Hey Team Tiger!

The Mighty Mice and the Thundercats went head to head at beautiful Clover Park in Santa Monica, with the the Mice taking the APRIL Cup with a tie-breaker in overtime. What a competition, what a day—sweet! Afterward, good eats were had by all with a BBQ from Tiger Fitness. Great burgers Brian!

>>Join TigerFit Boot Camp Here.

Fitness Tip: Attitude is Really Everything – When it comes to living healthy. A negative attitude can sabotage the best laid plans for your fitness and health goals. Living well is a direct correlation with a positive attitude. Keep smiling and try to surround yourself with positive people and influences, while you look for the good in daily business and personal activities.

Exercise of the day: The Ball Rise and Shine Advanced this great lower back core exercise movement will help you build and tone your lower back muscles with the help of your stability ball.

Fitness Tip: Get connected – Check out TigerFit Blog for fitness, weight loss, diet, exercise for discussion, news and views.

Exercise of the day: The Band Incline Chest Press is a great upper chest exercise that helps you tone and tighten your upper body with the use of exercise bands.

Exercise isn’t just for the gym, integrate physical activity
into all parts of your life—especially at home.

Listen, we all spend most of our time at home and we see it as a sanctuary from the outside world. We get cozy on the couch and much of our time is spent preparing meals and eating and generally relaxing. The problem is that this sedentary lifestyle that we have at home neutralizes any exercise program that we may be doing at the gym and is a missed opportunity to generally increase our overall metabolism.

With a few easy changes to your lifestyle, adding physical activity at home can turn a couch potato into an athlete. As a side benefit to your healthier consciousness, your children will see that physical activity is not something you “do” at the gym or just on the soccer field, but is a normal, healthy part of life, which sets a good example for them.

You’ll soon find that you can combine exercise with many daily activities and that your time spent at home will supercharge your fitness program and help you burn fat and gain lean toned muscle.

Tiger Fitness Top 10 Home Exercise Tips:

1. Ditch the housekeeper and clean the house yourself— home cleaning is just one huge aerobic exercise class!

2. Retire the riding mower and landscaping team and work in the garden or mow the grass yourself. —Raking leaves leaves, weeding, pruning and digging in the garden burns huge amounts of calories-get to it!

3. If you are a stay at home parent and/or work out of your house go outside for short walks. —Start with 5-10 minutes and work up to 45 minutes of brisk walking.

4. For short trips, walk (choose a hilly route) or bike to the corner store instead of driving. —Great for the love handles, the environment and the soul.

5. Always combine watching TV with another activity like pedaling on your stationary bicycle, folding laundry, performing crunches, etc. (be creative). —Parking it on the couch leads to boredom and bored-eating. Move it!

6. Stand up and take walk while talking on the telephone. —You never know where you will end up!

7. Walk the dog or better yet take the dog for a leisurely jog. —you both will love it!

8. See shopping as a way to increase your steps for the day. Park farther away at the mall and vigorously walk the extra distance. Try to mostly wear your running shoes and sneak in an extra lap or two around the mall or department store.—Easy and effective!

9. Make things less-convenient at home, by placing things you need daily in the garage or place cleaning items in high places. —Extra squatting, bending, walking, carrying and stretching ALL add up to a fitter you!  

10. Keep the exercise equipment in your home gym repaired and convenient to use! —Dedicate a room or garage space for your home gym!

You are on the way to a leaner and more tone you…sweet!

How to Guarantee Your Fitness Success!

Starting a new fitness program for the ump-teenth time?
Here are the 10 keys to strengthening your motivation and finally achieving fitness success.

1. Fitness Goals must be realistic.
Start simple and then move on to longer range goals. Don’t forget to make your goals achievable and realistic. When you are overly ambitious, frustration usually sets in quickly. If you’ve been a couch potato for a while, short-term goals are best—begin with a five minutes walk 1-2 times a day. Intermediate walking goals — 20 minutes 3-4 times a week. Long-term goals — complete a 5k or 10K.

2. Begin your program slowly.
If you push yourself too hard at first, you may be forced to abandon your program because of pain or injury. It’s better to start slowly and progress gradually.

