It's incredible how much everything can change in a month. Especially when you are consistently working out and focusing on being healthy. At the beginning of each month, Amy has us do a small fitness test. This helps us to gauge how we've improved. The first Monday in April I could do (in one minute): - 34 push-ups (with knees down) - 45 second plank (with knees down) - 30 jump squats - 26 right leg touches while balancing - 30 left leg touches while balancing The first Monday in … [Read more...]

Blitz focuses on functional fitness (say that 10 times fast!) and with a decent number of workouts under my belt, I can say that it is very effective. Functional fitness is meant to mimic your everyday movements, which ends up giving you a full body workout. I know this because every muscle group on my body curses Chris the day after a workout! I asked Chris to explain it a little better: Functional fitness attempts to mimic real life movements by activating as many muscle groups during one … [Read more...]

I tried and tried as hard as could, banging it on the counter, using rubber gloves, but no matter what I could not open the jar of jam. At that moment, I felt pretty pathetic! It was also at that moment that I finally conceded to taking on a 90-day challenge, training with Chris from Blitz and receiving nutrition coaching from Kelsey at Revive Wellness. While I had already thought about it numerous times in the last year, such as the time I went shopping and at 5 different women’s … [Read more...]

Exercise has given me so much. Time for myself, reflection and strength. Without this 90 day challenge, I wouldn't have had the moment of clarity and strength where I decided to end my almost 10 year marriage. This moment of clarity also brought on a whirlwind of emotions, to-do lists and crazy amounts of stress. My normal reaction to stress is: panic attacks, vomiting, anxiety and a lot of cleaning. In typical fashion, I panicked, freaked out, cried, got hives and cleaned. I couldn't keep … [Read more...]

To tell you the truth, I was scared of starting an all-girl bootcamp class. I worried about keeping up with the class and if I would slow everyone down. My first bootcamp class was a blur. In order to keep up with the class, I had to move fast, really fast and I just wasn't there yet. I struggled to get up off of the floor in between exercises and was conscious of my shirt riding up my back. I needed to take extra water breaks to give myself time to recover. I was one hot mess. I … [Read more...]

Over the years I’ve made lots of goals, some I powered through, some disappeared as fast as they came, I’ve come to realize I made some really naive goals. Now, being a little older... a little wiser and being an adult who's evolved a bit in the last ten years and come to realize that part of the reason I hadn’t achieved certain things in my life wasn’t because I couldn’t do it or I wasn’t smart enough or whatever the excuse at the time may have been, but rather this: I set goals … [Read more...]

When I was in school, I had to be #1. I am competitive by nature and I would push and push myself to get better grades, research more and do more. This lead me to terrible panic attacks. The type of attacks where I honestly thought I was going to die. I would get tunnel vision, start hyperventilating and feel my heart ripping through my chest. I would often end up in the hospital where my message was to relax and take care of myself. I didn't listen to my doctor and my panic attacks … [Read more...]

You know the moment when you grab your yogurt and realize you forgot your spoon? You look around for things to use to eat your delicious treat and dammit, you can only find a fork. Doesn't seem that bad, right? Alas, the yogurt starts pouring through the fork and you wonder if it would be easier to just slurp it out or even use the opposite side of the fork to shovel it in. It's frustrating and slow. This is exactly what getting my 4 year-old out of the house at 6:10am is like. You can trust me … [Read more...]

This past week, I moved from 3 workouts to 6. You would think that exercising as much as I did would be hard, but it was actually kind of fun (Don't tell Chris). I mixed things up between one-on-one training sessions and running. I liked that each one-on-one session was different. We are working on the same core movements, but in different ways. This keeps things interesting for sure. I was doing really well until this thing came out: I know it seems innocent, but I'm pretty damn clumsy. I … [Read more...]