Starts in June on Monday’s | 12:00 pm
Everyone has different obstacles with their bodies; many of the problems come from people not knowing how to utilize their bodies in the most effective ways during their workouts.
Working out without activating certain muscles leads the stronger muscles to get stronger and the weaker muscles to get weaker. This leads to compensation making our bodies get into a dysfunctional yet comfortable alignment which can be a hard cycle to break. The neurological connection between the brain and the muscles is crucial in effectively working out. Learn the tools to effectively move & exercise while using all areas of your body when working out.
What your weekly topical hour will look like:
- Warm-up: Learn about the specific warm-ups with hands-on application
- Workout: Cover 5 exercises with an explanation and hands-on demonstrated work
- Stretches: Learn about the specific stretches with hands-on application
- What this program will offer each participant:
- Weekly topic handouts/infoHands-on demonstrations
- Weekly body regions:
- hips & legs
- shoulders & arms
- Individualized feedback
- homework
- $120 for the program (~4 sessions)
For more information or sign-up, please contact personal fitness trainer Amanda Heminger at aheminger@sacdt.com.
Fitness Department, Fitness Programs, June News & Events, May News & Events
The Seattle Athletic Club just wrapped up another very successful 12 week weight loss competition for 2016. This year we had 17 participants looking to start healthy habits and begin their weight loss journey. Of those that competed in the competition, 88% lost weight. Of those that lost weight, 60% lost over 5 lbs and the top finishers all lost over 25 lbs.
Speaking of top finishers, here is how the competition finished up:
- 1st place: Mike, lost 15.66% of his body weight.
- 2nd place: Jon Hocut, lost 15.30% of his body weight.
- 3rd place: Pip McKay, lost 12.83% of his body weight.
We are proud of all the hard work and dedication from everyone that participated in our competition. Many of our participants had great things to say about their Lose It experience and how it helped them change their lives.
If you are looking to start a fitness program, please come see any of the fitness staff. Everyone at that Seattle Athletic Club is here to help and assist all members with any fitness endeavor. As you can see, you can be more successful using a structured program and network of people looking to help you out. So, when it comes to your next fitness adventure, talk to the professionals at the Seattle Athletic Club!
Fitness Advice, Fitness Department, Fitness Programs, May News & Events
Lose It!, weight loss
Wednesdays | 6:00 pm (Ongoing),
- Ready for a new and exciting approach to achieving your fitness goals?
- Tired of the same old boring routines?
Functional Fitness is a total body strength and conditioning class designed to challenge you in new and exciting ways.
Plan on using a wide variety of exercise equipment such as battle ropes, kettle bells, jump ropes, TRX, agility ladders, and the sled. The goal of this class is to improve your cardiovascular fitness and leave no muscle unchallenged while making you feel stronger and more confident so that you can tackle any obstacles that life might throw at you.
- Begin building endurance and full body control!
- Enjoy a new and innovative approach to functional circuit training!
- Improve core strength and stability!
- Burn fat and increase lean body mass!
- HAVE FUN!!
Meet at the south end of the SAC basketball court at 6:00 PM every Wednesday night!
- $100/month or $30 Drop-In
For more information, please contact or to sign-up please, contact Personal Fitness Trainer, Will Paton at wpaton@sacdt.com or 206-443-1111 ext 288
Fitness Advice, Fitness Department, Fitness Programs, July News & Events, June News & Events, May News & Events, Strength Training
agility ladders, jump ropes, Kettle bells, sled, TRX
It’s time for a little reflection. If you look back a few months ago, a year ago, 4 years ago, what about your fitness routine and your fitness level has changed? How many of your major goals have you accomplished? Can you look at a picture from 2 years ago and say, “Wow, I can’t believe how out of shape I was!” with pride knowing how far you’ve come? Can you look back 6 months ago and say, “It’s so awesome my knees have been pain free for 6 whole months!” If you really reflect, I hope that some things have improved for you and that you are on a path of health and happiness. If you are not, if you really are just spinning your wheels there might be a few things holding you back. You can easily change these things with minimal effort. Even if you only change one of these things it could make all the difference!
1. Variety– Are you doing the same machines? Are you working out for the same amount of time? Are you doing the same weight/reps? Are you always doing the same classes? It’s time to mix it up! This is one of the biggest keys to constant improvement as well as keeping your workouts interesting! Go outside your comfort zone and try something a little bit different!
2. Intensity– Not every workout needs to end with you puking in a garbage can. However, not all workouts should end with you skipping down the street without any fatigue or soreness. Everyone has a different idea of how intense a workout should be. In my personal opinion as long as you feel proud of the things you did in the gym (how much weight you lifted, how fast you swam, how high you jumped, etc) then you are on the right track. Just going through the motions will get you nowhere. You must push yourself to some extent nearly every time you do a workout.
