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

Hi everyone! I know, I know, it's been a while.....all kinds of crazy have been going on over here. Crazy good though! And definitely good times :)

For those of you who don't know, my husband's brand spanking new bar just opened!! It's called The Night Light, located at 311 Broadway in Oakland, Jack London Square. It is gorgeous! He's been working on this project for over a year, and the final results are amazing. There you have it, my shameless shout-out. Come down and check it out!

Happy Spring! I can't tell you how happy I am that it's spring! (although it doesn't quite look like spring out there today) Doesn't matter though, summer is on it's way!! Hip hip hooray!

So let's see...a few things that have been going on this month at The Fuse. At the beginning of the month we hosted a group of St. Mary's high schoolers for a yoga class with Cynthea Denise. Here they are after class:

All month long we've been doing a tuck jump challenge. Whoever does the most tuck jumps in 1 minute wins a $100 gift certificate to Nike. The race is on! There's only 1 day left, and there are a few women who are neck and neck, in the 100+ range....tomorrow they'll both be in do defend their jumps and compete for the prize. Have you tried doing tuck jumps lately? Over 100 in a minute is just down right crazy!! And more importantly, everyone has been improving and crushing their previous scores! Making Pascha and I so proud!

And that, my friends, is my Monkey Ninja. Yes, they really do exist. Isn't that pretty bad-ass? I think so. And here's my Iron Work's Monkey Ninjas in action, the last few seconds of a really intense workout.

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And lastly, here's a quick video of this morning's TRX Power class getting worked by Pacha in this intense, TRX circuit!

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Happy Friday to you all! And, if you're around Oakland tonight, come have a drink with me at The Night Light! I'll be there for a bit!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hi friends! Happy New Year! Now that 2011 has wrapped up, here's to 2012 being a year that brings good things to you and your family!

The holidays have been a whirlwind this year, lots of fun, and lots of crazy :) Here's a quick recap of mine in photos....

I'm sure we all indulged more than usual, but don't let it bum you out. We work hard all year long, we deserve to have some indulgent behavior :)

Now, time to get your booties back into The Fuse.....let's get this new year started with a bang! We're kicking it into gear this month with our New Years Specials and our fitness challenge.

There are two specials--the first is for all members, a 2 for 1 deal--you bring in a workout buddy (spouse, friend, partner, etc), you both receive 50% off a monthly unlimited package AND you have someone to motivate you (reg. $150 each, now $75 each). The second deal is for new members only, which is $50 off a monthly unlimited class package (reg. $150, now $100).

And the challenge for this month....the dreaded/loved burpee....dreaded by you, loved by us, dreaded because they're tough, loved because they get results. The most burpees (no push-up on the burpee) in 90 seconds wins. The prize? A $75 gift certificate to Lululemon...a little something toward showing off your hard-earned, toned muscles.

And that's a wrap. Happy New Year!!!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hi everyone! Happy end of the week! I know, it's been a little too long since my last post...sorry, things have been busy!

Let me fill you up on what's been going on around the studio....

Last month was a great month, thank you to all our members and clients! We really love what we do, thanks for being a part of it! We got some new equipment (exciting for us, possibly scary/exciting for you :) )...more kettlebells, medicine balls, a dynamax ball, a sandbag, balance disks and a body-fat scale. That's right, more stuff to torture you with ;)

Our donation boxes have continued to fill up with food and warm clothing. Again, thank you all for your kindness and genorosity!

As we're all aware, the holiday season is in full swing! We are really looking forward to our Holiday Cocktail Party, which will be at our studio on Friday, December 16th, 7-8:30pm. We got our mini tree yesterday and will be hanging our lights and decorations today and tomorrow. Pictures of said decorations will follow :)

Either Pascha is really in the holiday mood, or she just lost her water bottle....maybe both :) She's been using this awesome Christmas mug these days....

Our little holiday wreath, waiting to be hung....

