Hi everyone! Happy Hump Day! What a gorgeous day it is!

I am spending this sunny and warm(!!!) afternoon with the two cutest Fuse Fitness  little ladies, Ava and Anai. Ava and I picked up Anai from school, got some frozen yogurt, and headed over to Indian Rock in Berkeley to play!!

Enjoy the rest of this beautiful day!!

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com

Hi everyone! Happy February and happy Groundhog's Day! Here's to hoping the groundhog sees its shadow and that spring is on its way :)

Well, it's been an exciting month! Sadly, I haven't taken the time to blog about it--so here it goes, playing catch up and talking about what's new.

We've had a great month at the studio! Lots of dedicated fitness junkies kicking it up a notch, committing and sticking to New Year's resolutions, burning fat, building lean muscle, and most importantly, blasting through hundreds of burpees. We held a burpee contest this month, tracking burpees every day, awarding the person who had the largest percentage increase throughout the month.

And the winner is....drumroll please.....Avery Sim, with a whopping 120% increase! The prize? A gift certificate to our favorite workout clothing store, Lululemon!

Here are a couple videos of my awesome Power TRXers, who have gotten so strong and fit!

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Some recent healthy eats:

I threw a super fun dinner and bowling party for all my Iron Works fitness peeps. We started off with dinner and margaritas at Picante and ended with bowling, more drinks, and birthday cake at Albany Bowl.

A quick photo update on my kitty ventures....this super friendly neighborhood cat jumped on my head when I bent down to pet him. I was a bit scared that he was going to scratch my face, but he just hugged my head and nestled his little face against me, purring away. No claws, just love :)

And lastly, what's happening this month at The Fuse Fitness....February is National Heart Disease Awareness month, so we are challenging our members to strengthen their hearts by creating an endurance challenge. We'll be running the hill by our studio for time, and at the end of the month, the member with the best time will win a Polar Heart Rate Monitor Watch!

Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week!! I'll be back soon with some more photos and videos regarding the haps at our little studio :)

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

Hi everyone! I hope your week is off to a great start and that you all had a fun Halloween weekend!

Our Halloween party went awesome....my inner Martha Stewart appeared....and trust me, it's been a while :) I bet most of you didn't even know I had an inner Martha Stewart....at least that's what one of my clients told me. Here's some pics to recap the party. According to the 10 year old girls, "it was the best party of the year!" (I know, I know, how many parties do they really go to? Whatever, it's still a compliment :))

Maybe the best decoration I did was the creepy, bloody hand....I made two, the other was in the cauldron floating around.

So yeah, I had a little fun with this. The girls all had awesome costumes, had a dance party (10 year old girls' dance party, it was good...), decorated and devoured cupcakes, danced some more, ate frosting by the HANDFUL (no joke), climbed up the huge magnolia tree in our front yard, and carved pumpkins.

Happy girls, no? Therefore, I'd say the party was a hit :)

Yours in Health (and apparently cupcakes :)),

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness

p.s. While the girls were up in the tree, I decorated a few cupcakes myself :)

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

Hi friends :) Hope you're all having a great weekend. It's soooo nice outside, crazy how we really get our summer weather in the fall. What fun things have you been up to this weekend?

Yesterday we went to the Halloween store and picked up some supplies for the Halloween party we're having for Ava and 7(!) of her girlfriends next Sunday. Some things to decorate and spook up the house a bit. She's really excited and it should be a lot of fun. I'm sure things will get a little crazy having 8 10-year-olds over :)

Last night Doug and I went to a Halloween party. Our friends always have their Halloween party the weekend before Halloween, which is smart, because there's always so much going on on Halloween weekend. It was so much fun and there were so many awesome costumes! I dressed up as Raggedy Ann....

Pretty funny, huh? Someone actually told me that my "hair" looked really good, like it could be real. I was like, "Um, it's red yarn...." One of those awkward/funny moments where someone you don't really know at a party tries to make conversation and says something pretty silly.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and see what everyone was up to this weekend. I'm not quite sure what we're going to end up doing today....right now Doug and I are "watching" football (he's watching, I'm "watching") and drinking a cold beer....enjoying my rest day. After 9 hard workouts this week, it's nice to have a day off :) And on super warm days like this, an ice cold beer never tasted so good.

Yours in Health,

Kristin @ The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com