3. Rest Days– Have you been working out in the gym every day for the past month? It’s time to take some time off. This does not mean you have to sit on the couch without moving for days. It means, change your idea of what rest is. Go for a walk instead of coming into the gym for the 24th day in a row. Garden, play with your kids, clean out the garage, or take your dog on a hike. To get the most out of your workouts your body needs time to recover and your mind needs time to go on autopilot. Enjoy some time out of the confines of the club!
4. Fun– If there isn’t anything enjoyable about your workouts, you are headed for trouble. There should always be something that you look forward to in your workouts. Maybe it’s just the stretch at the end. Maybe it’s your favorite lift, watching TV while you run, working out with friends, or your favorite song in spinning class. No matter what, there should ALWAYS be something enjoyable about your workout!
5. Multi-directional Movement– We generally move in one direction…forward. It’s very important to train in all planes of motion (frontal, sagittal, transverse); this is especially true if you are an endurance sport athlete. Too much time in one direction means that you aren’t working supporting muscles. You can only gain so much strength if you are only working one group of muscles! Besides, the lateral movements will also add variety!
6. Stretching– I’ll be the first to say it, stretching sucks. But if you want to be the fastest, strongest, and most fit looking you can be, you need to stretch. The more pliable you keep your muscles, the more they can contract, the bigger range of motion you will have, the more muscle fibers you will have to use, and the more capacity your joints will have to maintain good form. While it might be boring and or painful, it’s absolutely necessary for keeping a healthy body.
7. Small Muscle Work– This goes along with stretching. If you don’t improve the little helpers in your body, then they cannot help the bigger muscles perform to their highest potential. Increasing the little muscles around a joint will keep the joint healthy and moving in a full range of motion!
8. Resistance– Increasing resistance will help your muscles grow and help increase cardiac output. We don’t all have goals of back squatting 500lbs but only doing air squats will only improve your muscle tone, joint stability, and caloric burn minimally. So pick up a medicine ball, grab 2.5lb heavier weights than you normally use, and put an extra magnet on your weight stack. Giving your body something to work against will pay off leaps and bounds when it comes to increased strength. You’ll thank me the next time you have to help your brother move that big couch!
So keep working hard, keep having fun, and keep things fresh and interesting. Have goals, achieve them, and then set new ones! Make each workout count and be an inspiration to yourself as well as others!
If you need any help please contact Adriana Brown at abrown@sacdt.com
Fitness Advice, Fitness Department
Dear Journal,my name is Adriana Brown and I am obsessed and in love. My husband feels as though an intervention may be in order. I cannot stop using the fitness app, MyFitnessPal. Thanks to fellow trainer Shay Massey, I am totally obsessed with this app and I constantly recommend it to clients, friends, family, acquaintances, and relative strangers. If you want to lose weight and feel like you still have a choice in what you consume (nothing is off limits) this is the absolute best way to do it. Here are a few things I totally love about this app:
1. It’s super easy to use.
2. You can tailor it 100% to your personal needs and goals
3. It’s cell phone friendly, computer friendly, and tablet friendly
4. If you are 100% honest with it you are 100% guaranteed to achieve your weight loss goals.
5. Nothing is off limits
Do these all sound too good to be true? Well, it is and it isn’t. You still have to put in effort just like attaining any goal.
First off, you need a food scale. Most foods you input into the app are measured in grams or ounces. It’s imperative that you measure/weigh your food as that will give you the most exact count of your macro-nutrients (carbs, protein, fat).
Second, you need to do a little leg work You can do a general search (Pink Lady apple), or you can scan a barcode (mixed veggies), or you can import the URL for any recipe (who the heck knows the nutritional info for homemade chili?). Once it’s in your food database you can easily select it going forward, so there’s no second time searching for your favorite Lara Bar!
Third, going out to dinner is hard. If you can’t be exact, do a search of something close to what you are eating. I doubt MyFitnessPal has Etta’s clam chowder in it, but you could select “Whole Foods Clam Chowder” and then be annoying and ask your server how many ounces the clam chowder is.
Fourth, it’s best to do most of your food log the day before. If you know you are having two eggs and a banana for breakfast tomorrow, you should go ahead and plan out as far as you can for the next day. That makes the whole day of meal planning much easier and increases the likelihood that you will hit your target amount of macro-nutrients, which is the ultimate goal.
The fifth–and most important step if you really want to lose weight–LOG EVERYTHING to the best of your ability. If my kids don’t eat all their broccoli I will eat it and add in even just 1.2 ounces so that I’m being honest with myself and really achieving my counts for the day. The more exact you are with your logging, the quicker you will achieve your goals.
