I love boot camps! You are able to work out outside – with a ‘drill-sargeant-like’ instructor and perform a ton of body exercises such as push ups, sit ups, lunges, shuttle runs, burpees and more!

AND if you live in New York, it looks like you’ve got a great choice – check out the below article!

Read more on my article: 8 Reasons to Boot Camp!

Boot Camp Outruns Excuses

Stacy’s Boot Camp Helps Participants Shape Up without Shipping Out

New York, NY (February 6, 2008) – For most Americans, working out is a chore; it’s a means to stay fit and ward off illnesses like diabetes and heart disease or simply to avoid unattractive extra pounds of fat. There’s little to get excited about when returning day after day to the same gym and going through the same routine. Stacy Berman, former master fitness trainer at New York Sports Clubs (NYSC) and the founder of Stacy’s Boot Camp noticed her clients’ growing discontent and decided to take workouts to the great outdoors in order to get New Yorkers pumped up about working out once and for all.

Stacy’s Boot Camp meets in various parks throughout Manhattan , rain or shine, where Stacy leads each group in a challenging and regimented workout plan that combines strength, cardiovascular, flexibility and experience training designed to help each participant push their limits. Stacy maintains the essence of a boot camp, which is to present a demanding physical challenge, but has created a program that can easily fit into any hectic schedule.

“Moderate amounts of high intensity exercise yields greater benefits than the traditional endurance training when done correctly and decreases risk of injury due to overuse,” Stacy says. “I’ve created a program where people sweat and feel the burn of a good workout, but can see results in nine one hour blocks spread out over three weeks. The added energy of the park and camaraderie the group provides keeps everyone upbeat and motivated.”

Boot Camp Workouts Help Beat Workout Boredom

For every excuse in the book ever used to avoid working out, Stacy’s Boot Camp has an answer. Similar to how popular diet plans provide specific guidelines paired with reachable goals, those who sign up for Stacy’s Boot Camp know what they are getting themselves into. In each three-week long program there are nine, one hour-long sessions during which Stacy leads the group in challenging workouts and carefully monitors each person’s progress. The group setting serves to encourage mutual motivation – old friends often join together and new friendships blossom easily – and working out in the outdoors is invigorating, and according to the American Council of Exercise (ACE) through which Stacy is certified, “Outdoor exercise is more engaging and mentally stimulating due to the changing scenery and terrain.

People who rely solely on a gym membership to meet their fitness goals often fail because as amateurs they are incapable of creating a workout plan that addresses their specific issues. Under Stacy’s watchful eye, participants of Stacy’s Boot Camp are treated to individual attention while paying prices much lower than individual training sessions. Taking advantage of personal trainers at the local gym can cost hundreds of dollars an hour – a financial commitment many people simply aren’t willing to make. At about $27 dollars a session, Stacy’s Boot Camp is an affordable option for people who want to take advantage of a professional workout but are intimidated by the cost often associated with a trainer.

How Stacy’s Boot Camp Works You Out

Stacy’s Boot Camp workouts engage the entire body by jumping from one exercise to the next without breaks in between. It is a strenuous workout, but unlike fitness experts who tout a “no pain, no gain” philosophy, Stacy’s philosophy challenges each member to push their own personal limits. With each session Stacy picks up the pace, forcing the class to go beyond what they previously believed themselves capable of to accomplish new and unexpected goals.

During each session Stacy emphasizes calisthenics, a series of exercises to develop strength, power and balance, by not only work the targeted muscle groups but require the whole body to work as a unit to perform the motion. Push ups, pull ups, squats, lunges, sit ups, and other body weight exercises are interspersed with cardiovascular activities like running and jumping jacks.

• Push ups – For beginners pushups are sometimes the hardest exercises because of how many muscles are involved: during the motion of a push up, the chest, triceps and anterior deltoids are worked, while the back and biceps are stretched. Just holding the proper form is a great workout for the abdominal muscles.
• Pull ups – Even for those in great shape, pull ups pose a serious challenge. They primarily target the back muscles extending from shoulders to the lower back as well as the biceps.
• Squats – Squats are a lower body exercise with the main emphasis on the quadriceps and the glutes, but it also involves the hamstrings, the calves, and the lower back. The squat is often called “the king of exercises” because of the belief that it’s capable of inducing more and faster muscle growth than any other exercise.
• Lunges - The lunge strengthens the quadriceps muscles, gluteal muscles and the muscles comprising the hamstrings. A long lunge emphasizes the glutes whereas a short lunge emphasizes the quadriceps.
• Sit ups – Sit ups are one of the most common exercises for the abdominal muscles. People attain washboard abs and get rid of pesky love handles through dedication to crunches.

Participation in Stacy’s Boot Camp forces preconceived notions about fitness into the ground – participants from all walks of life find Stacy’s Boot Camp engaging and exciting. “Whatever your goals are, I can help you step outside of the box and experience a challenge that will makeover your mind as much as your body,” says Stacy.

go! go! go!

There are certain things you LOVE…and when you become more involved with your fitness journey, you start to LOOK FORWARD to certain things – you look forward to certain foods, certain outfits, even certain songs. WHY? Because they all motivate you to eat clean and work out hard.

Some of the things I look forward to are:

- Running in the morning (2-3 miles)

- Eating breakfast

- Working hard then realizing it’s time for my 2nd meal of protein shake and 100 calorie popcorn

- Nrgize smoothies after my workout

- Stretching after a long, kickboxing class

- Seeing the definition in my arms when I train

- Saying hello to the trainers and gym employees

- Feeling satisfied knowing I finished a really good day.

—-

I wanted to share with all of you all the things I LOVE! And that includes all my favorite fitness brands!

Here are my favorite fitness tools:
- Nike (love their capri pants, their shoes, their hair ties and their hats)

- Cybex Arc Trainer: this is my favorite ‘precor-like’ machine to train cardio.

- Free Motion: I love anything that promotes functional fitness!

- Oxygen Magazine: their brand is unique as they always put out quality fitness models, great training articles and good reading information. They also give readers opportunity to engage and aspire to be a model one day.

- Billy Blanks: I LOVE Taebo.

- Zumba: if you are a gym and you are hosting a class, I will be THERE!

- Dasani Water: I LIKE the hardness of their water bottles!

- John Scott Nitro Supplements: I use their protein and fat burners religiously and I LOVE THEM!

- Adidas jackets and pants. I love their stripes! Especially if they are pink or yellow

- Bill Phillips books: Body for Life…awesome starter book! I loved their magazine when it was out!

Here are my favorite fitness foods:

- Low Carb Snickers bar: all time, top favorite. High in Fiber, protein, and not so much saturated fat or carbs.

- Max Muscle Chocolate Protein shakes

- 100 calorie bag ANYTHING. I love the portion control!

- Fat free, high fiber, natural, no salt popcorn

- Asian pears

- Nrgize Smoothies! Especially after a long, good workout!

- Jenni-O: Healthy lean turkey and great on the go meals! (I don’t know a lot about the way they process their meats though!)

- South Beach anything: I like their bars, I like their frozen meals…it is probably the most delicious thing to eat when you are really, really busy.

- Egg Whites and whole wheat English muffin with soy cheese for breakfast!

- Shrimp and Broccoli (I eat once a week!)
SO! What are your favorite fitness things? If you don’t have them..then create a list! Once you starting figuring out what you like about fitness, versus what you don’t like…you start getting more into the ‘healthy world’. You start using our language!

Did I miss anything??!

Love it!

“First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.” Aristotle

Fitness Motivation:
Aristotle said it best.

If you want to achieve a SPECIFIC END…then you must ADJUST ALL YOUR MEANS.

Do you have a goal? Is it realistic? Is it planned? Is it specific????

Do you have your tools??? Do you have a subscription to fitness cure?? Do you hang around good role models? Is your refrigerator clean? Do you have all your supplements?

Are you willing to adjust as needed?

For me, getting to a goal is not a matter of  if but when.

In the beginning of any journey I WRITE everything down…I create calendars I see everywhere…I document my progress.

SURE! I get off the path and sometimes miserably fail…

BUT there’s a reason why I succumbed to weakness…WHY I wasn’t able to follow through..

and I figure out that reason.

I become a better person because I dove into that reason.

SO – where are you in your fitness journey?

Have you given up?

Have you said to yourself: “I’m NEVER going to be blah, blah, blah”

OR

Have you just taken a small break and realized that MAYBE, you can

- eat less at night

- train more intensely at the gym

- drink a little more water

- say a little more prayers

and be a little bit more positive about the actions you are taking and the small goals you are making.

THINK about it.

Happy Hump day!

Very interesting! In a few years, we may be prescribing DIFFERENT types of fitness depending upon your ailment. In this study, they tested both endurance and strength athletes in their 20-30’s in a 90 day study. What they found was an enlarge heart in endurance athlete and a thickened heart in the strength athletes!

check out the study below:

How Exercise Changes Structure And Function

Of Heart

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2008) — For the first time researchers are beginning to understand exactly how various forms of exercise impact the heart. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, in collaboration with the Harvard University Health Services, have found that 90 days of vigorous athletic training produces significant changes in cardiac structure and function and that the type of change varies with the type of exercise performed.

“Most of what we know about cardiac changes in athletes and other physically active people comes from ’snapshots,’ taken at one specific point in time. What we did in this first-of-a-kind study was to follow athletes over several months to determine how the training process actually causes change to occur,” says Aaron Baggish, MD, a fellow in the MGH Cardiology Division and lead author of the study.

To investigate how exercise affects the heart over time, the MGH researchers enrolled two groups of Harvard University student athletes at the beginning of the fall 2006 semester. One group was comprised of endurance athletes — 20 male and 20 female rowers — and the other, strength athletes — 35 male football players. Student athletes were studied while participating their normal team training, with emphasis on how the heart adapts to a typical season of competitive athletics.

Echocardiography studies — ultrasound examination of the heart’s structure and function — were taken at the beginning and end of the 90-day study period. Participants followed the normal training regimens developed by their coaches and trainers, and weekly training activity was recorded. Endurance training included one- to three-hour sessions of on-water practice or use of indoor rowing equipment. The strength athletes took part in skill-focused drills, exercises designed to improve muscle strength and reaction time, and supervised weight training. Participants also were questioned confidentially about the use of steroids, and any who reported such use were excluded from the study.

At the end of the 90-day study period, both groups had significant overall increases in the size of their hearts. For endurance athletes, the left and right ventricles — the chambers that send blood into the aorta and to the lungs, respectively — expanded. In contrast, the heart muscle of the strength athletes tended to thicken, a phenomenon that appeared to be confined to the left ventricle. The most significant functional differences related to the relaxation of the heart muscle between beats — which increased in the endurance athletes but decreased in strength athletes, while still remaining within normal ranges.

“We were quite surprised by both the magnitude of changes over a relatively short period and by how great the differences were between the two groups of athletes,” Baggish says. “The functional differences raise questions about the potential impact of long-term training, which should be followed up in future studies.” Read the rest here.