If you haven't heard, we were recently named the Best CrossFit Gym (4th year in a row) and Best Place to Workout in Boulder (3rd year in a row) by the Colorado Daily!

What if mental toughness isn’t about your ability to go-go-go!

Before kids, I’d been a competitive athlete since I was young, making time for difficult athletic pursuits during even the busiest times of my life. When I had my first child in 2013, exercise - a fundamental piece of my identity - came to a sudden halt.

The timer buzzes after a hard workout, and I sit down, sweaty and out of breath. I look at the person finishing up beside me and wonder how much time they have left. I get more invested with each rep, excited to cheer them on. You’ve got this! Try to finish it off! Before I know it, I’m clapping and shouting (still out of breath), encouraging my classmate to finish.

If you’ve ever met me or seen me work with patients in the gym, you know I love glute exercises. They will solve all problems in life, or at least a lot of them related to injuries in the legs and back. But what about using a loop around your thighs to activate those glutes during squats?

If you (or a friend or family member) have ever had a bout of severe dizziness or vertigo that occurs with positional changes or head turns, you know how scary and debilitating it can be. But did you know that it can often be quickly diagnosed and treated by physical therapy, and that over 90% of patients can be successfully treated with a simple maneuver?

Below are my 5 favorite exercises that kept me moving, feeling healthy and staying focused on my goals and challenges in front of me.

Self care means something different for everyone. For some, it means spending a day at the spa, free from pressures from the outside world. For others, it’s maintaining a strict diet. I don’t know exactly what’s right for you, but I know the answer for me, and it’s actually not either of those things.

Be gentle on yourself. Not every day is your best day. Not every workout is your best workout.

The fascia, most often overly simplified to be described as our connective tissue, is a continuous structure throughout our body. Think of a spiderweb. The structure of a spiderweb is 3-dimensional. The web matrix is both around the outside, as well as weaving through the inside. If you pull on a spiderweb, the entire structure of the web shifts.

Some of you may know that I visited Haiti this past summer (because who doesn’t want to take a trip to Haiti in the middle of summer?), but you may not know why: to volunteer with an incredible organization called The Vertile House. Founded in 2010 after the devastating earthquake that left tens of thousands of children in Haiti orphaned and homeless, The Vertile House provides a safe, stable and nurturing home for kids from the community.

I’ve been thinking a lot about goal setting recently. Every top notch athlete and coach will tell you about the importance of goals.

During every Clean Challenge (and any good nutrition program), the first thing we're concerned about is the quality of food you're putting in your mouths. All by itself, this approach has shown to be greatly beneficial for most Challengers, as well as for the general population.

I'm more guilty than anyone of this. I'm feeling crunched on time at the end of a long day, and so instead of cooking the food I have at the house, I drive somewhere for take-out so I can eat NOW.

Alright, you've honed your macros, you're getting all your veggies, and your hydration is on point. Now: are you getting all the nutrients you can from your food?

A lot of what we do in CrossFit is very fast-paced. Not only in CrossFit, but in life! We are rushing to get our kids to school, to meet a deadline, to get to a meeting, or simply walk from point A to point B. Unfortunately, for most of us, our eating habits are not any different.

Meal prep and food prep may sound like the same thing, but there are slight differences between them. Depending on your environment, the busy-ness of your schedule, or the type of personality you have, one may work better for you than the other!

We recently sent out a survey asking questions about members’ eating habits and nutrition goals. More than 100 people responded (thank you!) and it turns out that the most important goal was losing body fat (65%).

If you're not familiar with "counting your macros," it's the process of monitoring and managing your daily intake of the three macronutrients: fat, carbohydrates and protein. Everyone has a different amount they should aim to eat based on goals, body composition, age, gender, level of training, and more.

We all struggle with the ability to live in the moment — surrounded with countless distractions by our phones, tablets, computers, television, radio, or you name it and most of us have it. These external devices draw us out of what is going on in our environment and distract us from engaging in what is happening around us.