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“Who cares about being pretty, I want to be noticeable.” - Tris, Protagonist of Divergent Series

Flyte Fitness Contributor Taylor Hahn wrote this week’s blog.

Later this week, “Allegiant,” the final installment in the Divergent series, opens in theaters nationwide. Tris, played by Shailene Woodley, is fighting against the Bureau of Genetic Welfare after it turned her city of Chicago into a social experiment gone bad. Tris is a strong female force to be reckoned with in a battlefield dominated by men. After all, she is from the Dauntless faction, which is considered the pure embodiment of strength. Tris will do anything to save her society, but will she succeed?

Tris is much more than just a pretty face. She is a strong, independent woman who shows her physical and mental strength throughout the entire series.

In preparing for her role, Woodley was relentless in her workouts. She used several bodyweight exercises each day to get her character in the most killer shape possible because fighting against the Bureau of Genetic Welfare isn’t for the weak! Today, I’ll share six specific bodyweight exercises that Woodley used to get in “Tris-shape.”

Bodyweight Exercises

Jab Cross Drill: In a boxing stance, guard your face with one hand, then punch with your opposite arm with your palm facing the ground. After completing the jab, return your extended arm back to protect your face. Repeat for one minute and then switch leading hands. Make sure you really put effort into the jab! You’ll feel it in your shoulders!

Lunging Power Hop: With your right leg lowered into a lunge position, jump straight up and swing your left arm, pushing off your right foot. Make sure your knee does not extend over your foot. Land in your starting position and repeat for 30 seconds on the left leg. Your quads will burn!

Prisoner Squat Hop: With feet slightly hip-width apart, place your hands behind your head and lower yourself into a squat stance with your knees behind your toes and your chest lifted. Then jump as high as possible, return to the squat stance, and repeat for one minute. Your heart rate will speed up quickly!

Bodyweight Exercises Enhanced with Core Flytes

Bear Crawl: Get on all fours and tighten your abs. Crawl forward and backward for one minute with your back relaxed and abs engaged, lifting one foot and hand up at a time. This move can also be used with Core Flytes for a more engaged ab workout. Place your Core Flytes underneath your hands and perform the bear crawl for 30-45 seconds. The balls under each Core Flyte add a new challenge compared with the stationary bear crawl. You’ll engage more muscle groups in your arms, legs, and core. You’ll get a more intense burn with the Core Flytes, so each set can be shorter.

Power Push Up: Get into a lower-pushup position and lift your hips so that your body makes an upside-down “V” shape (downward dog), then quickly return to the plank position with your abs engaged and your elbows as close to your body as possible. Do sets of 8-10 reps. Add a Core Flyte underneath one foot to activate your core more and to help strengthen muscles throughout your body as you keep the Core Flyte stable. Alternate sides after 4-8 reps. Controlling your body with the Core Flytes will increase coordination and stability.

Spider Run: In an upper-plank position, lift your left foot and move your left knee forward so that it touches your left elbow. Then, quickly return to your original plank position. Continue this movement, alternating legs for one minute. For a more intense workout, place Core Flytes underneath your feet, performing the above movements slowly and with control. This will engage your leg muscles and your core even more than the traditional spider run. Expect to sweat with this one!

These bodyweight moves, which Woodley used to transform herself into Tris, helped her become unstoppable throughout the Divergent series to beat the Bureau! You can easily perform them anywhere.

For more information on how Woodley got in the best shape possible, check out visuals of her performing the moves I discussed here!

We’d love to hear from you. Will you use any of these moves in your workout routine? Comment below or on our Facebook page or tweet us at @flytefitness.

Be Flyte Fit,

Taylor Hahn
Contributing Writer, Flyte Fitness
Certified Group Fitness Instructor & Personal Trainer

P.S. DON’T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR FITNESS UPDATES! CLICK THE BOX AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE!

“Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore.” - English photographer Cecil Beaton

I think I speak for all of us when I say, “Boredom sucks.” Most of us are getting bored quicker and more easily these days. With attention spans shortening, if we don’t have our smartphone fix, our coffee, our TV, or our fantasy football scores, we feel fidgety. We fall into the trap of multitasking and we get caught up in acting for the sake of doing… often to avoid boredom.

Electric Shocks Preferred to Boredom
A collaboration of the University of Virginia and Harvard University found that people despise boredom so much they are even willing to cause themselves physical pain in order to avoid it. A series of 11 studies, led by UVA psychologist Timothy Wilson, began with groups of participants who were asked to be alone for short periods of time (up to 15 minutes) without any material to stimulate their minds. Most of the subjects reported not enjoying the experience.

Wilson and his team wanted to see if people would chose to take part in an objectively unpleasant activity rather than no activity at all. So, as psychologists like to do, they added a button to the barren room that when pressed administered a mild electric shock to the participant. Participants were given a sample shock and all agreed that they would pay not to receive the shock. However, while sitting alone for 15 minutes, 67 percent of the men and 25 percent of the women in this study voluntarily shocked themselves.

Wilson said, “Simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid."

Best-selling author and Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert partnered with Wilson’s team on the shock study. Gilbert shared in a Freakonomics podcast last month that one of the male participants shocked himself an astonishing 190 times in the 15 minute period.

Boredom is Dangerous
Okay, so we clearly hate being bored. In addition, it turns out, boredom is also bad for our health. U.K. researchers collected data from 7,500 participants over a three-year period in the 1980s to gauge their level of boredom at work. 20 years after the collection period, the researchers analyzed the data for participants who had died. They found that those who had reported being “very bored” were two and a half times more likely to die from a heart-related problem than those who did not report being bored.

Psychologist Stephen Vodanovich of the University of West Florida states that research indicates that boredom increases the risk of anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol dependency, smoking, eating junk food, and work and school performance.

Exercise Combats Boredom
WebMD contends that boredom is common reason that people give for not exercising. People often find exercising monotonous. So, I’m going to argue that we should do something that many of us find boring to fight boredom. I’m a big fan of experimenting to find what works best for you… for your schedule, for your meal plan, for you workout routine. People often ask me, “What kind of exercise should I do to get me motivated?” The answer I give is, “Start with something that you will enjoy.” If we don’t like something the chances are slim that we’ll do it consistently.

Being active, however, isn’t sufficient to prevent boredom from creeping in. I’ve run the same route in Central Park dozens and dozens of times. And, yes it can get a bit boring. We need to find new ways to vary our routines so that they don’t become too… uh… routine.

Fight Boredom Your Way
There are some tips for combatting boredom while we work out so that we will stay motivated enough to keep exercising and enjoy it more. Again, everyone is different and not every suggestion will work for all of us. Reducing boredom is tantamount to making our workouts more fun. Making exercise a social activity can work for many of us. A running partner, workout buddy, or trainer can make exercises more competitive, supportive, or interactive. We wrote about how a great workout pal can be your dog in a blog last summer. Combining exercise with something else you enjoy can help a lot. Most people running on the treadmill or lifting weights in the gym have their headphones or earbuds glued to their heads. If music isn’t your bag, watching television, listening to podcasts, playing video games, or reading books may work for you.

One of the best ways to ensure that boredom doesn’t creep into our workouts is to create variety. With the many options of new and exciting classes available for us to try at gyms, apps and YouTube workouts available to enjoy at home, and new products to incorporate into my exercise regimen, I keep things interesting and fresh. My preference is to try at least one new exercise every week. My Core Flytes certainly make this easier for me to do as I am constantly challenged by what others are posting on social media. Fortunately, people are regularly telling me what they’re doing with their Core Flytes and it helps inspire me to try something new. This week a customer shared a “zombie press,” which I’m still working on!

We’d love to hear from you. What do you do to keep your workouts fun and make sure you’re never bored when you exercise? Comment below or on our Facebook page at facebook.com/flytefitness or tweet us at @flytefitness.

Be Flyte Fit,

Jeremy Greenberg

P.S. DON’T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR FITNESS UPDATES! CLICK THE BOX AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE!

“Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore.” - English photographer Cecil Beaton

I think I speak for all of us when I say, “Boredom sucks.” Most of us are getting bored quicker and more easily these days. With attention spans shortening, if we don’t have our smartphone fix, our coffee, our TV, or our fantasy football scores, we feel fidgety. We fall into the trap of multitasking and we get caught up in acting for the sake of doing… often to avoid boredom.

Electric Shocks Preferred to Boredom
A collaboration of the University of Virginia and Harvard University found that people despise boredom so much they are even willing to cause themselves physical pain in order to avoid it. A series of 11 studies, led by UVA psychologist Timothy Wilson, began with groups of participants who were asked to be alone for short periods of time (up to 15 minutes) without any material to stimulate their minds. Most of the subjects reported not enjoying the experience.

Wilson and his team wanted to see if people would chose to take part in an objectively unpleasant activity rather than no activity at all. So, as psychologists like to do, they added a button to the barren room that when pressed administered a mild electric shock to the participant. Participants were given a sample shock and all agreed that they would pay not to receive the shock. However, while sitting alone for 15 minutes, 67 percent of the men and 25 percent of the women in this study voluntarily shocked themselves.

Wilson said, “Simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid."

Best-selling author and Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert partnered with Wilson’s team on the shock study. Gilbert shared in a Freakonomics podcast last month that one of the male participants shocked himself an astonishing 190 times in the 15 minute period.

Boredom is Dangerous
Okay, so we clearly hate being bored. In addition, it turns out, boredom is also bad for our health. U.K. researchers collected data from 7,500 participants over a three-year period in the 1980s to gauge their level of boredom at work. 20 years after the collection period, the researchers analyzed the data for participants who had died. They found that those who had reported being “very bored” were two and a half times more likely to die from a heart-related problem than those who did not report being bored.

Psychologist Stephen Vodanovich of the University of West Florida states that research indicates that boredom increases the risk of anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol dependency, smoking, eating junk food, and work and school performance.

Exercise Combats Boredom
WebMD contends that boredom is common reason that people give for not exercising. People often find exercising monotonous. So, I’m going to argue that we should do something that many of us find boring to fight boredom. I’m a big fan of experimenting to find what works best for you… for your schedule, for your meal plan, for you workout routine. People often ask me, “What kind of exercise should I do to get me motivated?” The answer I give is, “Start with something that you will enjoy.” If we don’t like something the chances are slim that we’ll do it consistently.

Being active, however, isn’t sufficient to prevent boredom from creeping in. I’ve run the same route in Central Park dozens and dozens of times. And, yes it can get a bit boring. We need to find new ways to vary our routines so that they don’t become too… uh… routine.

Fight Boredom Your Way
There are some tips for combatting boredom while we work out so that we will stay motivated enough to keep exercising and enjoy it more. Again, everyone is different and not every suggestion will work for all of us. Reducing boredom is tantamount to making our workouts more fun. Making exercise a social activity can work for many of us. A running partner, workout buddy, or trainer can make exercises more competitive, supportive, or interactive. We wrote about how a great workout pal can be your dog in a blog last summer. Combining exercise with something else you enjoy can help a lot. Most people running on the treadmill or lifting weights in the gym have their headphones or earbuds glued to their heads. If music isn’t your bag, watching television, listening to podcasts, playing video games, or reading books may work for you.

One of the best ways to ensure that boredom doesn’t creep into our workouts is to create variety. With the many options of new and exciting classes available for us to try at gyms, apps and YouTube workouts available to enjoy at home, and new products to incorporate into my exercise regimen, I keep things interesting and fresh. My preference is to try at least one new exercise every week. My Core Flytes certainly make this easier for me to do as I am constantly challenged by what others are posting on social media. Fortunately, people are regularly telling me what they’re doing with their Core Flytes and it helps inspire me to try something new. This week a customer shared a “zombie press,” which I’m still working on!

We’d love to hear from you. What do you do to keep your workouts fun and make sure you’re never bored when you exercise? Comment below or on our Facebook page at facebook.com/flytefitness or tweet us at @flytefitness.

Be Flyte Fit,

Jeremy Greenberg

P.S. DON’T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR FITNESS UPDATES! CLICK THE BOX AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE!

“Never make predictions, especially about the future.” - Casey Stengel, Major League Baseball outfielder and manager

It's now November. Whoa! Where has the year gone? As we replace the pumpkin and ghost decorations with turkey ones, we are one step closer to the end of 2015. It's been an exciting year for us at Flyte Fitness. We began selling our Core Flyte stability training tools and customers, fitness professionals, and distribution partners all gave us excellent feedback. As the year comes to an end, we are looking forward to a great 2016.

So, what's in store for fitness next year? Last week, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world, gave us its annual predictions. ACSM published the results of its fitness trend forecast for 2016.

2,800 survey respondents –worldwide health and fitness professionals – differentiated "fads" (think Pizza Rat) from "trends" (think brick oven pizza) and focused on the areas that they think will influence the way that individuals will behave in the foreseeable future.

Here are the top five fitness trends for 2016 predicted by experts:

1. Wearable technology
Requirements: Cool tech gadgets

This trend went from “never-ranked” in the top 20, to “top-of-the-list.” The most common wearables used today are activity trackers that count steps walked, estimate heart rate and calories burned, and count hours of sleep. Many of these are integrated with smartphones and apps. There are wristbands (Fitbit), watches (Apple Watch), spectacles (Google Glass), and even earrings (we wrote about these last year).

The survey's lead author Walter Thompson, Associate Dean of the College of Education & Human Development at Georgia State University, said wearable technology helps by "gauging the intensity of effort during the workout... [and] also provides motivation between workouts."

We have written extensively about the importance of motivation and accountability when it comes up exercise. Technology that accurately monitors activity with little support required by users helps us see when we succeed and when we fall behind in clear, objective, and quantifiable metrics. I'm all for tools that help us track progress, and if they look cool too, great.

2. Body Weight Training
Requirement: Body.

The top trend in last year's survey, body weight training, took runner-up for 2016. Most personal trainers, group fitness classes, and popular home workout programs include body weight exercises that require only one's body. I was happy to see fitness professionals continue to recognize this trend as Core Flyte exercises take body weight exercises like planks, lunges, squats, push-ups, and rollouts to the next level.

3. High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
Requirement: Clock.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT), HIIT, is considered an effective method for getting a limit-pushing workout in a short period of time. It is comprised of alternating bursts of activity (e.g., sprints) and brief periods of recovery. It can be used with both cardio and strength exercises. Our Everlast Lab Core Flyte class has a session consisting of HIIT with 45-60 seconds of all-out Core Flyte exercises alternating with short rest periods.

4. Strength Training
Requirement: Weights.

Strength training uses resistance in order to build muscle and anaerobic endurance. It typically involves the use of equipment such as free weights. This type of training evokes the nostalgia of the movie Pumping Iron, but is certainly not only for the body-building type. Many women shy away from using weights due to fear of getting "too bulky." This is an unfounded fear because using weights is a great way to tone muscles and build strength and does not create a bulky look for most women.

5. Educated, Certified & Experienced Fitness Professionals
Requirement: Knowledge.

Ignorance may be bliss, but when it comes to exercise, it stunts progress, leads to inefficient workouts, and causes injuries. Knowledgeable fitness professionals help set and establish best practices and find innovative ways to work out. Attending fitness conventions in LA, New York, Orlando, and Atlanta this year has broadened my awareness of just how many new types of educational formats are out there, and how many are coming. Fitness professionals will have new ways to expand their tool sets with each new exercise science course. And, yes, we have in the works a Core Flyte education course for fitness professionals!

We’d love to hear from you. Is the prediction for wearables overstated? Which trend do you think will be the most important in 2016? Comment below or on our Facebook page at facebook.com/flytefitness or tweet us at @flytefitness.

Be Flyte Fit,

Jeremy Greenberg
Co-Founder & CEO
Flyte Fitness

P.S. DON’T FORGET TO SIGN UP FOR FITNESS UPDATES! CLICK THE BOX AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE!

The average career for NFL players is astonishingly short: 3.3 years overall and 4.9 years for kickers and punters. It's easy for those of us watching professional football players on TV, in a stadium, or through the lens of fantasy football points to miss the fact that these well-trained athletes are human. We put them on a pedestal when they succeed and we trash them when they don't perform well.

March, I met John Carney while I was working out with our Flyte Fitness partner Steve Weatherford in Southern California at John’s gym, Carney Training Facility. John and Steve were using Core Flyte stability trainers to train themselves, their NFL friends, and John’s clients. My first impression of John was that he is incredibly humble, very knowledgeable in exercise techniques, and open-minded with a thirst for learning and improving.

John Carney, now 51 years young, has a lot to be proud of. He is one of the most celebrated kickers in NFL history. He has 2,062 points scored (fifth in NFL history), played 23 seasons in the NFL, is one of two NFL players in history with four decades of active play, and was the oldest ever to play in a Pro Bowl at age 44.

Last week, John and I spoke about his NFL experience, his training program for kickers and punters, and his philosophy on fitness and longevity.

An Unlikely Road to the NFL
Growing up in Palm Beach, Florida, John loved soccer and played on his high school’s soccer team. Despite his passion for soccer, football was calling him. John recalled, “If you were a male at our high school, it was expected that you would try out for the team.” He initially tried out as a wide receiver, but felt that his soccer experience plus “a little bit of work” would get him on the field as a kicker and a punter.

John went to a kicking camp in Fort Lauderdale led by NFL kicking star Garo Yepremian. He made the junior varsity team as a kicker and a punter his sophomore year. Then, he played on the varsity squad his junior and senior years.

And that's where his football career nearly ended. John said, “I never really planned on playing football after high school. I wanted to play collegiate soccer, but I didn’t receive a lot of phone calls for soccer.”

John walked on to the football team at Notre Dame, which was his father's favorite school. Notre Dame had then, and still has now, one of the most competitive and storied programs in all of college football. John followed fellow high school teammate Alonzo Jefferson, Florida’s all-time leading rusher at the time, to the Golden Dome.

As a freshman at Notre Dame, John made the traveling team as the kickoff specialist. He proceeded to earn the field goal duties his sophomore through senior seasons. It was an exciting experience for John: “I loved the challenge to kick against exceptional programs like USC, Penn State, and Miami,” he said.

John had an outstanding career at Notre Dame. His 51 field goals remain the most in history. Despite John’s talent and track record, it wasn't easy for him to make it into the NFL. He went undrafted and it took him three years to break through and make an active NFL roster for the regular season. Reflecting back, John said, “The long road paid off. I had an opportunity to work my craft and get better and stronger and more serious about becoming an NFL placekicker.”