Testimonial: Julia’s Fitness Journey with EarthFIT
“Before EarthFIT, my life was mostly just kind of hanging around the house, not a lot of activity certainly wasn’t very strong. Now after EarthFIT, especially now that I’ve been coming five days a week, it’s so much different. I sleep so much better. I have so much more energy during the day. I’m so much stronger.
I remember when I first started, I couldn’t do anything really at my first initial assessment, doing lunges was hard and now I feel like it’s, I’m so much better at doing everything. I have so much more energy now, I’m much stronger. I remember when I first started, it was a struggle for me to be doing things with like 10 pound dumbbells. So, I’m just so much more able to move around and so much stronger and have definitely built some muscle mass. I’ve been to every other kind of gym that there is and being in a small group setting is so great because you not only get what one-on-one coaching from you guys, which is awesome, but there’s also other people to kind of help you along the way with both how to do things and just some camaraderie.
I think a lot of people see videos on Facebook to get their initial taste of what EarthFIT might be like and so seeing so many positive results, I think makes anyone skeptical about anything, but actually coming into the gym and seeing that as real and that all of the coaches put in so much work to everybody and it’s so individualized, all of that skepticism just floats away the first class that you have.
I would recommend EarthFIT to anyone who’s interested in doing any kind of movement. I would give them my phone number. Even if you feel like you can’t do anything right now, and you mostly just hang out on the couch, you guys are so good at taking people from absolutely nothing to wherever it is that they want to be. The hardest part of getting over it, I think is just coming in the door the first time meeting you guys, everybody is so easygoing and so truly interested in helping people, which is hard to find.” –Julia
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to muffin top Monday. That is right! And today’s video I’m going to go over and address one of the most common problem areas for people. I’m again asked a lot about it. It is the muffin top. At first, I had no idea what it was. I had to look it up on Google. Google showed me it’s this area right here above your hips right here. Where that little, extra letting sticks out of your jeans. If you got a lower cut shirt, It will stick out as well – that is the muffin top. So today I’m going to show you some exercises, how to strengthen that area. Specifically, the muscles we’ll be targeting are the obliques. But before we get into that, I do want to note it’s very important… you’re listening to this, like I’ve said, in other videos, you cannot spot reduce body fat okay? You can not spot reduce body fat. Meaning, if I just do a bunch of oblique exercises, my muffin tops kind of not go away. It could strengthen the muscles of your obliques and give it a slightly tighter look. Just because muscle is a little bit tighter than a fat, but it’s not going to completely eliminate it. What you need to do for that is get proper nutrition and exercise regularly. Get proper rest each night. So nutrition, exercise, sleep. I know it’s not the funnest thing in the world to tell you repeatedly, but those are the most important, it should be the cornerstone. Now that being said, you got everything on lock. You’ve been doing all those consistently for a while. We could do some isolation exercises for the obliques to kind of strengthen and tone that muffin top. So we’re going to get into those now.
I’m going to give you three quick ones here. First one we’re going to want to do is a (1) side plank. So you go down here all the way down to the ground. Bring those hips up. Now when we’re in the side plank, you want to first make sure our shoulders, our knees and our ankles are all in one nice line here. Raise the hips up. Squeeze the butt forward. You want to squeeze this area right here up your abs. If that’s too easy for you, you could raise a foot off and hold it there for a little extra of resistance. You would turn over. After a minute of doing one side, you’re going to turn over and do it on the other side. If you can’t quite make it a minute yet, that’s fine. Break it up to 30 second intervals is fine.
After that, we’re going to stay down on the ground and we will do (2) bicycle abs. Now, I see this done wrong very frequently. The best way to do this is you’re going to want to go slow and controlled. If you’re a beginner, here’s a way that you can do it properly, you’re going to take one hand, place it on the ground there. So this shoulder is staying down in this instance as my right shoulder. Cause I’m going to go up with my left shoulder, immediate at my right knee here. So I would go up, squeeze the core, go back down slow and controlled. After I’ve mastered it with two feet on the ground, raised 2 feet, go there and then we can alternate back and forth. But remember the opposite shoulder down, go slow and controlled, especially on the way down you want to squeeze the core there.
And then we’re going to go to a heavier (3) single arm carry. Let’s called it suitcase carry. Now, if you don’t have a 50 pound dumbbell like I do at home, you can find something, a bucket, fill it up with water. Grab a bag of rice, grab your kid by the collar, carrying him like this. I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. 🙂 Go ahead. When you are doing your carry though, you want to square your shoulders up, walk nice and slow and controlled there. Try and bring your belly button in and up. Squeeze your core the whole time. You want to keep these shoulders square. That’s what’s going to work. This is if you’re keeping these square, if we’re leaning to this side, that’s not going to work. And please do not do this exercise. When you’re doing that. (Please see the video) You’re just going to stand up and walk nice and slow. Think about a minute or so down a minute, minute and a half down on one side and then a minute, minute and a half on the other.
And I’ll throw in a bonus exercises. This one’s for more advanced people. It’s a windshield wiper. You’re going to go down on the ground here. Keep that chest elevated. You just drop your feet out to the side here, go down, and then you’re going to use your core. You’re going to flex your core to pull it back into center. Don’t use your hips there. So go down and even think about it. Just kind of leaning with your knees there, and then I’m going to squeeze my core and that’s, what’s going to bring it back to the middle. Don’t use your hips to move it back to the middle. If you’re not feeling that one quite a bit, you’re probably not doing it right. Okay. So just focus on those other three then. So to recap, to eliminate that muffin top, first thing you’re going to do is focus on your nutrition. You’ve got to quit eating as many muffins. You’re going to want to focus on your exercise and you’re gonna want to focus on that rest. That’s gonna eliminate the most body fat. And then once we got those habits down on lock, we can do some isolation for the obliques that is more of that muffin top area. That is all for today. Thank you for tuning into muffin top Monday. I hope everybody has a fantastic rest of their week. Stay strong!
Beaufort Fitness: How To Prepare Yourself For The Weekend
Happy Friday everybody! Thank you for tuning in. I hope everybody has had an amazing week so far. I hope you’re preparing for the weekend to do something you love with the people you love. And today’s video I’m going to go over really quickly. How do you prepare yourself for the weekend? Maybe you find yourself every weekend, that’s the time that you fall off. That’s the time you feel like you’re gaining the most weight. You’re going back into the gym on Monday 10 pounds heavier. How do you prepare yourself for that? On Monday, I did a video about how to recover from a bad weekend. We’ll talk about the preparation today. So we’re going to go through 3 quick easy steps.
(1) First step is actually to prepare. Look at what you got on the schedule that weekend, maybe you have a big family event coming up where you know that your uncle Bob is going to feed you a bunch of burgers. So, and you just can’t resist uncle Bob’s burgers, right? So prepare for that workout ahead of time. Drink some water, maybe eat a little bit less. I’m not suggesting that you starve yourself so you can eat more. Not that binge restrict mentality, but if you do have a healthier relationship with food, you could incorporate some fasting again, only if you have a healthy relationship with food, then incorporate, you know, if you know, you have a big meal coming up fast a little bit and then eat more calories later, also prepare your meals. If that’s something you really struggle with, a lot of people will do great meal prepping throughout the week. And then when it comes to Friday, all their meals are gone and they just wait until Sunday to start cooking again. It makes the meals there, have them ready, have them ready to go. A little preparation will go a long way. I’m sure you’ve all heard “If you fail to prepare, you’re preparing to fail”. Keep that in mind.
(2) Step number 2, schedule some movement. I track a lot of clients’ steps whether it’s my clients online or here at EarthFIT through my accountability app. I can see it syncs up to things like their Apple watches, Fitbits, things like that. I can see their steps throughout the week and initially, when I take on a client, a lot of times, you’ll see, they’ll have a certain level of steps throughout the week and then the weekend comes and they’ll drop. Sometimes it’s drastic. It’s like six, 7,000 steps. So that’s usually the first first thing I’ll address with them is, Hey, let’s boost our steps up. Let’s boost our movement throughout the weekend. And what will happen a lot of times is, you know, we’ll eat a lot of food, we’ll be on the couch. Football’s on everybody that knows me, knows I love football and we’re sitting down all day. We’re not moving. So schedule a workout, schedule some daily movement, schedule a long walk. A couple long walks is actually the most optimal there. You’re going to want to schedule frequent movement. Okay.
