Meet Mary Sampson

• Uncategorized
• No Comments

Folks, all I can say is that she does it all. On any given day you may see Mary pushing around 300 pounds on the sled, pulling in 75 kilos of sandbags, or setting a new record in the Dynamax Ball Slam relay. All in a days work right? I’d say so! In fact, Mary’s hard work and will to succeed has made her our defending Decathlon Challenge Champion (back to back titles by the way). Look for her to start that title defense this October.

Mary Sampson has been training here at Empower for several years along with her husband John and their two children Ben and John Jr. She exercises for 1 hour, 3 times per week with her personal trainer (Michael on Mondays and Wednesdays and Aaron on Fridays). In addition to her resistance training routine, Mary enjoys playing tennis, and running the Duke trail. Just ask her to tell you about a round of “cardio tennis.” It’s pretty intense.

I would tell you more about Mary’s results over the years and her training goals, but I’ll let her do it for you. Check out this link of an interview with Mary with her trainer Aaron, along with a clip of her workout today.

Be forewarned, do not try this at home…

Mary\’s Killer Workout

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.

Epic

• Articles
• No Comments

Do you ever use this word to describe something? Have you ever said something like, “man, that was an epic workout” or “that movie was epic” Well I think I have something that helps to define’epic.’

Epic.

In case you hadn’t heard this was a tennis match to end all tennis matches. This was the EPIC of tennis matches. Somewhere close to 150 games were played to decide the outcome of this one match. It took approximately 11 hours to finish. 11 hours. Ironman triathletes do 11 hour races. You could fly from NY to England and drive to Wimbledon and still have about 3 hours to spare. Drive from NC to NY City and you’d still be able to take an hour off to catch an off-broadway play.

The endurace of these athletes (not to mention their strength) is phenomenal. Especially when you consider how often they had to serve the ball. How often the volleyed. How often they stared at each other and wished for everything in their being that either this was the last one or the guy across would just give up.

This was pretty amazing and by all rights epic.

You want motivation. The next time you do that 60 minute workout. Think of these guys and see if you can’t push that much energy into the hour you’ve got. Give it everything. Leave nothing on the plate. I guarantee when these guys were finally done they had nothing in their tanks. They were empty, spent, obliterated.

See if you can obliterate yourself, walk away and come back the next time that much stronger. That is what fitness is.

Mike Babbitt, M.F.A, M.A., CSCS, ACSM-HFI

USA Triathlon Level 1 Coach, Master Trainer

Mike is a Master Level trainer at Empower Personal Training. He has a unique approach to fitness that combines his scientific foundation of research and applied exercise physiology with his artistic experience as a professional stage actor. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024