Jordan Law Owner of Spinunity Cycle Studio GROUP FITNESS WITH THE ALBERTA FITNESS LEADERS ASSOCIATION (AFLCA) Fitness to me means putting yourself first. I truly believe that without feeding our bodies with movement, and feeding our minds the stress relieving benefits of exercise we can’t fully invest in ourselves.
Be honest with your weaknesses, because we all have them - a glass of wine turns into a bottle, just a spoonful of your husbands DQ Blizzard turns into 7, just ONE Jacek Chocolate a day???... You get the point.
The biggest fitness myth for me is that you only need to invest into an hours’ worth of work a day and that will be enough. We need to invest in our eating habits and we should move all day. If we’re sedentary for 16 hours and sleeping for 7, 1 hour of exercise isn’t enough.
Don't forget to enjoy life through your fitness journey. It takes a lot of work to maintain control so we need a little bit of risk and release to balance it all out and make it fun.
You hear it all the time, but if you’re starting out with a fitness program, start slow and perfect it step by step. One pushup done perfectly will benefit you better than 10 pushups done poorly. I instruct my riders to focus on what their body is feeling before trying to keep up with everyone else. We all started somewhere once, and it’s a constant investment, but we will always finish successfully together when we focus on our own abilities.
Kaylor Betts TNP Fitness PERSONAL TRAINER SPORTS NUTRITIONIST Fitness is a form of meditation for me. It's something that when I enter my workout, it's just me, and the movements. I am fully present with each and every rep or stride and all my thoughts, all my stressors eventually dissipate. I maintain aware that much of the purpose behind my workouts is to strengthen me physically, but a good portion of what fitness brings to my life is mental. I focus on having the mindset that maintaining a fitness regime is something that is just simply necessary to prepare me and give me the strength for the challenges life brings me. The biggest fitness myth to me is hat more means better. This is not necessarily always true when it comes to fitness. I believe that the majority of people who are trying to take their body and health to the next level, workout too much. I see it all the time. Me personally, I focus on 30-45 min workouts 3-5 x per week, some of which is moderate intensity, and then try to simply "move" as much as I can outside of my workouts. I focus on consistency throughout the year, not ups and downs. Intense workouts are a stressor on the body. It can pose great benefits for us in the right amount, so I definitely promote it. However, if you don't take enough time to recover and rest, these workouts now start to be damaging for our health and can actually hinder your ability to lose body fat and slow your metabolism.
40 YEGFITNESS JULY/AUGUST 2016
Don't worry about getting in a ton of high intensity workouts in every day of the week, especially if you don't sleep enough and are stressed. Focus first on sleep, hydration, stress reduction and eating good whole food. If you can master these, then you can go give your body a good ass kicking. If you have a fitness goal, and your mindset is to get to that goal as fast as possible, you are setting yourself up for failure. Focus on changing your lifestyle. Start slow, be consistent, and find a professional coach who can be there for you and provide you with the knowledge you need to get to your goal. Fitness is like brushing your teeth - the goal is to get to the point where you do it everyday because if you don't, you know how bad it feels. Get to the point where it's just part of your weekly routine! That's what I call success in fitness.