Sweat Out; Happiness In!

What's up, Achievers?! No exciting news to report - still no baby! In our first question, we talk about how to address your posture and whether or not it's even necessary to be overly concerned about it (2:55). Here's the link to the t-spine video we talked about in the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZdGwJuA08E Next, we discuss whether or not we think you should "imprint" your lower back to the floor when performing floor-based core work (10:05). Finally, we give some advice on how to structure a strength program. We delve into percentages, sets and reps, 1RMs, and constantly chasing PRs (15:32). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! We may or may not have had our baby by the time you listen to this - we recorded this right after our Monday episode so we didn't leave you hanging if we did! In the first question, we dive into why a person might not have any problems squatting below parallel while pushing a plate out in front of them, but can barely hit 90 degrees when a bar is on their back (5:12). We then talk about how we address bilateral and unilateral knee pain while squatting (9:40). Finally, we address what a person should do if they're experiencing a lot of big toe pain while lunging (14:59). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! Baby is STILL not here so we're back! In the first question, we do a deep dive on the efficacies of partial vs full range of motion squatting (1:41). We then covered if we think you should take whey protein or not, and our general view on supplements as a whole (11:32). Finally, we talked about how we select coaches for our gym, Achieve Fitness, and how we recruit them in the first place (16:04)! We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! Still no baby yet! Lauren is visualizing that it's going to happen this Friday - so cross your fingers! In the first question, we talk about how to go about developing the core strength required for push ups after pregnancy (1:48). We then discuss how we modify and adapt our strength workouts for if someone's main goal is fat loss (6:46). We then went over our thought process on whether or not long distance running would impact a person's strength gains (14:02). Lastly, we dive into how long you should be able to hold a plank for, and how long you should work on training it each individual set during your workouts (17:16). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! We're about 10 days our from Lauren's estimated due date so we're in full-on BABYWATCH! We're more than likely going to take a week or more off once the baby comes so if you don't hear from us for a minute - you'll know why! In the first question of this episode, we delve into lower back pain with certain positions. (2:58) Next, we cover whether or not you can still squat/deadlift/clean if you have ankle mobility restrictions. (6:08) We also talk at length to a person who has been experiencing a lot of weight fluctuations and what we'd recommend for her. This one was difficult to answer because our advice in these situations is so person-dependent and case specific. Hopefully, you're able to glean some insight from our long-winded "answer", but we didn't think it was appropriate to give any hard and fast statements here and definitely not any blanket recommendations. (10:55) We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! This episode is specifically for all you coaches, personal trainers, and fitness professionals out there! We cover topics like when we talk about mindset and nutrition habits during our training sessions, what we do if we think our workouts progress clients too slowly, and if we make any modifications during our assessment process if we're working with someone who is elderly. At the end of the episode, we discuss a project we've been working on for quite some time now. It's an educational platform that covers everything that Lauren and I wished we had known when we first started out as personal trainers - it ranges from nitty gritty stuff like what CPT you should pursue, to where you should look for your first job all the way down to how to sell yourself at your gym, how to program for your clients, how to provide nutritional advice, how to teach the fundamental movement patterns (squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, lunging, etc.) and coach them based upon the invidividual in front of you rather than forcing them into "textbook" form, and how to approach personal branding. Future modules are going to cover the ins and outs of kettlebell training, powerlifting, olympic lifting as well as presentations on very specific topics brought up by the group. The most important aspect of the platform will be the community. Personal training is a pretty lonely field, and not many people/friends/family will understand the true "grind" and nature of our work. Having a community of like-minded professionals to learn from, collaborate with, bounce ideas off of, and sometiems comiserate with is going to be invaluable. This won't be just a one-off product that we launch and forget about - this is going to be a full fledged company where Lauren and I will spend the vast majority of our time. We're going to have our coaches at Achieve also involved down the line and make this a massive platform, because we want the reach of our community to be limitless, and because we see the potential of having thousands of coaches spreading positivity and inclusivity to their clients. It helps to spread our mission much further than we could ever do by ourselves and for that we're extremely excited! You can be the first in line for more information at www.achievementors.com.Go check it out!

