2010 Spring Fitness and Training Forum

The Spring Fitness and Training Forum was a blast on Saturday!  All of the staff were energetic and fun.  Here’s a little bit about each of the sessions I attended.

Feral Fit
This was session was full of play exercise.  We ran to a nearby park and went through a series of warm ups, then through 8 different circuits.  The focus was on crawling, pushing, pulling walking, jumping, running and climbing… and being wild!  I felt like a kid again.

Feral fitness is a comprehensive approach to health made up of the 5 Feral Fundamentals: Feral Fitness, Feral Food, Feral Fun, Feral Focus and Feral Family.   It was the most fun of the 6 sessions I went through and gave me a ton of great ideas for my bootcamp I’m starting next month.

Going Bare Running Without Shoes
We reviewed the foot and many of the muscles and bones used in running, compared the gait, posture and cadence of barefoot running to shod running and went into how to transition to barefoot running.  One of the most important points emphasised — Go Slow.  This isn’t something you can just start doing.  Your feet, legs and body aren’t used to running without support and won’t like it if you just give them up.

A detailed 10 week training plan was laid out and covered how to increase muscle strength and flexibility, condition your feet for barefoot running, practice drills, working on your environmental awareness and relaxation, how to progress slowly to avoid injury and safety working up to running 1-3 miles barefoot.

Also, he made a point to see that if you choose to go barefoot, you really have to commit to it.  Your foot won’t be able to properly adapt if you’re only going barefoot once a month.  Committment is key.  If you’re interested in this let me know and I’d be glad to share more on what I learned.

Running a Successfull Fat Loss Program
This session basically reviewed a 10 week program that you can purchase from them.  A personal trainer and registered dietician talked about each of the outlined weeks.  Buying this program wasn’t something I did, nor would I need to, but it did give me a ton of great ideas for a lifestyle change group I want to start-up as part of our wellness program at work.

Kettlebells for Trainers
I hadn’t ever picked up a Kettlebell before so I was really excited to learn about them and how to use them.  We all grabbed a Kettlebell and reviewed common Kettlebell exercises, proper technique and then even went through a full body workout (with way too many squats and lunges to count).  I was sweating like crazy at the end of this!  The Kettlebell works great at strengthening your core because there is so much stabilizing going on during all of the movements.

Jacob’s excited to try them out too.  It’s just something different to add to your workouts and variety is what I’m always looking for.

Core Conditioning Combos
This class trained the entire core, and it was hardcore.  Upbeat music was used to keep the tempo up and after the warm up we went through 6 different combos, each 3 times.  The focus was on flexion, extension, rotation and lateral flexion of the core and believe me, no angle was missed.

Mat Moves
My final class was perfect to end with.  Petra Kolber, the instructor, had such a calming and easy way to her.   She combined moves from yoga, tai chi, dance and strength to create this beginner-intermediate level workout.  Each move built onto the next, so remembering what was coming next turned out to be easy.

At the end of the way I was pretty wiped out.  I left with some great ideas that I can incorporate into my own exercise routines right away.