Fundraiser for Worlds next Saturday!! :)

Get Ready For Your Spring Season!!

Saturday, March 15th at 1550 W Armory Way

(pre-register here)

8:30am-9:45am - Athletic Testing courtesy of Palumbo Performance (free)

Get data on your vert, broad jump, single-leg-hop-and-stick, T-test, beep test, and more!

10am - 11:30pm Kettlebells for Field Sports ($20, or $35 for both)

Ren is a Level 2 Kettlebell instructor under Steve Maxwell. You'll learn key movements to increase mobility, strength and power, get eyes on form, and be able to ask about programming.

11:30am - 12:30pm - Self-Care On and Off the Field (free)

When you know how to take care of your own body and prepare it for your sport, you have SO much more confidence. We'll go over different types of soft tissue work, mobility drills, pre-workout muscle activation and warm up protocol.

15-minute snack break

12:45pm - 2:15pm Strength Training for Field Sports ($20, or $35 for both)

You're only as strong as your weakest link. Learn what your individual body needs to be as injury-free and powerful as possible - lots of single-leg and unilateral movements, functional core work, and the little form tweaks that turn a mediocre result into an amazing one. 

This is a Worlds fundraiser for Riot and Sockeye

Speed and Agility Clinic!

Here's the info for the clinic this weekend...hope you can make it! We're capping it at 30 people, so sign up soon if you wanna come! :)

Open to any ultimate player who wants to get faster, quicker, maximize their power and avoid injury!
Taught by Michael "MC" Caldwell, 14-year veteran of Sockeye and Ren Caldwell, Seattle Strength and Conditioning coach specializing in ultimate athletes.

This two hour clinic will include:
*a breakdown of a thorough warmup for field movement
*ultimate-specific technique and drills for improving on-field performance
*speed and agility for offense and defense
*Q & A session
*a handout (also emailed) detailing everything covered

Where: Delridge Playfields (4458 Delridge Way SW, 98106)
When: Saturday, February 1st, 2-4pm

Cost is $20

Space is limited, so sign up here!

All in

Most of you who've been following me with any degree of regularity have probably noticed a strong uptick in the number of ultimate-frisbee-related posts in the past year. I started working with the pro team Seattle Rainmakers early last year, having landed the job through recommendations of several ultimate players in Seattle whom I trained individually. I was really nervous, but threw myself into the job of learning how to be a strength and conditioning coach for an elite-level team - my book-learnin', teaching classes and one-on-one personal training did not prepare me for the experience, but it gave me the guts to try. I've been fortunate enough to garner trust in my Seattle community, and have been able to work with Sockeye and Riot this past year as well. Working with high-level athletic competitors has driven me to learn and grow, reaching out to other who are passionate about training for flatball (my friend Tim Morrill has been a great sounding board and ally) and to those who're currently at the top of their game (my current club players and especially my husband, MC).

The more I work with ultimate players and high-level athletes, whether they're in high school, college, or beyond, the more I want to work with them.

So...

I'm changing the shape and focus of my work. I've spent 13 years devoting myself to largely general population classes and one-on-one traning, renting space at a facility full time. In February I'm going to be moving to a gym at Interbay and renting space part-time - it's run by Joe Palumbo, a colleague who's way ahead of me in terms of sports programming and working with teams. In his space, which is three rooms at the moment but growing bigger, I'll have access to great equipment and no wasted space, with turf on every surface in the gym. I'll be able to bring teams in to train, something I've had a hard time figuring out how to do in my current space. And I'll be working alongside people who inspire and push me to be better and more dedicated to my work with athletes. When I'm not in the gym, I'll be at the IMA working with UW Element and the Sundodgers. Or I'll be at Garfield High School giving short seminars on lifting and injury prevention. Or on the field and at the track with clients, working on technique and changing direction. Or I'll be at home, programming, writing articles about training for ultimate and Skyping with long-distance clients. I'm still keeping on some of my clients who aren't competitive athletes, but I'm scaling that part of my business way back to make room for my growth in this sports arena.

 Long story short? This is the year I devote myself to getting better at strength and conditioning work, reaching more people, younger, and helping them perform at their highest level. I really couldn't be more excited. Really. :)

Happy Small Biz Saturday! Deals available till midnight on Sunday!

I think small businesses make the world go round, and I shop them whenever possible. I'm self-employed, partly because I'm ridiculously stubborn and think I know the best way to do everything, but also because being on my own allows me to react organically to the demands of my profession and my clientele, as well as incorporate any new ideas/information rapidly into my world view and operation. In short, it's hard work, and I wouldn't do it any other way.

