeance and I could not stop eating. It continued after coming home. I stopped going to work because I was so ashamed of myself. I was always somewhere between binging on thousands of calories at at time or fasting. I was eventually convinced me to seek help. This was one of the darkest times of my life.

Three years later, here I am, still lifting, up in weight, not healed, but substantially healthier. How?

Where I went wrong

If I could go back, I would change a lot of how I handled my disordered eating.

I would have talked about it and gotten help sooner.

I tried to hide my eating from everyone around me, which is a classic symptom of all binge eating disorders. I know that now. I was also really good at finding the other sick people around me in order to feel validated. I wish I would have put that pattern together when I was younger. Additionally, even after getting diagnosed, I opted out of some treatment options that probably would have really benefitted me. I can see now how seriously this disorder affected me, but in the moment I just talked it down. “This isn’t that bad, anorexics have it worse. Inpatient treatment is for teenage girls that are dying, not for 25 year olds that can’t stop eating.” That’s some bullshit. Those treatments are available for everyone for a reason (and there are lots of support groups aimed specifically at post-college age women and young professionals that I didn’t find until much later). Take advantage of them.

I always needed to be perfect.

This is probably the core of my issues, and I suspect the same goes for a lot of the people I see struggling around me. A lot of things came easy for me early in life: school, sports, friendships. I picked up a thinking pattern that goes like this: If I’m not immediately really good at something, it means I am incapable of doing that thing. This has affected me in every aspect of my life. Saddest example: I wanted to be an architect, but convinced myself that since math wasn’t immediately as easy as some of my other subjects, I just wasn’t cut out for it. I let my childhood dream die in an instant because of that black and white pattern of thinking.

I assumed that at some point, the work would be over I would be fixed.

Did you catch that up there? I’m still not healed. I recognize now that there will never be a time where I can just “relax” because I’m 100% recovered with no chance of relapse. That is not a thing. In my last blog I talked about self-care as that hard work and those hard decisions we have to make if we actually want to take care of ourselves. For me, this is it. I need therapy, I need journaling. I hate doing those things because they make me feel sick, but the truth is I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been (both physically and mentally) BECAUSE I do those things that are hard. I will always have to work at this and that is okay.

What I’m doing right (and you should do too)

So what’s changed in three years since getting the official diagnosis?

I finally got professional help.

You hire a professional to reach your fitness and health goals right? So why not hire a professional to reach your mental health goals? I’m on my fourth therapist now and she is a gem. It was hard finding a good fit and took about 2 years. It’s worth it. Half the time we don’t even talk about food, because half the time my disorder has absolutely nothing to do with food! The best part of therapy for me is the work we do on battling that black and white thinking I talked about above. Everyone that knows me well has heard me harp on about how therapy is useful for everyone, and I’m gonna spout that here too. You don’t need to have a diagnosed disorder to go to therapy. We all have faulty thinking patterns, and we all have the ability to retrain those patterns to be more helpful. A good therapist is key in making those changes.

I’m surrounded by people that support me without enabling me.

I mentioned above that I’ve always found other disordered people to make me feel more normal. I’m not doing that anymore. My family here at UF in particular have been a huge driving force in my recovery because they keep me accountable. When my therapist gives me homework, I know I can go to them for some additional motivation. Just like we remind Alison that she’s growing a tiny human right now, my coworkers need to remind me that yes, I do need to eat even if I’m not training that day.

When I was ready, I had to start going out of my comfort zone.

In the thick of it, my life was as follows: wake up at 3:30am, train from 4am to 6:30am, shower, work from 8:30am to 6pm or later, train again or go to class until 8 or 9pm, in bed by 9:30 or 10pm. There was no room for a social life, there was no room for real friendship, and there was certainly no room for food I didn’t make myself. After months of therapy, I was able to get used to eating out again. It was painful, there were a lot of tears, but I did it. Now I’m happy to say that I can eat foods that were even previously “danger foods” with some regularity. Do I sometimes lose it a little bit and binge? Yes I do. Like I said, it’s a work in progress. But those episodes are FAR less frequent, and my response to them has gone from some kind of fasting or over exercising to breathing techniques and mentally refocusing. My body is better for it because I’m not constantly breaking it down. I’m injured less and therefore a better athlete.

I got back in touch with how my body is feeling

A major theme of my disorder has been ignoring every hunger and fullness cue my body was sending me. At first I’d be ignoring my hunger until I got too desperate and then eating far beyond fullness, and then eating to a pre-set schedule no matter how hungry or not hungry I was. While I do still track most of what I eat and eat with a purpose, I spend a little more time trying to parse what my body is telling me. Example: last night after finishing my last meal I was still hungry. I ate half a Clif bar and then I was full, so I just didn’t eat the rest. I never leave food unfinished! This is the constant little progress I’m looking for.

I’m striving to let go of my “goal body”

Because really, that “goal body” has always been code for control. If I could just make my body look the way I wanted it to look, I could therefore make my life look the way I wanted it to look. Instead, I’m doing the hard things that actually affect my life. I left my old job that I hated to come to UF and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m keeping up with therapy despite it being hard and I’m consistently getting a little bit better. I’m not weighing myself as much and I spend a lot of time seeking out women on social media that are strong as shit but not fitness models as a reminder that I don’t have to be super tiny or super lean to be strong and capable. My goal body now is a body that can deadlift 400lbs (soon), that can run 10 miles, and that supports me in my non-fitness goals of being good to the people around me and helpful in every way that I can. And you know what, it’s succeeding. And I’m proud of myself for getting to a point where I can say that.