Sunday, October 11, 2009

Hope, Obstacles, Optimism, Inspiration, Passion

Do any of these terms mean anything to you? Can you relate to each, any, or all of these? Do you feel these in different moments of your life?

For me, they do. They strike a chord with me that I will not forget, hopefully. I believe we all are given opportunities in life and yes, obstacles as well. It is what we do with those that make the difference.

I want to show the world what's possible. What's hopeful. Lots of people have ideas or dreams, but they listen to the tape inside their heads that says, " I can't." Everyday, ordinary people do extraordinary things. If you simply view things from another perspective, new possibilities emerge.

Inspiration, it isn't something you can mail order from a catalog or online. It comes bit by bit and more often than not, it comes by surprise. Look at those around you with an open heart, you never know how inspiring others can truly be.

Does optimism attract optimism??? Does dwelling on the positive change your life? I believe the answer to these questions is yes. It can't help but do that. What you focus on, you attract. When you find your purpose, and it has to do with putting good out into the world, that good will reflect in your own life. Everything you want and everything you need starts to suddenly show up. Surround yourself with great people doing amazing things, and great amazing things come your way.

So to many who have believed in me, inspired me, thrown obstacles my way, or helped me discover my passion thank you!!!

My hope for anyone reading this is to discover your passion, have hope, conquer obstacles, and inspire others for the good of the world.

Have a wonderful day!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Are YOU ready for change??

Let’s talk about how our brains and bodies respond to change.
In order to understand how Change affects us we must define the concept of the SAID Principle — the body always gets better at exactly what it does. While we generally talk about this idea in relation to movement and performance, the brain works the same way with regards to everything we do (or don't do).
Habits are easy. Our morning ritual is our morning ritual because we don’t have to think about it. We frequent the same stores, take the same routes, buy the same brands, and return to the same restaurants because it’s the path of least resistance. This is precisely why habits are so hard to break.
While this may all be common sense to you, what you may not be aware of is that the body actually prefers it that way. We are hard-wired for survival as opposed to performance, which means that we want to conserve energy as much as possible — you simply never know when you need to outrun a cheetah (or, in more modern terms, avoid hitting swerving car next to you because the driver is chatting on their cell phone). And, making any sort of change requires additional energy — the brain literally burns more glucose when we have to do something out of the ordinary.
So, when you decide to "go for broke" and make several changes at the same time, any unplanned events in your life can easily derail the change you want to make. Your body literally runs out of energy to manage all of the changes, and falls back to what it already knows in order to make it through the day. So, while it may be frustrating to make changes gradually, it is a much more realistic approach for guaranteeing success because both emotionally and physically it requires less energy and won't place unrealistic demands on the body. Remember, success breeds success, so it is much better to have many small successes that add up, than to take on TOO much at once, fail and have to start all over at square one.
With that in mind, let's look at a few examples of places where people often struggle to make changes, and some ways to ease in to change.


Get More Sleep

Americans are notoriously sleep-deprived. Accidents related to sleep deprivation have been estimated to have an annual economic impact of $43 to $56 billion, and recent studies even indicate a link between chronic sleep deprivation and obesity. If you need to sleep more and improve the quality of your sleep:
• Create a nighttime ritual. 30 minutes prior to bedtime, unplug. Get away from the computer, put the phone away.
• Work to standardize your hours of sleep to a consistent amount 7 days a week.
• Finally, shift your schedule in 15-minute intervals to work up to 7-8 hours/night. Move it back just 15 minutes one week, and then 15 minutes the next week. In virtually everyone’s schedule, there is 15 minutes that can be given up somewhere.

Eating Behaviors

Make just one change a week. Here are some possibilities:
• Cut out a snack.
• Add one vegetable.
• Change one spice.
• Move just one meal out from in front of the TV.
• Throw out one trigger food.
• If weight loss is your goal, count your calories for one week. The next week, reduce caloric intake by just 100 calories per day. Each week thereafter, continue to reduce your calories by 100 calories per day until you are eating at your appropriate caloric volume to lose weight.

Fitness Training

85-90% of individuals who start a training program quit within the first 90 days, and 85% of that group quits due to injury. Given the large number of adults who claim to be on a training program, that is an awful lot of false starts. So, how do you start a training program you can stick with? As you have probably already guessed, slowly.
• If your problem is you just don't feel like training, then our first recommendation is to choose something that you enjoy. Research shows your rate of success is much higher if you choose something you like, because you are considerably more likely to stick with it. So, this week, pick one thing you like, and commit to it for a minimum of 5 minutes and have fun. Soon, you'll find yourself getting your full training program in.
• If time is a problem, realize you don't have to spend an hour a day in the gym to get or stay in shape. Look for 10, 15, or 30 minute windows in your schedule. It all adds up.
• Lastly, if you are one of those 85% who quit due to injury, a mobility warm-up will make you more resilient against future injuries. That, combined with starting the first week at no more than 50% of what you think you are capable of and remembering never to push into pain, will go a long way towards injury-free training.

