Hi Fusers!

Happy Friday!! This week's post is very important, an integral part of fitness and results. One that is too easy to skip. We frequently get so caught up in our need to accomplish our goals, that we forget to rest our bodies. Our dear friend Beverly Aabjerg is the guest writer for this 2 part series, and she has done a great job! Thank you Beverly!! 

Take a Break!

Take a break, not for long, but for a day or two every week. When you workout hard, it is critical to your physical and mental well-being to take the time to let your mind and body rest and renew.

Whether a weekend warrior or an elite athlete, rest is an important component of reaching your desired level of fitness. The American College of Sports Medicine advises, "A rest day must occur at least one to two times per week. Even small breaks during a workout are sometimes required to get the most out of the workout and prevent injuries."

Here are signs that you may need a break:

1. Are you constantly fatigued? 2. Do have a hard time getting a good night's sleep or do you need more than eight hours a night to feel alert? 3. Are you sore and stiff with aching joints and muscles for days with no relief? 4. Do you depend on pain medication to get you through a day? 5. Is the love gone between you and your workout even though nothing about it is  different? It may be time to switch up routines, or you might be burning out. 6. Overtraining can have a plateau affect on your body. Are you noticing few improvements or gains? Your body may have reached a stalemate that only a rest can fix.

7. Do you feel anxious knowing that your calendar or life-schedule will not allow you to workout everyday? 8. Are you experiencing one injury after another to one or more body parts? Beware,     acute issues can become chronic if not addressed.

If you are experiencing one or more of these symptoms, as advised, incorporate a rest day or two into your weekly workout schedule. Some people take a day off every fourth day. Others take Sunday off and start their week with energy and enthusiasm. Think of your rest day as being as crucial to your fitness as your workout days. If you have health concerns beyond over training, talk to your doctor. He or she will be able to help you determine if there are other underlying causes.

For more see next week’s blog where we will discuss the benefits of a rest day.

So remember, rest is crucial to making fitness gains. There is such a thing as too much. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

p.s. A quick reminder--we now have 2 classes on Sunday mornings, 9:30am is Metabolic Surge and 10:30am is Core and Stretch, both with Deshaun. Sign up HERE!

Hi Fusers :) Hope you're having a great week thus far!

Most of us made some health and fitness goals a couple of months back. Wasn't it easy to be gung-ho at the beginning of the new year, when we were motivated to have a fresh start, work hard and keep a positive attitude?

Life Happens

However, life happens and sometimes we get derailed off our path toward our goals. Often  it is a short series of small derailments that topple us, leaving us feeling defeated. We're here to encourage everyone revisit your goals. Take an honest look at where you are right now and let's get back on track!

Be Forgiving

First and foremost, forgive yourself if you haven't quite stayed the course with your goals. We are all human, nobody is perfect. Both life's enjoyments and stresses can lead us to make not-so-healthy choices. Take a moment to recognize this and keep it in mind. It is not how far we fall, but how we get back up that makes the difference in life.

Realistic Goals

Maybe your goals were not quite realistic. Remember that if you completely deprive yourself of your greatest pleasures (wine, chocolate, etc.), your body will not feel satisfied and you're more likely to end up bingeing. Keep your goals realistic. Cut back so that you can still meet your goals, but allow yourself some room to relax and enjoy. Quality of life and good mental health are also very important.

Hold Yourself Accountable

Share your goals with someone! By putting yourself out there and using the buddy system for motivation, you're more likely to stay on track because you'll be checking in with someone about your progress.

Be Honest with Yourself

This is very important. We all know our weaknesses, and it's far too easy to make excuses for them. Eating out too often? "Well, you know, I just don't have time to cook...." Indulging in your sweet tooth too much? "Well, I just needed some instant energy because I haven't been sleeping well...." Do these excuses sound familiar? Identify your weaknesses and keep them in check.

We're all in this together. We all get off track and lose motivation, but let's encourage and inspire ourselves and each other to be the best version of ourselves we can be.

