via – Lydia M, AbsoluteFIT Blogger @ AVAC®
I’m missing the studio (a little) but the beach is pretty great as an alternative – and check out that muscle definition! Fearless in a bikini at 43, y’all – that’s AbsoluteFIT. (Don’t worry, I wasn’t actually working out – just had my kid take a quick side-plank shot for drama’s sake. Back to lounging – aloha, everybody, and I’ll see ya the day after I get back!)
–Lydia M.
via – Lydia M., AbsoluteFIT blogger
Kids — sometimes they underestimate their parents.
One of my most treasured childhood memories was the steaming summer afternoon when I was twelve, and my fifteen-year-old brother and two of his friends — all nearing six feet tall, with wingspans to match — challenged my mom to a 3-on-1 game of basketball. They saw a 35-year-old 5’5” mom of three; practically an old lady, surely no match for them.
Long story short: The 1966 high school state semifinals bball champ absolutely smoked those boys — burnt their weak game to the ground! It was glorious!
My own kids are still young enough that they think I can pretty much do anything, but they were somewhat skeptical when I said I could jump two-footed onto something as high as their beds. They tried it themselves several times and said it was impossible. Well:
Take that, young whippersnappers! I’m going to keep doing AbsoluteFIT, at least in part because I want to keep blowing their minds for decades to come.
—Lydia M.
Lydia Markoff is an Almaden-area writer, mom, and fitness enthusiast with Texas roots, a New York education, and a Californian heart. She plays bass, reads a lot, watches too much TV, and can be found in the AbsoluteFIT studio three to five times a week. Her life goals include having a body like Linda Hamilton’s in Terminator 2, and/or having Bill Murray randomly crash a party she is attending. If you need something from her, try bribing her with good coffee or cold beer; odds are, she wants one or the other of those right now.
Continuing on in our regular series “The Vail Blog” – A monthly discussion on the “ABC’s” of discipline in health, fitness and wellness.
via – Jackie Vail, Personal Trainer, Team AVAC®
The Vail Blog – “F”. . .The letter “F” has the fundamentals that can help provide you with a fabulous fitness workout.
FUN • FREQUENCY • FULL • FUEL
Starting with FUN: Enjoy what you are doing in the moment!
Beyond that moment is FREQUENCY, how often you schedule this fitness routine?
Within this workout, you should include a FULL body movement, like Burpee push-ups.
Most importantly, consider how you FUEL your body. A perfect choice is with delicious macro nutritious foods! What’s are those, you ask? The body needs all three macros’ for optimal fuel: Carbohydrate, protein and fat.
Hungry for more fun fitness facts, let’s talk jvail@avac.us.
-Jackie
via – Lydia M., AbsoluteFIT blogger
AbsoluteFIT is one of those habits you’re glad to have.
You know I mean that in a good way, right? Heh. OK but just look at this:
That’s the MyFitnessPal app on my phone — I’ve logged 65+ days in a row (starting when I was on the AbsoluteFIT Challenge 2.0), which I think I can now call a genuine habit.
Food-wise, it keeps me honest, and so far, it’s helped me lose 11 pounds with remarkably little effort. And that’s INCLUDING a food category I’ve created in the app called “blowout” — that’s how I log things like my awesome, high-calorie Mother’s Day (breakfast in bed, big lunch, favorite dinner cooked by my husband and topped off by lots of wine and cake). It’s dispiriting to break feasts like that into their component parts, so I just … don’t. I’ll just be like — “blowout, 3,500 calories.” And the next day, I’m back to the usual detailed logging.
Exercise-wise, it’s a thrill to see how many workouts I’m getting — those “calisthenics” are how I categorize my AbsoluteFIT workouts, which I average four per week. You get credit for other stuff too, like walking, biking, or playing “Magic Power Rangers” with the kids, so jot that down too.
Want to replace some current not-so-good habits with better ones? No better time to start than right now …
—Lydia M.
Marcy Poindexter, Team AVAC®
Exercise is essential to losing weight – and keeping it off. There are tons of ways to get your heart pumping, but here are three types of workouts that will optimize fat loss and accelerate your results.
via Men’s Fitness
HIIT – If you want to be a calorie-burning machine, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the key. This means pushing yourself during short bursts of your workout session so you’re exercising at close to 100 percent of your maximum heart rate (MHR) and then recovering at a lower intensity of roughly 70 percent of your (MHR). These intervals can range anywhere from 20 seconds to two minutes, depending on your level of fitness. Figuring out your MHR is simple – just subtract your age from 220. So if you’re 35, your MHR is 185 beats a minute.
HIIT training is one of the best ways to enhance your afterburn, which means you will not only burn calories during the workout, but long after the workout is over (this is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption or EPOC). And you don’t just have to be on a treadmill to engage in HIIT training: You can perform intervals on any piece of cardio equipment (such as a bike, or rower, etc.,) or incorporate intense exercises like jumping jacks, mountain climbers and high knees into a 30-minute strength-training routine.
Resistance Training – Whether you’re using your own body weight or free weights, strength training (a.k.a. resistance training) rocks because, like HIIT training, it’s one of the fitness techniques that accelerates afterburn. That’s because after a tough resistance-training workout, your muscles are hard at work rebuilding themselves, burning up to 100 calories a day in the process. Be sure to do reps of those push-ups, triceps dips or dumbbell presses until the point of fatigue.
via ACE
Plyometrics – An advanced fitness technique best described as jump training, plyometrics consists of explosive movements than can significantly increase your strength, speed and endurance. Athletes have used this type of training for years to maximize their performance, but anyone can reap the benefits of this high-intensity exercise, which increases your metabolic rate for hours afterward. An example of plyometrics is a squat jump in which you squat down and spring upward out of the squat so your entire body leaves the ground.
-Marcy
Schedule a personal training session with Marcy Poindexter.
via – Lydia M, AbsoluteFIT blogger at AVAC®
Again with the batwings … We gotta talk triceps, so many women’s faaaaaaavrit subject.
Armwise, my genetic destiny, as I’ve mentioned here before, is Batwing City, USA — aka bingo wings, aka my beloved grandmother’s bequest to me (whether she wanted to give them to me or not). But AbsoluteFIT changes you — you still have the body you were born with, but you CAN make improvements or adjustments.
The cover pic is me doing tricep pushups — GOSH but they’re difficult, and I can’t do a single one at full extension (they’re all from the knees). But here’s another angle that works ‘em:
Now, that’s not slo-mo. That’s just me making an Exercise Face while I do TRX rows really slowly, working chest, back, upper arms, and core all at once. Never a wasted second on the TRX, y’all.
Wanna come in and learn how to do these yourself? Sign up for a workout today!
—Lydia M.
Lydia Markoff is an Almaden-area writer, mom, and fitness enthusiast with Texas roots, a New York education, and a Californian heart. She plays bass, reads a lot, watches too much TV, and can be found in the AbsoluteFIT studio three to five times a week. Her life goals include having a body like Linda Hamilton’s in Terminator 2, and/or having Bill Murray randomly crash a party she is attending. If you need something from her, try bribing her with good coffee or cold beer; odds are, she wants one or the other of those right now.
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