(3) Third thing. Focus on your sleep. A lot of times our sleep is all over the place on the weekends. We’re staying up a little bit later. We’re drinking alcohol before we sleep. So we’re not getting that quality deep sleep that we need to really facilitate recovery and fat burning. So you’re going to want to really just try to prioritize your sleep, you know, go to bed at a reasonable time. I’m not saying you need to go to bed at 7:00 PM, but try to get a full eight hours in and think about your sleep and how that affects you. A lot of times when we’re tired the next day, it will mess with our hunger hormones. So we’ll eat, we’ll make poor nutritional choices. And then after we make those poor nutritional choices, it makes us tired so then we’re sleeping on the couch and then we’re not moving. So focus on your sleep.
So those are the 3 steps again, to recap, just prepare, go into the weekend. Look at what you got, look at your schedule ahead. If you’ve got a big event coming up, prepare for it. Schedule some movement in step number 2, you want to get out, move just, don’t be a couch potato all the weekend. And step number 3, think about your sleep. That one will probably go the farthest out of all of these, really think about your sleep and you’re going to get great results. Okay. So if you incorporate most of those, you’re going to see great benefit. Thank you for tuning in today. I hope everybody has an amazing weekend. Stay tuned. There’ll be a video on Monday and everybody, stay strong!
Betsy was skeptical of all gyms, decided to try EarthFIT and she wished she would have done it sooner. Check out her testimonial.
“Before EarthFIT, I have always exercised cardio, yoga, all sorts of different things, but I had plateaued. And when I turned 50, I realized I needed more, I wanted more for my body and brain. I was skeptical about all gyms, which is why I never joined one. And, I just didn’t see the point of it if I could do it at home on my own, I have done individual training. I did the beach body programs with Shaun T the insanity. And I did those regularly and I saw results with them but then, you know, again, I plateaued and I needed the individual encouragement and pushing, and knowing I could do more. The things I thought I could do when I got here, I found that I couldn’t do them or I was doing them wrong the whole time, which I think is why I wasn’t seeing the results that I wanted to see. I’ve strengthened and toned my body and my brain. I was worried that I was going to become feeble-minded and weak as I age. And I certainly feel stronger in both areas. I’ve been doing this almost a year now. And, I, everybody I see, I say they need to come, I tell them my story that I was skeptical about all gyms for 25, 30 years, I never did. And what I’ve seen in myself in the past year has just totally been worth it, wish I started earlier.”
It is important to remember weight loss is a journey with ups and downs. Losing weight is not always going to follow a downward linear progression. There will be days your weight goes up and days it goes down, as long as the long term trajectory is on the correct path, success can be obtained. With that being said, here are five things to consider if your journey has hit a roadblock – Breaking Through A Weight Loss Plateau (Click Here)
Beaufort Fitness: How To Recover From A Bad Weekend
“Today’s Q and A, I’m going to go over one of the most commonly asked questions I get. It comes up almost every single Monday. It’s “Sam, What do I do now that I had a bad weekend?” All right. We’re going to get right into that. Usually this question comes to me in the form of one way or another. It’s “Sam. I went out with my girlfriends, I had a bunch of drinks. I forgot to exercise.”, “Sam, I sat on the couch and baked a bunch of cookies.”, “Sam, I watched football and ate pizza. Now I weigh 10 more pounds, what do I do?”
