No Excuses

Why so angryz? We ate the pancakezzz?

I’m gonna give Mikey an earful in this blog post.

(For all of you who have a temporary workout-finisher-induced-hate-on for Mike, this is for you too.)

In our fitness circles, I’m sort of known as the ‘fitness Mom’.  I suppose this is partially due to the fact that I’m 50 (while most of my colleagues in the biz are MUCH younger). Also because I AM a mom and I look out for everyone in the group. I always have Tylenol or dental floss or I’ll give someone a hug or a kick in the arse – whatever is needed most at the time 😉

So I get a little miffed when Mike talks about being ‘an old guy’. While I’m not old enough to be his ‘mom’, I can tell you that he’s not old. I wanna smack him when he says this and since we’re good friends, he better be careful as I just might.

I need to be clear that I have the UTMOST respect for Mike and his personal fitness journey. This is a man that has changed his entire lifestyle and lives what he preaches daily. When he says he’s ‘old’ I know he’s sort of ‘tongue in cheek’ and I joke with him a lot. I just don’t want you to think that he uses this as an excuse to go eat pancakes. Trust me, I’ve eaten pancakes with this man, and the only time he will is after he’s done his part to earn them. So don’t mistake his joking for a reason for YOU to sit down or eat pancakes or whatever else with reckless abandon.

Moving on…

Age is only a number and NEVER an excuse for being inactive or for having excessive belly fat. You should be able to take that advice from someone older that’s walking the walk. I know it may be hard to swallow this when you hear it from a trainer that’s still wet at the ears: hasn’t bore children, changed careers, had life experience like you have. But when someone that walks in your shoes demonstrates that getting lean and fit ‘can be done’ even when not in 20 years old anymore, it’s harder to make excuses.

The thing about aging is this: you can pretty much do it ALL, but you need to train ‘smarter’ and you may need a little more time to recover. As we age, we naturally have some limitations that we may need to work around. For example, my knees have had a lot of use and aren’t keen on long distance running (I wasn’t heartbroken to hear this) any more. The limitation for me is that if I feel my knees with any impact type exercise, I pay attention and may switch from a full on squat jump to a full body extension. I don’t go sit on the couch.

There are all kinds of ways to maintain super high intensity while respecting your body. Don’t go hog wild on stupid training protocols. You need to increase intensity to workouts slowly, pay attention that you’re experiencing the ‘right’ kind of pain and you’ll be golden. You’ll get the results you want without the aging aches and pains you may think you’ll get with intense workouts.

Look, I don’t train for hours daily and neither should you. I train hard in short bursts with challenging workouts and it works. It works for me and for my clients and it will work for you. If you’re a reader of Mike’s awesome blog posts, you know that long, slow low intensity workouts are a total waste of time. If you do any of Mike’s finishers, you know what short intense training can do to help get you lean.

Here’s a sample workout that you’ll love:

Do 30 seconds of work with a 5 second transition:

Repeat up to 6 times.

Have fun with this workout and if you want more fun follow along workouts, you can check out my Challenge Fat Loss program. You can follow along with me as we go through fun and challenging short workouts. If you like Mike’s stuff, these are right up your alley, you’ll love these workouts because they’re short, intense, never boring.

Get more fat-burning challenge workouts here

About Shawna

Shawna Kaminski is a retired schoolteacher of 20 years who’s found her passion in the fitness industry. She’s parlayed her ability to teach and her love of training into programs that you can directly benefit from. Shawna just turned 50, is a mother of two teenagers and understands how busy life can be. Her workouts are short and intense and often can be done anywhere. She’s always up for a challenge and shares her fitness challenges with you. Currently she runs her own fitness boot camps and coaches clients in person and online with her amazing result getting programs.