On the upside, if you want to eat a Snickers Bar tomorrow, you totally can. It may mean that for the rest of the day you eat nothing but baked chicken and carrots to achieve your food goals, but the choice is yours to make. This is not a diet. This is a way for you to learn what kinds of foods give you what kinds of nutrition and how much of those foods you should be eating. It’s not even about calorie counting; it’s much more about hitting the macro-nutrient count. It’s almost like a game trying to hit your numbers, changing food amounts, changing food, etc. I just love it and think it’s an amazing way to stay on track. Even if you only use it for a week or two in order to understand how much of your meals should be carbs/proteins/fats, it’s a great learning tool.
I highly recommend you give it a shot. Perhaps you’ll love it so much, I’ll see you at the next MyFitnessPal addiction group!
If you want more information about this or other ways to achieve your goals, please contact Adriana Brown at abrown@sacdt.com
Fitness Advice, Fitness Department
apps, goals, MyFitnessPal, personal, tablet, tablet friendly, weight loss
You may have noticed that the club upgraded some of its workout equipment after the annual club closure. Here is what we have that’s new and some fun ways to use it.
3-way Olympic Benches: these benches have a back rest that moves upward and downward allowing you to perform incline, flat or decline chest press on the same piece of equipment. It can
also be adjusted out or in allowing both short and tall individuals to fit on the bench and workout.
Elevate Series Treadmills: These treadmills have been show to have a 30% reduction in forces in the knees compared to running on the roads. They have a quick control panel by the heart rate monitors to allow for quick changes in speed and elevation. Some of the coolest features lye in the touch screen monitors where you can: watch TV channels, browse the internet, access fitness apps, take guided tours viewing a city France while the treadmill adjusts the incline based on the actual incline on that city road/trail, do any of the 42 pre-programmed workouts or do any of the 8 custom workouts created by the SAC fitness staff, create a profile on Life Fitness Connect (https://www.lifefitness.com/home/products/lfconnect-app) and track all your workouts on the treadmills and much more.
Cage System: We added a cage system which allows for 6 workout spaces to do any of your major barbell work. The cage also has two monkey bar sets, 6 pull-up bars, 3 sets of bar safeties and J-hooks that can adjust the bar rack position from the floor to the top of the cage. Those are all the basic workout features you can do; there are many other uses for the cage system using resistance/power bands, benches, and a TRX workout area.
If you have any questions on how to set up or use the new equipment please feel free to ask and of the fitness staff or contact the fitness director Jacob Galloway (jgalloway@sacdt.com) to set up some individual time to review the equipment.
Fitness Department
3-way Olympic Benches, Cage System, Elevate Series Treadmills
We asked the fitness staff what they would recommend our members read and this is what they came up with:
Jacob Galloway – David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
To me this book really was about the power of perception and how we look at hardships in our life as negatives when in reality they shape us into the people we are today. These hardships create personality traits that can allow us to overcome other challenges that others would not.
Greg Svoboda – Mastery by Robert Greene, The Power of Less by Leo Baubuta
1. If you are unsure of your passion in life, or have yet to discover your life’s task, get Mastery. It has radically changed my life and continues to serve as an irreplaceable guide. Greene takes you through the journey of discovering and developing your life’s work, along with the process required to grow from apprentice to master of your craft.
2. Are you relentlessly moving towards the direction of your dreams every day? Whatever the answer, grab The Power of Less. Baubuta lays out what I feel is one of the greatest foundational methods for skyrocketing productivity and success. His goal setting process could be better, but the rest is gold. Literally tripled the amount of work I was accomplishing in a day while reducing my overall stress.
Tom Sheriff – Beyond Basketball by Coach Mike Krzyewski (Duke), Name of the Wind (King Killer Chronicle book 1) by Patrick Rothfuss
1. This is one of my favorite books that pertain to sport and life. This is an easy read with each short chapter telling a different story.
2. This is my favorite “for fun” book series of all time. It’s an epic fantasy that has nothing to do with training, life lessons, self help etc. (but really it does). I recommend it to everyone because it’s an extremely well written amazing story. It is a series with 2 of the 3 planned books out so far; I can’t recommend it enough.
Shay Massey – The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
Great read for those who are looking for their purpose or path in life. Encouraging the reader to act now and to live their own personal legend it can be just the thing to encourage forward movement. I also enjoyed the author’s perspective on life’s “obstacles.” Many times the reader is reminded that life’s road bumps are simply that, not dead ends or absolutes.
Amanda Heminger – The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma
This is a great book about maintaining balance and finding happiness in life. The story is about an over-worked, highly stressed lawyer who has the job, money, and power. Despite all of this, his life feels incomplete. It takes a turn for the worse when he suffers a massive heart attack. Re-evaluating his life, he decides to travel to India and become a Monk in the hopes of getting in touch with his spirituality, and discovering how to be healthy, balanced, and joyous with his life. This book takes you through every step of his journey, teaching valuable lessons and offering eye-opening wisdom in regards to what is important in life, and the value of finding inner peace.
