Arin Lindauer

 

“Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets”

Queen & David Bowie Under Pressure Lyrics 1981

I know you may have thought today’s blog post was going to be me singing this great song from Queen and David Bowie, but it really is about stress!

When I was putting this blog post together this song kept creeping into my mind, so I had to give it some well-deserved recognition.

So let’s talk about…the pressure or stress are you under?  Now stay with me on this.  This post is long and you may have to come back to it, but it will be worth your time.

Here at Transformation Fitness and Wellness we work with all types of Professionals.  Many of them deal with the infamous and sometimes debilitating thing called: STRESS.

Did you know that stress is not always the enemy!

People often think of stress as a dangerous and deadly thing that can wipe years off of your life.

Stress can be very harmful in certain situations, but stress can also help you stay focused energetic and alert.  The Stress you feel before or during a presentation actually increases your concentration and can be a good thing.

Stress and the Allostatic Load

Grab a piece of paper and write down all the things in your average day that could possibly be a stress on your body, mind, and emotions.

I’d guess your list probably looks something like this:

• Boss yelled at me
• Rushing around to see clients
• Worrying about money
• Commuting
• Crummy weather
• Kid woke me up early
• Girlfriend/boyfriend snarled at me this morning

If you’re like most people, you’re a camel carrying a big load of straw with these combined life stresses.

Now imagine what could happen if you start piling on more straw with worrying about your body image, with physical stress from your workouts, or with restricting your food intake. Eventually… snap.

The pile of straw — the cumulative total of all the stuff in your life that causes physical, mental, and/or emotional stress — is known as your allostatic load.

Good stress, bad stress

Some stress is good stress (also called eustress). Good stress pushes you out of your comfort zone, but in a good way. Good stress helps you learn, grow, and get stronger.

For example, riding a roller coaster is fun and exciting. It lasts a short time, and you feel exhilarated afterwards. (That is, if you like roller coasters.)

Exercise can be another form of good stress. You feel a little uncomfortable but then you feel good, and after an hour or so, you’re done.

Good stress:

• is short-lived
• is infrequent
• is over quickly (in a matter of minutes or hours)
• can be part of a positive life experience
• inspires you to action
• helps build you up — it leaves you better than you were before.

But let’s say you ride that roller coaster constantly, or lift weights 4 hours a day, every day. Now it doesn’t seem so fun, does it?

This is bad stress, or distress.

Bad stress:

• lasts a long time
• is chronic
• is ongoing
• is negative, depressing, and demoralizing
• de-motivates and paralyzes you
• breaks you down — it leaves you worse off than you were before.

One key feature that distinguishes good from bad stress is how well the stressor matches your ability to recover from it.

The stress “sweet spot”

Since stress affects the mind, body, and behavior in many ways, everyone experiences stress differently.

Each of us has a unique “recovery zone”, whether that’s physical or psychological, and our recovery zone depends on several factors.

Just as important as the stress itself is how you perceive and respond to it.

Some people go with the flow and can adapt well to what others would perceive as highly stressful events. Other people crumble at even the slightest challenge or frustration they encounter.

There are many things that affect our tolerance to stress, such as:

• Our attitude and outlook — People with optimistic, proactive and positive attitudes are more stress resistant. And people who view stressful events as a challenge, and realize that change is simply a part of life, have a far larger recovery zone and are far less vulnerable to stress.
• Our life experience — Past stress can build us up or break us down, depending on when the stress happened and how powerful it was. Moderate stress at a time when we can handle it generally makes us better and more resilient. However, stress at a time when we’re already vulnerable (such as during childhood, or piled on top of other stressors) can actually leave us worse off.
• Our genetic makeup and epigenetic expression — Some of us are genetically more “stress susceptible” than others, especially if we meet environmental factors that then epigenetically “switch on” or “switch off” those crucial genes. For instance, one study found that older people carrying a certain gene polymorphism suffered major depression only if they had something bad happen to them in childhood. The folks with the genetic variant who had normal childhoods were fine.
• Our perception of control — Stress becomes most traumatic when we feel trapped. If we’re able to successfully fight or flee, we tend to recover better. But if we feel unable to change the situation, we’ll go to the next-stage stress response, the “freeze” response. This is when we feel helpless, hopeless, and paralyzed. We may also get more stressed if we’re “control freaks” — constantly trying to grip, grab, and grasp everything tightly.
• Our natural personality type — If you have confidence in yourself and your ability to influence events and persevere through challenges, it’s easier to take stressful events in stride. People who are more vulnerable to stress tend to feel like they have no ability to influence the events around them. They might also be highly empathetic and thus feel “pushed” and “pulled” by the needs and wants of others.
• Our support network — A strong network of supportive friends and family members (which can even include pets) is a powerful buffer against the stress of life. Conversely, loneliness and isolation worsens stress.
• Our ability to deal with our emotions — If you can’t calm and soothe yourself when feeling stressed or overly emotional, you’re more vulnerable to stress. The ability to level out your emotions will help you better handle adversity.
• Our environment — Natural environments (e.g. outdoors, spaces with lots of windows and natural lighting, etc.) calm us down, as do secure and safe environments (such as your comfy living room). Industrial environments full of stimuli (e.g. noises, machinery, artificial lights, threats coming at us quickly, etc.) amp us up and put us on edge. We also feel more relaxed in environments we think we can control, such as our homes; we’re more anxious in environments we think we can’t control, such as large public spaces or most worksites.
• Our allostatic load — The larger the allostatic load (in other words, the more stuff we’re dealing with at once), the more it wears down our resilience, and shrinks our recovery zone. How we respond to stress is critical, but the cumulative load of excess stress can wear down even the most resilient and positive person.

Generally, the “recovery zone” looks like this:

If the stressor is too low — not enough to cause a reaction — then nothing will happen. You’ll go along the same as before, no better or worse.

If the stressor is too high — too strong, and/or lasts too long, outpacing your recovery ability — then you’ll eventually break down.

If the stressor is within your recovery zone — neither too much nor too little, and doesn’t last too long — then you’ll recover from it and get better. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

Balance the demands

We want enough “good stress” to keep a fire under our butts, but not so much that we break down and burn out.

(This applies to our own exercise and nutrition as well as our family lives and overall workload.)

That optimum zone depends on your allostatic load, as well as how you perceive and respond to it. Remember, this is your individual stress zone — nobody else’s.

And remember that the allostatic load is everything: mental, physical, emotional: that email from the boss… your hangnail… the weird paint smell in your office… your shockingly high phone bill… everything goes on to the “stress pile”. So consider this holistically.

If your existing pile of straw is already heavy, then it’ll take only a few more straws to break you. And if you view your pile of straw as being too large and heavy, regardless of its actual size, then again it will only take a few more straws to break you.

Thus to manage stress, we must do two things:

• learn to balance our life demands, workload, and exercise/nutrition responsibilities; and
• view these responsibilities as an achievable challenge or an interesting problem to solve, rather than some insurmountable obstacle.

Manage your allostatic load

To lead a healthy, productive, and fulfilling life, you must manage your allostatic load.

Here are some activities you can do immediately to boost your body’s happy chemicals, activate your “rest and digest” nervous system, and start building your stress resilience.

• a relaxing walk (especially outside);
• being out in nature;
• getting moderate sunshine;
• listening to relaxing music;
• mindfulness practice and meditation;
• massage;
• deep breathing;
• laughing;
• snuggling a loved one or pet;
• yoga, gentle mobility, and/or slow stretching exercises;
• gentle swimming or water immersion (such as a hot tub);
• relaxing in a sauna;
• having sex (seriously);
• physical, non-competitive play;
• moderate, occasional drinking — 1-2 drinks for men, and 1 for women… enjoyed slowly and mindfully;
• drinking green tea.

In other words, think of de-stressing as purposefully chasing relaxation.

By the way, some recreational activities don’t count, such as:

• watching TV or movies;
• playing video games; or
• surfing the internet.

Electronic stimulation, while fun, is still stimulation. So, anything involving a screen is out.

Lets dig a little deeper into a few of these.

Meditation

Meditation is one of the best stress-relievers.

Research on regular meditation shows how incredibly restorative it is, as it:

• lowers blood pressure;
• lowers heart rate;
• lowers stress hormones;
• lowers inflammation;
• boosts immune system;
• improves focus, mental clarity and attention, even when not meditating;
• improves mood; and
• improves sleep.

Being chronically over-stressed can negatively rewire your brain, increasing your risk for anxiety and depression.

Fortunately, meditation is like magic. When done regularly, it can rewire your brain in the opposite direction, to do all kinds of awesome stuff.