3. Variety is the spice.
Changing-up your exercise program keeps boredom at bay. Begin walking and alternate with biking, swimming or TigerFit Boot Camp. Get out of the house or gym in good weather, and do flexibility and stretching exercises. Join a local soccer club or just play with your kids. Try TigerFit Personal Training to broaden your access to different forms of exercise and programs.

4. Fitness Should Be Fun.
You definitely will stick with your exercise program if you are having a good time—if you’re not immediately change it up. Rugby, volleyball or running clubs are great alternatives. Swing dancing classes are vigorous fun. Cross-train by exchanging your running duds for a swim suit. With a little thought, exercise should be the part of your day that you look forward to most.

5.  Integrate physical activity into your daily routine.
Finding time for exercise can be stressful, but this is not an excuse. Workouts should be scheduled as you like any other important activity in your life. Try to slip in physical activity throughout your day. Creativity is key! Walk during your son’s soccer practice. Think stairs, avoid the elevator at work. No more couch potato, ride a stationary bike or do strength training exercises while you watch TV.

6. Write it Down.
Are you hoping to lose weight? Boost your energy? Sleep better? Manage a chronic condition? Write it down! Seeing the benefits of regular exercise on paper may help you stay motivated.

7. Get the support you need.
You’re not in this alone. Invite friends and co-workera to join you when you exercise. Exercise with your spouse or your kids. Take a class at a local fitness center.

8. Definitely track your progress.
It may help to keep an exercise diary. Record what you did during each exercise session, how long you exercised and how you felt afterward. Recording your efforts can help you work toward your goals — and remind you that you’re making progress.

9. Go ahead, reward yourself.
After each exercise session, take a few minutes to sit down and relax. Reflect on what you’ve just accomplished. Savor the good feelings that exercise gives you. This type of internal reward can help you make a long-term commitment to regular exercise. External rewards can help, too. When you reach a longer range goal, treat yourself to a new pair of walking shoes or new tunes to enjoy while you exercise.

10. Flexibility is Key
Too busy to exercise or simply don’t feel like it, then take a guilt-free day off. Take a break when you need it, it’s a part of a successful exercise program. Just make sure it’s just a break and don’t let it derail your progress.

Remember, physical activity should be FUN and is for life. Be sure to review these tips whenever you feel excuses coming on to keep your fitness program on track. Tiger Fitness Los Angeles trainers are master motivators for when you are looking to take your fitness to a higher level. Check us out at—Tiger Fitness Los Angeles.

Tip: Train your Mind – Listen to audio books while you exercise – Self-improvement and motivation books are GREAT here. You’ll feel twice as productive, and highly energized, and the time will fly. As you are working out you are not only focused on feeding your body, but your mind. What a great combination to live by.

Exercise of the day: The Band Lat Raise Single Arm is a great isolation shoulder exercise that will help you strengthen the entire shoulder area while traveling on the road or in the comfort of your home gym.

Self-Motivation for Fitness Success!

Have you ever heard the saying that if you believe, you can achieve? Many of our clients have accomplished extraordinary things based on this simple principle. A vivid example of this principle was caught on tape during an interview that took place backstage at a body building competition. A reporter asks a successful young body builder about the possibility of his competitor stealing his long held title. The tanned athlete laughed at the question as he rubbed oil on his sculpted muscles. Then he looked up and said evenly, “There is no such thing.”

The year was 1975 and the athlete was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He did, of course, go on to beat his competition—but then, he hadn’t left himself any other option.

Do you have a fitness or weight loss goal that you want to achieve? Do you want to lose 10 pounds or lower your cholesterol? Somewhere between believing and achieving you need a heaping dose of will power. In light of recent studies that have shown that less than half of Santa Monica adults have a healthy weight, it seems that will power has become rather hard to come by.

Will Power is best described as the ability to control impulse, to overcome laziness, and to persevere toward your fitness program. It is the strength that keeps you from going back for seconds after a delicious meal. It convinces you to choose a salad instead of fries with your sandwich. And it propels you off of your buttocks and to the gym after a long day at work.

As of late, the art of exercising will power has been given a bad name. People naturally associate it with giving up something they are crazy about, or with forcing themselves to do something that they aren’t so crazy about. This perspective misses the point. The fact is that it is only when you master the art of will power that you achieve inner strength.

So how does one master the art of will power?

