Hellllooooo February!  While it is still quite cold outside as we finished up February, we were able to keep our bodies and minds warm as the Love More month pushed us, and kept us moving.  There was a great theme this month as we all tried to Love More in all aspects of our workouts and lives, and it was great to see so many people rally around this concept!  Our Love More Challenge kicked off, as we look to raise money for the Children's Heart Foundation by participating in some great workouts, spreading the love, and getting some sweet merchandise.  While Love More was our theme for February, it doesn't have to stop there!!  Let's see how we showed some more love this month.

Only two months in to 2021 so no drivers on Route 66 yet.  However, if trends continue, we may see our first commuters traveling down this prestigious route verrrrryyyyy soon....Stay tuned to your traffic report for all the updates ;)

Na na na na na na na.  Any Will Smith fans out there?  No?  Just me and my throwback?  Ok.  Anyway!  This month we had some great turnouts, and people used all 28 days of February to get their 20 workouts in!  While some I had to convince at the results party (won't mention any names, cough Jim cough), but nonetheless, they got there!  Big shout outs to Leanne F, Jim H, Terri H, Beth S and Cynthia T for getting their prongs in February! 

Holy buckets, is it really 2021 now?!  Is 2020 finally actually over?  We rang in the new year and welcomed 2021 with open arms this month, and as Fitness Inspirers, continued to look forward and find ways we can improve, and upgrade our health and fitness.  While 2020 was a dumpster fire in MANY ways, what was inspiring was how we were able to adapt, commit, and help one another find routines and systems to make sure our health and fitness did not suffer.  I'm proud of how we were able to come together as a community, work through a challenging year, and come away with some positives!

Even though in the beginning of 2020 we were told not to really leave our houses and drive, by the end of the year, we had TONS of Inspirers zooming down Route 66!  Getting 66 workouts in the year is a great accomplishment and a great sticking point in creating a healthy lifestyle, so here's to getting even more drivers on Route 66 in 2021!

Similar to Route 66, it was great to see how many royal Inspirers we had in 2020.  The crown and prong milestones were new to Fitness Inspired in 2020, and it was awesome to see how many Inspirers really took to the new goal and went after it!  5 workouts a week, with 20 for the month can seem tough at first, but once you get in that workout flow and see how sticky it can be, royalty is right within your grasp ;)

As we turn the page to 2021, it is a great opportunity to refresh, reload and embrace the change.  Our theme this month was "Inspired Action", as we look to start the year on purpose and with intent!  We all look to set goals for ourselves as the year begins, but what's most important is the follow up.  We need to make sure we approach everything with inspired action as we look to support our "why".
Our homework truly challenged us as it called for a lot of negative sets!  Those negatives really turn in to positives as they make our muscles work and get even stronger.  That can be seen in our physical testing with our pushups and lunge pull ins.  I'm sore just thinking about it... 

Let's take a look at some of the highlights!

• Chloe M improved her waist measurements by a combined 6.8%!
  
• Beth S improved her "hour  glass" measurements (weight, chest, true waist, waist at belly buttton and hips) by a combined 14.18%!
  
• Meg McG improved her physical testing by a combined 254%!
  
• Cynthia T completed 23 workouts this month!
  

Top Achiever Leaderboard
Showing up muscle (number of workouts)

• 2nd place: Beth, Leanne, Megan M
  
• 1st place: Cynthia
  

Waist Measurements % Improvement

• 3rd place: Meg McG
  
• 2nd place: Beth S
  
• 1st place: Chloe M
  

Hour Glass Measurements (weight, chest, true waist, waist at belly buttton and hips) % Improvement

• 3rd place: Cynthia T
  
• 2nd place: Chloe M
  
• 1st place: Beth S
  

Physical Testing % Improvement

• 3rd place:  Megan M
  
• 2nd place:  Chloe M
  
• 1st place:  Meg McG
  

January's Top Achievers are------Beth S and Chloe M!!

It's everyone's favorite time of year again!  No, not the Holiday season, but the 12 Days of Fitness season!  Sure things looked a little different this year, but we were able to get creative and still experience one of our favorite programs of the year!  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 libations and seasonal treats that are readily available (and let's be honest, 2020 probably saw a lot more libations this year).  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 (I see you Home Alone), incredible energy, and the wonderful camaraderie that comes with representing Green, Bling or Red! 

As we look at the last traffic reports for 2020, we had some GREAT numbers  of Fitness Inspirers traveling down Route 66!  Our final count saw 23 Inspirers zooming along which is amazing!!  Shout out to our latest addition of Meg McG!

We had some great milestones for 2020 including our newest one of reaching for that FI Crown!  Just in case you forgot, 20 workouts for a month earned you a prong, and five prongs earned you the elusive FI crown.  This was a great motivator for Inspirers as we saw some record number of workouts for the month.  Overall, we had 8 Inspirers get their crown, so let's raise a toast for the royalty!

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. 

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, 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, with team members averaging just over 11 workouts for the program!  Bling was great with the energy, enthusiasm and effort during classes as they won that point 12 times!  Red had great results with their improvements and overall it was a tight race!  It came down to the wire but at the end, Green was our winner! 

Aaaaand just like that, November is done!  Wow, this year has felt like the longest year, but at the same time, it feels like it has zoomed by!  It has been an interesting year, but we all still have a lot to be thankful for and this month's theme of Happy.  Thanks.  Giving helped us see that.  It was great to do a Friendsgiving workout midway through the program, and then to cap it off with a great workout on Thanksgiving day!  Thankful for all of you and the great community we have built.

We have all settled into Fall now and what better way to gear up our intensity than to have a Rocky program?!  The days may be getting shorter, but our energy levels, accountability, and competitive natures have all been kicked up a notch! Rocky is always a favorite program because it puts us all into teams, which really puts our accountability into another gear as we do not want to let our teammates down.  Our teams lift each other up and help push us to new levels we didn't think we could get to.  The Blue Bombshells, Yellow Sunshine Stars, Pink Panthers, Rainbow Warriors, Red Rabble Rousers, and the Evergreens brought it this month so let's see what happened!

So yeah, Summer is definitely in our rear view mirrors as the weather outside is getting a bit chillier.  With Fall, means kids are headed back to school (virtually and in-person - weird that I have to make not of that...) which obviously means that September was a perfect month to enter the School of Fitness Inspired!  It was a great month to start our "school" as we had 5 weeks of this program which saw some great workouts, some new faces, and new themes and challenges.  On to September we go!

As the summer has started to make its way out, it was only fitting that our theme this month was to Savor Summer.  We really focused on finding rhythms and routines, and truly appreciating the little things as fall approaches, and we shift into a new season.  Also in August, we got to rock a fun 4-day challenge and met some new Inspirers who got a little taste of what Fitness Inspired is all about.  Without further adieu, let's see what August was all about! 

July is definitely the month of the birthdays as not only do we celebrate America's birthday, but Kiersten's and Ethan's as well.  I mean come on, when the birthdays are 3rd, 4th and 5th, that is definitely a reason to keep a celebration going.  Speaking of celebrating, July was a great month to celebrate all our Fitness Inspirers as everyone did a spectacular job of getting Fired Up and Spreading Sunshine!  Now on to the highlights for this month!

The thick of summer is upon us and we did not slow down this month!  In the spirit of competition, we split our Fitness Inspirers into three teams, Team Pennsylvania, Team Michigan and Team World, and we let the games begin!  The team atmosphere kicked up our competitiveness and camaraderie and even helped push ourselves a little harder.  A great new feature this month was setting our weekly goals for number of workouts to complete which only helped our accountability.  Now let's see what happened!

This month, we continued to rock out our virtual workouts.  We have seen our community grow, as we embrace the season we are in, and people are loving getting super sweaty from some intense classes!  Let's just say I will never look at playing the card game war ever again....dang spades and atomic pushups. 

Let's take a check in and see who is getting their kicks on Route 66 this month.  Crossing over the 66 workout milestone for 2020 this month were Abbey C, Jim H and Jamie T!  Just in time for summer to be hitting that highway, congrats new '66ers!  Looking in the rear view mirror, I see a few more drivers speeding up to get on our Route next month!

No one mentioned what song I referenced last month, so I am continuing with it this month.  People continued to ride the momentum they have been building and we had some great numbers of people getting their prongs this month.  In May, Abbey C, Leigh D, Terri H, Jim H, Michelle R, Jenny C, Cindy E, Megan M, and Megan S each added to their prong totals.  Then, with May being the 5th month of the year, we had two Fitness Inspirers go 5 for 5 in getting their prongs and have officially completed their crowns!!  Congrats to Katie B, Karen L, and Marcy M!!  Your swag will be coming soon!!

May was a great month for us all to really get everything in gear, and ramp things up.  While April proved to us that we are healthy and strong, and adaptable to whatever is thrown at us, May proved that we truly were made to achieve during difficult times and could thrive as well.

This month we really kicked it up a notch as our homework seemed like full workouts in themselves!  I mean come on....40 or fail in atomics, wall presses, burpees and double leg stretches were no joke!  However, while that HW was brutal, it definitely got us prepped for our physical testing as we saw some crazy results!  Here are just a few of the highlights from May:

• Cindy E improved by an average of 136% in physical testing!
  
• Megan M lost 7 pounds!
  
• Marcy M lost 5.5 inches!
  
• Susan G improved by 111% on her burpees!
  
• Megan S lost 2.5 inches!
  
• Amy H lost 2 pounds!
  
• Elizabeth S lost 2 inches in her waist!
  
• Angie R did 18 more atomic pushups!
  

May was such a great month and it really showed us what we were MAYde of.  Now we look forward to June with our Team Beach theme, representing Team Michigan, Team Pennsylvania and Team World!  Let's go!!