I'm offering a couple HUGE deals this weekend - please consider taking advantage of them, either for yourself or someone you care about! If you live somewhere other than Seattle, I'd love to train you via Skype, so don't let distance scare you off! :) Here's the options (which you'll find under the "All-Around Awesomeness" payment menu at the top of the blog):

Starter Kit ($50): 

*consultation

*movement evaluation (FMS)

*corrective exercises for the month

*take-home program to get you started

*follow-up session in one month with program adjustments

So that's 2 sessions, each of which are a hour long...I'm not mathematician, but that's about $100 off these services at their normal price!

Gift of Health ($40):

*consultation

*movement evaluation (FMS)

*corrective exercises

*take-home program

*fancy gift certificate mailed to you (or available for pick-up)

Again, about half off my regular prices!

Happy small business shopping!! :)

the edge

I was asked to speak to some aspiring personal trainers at NPTI yesterday - I said I'd be psyched to share some of my work with ultimate frisbee athletes and the movement evaluation protocol I've developed for ultimate. But as I prepared for the talk, something very quickly became apparent...I wanted to share my approach and talk about the pitfalls and successes of the past year, but I also needed to share with them the deeper thing, the guy behind the guy, of what this year has meant to me. It took a while to condense my mixed feelings around this tumultuous time, but I finally narrowed it down to two talking points, which I tried to emphasize throughout the talk.

1. The best systems arrive from necessity, and should be constantly reexamined and updated.
My movement evaluation, which has become a calling card of mine, is a perfect example. It's a service I can (and now do) offer to any field athlete wishing to tighten up energy leaks in their movement and minimize their injury risk. It's simple, a minimal time commitment (30 minutes), and tells me most of what I need to know to be able to set someone up on a strength program. I created it because at the beginning of last year I was asked to be the strength and conditioning coach for the Rainmakers and do my best to help 27 athletes not only make it through their first professional ultimate season unscathed, but aid most of them in going directly into their club season (which ended in October). I signed on in February, and the first game was in the beginning of March. I had one month to get them game-ready, and most of them were coming into the season deconditioned and/or nursing injuries. I knew that I needed to assess where each athlete was, and give them specific tools to help them improve that state quickly, and I saw no way to do it other than an evaluation. I spent a week doing research, trying out different movements, recording videos for the mobility and stability "fixes" I was going to employ, and running things by my husband, who's been famously injury-free most of his 14-year career on Sockeye. It was a whirlwind weekend, but I managed to get all the players in and out of the evaluation with no major snafus. I was excited about the data collection portion of the eval as well...it seemed to me that I knew of common "frisbee injuries," but I'd never had an actual sample population to test my theories. I found some new things, and confirmed other suspicions. It was a huge success in my mind because I'd managed to make a personal connection with each athlete, give them information about their body and the way they moved that most hadn't ever gotten, and give them the tools to start changing patterns that were leading (or had lead) them along the road to underperformance and getting hurt.
Since that time I've done evaluations for several individual athletes, and also worked with Seattle Riot throughout their season, starting with evaluations. It's probably single most important piece of work I've done in my career, and it was developed because it HAD to be developed. I'm currently in the process of updating it to include some power testing - that element of player evaluation was done at the combine for the Rainmakers, but that's not the case for any other teams I'm working with. Constantly reexamining any pieces of your system for flaws, asking for feedback, and being willing to let your ego go and do something else if what you had is no longer serving you...that's one thing this year has taught me.

2. We do our best work when we're at the edge of our competency.
Real talk? I was terrified when I was approached to be a S & C coach. I had the necessary certifications, the book knowledge, and a 13-year-long career in personal training and teaching classes/seminars. But I acutely felt the weight of the responsibility to a group of people, to a sport I'd been on the sidelines of since college, to guys that were good friends of mine. This was a national stage, and a new one at that. I knew I would be doing many things for the first time, and the possibility of failing them or disappointing myself was real and immediate. I almost said no. But I knew that I couldn't. It was what I'd always wanted - I just didn't think I was ready. What I've learned, though that experience and many others that have followed hot on its heels this year, is that you're never ready for things like this. Not being prepared, not feeling 100% sure of yourself, is a necessary part of any real innovation, any true steps forward, for yourself and/or in your field. You're driven to know more, grow more, and synthesize new information. You're also forced to accept help from others, through reading or talking to experts, and to listen to the people you're working with and value their feedback on your approach. You're required to be humble, and at the same time, step forward confidently, and it's ridiculously difficult to keep from freaking out.
But man...this year, while being one of my most difficult and tiring and stressful, has also been my favorite year. I've become more thirsty for knowledge, positively self-critical, and will unabashedly take anyone to coffee that I respect and think I can learn from and exchange information. I barely recognize myself. And my business, well, it's going really really well. Better than any time in the last 13 years. Because I'm ridiculously passionate about what I'm doing, and light years away from where I was in January, where I was thinking maybe I'd go to film school. I feel great about the focus of my training, and about my trajectory - things have never been so clear. And even though I'm still living at the edge of my competency (working 12-15-hour days at USAU Nationals for two frisbee teams is the most recent example), I'm not really afraid any more. It's starting to feel thrilling, living there. And I think if more of us lived there, we'd be better trainers, better people, for those who are working with us to get better, stronger.

