RE: Kathy S - TLP video descriptions (Functional Fitness)
Here is Tracie's reasons for getting into Functional Fitness. Does anyone know what it really is??
"February 19, 2004
by Tracie Long-Mathewes
On April 4th, 2003 I taught my last spinning class. I only had 2 people there, my girlfriend Anne and a long time exerciser named Jim. I remember we just chatted the whole time, didn’t really do a “ride” per say. I told them I was resigning from LifeQuest and was taking some time off from teaching. They were bummed, especially Anne because she came to all of my classes and had lost 25 pounds working out with me and the other instructors at The Firm and then LifeQuest. (When we moved after the studio was closed) But I wasn’t bummed. I was burned out.
It wasn’t just spinning either. It was the whole thing…. 16 reps of leg press, 16 biceps curls, alternating biceps curls, squat with overheads…you name it and I was pretty tired of doing it and teaching it. While my work with FitPrime was very stimulating the choreography was how Anna liked to exercise. I still didn’t “own it”. I was looking for something I felt really was mine…something that got me excited about exercise again.
The first few months of not teaching I attended a new local yoga studio. I had been wanting to get into yoga for a long time. Ashtanga yoga was for me. It was athletic but still allowed me to get more “centered”. My favorite was the hot Bikram yoga because of the balance and focus it gives you. Still, it wasn’t mine.
And then it happened. I really didn’t discover functional fitness in a class. Even though I wasn’t teaching I still had personal training clients. While I was training them to do bench press and squats other trainers had their clients on stability balls and using medicine balls. My personal training business was very new and not very established so I scaled back and focused more on learning.
Cindy Thorp is a disciple of Functional Fitness training and had been using this style of training while she lived in Texas. I was amazed at her athleticism. While I was feeling old and stale (and achy, and stiff and “muscle bound”) I noticed she had newness to her teaching and her training clients were making incredible strides. She herself could perform exercises that would surely given me trouble (or worse). She had core strength, I didn’t. And not just the core strength you get from Pilates, dynamic core strength!
Cindy, a whole group and myself departed for Richmond to study with the NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine
www.nasm.org) and that was the beginning of my education.
Now that I am training for my video using Functional Fitness I am so excited about the changes I am getting. At first I only felt them (but boy did I feel them!) but now I am seeing them. The bonus? My upper body flexibility has increased dramatically (lateral flexibility) and my neck and backaches and pains are few and far between. The really great thing about Functional Fitness training is the calorie burn. Because you are using your core throughout the exercises and using many muscle groups to perform movement patterns (not just isolated exercises…i.e., bench press, biceps) you burn 30% MORE calories. This works for me because with a family and a career I don’t have to workout for longer than 45 minutes to feel liked I worked everything!!!! There was a time when 90 minutes a day seemed like the standard and anything less seemed sinful. After hearing how more than an hour a day of exercise can actually be BAD for you Functional Fitness training made that much more sense.
I’ll never go back. "
