Are You Setting Reasonable Goals?

As Laura Kneedler discusses in her post How to Make Your Fitness Goals Stick, successful goals often share certain attributes. Perhaps the most important characteristic of a goal is that it needs to be realistic. If your goal is not reasonable, you will be setting yourself up to fail. Part of you always knows when [...]

Developing Self-Discipline the Easy Way – Part 2

In my last post, I discussed an easy way to develop self-discipline in the face of an impulse. Today, let’s look at the second piece of self discipline: doing what you feel you should be doing (even when you don’t necessarily feel like it).
When we’re talking about fitness, this is most obviously applicable to getting [...]

Zen and the Art of Weight Maintenance – Part 1

Mindfulness is a word that seems to be getting a lot of mileage these days and it’s no different when used in the context of weight loss. This central concept of Zen practice is, to put it simply, the act of paying deliberate attention; and it can help you whittle down your calorie intake without [...]

Making Cardio Fun

I have a confession to make; many cardio workouts bore the enthusiasm right out of me. Sometimes when I’m on the treadmill at the gym, I feel like a caged rat on an exercise wheel and getting motivation to continue can be a real drag.
You see, I’m an outdoor-loving adrenaline junkie, and for years I [...]

Zen and the Art of Weight Maintenance – Part 2

In Zen and the art of weight maintenance part 1 we talked about how you can use mindfulness to help you determine whether or not you really need to eat when you first feel that hunger signal. Today let’s look at how it can be used once you’ve determined that it really is time to [...]

Zen and the Art of Weight Maintenance – Part 3

The first two parts in this three-part series looked at mindfulness and food intake. Today’s post is about how we can make use of mindfulness while weight training.
Certain exercises come to mind when you think of paying mindful attention to your workout. You might get the image of a session of Tai Chi, Yoga, or [...]

The Top 6 Ways to Sabotage Your Workout

Even with the best intentions, you can sometimes sabotage your workout by overworking or working out in the wrong ways. Here is my list of the top six workout vices, and the ways to cut out these bad habits.
1. Skip your warm up.
You may tire sooner without a warm up and end up having a [...]

Training Partners and Motivation

Motivation to train can sometimes be hard to come by. There is no point in pretending that it will always be easy. Sure, there will be days when the sun is shining outside, and you are itching to get out there and do your workout. That may even be true most days for some trainers, [...]

Setting Fitness Goals, Then Make Them Work!

Setting Fitness Goals? Running your first marathon for that special charity? Entered a ‘Try a Tri’? Signed up for a long distance bike ride?  These are the kinds of events that often get us motivated to really get focused on getting fit and organizing our training.  You choose your event, get registered, mark it on [...]

Is Stress Stopping You Getting Six-Pack Abs?

You know how it is: you’ve been working your Abs to death to get that tightly cut six-pack and you’ve been watching your diet and nutrition program like a hawk, but you can’t seem to shift that last few pounds of fat. In today’s fast-paced world, it could be stress that’s screwing with your 6-pack. [...]

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