For example, meditation can contribute to:

• neurogenesis (growth of new neural connections and brain cells);
• emotional regulation (in other words, your ability to manage your feelings);
• memory and recall;
• development of the brain’s gray matter (even after only a few weeks); and
• our ability to regulate our body clock.

So how do you actually go about doing it?

While people sometimes think of meditation as an arcane practice best suited to adherents of the Hare Krishna sect, it’s actually pretty easy to do, and you don’t have to look or act like an aging hippie to benefit from it.

1. Find a comfortable, quiet, private place.
2. Sit or lie down, whatever seems most convenient. The position doesn’t matter, as long as you’re relaxed.
3. Get a timer going. Set a timer for 5 minutes, and then forget about counting down how long it’s been. That’s your timer’s job. It’ll take care of you.
4. Close your eyes.
5. Start with a quick 30-second “body scan”. As you scan down your body from head to toe, think about consciously relaxing each muscle. Let everything sink downward. In particular, let your face droop.
6. Now, focus on your breathing. Breathe in through your diaphragm, pushing your belly in and out. Observe how the air moves in and out.
7. Count 10 breaths, observing each one.
8. Let thoughts drift in and out. Let them wander in, then shoo them away. They’ll be back. You don’t need to hold on to them.
9. Observe only. Don’t judge. There is no “should”. If you think of something, no worries. Don’t fret. If you hear a noise, or have an itch, simply think, There’s a noise or I have an itch. Make a note of it; then move on.
10. Keep coming back to your breathing. There’s no rush; just keep wandering back to it. What’s it doing now?
11. Repeat until your time is up.
12. Finish with 5 good belly breaths to “bookend” the session.
13. Open your eyes.

That’s it. Pretty easy right?

Green tea

You already know that drinking green tea has tons of health benefits. At PN we have been singing its praises for years. And now you can add one more benefit to that list.

A large study in Japan found that regularly drinking green tea lowered the stress levels of those found to have high levels of psychological stress. This is thought to be due to L-theanine, a non-protein amino acid in green tea (and, to an extent, in other teas).

L-theanine is a proven stress reducer and calming agent. It inhibits cortisol, which our body releases in response to stress, and also lowers your blood pressure and heart rate as it chills out your sympathetic nervous system. And it causes all of these actions in as little as 30 to 40 minutes after consumption.

L-theanine may even change your brain function. During most of your waking hours, your brain is producing beta brain waves, which can affect concentration and focus. Green tea consumption will actually stimulate your brain to emit alpha brain waves instead, creating a state of deep relaxation and mental alertness, similar to what you can achieve through meditation.

This may occur because L-theanine is involved in the formation of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma amino butyric acid (GABA). GABA influences the levels of two other neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, producing the key relaxation effect.

Sipping a few cups of tea throughout the day can help to lower stress, increase focus (even more effectively than coffee), suppress appetite and improve your health. Not too bad.

L-theanine, found in green, is a proven stress reducer and calming agent.

Exercise

Regular exercise is a great tool to help you handle stress. Exercise often allows you to blow off steam, and exercising regularly can boost your stress-tolerance.

However, remember that all stress fits in one bucket — i.e. the allostatic load. If you have a super-stressed out life, training your ass off 6 times a week is only contributing to that, as training stress goes in the bucket too.

Instead, balance your exercise approach. It’s not all about high-intensity, high-volume lifting combined with high-intensity intervals all the time. Training intensely as your sole approach to exercise will continually jack up your sympathetic nervous system and compound your stress symptoms.

Instead, do a mix of intense weight training, some intense conditioning, and plenty of restorative exercise — exercise that leaves you feeling more refreshed and invigorated after doing it, not drained and exhausted. This would include activities like:

• walking outside in sunshine (BSP’s favorite, especially with the dog);
• yoga;
• gentle mobility, and/or slow stretching exercises;
• gentle swimming or water immersion (such as a hot tub);
• a casual bike ride; or
• a casual hike.

This exercise is meant to stimulate some blood flow, get you outside if possible (because sunshine and nature are proven to improve mood and lower stress), burn a few calories, and stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system.

Your parasympathetic nervous system is known as the “rest and digest” system (as opposed to the “fight or flight” sympathetic nervous system). Engaging your parasympathetic nervous system is key to lowering your stress.