I'm not sure how much of this got through to the people in that room yesterday, but preparing to speak to them certainly made me realize how lucky I've been this year, to have so many athletes trusting me, and so many professionals willing to share with me and make me better. I'd like to thank all of them, and let them know that none of them are off the hook in that regard...I'm thinking that 2014 is going to be even more amazing. :)

the gift of the sternum turn

When I was working out of Zum, I had the incredible pleasure of working with Jeff Haller, a truly gifted Feldenkrais teacher and mover. Having grown up a dancer, I had a great sense of how my body should look, but not a great connection with how movement should feel in my body. I also had a bad habit of sidling around my weaknesses, creating shortcuts to perform exercises instead of addressing my imbalances and working through them. It's pretty impossible to get away with that when working with a good Feldenkrais instructor...they can see through the bullshit and gently (inexorably) encourage you to look at the reality of what your body is telling you.
One day a group of us trainers were working with Jeff on the idea of organizing your body by paying attention to your skeleton...stacking the bones on top of each other instead of making your musculature do a ton of work just to keep you standing or walking. He had me walk towards him as naturally as possible, then pointed out to the others that when I stepped on my right foot, my sternum turned slightly to the right. When I stepped on my left foot, my sternum also turned to the right. He had me stand on my left foot and try to turn my sternum slightly to the left. It was as if my body just didn't understand what he was asking. I felt like Ben Stiller in Zoolander, "I'm not am ambiturner." I sweated and fell over and tried again, and finally managed to orient myself over my left leg. And the whole time I was thinking, geez, no wonder I have such a hard time balancing on my left leg! No wonder my left leg is weaker! No wonder, no wonder...he had us experience this idea of getting yourself properly oriented over your legs in whatever position, walking, running, shifting slowly from foot to foot. It was amazing to feel all the muscular energy I was using to keep myself from falling be redirected into movement I wanted to be making.
In the past couple years I've been experimenting with the sternum turn myself and with my clients, and I've seen dramatic results. I was having a lot of knee pain and IT band tightness while trail running...I slowed down for a week and really concentrated on turning my sternum slightly when I ran so that as my foot landed, I was well-balanced over my foot...my pain disappeared. I showed it to my husband...his knee pain and issues while sprinting and doing single-leg movements disappeared. My clients have been able to correct their knee instability just by focusing on turning slightly toward their standing leg. And in my mobility class this morning, I had my people do two reps of a single-leg exercise with no sternum turn (facing straight forward) and five with a sternum turn...they all said they felt more balanced and stronger with the sternum turn. So I think YOU should give it a try, if you're interested in a little lab session! :)
First walk around a bit. If you can, have someone watch you, or walk towards a mirror, as naturally as possible. See if you you turn more one way than another, or if you tend to keep your upper body straight ahead. Next, try standing on one foot with your body straight ahead and just notice what muscles are working to keep you there. Then turn your upper body just slightly towards your standing leg and see what changes. Do you feel more stable? You can then take this into other movements like walking or running, or single-leg squats or whatever. It's...kinda magic. Watch MC doing a squat progression here...you should see the subtle sternum turn at the bottom part of the movement, when most of his weight is on that leg. And let me know what you think when you try it! :)

Make it Rain

What an insane month!! I signed on to be the strength and conditioning coach for Seattle's first professional ultimate frisbee team, the Seattle Rainmakers, and have been head-down workin' since then to bring all the knowledge and expertise I have to bear for the benefit of the team. This is an incredible opportunity for me to put to use the knowledge I've gained in the past few years while working with frisbee players and my other clients...it's being amazing to work with a group of smart, high-level, hardworking athletes.

My first goal as a coach was to do an in-depth evaluation with each player. I created the assessment using my own work with frisbee players and athletes as a guide, ascribing to Gray Cook and Michael Boyle's theory: mobility first, then stability, then movement. I started by talking with them about their injury history, any current physical concerns, and their activity level at the moment. Then I assessed their movement patterns, identifying imbalances and pinpointing the places where improvements could be made to reduce the risk of injury and increase power. I took the guys through specific "fixes" for these areas, and sent them off with (hopefully) a better sense of the guy-behind-the-guy for issues they were having.

