Well, what else can be said about the month of March, other than it was something else?  What started as a normal month turned into a huge adjustment for everyone.  While it was (and continues to be) an uncertain time, we were able to adapt and continue on our fitness journeys in new ways.  After the first week of March, everything moved to virtual, and we welcomed a new location to the Fitness Inspired community with the starting of our inaugural group in Grand Rapids, MI!  Fitness Inspired is all about the community we create and we are happy and excited to grow that community even more!

Well that didn't take long!  3 months in and we already have a couple of drivers hopping on to Route 66 on their fitness journey in 2020!  Look as Katie B and Karen L already achieved 66 workouts in 2020 and we are only a quarter of the way through the year!  Expect to see some more traffic soon...

Getting 20 workouts in during one calendar month is definitely a difficult, yet achievable goal.  Getting that goal gets you one prong on your crown and let's see where we are at.  So far, we have 7 different people who have at least one prong of their crown.  Going a perfect 3 for 3 so far this year are Katie B, Karen L and Suzy S! 

While it may not seem like we were very lucky this month with everything going on around us, it is important to focus on what we can control and what does make us lucky.  We are lucky that we are able to maintain our Fitness Inspired community during this time and we are lucky that we are able to adjust and adapt by moving everything to virtual programming.  It is incredible what we are able to accomplish when we are faced with a challenge, and this month was no different in that aspect. 

We had some challenging homework and physical testing this month that really had our muscles (especially upper body!) screaming.  We were brave in our belief, language and actions, did some insane pushup combinations, and of course did everyone's favorite - burpees.  Let's check out some physical testing highlights:

• Marcy M improved 16% on her pushup/touch/dip series!
• Suzy S improved 28% on her pushup/touch/dip series!
• Terri H did 2 more burpees in a minute!
• Jim H did 4 more burpees and 2 more pushup/touch/dips in 1 min!
• Megan M improved 66% on her belief series and 125% on her pushup/touch/dip series!
• Leigh D improved 45% on her belief series and did 4 more burpees in a minute!
• Susan G improved 100% on her belief series, 66% on burpees, and 115% on her pushup/touch/dip series!
• Michelle R did 4 more burpees in a minute and improved 100% on her pushup/touch/dip series!

Those we some great results, and we had a great time celebrating them at our Virtual Results Party/Game night!  It may have to be a new tradition even when social distancing is in our past.  A great way to finish out this month, and now we are starting April with a fresh start, a chance to adapt to our new temporary reality and attack it head on.  Here is to April being Healthy and Strong!

2020 already started with a bang, and add to the fact that this year the month of February had 29 days and you have total craziness!  There was a lot going on this month with some new faces, team competition, and of course, the Annual Party!  We definitely took advantage of having an extra day this month and we saw great results because of it.  So let's get to it because we have a lot to talk about!

Since we are only in our second month of the year, it is still not possible for anyone to be on Route 66 yet, but we have people who have already traveled pretty far to this point, that they are getting close!  The highways better watch out because Fitness Inspirers like Karen L, Katie B, Suzy S and Marcy M could potentially put their blinker on and start merging by the end of next month!

The "Strive for Five" is up and running and we have some Fitness Inspirers who are already 2 for 2 getting 20 workouts in for the first two months already!  So far, Katie B, Karen L, Suzy S, and Marcy M have already earned 2 prongs on their crowns!  Earning a prong this month was Abbey C. and combine her with Cindy E and Jamie T who earned a prong last month and that is 7 Inspirers who already have at least one prong!  Great job!

When dealing with our Fitness, it truly is a journey.  It can be hard at times, but the payoff is so rewarding!  Sometimes we need to stop and remember that while we love the results, we also need to love what gets us there and enjoy the journey.  February is of course a month of love, so why not love the path?  We had some intense Homework and Physical testing which pushed us to our limits.  I mean those hovers with your leg up or back?!  Come on....  While we knew our HW and testing would be hard, Chris, Nicole and Samantha pushed us so we could maximize our results at the end of the month.  Here are just a few highlights:

-Abbey C lost just over 5 total inches!
-Karen L lost just under 5 pounds!
-Becky C tripled her Hover/Plank time!  (200% improvement!)
-Becky F lost just over 6 pounds!
-Nicole H lost 3 total inches!
-Melissa M improved her hovers w/a leg up or back by an average of 175%!

Since this was a team inspired month, there was no Top Achiever, but of course there was a team champion!  The scoring was based on team weight % improvement, inches % improvement, physical testing
% improvement and attendance.  What was crazy is that each team came in first in one category which is awesome!  Then the scoring came down to the wire as the results were tight.  In the end, team separation was only between a couple percentage points and there was a tie between the Blue and Yellow team!  However, you know Kiersten can't have ties, so at the Annual Party there was a minute to win it tie breaker with YELLOW unraveling his streamers the fastest!  Congratulations to YELLOW consisting of Abbey C, Michael C, Michele S and Jamie T!

Time to ring in the new year!!  With that being said, our theme for this month, and the start of the decade no less, was "New Year.  Better You".  You are already amazing so no need to make a new one of you!  Now is the time to pledge to ourselves to make improvements and look ahead to what we can be.  January can be tough as we come off our holiday season, but it can also be empowering as we start fresh with the beginning of a new year, and the creation of new goals and milestones.

As we begin 2020, we have set our sights on some great and challenging milestones for the year.  We are continuing on the path to Route 66 in 2020 as it is still a great indicator of forming powerful, life changing habits.  Along with this, we have added the "Strive for Five" where we look to get 5 workouts a week in (20 workouts for the month) for 5 months of the year.  This is replacing the 199 workout milestone as our new challenge really pushes us to keep our momentum going from week to week and then translating to month to month!

Also exciting as we begin the new year is moving in to the new studio and welcoming two new instructors (to complement our already amazing Chris)!  January introduced us to the new studio space at 140 Kelly Alley, which is the Movements Arts Studio and we are loving it so far.  Nicole G and Samantha S were also welcomed to the instructing group and they have already challenged us with some great workouts.  Finally, as we finish the first month of 2020, one goodbye we have to say is to our favorite host Logan.  Logan recently got married and will be moving away with her husband as they start their new lives together!  Thank you Logan for all that you did for Fitness Inspired and all the lives you help improve!

Since our month (and year) just started, no one is one Route 66 just yet.  However, with our additional milestone of "Strive for Five" we have already seen a great number of people reach new heights in number of workouts in just one month!  Let's keep it going!

New this year is the Strive for Five  milestone which calls on Fitness Inspirers to reach for 5 workouts a week (for 20 workouts during the month) for 5 months in 2020.  Each month that an FI'er achieves that, they earn a prong of their FI crown.  So far, after one month, we have already had 6 Fitness Inspirers earn their first prong!  Great job Katie B, Cindy E, Karen L, Suzy S, Marcy M and Jamie T! 

As we started the new year, we really wanted to challenge ourselves as we returned from a small hiatus following the holiday season.  This was evident as we began to do band burn outs at the end of each workout, and truly pushed outselves with the physical testing of pushups in one minute, band squats in one minute, and banded rows in one minute.  Chris had us working at the top of our window with his core circuit and resisted run to name a couple, and we were introduced to the great energy and intensity of High Fitness with Nicole, and Tabata with Samantha.
Here a just a few highlights that we saw this month:

-Karen L improved her Band Squats by 76%!
-Marcy M improved her Pushups by 56%!
-Cindy E lost 3 total inches!
-Suzy S lost 2 total inches!
-Ray L improved his banded rows by 40%!

It's everyone's favorite time of year again!  No, not the Holiday season, but the 12 Days of Fitness season!  The month of December can be a difficult month for those trying to maintain results or continue on their fitness journey as it is very easy to fall to temptation with all the holiday parties, libations and seasonal treats that are readily available.  With this being said, the point of the 12 Days of Fitness is to help maintain your momentum you have had all year by trying to improve but most importantly, maintain.
It was an incredibly fun 12 Days with great innovative workouts, incredible energy, and the wonderful camaraderie that comes with representing Green, Bling or Red!  12 Days came to a rousing end with a celebration in the new studio space (Movement Arts Studio located 140 Kelley Alley), and was capped off with an inspiring Adopt-a-Family workout lunging through the aisles!  What a great way to end 2019 with an exciting anticipation for 2020!

As 2019 comes to a close, we had a great number of Fitness Inspirers reach the 66 workout achievement!  As we near the end, there is still time for a few of us to even reach 199!  It has been an incredible journey so far so let's speed to the finish line (without getting a ticket of course ;))

The 12 Days of Fitness program is easily one of our favorites.  It is a great opportunity to commit for 12 fun workouts in an effort to battle the December/holiday splurge season.  Along with this, it is an added bonus that we are in teams to amp up the accountability even more.  Red, Bling and Green really rocked it this month!

Invigorating our workouts even more, and giving us a chance to really improve our physical testing numbers was our homework.  12 sets of hover planks, anti jellies, superman, rocky abs etc. really got us working and on the right path to results.  Speaking of, now on to the results!

