Yesterday You Said Tomorrow

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Boot Camp Workout

Ready to Sweat?

Fitness boot camps never go out of style for good reason: The military-inspired workouts burn serious calories.

Built on three fundamentals of training—cardio, strength, and agility—boot-camp workouts require little more than your body weight to get result. They’re more intense than any fitness class and more fun than traditional gym workouts.  Fitness boot camps never go out of style for good reason: The military-inspired workouts burn serious calories.

Stick to Basics

Put aside your stability ball: Boot camps are all about bare essentials, starting with the moves.

By stringing together exercises like jumping jacks, pushups, and squats into circuits that go from one move to the next with little or no rest in between, these workouts turn your body into an uber-efficient resistance machine. The moves target muscles throughout your entire body.  They’re much more effective than equipment-based exercises that isolate one single muscle group at a time.

Follow the Clock

Set a time limit for each exercise— think 20 to 60 seconds. It keeps you from pushing too hard and from slacking.  If I told you ‘Do squats until I say stop,’ you wouldn’t give 100 percent. But if I said ‘Do squats for 30 seconds,’ you’d work harder because you’d see the end in sight.

Take It Outside

Without fancy equipment or complicated moves, you can do a boot-camp workout anywhere—a park, a playground, even a parking lot.

And taking your sweat session outside has some serious perks: When researchers compared the mental benefits of an outdoor workout with an indoor one, 71 percent of the fresh-air exercisers felt less tense afterward, while 72 percent of the cooped-up crew felt even more stressed.

Buddy Up

One key to success is camaraderie. A group makes you accountable to show up, and the support helps you push through an intense workout.

When it comes to fitness, the power of your peeps is well documented: One review of 87 studies on nearly 50,000 subjects found a clear link between social support and exercise. Enlist a small group of friends who have similar fitness goals and pick a time and place. If you’re a no-show, next time they’ll make you drop and do 20.

Referene:  Woman’s Health Magazine

Obtaining a Healthy Diet and Sticking to It

#1 Plan for Success

To set yourself up for success, think about planning a healthy diet as a number of small, manageable steps rather than one big drastic change.

Simplify

Think of your diet in terms of color, variety, and freshness. This way it should be easier to make healthy choices.

Start slow and make changes to you eating habits overt time.

Changing everything at once usually leads to cheating or giving up on your new eating plan. Make small steps, like adding a salad (full of different color vegetables) to your diet once a day or switching from butter to olive oil when cooking.

Every change you make to improve your diet matters.

Don’t let your missteps derail you—every healthy food choice you make counts

Drink More Water

It’s common to mistake thirst for hunger, so staying well hydrated will also help you make healthier food choices.

Exercise everyday

Find something active that you like to do and add it to your day.

The benefits of lifelong exercise are abundant and regular exercise may even motivate you to make healthy food choices a habit.

#2 Moderation is Key

People often think of healthy eating as an all or nothing proposition, but a key foundation for any healthy diet is moderation. The goal of healthy eating is to develop a diet that you can maintain for life, not just a few weeks or months, or until you’ve hit your ideal weight. So try to think of moderation in terms of balance. We all need a balance of carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals to sustain a healthy body.

For most of us, moderation or balance means eating less than we do now.  More specifically, it means eating far less of the unhealthy stuff (unrefined sugar, saturated fat, for example) and more of the healthy (such as fresh fruit and vegetables).

Try not to think of certain foods as “off-limits.”

When you ban certain foods or food groups, it is natural to want those foods more, and then feel like a failure if you give in to temptation. Start by reducing portion sizes and not eating them as often. Later you may find yourself craving them less or thinking of them as only occasional indulgences. Think smaller portions.

When dining out, split a dish with a friend, and never supersize anything. At home, use smaller plates, think about serving sizes in realistic terms, and start small. If you don’t feel satisfied at the end of a meal, try adding more leafy green vegetables or rounding off the meal with fresh fruit.

Healthy eating is not about strict nutrition philosophies, staying unrealistically thin, or depriving yourself of the foods you love. Rather, it’s about feeling great, having more energy, and keeping yourself as healthy as possible– all of which can be achieved by learning some nutrition basics and using them in a way that works for you. You can expand your range of healthy food choices and learn how to plan ahead to create and maintain a tasty, healthy diet here at Unite Fitness Camp. Give us a Call today!

Leah Britt
Certified Personal Trainer/Nutritionist

Time to Work Out

There’s Always Time to Work Out

Leah’s best ways to fit exercise into a busy schedule

These four cardio workouts – two indoor and two outdoor – take 20 minutes each. So the next time one of you catches yourself saying: “I just don’t have time today,” you can remember that 20 minutes is all it takes for a fun, effective workout – no excuses!

Outdoor option 1:

To add intervals to a normal walk, start at your usual pace and gradually build up the intensity for each interval.

Warm-up: 2 min at 3.5mph, building to your regular walking pace 16 min: Walk fast for 2 min (5mph walking, 7mph running). Walk more slowly for 2 min (4mph walking, 6mph running). Do this four times. You should be breathing hard in the fast sections and able to speak only a few words. During the easy intervals, you should be able to hold a conversation

Cool-down: 2 min easy pace (3.5mph)

Total calories burned: 99

Outdoor option 2:

Grab a skipping rope and get ready to sweat – this program will keep your heart pumping. Do it in a park near some steps.

Warm-up: 2 min jogging

3 min running at a strong pace

2 min running up and walking down steps

1 min skipping

3 min running fast

2 min running up and walking down steps

1 min skipping

2 min running fast

1 min running up and walking down steps

1 min skipping

Cool-down: 2 min easy jogging

Total calories burned: 250

Indoor option 1:

Choose the manual program on a stationary bike and adjust the levels yourself. For each workout, take it down a notch if our suggestions are too hard.

Warm-up: 2 min at level 3 (maintain 80rpm)

1 min easy (level 4; this should be a pace that you could maintain for half an hour if necessary; come back to this pace for all subsequent “easy” intervals)

1 min hard (level 6)

2 min easy (level 4)

2 min hard (level 7)

3 min easy (level 4)

2 min hard (level 8; to get through this tough interval, breathe deeply while you focus on one point)

3 min easy (level 4)

2 min hard (level 7)

Cool-down: 2 min at level 3

Total calories burned: 189

Indoor option 2:

Choose two different machines at the gym (stairclimber, elliptical trainer, treadmill, bike or rowing machine) and alternate between them. For my example, I’ve used the elliptical trainer and stairclimber, but mix it up as you wish.

Warm-up: 2 min on elliptical trainer (level 3)

4 min on stairclimber (level 7)

4 min on elliptical trainer (level 7)

4 min on stairclimber (level 8)

4 min on elliptical trainer (level 7)

Cool-down: 2 min on stairclimber (level 3)

Total calories burned: 228

Twenty minutes that count

Need more evidence that a 20-minute workout is worth the effort? Let the numbers do the talking. First, look at how much you’d burn during a normal 20-minute routine and then see how much you can burn just by boosting your intensity for short periods of time. And remember, the more intense your workout, the more you’ll sweat and the more calories you’ll burn.

20 minutes regular activity burns the following calories*:

walking (3.5 mph) 80
running (10-minute miles) 200
cycling (level 4) 160
rowing (moderate effort) 140

20 minutes with intervals burns the following calories:

walking (3.5 mph/power walking) 85
running (10-minute/8-minute miles) 225
cycling (level 4/level 7) 180
rowing (moderate effort/very vigorous effort) 155
* All calorie counts are for a 150-pound adult.