This time of year is always really busy, there seems to be lots of birthdays as well as holiday parties, shopping to do, visitors stopping by.....while lots of fun, its often really stressful. It's easy to get off track with your health, missing workouts to run errands or indulging in too many treats. While it's important to allow yourself to indulge, it's a good idea to keep it in check. Decide what's really worth it to you and go for it....for those things that aren't quite worth it, skip it. Try to stick to your workouts so that your stress levels stay in the sane level and the scale stays in the sane level too :)

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

p.s. If you'd like to sign up for our newsletter, go to this link: Fuse Fitness Newsletter

Hi friends :) First off, I want to wish my wonderful friend and business partner Pascha a very happy birthday! This has been a wonderful and crazy last few months, and I'm so very grateful to be doing this with you :)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know I did :)

Mine started with an awesome morning Monkey Ninja Bootcamp--shout out to Beverly, Damon, Josh, Kristin, Lashunda, Kattt, Beth, Noa, Rebecca, Joanne, Daniela, and Samantha. We jumped, lunged, chopped, crawled and sweated our way through an intense calorie and fat burning workout--no guilt eating later for us :)

Afterward, I joined my family at my parents' house--we had a small gathering this year, my parents, my husband Doug, my lil' bro Jase, and my step-daughter Ava. Major props to my mom who had been cooking and preparing food for a couple days. I joined in helping her as soon as I arrived. My main contributions were a pumpkin pie and preparing and cooking the green beans and brussel sprouts.

A few pics of some of our food....

Lastly, I'd like to share a few things I'm thankful for, as well as some of the things my family is thankful for (we shared what we were thankful for during dinner)....

1. My family--there is nothing more important to me than my family. I appreciate how close we all our and how accepting everyone is. We are notorious for always having a good time, filled with laughter, joking around, lots of food and drinks.....my friends love coming over for celebrations because my family is just that fun.

2. According to Ava, my 10 year old step-daughter--"I'm thankful for my family, my friends, my pets and the planet Earth." Well said little one, and well rehearsed. Her response, "I know, we had to recite this in class."

Luckily for her, when she recited what she's thankful for, she had no idea what was coming. Something else to add to the list--dessert :)

3. My mom told a touching story about seeing a woman at the grocery store helping her daughter out of the car. She said the litte girl was probably about Ava's age and had cerebal palsy. Seeing this woman made her feel very grateful for everything we have. It's not perfect, but it's plenty.

4. "Margaritas!" A little out of character, but that was my dad's response. He spoke the truth though, maybe even what we were all thinking in the back of our heads, margaritas are something to be very grateful for.

See that bottle of tequilla behind the turkey...um yeah, so we have a thing for  margaritas. We'll keep working on that bottle the rest of the weekend :)

All joking aside, I'm truly grateful for the love and support of my family and friends, for the amazing oppportunities I've had thus far in my life, for my health, and for being able to do what I love--share my views on fitness and health with all of you. Thank you for being a part of my life :)

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hey everyone! Hope you had a great weekend! We had an awesome workshop at the studio this weekend--our wonderful yoga instructor Tia did an amazing workshop called Unwind, Unknot and De-stress. Wow, it was really good! If you missed it this time around you really should come to the next one she does--I think we'll bring her back in late winter/early spring. I'll keep you posted...

Just wanted to post this awesome video of my client and friend Ale, kicking ass doing the side to side reverse crunches on the TRX last Thursday.

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Nice form Ale!

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm starting to get into the holiday mood just a bit. I hardly even realized that Thanksgiving is just NEXT week....time really is flying by. It was brought to my attention because my youngest brother is coming into town Thursday(!!!!) and in case you couldn't tell by all the exclamation marks, I'm very excited.

I know it's a little up close....lol, sorry about that. This is the most recent picture we took, back in September when I went to visit him in NY. Isn't he cute? ;)

As many of you already know, I am just the luckiest sister in the world, because I have 3 brothers! Unfortunately I don't get to see all of them this holiday. But they all mean the world to me.

Here they all are being their awesome, dorky selves, clowning for the camera person (me!)! I'm obviously biased, but I think that's a good looking group of boys! More importantly, they are all so incredibly intelligent, inspiring, funny and so much fun to be around....I love being the only sister!