The scoring for 12 Days was broken down into categories of attendance, enthusiasm and improvements/maintenance in weight, inches, and the physical testing categories.

Green crushed it for attendance rocking both the live and online options and Red was great with the energy, enthusiasm and effort during classes.  Bling had great results with their improvements and overall it was a tight race!  It came down to the wire and at the end there was a tie between Green and Bling!  At the results party there was an intense tie breaker and our champion for the 2019 12 Days of Fitness was the Green team!  Congrats to everyone on a great month and we look forward to 2020!

If October was the month where the weather started to get crisper, then November it really hit home!  While the temperatures dropped, the energy and focus during workouts this month certainly didn't!  We all gave thanks that, we had two hills once again, Chris, Logan and Bre, all rocked it out, and Kiersten was live for a week as well! 
Other than the workouts, a big highlight was our Friendsgiving celebration which once again showed what a great community of Fitness Inspirers there are!  It was a time to come together and appreciate our journeys, as well as those around us who lift us up.

It didn't take long this month as Cindy E reached 66 workouts the very first workout of the month!  Along with this, we do have a good number of Fitness Inspirers who are getting ever so closer to the 199 mark!  Keep rocking the workouts and you can do it!

November is always a great time to give thanks, not only for what we have, but also for what we have the capability to do.  It can be easy to fall (pun unintended) into a workout funk as the weather gets colder, but when we appreciate what we are capable of, and give thanks for the accountability of other Fitness Inspirers, it pushes us to go farther. 
Here are just a few of some great November feasts...I mean feats:

-Terri H lost 1.5 inches from her waist!
-Jim H lost a combined 5 inches!
-Marcy M lost 4 pounds!
-Michael C increased his TRX Mountain climbers by 109%!
-Terri H increased her TRX Hamstring Curl by 56%

The air is getting crisper and the days a bit shorter, but October was a great month because we got an additional week of workouts in!  We were able to utilize this month to its fullest potential by having 5 weeks worth of classes - woot woot!  Once again we had two spooky hill sessions, Kiersten was live for a week, and Chris, Logan and Bre brought it for their Brave workouts.
This month we applied the mentality of "Be Yourself but Braver" and that helped push us to bring ourselves to new heights.  Our brave physical testing this month included burpees, atomic pushups and rows and the improvements we saw were scary good!

Joining the Fitness Inspired leadership team trend of hopping on Route 66, our amazing FI instructor Chris is now speeding down the highway!  His Route 66 is a little more hilly (see what I did there?) but he isn't slowing down anytime soon!

October is the perfect month for the theme of "Being Ourselves but Braver".  Kiersten likes to emphasize to "do something that scares you" or to participate in the "FI Scare Dare", so what better way to tackle those concepts but to be Braver?  It was a great month to see what limits we could push ourselves to, try something new, and really reach for our maximum potential.
Here are just a few Brave highlights:

-Marcy M improved her burpee total by 50!
-Terri H improved her TRX rows by 84%!
-Marcy M improved her TRX rows by 36%
-Suzy S lost 2 inches in her waist!
-Terri H went down in body fat by 6.8%!

Fall is officially upon us y'all!  September is a great month to get a good routine going with workouts as the weather is starting to get a little cooler (more refreshing of course) and the school year is here so not as many vacations (sad and happy face).  A lot was happening this month as Kiersten was able to teach some live classes, we had two hills, and dominated the sand!
With the fresh beginning of September, we brought it back to basics with Fitness Inspired 101.  This month's physical testing used that upper body and core as we rocked out a minute of pushups, and saw how long we were able to hold hover/plank.  Shaking is a good thing right ;)

While we didn't have anyone merge on to Route 66 last month, we had one eager driver eclipse that Milestone this month!  Everyone's favorite host and 90's music enthusiast Logan M is now speeding along Route 66!

With a great number of drivers eclipsing our first milestone of 66 workouts, one Fitness Inspirer has reached the magic number of 199 for the year!  Even though she moved away from State College earlier this summer, Katie B has committed to zoom workouts, and online Fitness Inspired workouts to keep her number for the year growing!  Not only that, this number will only continue to grow as she starts teaching her own FI classes in Philly!

Fitness Inspired 101 was a great way to get us focused on building foundations for living our best Fitness Inspired Life.  We took the homework and physical testing back to their roots and it certainly pushed us.  There were great physical testing and measurement feats and here are a couple highlights.

