You’ve probably heard the the words functional fitness before, but what does that mean? When your body is functionally fit, you are able to perform every day movements in everyday situations without the pain associated with, say a bad back. For example you may be able to lift your weight in a bench press, but are you able to lift your toddler or a bag of groceries into your car without any problems? When you workout at a gym on the machines you are training your muscles to work in 1 plane with 1 stable and controlled motion. When you train for functional fitness you work multiple muscles at one time to work together in an unstable, yet controlled environment. For example, you may stand on 1 leg while holding a dumbell and Read More »

On Saturday August 9th in Couer de’ Laine , Idaho, Shannon Van Oppen completed her first triathlon, Olympic distance, in 4hours and 1minute! Shannon has been training at The Exercise Space for just over a year now and has made amazing gains in transforming herself back into the athlete she once knew herself to be. Wanting to keep Shannon company through this journey I joined her in the triathlon. We rose at 4:30am Saturday morning to make sure we had enough time to pour ourselves into our so small wet suits…double checked our transition area, and headed to the water’s edge for our 7am start time. Just before entering the clouds let loose and the biggest rain drops I have ever seen bounced off of us. Then in we went - what a surreal experience with the rain splattering the water’s surface and swimming with 1400 other bathing cap clad people. A kick in the face, or a head in the side is very common when sharing water space… all heading to the same buoy. No worries, the swim was over before we knew it, in 33 minutes! We dizzily trekked back to transition to peel off our wet suits, grab our sneakers, and onto our bikes we were for the very hilly 25 mile bike ride. Luckily we were often distracted from the hills by the generous views of the lake along the way. Shannon made it up every hill, and did not stop or walk once. 2 hours later we were back in transition ditching our bikes and heading out for the 6.2 mile run. Although Shannon’s knee was not cooperating she still managed to finish the run and complete her first triathlon ever! An amazing experience for me to watch her accomplish this goal, as words cannot describe how proud of her I am. Shannon, you rock!

Stephanie Rush just accomplished the most physically challenging thing of her life - an Olympic distance triathlon. That is a 1 mile swim, 25 mile bike ride, then a 6 mile run! This is huge for a self professed non-athlete. Having trained Stephanie over the past year, I am so proud of her - she finished in 5:08.

In addition to her weekly strength workouts at The Exercise Space, Stephanie joined Team in Training to help raise raise funds for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma research and patient services… and to keep her motivated to do her Saturday 7am swims!

Congrats Steph!!!

One of the many benefits of regular strength training is having strong bones. Your bone density increases when lifting heavy objects, in turn, decreasing your chances of breaking a bone if you have a fall. Take it from Mark (the unhealthy guy turned expert mountain bike racer featured back in March). Yes, he gave me a bird’s eye view of his ball of tumbling body and bike.

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Back in 1982, when she was just 20 years old Shannon Van Oppen watched the Iron Man on TV and decided then and there, someday, she would compete in a triathlon. The next couple decades, life took over …marriage, kids, illness, weight gain etc. I met Shannon back in the fall of 2007 when competing in a triathlon was still a dream… Read More »

“This time he was different,
he not only wanted to race, he wanted to win!”

When Mark and I first started working together in March 07, he came to me to get ‘in shape’ for the upcoming mountain bike race season. Mark was 39 years old, 6′ tall and weighed 223 lbs with a body fat of 30% (typically unhealthy). Biking had been a casual hobby for the previous few summers, but this year he wanted to race. Having not worked out formally in decades, I first identified and began to correct some muscle imbalances Mark had developed from long hours of sitting in front of his computer. I then incorporated a lot of balance, stability, and core muscle work into his routine, before we knew it the first race was upon us (in photo, left)…and I didn’t work with Mark again until January 08.

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