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Over this past month, we have focused on strength in all of its forms. I hope that you had a chance to try some of the workouts to test your physical strength. I also hope that you took time to reflect on your other strengths...the non-physical ones. Thank you to everyone who participated whether your posted/shared or silently observed. These challenges have been a great way to bring together some awesome people near and far and to share my thoughts on fitness and wellness as well as hear from all of you. I'm taking a break from running these challenges for the rest of the summer. . . HOWEVER, I will continue to post videos and blogs on my Maria Finnegan Fitness facebook page and my mariafinnegan.com website. Please continue to check in there for new workout ideas, motivation and videos. Finally, I had a suggestion from some of my local clients to do a "Where in the World ?" picture party this summer. So....while you are enjoying your summer and/or vacationing....take a quick selfie or group shot of your workout or your vacation. BONUS points for anyone who wears a Maria Finnegan Fitness t-shirt or tank in the picture. Post your pics here so we can stay in touch and see what each of us is doing! And speaking of swag...if you haven't received a MFF t-shirt or tank yet...please let me know. I still have a decent supply of long sleeved shirts (mostly size large) and I'm going to be ordering tanks soon. I would love to get these out to you so let me know!!! Thank you again everyone. Stay in touch. #SYTY #noexcuses xo maria 
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Day "twenty-something." Good Monday morning. With my vacation and the spotty internet on vacation, I lost some days of this challenge. No idea what day we are actually up to at this point! Thank you to everyone who has continued to follow and participate either by reading, posting, observing and/or trying the workouts. Tomorrow will the be the last official day of this challenge. Today's task is a simple one.... 30 minutes of exercise/movement and incorporate some of the core work we have practiced this month.... AND...... think about strength and what it means to you. Remember back to the beginning of this challenge and we discussed "core strength?" What are your core strengths? What does "being strong" mean to you today? I would LOVE to hear from you if you feel like sharing or just take a few quiet moments to think about this at some point today or tonight. #noexcuses #STYT xo maria  Day 24
Mindful task: Circling back to those questions I posed to you a week ago...Am I hungry? Is this food a smart choice? And now the third one: How much food do I need? Now this can be a tough one because we all have different caloric needs. To truly answer this, your best bet is a nutritionist who can discuss your activity level and help determine your daily intake goals. Food/activity tracker apps can also be helpful in giving us daily calories goals based on fitness and health data we provide. I have used both of these options and found them incredibly beneficial in getting a grasp on what my body needs just to function and then what it needs in order to properly fuel my workouts. I highly recommend a nutritional consult and/or using a food and activity app for guidance. Now in addition to getting a grasp on our daily caloric needs, I think we can also look at this question on a smaller scale. How much food do I need right now? At this meal? For this snack? By tuning into our body's signals and cues, we can continue to build our nutritional strength and make healthy food choices. Practicing mindfulness and presence while we eat can help us know how much food we need. Tasting our food and enjoying the taste. Slowing down while we chew. Drinking water throughout our meal. Pausing between bites. While we each have different satiety set points, if we give ourselves the time to be present while we eat, we might actually enjoy the experience a little more AND we likely will eat to satisfaction instead of to that stuffed feeling. For today.....lets see if we can practice mindfulness while eating and tune into the cues our body gives us regarding satiety. Now you know I'm a mom to three children and I'm the first to admit that mealtime can be a frenzied experience at times. I'm not asking anyone to have a two hour dinner tonight. However, I strongly believe we can still pace ourselves and be aware of what and how we are eating even if it's a fairly quick lunch in between activities....or maybe just think about how much food we honestly need when we are looking for a mid-day snack. Physical task. It's a sweaty "crazy sunburn down my torso" video....but we got it done. Click here. 45 on, 15 off. Repeat. Let me know how it goes today friends. Thank you for continuing to participate in this challenge. Have an awesome day. #STYT xo Maria Day 23.
Here's the physical task. Three exercises. Click here for video. Today or tomorrow friends. Get it done. #noexcuses #STYT xo Maria Day 22.
Late post but getting it in. Since I'm on vacation I've decided to keep sharing a daily workout this whole week. Yay!!!! It's the challenge that never ends!!! 😊💪🏻 This one might have to be done tomorrow since your day might be done but here you go for tomorrow. Click here for video. Remember that this is all about strength this month.....physical, mental, emotional, nutritional......and on and on. Let's do this together friends. Whether you try my workout ideas or your own.....no excuses. YOU are strong. YOU can find strength.....from the inside out. #STYT xo Maria Yesterday was a travel day for my family so I'm adding another day to this challenge, which means we are together for one more day! Yay!!!