-Cindy E increased her pushup totals in one minute by 30%!
-Becky C increased her pushup totals in one minute by 28%!
-Marcy M, Cindy E, and Terri H increased their plank times by an impressive 50%!
-Jim H lost a combined 4.5 inches!
-Becky C lost a combined 3.5 inches!
-Marcy M lost 2 inches from her hips alone!

August was certainly a summer road trip theme for everyone as we had some new faces teaching and utilized a little more technology in getting our workouts in!  Chris and Bre took some of the reins with their teaching prowess while Kiersten was able to do some live teaching and complement it with some zoom workouts.
For physical testing, we channeled our inner cowboys and cowgirls, creating the ever difficult and fun cowboy pushup and doing everyone's favorite, the gallop laps.  The galloping laps were so popular that for post testing, we decided to do 8 additional laps than we pretested for since everyone loved them so much ;)  More on that to follow....

While we didn't have anyone new eclipse the 66 workout milestone, we have more fitness inspirers getting ever closer!  Along with this, we even have a couple inspirers close to reaching 199 workouts this year!  Keep pushing and keeping riding the workout highs!

We made the road trip all the way to the rodeo and got some work in.  As hinted above, we got a little over zealous during post testing and did 8 more laps than we pre-tested for.  Let's just say I don't think anyone will be looking to apply for positions at a ranch any time soon as people feeeeellltttt it!  
In calculating the changes/improvements for the laps, we had to use a little math.  Since the original pre testing numbers were 46% of the laps that were run in post testing, I multiplied the post testing time by 46% to get a time that would apply for 7 laps.  Of course, this math does not take in to account the physical tiredness of the additional 8 laps and the potential for slowing you down, so that should definitely be taken in to account when looking at the final time changes.  But without further ado, a couple physical testing feats!

-Terri H increased her cowboy pushups by 27%!
-Jen J increased her cowboy pushups by 20%!
-Marcy decreased her gallop lap time by 17%!
-Suzy S decreased her gallop lap time by 11%!  

The summer road trip theme was very appropriate for this month as there was a lot of moving around and different experiences in workouts.  While there were a lot of moving pieces, there was no question who was top achiever for this month.  
This person ranked in the top 2 in each category and was always a strong force.  She leaned down even more, losing a couple more pounds and inches off her already athletic and strong frame.  Her stamina and speed were also showcased by her gallop time improvements.  Without further ado, our Top Achiever for August is Suzy S!

A little less rain this month which means we got to go outside some more which was very refreshing.  What was also refreshing was the continued success that Fitness Inspirers had in the month of June.  June is the true kickoff to the summer and what better way to get summer started than with great workouts.
Physical testing involved 5 categories for the 611'ers and 3 categories for the Grayswoods group.  It was a 50 or fail design and the three that everyone did were Rainbow Abs, Burpees and Wheels, while the two additional categories that the 611'ers did were TRX Rows and Atomic Pushups.

Three more people merged on to Route 66 this month!  Congrats to the power couple of Jim and Terri H, and joining them was Cindy R!

As mentioned above, there were many physical testing categories for the month of June.  The biggest concept of these exercises was to achieve 50 reps or fail, and Inspirers this month really pushed themselves.

-Marcy M increased her burpees by 100%!
-Jim H increased his burpees by 100%!
-Cindy E increased her rainbow abs by 100%!

50/50/50 Club:
The following Fitness Inspirers achieved 50 reps in Rainbow Abs, Burpees and wheels:
-Cindy R
-Bre D
-Marcy M
-Abbey C
-Karen L
-Margarita L

50/50/50/50/50 Club!
Suzy S had the crazy accomplishment of not only getting 50 reps in in Rainbow Abs, Burpees and wheels, but also doing so with Atomic Pushups and TRX Rows!

What was fun and exciting to see this month with the Top Achiever leader board was that so many different people made the top 3 in at least one category.  That shows that everyone is going the extra mile by putting in great work to achieve great results

Weight % improvement

• 3rd place: Logan 
• 2nd place: Wendy
• 1st place: Abbey

Inch % improvement

• 3rd place: Jill L - 9.5%
• 2nd place: Cindy R - 13.4%
• 1st place: Logan M - 16.8%

Physical Testing improvement %

• 3rd place: Cindy E - 60%
• 2nd place: Jim H - 62.5%
• 1st place: Marcy M - 74%

June's Top Achiever goes to-- LOGAN M!!

Holy May!  In between all the rain, May was an incredible month as it was Rocky training camp time!  Rocky is a fun team approach to boot camp which always brings great camaraderie, and of course, great results.

Physical testing this month was a combination of individual improvement, focusing on rocky abs and a challenging chin up hold, as well as a team component (for our grays woods group) working with a team relay.