Well, I’m going to tell you there’s a three-step approach. We need to take your first step (1) We need to forgive ourselves. Okay. Whatever you ate, it happened. It’s over with, okay. Before you were probably feeling really good if you’re staying on to your exercise and nutrition, now you might be feeling a little physically and mentally beat up because you’re not at optimal health. So you’re walking around really thinking about how can I get back in this? And you feel bad. First thing we have to do is break that negative feedback loop. Okay. What we want to do is forgive ourselves. Say it happened. Okay. Remember, you’re only one meal away. One day away from being back to being at your optimal health. Okay. One meal away, one day away from being back on the path to success. Okay. So always take that with you.
Step number (2) We got to hydrate. We want to rehydrate a lot of times when we have things like alcoholic beverages or less than optimal food, it’s going to dehydrate you. So you want to rehydrate, get ready for the week that’s to come.
Step number (3) Stick to whatever plan you’re on, whatever plan your coach recommends to you. Okay? You want to stick with the exercise routine. You don’t need to go out and do anything drastic and cause further stress to your body. So you don’t need to go and run 12 miles just because you had a brownie… stick to it. Okay.
And then if there’s a bonus step, it would be to learn from your mistakes. I’ll make another video on how to prepare for things, big events as the holidays come up, but you can kind of recognize what patterns what’s triggering me to eat a certain way. Do this so you can learn from your mistakes and just better yourself. But again, to recap, you need to forgive yourself. We got to hydrate. We have to stay with our normal exercise routine and then try to learn from our mistakes. Everybody makes them it happens. That’s all right, we’re all human. Just remember you’re one day away from being back on track to being your healthiest self. All right, everybody have a great Monday and everybody, stay strong.”
“Hey Everybody! Thank you for tuning into today’s Q & A. Today, I’m going to go over one of the most frequently asked questions. It’s “Sam, how often should I be working out? How many minutes a day do I need to spend working out? How many hours a week do I need to spend working out? How many days a week should I be working out?” I’m going to cover that in today’s video. We’re going to get right into it… nice quick one for you guys today. So to answer the question, how often should I be working out at point blank? Give me a drum roll, please. The answer is it depends. It really depends where you’re starting from. And now I know that’s not the answer most of you want to hear, but you’ve got to think if you’re starting out from the couch, it’s going to be a lot different than if you’re starting out from somebody that’s already intensely exercising three to four days a week.
Okay? the best recommendation I can give to you to make this specific to you is hire a coach. Tell them your goals, work with that coach. They’re going to prescribe you the best possible program for you. Okay? I’m not going to leave you guys with it depends. Get a coach answer. Okay? I’m going to give you a general prescription for fat loss for beginners and then people that are already training three to four days a week.
So for beginners, the first thing you want to do is you’re going to want to increase your frequency. Okay? You’re going to bring your frequency up with exercise. So you’re, want to get off that couch. You’re going to move as much as possible. So every single day you could be moving for about 30 minutes. When I say move, that does not mean go to the gym and start using every piece of the equipment, you could find beating yourself up for 30 minutes. That means just simply getting out, making a habit out of moving could be walking.
It could be doing some light mobility or stretching things.
So once you get that down and you’re ready for more, you’re ready for better results, faster results. It’s time to increase your intensity by weight training. So you’re going to start to weight train one to two days, maybe three days a week for most optimal results. You’re going to want to go with between three and four. Once you get that habit down, you’re in the three to four range where most of my current clients are; they’re intensely weight training three to four days a week. Then we’re going to add in things like mobility, aerobic conditioning in your off time. A lot of my clients say, Sam what should I do in my off time? How much time do I need spending outside of seeing you in my off time. And simply what I tell them is you need to be doing things, mobility. That’s going to increase your performance in the gym.
You want to work on those types of things, because if we can increase your performance in the gym, when you’re already training those three to four days a week intensely, you can make that better. You can push it more intensely. That’s going to give you better results. It’s going to push you closer towards your goal. So to wrap it up a few things to consider when your frequency goes up, your intensity is going to come down a little bit, meaning you’re not going to go from three to four days a week lifting super heavy than going to seven days a week lifting super heavy, no. Your intensity on those other days needs to come down and vice versa. If you’re, you know, lifting super heavy three days a week, but you want to add more frequency.
