Master of Modification: Adaptive Athlete and CrossFit Sensation Lindsay Hilton

This is a guest post from Carole Klein. She is the manager of social media and content for Unique Fitness Concepts located at their headquarters in Vernon Hills, IL. She has a B.S. in exercise physiology and is a fitness industry expert with more than 20 years of experience as a competitor and personal trainer.

It might be tempting to think that being born without arms or legs would pretty much make it impossible to become a fitness inspiration to the entire world. However, that’s exactly what incredible adaptive athlete Lindsay Hilton has done. Hilton first grabbed people’s attention when a video of her working out went positively viral in 2016. Since then, she’s become a CrossFit sensation and a serious inspiration to people all over the world.

She continues to influence athletes and fitness enthusiasts all over the world as she sets (and accomplishes) new goals, and we personally can’t wait to see what she does next. Here, we’ll take a closer look at Lindsay Hilton and her amazing journey as an athlete. We’ll touch on some of her most noteworthy achievements. We’ll go over a few useful lessons we can all learn by watching Lindsay set the fitness world on fire, as well.

Feb232018

How to Keep Up Your Workout Routine When Traveling (MOTIVATION!)

This doesn’t include one of our notorious hotel workouts. This doesn’t have a ton of exercises and numbers. You won’t find any programming here: No sets, reps, rest, etc. This is strictly motivational and completely intended to help you remember that you can make up as many excuses as you want, but you can also take them away. It is all on you.

Feb112018

How To Take Care of Yourself

This was originally going to be a “review” of my recent trip to High Five Hand Therapy, but let’s talk about something much more important. I think we’re all really bad, or out of touch, when it comes to recognizing our physical and mental/emotional well-being. There are so many people who try to talk themselves into their condition being worse than it is and there are others who try to convince themselves that something serious isn’t so bad. As a result of our extremism in this realm, we often end up ignoring our issues and failing to deal with them properly. At the end of the day, that lack of awareness turns into negligence and eventually makes our problems worse, often creating even more problems.

As a professional in this field, this is always on my mind, but it can be hard to communicate with clients since so many people can take it the wrong way. Instead of being reasonable and level-headed, in an effort to create a sound plan to reach a goal, most people take offense to any kind of feedback and in the end, they end up suffering more. We’re all victims of it, to a certain degree, myself included. This was made aware to me, or more aware, during and after my trip to this therapy spot in Garden Grove, CA, which is really far from where we live. Still, since health is an important investment, I decided to take the time and money to go, and I’m glad I did.

Feb052018

Hungry & Fit Meditation Series

This year seems to be full of fun changes and projects. One you already know about–LA’s Must-Visit Restaurants of 2018 series. After months of putting it off, we are finally bringing you another project that you can hopefully benefit from. I first got into meditation during college and, since then, it’s become an important grounding part of my life even if I don’t do it as much as I should. In the past, you’ve seen written meditations come from us. We taught you the basics of meditation, how to use it for positivity, and for love. If I listed all of the ones we’ve published, I would probably be here for a long time. If you want to look some up, just type in ‘meditation’ in our search bar to find them. We’ve heard great positive feedback from you on these meditations so we wanted to bring you something even better.

Feb042018

How to Measure Your Fitness

Hungry and I make goals every month in a few different categories: Personal, Hungry & Fit, Home, and Fun. This month, one of my personal goals was to create and follow a training program that would help me with the upcoming Tough Mudder we have in a month. Yeah, probably left it a little bit late to start training, but better late than never, right?! Well, as you know from being a loyal subscriber, we are both personal trainers. So in all rights, I could make myself a training plan–I’ve done it many times before. However, even trainers need trainers and I happen to be married to a pretty fantastic one. I whined about making one so he took a pad of paper and drew one up for me instead. Perks!

The first part of this training plan is measuring my fitness aka performing an assessment of sorts. Luckily, since I am a trainer and I know my away around a gym and loads of exercises, Hungry doesn’t have to stand over me and watch. It’s good to do this before and after a training program to test that program’s effectiveness. So if you’re gearing up to start a new training plan (perhaps from us), make sure to do this assessment first.

Feb012018

The Problem with Articles About Exercise

Just a few days ago, we saw this (old) article shared on social media. I’m sure we looked at it back in 2013, but I couldn’t help myself from taking another look, especially with such a bold title: “The 5 exercise machines you should never use at the gym.” Companies put more money than you’d expect into the R&D (research and development) aspect of creating fitness equipment, so it’s hard to believe there’d be a machine you should never use at the gym, right?

Yes and no.

There really aren’t many pieces of equipment that a legitimate gym would have that should be avoided by every person. Gimmick products that you see on TV such as the new “Squat Magic” would be on that list, but that was surely created in an effort to make money fast. Even with those gimmicks, if performed properly by the right person, calories are going to be burned, at the very least.

Jan232018

What is Sports Performance and Why Does it Matter?

You might have been shopping around for the right person to help you get in shape, and throughout that process, seen a ton of job titles. Ranging from personal trainers to holistic wellness coach, from healthy lifestyles expert to sports performance specialist, there are dozens of monikers that are used in the health/wellness/fitness industry. Ultimately, a professional can put anything on their business card to best represent the service that they offer, but in general, there are some notable differences in the positions.

Jan162018

No-Bake Sticky Protein Bars

How are everyone’s goals progressing? Are we still working hard? Even if you slip up every now and then, don’t let go of the dream! You’re going to mess up, it happens, it’s better to accept that than be blindsided down the road. However, you need to set yourself up for success as much as possible. That means providing yourself with good snacks and good workouts. In this post, I shared some recipe and workout ideas. Go check them out!

It’s important to get enough protein as you’re chasing goals, whether they be losing weight or gaining muscle. I just discovered this super easy no-bake protein bar recipe from Bodybuilding.com. Yep, that’s right–no baking involved. I changed the recipe somewhat to fit my own needs as you’ll see below. These no-bake protein bars are delicious and I accidentally ate three yesterday (whoops). And yeah, there is no baking involved so this recipe takes as long as it takes you to mix all this things together. You can use any protein powder you want and I used Red Velvet protein powder which is why it’s all red!

Jan142018

The Perfect Diet

The perfect diet: a holy grail we have all been seeking for years. Well, turns out–SPOILER: there isn’t one! The purpose of this post is to encourage you not to listen to zealots, but to science. And even more than that, decide on your goal and then decide how you’re going to tackle your nutrition. We want to see you succeed.

Jan032018

Easy Recipes and Workouts for a Healthy New Year

Happy New Year! This is the time to set the tone for the year--to make smart goals, decide on an intention, and kick things off on the right foot. Of course, this isn’t the only time of year to set yourself straight, but it’s a great opportunity. However, this time of year can be daunting–there’s all this pressure on becoming the “new you” and that’s not exactly a straightforward laid-out plan. There could be a thousand possibilities of what to do for fitness or what eating style to go for.

Let us help you in a small way. We’ve gathered five easy healthy (and delicious) recipes as well as five workouts you can do from the comforts of your home. Not sure what gym to subscribe to? No problem. Start with these home workouts first and then go from there. The recipes listed below range from snacks to meals and are all very simple (it’s rare to find a complicated recipe on our blog–I don’t have the patience for it).