It's early here and hot so I just put together a short sequence for you to try today for your physical task. Here is the video. . 20 sec work, 10 sec rest. Fit it in sometime today friends. #noexcuses #STYT Happy weekend everyone. Today I have a great physical task for you to try today or tomorrow. I did this with my 7 am class today and it was super fun. This is called the "blackjack" workout and you will be doing 21 repetitions of each exercise. I will leave it up to you how many exercises you pick. The entire workout includes all 21 exercises for 21 reps. Should take about 25 minutes or so to complete. Make sure you are warmed up before adding this in to your routine.  Today's mindful task: Reflect on the second nutrition question we talked about a few days ago. After determining: "Am I hungry?" The next question is: "Is this food a smart choice?" We have determined...yes...I am hungry. Now we have to make a choice. Are we going for the cookies? The chips? Or the piece of fruit? This is the hard one, I know. When I pull that fridge open I see the leftover pizza and the veggies. There's the apples and there's birthday cake. We all know which is the healthier choice but reaching for it can sometimes be the challenge. It can take a whole lot of strength to choose the healthy food. This challenge is all about strength though so now we apply a new type of mental strength...the ability to make a smart, mindful choice regarding the fuel for our bodies. Here's what I usually do...I think about my fitness goals. I think about how I want to feel after I've eaten. I think about all the time I put in to my workout this morning and how I don't want to cancel it all out by choosing the birthday cake for lunch. Sometimes I think about what I tell my kids. You gotta eat the healthy stuff first. For today and into tomorrow, I invite you to ask yourself this question....Is this food a smart choice? Use these questions as a source of strength when you are out to dinner, preparing lunch or attending a summertime cookout. Just like we build up our physical strength, let's start to build our nutritional strength together and make healthy (healthier) choices. Have a fantastic Saturday friends. #STYT #noexcuses xo maria  Hope you are having a lovely day. Physical task: 30 min of cardio and add in today's core sequence. It's a good one and there are plenty of ways to modify. Beginners: 1-2 rounds of each Experienced: 2-4 rounds of each I'm checking in again to follow up on those nutrition-based questions I posed to you the other day. I STRONGLY believe (and the science and research proves it) that it takes good nutrition and exercise to maintain a healthy body. If we work our butts off in the gym and then eat we a whole bunch of junk every day, we are going to have a hard time seeing any progress towards our fitness goals. So today we look at the first question: "Am I hungry?" Simple question...but if you are like me, I'm sure there are times when the answer is no.....and we still eat because we are: bored, stressed, craving something, tired, lonely, distracted, "it's time to eat," "there's still food on my plate," etc. The list goes on and on. Since we are exploring all forms of strength in this 21 day challenge this month, let's practice mindful nutritional strength by asking ourselves "Am I hungry?" the next time our mind wanders to the idea of eating. If the answer is YES...well then let's eat. Please...eat. If the answer is honestly NO....then maybe pause for a moment and think about what it is that's cueing you to eat. Maybe you are thirsty and a tall glass of cool water could satisfy that hunger. Maybe you've been sitting too long and you need to get up and go for a walk. Is something on your mind and instead of eating you could text or call a friend and chat? When I'm home, sometimes I find myself wandering to the fridge, opening it mindlessly and staring in, mindlessly. If I can ask myself this question "Am I hungry?" ...this automatically pulls me from the mindless state to the mindful state. And then I usually make a much healthier choice and decision. Let's practice this question today as our "mindful strength" task. As always...feel free to post any observations or thoughts here...or simply observe and participate on your own. #STYT xo maria  Day Fifteen. Thank you to everyone who is following along with this challenge. It is a pleasure for me to share what I know and love about health, fitness and wellness and particularly to focus on strength. Last week we started tracking our food. I know it's hard to do. I'll get in a groove of logging into My Fitness Pal and then forget and fall out of the habit. I hope for those of you who are trying a food journal, or thinking of trying it, are seeing some benefits. When I talk to my clients about calories and exercise, I always emphasize moderation and awareness. A few years ago I did a bootcamp training and we talked about nutrition. One of the take aways from that discussion was a few simple questions to ask ourselves....Am I hungry? Is the food I'm going to eat a smart choice? How much do I need? I'm going to elaborate on these over the next day or so. For today, see if you can add one or two of these questions into your day as you choose how to fuel your body. For today's physical task I offer you a short, simple effective sequence to work your backside. Add it in during or at the end of your workout today or tomorrow. Simple sequence for glutes, hamstrings, abs and back Thank you to my 6am clients for the demo and the commentary. One note: In the video I say "lift your leg hip height". You can do that or lift it higher (like I show in the video)....the key is to keep it long and in line with you spine. If we find our back is starting to arch, just lower the height of the leg lift. 10-16 reps of each ( I show 12) . Make sure you stretch after! Enjoy. #STYT No excuses. xo Maria  This weekend was jam-packed with birthday celebrations here for our daughter who turned 7 years old. Such a lovely joyful time. And then on Sunday, as I was driving to teach SUP, I turned on the radio and heard about Orlando and felt heartbroken. From joy to pain. Today I dedicate this post and workout to the victims, families and loved ones of those involved in the tragedy in Florida. As you work on physical strength with these exercises and/or your own workout today, let's also focus on mental and emotional strength. I posted last week about strength in numbers. As a team, today lets make a commitment to be strong in our love and kindness for one another. Our core work today is posted in the two videos below. As always, if you still new to exercise, please practice one round. If you have been working out for a while, please try for 2-3 rounds This is a fun buddy workout 1 push-up 1 plank hi five 1 help up 1 squat Then we do 2 of each, 3 of each and so on. Set your timer for 5 minutes or set a goal for number of reps. Super fun!!! And then there's this: 20 sec work, 10 seconds rest Mountain climbers V-sit twist Plank tap Shoulders Bridge lifts Thank you to my 6:00 am class for being my models today for these workouts.
Peace and strength to all of you. #STYT Xo Maria |
Maria FinneganWelcome and thank you for visiting this site. I'm happy and grateful to have a place where I can write about fitness and wellness. In addition to blogging about exercise and sharing workouts, I also use this space to tell 200-word stories about the inspiring and amazing people I encounter in this career. I look forward to sharing as many of these journeys as possible, and would love to hear from you if you would like me to tell your story. You can contact me anytime. Thank you so much for your interest and your effort. Think fit...be fit...stay fit! You are stronger than you think. #STYT Archives
August 2019
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