There’s nothing wrong with kicking butt in the gym, but don’t let your only form of exercise be balls-to-the-wall high intensity training, especially if you already lead a stressful lifestyle.

Allow yourself some quiet and gentle exercise: You’ll lower stress, improve recovery, and — as a side benefit — you’ll also improve your intense lifting.

Other tips for stress management

• Establish a routine and some order in your life. While scheduling yourself too strictly can be confining, too much reactive spontaneity can be stressful as well. Find a balance between the two that works for you.

• Eat plenty of omega-3 fats. Eat fish, pasture-raised animals, flax seeds and chia seeds, and take fish, krill or algae oil.

• Know your limits. Know how much stress you can handle. While you can increase your stress tolerance and lower your stress by following the preceding tips, simply knowing that you can’t be everywhere at once, or everything to everyone, will also take some pressure off. Be reasonable about your individual capabilities and expectations. Remember that each person is different.

• Single-task. We often think that multitasking lets us do more work in less time. Research consistently shows the opposite: When we focus on multiple things at once, we do each of them less efficiently and effectively. Each time you interrupt one task, your brain takes about 15 minutes to get back to optimal processing speed and efficiency. Most of us don’t do anything for 15 focused minutes, so our brain never has any time to settle in and get ‘er done. Do one thing at a time, do it well, and then move on to the next.

• Unplug from the digital world. There’s constant electronic stimulation in our lives. Unplug from it once in a while. Turn off your phone. Close your computer. Go read a book, play games, and get social with other humans.

• Change your stress story. Drop the negative self-talk and work towards a more positive attitude. Telling yourself, and other people, how busy you are and how much you have to do only makes yourself feel busier, chaotic and more stressed. On the other hand, a positive attitude can actually lower stress levels. Simply telling yourself you can manage something can give you more confidence to manage it. This doesn’t mean that you can never be frustrated or sad, it simply means you shouldn’t wallow in it.

What this means for you

Don’t get stressed out by trying to incorporate all these tips. (Ha, ha.) Just focus on two key points:

1. All stress — life, work, family, financial, training, good, bad — fits into one bucket, creating your unique allostatic load. To stay healthy, lean, and fit, you must manage this load. Find the strategies that work best for you, and practice them on a regular basis. And keep in mind that what works best for you at this particular stage of your life may not work for you in other stages. Be willing to evolve your strategies as your life, and allostatic load, evolve.
2. Just as important as your stress load is how you respond to it. View stress as a challenge or an interesting puzzle to solve. Roll with the punches and have a Plan B (or C, or D). Stay open, flexible, and creative. This attitude helps you handle your allostatic load better, and mitigate the potential harm it could cause you.

 

Hope you enjoyed this post and if you want help with how to incorporate healthier habits into your life we can help.  It is amazing when you start taking care of you, everything else seems to come together.  Let us know if we can help!  If you need help managing your stress come-in for a FREE CONSULTATION to see how we can help.

Does the change of the seasons bring on a change in your sinuses too? Many people experience symptoms such as congestion, sneezing, itchy eyes or throat, and feel like their nose is going to run away from their face! If the sinus pressure makes you feel like you will never be able to get a good night’s sleep again, read on to learn about a non-pharmaceutical approach to dealing with congestion caused by the Sternocleidomastoid (SCM).

You might already know or have heard about trigger point therapy (TPT). It is non-invasive/non-pharmaceutical pain management technique in which a trained professional manipulates specific areas of soft tissue know as trigger points. A trigger point is an irritable tight spot in a taut band of skeletal muscle which sends pain or sensation that can be felt away from the muscles causing the problem, known as referred pain. For example, trigger points in one of your neck muscles may refer pain to the wrist area and is often misdiagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome.

Let’s talk about one of the neck muscles called Sternocleidomastoid (SCM). SCM lies on the side of your neck and has two muscle bellies. As you can see the picture below, trigger points (X’s) in SCM refer pain in a wider area (red shaded area).

Here are some symptoms caused by active trigger points in the SCM.

• Tension headache (top of your head, back of your head, and forehead to eyebrow)
• Watery eyes
• Blurring eyes
• Earache
• Dizziness
• Vertigo
• Sinus congestion (sound familiar anyone?!)