Here's an example of a diagnosis, a fix, and the follow-up I did with the athletes. Watching one athlete perform a series of free squats (no weight) I noticed that his low back was rounding under at the bottom. I pointed it out to him, asking if he could slow the movement down and keep a neutral spine the whole time. When he was unable to, I had him try a no-weight deadlift. I asked him to keep his knees slightly bent and his back neutral, hinging his hips backward until his body was parallel to the floor. He was unable to get close to parallel, so I was able to determine that the problem in the squat movement was poor hip mobility. I showed him the fix, the Frog Stretch (awesome movement), and later sent him a description of it, including how often/long/when he should do it. We went through a few different movements, with me looking for different things each time, and I ended up with a full body profile of each athlete and a sense of where to place them on the training continuum.

I'm gathering incredible data right now, and have just finished the first round of videos for the team workouts I'm leading this season. Thanks to the MLU for bringing me on, and I'll keep you posted about the work I'm doing with this awesome group of people. Learning a lot, giving a lot, super pumped. :)

Frog Stretch

Kettlebells 101!

Another seminar coming your way! :) 

RSVP at ren@renfitness.net, space is limited!

Injuries

Working out isn't easy. If it was, they would call it something else. 

In that spirit, let's look at why and how a lot of injuries happen in the gym. Often, people don't listen to their bodies and try to push past warning signs. Then they end up injured, frustrated, and feeling bad about themselves. Other times people use the wrong muscles/joints to perform movements and end up putting excessive strain/force on places that can't handle it - boom, there goes your hamstring. And occasionally someone will smack themselves with a heavy object or fall over. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that all of these situations (even the last one) is largely preventable by focusing on two aspects of movement: attention and a proper warmup.

Everyone pays some degree of attention while working out, of course. But there's a difference between paying attention and being attentive. If you're talking to your friend while you're lifting, you're not being attentive. If you're thinking about what you're going to make for dinner while you're doing goblet squats, you're not being attentive. Whenever you're moving, try to think specifically about what you're doing...for instance, with the goblet squat, think "Weight in the heels. Shoulder blades engaged and dropped. Push up with the glutes and bring the tailbone underneath at the top. Keep the bellybutton pulled in. Breathe." If that seems like a lot to think about, that's because it is. Moving your body in complex ways requires complex thought - if you're not checking in on all levels, you're not getting the most out of your movement, and are at risk for tweaking your knee while you're spacing out! As a trainer, it's my job to not only be that voice for my clients, but also help them develop that nuanced voice for themselves. You know, for all those times when I'm not yelling at them. :)

So what's a proper warmup? I'm sure you've heard by now that it's important to get the blood circulating before you do a ton of stretching or big movements. A few minutes on a rowing machine or jumping rope or some cardio equivalent is always a good start. After that, though, the kind of warmup you do should be determined by the content of your workout...in other words, your warmup should be as specific as possible to the work you're going to be asking your body to do. For instance, if you're going to be doing a lot of leg/core work (squats, deadlifts, lunges) I would do some kind of full body check-in, a dynamic warmup for the quads/hamstrings, and something like inchworms to integrate the upper and lower body. I'd also do some mid-back activation to get the spine warmed up and ready to support weight. What I WOULDN'T do is a lot of pushups and pullups or other upper body exercises. When in doubt about whether to do an exercise as a warmup, ask yourself, "How will this help me prepare for what I'm about to do?" If you can't answer that questions, skip it and find something else that will serve you better. Pay special attention to areas where you struggle - if your hips tend to be super tight and you know you're going to be doing Windmills in your workout, try a hip opener like this or this to get your range of motion opened up. 

If you're warmed up appropriately and you're being attentive during your workout, you should be able to move your body in the best and most pain-free ways available to you, and minimize your risks in the gym. :) 

5 Itty-Bitty Challenges to Get You Moving in the New Year

Inertia is a terrible thing. It is also a wonderful thing. A body in motion tends to remain in motion, but GETTING going can be really difficult! Here are some low-commitment, low-stress ways to break the cycle of sitting on your ass and wishing you were living more healthfully. :)

1. For a week, while at work, set an alarm to go off every hour. When it does, do 2-5 minutes of stress-relieving activity (roll your neck around, stand up and stretch, massage your hands, take some deep breaths). Spent on a regular basis, even this small amount of time will connect you more with your body and keep muscles and joints from locking up. You'll feel much more inclined to move after work if you've kept moving during the day!

2. Think about six things you want to do that are active...these can be first-time things or favorite things. Have you always wanted to canoe around Greenlake? Do you love hiking Mount Si? Write these ideas down, then figure out which of them you want to do this month, which one next month. Put them on a calendar and get excited about them. You'll find yourself behaving differently knowing that fun activities are waiting for you for the next half a year...

