5 Year Red Carpet Celebration!

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“Ceeeeee-le-brate good times, c’mon!”

No, it’s not just a corny song you hear at weddings.  Empower is celebrating its fifth anniversary!

Join us for our red carpet event on September 20th and 21st.  Details can be found here.

We’ll be celebrating all the way through September with some great promotions as a means to reward our outstanding clients.  You can purchase a 60 minute massage for $50 or purchase a 5 class pass card for only $50!

Finally, look out for our new Flip camera as we’ll be recording footage of our clients giving testimonials and doing exercises (with permission of course).

Back to School

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WOOHOOOOOO!!!! That’s what I said the day I got my first automobile – a mustard yellow 1992 Ford F-150…what a classic. It’s what my wife screamed as she held her hands up towards the sky going down Splash Mountain at Disney World this summer. And kids, that’s also what your parents say when its time for you to go back to school. Just kidding! but not really

Yes, it is that time of the year again. Time to put away the boogie boards, board shorts, and suntan lotion, and dust off the trusty backpack and trapper keeper…do people still use those? Got all of your school supplies and new school gear? Pens, pencils, and the biggest pack of Crayola crayons you can find? I remember back when I was the first kid in school to get the 128 pack. I thought I was so cool with my robin’s egg blue and burnt sienna. Good times. But I digress.

Anyway, the point is that the beginning of the school year usually brings about a great deal of change, and change, while often good, can be quite stressful. The stress and anticipation about the upcoming school year, if not managed properly, can pose quite the challenge to one’s health and wellness. This is true whether you preparing for your first day of kindergarten, middle school, or even your senior year. And parents, I probably don’t have to go out on a limb to tell you that you’ll probably be feeling some of the anxiety too.

Therefore, it’s important that we do our best to manage back to school stress by focusing on things that we can do to improve our well being. But that’s easier said than done, right? If you are looking for a few cool tips though, then check out this article. (link) It discusses back to school health and how parents can take steps to ensure their children are well rested, energized, and fully prepared for the rigors of the school year – just like our friend Billy Madison.

"Back to school. Back to school, to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool. I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight. Oh! Back to school... back to school... back to school."

Jamie Ives MA, CSCS, Master Trainer

Jamie has several years of experience in the fitness industry, working with clients of various ages, ability levels, and health conditions. He enjoys using his knowledge as well as his experience in exercise prescription and program design to help each of his clients reach their individual wellness goals and improve their quality of life.  For more information about Empower Personal Training, please call (919) 401-8024.

The Empower Team

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I work with a bunch of characters.  Each trainer has a different style and unique personality.

Some call Mike Babbitt the Drill Sargent.  One of his clients sarcastically asked Mike “wouldn’t it be great if we did an entire workout with just the air dyne, burpees, and spartan tire flips?”  Mike made him do it in their next session.

At first glance Jamie Ives seems like a quiet, reserved fellow.  Get to know him a little better and you’ll discover he has a wicked sense of humor.  He’ll deploy an awesome workout while he has you in tears laughing at his jokes.  It’s common to see Jamie lip-syncing the lyrics to music playing on the radio.  His favorites are Creed and Savage Garden.

Gena Coleman is a character like no other.  Look over while she has a client doing a set and you may see her correcting form.  Look again when the form has been corrected and you’ll probably see her break out some sweet dance moves.

'N-Sync lyrics? Jamie's got 'em

Tom Stafford is a funny dude eager to hit you with a funny joke or a magic trick.  He’ll ask you trivia questions in the middle of a hard set.  He’ll tell you about how tennis shoes are ruining the world.  He’ll play you a funny answering machine message featuring his daughter growling.  Tom likes medicine balls, TRX straps, and full contact crab walk soccer.

Julie King is the queen of charisma.  She’ll teach you proper exercise mechanics and then translate something into Mandarin for you.  I’ve seen her have a group of kids exercise for an hour and love every minute.

We don’t see her very often but Katy Harris has been here longer than any other trainer.  She sets the standard for customer service and dedication.

Come to Empower in the morning and you’ll find Patty Shoaf.  Patty is bursting with personality and training knowledge.  Greet her and you’ll receive a smile and a devastatingly hard handshake.

