Posted on

Workout Week 4 Day 1 (Jen)

After working yesterday I went home and was exhausted, I felt like just laying in bed the entire night-but eventually I motivated myself to get up and go to the gym, after a decent meditation session. I was mindful I was being lazy and accepted it and then over came it. The workout was

3 Position Snatch 35, 55,55,55,60,60,60,65,65
Front Squat Warm Ups
-Warm up sets x5 @ 35, 55, 65
-Warm Up sets x3 @ 70, 75
Front Squat x1 with 3 second pause 85, 90, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125

I opted out of doing the core workout, which I should have. I had been at the gym for 2 hours already and was just done and wanted to go home and eat. I also didn’t form role, stretch and do mobility work. I don’t think today will be a gym day, as there is a lot of meal prep I have to do-which I was to tried last night.

Day 1 of the Whole 30 was successful, mostly keeping myself busy is going to make it easy. I’ll be putting time into constructive things like meal prepping, working on the house, and getting outside and walking and playing more pokemongo.

Cheers-Jen

Posted on

Camping June 16-18 @BearRun Prospect, PA

Justin and I have been terrible about sticking to our path to get stronger and leaner-mostly neglecting the blog and our own health. I want to talk about our amazing weekend, relaxing, being with friends, and outdoors.

We arrived at Bear Run campground on Friday afternoon to P25a Walk In campsite. The weather in Pittsburgh was horrendous with heavy rain fall and flooding, however just north 40 some miles not a drop of rain or cloud in the sky. Justin and I unloaded the car, as this was a walk in site.

FullSizeRender (1)

After we were set up our friends arrived and set up camp. We spent the afternoon into late evening hanging out, talking, and cooking mountain pies, steak, and pasta. There were many adult beverages, laughs and hammock swings.

Saturday I was really feeling the effects of to many adult beverages, not enough sleep and the heat. Breakfast was fantastic, bacon, eggs and delicious vegetables, and potatoes. Camp fire meals are tasty. Later in the afternoon more friends arrived! We spent the rest day in Hammocks and camping fold chairs traveling between the two camp sites-even though I was not in good shape and just wanted to crawl into a ball and sleep for hours-I powered though the disastrous state I had created from too much fun the night before.

Sunday morning, no one wanted to get up and face the day because we all knew that camping would be over and we had to go back to being adults. But eventually we all arose and started making breakfast and tearing down camp. We made an amazing campfire meal of breakfest tacos, catering to both the meat and non-meat eaters.

One thing i was introduced to is turkish coffee by our great friend Nina. The coffee beans are ground finer than espresso and placed into an interesting looking pot, which is pictured. You let the coffee rise 3 times-as each time it rises you remove it from the fire-to allow it to settle back down. She shared her delightful beverage with everyone that was willing to try it. For me, I just had my normal fresh press style coffee with some coconut cream.

Amazing memories, love and gratitude is how I felt after leaving the campground. I will hold those 48 hours near and dear. It is important to spend time with your friends and family and have fun.

But now-it is time to get serious-30 days of strict diet, lifting, sprinting, no drinking and meditating. This will allow us to not make excuses and eat out-which is mostly so unhealthy, establish routines to make better choices and not be lazy about everything when it comes to our health. Here is to a successfully Whole30- I look forward to this journey.

-Jen

Posted on

Chicken Thighs with balsamic vinegar, tomatoes, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese

This is so yummy and Altshift #5shift friendly!

Ingredients
• 5-6 chicken thighs with skin and bone
• 2 tablespoons avocado oil or any cooking oil
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons of arrowroot starch
• 1 cup of white mushrooms sliced
• 1½ cups small colorful tomatoes (tomato melody)
• 8 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese sliced
• Oregano, basil, salt, and pepper

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 410 F

Sprinkle all the seasonings on each chicken thigh, then rub the spices into the chicken
Heat a cast iron skillet with the avocado oil over medium to high heat
Cook the chicken thigh on each side for 3-5 minutes to sear. Remove the seared thighs from the cast iron skillet
Add the minced garlic to the empty skillet for 30 seconds to a minute. Add the vinegar and arrowroot starch and stir. Continue to cook on low heat until the marinade is thick, while stirring
Add the chicken thighs back to the skillet to coat each with the marinade. Add 1 cup of the colorful tomatoes and the mushrooms to the skillet.

Place the skillet in the oven for 25-35 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked.
Remove the skillet from the oven and place mozzarella slices over each chicken thigh. Place the skill back in the oven for 3-5 minutes until the cheese is completely melted.
After, the cheese melted remove from oven and add the rest of the colorful tomatoes and consume!

Posted on

3/20/2017 WOD

My first lifting workout in what feels like months, but only a few weeks crushed me. In a few short weeks I have lost a bit of volume in the weight I was able to move, and power making it through the movements. I am writing this 2 days after the work out. But my first day back consisted of this:

Bench press 5×10 w/ barbell @ 65lbs
Back Squats 5×5 w/ Barbell @ 95lbs
Box Step ups 40 reps @ 24 inches
Incline press 3×10 w/ 20lbs dumb bells
Goblet squats band above knee 3×10 with 20lbs KB

I do have some stiffness and soreness happening, but it isn’t terrible and will not hold me back from pulling and pushing weight later on in the day.

-Jen

Posted on

Good, capital G good

We are all capable of amazing things, but to make these amazing things happen in our own lives we need to have a head right and fully understand why we are trying to do these things. My husband and I have been on a winding bend roller coaster that hasn’t stopped over the last few years. We have gone strong in our efforts to improve our bodies and mind, however we often fall away from those strong efforts back to our old habits, to board that roller coaster yet again, and again. We have both had a few health scares and it really turned on the switch that is time to get series and quit telling ourselves that “we will start tomorrow” and start today. So that is what we did, this blog is our journey to reset our mind, heart and body.

I’d like to start with some great advice from the late Chris Moore aka Barbellbudda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RocCNvDAEuc

“One thing you can always do to ensure justice, to ensure you are doing Good, capital G good. Always try to come back to something you love daily and to try to make it better  just a little bit better a little bit more helpful  a little less heavy with mistakes a little better focused any small improvement coupled with the daily effort of just trying again is really the only remedy to the self-doubt and you are going to feel it that you want to do something but something is going to whisper in your ear that maybe that is not possible, The only way you are going to remedy that is to keep doing it and to stoke and cultivate within yourself faith for lack of a better word to keep it up that if you will be rock solid with yourself you know that you have something worth sharing and providing talking about and doing. If you keep stoking your little fire that will remedy the issues of self-doubt  that will help that better than anything else and even know you will keep dealing with at the very least, very least you will be able to easily look back to where you are because right in the present moment its hard to always believe in the vision and the dream you have all the faith . You also take a little time to show yourself some gratitude for how far you have come to realize that in the space of a couple of years you can have a lot of hurts wounding things cause that is going to happen to everybody but also in the same point you can see all the little moments when where you were able to produce and make something   and persevere and move on through those moments. Two years to see how far you have come with this simple practice like that is really all the proof you really need to make tracks. If you want to be a good coach just keep coaching me you wanna be a great writer find a way to write, even just one sentence today, one sentence written as good as you could will make that happen . If you want to take on a business task, anything you might want to take on keep up the daily faith that is how you will make it a real thing and I really believe that.”