3. Each day for a week, take a look in your fridge/kitchen cabinets. Find something that you know isn't good for you and throw it away. Sometime that week (you don't have to do this once a day) buy something you know is better for you to replace it. One of my favorite rules of thumb for shopping in grocery stores (learned from my friend and nutritionist Aimee Gallo) is this: stick to the edges. In general, the perishable stuff is there (deli, dairy, breads, meat, produce) while the stuff with lots of preservatives (box cereals, canned vegetables, candy and chips) is up and down the aisles.

4. Get up five minutes earlier for a week. Spend those five minutes doing something nice for your body or mind. Meditate, do some Sun Salutations, roll on a foam roller, stand outside and take long slow breaths while you take in your environment. Five full minutes, at some point before you start your day. 

5. Put a piece of workout equipment in the middle of your living room. This could be a yoga mat, a couple dumbbells, a treadmill, a medicine ball. Seriously, put it smack in the middle of the space so that you almost trip over it (but don't do that). If you have to walk by it all the time, or look past it in order to watch TV, you will use it. You might even pull out some other stuff and use that too, or inspire someone else in your family to use it. If it starts to become part of the background clutter, switch it out for something else!

Try one or more of these and see if you feel the wheels being greased at all...and let me know what your experience is! :)

Top 5 Holiday Tips

Ah, "the holidays." Fraught with peril. I put "the holidays" in quotation marks because technically it's a couple of days that our media culture and inertia tries to turn into an entire season of eating crappy, running around  trying to buy gifts, and lying around the rest of the time watching football and It's a Wonderful Life. Stress, bad food, and lethargy..,whoopee!! No wonder we invented the idea of New Year's resolutions...

I say, let's resist! I say even though it's pretty nasty weather outside and there's all this pressure from everywhere to not take care of ourselves, light a candle for our country (or just your friends. Or just yourself!) and treat yourself well in the end of December. Here's a few ways to do just that - not all of them are fitness-centered, but they're all health-centered:

1. Whatever gifts you buy/make, do it with intention. You make the best choices when you're calm and centered, not when you're running around Target like an insane person shoving iTunes cards in your cart. Everyone I know has told me repeatedly that their favorite gifts to receive are the thoughtful ones, not the expensive or trendy ones. You'll end up feeling much better about the gifts you give, and be less stressed about finding them.

2. Spend at least 30 minutes a day moving your body and breathing. I'm not saying you have to get to the gym and work out for an hour and a half...trying to make time for your normal workout routine might make your life feel more stressful in this busy time of the year. But a little physical activity can keep the stress from turning into a neck spasm and low back tightness from turning into a herniated disc. Just do something, mindfully. If, on the other hand, the gym feels like an oasis in this world of crazy, then by all means get the heck in there as often as possible!!

3. Pretend it's already New Year's. I don't mean that you should bust out the champagne or (ill-advisedly) make out with your co-workers. I mean you should consider telling yourself that your New Year's resolutions are starting today, this minute. What do you want to do differently? How can you shift things in your life/thoughts to be more the person you want to be? Don't spend the next two weeks getting all the bad stuff in and over with so you can start fresh. Just...don't do all those things in the first place. I guarantee you'll feel better about yourself come January 1.

4. Get enough sleep. This season is infamous for the colds/fevers that get passed around (I've had half my clients cancel in the last week due to illness, and I'm home with my sick kiddo today). Between holiday parties and other shenanigans, our schedule gets crapped and we try to make up for it by going to bed later and/or getting up earlier. You can't really control your exposure to sick people or the weather, but you can control your rest.  Get. Enough. Sleep. Or. You. Will. Get. Sick. 

5. Enjoy food/drink in moderation - if you can't, abstain! Some people can't have anything alcoholic or sweet, even a taste - it sets off irresistible cravings and they have a hard time stopping themselves from overdoing it. For some of us, though, a little bit won't turn into a gallon...in that case, there's no reason to deny ourselves the fun and good feelings that comes from eggnog and homemade cookies. Just don't go crazy with it. 

Lastly, a reminder that all the deals listed at the top of this page are in effect through January. I'm meeting with several people this month to help them get started on a healthier path. BEFORE the New Year...lemme know if you want to be one of them! ;) 

NYC!!!

Last April I traveled to New York to train with Steve Maxwell, my favorite coach, and go for my Level 1 Kettlebell instructorship. It was really hard work and I felt physically unprepared (turns out a recent car accident had messed me up more than I knew) but I had an amaaaaazing time in NYC and felt like a badass after doing the certification.

This year I'm going back for more...certifications in Clubbells and Level 2 Kettlebells. It's starting to sink in that I have a LOT of work to do and only four months to do it. Trainer, train thyself!!! So here I go! As a part of this process, I want to post some workouts and videos on my blog (like this one, but with less sun) so you can follow along with  my efforts and maybe learn some stuff in the process. I'm also going to be posting pretty frequently about my work with my client Melina, who writes an awesome blog and who's going to be documenting her physical/mental transformation over the coming months. So the bottom line is check back in with this blog often, because there's going to be a lot of cool shit going on!