To summarize, 1) pick something you like to do, not something you feel like you have to do, 3) it doesn't have to be an hour, make it short fast and realize it is effective, and 3) ensure that your body is prepped for success by being prepared for movement.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Introductory Kettlebell Workshop

This two-hour workshop will cover basic kettlebell exercises. My workshop will show you how to use your body safely, effectively and efficiently. You’ll be amazed at what this universal tool, the Russian Kettlebell, can do with your body both in strength training, core conditioning and cardio without any impact to your joints! Kettlebells will give you a metabolism boosting workout in less than an hour three times a week with some amazing results! Come experience it for yourself!

Learn how kettlebells can help you get in the best shape of your life!

When
Sunday, September 20, 2009
2 – 4 p.m.

Where
Pretzel Logic Yoga
3068 Trenwest Drive
Winston-Salem, NC 27103
(336) 760-0307

Requirements
Registration and payment must be made prior to the workshop.
Register online at www.rapidresultsfitness.net

Cost
$50 per person
Kettlebells will be provided

For more information please visit: http://www.rapidresultsfitness.net/assets/events/introductory-kettlebell-workshop-winston-salem.pdf

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Ropes? Chains? Yikes!!!! Update..... in Chronological Order

OK it has been WAY TOO LONG since my last blog... And so much has happened I don't know where to start!

I guess I will start with the personal (professional) good stuff. My good friend, Tim Anderson, (RKC Level II and Z Health Guru also Level II Battling Ropes Coach) and I have been filming a video the past several weeks. We are very excited about it and hope the outcome will really inspire folks who purchase the video to keep training consistently with kettlebells and stay motivated to see the results they had hoped for. I gotta tell ya, Tim is a great trainer more importantly his heart is in the right place all the time. He is wise beyond his years and is just the best to be around. He has helped me in my own training and given me pointers not only in training, but in life. It is an honor to work with him. I look forward to sharing this video with each of you when we are finished.

Secondly, I have to say that last week was a highlight for me because we put our members of Rapid Results Fitness through the VO2MAx for the first time. They had no idea what they were in for. And I gotta tell ya the just killed it!! Kevin led them through the 6 minute cadence and then we hit the ground running. Next thing you know we hit 80 sets! Yep! WE made it. There were a few who tore their hands that led them just shy of 80 but all in all it was OUTSTANDING!!!! I was so proud of them and their efforts! Their technique was great and their spirit even better!!! You guys make me feel so lucky to do what I do! So a big thank you to each of you and big hugs from me to you!

So this brings me to Sunday, yesterday.... my day began with John Brookfield at the Level II Battling Ropes Coach certification. I showed up at 9am ready (or not) to conquer the ropes, chains and whatever else John threw my way. Needless to say there were times I wondered if I would get through it. This is no small feat. 20 minutes of velocity training, 1 mile pull of 100 ft of rope, 15 minutes of towel drill and miscellaneous drills that never seemed to end with chains, towels and the like. But John has a way about him that is comforting and keeps you going. IT was definitely a test of mind and body and SPIRIT! Yes God was with me for sure... There was no way I did that alone. My colleagues, Tim and Kevin know that for sure. Tim, I appreciate all your encouragement through it. I feel good about it and look forward to introducing others to the ropes and John's way of training. I think there is alot to be learned, experienced in tis kind of training. Very simplistic, almost like becoming "one with nature" really. Curious if any of you have done this, feel the same. Let me know your thoughts...

Keep training smart and with a happy heart,

Betsy

Friday, August 14, 2009

OOOH! REALLY???!!!!!

Are we attracted to this? Is this the way of choice? I think NOT!!!! Notice the title "It's Hip To Be ROund"
Enough already! It is unhealthy, and unnecessary, end of story......PS Which one do you want to be???

NoticedIt’s Hip to Be Round Published: August 12, 2009
THIS summer the unvarying male uniform in the precincts of Brooklyn cool has been a pair of shorts cut at knickers length, a V-neck Hanes T-shirt, a pair of generic slip-on sneakers and a straw fedora. Add a leather cuff bracelet if the coolster is gay.

In truth this get-up was pretty much the unvarying male uniform last summer also, but this year an unexpected element has been added to the look, and that is a burgeoning potbelly one might term the Ralph Kramden.

Too pronounced to be blamed on the slouchy cut of a T-shirt, too modest in size to be termed a proper beer gut, developed too young to come under the heading of a paunch, the Ralph Kramden is everywhere to be seen lately, or at least it is in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, the McCarren Park Greenmarket and pretty much any place one is apt to encounter fans of Grizzly Bear.

What the trucker cap and wallet chain were to hipsters of a moment ago, the Kramden is to what my colleague Mike Albo refers to as the “coolios” of now. Leading with a belly is a male privilege of long standing, of course, a symbol of prosperity in most cultures and of freedom from anxieties about body image that have plagued women since Eve.

Until recently, men were under no particular obligation to exhibit bulging deltoids and shredded abdominals; that all changed, said David Zinczenko, the editor of Men’s Health, when women moved into the work force in numbers. “The only ripples Ralph Kramden” and successors like Mike Brady of “The Brady Bunch” had to demonstrate were in their billfolds, said Mr. Zinczenko, himself a dogged crusader in the battle of the muffin top. “But that traditional male role has changed.”

As women have come to outnumber men in the workplace, it becomes more important than ever for guys to armor themselves, Mr. Zinczenko said, with the “complete package of financial and physical,” to billboard their abilities as survivors of the cultural and economic wilds.

This makes sense, in a way, but how does one account for the new prevalence of Ralph Kramdens? Have men given in or given up? Are they finished with asserting the privileges that have always accrued to men. Or is the Ralph Kramden Barack Obama’s fault?

Hipsters, by nature contrarian, according to Dan Peres, the editor of Details, may be reacting in opposition to a president who is not only, as the press relentlessly reminds us, So Darn Smart, but also hits the gym every morning, has a conspicuously flat belly and, when not rescuing the economy or sparring with Kim Jong-il, shoots hoops.

“If we had a slob in the White House, all the hipsters would turn into some walking Chippendales calendar,” Mr. Peres said. Instead, the streets of Williamsburg are crowded with men who are, as he noted, “proudly rocking a gut.” Mr. Peres’s magazine has a term for these people: the new “poor-geoisie.” But the people lining up for $13 lobster rolls at the Brooklyn Flea last weekend hardly looked as if they were worried about making the rent.

“I sort of think the six-pack abs obsession got so prissy it stopped being masculine,” is how Aaron Hicklin, the editor of Out, explains the emergence of the Ralph Kramden. What once seemed young and hot, for gay and straight men alike, now seems passé. Like manscaping, spray-on tans and other metrosexual affectations, having a belly one can bounce quarters off suggests that you may have too much time on your hands.

“It’s not cool to be seen spending so much time fussing around about your body,” Mr. Hicklin said.

And so guys can happily and guiltlessly go to seed.

Women have almost never gotten a pass on the need to maintain their bodies, while men always have, said Robert Morea, a personal fitness trainer. (Full disclosure: my own.) It would be too much, he added, to suggest that “potbellies are suddenly O.K.,” but as lean muscle and functionality become the new gym mantras, hypertrophied He-Men with grapefruit biceps and blister-pack abs have come to resemble specimens from a diorama of “A Vanished World.”

“When do you ever see that guy, anyway?” Mr. Morea asked, referring to those legendary Men’s Health cover models, with their rippling torsos and famished smiles. “The only time you really see that guy, he’s standing in front of an Abercrombie & Fitch store.” Perhaps, he suggested, there is really only one of them. “It’s the same guy. They just move him around.”

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

I am Living on the EDGE!!!!

As I realize I have not been blogging lately I feel the need to catch you up to speed on what I have been up to lately...

First off, the Va. Beach kettlebell workshop was awesome!!! We had a great turnout and the participants were very eager and showed great form as they swung the bell and "got down" with their bell during the get up!!!

Since the workshop, things at Rapid Results Fitness just keep getting better and better. Let me tell you why: I have to say for starters, I think I have the best members and clients ever, really! Why? Because if they are not giving their best in effort in class they are giving positive reinforcement to their neighbors in class. Moreover they just seem to get it... They realize the mind and body connection. At Rapid Results Fitness the workout environment is just plain fun!!! The camaraderie is fantastic!

Here is the best part lately, my clients are talking!!!! "What do you mean", you ask? They are seeing results and best of all they are sharing their experience with others!!! YEA!!!!!! It just makes me so happy to hear them one by one share tidbits of improvement, aahah moments, and real life achievements. I couldn't be more proud of each of them.

They have shared experiences and revelations that they each exclaim was a direct correlation to kettlebell training with Rapid Results Fitness. When I hear these words, it makes me thankful for every moment of what I do as an instructor.

So to them, I am grateful. The members motivate me as much as I may motivate them. We are in this together!!!! And to all my buds at RRF, "LIVE IN THE REP YOU'RE IN"!!!!! :-)

Oh, PS The Title " Living on the EDGE" is what I am doing lately too.... Experiencing, Discovering God Everywhere!