Focus on one thing at a time.Don’t attempt to implement will power over every bad habit in one shot. If your fitness goal is to lose 10 pounds, then start by breaking just one of your unhealthy habits that contributed to the weight gain. Linda Johnson, Santa Monica lost 12 pounds in 4 months by breaking one simple habit—her morning blended mocha!

Gradually work toward a goal. They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day—and neither was the perfect body. It takes time to, build muscle, lose fat and to increase your metabolism. Consider every time that you implement will power as taking one step toward your fitness goals, if you keep taking step after step you will eventually arrive at your destination.

Change your unhealthy surroundings. If your fitness goal is to lower your cholesterol, then don’t stock your fridge with bacon! If you want to lose 10 pounds and know that you have a weakness for chocolate—don’t buy that candy bar! Transform your environment into one that supports the lifestyle needed to achieve your goal. This will make your progress much easier.

Find healthier alternatives. If you have an unquenchable craving for a burger—don’t panic! Try a lean turkey burger or veggie burger. Instead of ice cream, stick with non-fat frozen yogurt. Trade in your greasy potato chips for the low-fat baked brand. There are numerous alternatives to your unhealthy favorite foods; all you need to do is find them. Take a trip to your local Santa Monica food co-op or health food store and browse around. You may be surprised to find that the healthy version tastes even better than the original!

If You Believe, You Can Achieve!

Build a support group. When you are in the throes of exercising will power, the last thing you want is for your friends and family to surround you with everything you can’t have. So tell them about your goal. Let them know the things that you can’t eat and those that you can. Build a Santa Monica support group out of those closest to you, and who knows—you may end up helping them achieve better fitness as well! One of the main reasons that TigerFit Boot Camp is so successful is that it thrives on an atmosphere of support.

FREE TigerFit Pre-Boot Camp Tryouts
—begin on June 1st.

Attention Men and Women: Our New Summer TigerFit Boot Camps begin on June 15th, be sure to attend our FREE pre-boot camp tryouts that begin on June 1st. FREE spots fill quickly. Click the Link to sign-up.—Sign Up Here.

TigerFit Boot Camp is perfect for clients looking for a team-oriented, alternative fitness experience. We call our boot camp a kitchen sink fitness program because we throw in everything that we can think of; challenging body weight exercises, yoga, circuit training, pilates, weight training. You name, we use it. Not only does using the best of every fitness method get our clients into amazing shape, it insures that the program stays fresh, and that our clients enjoy the experience. TigerFit Boot Camps make it hard to believe you are getting in such great shape because you’re having so much fun.

Discover the Fitness Secrets
of the “Naturally” Lean

You know who they are, the “naturally” lean people. You see them on almost every magazine cover wearing their ridiculously skinny jeans and their washboard revealing midriff tops. Their super charged metabolisms seem to burn off anything they eat leaving their bodies impossibly lean without any effort.

They’re just too perfect to live and, truth be told, they don’t really exist. These people with seemingly impossibly fast metabolisms, these people that eat anything that they want are just like you and me. They just have a secret weapon against fat that anyone can use, including you.

Secret Weapon #1:
They eat when they’re hungry:

Here is a statement that I want you to burn into your memory; if as a society we only ate when we were hungry, there would be no overweight people in the world.

Your body has the ability to regulate your weight naturally. Your brain knows that extra fat on your frame is unhealthy; it actually fights against it… for awhile. However, society has programmed us to overeat.

Portions are enormous, snack foods like chips and cookies are not just encouraged, they are mandatory, almost everything in our world is somehow tied to food. That’s right, you have been programmed to overeat.

Remember when you were a kid? You didn’t worry about watching calories. You ate when you were hungry. Somewhere along the way those natural eating patterns set by your own internal rhythms were overridden with imposed programming.

Maybe your parents made you clean your plate before leaving the table, maybe you learned to eat when you were stressed out, maybe you got into the habit of eating junk in front of the T.V. Somewhere along the line our natural habit of eating when we were hungry became eating when we are stressed, or sad, or bored, or distracted.

As a society we use food for almost anything but what it was intended for, a source of fuel. The first step to getting to lean is to separate actual hunger, from something masquerading as hunger. Thirst, lack of sleep, stress, boredom, all can trigger the hunger reflex.