Also, the special prices on training (the "Buy Now!" thing at the top of the page) are going to be in effect until the end of January...please consider taking advantage of the deals!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go throw some kettlebells around...

Black Friday? Naw...Small Business Everyday!!

Shopping at big box stores is soooooo pre-recession. Supporting small local businesses is sooooo 2012. From now until Xmas, I'm offering a few screamin' deals for you and those you love. Because I care.

Like, seriously, I really do. :)  

You'll find a spunky Paypal button at the top of my blog - please use it! Here's some descriptions of what I'm offering - please email me with any questions! You can purchase as many as you want, for yourself or for others...

The Starter Kit! $80 gets you (or your secret Santa person) an in-depth wellness consult, movement assessment and take-away program. It's 90 minute of uber-personalized amazingness - a $150 value.

The Mobility Month! $30 gets you (or your partner) four mobility classes at Excellence Health & Fitness. The classes are a hour long and will increase pain-free range of motion and burn tons of calories! 6:30am on Fridays - a $60 value .

The Workplace Visit! $70 gets you (or your employer) a health/wellness program consultation for a business. Want to incorporate movement and health into the office but not sure how to go about it? Get someone in there who has fresh perspective and tons of experience - a $200 value.

The Monthly Management! $150 get you (or your mom) 3 one-on-one personal training sessions, once a month. Set goals, check in, get new exercises and strong motivation, and stay accountable in the interim - a $240 value.

Consider supporting your friendly hometown personal trainer this holiday season...I've worked hard to become great at what I do, and I would love to help you (or your best friend) get even healthier and more fabulous! :)

does this dress make me look dehydrated?

I felt like a bonehead. I'm a personal trainer, I'm an athlete, I'm reasonably self-aware...and yet on Sunday afternoon I found myself feeling depressed, irritable, clammy, headach-y and tired. And I could not for the life of me figure out what was wrong. Eventually, I tied how I was feeling to the fact that I had had several glasses of champagne at a brunch that morning (that's another story) and two cups of coffee during the day, but no water. NO WATER. #facepalm

Dehydration: it happens to the best of us. I was chronically dehydrated until I became a personal trainer at 23. I had grown up drinking fruit juices, tea and soda, and never drank plain ol' ordinary water. I also ran around like a crazy person and lived in Florida for most of that time. Studying for my first personal training certification, I recognized myself in the list of symptoms for dehydration:

*Dry, sticky mouth
*Sleepiness or tiredness — children are likely to be less active than usual
*Thirst
*Decreased urine output — no wet diapers for three hours for infants and eight hours or more without urination for older children and teens
*Few or no tears when crying
*Dry skin
*Headache
*Constipation
*Dizziness or lightheadedness
--taken from the MayoClinic site

Hey, I thought, I feel most of those things, most of the time. I wonder...I started to drink more water, and I started feeling better than I even had in my life. It was hard for me to believe that such a simple fix existed for all of those physical ailments. Of course, the question then became, how much water? In recent years there's been more media emphasis on hydration and more of a business in water consumption (plastic water bottles sold at Costco, fancypants aluminum and BPE-free bottles), and you seldom see someone at a gym or yoga class without a personal water source. How much should you drink? The common answer is 8 cups a day, and that's more or less correct. The more specificity the better (in my book), though...The Institute of Medicine suggests that for men, 3 liters (about 13 cups) a day is about right...the daily intake for women should be 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) a day. I like a super-awesome level of specificity, though, and that means linking water intake to body weight, so my favorite table is here:

 Body weight Daily fluid requirements (approximate)
10 pounds 15 ounces
20 pounds 30 ounces
30 pounds 40 ounces
40 pounds 45 ounces
50 pounds 50 ounces
75 pounds 55 ounces
100 pounds 50 ounces
150 pounds 65 ounces
200 pounds 70 ounces
--taken from Medicine.net

Keep in mind, too, that if you're sweating, you're also losing sodium, so you need to replace electrolytes as well. And you get water in food and in other drinks as well as just water - yet another reason to eat lots of fruits and vegetables! So how can you test if you're getting enough through all of your fabulous methods? The best indicator isn't thirst or even how you're feeling (though you shouldn't be thirsty and you should feel good) - it's your pee. Colorless or light-colored urine gets the thumbs up, darker yellow means you need to start drinking.

And not drinking champagne, like me. That, as I said, is another story. :)

New class starting in November!!

