Downtown Nashua Dynamic Fitness Challenge

Yesterday we started a very cool event at the gym that we called the Downtown Nashua Dynamic Fitness Challenge.. We have 12 people that work for or own businesses local to the Downtown Nashua area that are competing against themselves and each other in a fitness event that challenges the body as well as the mind.. It works like this; everybody completes a workout that Michele and I came up with that we feel tests a person's full body strength and endurance as well as your mental toughness. The workout is in what we call a "Prison" format. There are 5 exercises and you have to complete 10 of each the first time around, then 9 the next time around, then 8, and so on until you get to 1.. I got this format from my friend Jon Hinds at The Monkey Bar Gymnasium. I think it's called a prison workout because you don't really feel like you're making any progress through the first few rounds and it feels something like being in prison (i'm guessing here :)... On the other end, once you get to the last few rounds you're cranking through the rounds and when you're done it feels like you've been released from prison (again, i'm guessing).. The exercises in this particular prison workout were: Pushups, Sit Up and Reach (with a medicine ball), Burpees, Body Rows, and Plyometric Box Jumps.. The challengers really pushed themselves and came in with some great times! Best overall was 17:29 on the men's side by Paul White, and 19:38 by Karen Campfield for the women.. Excellent times! These initial times were saved. Now we'll be working out together 3x per week for the next 8 weeks and we'll be performing the same workout at the end of the challenge to measure everybody's improvement.. Prizes will be given to best overall time and best improvement in time for both men and women.. Our challengers are:

Roni Vetter - Jake's Ice Cream, Rt 1o1A

Karen Campfield - Surf Restaurant, Main St

Jenny Amidio - J. Bella Salon, Rt 101A

April Bohaker - Salon Apryl, Elm St

Deb Soby - Patisserie Bleu, Main St

Andrea Granger - Verde Salon, Main St

Wendy Steinmetz - Myoptic, Main St

Paul White - Northeast Acreage

Pete Johnson - Johnson Electric, Front St

Kirk Dubois - National Grid

Marc Petit - AH Machining, Factory St

Dr. Paul Gasch - Amherst Family Chiropractic

Great job everybody! 

While I'm thinking about it I'm going to throw out my own personal challenge to anybody who wants to try it.. I went through the Downtown Nashua Dynamic Fitness Challenge myself this morning to see how fast I could get through it. I did it with full burpees (pushup and jump), and 24" box jumps.. It took me 11:41. Anybody who wants to give it a shot, come on in to the gym and try it out.. If you beat my time we'll give you a free month at the gym. Men have to do it with full burpees and 24" box jumps.. Women can do burpees without the pushup, 18" box jumps, and pushups from their knees. Come on down and try it out. Hope to see you soon...

Finished my workout playing on the ropes.......

All the best,

Kevin

Workout 10-26 and 10-27

Just wanted to quickly share a couple great full body workouts with you that I did today and yesterday... Yesterday's workout was my 5 mile trail run with some plyo jumps and plyo pistols followed by 5 x20 of explosive crossover pushups...

alternating with 5x30 of the Corkscrew...

This morning I had another great workout. I started out with 5 minutes of skipping rope to get loose. Then I tried a burpee challenge which I've been wanting to try for a while now but haven't gotten around to.. The burpee challenge is to see how quickly I could do 100 burpees.. These are full burpees with a pushup and a jump. It took me 7:08 to complete the 100 burpees. I did the first 50 without stopping in 2:49.. My goal is to eventually be able to get 100 burpees in under 5:00.. I have a long way to go. Give this a try and let me know how you do.. I followed the 100 burpees up with 100 jackknifes:

Followed by some handstand work....

All great exercises. All with nothing but my bodyweight.. Killer workouts! Train hard my friends...

All the best,

Kevin

Don't Go Back to Rockville.....

Ever hear the REM song "Don't Go Back to Rockville"? I never understood what Michael Stipe had against the town of Rockville, but to be honest, I can never understand what any of REM's songs mean anyways.. I love their stuff but none of their lyrics make any sense. But today, I can understand why nobody should go back to Rockville.. I'm sitting here with an article in front of me that talks about the Funfit Family Fitness Center in Rockville that has kid sized exercise bikes, treadmills, air stepper, and hydraulic strength training equipment... Every time I read it I have to shake my head...