And again, that frequency, that frequency is going to come from things like mobility, aerobic conditioning to improve our performance in the gym. So I hope that answers that question for you. If you need any further clarification, feel free to reach out to me. If you have any other questions, message me, leave me comments. I’m here to help you. If you need a coach, you don’t have a coach. You’re not sure. Hey, how often should I be working out? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what you just said… Reach out to me. You can reach out to Beaufort personal training. We would love to see you at EarthFIT or online wherever you are. We’re bringing it to you. Everybody, stay strong.”
“Hey everybody! Today, I’m going to go over an exercise I see done incorrectly all the time. One of the most popular exercises, one of the most beneficial exercises that you could do from anywhere. That is the Push Up. The most common error I see is people starting out in the wrong position. So I’m going to give you a quick video here, some quick tips on how to get into that perfect push up position. So you could do your perfect push ups every single time.
So you’re going to go down to your knees here. I like to make a T when I start my push ups, so I can bring my hands out to about shoulder height here, make a T (form).
So they come in line with your chest and then simply just fall forward here. My hands are right under my shoulders, though. If you’re doing push ups from the knees, you just stay here.
You could bring those knees back a little bit, kick your heels up to your butt and then go down. That would be a modified pushup. Or if you’re doing any standard push up, just go from the high plank here, hands stay around the shoulder blades. You go down and then press your way back up.
So again, you go from a T position here. So start out T hands, shoulder width apart, bring right to the chest, fall forward, make sure your hands are right under your shoulder blades. You can kick those feet back, or if you’re going from the knees, kick the heels up, go down and then press up as a quick little tip on how to get into the perfect push up position so you’re doing those push ups perfectly every time. And remember you want your hands right under those shoulder blades. I see a lot of people doing that incorrectly. That is all for today. Everybody, stay strong.”
“Stress. The last one we’re talking about is reprogramming. But guess what? Stress is a way to reprogram the immune system. And it’s super important. So if you didn’t know, this exercise is actually stress, but it’s the healthy stress, right? This type of stress actually boosts your immune system when done correctly. If you overtrain, you can actually decrease your immune system to a point where you put yourself at risk. So this is why the science of training is so important.
So this is why when you come in, we adapt your body. Slowly. Adaptation is key to keeping a healthy immune system. As you train, you actually dip the immune system down. When you go home, you eat, sleep and drink water, and you replenish with the good food, the good substance. You’re actually now building your immune system at a higher level when it recovers, opposed to what it was previously.
So let me state that again. When you train you stress the body, the immune system goes down, you lose energy, glycogen, nutrients, et cetera. You go home, you take in good nutrients, and then you build yourself at a higher base level of immune system. The same thing happens when you use something like ice baths or cold showers. It does the same thing.
There’s what’s called hormesis. Hormesis is basically the stress response. It’s an exposure to an environmental toxin, which could be a little bit. So just a little bit of toxins can be beneficial. For example, they found that a little bit of radiation actually is good. And this guy named Schultz, a scientist found out that if he sprayed pesticide on yeast, that the yeast would die. If you spray just a little bit of it, the yeast actually grew, which got him to understand hormesis that a little bit of stress actually helps the body grow.
A little bit of stress of exercise helps the body grow. And as you continue, you actually build your stress response. So that’s why people can get ice baths for longer because they’re building their stress response. That’s why people can exercise for longer. So they’re building their stress response. They’re also building their immune response and immunity. So exercising will reprogram the immune system, cold showers, ice baths, help reprogram the immune system. We also already talked about removing and replenishing. So those simple things will make a big and massive impact on your body. I hope this helps. Let’s start with the challenge by just taking 22nd 32nd cold showers. You’re already exercising. If you can do that and increase, you’ll make a dramatic difference on your health and overall immune system.”
“Alright replenish. We went through remove. So if you remove the stuff that lowers the immunity, now we want to put the stuff in that builds it. And you may have heard me talk about vitamin C. Vitamin C is essential for the body’s process of healing, fighting off infection. We have to get our vitamin C from foods, and that’s also very challenging to do because you have to eat a ton of fruits and vegetables and greens, and most people just aren’t getting them today. So that’s why I recommend supplementing with Lypo-Spheric Liposomal Vitamin C that’s high quality because you don’t want to get the GMO corn. That’s actually bad, that’s one of the toxins that we’d want to remove that I was talking about in the previous video.