 

The SCM causes many problems when it becomes dysfunctional, but it is very common to have trigger points in your SCM. Do you do anything that tightens your SCM on a regular basis? (SCM is mainly responsible for turning and tilting your head).

Here are some of the perpetuating factors of SCM dysfunction.

• Sleeping on your stomach (turn your head to one side overnight)
• Talking on the phone for a long period of time without headsets.
• Reading a book on the bed while turning your head to one side.
• Bad posture

Allergy symptom can be triggered by many different factors like pollen, pets or dust. But when you have sinus congestion, you may be able to try simple self-care to treat SCM to relieve the symptom.

Step 1:

Turn your head side to side to see the range of motion (how far you can look over each shoulder). Can you look further towards one side than to the other? It could be that you have tension in one or both of your SCM’s.

Step 2:

Using the hand that is on the same side as the SCM you are going to be treating, firmly pinch the SCM. Start close to the clavicle (collarbone) and massage the SCM using the same “pinch” all the way up to the bottom of your ear. You may find “hot spots,” which are more painful than others, or may even cause the referred pain pattern seen in the pictures above. When you find these “hot spots,” hold the pinch until the tight spot gets looser. Relax your neck and make sure the SCM is as loose as possible during the treatment. (See picture below)

Step 3:

Turn your head again to see if the range of motion has been improved

 

It may not be a 100% cure, but deactivating trigger points and increasing circulation in SCM may ease the symptom when you have a headache or sinus congestion.

Would you like someone to contact you about Trigger Point Therapy? Fill out the form here:

https://indianapolispersonaltraining.com/indianapolis-personal-training-services/trigger-point-therapy/ ‎

Trigger point therapy can help you with many ways to relieve your pain and other symptoms. For more information about Trigger Point Therapy, please contact us at 927-9689 or email at support@tfwellness.com.

New Work Out Program Design

Some of you may have noticed that we have made some changes in our work out program design.  Today I am going to explain to you what those changes are and why we are making them.  An example of the new program layouts that we are using is shown on the left (you may have seen your Fitness Professional  carrying forms like this one around the studio recently).

The Program

All workouts will be structured according to our program design and exercise methods.  Workouts will include core work, corrective exercises for any mobility or strength deficiencies you may have, exercises for all of the major muscle groups, and some type of finisher or burn at the end of the workout session.  All of this will be done in a manner that is specific to each of our client’s goals and needs.  For example, if you have troubles with shoulder mobility we will include a corrective exercise to address the problem. If you are looking for fat loss we will provide set/rep schemes and exercises that will help you reach that goal.  Each program will contain two or three workouts, depending on your session schedule, which will be completed four times each before moving on to a new program.  You may ask, “If I am doing the same workout four times will I still improve and benefit from it?”  The answer is yes, it can take up to six weeks for your body to adapt to a workout and for the benefits of your workout to stop occurring.  This means that by repeating these workouts four times, which will take approximately four weeks, you will continually improve if you are also taking action outside the studio.  Always reinforce your studio workouts with proper nutrition and cardio at home!

 

The Benefits

The biggest benefits that you will see with this new programming method is that it will provide structure and standardization while also being measurable and progressive.

1)      Structure and Standardization

As stated above, this new program design will give our clients more structured workouts based on our exercise methods and principles.  By having this structure we will also be able to standardize the workouts.  This means that any Fitness Professional will be able to service any client and ensure the client keeps on track with their personal program.   All Fitness Professionals will be able to quickly identify what exercises, sets, reps, and resistances you have been performing up to that point and what you should do moving forward.

2)      Measurable and Progressive

The program design will also allow us to help you progress throughout your time working with us.  This design will allow us to efficiently keep track of your progress from workout to workout.  We will be able to accurately record what you have done in each workout and improve on it the next time.  Each time we write you a new program we will be able to observe the last program you completed and give you something new that will challenge you to an even greater extent.

I hope this post will give you  a better idea about what is going on here at Transformation and how we are trying to improve our services!  Also if you have ever wondered what it would be like to workout at Transformation Fitness and Wellness please Click Here and request a Free Consultation.  We will sit down, evaluate your health history and fitness goals.  Then we will determine if we are a good fit for you!

Thanks and have a great day today!

 

 

Though the months of July and August Transformation Fitness and Wellness hosted a 4-Week Skinny Jeans Challenge!  We had 16 women in the running for a pair of Designer Skinny Jeans and an experience shopping at Nordstrom!