(This is me reading the article shaking my head)

Am I the only one who has a HUGE problem with kids on treadmills and exercise bikes? Apparently, Diana Ennen of Margate, FL doesn't have a problem with it.. She signed her 10 year old daughter up at her health club where she uses the stair stepper and hand weights.. Diana's comment... "Her clothes fit better. You can tell she's firmer.".... You can tell she's firmer???? Your 10 year old daughter?? Sounds like Diana squeezes her daughter like she's a tomato in the produce rack.. My question for people is why take a bad idea, like starting exercising on machines as an adult, and make it worse by having your children do it too.. Damn, Diana, I know the weather is really awful in Florida, but on the couple of sunny, warm days you do get down there why not take your daughter to the playground? Hmmm, what an alternative idea that is.. 

The gym has been growing on a daily basis.. New people coming in every day. Everybody that comes through the door is having a great experience and they're telling all their friends.. You know why? Because there's no machines, they're getting the best workouts of their lives, and they're having fun doing it because, as challenging as the workouts are, they're playful. Skipping rope, doing burpees, climbing ropes, jumping on stuff, doing exercises on gymnastic rings. It all brings us back to a time when we were fitter, more mobile, and happier. It's all natural, full body movements. I don't think there's one person that I've trained that hasn't said on at least one occasion "I haven't done that since I was a kid". And it's always with a smile on their face. People comment on their increase in energy and the positive, supportive atmosphere at the gym. I'm not lying when I tell you we're changing lives at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. 

As for Rockville??? Like Michael said, "Don't go back there..."

All the best,

Kevin

Killer '300' Workout

Just a quick post on a killer workout I did earlier this week. I've been playing around with a lot of different "300" style workouts lately which are workouts where you pick a few different exercises and mix it up for 300 total repetitions.. The workout I picked for this particular day was:

100 burpees

100 pistols

100 Double KB Press with 16kg kettlebells

Awesome full body workout..  I did this in 5 rounds of 20 reps of each exercise.. 20 burpees really gets your heart max'd out and gives you a true full body workout. The pistols and KB presses are just great moves for building strength and explosive power.. Make up your own 300 workout and let me know what you come up with.

All the best,

Kevin

Just Havin' Fun

Sunday we went out for a hike up Mt Watatic.. It's a great local hike with an excellent view from the top and it was the peak of the Fall foliage season. To be honest, I don't get the whole "we have to go see the foliage" thing, but I do get the whole "let's go hike up a mountain" thing.. Mountains are about the best outdoor functional conditioning gyms around.. For example, there's giant boulders to climb up on and do sets of pistols....

There's trees to climb...

There's big rocks to do plyometric jumps on:

And there's lots of uneven, rocky surfaces to challenge yourself on with your handstand walking.... Right up to the point where your hand slips and your finger gets stuck in a crack of a rock and almost breaks off...

And like the last time we all went hiking we played the "ten lives" game on the way down where you start with ten lives and you can only step on rocks or roots on the way down and every time that you step on the ground you lose one life.. As we were playing the game on the way down a group of guys in their 40's and 50's came up behind us and got held up a little by us playing our game. I quickly described the rules of the game to them to let them know what we were doing and they laughed, probably thinking it was a goofy game.. After about two minutes they were still behind us and I said to them "you're playing the game, aren't you?".... 

You know what the answer was, don't you? It doesn't matter how old you are (or you think you are), you're never too old to stop playing.. I heard the quote once "We don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing".. Very true.

Have fun,

Kevin

If You Choose Not to Decide, You Still Have Made a Choice...

We make choices every day that really have minimal impact on the present but have a huge impact on our future.. Choices like deciding to spend Sunday afternoon watching football, drinking a six pack and eating nachos.. Big deal, right? Who's it hurting? There's always tomorrow to exercise and take care of yourself.. So you get up Monday morning, skip breakfast, grab a large coffee with extra cream and sugar, maybe a muffin, and head off to your job.. Maybe you like your job.. Or maybe you're one of those who, when asked how you like your job, respond with a chuckle and say "it pays the bills".. I can always start looking for a better job, eating right, taking care of myself, etc., etc.., tomorrow.. Well, for many of us, tomorrow doesn't come until we're 72 years old with a shelf full of heart, liver, and cholesterol pills, a pack of Depends in the closet and a full one in your pants, wishing you had taken better care of yourself when you were younger. We live in a reactive day and age where we don't pay enough attention to our health and wellness until we get symptoms, and then we react to them. We react by getting a prescription to make them go away.. But that doesn't fix the problem, it just prolongs the eventual (and certain) point where your body has had enough. 

