Hey all, hope you're enjoying a wonderful Saturday so far.  What a gorgeous day it was!  For many of you, trying to identify healthy, energy boosting snacks to get through your day has been a challenge.  As much as we talk about how important it is to make healthier eating decisions, it's understandable as to why those choices can be so taxing.  With the following blog, I wanted to be able to provide a few options to consider when faced with those mid-day energy slumps.

    Hey everybody, hope this blog reaches you all doing better than ever!  As we continue pushing forward in our efforts to seek self improvement and boost our health and wellness, I want to reiterate how vital it is to our success that we don't overlook the importance of allowing for proper rest and recovery time.  Why is it so important to allow time to heal? It is inevitable, regardless of how young or old we are as we make this journey that we will all have to combat the issue of inflammation.

    Hey everybody.  I hope you all have enjoyed a fabulous training week so far.  Lots of great things continue to happen in the lives of our members, and it certainly is well deserved.  With the recent focus on running, I wanted to continue sharing strategies consistent with ensuring running health and longevity.  Here's another, enjoy!

If we want to continue running fast, we must continue to run hard.  We begin to lose skeletal muscle mass at about age 25.

    Hi everyone, hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Easter weekend.  I wanted to make sure I introduced the next series of blogs now because I believe it perfectly coincides with all of our focuses towards improving our running abilities.  Far too often we are looking at only the workout itself,  and forget the importance of our post-run/workout recovery.  It is this oversight I wish to address in the following blog.  Please continue to follow this series as there will be additional installments to come.

    Hey everybody, hope you've all enjoyed a wonderful week so far.  I thought that with the Easter holiday just a few days away a recipe to naturally dye our Easter eggs would come in handy.  It would also allow us to save some money, and avoid using any toxic coloring ingredients.  Have a wonderful, safe holiday!

    Color your Easter eggs with dyes made at home using fruits, vegetables and spices. Experiment with other colorful ingredients such as red cabbage, blackberries, coffee, tea, ground paprika or grape juice, too, if you like.

    Hey everybody, good morning!  By now it's no secret that eating right is a vital component to your health and wellness success.  The following information should provide some additional insight as to which foods provide the best compliment to those efforts.  If there's one thing I'd like you to take away from this (other than just the nutritional info itself), it's to be open to trying new things and experimenting a little bit.  Don't assume you won't like something, try it and find out!

    Hey everybody.  I'm very excited to show you the customized sneaker I designed with Nike specifically for METropolitan Fitness.  After speaking directly with Nike, I was advised that these shoes will be available for purchase if you decide you like them enough to buy them for yourself.  Please contact me and let me know so I can forward the appropriate link info to you.  Thanks again for all your support!

Yours in health and wellness,

Mike

    Hey everyone, hope you've enjoyed an amazing week so far.  I thought that the following blog was especially important to write at this time because it perfectly coincides with my challenge to all of you to work on running your best mile.  Over the course of the last few days I have had a few specific conversations with METropolitan Fitness members who expressed concern over whether or not taking on a challenge like this was feasible or not.  I hope that this information helps ease your apprehension and provides some reassurance that it can be done safely and responsibly.

    As many of you already know, I'm a huge advocate of stretching in our continuing efforts to retain our elasticity and flexibility.  What I'd like to highlight here in this blog are some of the benefits realized from flexibility training.  In blogs to come I'll also discuss additional rules for stretching, provide examples of how stretching can lead to improved performance, and review additional stretching instructions.  Should any of you have any questions, please reach out to me directly or post your questions here so that the forum readers can follow along as well.

    Good morning everybody, hope you all are well on your way to another amazing week!  I wanted to share the next blog because I am often approached in the gym with questions regarding the best ways to target your "lower abs", especially now that the weather has been so unseasonably warm.  The following is something you all should know when it comes to the burn you feel when doing certain exercises.  For those of you who already train with me, this information will reinforce our approach to not spend all of our time focusing on exercises that involve leg movements.