 

Each of the women completed three workouts per week, logged their food in a food journal, and committed to adding cardio 2-3 days per week.  They supported each other in grueling but satisfying workouts each week.  They had great weeks and they had not so great weeks.  But, hey that’s life!

 

What I can tell you is they all saw tremendous results and if you want to see people work hard come check out our small group training classes.  We have them early in the morning, towards the later morning, Noon, afternoon, and on into the evening.

 

Nothing gets us more excited than seeing hard work and dedication to the process that will ultimately help each person reach their goals!  We live, eat, breath helping people change their habits which then changes their lives!

 

You have to be willing to get outside your comfort zone!

 

The results from the Skinny Jeans Challenge were close!  From all 16 participants we saw between 4 and 16% change in their bodies.  This was assessed by measuring weight, body fat, and circumference measurements.  The difference between the top two ladies was only 1.3%.

 

The Skinny Jeans Winner, Margo, saw 16.4% change in her body.  She dropped 3 pounds of fat, 5 inches lost total on her body, and dropped her body fat 4.1% all in 4 short weeks!  Great work Margo, those are tremendous results!

 

I know I am giving the winner the most praise and sincerely all these women are worthy of new Skinny Jeans!  They all worked hard and every single one of them saw amazing results!

 

Here is a pic of Margo in her new Skinny Jeans!

I want to give you more insight on what Margo did to see these changes.  Margo made the changes in her nutrition, cardio, and was consistent in her workouts.  With her nutrition we had to make sure she was eating enough and also getting enough protein in.  (This is very common when we coach clients on nutrition.)  When it came to cardio we found that she did not mind running and if we set it up in intervals it was very doable.  She was even able to recruit her 8 year old daughter to help keep her motivated during the cardio sessions!  That’s team work!

 

Most people can get themselves to their appointment, and this was true for Margo.  But she gave those workouts everything she had.  We provided the structure, coaching, and correction of form for the workouts, but she brought the will and desire!

 

This takes me to the passage I read in my reading this past week.  I have been reading John Maxwells, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth.  He quoted the passage “Dream Big”.

 

If there were ever a time to dare,

To make a difference,

To embark on something worth doing,

It is now.

Not for any grand cause, necessarily-

But for something that tugs at your heart,

Something that’s your aspiration,

Something that’s your dream.

You owe it to yourself to make your days here count.

Have fun.

Dig Deep.

Stretch.

Dream big.

Know, though, that things worth doing seldom come easy.

There will be good days.

And there will be bad days.

There will be times when you want to turn around,

Pack it up, and call it quits.

Those times tell you that you are pushing yourself,

That you are not afraid to learn by trying.

 

Margo’s journey reminded me of this passage.  Taking the steps necessary to live your dreams and reach your goals and do what you want to do will cost you.  You will have to work hard.  You will have to make sacrifices.  You will have to keep learning and growing and changing.

 

So ask yourself this question:  Are you willing to pay that price?  I certainly hope you are.  But know this: Most people are not.

 

It’s a harsh reality but with the help and support you can and will do anything you are willing to do as long as you are willing to make the necessary changes!

 

We are here for you, so reach out today!  Margo’s journey still continues and if you want to see results in as little as four weeks give us a call or Request a Free Consultation Today!

 

I highly encourage everyone to commit 20 minutes to an hour to reading each day.  I started this well over a year ago and it has had a huge impact on me personally.  I am currently reading John Maxwell’s book, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth.  Anything John Maxwell is well worth the read!

 

Words to live by:

 

“Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow has not yet come.  We have only today.  Let us begin.” – Mother Teresa

 

Arin Lindauer

I am excited to write this post today because I have something really cool to share with you.  Over the almost 6 years we have been in business we have evolved and changed and morphed this business.  This is all with the goal of giving the best product, having the best staff, and getting the best results for our clients.

 

In the process of constantly working to improve, perfect and provide the best product we started to look at how we service our clients.  We encourage our clients to get a “buddy” to do cardio with, so why not have a “buddy” to do your workout in the studio with?

 

We started providing small group training.  We also realized the time of the session need to be a little bit longer to best deliver the results we wanted to achieve, thus our small group sessions are 45 minutes in length.