Jason Anderson – The Soul of a Butterfly by Mohammad Ali’s
This autobiography is full of life and sport inspiration (inspirational quotes) which you expect when you think about readying a book about Ali but it also goes pretty deep into him as a man where you almost feel like you know him as a friend not just a celebrity. You get to know the real man not just the confident/flamboyant boxer most knew him as. It goes into his life before boxing and what got him into boxing. It covers times in his life that he was not proud of and what he did to correct his faults which a “tell all book” from others may not get into. You clearly understand fighting for what you believe in and believing in yourself whether it’s daily life situations, sports, or religion is how he lived his life.
Adriana Brown – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.
Matterhorn is a visceral and spellbinding novel about what it is like to be a young man at war. It is an unforgettable novel that transforms the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful and universal story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice: a parable not only of the war in Vietnam but of all war, and a testament to the redemptive power of literature.
Fitness Department
and the Art of Battling Giants, Beyond Basketball, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Mastery, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, Misfits, Name of the Wind (King Killer Chronicle book 1), The Alchemist, The Book Thief, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, The Power of Less, The Soul of a Butterfly
The Seattle Athletic Clubs boasts over 50 group exercise classes a week! Have you tried one yet? As an instructor, I have a short list of suggestions that will make your and the instructor’s experience richer and safer.
- Introduce yourself to the instructor before class begins.
- Instructors will notice your presence in class, even if you sneak in and go straight to the back row! So, introduce yourself and inform him/her of any injuries you’re dealing with so he/she can be aware of your condition.
- Show up on time (means 5 minutes early to set up your equipment). Instructors build their class around a warm-up and a cool-down, and if you miss the warm up you may hurt yourself.
- Ask questions! After class, approach the instructor to ask any questions about an exercise or concept you didn’t understand. Instructors love to talk shop.
- And finally, give feedback! Whether a compliment or a suggestion, an instructor will want to know what you thought. Let his/her manager know what you thought as well because feedback (positive or negative) can only sharpen our awareness and hone our skills to make us better instructors.
We hope to see you in class!
Cardio Training, Fitness Department, Pilates, Swimming, Workouts, Yoga
Barre, group exercise, HIIT, Pilates, yoga
The SAC wants to introduce one of its newest members of the fitness department Amanda Heminger. Amanda moved to Washington state after graduating from Oregon State with her BS in exercise science and working for a couple years at the Oregon Athletic Club and managing the fitness on the Intel campus.
In Amanda’s youth she began having migraine headaches, gained weight and felt uncomfortable in her own skin. She decided to take action by running with her Dad and eating healthier; ultimately teaching herself to relieve tension, changed her body, and become more comfortable and confident with who she is. Since then, Amanda has wanted to share her gifts of fitness and help people love how they feel from the inside out.
Amanda’s Philosophy: “To me, being healthy means more than just eating right or being fit; it means feeling good in your own skin and being happy in all areas of your life. I believe that everyday movement SHOULD BE pain free and believe the statement “Less is more” to be true. Making small changes to how you prepare for movement can drastically improve the way your body feels every day.”
Amanda enjoys running, playing sports, spending time outdoors in the beautiful Northwest, and has a love for animals and the unconditional love they give.
Fitness Department, SAC Team
Oregon Athletic Club, Oregon State University
Hazel is such an inspirational person, throughout our time together she has motivated me in ways that she most likely doesn’t know. When I first met with Hazel I was taken aback. She came to me with an array of physical hurdles that most people would have used as an excuse to stay at home and as far from the gym as possible. Yet there she was! Not only was she ready to train, she was well informed and eager to find ways to stay active despite her surgeries and other physical ailments.
When I think of Hazel I don’t think about the fact that she has had a hip replacement, a knee replacement, bilateral retracted rotator cuffs, collapsed bones in one foot as well as scoliosis. No, I think about a woman who goes to the gym 5 days a week without fail, who follows her workout regimen religiously and always has a smile on her face about it. Working with her has taught me to not only question the limitations that I have put on myself but also to question the limitations I put on others.
When I asked Hazel what motivates her and she said she loves the gym culture, the people she sees every morning and knowing that she has control of that aspect of her life. I can honestly say that I didn’t expect Hazel to have progressed as quickly as she did, but her confidence and persistence encouraged me to push her harder. Hazel went from using a cane and the hand rail when going up and down the stairs when we first met to walking confidently without any assistance and this is due to her own will to overcome any hurdle thrown her way.
Hazel is always challenging herself in ways most won’t even dream of. Whether it is her pushing the prowler, doing rope throws or killing the high intensity interval circuits on the elliptical, Hazel is sure to be giving 110%. On days when I want to give myself an excuse to slack I think if Hazel and am reminded that I can make the most out of where I am and that I am the only person in my way.
Fitness Department, Inspirational Member of The Month
motivation, rotator cuffs, scoliosis
