This blog starts with a question: Did your New Year's Resolution last year involve fitness, weight loss, or getting your health back on track?
Did you do it?
My job takes me out into workplaces to do seminars on health and fitness. My emphasis is normally on staying healthy and fit through exercise. I often get on tangents, most often it is about New Year's resolutions. Most people make the weight loss one year after year, and yes folks, decade after decade. I get on a tangent, and love asking in July "who's on track with their New Year's Resolution?"
It gets a lot of laughs, as people suddenly remember midnight December 31, then the gym membership they bought January 2, and empty promises.
Why? What is it about feeling great, increasing energy, and being comfortable in our own skin that isn't motivating enough? Proven scientific fact, exercise is all kinds of awesome for the body.
Is the gym too hard for most people? Not if you stop doing workouts that are above your physical level.
With my classes in Winnipeg at Snap Fitness, we work specifically on this. If a 40-year-old male walks in my door and decides he wants to get back into "game shape" for touch football. I gently remind him that if he didn't play sports in University, it's been 22 years since he last exerted himself regularly at a sport level. When a 35-year-old women comes in and starts talking about a destination marriage and has three months to get ready and it's "all so sudden and unexpected." The same reminder gets made, high school was 15 years or more ago. You can't just jump into high intensity workouts. You have to respect your limitations and approach fitness for a lifetime.
If it took you 15-20 years to get out of shape, how do you think a six week bootcamp is going to fix the problem?
My approach is to get back to a lifetime of being healthy. To stay active, happy, and in shape you need to be having fun and have a program that makes sense for you. Once you set a base level, feel free to kick it up a notch for those Facebook selfies on the beach. Heck, I'm doing that right now! Contiki tours is taking me on their Ultimate Thailand Adventure. You better believe I've been hitting the gym harder than usual and making sure my snacks are carefully planned out. I'm never out of control, but I do focus harder from time to time on the little things.
I like to approach my health quarterly, like a successful business. Every 90 days, reassess my fitness, and lifestyle. Make sure its on track. If it needs a little pick me up, set some goals new goals try something new and different.
Working in Winnipeg in both the high performance sport world and with weight loss, I get to train some of the best athletes out there. I also get to learn from some of them. There are so many little tips from pro athletes that you can put in your workout so you know it's benefiting you in the real world. It makes going to the gym less of a chore and more a practical experience.
With the Roar of the Rings coming to Winnipeg and curling being a pass time so many enjoy, it seemed logical to use Chelsea Carey to demonstrate a few exercises anyone can put into their routine. See a trainer in your city to make sure you implement them correct, and then know that your time in the gym is going to make your hobby a little easier and safer.
Flag football is also a huge draw for many adults looking to have fun in the sports world. I enlisted the help of pro football player Carl Volney to demonstrate some balance and core stability exercises to make the body stronger and able to adapt to the stress of getting back into sports. Carl runs a camp for young athletes in Winnipeg called Finish First Football with his cousin and fellow team mate Kito Poblah. Together they are changing the way young athletes approach training and play Football.
If you are not having fun, you won't stick to a program. If you are not consistent, you won't see results. That means next year you'll be having the same resolution, but instead of 10lbs to lose it may be 15. My hope is that everyone will find the passion for their health, and the realization that constant and consistent active living is the only cure to the health crisis going on. We all need to find that thing that keeps us moving, and having fun. Then train for it, stay active and make the gym make sense.
Find something that gets you filled with passion, work towards it. Enlist the help of local trainers, dietitians, massage therapists, chiropractors, and anything else you can think of. Put value in your health, and see how far it will take you. Make some memories and live life with #noregrets.