 

The program still includes nutrition journal accountability, 6 week assessments, and cardio requirements are still talked about in our small groups.  Also we have added the option to sit down one on one with your accountability coach after your assessments to discuss your goals in more detail.  Honestly you can schedule an appointment like this anytime you need more support.

 

So why do I tell you all of this…

 

I was watching one Saturday morning as we finished up another kick butt workout by Ross and I saw the class foam rolling and stretching and talking.  I was not leading the discussion but it was the clients talking amongst each other.

 

They were talking about how one person was struggling with nutrition and the other client was giving amazing advice on what she personally does.

 

This is when it really sunk it…these clients were having a blast working out together, encouraging one another, keep each other going.  The Fitness Professional kept the class moving, perfecting form, and encouraging them too.  But what I found so amazing was the support system that produced from being in a group setting.

 

Then the following week again I was just observing the class one evening and I saw the group session come to an end and the members of the group were talking about how hard the workout was, glad it was done.  Then they were asking what each other did for work…business cards were exchanged and again it really hit me how amazing our small group training has become.

 

When we decided to open up this business we had a goal of helping people become healthier and live with a better quality of life.  In this process we have acquired sincerely amazing clients that we have the opportunity to see two and three times per week.  I love seeing the relationships that have formed with the people in the studio.

 

In conclusion I wanted to share this with you because if you have wondered about working out in a small group and you are not quite sure if it is for you I encourage you to give us a call or sign up for a Free Consultation and we can see if this a good fit for you.  At the end of the day we are still getting amazing results from people and if you don’t believe me just come and observe a group!

 

Also if you are reading this and you are a current client that works out one on one with us you might try a couple group sessions to see if you would like it too!

 

Transformation Fitness and Wellness is so proud to be able to service the clients we do and sincerely look forward to the transformations to come.  We vow to continue to perfect our product to deliver the best results in Indianapolis!  Keep up the great work supporting each other, amazing clients!

 

I encourage you if you are reading this and you are not a part of our Transformation Small Group System give us a call and sit down with me to see if it could be a good fit!  We guarantee our results or your money back!

 

Have a healthy and happy day today!

 

Arin

Everybody knows that sleep is affecting your health and life. If you sleep 8 hours a day, you spend one third of your life in the bed! Isn’t that a crazy fact? Therefore, getting a good quality of sleep is crucial! However, many people struggle with getting good sleep. Have you felt tired or stiff when you wake up? Sleeping posture affects your muscular health and it is very important to know how to sleep well! Do you know how you sleep every night? Do you know what the best way is to sleep?

Let’s look at figure 1- fetal position:

 

As you can see, your abdominal muscles are shortened as well as the chest muscles. If you sleep with this position for 8 hours, your abdominal muscles get tight, which causes lower back pain. Also, tight chest muscles pull your shoulders forward, sloughing your posture. We already do a lot of activities during the day to shorten our chest, such as using a computer, driving a car, or cooking, so you want to avoid tightening your chest when you are in bed. Do you sleep in a cold room? You often want to sleep in fetal position when it is cold. Make sure you set the right temperature on your thermostat or wear enough clothes to keep you warm.

How about figure 2? – sleeping on your stomach:

With this position, you have to turn your head to one side. Can you imagine how stiff your neck will be in the morning? Also, your calf muscles get tight as well. Ladies, do you wear heels? If you wear heels all day AND sleep on your stomach, your calves are shortened for a long period of time, which can cause foot pain or plantar fasciitis. Sleeping on your stomach is not a good idea.

Now let’s talk about a good sleeping posture. Ideally, you want to have your body as neutral as possible, so no muscles are extremely shortened or stretched overnight.

Take a look at the figure 3- sleeping on your side with support:

When you sleep on your side, you want to put a pillow between your knees so that your hip won’t be over-contracted or stretched, which decreases stress on your lower back. Also, if you can have another pillow in front of you to put your arm on, that can prevent from having a tight chest.

Look at the figure 4- sleeping on your back with pillow under your neck and knees:

Back Sleeping with Support

It is easier to have a neutral position when you sleep on your back. Just be sure to use good support.

Having a good sleeping posture affects not only a quality of sleep, but also muscle health. Getting good sleep gives you energy throughout the day that will make you more productive. A little change in your sleeping posture can give better sleep and less pain in your muscles, so why not try today?

For more information about the posture (sleeping, standing , or sitting) please contact at 927-9689.