You know what's better than being strong? Being strong, flexible AND having healthy joints so you don't get injured! Let's be honest: a lot of us don't even stretch on a regular basis, much less work on our mobility. We end up hobbling around from workout to workout, always in pain in some area, but convinced we can't spare the time to loosen things up. Unfortunately, this is totally a short term solution...eventually you will get injured (and you probably already have!) from a lack of mobility. Mobility and flexibility are different beasts - mobility movements always have strength and movement components, while flexibility exercises rarely involve strength. Practically, this means that mobility movements focus more on increased joint health than increased muscular length. People are most likely to hurt themselves where their muscles attach, which in my opinion makes mobility training more crucial than flexibility training for anyone looking to avoid injury.

SO...I'm starting a class in November at my new gym, Excellence, that will focus on increasing mobility while getting a kick-ass workout! It's gonna be Friday mornings from 6:30am-7:30am, and you can come for the month for only $40 or drop-in for $10. I'm so excited to be creating this new class...I would love you to check it out! You'll wanna be there if you're interested in:

*Circuiting mobility exercises with strength movements
*Getting stronger and more mobile/flexible
*Learning simple movements that you can add to your fitness arsenal
*Increasing your range of motion
*Living and moving more pain-free
*Building long strong muscles
*Releasing tension in the shoulders, neck, and spine
*Improving your posture
*Learning fun variations on common exercises (like pushups and planks)
*Sweating like a mofo

Questions? I got answers. :) Hope to see a lot of you there on November 8th!!

I heart squash

I don't know about you, but about this time every year I yearn for squash. The color, the flavor, the texture...everything about it reminds me of fall and my childhood. I remember my mom's dish in perfect detail - the acorn squash cut in half and the seeds scooped out, replaced with butter, cinnamon sugar and a pinch of salt. For years of my adult life, this was my go-to dish for Thanksgiving parties...I subbed out fresh minced ginger and cinnamon for the sugar. If you don't have time to bake it, you can stick it in the microwave, covered, for 6-8 minutes, and boom! You got squash. :) I'm excited to try out some of these recipes this autumn (especially the Southwest Stuffed Acorn Squash...I'm making that tomorrow!). Happy eating! :)

Where there's a will...

My husband pointed me towards an article in the latest Wired magazine...in searching for it online, I came across one published earlier this year that's more comprehensive and dealing with the same subject. Willpower. The findings of the latest studies are very interesting - let's look at the main point, and then figure out what it means for all of us.

Big Idea: Willpower is incredibly feeble. We have a hard time saying "no" all the time, and the more times we have to say "no," the easier it is to turn that "no" into a "yes." So if there were two hundred individual socks scattered around the floor and you had to bend down to pick up each one, somewhere around the 100th one (or earlier, depending on your own personality) you would probably say "Screw this, I'm going to go watch TV," leaving the rest of the socks to languish on the floor. Hmmmm...maybe this analogy only works well for parents...oh well, hopefully you get the idea. In practical terms, that means that your success at, say, eating a healthy and balanced diet has way more to do with your environment than you might think. How many times a day do you have to choose to eat an apple instead of a Snickers? Are nutritious food choices fewer and farther between in your workplace? Is there an office candy jar, and are donuts and bagels served at meetings? Every time you have to say "no," you're using up your precious store of willpower.

Willpower is limited and easily worn down...so what to do? Well, here are a few ideas:

1. Set your intentions as clearly as you can. What are your goals? To be healthier? To lose weight? Get specific about those goals...really think about what "healthy" or "weight loss" means to YOU. And this is important...once you've clarified your goals, try to bring them closer to the surface of your mind. The more conscious you make yourself of what you want to achieve, the more you'll recognize the obstacles (within and outside of you) to getting where you want to go. Once you've narrowed things down and focused in...

2. Shift your home environment. This is the area that's most under your control. Get rid of all the crap in your cupboards, just throw it out...that way the choices that you do have to make will be between one good-for-you option or another. If you have to say "no" to the ice cream every time you open the fridge, you'll end up saying "yes" more than you want to. When your home more truly reflects your intentions...

3. Shift your work environment. Pack healthy snacks to bring with you to work so that you're not trying to make a choice while you're starving (according to the article, we make poorer choices when we're tired or have low blood sugar). When it's your turn to bring the snacks for the meeting, bring nuts and fruit. Talk to your boss/coworkers about replacing the candy jar with mints or sugar-free gum - a quiet mention about rising healthcare costs would probably aid you in this one. ;)

4. Avoid temptation. The Wired article states that the most strongly-willed people that were studied "are able to intelligently steer clear of situations that trigger problematic desires. They don’t resist temptation - they avoid it entirely. While unsuccessful dieters try to not eat the ice cream in their freezer, thus quickly exhausting their limited willpower resources, those high in self-control refuse to even walk down the ice cream aisle in the supermarket." That's what all the shifting of your home and work situations is about - removing the crap so that you have plenty of willpower left over for other stuff, like exercise, reading, playing with your kids, or whatever you would do if you weren't desperately trying not to eat the chocolate in the cupboard.