What's up, Achievers?! Special two year wedding anniversary episode from yours truly! We just spent a wonderful weekend in Cape Cod (and crossing our fingers that the baby wouldn't come while we were stuck in traffic ha!). The first question was pure logistics - how do you continue to work on overhead pressing when you just moved, and you have to workout at home and you have low ceilings?? (1:39) Next, we talk about some modifications during pregnancy, and how to approach things from a mental and emotional standpoint because you're guaranteed to have some feelings of "feeling weaker" and "losing progress" and "not being as strong as you once were" etc. Hopefully, we give a little perspective on the matter and we hope it helps! (4:32) Finally, we talk about all the conflicting advice out there about how many sets and reps you should do for different goals. Furthermore, we talk about exercise selection, especially if you're looking to develop a specific area. (11:55). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! Really, really good episode here in our humble opinions! Lots of tangible advice that you can follow - we hope you enjoy! In the first question we talk about the differences between Olympic Weightlifting, Powerlifting, Bodybuilding, Crossfit, and general strength training (3:38). Next, we covered some methods you can use to maintain healthy eating besides meal prep. You don't have to perfectly cook and weigh all your meals in order to eat "healthy" - there are a lot of strategies you can use while eating out and taking out! (14:01) Finally, we talk about how to focus on the process and maintain positivity when you have setbacks like injuries/sickness/travel/etc. (20:22) We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! In this episode we really delve into injuries and pain. Oftentimes, when we have an injury or setback it can feel really debilitating - not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Hopefully after listening to this episode (especially the last question), you'll have a better sense of how to go about managing your health and fitness and overall mindset next time you experience pain and/or injury. The important thing to always note is that your body is very resilient and can bounce back quickly. That mindset alone can really have a major impact on how quickly things can turn back around! In the first question, we talk about what to do when experiencing an imbalance while squatting (4:17). Next, we cover if foam rolling alone is enough to address knee pain (8:11) or any pain for that matter. Lastly, we talk about how we manage acute pain - the example in the question was someone experiencing shoulder pain after playing tennis without warming up (16:32). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! We missed you all! It's been a whole week since we've last connected! :( Lot of fun questions in this one! We first started with how to modify someone's workouts program in order to break past a plateau. A couple episodes ago, we discussed things from a more general and nutrition standpoint and this time we dug a little bit deeper into the exercise side of things (2:27). The, we talked about what we thought about fasted workouts, and how science is important, but your personal preference should be prioritized! (9:16). Lastly, we discuss some of the strategies and mindset we use in order to cultivate the community and culture that we have at Achieve (13:41). This one was a really fun one to talk about and answer as our enthuasiasm may suggest! We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! This might be our longest episode to date, and rightfully so because it covers everyone's favorite topic: weight loss. We dive really deep into mindset, nutrition, and training principles we adhere to when working with our members. The big question we always return to is: "Do you truly want to lose weight, or is it something that you think you should be trying to do?" We're happy with how this one came out and we think a lot of you will get a lot of value out of this one. Please shoot us a DM on Instagram if it helped at all and specifically what part resonated with you. We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles!

What's up, Achievers?! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and we are back with another podcast! In question one, we discuss the concept of eating every 2-4 hours and whether or not it is superior for "stoking your metabolism" (2:34). Next, we talked about a specific person who happens to have better results dealing with shoulder impingement when benching on the Smith machine rather than using a barbell. We go over whether or not we think she should stick with the Smith machine, and some other considerations (8:02). After that, we talk about a scenario when a well-meaning fitness coach told one of our listeners that they needed to perform DOUBLE the amount of exercises they were currently performing in order to achieve good results. We talk about why that sort of advice is flawed and then go over our recommendations (10:53). Lastly, we go over whether or not nutrition is the most important factor to your health and fitness success (17:19)! We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles! Jason and Lauren

What's up, Achievers?! Really, really solid episode today for you all - even though we felt jet lagged because of a fire alarm that woke us up in the middle of the night! There is a little static for some reason at the end of question one, but it seemed to work itself pretty quickly. We first discussed all of the contradictory advice and information concerning foam rolling, and rolling your IT band (2:33). We then covered what to do if you're experience shoulder and neck pain from pull ups. We described why this might be happening as well as some strategies to counteract it (8:42)! Then we talked about how to approach warming up quickly when you're short on time (13:15). Lastly, we gave some advice to a recent grad with an Exercise Science degree on whether or not they should think to open up a gym (17:39). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles! Jason and Lauren

What's up, Achievers?! In today's episode, we discuss how to deal with "slow" progress in the gym and how we approach it with our members (3:18). Next, we talked about how to approach breathing during low rep exercises, high rep exercises, and cardio based exercises (10:28). Lastly, we cover if we think it's necessary to have a business degree to open up at physical therapy clinic (14:38). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles! Jason and Lauren

What's up, Achievers?! We've got a GREAT episode for you all today - we received some really great questions that are slightly different, which allowed us to go really deep in our answers. First off, we discussed how to decrease hamstring activity (to the point of pain) and increase glute activity during RDLs and Single Leg RDLs (2:35). We then covered what muscles "should" be working during a squat and if it's okay to not feel your quads as much during them (7:09). We also talked about how your back position should be while descending during a squat. Should you arch? Should you keep your back flat? What gives - why is there so much conflicting information?? (12:01) Finally, we went over what to do when experiencing both a weight loss AND strength plateau (17:30). We hope you enjoyed this episode! If you did, we'd love you forever if you left a rating and review on iTunes - it seriously helps us out a lot! Please DM us @achievefitnessboston on Instagram if you have any questions you'd like us to answer. Until next time, Peace, Love, and Muscles! Jason and Lauren