It doesn't have to end that way and regardless of what your starting point is today and how you got there, you have the option to re-write the ending. And it all starts with your choices. A choice to not workout is a choice to be unhealthy. A choice to eat pre-packaged meals loaded with refined sugars and processed carbs is a choice to be sick. Colds aren't caught, they're cultivated by not taking care of ourselves. I asked a guy a few weeks ago if he was going to come to the gym once it opened and try a couple workouts. He responded "I'm a smoker.", as if it was his nationality. People have so many excuses. It's inconvenient, it costs too much, I don't have the time.. But they're just that. Excuses. If you don't make the choice to do what it takes to be healthy and strong then you are making the choice to be sick and weak. If you want to be healthy and strong, then make the commitment to a healthy lifestyle. Re-write your ending and join us. It all starts with a choice.

Be Well,

Kevin

A Visit From North Sparta

We held our first "Spartan Workout" at the gym on Tuesday night and we had a visit from a couple friends from North Sparta which is up near Manchester... Doug and Steve are part of a Sunday morning workout group that regularly scour the internet looking for the craziest workout ideas to give themselves fantastic full body workouts. They tell me stories of pushing pick-up trucks full of gear (uphill), flipping tractor tires across football fields and swinging 20kg kettlebells around their heads on a rope.. Very cool stuff.. I worked out with these guys one Sunday morning and there is a lot of great energy and they put themselves through some amazing full body functional conditioning routines. So I was really psyched that Doug and Steve came down to workout with us.. George also showed up.. George has officially become Dynamic SC's first gym rat, having participated in workouts every day the gym has been open. He even stuck around for a second workout on Monday (but don't tell his wife, she thinks he was shopping for a present for her or something like that).. The Spartan workout was very difficult and the three of them put in a fantastic effort. We started out with rounds of:

Battling Ropes

Plyo Burpees

Ring Pull-ups

Double KB Front Squats

The boys completed 5 rounds in a 30s/30s work to rest ratio. 30 seconds of any one of these exercises kicks your ass, never mind cycling through the four of them one after the other.. After completing 5 rounds of that I had them on the power wheels for 100yds of power wheel crawl (50 forwards, 50 backwards)... Everybody put in max effort and are all looking forward to coming back for more.. Enjoy the highlight reel.. Good work men!

Having watched the guys doing all those plyo-burpees the other night inspired me to add them to my trail run today.. Workout for today: 5 mile trail run, 75 plyo-burpees along the way jumping on various rocks, felled trees, stumps, benches, and mounds of dirt of varying heights from 12 - 30 inches..

Added some pseudo-Planche pushups (3x20) and 6 x 15 second parallette L-sits

All the best,

Kevin

Nothing like a good butt-kickin to pick you up

For me, the days that I least want to workout are the days that I most need it.. Today was one of those days. As everybody who's been following along here knows, the gym opens in a couple days and I still have a bunch of stuff to do to get completely ready for it. Columbus Day Weekend is a big soccer tournament weekend here and I coach my daughter's soccer team so my morning and early afternoon was spent at the soccer fields. It was an incredible day for soccer and we had a great day. We won 3 and lost 1 (to a team that we were better than) and everybody had a really good time. But here was the problem.. I'm a little stressed (OK, a LOT stressed) over getting the gym ready for opening day and the tournament was taking me away from so many things I needed to get done which just added to my stress level. But I told myself a while ago that even though I knew the gym would be a significant time commitment I was still going to commit to my daughter's soccer team.. If I hadn't, I know I would have looked back on that decision in about 20 years and said "I should have kept coaching her team even though I was just starting a business.".. And I know I made the right choice. 

Anyway, I'm the type of coach who is completely committed and focused, and coaching is really mentally draining when you're as committed to it as I am.. Some people tell me I should lighten up a little, but I say if you're not committed enough to it so that you're mentally drained after a game then you don't care enough and shouldn't be doing it. Any good coach will tell you the same thing and it really doesn't matter if you're coaching U10 or the National Team. So we had 4 games today and I was spent. And the food at the tournament was CRAP (other than the pumpkin bread that Grace's mom made which was fantastic :) I left the fields in the middle of the afternoon really feeling spent mentally and run down physically. The motivation for a nap was high. The motivation for a work out? Not so much. But I knew that a workout was the only thing that was going to bring me out of it.. And I also decided it needed to be a workout that would completely torch me. So I had a pb n j on whole wheat and a glass of chocolate milk with added protein and off to the gym I went..... 

