The sun was sweltering hot. I could feel a sunburn coming on despite applying sunscreen hours earlier. As I breathed in and out, my feet, hands and elbows dug deeper into the sand, spreading, moving, and making me feel I was falling out of line. It’s just a plank, Trish. You can hold it longer. The woman next to me …
How to Flip The Script on Fitness and Start Again
What happens when we outgrow ourselves? Our dreams? Our stories? Our fitness? Our friends? Our job? In fitness, this can look like over exercising to hide our discomfort with ourselves. It appears healthy on the outside, but inside there’s turmoil, shame, and self-loathing. At work, this might look like a colleague who is always in bad mood. In relationship, it’s …
How to Boost Your Mental Fitness
Jennifer looked at me defeated with tears in her eyes after a workout one morning. She couldn’t understand how after months of consistent training, cutting back on alcohol and treats, her arms were still not looking the way she wanted. She was weeks out from her wedding and wanted the photos to capture a happy time in her life, not …
Bridging the Gap Between Effort and Struggle
There is far too much hype given to “the struggle.” The mental and emotional struggle of starting a business and making it successful. The physical struggle of overcoming an illness or serious injury. The political, cultural, and economic struggles of our present time. Sometimes, “the struggle” is a necessary part of achieving something great, developing greater self-awareness, or overcoming a …
A Four Step Grounding Process for a Successful New Year
“Where focus goes, energy flows.” When positive psychology began making a name for itself as a new field of research in the early 2000s, people flocked to book shelves to purchase its promise of happiness. At the core, we want to flourish and feel elated at all times, but without its contrast, can we really appreciate or understand what happiness …
Get your Female Client to Buy In to Strength Training
It’s one thing to get on social media and wax poetic about the benefits of lifting heavy for women, and it’s another to get your female client committed to doing so. The stigma with women and lifting has been around for longer than most of us have been alive, and there’s a perpetual cycle of misinformation out there that fitness …
An Easy Way to Change Your Habits
It’s incredibly frustrating to watch ourselves rise to the occasion for something we truly want only to backslide into our old habits a few weeks later and fail, again. False starts repeated over and over again are not character flaws, but a combination of poor habits, poor systems, and lack of knowledge. I was and sometimes still am a person …
Body Shaming Yourself Fit Is Not The Answer
I used to work in an office where good work was rarely rewarded, but mistakes big or small were magnified and publicly shamed for everyone to see. Sometimes the shaming was subtle, and other times it was plain as day. The office’s infamous “Bun Fund” was one example of the deeply rooted culture of shame and fear. The Bun Fund’s …
4 Steps to Accomplishing Anything You Want
Our society is hellbent on setting and achieving goals, no matter what the cost. Companies set aggressive quarterly and annual goals, every January millions of people commit to getting fit as their goal, and we as individuals set performance goals to get a raise or promotion at work every year. Yes, goal setting is very powerful, even necessary to getting …
The One Mindset Shift You Need for Exercise Consistency
I can sit there and babble on about all the life hacks to help you stay more consistent with your training, especially around the holidays, but I’ll spare you. You’ve heard them all. Heck, you’ve probably tried them before and still found yourself fluffier and softer come the New Year. All those tips and tricks we desperately yearn for do work….until …