So replenish, we want high vitamin C. We want selenium, zinc, magnesium. These are vitamins and minerals that are going to boost immunity, help fight off infection, keep the body in a stable environment. And this is essential, essential for the body. There’s a guy who believes that most people are walking around with subclinical scurvy, meaning their vitamin C levels are super low. We do not create our own vitamin C. When sickness comes in, we need to increase the doses massively. And it’s very hard to get it through nutrition. So get vitamin C, goats… dramatically create more vitamin C in their body when they’re sick and this helps them fight off infection. So again, I can’t stress this enough, always have vitamin C available, take it daily, especially the more you exert yourself, the more you’re going to need. It helps with the formation of collagen, right? That’s what your skin is made of, your joints are made of.
So it’s, it’s super important. So now vitamin C zinc, selenium, magnesium at EarthFIT, we have a ReMag, which is a magnesium, but we also have ReMyte, which is loaded with minerals. And it’s something I highly recommend that every client, especially as you age, as your body, doesn’t absorb more of the minerals that you take advantage of. So that’s one of the ways you can do that. So vitamin C core minerals, clean fruits and vegetables. That’s what I recommend. This is what’s gonna replenish bioavailable.
When I say clean, I’m talking about no pesticides, preferably organic fruits and vegetables. In my book, I go into a little bit more depth on this stuff. So if you’re part of this, you have a chance to get in on the advanced copy. But this is just a simple breakdown of what you can do now to replenish. Juicing daily is a great way to get all the vitamins and minerals that you need. So vitamin C, ReMyte minerals or any core minerals supplement that you can take and then things like eating more fruits, vegetables that are clean juicing can be a simple and easy way to do it. All right, so that’s how we’re going to replenish the body and get the vitamins and minerals we need to boost the immune system.”
“Alright. So the first topic is remove. So this is the simplest. All you have to do is remove things that lower immunity, like for example, sugar, sugar lowers your immunity for hours sometimes days afterwards. So if you’re taking in processed sugar, your immune system is going to go down, so get rid of the sugar. Alcohol, alcohol is a toxin. When you metabolize it, it creates a toxin. It doesn’t get metabolized like other foods. It lowers your immunity. The first line of defense is going to be, removing the alcohol from the body. So no sugar, no alcohol. That’s the first thing. Then you can start to move on processed foods, things with additives, right? All these things are going to cause the immune system to have a response and not in a way that is good, meaning fighting off infection. It’s going to lower the immune system.
And so anytime we lower the immune system, we’re opening ourselves to infection. There’s about 1200 toxins that are put in our toothpaste, our shampoos that are banned in, for example, Europe, okay. These toxins are constantly being put on our skin, makeup, all that stuff. If you can remove as much of this stuff as possible, this is a much more in depth, longer thing, but you can start by researching, just look at the labels and then look at the labels. If you can’t read them, or they’re very hard to pronounce most likely they’re toxic chemicals. That’s a simple way of looking at it. So using as much natural products, removing the toxins that you’re exposed to daily, and we can start off with sugar and alcohol, right? Those two things right away. If you wanted to go more into the advanced method, start removing the processed foods, the junk foods and the chemicals that are in products that you’re putting on your body.
If you can’t put it in your mouth, putting it on your body is the same exact thing. Just think of all of your pores as this might be disgusting for some people, but there’s a guy I heard say this, that all your pores are like little butt holes and mouths. All right. So they’re excreting toxins and they’re taking toxins in. So that’s one of the benefits of exercising, which we’ll get into is that you’re sweating toxins out. So think of the body, the cleaner, it is the less mucus, the less acid is in the body, the more healthy you are and the better your immune system is. So that’s one step is remove. So remove the toxins, remove the sugar and alcohol specifically.”
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