Let me tell you, when you own a gym and you can go there on a Saturday afternoon and you're the only one in there and you crank the music so that it registers on the Richter scale, it is a very, very cool feeling and it is very motivating.. I decided I was going to do the 30/300/3000 workout which is the kind of workout that challenges you a ton, both mentally and physically. It's 300 yards of power wheel crawl (see video here for an example of the PW crawl) followed by 3000 revolutions on the jump rope (1500 forwards and 1500 backwards) and it has to be completed in under 30 minutes. My previous best was 29:24 and I was determined to beat it. I set it up so that I would power wheel forwards 30 feet and backwards 30 feet without stopping, rest for 3 breaths, and repeat for 15 sets.. By the 9th set I was needing 4 breaths before starting again and by the 13th set I was taking 5, which wasn't nearly enough. I finished the power wheel crawl in a little over 7 minutes and went right to the jump rope, alternating between 500 forwards and 500 backwards until I had 3000 jumps. After doing 300 yards of power wheel crawl the shoulders get very tight which makes it really hard to jump rope for an extended period. Especially when you need to keep a pace of about 150 revolutions per minute. I found that when I would throw in about 50 crossover jumps every so often that it would really help loosen up my shoulders and allow me to continue at a fast pace... I completed my 3000th jump at 28:39. 45 seconds better than my previous best! 

The best thing about it was how much it energized me. I felt amazing after this workout. Especially after feeling so run down earlier.. Life is good

All the best,

Kevin 

FINALLY!!!

Well, we finally got our first group workout in at the gym.. We had a select group come in for a sneak peek of the gym before our official opening date of Oct 13 and we got a great workout in.. The workout was a Functional Interval Training session that consisted of:

Jump Rope 

Hanging Leg Raises

Single or Double Kettlebell Front Squats

Hindu Pushups

Kettlebell Swings

We did this workout in a 40sec:20sec work:rest ratio and completed 6 rounds.. It's been about 3 weeks since the last of the outdoor FIT sessions that I had been running so everybody was psyched to get back at it and they really loved the gym (or at least that's what they told me.. i think they all knew that if they said anything different i would have been crushed and i probably would have banned them from the gym for life :)  I'd like to thank Rick, Sarah, Lynne, Sharon, George, Tina, Michele for coming to the session and giving me a great effort, Catherine for joining in and reminding us that we do this because it's fun, and especially Michele for taking the video and watching the kids in the lounge area while the rest of us got to enjoy ourselves... I promised her I get the kid duty next time...

One more pre-opening workout Friday morning at 6am and then we're open to the public on Monday Oct 13th... I know what you're thinking.. "C'mon, are you really going to have your first day of being open to the public on Columbus Day?".. I thought about it and I asked myself what would Christopher Columbus do in the same situation, and the answer was obvious.. Clearly, while Columbus and his men were on their way to America to discover the people who discovered America they had to do something in their spare time on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.. I doubt they brought a bunch of elliptical machines, treadmills and Nautilus equipment with them.. Hell, as old as Chuck Norris is I don't think he was around to sell those guys one of those stupid "Total Gym" things from the infomercials (I'm pretty sure Norris wasn't born until some time in the 1600's).. There's no doubt in my mind that you could have found Columbus and his crew doing burpees, pushups, pullups, jumping rope and all kinds of full body functional workouts. So tell me, is there any better way to honor Columbus and his crew than to open the first functional conditioning gym the Greater Nashua area has ever seen? Of course not! Hope to see everybody bright and early Monday morning for our 6am session. Happy Columbus Day :)

All the best,

Kevin

Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day...

Just got in from my run and my favorite Jethro Tull song, "Skating Away..." was playing on the iPod. It made me think of how I am kind of skating away on the thin ice of a new day myself, in the sense that it's a brand new start with my own business. With the gym opening in a little over a week I was thinking last night about how far it's come from the first day about a year ago when I read the article about the Monkey Bar Gym in Wisconsin and thought what a fantastic idea it was. Yesterday I picked up my Certificate of Occupancy at Nashua City Hall. The gym is very close to completion and will be open for business Oct 13 as scheduled. Although next week I'm going to have the people in for a workout or two that were attending the outdoor FIT sessions this past Summer.

It's a little scary. But I've received overwhelmingly positive feedback on what we're doing and I think it's going to go really well.. I heard a quote once that said "If your dream doesn't scare you then it's not big enough".. Well this one scares me a little bit so I think it's plenty big..

Workout today:

- 20 minutes of Joint Mobility (as we get older, we can not do enough joint mobility exercises)

- 70 pistols (35 each side in sets of 2x10, 1x15) I did these unweighted and barefoot which is a lot more difficult than if you're holding a weight in front of you (unless it's a really, really heavy weight) or if you're wearing a shoe (try it if you don't believe it)

- 5 mile trail run with plyo jumps along the way

- 2 minute set of front squats with 2x16kg kettlebells (33 reps)

- 2x25 jackknifes

- 2x30 corkscrews, which is a great core exercise where you start on your back and lift your body into a shoulder stand while twisting your torso.

All the best,

kevin