I haven’t known Aaron Hornstra for very long but I can tell he’ll fit right in here.  This guy is clean-cut, punctual, witty, and the second all time leading scorer on his high school basketball team.

Michael Whitehurst runs many of the day-to-day operations around here.  He’s fun, reliable, and knows how to brew a great raspberry cider.

Ronda and Jessica started Empower Personal Training five years ago.  They have established a fantastic environment for people to achieve their health and wellness goals.  We have a special team of trainers, nutrition counselors, massage therapists, yoga and pilates instructors that are educated, certified, and ready to provide great service.

Our trainers

Paul Piracci, CSCS Professional Trainer

Paul brings a background of athletics and education to the Empower team. He believes that wellness should be viewed as a blended lifestyle that balances nutrition, a healthy mind, and fitness which incorporates fun recreational activities. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024.

Want to lose weight?

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Are you someone who needs to lose weight?  Have you tried everything under the sun but find yourself chalking it up to a slow metabolism?  Here are some tips that will help you:

Exercise hard at least 30 minutes, three times per week.  This can be anything that gets you out of breath, sweating, uncomfortable, and just plain working hard.

Do something to elevate your heart rate five times a week for an hour.  Walking, cleaning the house, washing your car, playing with the kids, sports, or basically anything that doesn’t involve sitting and watching TV.  And no, lifting the remote does not count as bicep curls.

Cut out the following foods from your diet: sugar, alcohol, refined starches, and anything that comes from a container with more than three ingredients.

Consume 75% less dairy and the bread, cereal, pasta, and rice section of the food pyramid.

Eat two or three servings of fruit everyday, no more and no less.

Eat lots of vegetables (don’t do bicep curls with the ranch dressing bottle either!).

Follow these rules and I’m certain you will lose fat.

Paul Piracci, CSCS Professional Trainer

Paul brings a background of athletics and education to the Empower team. He believes that wellness should be viewed as a blended lifestyle that balances nutrition, a healthy mind, and fitness which incorporates fun recreational activities. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024.

Fitness Tips

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When it comes to fitness tips, everyone seems to have an opinion. Best friends, next door neighbors, coworkers…ask any of them what you need to do to get in shape and stay in shape, and you’ll likely get any number of responses. Eat less meat, eat more spinach , run every day, purchase the latest fitness product on the market, or do whatever the latest fitness magazine tells you…and that’s just to name a few. You know my great uncle Leroy once told me that all I had to do to get in shape was to carry around a weed eater and push a garden tiller around all summer. Thinking back, I’m not quite sure that worked out as well as I had hoped it would; however, it did help improve my cultivating and lawn maintenance skills.

Anyway, with all of the opinions out there, where does one turn for good fitness information? Well, I’m a big fan of checking the literature, the empirical studies, yes the good ole’ scientific research. While I don’t think it’s necessarily the best idea to form an opinion based off of the results of one single study (after all not all research is good research, and one can usually find holes in just about any study ever done), analyzing research is ultimately the most effective way to separate the good information/advice from the bad. Or in this case, the good fitness tips vs. the bad fitness myths.

With that said, I browsed through some of the literature in the fitness field to see if I could find anything that sounded somewhat appealing. You can do it too. Simply google exercise research or something like that and scan through the results. Or, if you have a few minutes, browse through a research search engine such as pub med . Journals like the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise are great sources as well.

Here are just a few links to studies that address certain “fitness tips.”

1. Is it possible to lose weight by lifting weights? Check out this study published by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. (link)

2. Always take the elevator at work? This study may have you thinking again about the benefits of the infamous stairwell. (link)

3. Can’t remember what your spouse told you to buy from the grocery store? Maybe taking a walk will help you to remember. (link)

4. Having trouble achieving the fitness results that you desire? Sometimes all you need is a little extra motivation from someone special. (link)

Jamie Ives MA, CSCS, Master Trainer

Jamie has several years of experience in the fitness industry, working with clients of various ages, ability levels, and health conditions. He enjoys using his knowledge as well as his experience in exercise prescription and program design to help each of his clients reach their individual wellness goals and improve their quality of life.  For more information about Empower Personal Training, please call (919) 401-8024.