Motivation

How Did You Find a Passion in Fitness and How do You Maintain it?

I believe one of the best things a person can accomplish in their lives is finding something they are passionate about. I feel so lucky to have found something that I am passionate about in life and continue to love every single day. But so many people haven’t found that yet, or have found something they are passionate about but find it hard to keep that fire burning. I believe it comes down to a few simple things, but here is my story, and the story behind the creation of CeeFit.

Growing up I was fortunate enough to play high school, club, and collegiate level water polo as well as swimming. My entire life I was basically given the proper tools to train and recover properly at a high level. When I finished with both of these, I found myself in a pretty severe downward spiral of weight gain and inactivity. As so many people do, I began to feel depressed, I lacked energy, and I simply did not feel good. It was at this moment in life that I began to look after myself again, incorporating some of those tools I learned throughout my athletic career. But I soon hit a wall and realized that I could not train the same way as I had in the past. I began researching and going out of my way to learn as much as I could about training and nutrition and that is when I fell in love with this process. The fitness industry is vast and there is so much more that we have yet to learn, but that is so exciting. I wanted to share my knowledge with those who found themselves in the same position I was when I began this journey. Between coming out of that and finding a passion for helping others in the gym and with their nutrition, I chose to start this style of blog in order to help people better their lives!

So I guess that brings me to the second part of the question. How do I maintain that passion? The simple answer, is that I don’t. There is no secret, trick, or anything like that to maintain your passion, or maintain activity related to fitness. If you quickly lose interest or have a hard time maintaining it then it is not a true passion of yours. That may be hard to hear and you may disagree, but if done properly I believe the results will inherently keep you interested. If you are not seeing results there are ways around that plateau to keep you motivated and inspired. That can range from actually adjusting your training to even simple things like buying new workout clothes! Feel free to reach out to us if you are stuck in a rut and need help getting out of it. That is ultimately our purpose as we try to create a positive and healthy fitness community.

COVID-19 And How We Can All Maintain Our Progress

I think it goes without saying that the outbreak of COVID-19 or the Corona Virus has impacted all of us. I have had so many people emailing, messaging me, or commenting on our posts asking our advice on how to maintain their progress without gyms, and in some crazy cases without access to proper nutrition. And while I could create a list or a few suggestions, I believe that is too simple for such an elaborate issue. Instead, I want to highlight my own personal progress maintenance, and help relate to your own personal life.

On March 28th, 2020 I lost my full-time position as most of you have due to COVID-19. Funny enough I work for a pretty large chain gym, and they closed down all of their locations. I was out of work and at the same time lost my biggest hobby and outlet for positive energy. I left work that day disappointed, but saw so many people around me experiencing the same thing. Which inspired me to make the best out of our current situation and continue to make progress. But how do we go about doing that? Simply we take the principles discussed throughout CeeFit and adapt them to whatever resources we have available.

The first adaptation, and would I would consider to be the most important, was my nutrition. Without the gym, my capacity to work (or in other words weight lift) was severely decreased. The best way to counter act that was to bring down my overall calorie count. For those of you struggling with the same thing, I recommend cutting your carbohydrates anywhere from 25-50% depending on your program and attempting to maintain your intake of protein. This will dictate the amount of glycogen store and utilization in this time of less overall work.

The second part would be adjusting our training accordingly. For me, this new way of living and working out gave me an opportunity to focus on areas that I lacked when the gym was available. For each of my lifts I doubled reps and sets in order to facilitate the same amount of stress on the muscle, and incorporated bodyweight and weighted bands to substitute for weight lifting. If you do not have weights at home, my main recommendation would be finding various household objects to use as resistance. And have some fun with it! I’ve used everything from laundry detergent to flour so get creative with it!

In conclusion, we are all going through a ridiculously hard time. I want CeeFit to be a sanctuary where everyone can come together and push through this pandemic. I plan on showing you guys more and more of how we can all come together to continue our progress. Feel free to reach out to me, and let’s get going!