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! Hope the weekend has been treating you well. It's been so beautiful outside! Hope you were able to get outside and enjoy the weather. We headed out for a hike in the El Cerrito hills and it was so lovely to have the warm sun on my back, see the early signs of spring, and breathe in the fresh air.

Just wanted to quickly share a few photos and short video clip of my Saturday morning Monkey Ninjas. This is a fiercely hard-working group I tell ya.

And the video clip....

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Hope you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening! Great week of classes and training sessions last week, looking forward to another!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! Here's a quick video from this morning's AWESOME Valentine's Outdoor Bootcamp. What fabulous weather, beautiful people, positive energy....what more could we ask for?!

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Thanks to all of you who came out today! Happy weekend!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! Happy Friday to all of you!! Hope you guys have some fun plans this weekend. Don't forget that we're having our Valentine's Day Outdoor Bootcamp tomorrow (Sat. Feb. 9th) at 10:45am at the Albany Veteran's Memorial Park, which is located behind Albany High. Sign up online or just show up! Free for everyone, so bring your Valentine.

Just wanted to remind everyone of what motivated us this week....

Important words to live by I tell ya. Easy to forget this and take our bodies for granted....

Anyway, happy weekending to you!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! February is heart disease prevention and awareness month.

The Bad News

Did you know that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, killing more than 600,000 Americans each year? Pretty scary, huh?

The Good News

Did you also know that you have a lot of power in protecting and improving your heart health? That's what we're here to talk about.

What is Heart Disease?

First, let's quickly discuss what heart disease is. Your arteries supply blood to the heart, carrying oxygen and nutrients to this very important muscle. When plaque builds up on the inner walls of your arteries, it causes hardening and narrowing, thus reducing the blood flow to the heart. When plaque buildup becomes so severe that blood can not reach the heart, heart attacks occur, causing permanent damage and sometimes death.

Risk Factors

Now, let's go over the risk factors for heart disease that are in your hands. High cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, diabetes and high stress levels all significantly increase your risk of heart disease. However, you can control these risk factors and The Fuse Fitness is here to help you take control of these risk factors and ensure that your heart is healthy.

No Smoking

First, schedule a physical to have your blood pressure and cholesterol levels checked. If you smoke, ask your physician for help quitting. This is crucial! Cigarette smokers are two to three times more likely to die from heart disease than nonsmokers. Next, determine whether your weight, and even more importantly, your body fat levels are healthy.

Height and Weight

Body mass index (BMI) is your weight in relation to your height, and is a helpful measurement in determining whether your bodyweight is healthy or not. Have your body fat measured, especially focusing on visceral fat, which is abdominal fat located around your vital organs. Think "beer belly" or "muffin top." Make sure that you are exercising at least 30 minutes daily and that your diet consists of lots of fresh vegetables and fruits and whole foods that are as minimally processed and organic as possible.

Here to Help!

The Fuse Fitness wants to help you reduce your risk of heart disease and help get you healthy! We will be doing a 6 week body fat loss challenge beginning the first week of March.

We will measure your body fat using our Fat Loss Monitor with Scale, which sends a safe, low-level electrical current through you body to calculate the amount of body fat tissue, known as the Bioelectrical Impedance (BI) Method. We will take the measurements at the beginning and end of the challenge.

Get Started Now

We offer a wide variety of fitness classes for all levels, sign up HERE, as well as personal training, which gives you a more individually designed and structured program. Let us help you in getting your minimum 30 minutes of exercise per day! You just need to take the first step by signing up HERE and NOW.

As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns. We are here to support you!

Yours in health,

Kristin at The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers :) Happy Super Bowl Sunday!! Just wanted to share a few photos and a short video from the past week at The Fuse.

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Enjoy and GO NINERS!!

Yours in Helath,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! This oldie but goodie is a timelapse video taken by Imad Obegi a couple years ago of my Monkey Ninja Bootcamp at Berkeley Iron Works. A little glimpse of all the things we do in bootcamp.....if you look closely, you'll notice Kimber in the mix :)

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Just wanted to share :)

Yours in Health,

Kristin at The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers! My business partner and great friend Pascha Brown wrote a valuable piece on how to stay on track and maintain your fitness goals. Her post really reminded me of this week's motivational quote from Oprah, "We can't become what we need to be by remaining who we are." We can't reach and maintain our goals by slipping back into bad habits. We have to stay committed, focused and consistent, but not beat ourselves up for slipping every now and then. Here's Pascha's article...

After setting your goals, working towards and achieving some visible results, how do you maintain them?

We often sabotage ourselves when we are nearly there. Why? Because we have started to look and feel fitter than we were before, leading to increased self-confidence. At this point it's easy to go right back into our old habits, such as eating too much unhealthy food and starting to skip workouts.

When this occurs it is very difficult to get back on track because we compound the breakdown by getting upset with ourselves. A great strategy for combatting a set back and a potential psychological tailspin, is to realize and plan for the likelihood of ups and downs. Acknowledge now what the potential setback triggers are for you and then plan what you will do in case you do lapse. In other words, what will you do if you have a bad day to let it go and move forward to create a good day?

Here is a checklist to get you through your maintenance phase.

• Consistently work on your eating habits though they will never be perfect. If you fall off the horse, just get right back on.
• Vary your workouts so your body does not reach a plateau. This is why as instructors we are always changing up our workouts and why we offer a variety of classes.
• Don't feel that you have to achieve a high level of fitness in order to achieve results.
• After you have completed one major goal, quickly move onto the next goal. Fitness doesn't stop after weight loss.
• You do not need to work out several hours a day and live on salad and protein shakes. Avoid over-training and getting burned out.
• Have an accountability partner or take group classes to stay consistent. We offer many awesome, diverse and well programmed classes here at The Fuse Fitness. Check out our class schedule here.
•  You have to do what is necessary to achieve results, and that takes commitment and consistency.

Share with us, what do you do to stay on track?

Yours in Health,

Kristin and Pascha at The Fuse Fitness

Hi Fusers!! Happy weekend to you all! Extra bonus: it's 3 days long! Awesome :)

I hope last post got you to thinking about your fitness goals; I know it did for me. Which is why I want to talk a bit more in-depth about the importance of setting specific goals and how to set them, and why this leads to success. I will also share my personal fitness goals--nothing like putting your goals out there to the world to help hold you accountable!

First of all, setting goals gives you focus and clarity for the long-term, and also inspires and motivates you day to day. Specificity is really important when setting goals; it creates a clearly defined goal and a time frame in which you want to achieve it. For example, if your goal is simply to lose weight, there's very little motivation or focus there to push you. However, if you specify that you want to lose 8% body fat by May 1st of this year, now you're talking. You've got something quantifiable to achieve and a deadline that you want to hit this goal by. The SMART acronym is a perfect guideline to help you make goals that will be successful.

After creating a time frame for yourself, it's much easier to break that up into smaller periods with smaller goals set to help reach the big goal. Much more manageable than just saying I'd like to lose some weight this year. A really important part of setting these smaller, stepping stone goals is rewarding yourself. Whether it's a massage, a new outfit, whatever it is that feels like a reward, this is really motivational and a key to success.

I'm going to share with you my fitness goals for this year. This will help hold me accountable and keep me in check. First, and most important for me, is that I will spend more time this year making sure I have enough recovery between workouts. I have found that my body is overtrained, feeling tight and injured, and I know that I am working out too much. Without proper recovery, you actually stall your improvements, and it has a negative effect on the body. I need to really focus on this, which is very difficult for me, because as many of you know, I want and love to work out with every one of my classes.

My next goal is that I want to add weight to my pull-ups. By May, I'd like to be able to do 5 strict pull-ups with an 8lb kettlebell attached to my body. Let the pull-up training begin for me! I will keep you posted on this goal :)

Last, I must bring back my post-workout protein shakes!! I will do another post on this soon (including a video of me making my shake so you can see how easy it is), but for now, you can read my last one here. This is so important, and I have completely dropped the ball on this. Beginning this week, it's on!

Enjoy the beautiful weekend everyone!

Yours in Health,

Kristin at The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com