There was a time when listening to your body and its internal rhythm was second nature. The first secret is to get back to the point where your body tells you what it needs and when it needs it… and you listen.

Secret Weapon #2: They eat the foods
that they want to:

Our bodies have the innate ability to eat the foods that they need. What we call “cravings” are actually our bodies way of telling us we need something in that food to grow, heal, maintain.

However, just like our ability to regulate when we eat, we have reprogrammed or ability to regulate what we eat and how much we eat. Listening to our bodies is not something that is encouraged in our society, as a matter of fact the assault on our natural inclinations is relentless.

Every commercial, every billboard, every magazine advertisement screams that we should consume, and consume as much as possible. Not only have we built a fast food restaurant on every corner, we can have it delivered if we don’t want to leave the couch. We have an entire industry dedicated to getting us to overeat.

Once again, the secret here is to listen to your body, not that commercial. Have you ever felt “bad” after eating food that you knew was unhealthy? Maybe it gave you heartburn, maybe it made you sluggish and tired, maybe you got a headache. All of these things are your body way of telling you, no, screaming at you that you ate the wrong thing.

Now, how do you feel after you’ve eaten a meal that you know is good for you. A quality lean protein source, lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, a complex carbohydrate.

I’d be willing to bet that you feel great! You have more energy. Your mood is lifted. Your workout was more satisfying. What do you think your body is telling you when feel this way? Listen to that message. Embrace that feeling.

Secret Weapon #3:
They don’t count calories :

We are all creature of habit. Take a look back at any week of your life and you will see patterns in the way you eat. We usually eat at roughly the same times everyday, and we usually eat the same things from the same places.

Once the pattern is recognized and established you know where your calories are coming from, and once they’re counted, you know how many you’re taking in. Now of course there are some times when there will be exceptions, like when you’re traveling or special occasion dinners.

However, for the most part your diet stays pretty constant. The trick here is to know the calories in the foods you eat, to make that knowledge a part of the eating process.

Once you know the calorie counts for all of the foods that you eat, you automatically know how many calories you’re taking in on a particular day and if you’re over or under your calorie goal. So the secret here is, don’t count…know!

Secret Weapon #4:
They don’t keep a food journal:

Now I know that I’m going to get some grief for this one. As a trainer I insist that all of my clients keep a food journal. Well, you might ask, how can not keeping one be a secret to being impossibly lean?

My philosophy on eating healthy, as well as working out is that it should become a part of your lifestyle. It should become second nature to know how many calories that you’re taking in and the quality of those calories.

Keeping a food journal is just a way to establish patterns, once the patterns are established, once you recognize the parameters, once all of this is engrained and your old damaged programming is rewritten, the food journal is internalized, just like it was when you were a kid, before your natural rhythms were disrupted. It’s just like counting calories, sure you have to do it before you can know what the count is.

Sure you have to keep your journal before you can establish patterns. But once you have, your day to day eating is established. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve asked to see my clients food journals and I see page after page of the same things over and over. Once you reach that point, the need for a food journal is done.

Secret Weapon #5:
They don’t “Workout”:

This is another one of those remember when you were a kid scenarios. Kids don’t go to the gym. They don’t need to. They play. Their workout is whatever is the most fun at the time.

Playing tag, riding bikes, roller skating, climbing the jungle gym all kept us burning calories when we were little. It’s time to get back to that mindset. Workouts shouldn’t be a chore. They should be fun. If your workouts aren’t fun, you’re doing it wrong.

If you don’t like running, don’t run. Ride a bike instead. Find a trail that inspires you, invite friends to go along. If riding a bike doesn’t get your mojo running then go surfing. The point is find something that you love doing, and you’ll never workout a day in your life.

I happen to love weight lifting, always have. Even when I was a little kid I had a set of dumbbells. Ok, maybe I was a weird kid, but the point is that when I workout, I’m doing something that I love.

Every one of us has a favorite activity. It might have been awhile since you done it, you may have even forgot about it, but somewhere in your brain is the memory of pure joy that only physical exertion can bring you. Find that bliss, it will save you.

So there you have it, the secrets to being impossibly lean. Just like most things in life, the answers are simple, they’re just not easy. Stick to the basics, make minor adjustments and have fun. Getting lean can be a rewarding journey. Don’t be afraid to start that journey today.