The Numbers Don't Lie

We're halfway through our Downtown Nashua Dynamic Fitness Challenge and yesterday was "assessment" day to see how far our challengers have come in the first 4 weeks of the Challenge.. To recap, the Challenge is made up of 12 people that work for or own businesses that are local to downtown Nashua. We have Deb Soby of Patisserie Bleu, Karen Campfield of Surf Restaurant, April Bohaker of Salon Apryl, Andrea Granger of Verde Salon, Kathleen Palmer of the Nashua Telegraph (who is covering this same event on her own blog), Jen Amidio of J. Bella, Roni Vetter of Jake's Old Fashioned Ice Cream (I'm actually eating some of Roni's Hunk O'Berry ice cream as I write this, it's the best :). On the men's side we have Pete Johnson of Johnson Electric, Paul White of Northern Acres, Kirk Dubois of National Grid who is single-handedly responsible for the drop in natural gas prices over the past month so you can feel free to thank him personally. We also have Dr. Paul Gasch of Amherst Family Chiropractic and Marc Petit of A.H. Machining. Marc comes to my noon time kettlebell workouts and then comes back at 5:00 for the fitness challenge workouts 3x per week. He's becoming a beast!

The challenge is this: Everybody performs a workout consisting of pushups, sit up and reach (with med ball), burpees, body row, box jumps. The workout is done in a format where you perform each exercise 10 times, then 9 times, then 8 times, etc... all the way down to 1.. Everybody completed this workout 4 weeks ago at the start of the program and the times varied from a best of 17:30 to 32:00... In just 4 weeks, everybody absolutely shattered their times. The improvements in time were anywhere from 20% to 50%!! The efforts that were put in were inspirational and the times this time around were between 14:05 and 22:00.. People were knocking 10 minutes or more off previous times.. In 4 weeks! To me, that is truly amazing. Everybody involved has been commenting about the increase in energy, stamina, clothes fitting differently, more positive attitude and self-confidence. I don't think I'd be exaggerating to say that for some of the people involved, if not all of them, it's been a life changing experience.. The numbers don't lie.. These people are getting themselves in the best shape of their lives.

I was so inspired by their efforts (and scared that they were getting too close to my time I put up 4 weeks ago), that I re-did the challenge myself this morning... Last time I did it in 11:42 but when I was done I knew I could have pushed a lot harder, mostly because I didn't have much of a goal in mind to shoot for and I had never done the workout before.. This time I went into it with the goal of beating 10 minutes. I pushed as hard as I could and finished at 9:30.. I checked my heart rate at the end of the session and it was at about 99% max.. Last time I put out the challenge that anybody who beats my time gets a free month at the gym and it still stands.. You just have to do it a little faster now :)  Burpees have to be full burpees with pushup and jump with hands overhead at top of jump and box jumps have to be 24" jumps landing both feet on top of box.. Women can do burpees without pushups and jumps on an 18" box... 

Come on down and give it a shot.. If nothing else you'll get one of the best 10-20 minute workouts of your life...

All the best,

kevin