Most of us will try to skip #1 and go right to the other suggestions...I'm guilty of this as well. I urge you, though, to take the time to figure out why you want to change, and who you want to change into. Pick up all the socks just this one time, give yourself a clean slate, and go boldly forward. Good luck!! :)

best laid plans of mice and personal trainers

Okay, so you're not gonna believe this...

Fate has dealt me a strange hand this year. It's been a very challenging time, demanding lots of growth and acceptance of change (which is awesome, and terrifying, and difficult). I left Zum and moved to Northwest Fitness and Conditioning, a place with a promising vision under a thin layer of sweat and drywall dust. And now here I am, a couple months later, announcing another move.

The fact that I'm reeeeeally excited about this move should tell you something, especially since I'd be hard-pressed to get excited about transition of ANY kind after the past few months! I'm going to be joining the awesome team of independent contractors at Excellence Health & Fitness! I've known the owner, John, for a while and I'm a huge fan of what he and his business partner Eli have build over the last several years. The space is beautiful, with high ceilings (and aerial silks! Aerial silks!!), a hardwood floor in the classroom space, a huge metal frame to hang on, and plenty of kettlebells and other toys to swing around. The trainers there are top-notch (and super nice). But what really sets the space apart from every other personal training studio (and gym) in Seattle is their vision of and dedication to holistic wellness.

We all know that being healthy and working towards the body you want takes more than just exercising. You have to take time to recover. You have to eat well. You have to destress and rebuild your muscles and your psyche. We all know this, but there are pieces of that puzzle that we all struggle with. I don't really have a problem eating well or exercising enough - I have a huge problem taking time for myself to relax and take care of my body. It's difficult to convince myself to focus on this one area, since I can always remind myself how well I do in the others! It'll be harder to ignore at Excellence, though, because this place is all about the whole package. Since the last time I checked them out (six months ago) they've installed a fantastic cafe with smoothies and healthy lunch options. They have a wellness center in-house that features chiropractic, massage and acupuncture. And they have a membership that includes all these things (though you can still choose your services a la carte). It's sort of like a one-stop-shop for wellness.

Yeah, I'm excited! I know I'll be personally inspired by this place and these people to make changes in my own life and the lives of my clients. So even though part of my brain is covering its ears and saying "No more transitions!!" the rest of my brain is skipping around and imagining how much fun it will be to work in this awesome environment every day. Thanks, Excellence, for bringing me on board! :)

Kettlebells 101

Here we are, folks...my very first kettlebell basics seminar. I've recently become a Level 1 Kettlebell instructor under Steve Maxwell and I'm so excited to share my enhanced knowledge with you!! Please consider coming out and learning more about how to use kettlebells in your workout...and even if you've been training with them for awhile, revisiting the fundamentals and getting your form analyzed will do you a lot of good! Tell your friends - my pipe dream is to have to schedule several seminars in September to meet demand. :) Here's the details...

And just for fun, here's a video of me doing some fancy Windmills...I won't be teaching this at the clinic, but it'll definitely be a part of the Kettlebell 201 course! ;)

Momma's got a new pair of shoes!

Well, okay, I don't actually have a new pair of shoes. But I DO have really exciting news...RenFitness is moving! My new space is in South Lake Union, right on the corner of Mercer and Fairview. It's called Northwest Fitness and Conditioning, and it is awwwwwwesome. I've been contemplating a move for awhile - I got my kettlebell certification (the experience of which is a future blog entry in itself) in New York and was excited to have a change of scene and meet/work with some new trainers. This place literally fell in my lap at the perfect time, and I couldn't be more excited. So what does this mean for all you lovelies?!

First of all, I will once again have a space with no membership or drop-in fees for my clients - you pay me and me alone. It also means you can only work out there with a trainer...no coming in and messing around on your own. But that also means you're free to belong to whatever gym you like (or just play on the playground like I do) and you can still train with me.

Secondly, I'm going to be offering kettlebell classes and clinics, and I'm really excited to get into more small group training. I've had a wonderful experience working with a rad group of women at Zum for the past few months, and it's fired me up to create more little microcosms of awesome. (I should tell you that after much deliberation they ended up giving their group the name "Ren's Bitches." I can't imagine why.)

And last but not least, the space (while unfinished - official opening day is September 1st) is tooootally awesome. Field turf, a huge sandbox filled with rubber pellets (springy!), speed and agility toys galore, kettlebells, built-in plyo boxes...it's kind of a personal trainer's pipe dream. So light a fire with me, guys...would love to see you over there! And tell your friends! :)