Anyway, I can't resist sharing a couple mores pic of my little bro and me....like I said, I'm ridiculously excited to see him :)

Jase, if you're reading this, get ready for lots of Mexican food, margs, laughs, cupcakes (I saved you some!), and good times! Can't wait to see you!!!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hey everyone! Happy Wednesday! Mine got off to a great start with an awesome TRX Power class--way to go Beverly, Kristy, Scott, Rebecca, Susan and Pascha!

While I wasn't able to get in a video of today's class, I was busy sweating away, here's a clip from last week's same class with a few different people. Last Wednesday I was taking a rest day....I somehow have a few ribs out of alignment (wtf?!)....so I've been trying to take a bit more rest here and there. You're probably wondering the same thing I have been....how does one go about knocking multiple ribs out of alignment without falling off a roof....I'm still working on the answer to that one :)

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If you've been following my blog, you've probably started to realize that I'm a huge advocate for letting loose and having fun....all the hard work and dedication of training hard and eating healthy has to have its rewards. For me, it's about enjoying the pleasures of life while maintaining my level of fitness. However, sometimes I get carried away....this past weekend was no exception. I ended up going out to eat 4(!) nights in a row....not normal for me AT ALL. I celebrated my best friend's birthday on Friday night....here's a photo of how it went down.

Many, many margaritas :) The following 3 nights my parents were having a mini-vacation and staying in SF...and invited us to dinner 3 nights in a row. Wow, I'm one lucky girl. My parents are so much fun and we had a great weekend. Lots of food, lots of wine, lots of laughs :)

And last, I have to recap on my chronicles with my clients' pets. Here's a video of Kit....if you read my blog then you know she is having a love affair with my gym bag.

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And here is a photo of Rudy, another client's pet.

....isn't he handsome? He's so sweet and despite his size vs. my size, he always tries to sit in my lap. He's definitely not a "lap dog." I'm usually covered in dog fur by the time I leave their house...and doggy kisses :)

Hope to see you all in class soon! Please feel free to leave me a comment ;)

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hey everyone! Happy almost Friday to you! Probably will be Friday by the time you read this :)

So this week has been kinda up and down for me. There's been a lot of great things, but I've felt pretty run down all week. I think I hit a wall....and really needed some extra rest. Thankfully, I had a free hour yesterday due to a client being out of town, and I was able to hit the sauna at Iron Works...yeah, I totally fell asleep. But I woke up feeling really rejuvenated...sometimes a little extra rest does the trick ;)

But I'd rather focus on the positive things....so here's a recap in photos and videos.

We have a new studio mascot, first discovered last Saturday. She's stayed around all week, hanging out by our front door. And yes, she's still alive, she was crawling around just earlier this evening.

Awesome Sunday sunset, captured from my living room:

This never gets old :)

I had to take a photo of my second favorite cat (1st favorite being my own of course :) ). Her name is Kit and I'm pretty sure she's having a love affair with my gym bag. For 3 years I have been going to my clients' home to train them, and Kit just can't get enough of my bag. She loves to rub herself all over it, get in and hang out. She gets a bit embarrassed when I try to take her picture, so I have to be covert about it :)

I wouldn't want to hurt my kitty's feelings, so I've gotta post a pic of her too. She is not as sweet as Kit, she bites and scratches....but I love her anyway :)

Cute, huh?

I also wanted to give a huge shout out to all our students and clients! We have been so impressed with everyone's pushups this week! It's been really awesome seeing you all break your records day after day....lovin' it!

Here's an awesome clip from this evening's Monkey Ninja Bootcamp, you guys killed it!

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We're finishing getting ready for a Halloween party for my daughter and her girlfriends this weekend. She's very excited....and I've got a lot of baking left to do! Call me crazy, but I couldn't bear buying her a whole bunch of junky, processed candy for the goody bags. Instead, I signed myself up for making homemade Halloween treats to put in the bags....you know, in all my spare time :) It's a win win--I feel better about knowing that the homemade treats have quality ingredients. She's happy because even though she would love a bunch of candy, she knows that homemade treats always taste better in the end. I've got my work cut out for me tomorrow evening :)

I'll let you know how it goes :)

Happy Weekend and Happy Halloween!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness