This summer, we’re asking for original, funny, unique, and creative photos of you, your family members, your friends, whatever, on your outdoor adventures and summer vacations. The person who gets the most Facebook “likes” on their photos cumulatively throughout the 13 week the contest runs wins an AWESOME summertime prize package!

To Enter:
Anytime between 6/2/2013 and 8/31/13, take a weekly unique and fun summery picture involving the Fortitude Fitness Systems logo (can be found on a t-shirt, hoodie, sticker, etc.). The picture can be of you, your family and friends, something funny, nature, or anything else that inspires you, but it HAS to include the FFS logo in some form.
Then, upload the picture to your Facebook page, and tag FFS (or Ben Warstler if you have a hard time tagging FFS). If you don’t have Facebook, e-mail your picture to bensbootcamps@gmail.com, and we’ll upload it for you.

The Rules:
1. Winner will be selected based on the highest cumulative number of “likes.” That’s right, the more pictures you enter, the better chances you have of winning, but you can only submit ONE photo per week!
2. Each photo MUST “tag” FFS to officially be entered.
3. Each photo MUST contain the FFS logo in some way.
4. You do NOT have to be a current member of FFS to participate. You can be anyone from anywhere!
5. We don’t condone you doing anything risky or dangerous, or that could put you in harm’s way, so please don’t enter pictures that are too crazy or unsafe, we just want pictures of you having fun! Entries of this nature will be disqualified!
6. You don’t have to upload a picture every week the entire time, but to be fair, please do not upload more than ONE official entry per week.
7. Make sure to encourage your Facebook friends to “like” or “share” your posts. The more “likes” you get on each photo, the higher the likelihood of you winning!

Themes will be posted for each week shortly!

Joan Huguenin 

Joan is working on her 5^th year in our program.  That’s not whats most impressive.  Joan is our eldest camper.  That’s also not what is the most impressive.  What’s impressive is that Joan never lets anything get in her way of her health.  Turning 70 this year Joan is as healthy as she has been ever in her life.  She is extremely consistent in her attendance and never misses a class (unless the roads are bad) and if she does, always makes it up.

In training, Joan has the best kettlebell swings of all of our clients. Her form, might just be better than mine (Ben’s).  She never gives up in her workouts, but also knows her limits, two high qualities for longevity and success.

Congratulations Joan, you’ve worked long and hard and we all appreciate your hard work.  It never goes unnoticed.  We will always leave a spot for you by the fan J.

Rising Stars

Melinda MacDougal

Megan Hinkley

Kara Heath

Brittany Colbeth

Danielle Aldrich

The Functional Movement Screen is not a new idea or way to assess clients.  However, for a long time it has been difficult to assess large groups of people but ALSO be able to provide the tools for large number of clients to be able to train safely utilizing the Functional Movement Screen results in a large group setting like our Group Training program.  I mean think about it for a minute, how is an instructor going to be able to tell client A they can’t do Kettlebell Swings, but client B, C, and D they can.  AND what do you have client A do instead of Kettlebell Swings.  Now take that situation and multiply it by 20-30 clients!!  It can get overwhelming and disorganized fast!

Well not anymore

Now we are able to implement the Functional Movement Screen in its entirety for ALL of our clients.  And that is a real bid deal.  Why?  Well let me tell you a little bit about the Functional Movement Screen:

The Functional Movement Screen revolves around basically 3 things: Mobility, Stability, and Flexibility.  There are 7 main tests that are involved in the screen and are simple movements that gives us a well rounded idea of how well a client moves and patterns that could be more harmful than good.  From the 7 part test we can find the ‘red lights’ that a client will have and can cause more injury if they are not addressed (Red Lights are those tests that a client did not do well or scored a ’1′ based on a 0-3 scale).  I’m not going to get too much into the ins and outs of the test beyond this but I will say that assessments are meant to do two things:

1 Uncover some potential risks for injury from training due to various reasons (mostly compromises from whats being tested that I mentioned above)

2. Provide potential solutions for the risks we find with the assessments.

And by potential solutions, I’m referring to corrective exercises and movements that will help fix the potential risk.  Its one thing to find an issue, and a whole other to provide tools for a solution.

So I’ve explained a lot here and it may sound a bit like verbal vomit, I apologize (I’m very excited about this), and you may be someone reading this that ‘just wants to train’ and don’t care about assessments, moving better, moving without pain, and getting better results.

Wait, did I just say get better results?

Yes, this screening process can do that.  How?  Think about this for a minute.  When was the last time you had a nagging injury or ache and pain that just appeared out of the blue or something that hurt the next day after a tough training session that is DEFINITELY not muscle soreness?  Sometimes that pain can lead to missed training days or sometimes worse, compensating for the ‘hurt’ bodypart causing a riptide of less than appealing things in the body (overcompensation on non-injured side, overworking uninjured side, less than favorable walking patterns due to compensation, and many more).

Now that may all sound like something you are not interested in…unless you have had an injury or pain issues in the past.  Then that not only is exciting, but also music to your ears.  See, there are likely things in your program that are causing more harm than good, and you DONT EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT! Yet that is.  Eventually you will know about it and it may cause you missed workouts, lots of ice and ibuprofen, or even worse.

In addition, there are some other ‘rules’ the Functional Movement Screen is based around. Let’s take a look:

• Pain should not be present while performing basic bodyweight movement patterns.  If there is pain associated with these basic movement patterns, movement patterns will be compromised and substantially increase the likelihood for developing further injury to the site of pain.  Also, this could lead to a secondary injury from the body compensating to avoid the pain or restricted movement. (well that one we covered above).

• Having multiple limitations within several basic movement patterns, even if they’re pain free, can create compensations and general weaknesses that may lead to a greater likelihood of injury.

• Basic unilateral movement patterns should be symmetrical on both right and left sides of the body.

• Fundamental and basic movement patterning should precede performance related activities.

• Basic before Complex, Stable before Unstable

If you can move well, you can accomplish more quality work, which translates into better results AND longevity.  It takes the guesswork out of training safely and effectively whether you are in a personal training setting or in a larger group setting.  This is something we are super excited to be providing for you and in the group training setting, is a game changer.  There are a handful of group training (bootcamp) programs using this system in the country, and we are very proud to be one of them.  It’s taking our training and service up another level and furthering us from the rest of the pack.

Black Tshirt Award

Lydia Mello

Lydia has been a spark plug from day 1.  She gives everything she has every single workout.  Fellow members who have worked out in a class Lydia is in know full well what that means.  She is vocal, and her effort is second to none.  Being a participant in our program for some time, Lydia has always had a very high level of intensity and effort in her workouts.

A vocal motivator and a very fun person to be around Lydia is the life of the party and enjoys every second.  Congratulations my human kettlebell, its been a long time coming but you are more than well deserving!

Also, congratulations to this phase’s Rising Stars!!

Rising Stars

Olivia Bernard

Katie Foster

Kevin Ingalls

Angela Marquis

Sue Leroux

Vell Avery

I shot a video today of two key points with the push up that might help you as it has helped our clients tremendously.  Check it out: