Some people say I want to change the world, but they get burnt out or tired. Today we are going to talk about caring for your whole self. Labor Day just passed which is a day all about working hard. Let's face the facts people if we aren't at our best we aren’t much help to those around us. I'm the family caretaker so I know how stressful helping others can be and I found myself getting burnt out, skipping workouts, indulging in sweets and unhealthy foods, and the list goes on. I never expected so many aspects of my life to be affected but once it was broken down to where I could understand what it was my body needed, I flourished so I want to share my self-care tips with you today.

 First and foremost, we will be talking about three aspects of your health today. Your physical health is defined as the condition of your body, taking into consideration everything from the absence of disease to fitness level. Physical health is critical for overall well-being and can be affected by Lifestyle: diet, level of physical activity, and behavior. Your Mental Health is the condition of being sound mentally and emotionally that is characterized by the absence of mental illness and by adequate adjustment especially as reflected in feeling comfortable about oneself, positive feelings about others, and the ability to meet the demands of daily life. Your Emotional health is an important part of overall health. Emotionally healthy people are in control of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Your physical health is broken down into three basic aspects, good nutrition, a healthy amount of rest and sleep, and exercise. I like to think about our bodies as our temples or our vehicles. The important thing to remember is that you only get one, it's not like the car in your driveway that you can go trade-in. We need to care about ourselves so that we can give the best care for others. This world has turned into a scary place but if we better care for ourselves than we can better care for and about others. This is something you can do in your everyday life to make your community a better place. It doesn't make sense to only care about your arms and not your legs, or your physical health and not your mental or emotional health. It's dangerous, Let's talk about simple ways to care for your physical health. First, you need to know how active you are in order to have a baseline to make improvements on and to set goals. For this task, I have fallen in love with the Forerunner 245 . It's a great product that allows you to track all the vital information you need to know. You can use our compare chart to see what is best for you

Your mental health is an important part of your overall health. Mentally healthy people are in control of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It means you are aware of your emotions. You can deal with them, whether they are positive or negative. Mental health is integral to living a healthy, balanced life. According to the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), one in five Americans experiences mental health issues which translate to more than 40 million adults a year. Our mental health includes our psychological, emotional and social well-being. This means that it impacts how we feel, think and behave each day. Our mental health also contributes to our decision-making process, how we cope with stress and how we relate to others in our lives. I use four main rules a day to recognize where I am mentally and to train myself to better react in a situation. Rule number one, focus your attention on the present moment, two, practice gratitude, three, exercise patience over hurrying to get things done, and last but not least you need to practice accepting what is already happening. With these four rules added to my daily life, I find myself much more aware of my mental health and how I'm feeling.

I know you're probably tired of reading by now but we are going to wrap it up with your emotional health. Your emotional health is your feelings and how you identify and accept those feelings. once you recognize where you are emotionally you will be able to care for yourself in a much healthier manner. Most of us identify our emotional health by the words we use to describe feelings such as happy, sad, scared, stressed, angry ext. The first step in better emotional health is recognizing the validity of your emotional state. We don't always like how we feel but it is of utmost importance that we recognize that it is real and it is there. The next task is figuring out why, why do I feel this way? You can go back to your mental health for that and think about how your thoughts have been and how you have been feeling and why that might be, only you have this answer and we are all different. Last but not least is to remember that feelings are simply words, they do not define us, its how we respond to those feelings that matter. I hope you enjoyed our blog on how to better yourself all around, I know it was a long read but I hope you learned a lot and that you are on you A game very soon.

Remember we are all part of something bigger whether it is a family, work crew, team, school, church, community, etc so if you want to make this world a better place DON'T forget about yourself!!

Sunshine And Warmer Weather Are Finally Making There Presence Felt.  And Like most of us, this past winter season, for that matter this past year has been one that has given us more in-door, stay at home days then outdoor ones. The weather just hasn’t been cooperative. But hopefully, this year is starting off a bit better with more sunshine filled days that coax us to get outdoors and be active. Whether its getting that yard cleaned up after last years fall and winter seasons made a mess with fallen tree branches, not to mention the leftover fallen leaves that have gone un-raked because of just plain, wet weather!

But now the sun is finally shining and beckoning to us to get outside and get some much-needed exercise, which for many of us means running, power-walking or jogging along our favorite paths, country roads or mountain trails. Just getting outside provides the necessary incentive to move!

Now, because we are going to put that sunshine to good use, we wanted to use an activity tracker that’s made for being active outdoors and the one we chose is the Garmin Fenix 5 GPS Multi-Sport Watch . Just for a few attention getters, the Fenix 5 has a bright, high-resolution, full-color Garmin Chroma Display. And so you can keep track on just how well you’re doing health-wise, it has the functionality of using the new Elevate wrist-based heart rate technology that lets you monitor your heart rate without the need to wear a chest strap!

And it's not just for running, but it’s also a Multiple Sports Activity watch as well. It has "Preloaded" activity profiles for all of your sports and adventures. You can get key stats at your fingertips with the performance widget that shows your training status, training load and more.

Befitting a watch meant for the outdoors, the Garmin Fenix 5 has a rugged exterior that looks like it could take some abuse. Five screws hold a beveled, black bezel in place, while five circular buttons (three on the left, two on the right) ring the 1.2-inch display. There's an inner bezel around the screen, along with an outer bezel; together, they measure nearly half an inch, though that's mitigated visually by the design. When you get right down to it, it's tough to find an activity that the Fenix 5  can’t track! What’s also an asset is its overall size and weight. Wearing the Fenix 5 it never feels weighty on your wrist, and with its good-looking design, you can wear it as an everyday watch and its right there with you when you lace up your sneaks for a run!

Display
The Fenix 5 has an always-on color display (a plus) with a transflective surface that uses sunlight to make the screen brighter. I never had a problem reading the display, even in direct sunlight.
The Fenix 5  also gives you a VO2 max score (a measure of your overall fitness level), the intensity of your training over the past week and a race predictor, which lists how fast the watch thinks you'll complete a 5K, 10K, half marathon and full marathon.

For each run that you do, you get a training effect, which gives you a score for both aerobic and anaerobic activity. A Training Status screen shows how productive your exercises have been and gives you a general sense if your fitness level is improving, holding steady or decreasing.

The Fenix 5's optical heart rate monitor proved accurate, but it did not respond to changes as quickly as a chest strap would. But for just a few points off, it dosesn't really make it a game changer. It’s very accurate based on being worn on the wrist.

The home screen (also known as the Snapshot screen), which has a black background, has two large circles toward the top that show how many steps you've taken and how much sleep you've had. Below that are small blocks for Active Calories, Activities, MyFitnessPal, Intensity Minutes and Floors Climbed.  Great data that you need in one place.

Swiping left or right shows you more information about various activities (steps, sleep, running, swimming, etc.). You can customize how many of these pages show up, as well as their order, by pressing an icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

Battery Life
One of the reasons I prefer wearing Garmin's watches over smartwatches is that I rarely have to worry about recharging. If you're not using GPS or the heart rate monitor, the Fenix 5 will last up to two weeks. That means if you forget to bring the charger on a trip lasting more than a day, you won't have a useless hunk of metal on your wrist. If you are using GPS, the battery is rated to last up to 24 hours, which is more than twice what the TomTom Adventurer (11 hours) offers. If you turn on UltraTrac mode (where the watch pings the satellite only once every minute, rather than every second), the Fenix 5 should last for up to 60 hours. I also like that Garmin has continued to shrink the size of its charging cables. Rather than using a bulky wireless charger like so many smartwatches do, the Fenix 5 has a small USB cable that snaps into a port on the back of the watch.

Bottom Line
The Garmin Fenix 5 has everything you need to keep you honest and provide you with enough data to make sure you’re not only reaching your goals but what you need to do in order to surpass them! This GPS watch is made for the outdoor adventurer who needs or wants to capture everything they do. It provides detailed stats on a multitude of activities, has an accurate heart rate monitor, doesn't weigh your wrist down too much and lasts a long time on a charge. All in All its a keeper and once you have it strapped on your wrist, you won't soon be taking it off.

So, go ahead, enjoy that warm sunshine we spoke about earlier and get yourself out there and get moving!

If you’re like me, this weather that’s finally arrived has me itching to get out and do something. Whether its lacing up a pair of running shoes and hitting the trails or a running path throughout the neighborhood or getting my bike down from its hangers and taking it out for a spin on the open road or mountain bike trails. All I know is winter seems to be finally behind us and I want to get out and enjoy the sunshine and feel nature hitting me in the face!

If it was a long winter for you and you’re seeking some new ways to exercise outside, why not do so with your significant other? It’s long been known that there are some serious benefits to getting healthy with your partner, including a better maintaining that urge to be active outside by being able to support each other's individual fitness and diet goals. Not to mention that couples that are active together have been shown to be 90% more likely to stick to a routine than if they were going it alone. So, use that enthusiasm that's got you itching to get outside and be more active by encouraging your partner along with you for that ride, jog, even rock-climbing, but do it together and you’re going to increase that feeling of wellbeing two-fold!

Besides, it's a known fact that some outside activities also build strength and stamina, the more you do them and to the greater length that you push your bodies to increase the duration that you're participating together to meet your pre-set goals. 

Endurance: Endurance activities increase your breathing and heart rate. They keep your heart, lungs, and circulatory system healthy and improve your overall fitness. Building endurance makes it easier to carry out many of your everyday activities.

Brisk walking or jogging: Getting those running shoes on is always a good feeling. After all, going for a good run is a great way to get your heart pumping and getting the kinks out after being cooped up in your home during the winter months. But as always, you need to work up to last years pace and distance and knowing just how well your doing is important in order to set realistic goals for yourself.

A good way to do this is by monitoring your progress with a good, accurate smartwatch. One equipped with a GPS and heart rate monitor to let you know just how far you’re going and how well your body is reacting to the stress you're putting on it. One good all-around monitor is the Garmin Forerunner 35 GPS Watch  It’s a great all-around activity monitor that’s simple and easy to use. It has a built-in GPS function that tracks your distance and allows you to plot your course for repeat runs, or walks. This activity monitor also doubles as a heart rate monitor as well and it’s doing this right on your wrist, no more chest straps are needed. Using Garmin's Elevate wrist heart rate technology. It can keep track of your heart rate when you’re really moving and even at rest, so you know the kind of stress you're putting on yourself. And it has an "All-day” activity tracking capability that counts your steps, calories and intensity minutes and reminds you when to move. And if you desire, it automatically uploads your data to Garmin Connect, where you can see how you’re doing against your friends if you choose to allow them to view your progress.

Yard work (mowing, raking, digging) is another form of outdoor activity that can get your blood pumping while getting your place in order. After all, your yard probably needs a lot of attention if you’ve been stuck inside all winter. Now is the perfect time to get those fall leaves off of the grass, and pick up the fallen branches and sticks and give the yard a rake before you try starting that lawnmower of yours. And if it’s a pull crank, you may just be looking for a little help in yanking on that cord to get it started after its been hibernating like you this past winter season!

No matter what you're looking at doing this spring to get outside and be more active, you also need to remember to provide the fuel your body’s engine is going to need to make all of these things happen. One good form of energy to have on hand is GU Roctane Ultra Endurance Energy Gel.  This smooth, great-tasting gel snack that not only tastes good but also gives you a kick of energy! The perfect fuel for those looking for a snack that can also be a benefit to not only their workouts but provides a boost for those that are working their muscles outside doing routine clean up chores that require hours of work to get the jobs done.

So, you can bet you’re not going to be alone this spring as the sun begins to climb higher in the sky every day, and sets a little bit later each day. Taking advantage of the springtime warmth to get back to being outdoors and active is going to be on everyone’s agenda. The key is to keep your activities in moderation as you build up your body’s stamina and in time you're going to be back up to speed to where you were when the leaves started to drop last fall.  

Today, more than ever childhood obesity is becoming a real problem with children from every facet of life. Even though schools are making strides to improve the lunch and snack fare available to them during the hours that our children are under their care. It seems like more and more children, from elementary through middle-school are experiencing medical issues such as stage 2 diabetes.

Nearly one in six of all U.S. children and adolescents are obese, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control. And with some struggling schools forgoing traditional physical education classes, health experts view this issue as a growing concern. The regular physical activity encouraged in PE classes not only helps build and maintain healthy bones and muscle, it has also been shown to improve students' academic performance.

"Research shows that school is one of the first places where kids establish health habits," says Jen Ohlson, co-founder of Interactive Health Technologies LLC (IHT), a company pioneering customized P.E. curricula through the use of heart rate monitoring. "As a solution, many health advocates are turning to physical education to positively impact adolescents' overall health. With the right tools and resources available in school that can extend to home, teachers and parents alike can reach students on an individual level, helping them achieve their own fitness goals."

This of course needs to be actively pursued by both parents and the school systems. Today’s children need to be shown that being more physical can help them both in the classroom and out of it as well. Especially if we get them motivated to join in available school sporting venues. We need to get them off the couch and outside participating in physical activities that get them breathing a little hard while using muscles that just aren’t being used when their sitting on a couch watching a movie, playing a video game or simply texting their friends who are also just sitting around their homes.

Physical activity, along with a sensible diet, rich in good proteins, the right carbs and even the right amount of fats will go a long way into allowing your child’s body to function the way it was designed to. You just can’t get fit by playing an action hero in a video game without you taking part in any REAL ACTION!

Set measurable short-term goals.
Motivation is all about goal setting. Teaching your kids to evaluate their habits, showing them just how much out of the day they’re just sitting around, being non-active as sort of a wakeup call, and showing them how they can make little changes that will improve their wellbeing is important and if explained correctly they just may surprise you and start listening to you about how they need to change up their lifestyle.

Setting goals can be a fun project for teachers and parents along with the students so you can all work collaboratively on making sure the goals are measurable, timely and realistically achievable. In order to track everyone’s progress. Yes, we said everyone because its not only the kids that are migrating to a larger pant size, it’s the adults as well. So we can all get on the same bandwagon and start getting in better shape by following through with the goals we mentioned above are so important to make.

Tracking Your Goals:
Use technology to help them understand.
"Research shows kids and adults in the U.S. are spending more than 7.5 hours a day using technology. Alarming as it may sound, we see leveraging that technology as an opportunity to help kids and the adults get and stay active," Ohlson says. Using activity trackers, that also have the functionality of a wrist-based heart rate monitoring device for PE, can make using wearable technology to motivate students and adults to exercise to their own individual potential. Harnessing the power of heart rate zone training, you can reach your goals by running around, jumping, dancing, really any activity that raises the heart rate.

One such tracker, maybe better suited for the adults is the Garmin Vivoactive 3 GPS Smart Activity Tracker. This SmartWatch with GPS, Tracks steps, distance, your sleep and has more than 15 preloaded GPS and indoor sports apps, including yoga, running, swimming and more

You can monitor your fitness level with Vo2 Max and fitness made estimates, plus keep an Eye on how you handle stress with the Stress Indicator feature by First-Beat Technology. This little feature alone can help you stay focused on what you need to be able to do in order to reach your fitness goals.

Now depending on the age of your kids, for those aged from 5-10 years old you can look into the Garmin Vivofit Jr 2 : Kid's Interactive Activity Tracker  Parents manage their kid’s activity tracker by using the free app. Add multiple children, and see their steps, sleep, daily activities, and chore data when it syncs to your mobile device.

You can, Assign tasks and chores, set schedule alerts, find out how many reward coins each child has, access adventures, and even invite the whole family to compete in daily step challenges together, all from your mobile device.  Keeping track of just how much your kids are actually doing and then offer a reward for good performance.  Making a game out of being active, will jump-start their "Competitiveness-Mode" which will keep them looking to outperform their siblings, and or, friends.

So, now that you have a couple of tools available to you to inspire both your children and yourselves, what are you waiting for. Go on, get yourself motivated and get stepping, as a whole family!

A lot of us think we’re in pretty good shape, especially if we like to keep ourselves active, watch the carbs we eat and exercise on a regular basis. But, if you’re in the right age group, which is between the ages of 18- to 35 and 35 is pushing it! You may want to see just how good of shape you really are in by taking the Army’s new physical fitness test. You can see how well you measure up against those young men and women that would like to be all that they can be by joining the army.

The main reason the army is changing up their fitness tests is to make it a more overall test of a recruit ability to perform so that they are ready for combat. The current one that had been modified in the 80’s does not measure how well a soldier will perform under fire. The service has spent more than a decade looking for a better way to not only measure combat readiness but also to train soldiers to that standard while reducing injuries.

Now, the army has a core fitness program that they feel addresses this obstacle to helping instill stamina, strength/ and agility training into a fitness program. They’ve created a 6-module exercise readiness test that consists of 6 fitness sets. They have called it the “Army Fitness Readiness Test”.

The way this was created is that When you reverse-engineer combat specific tasks, you end up needing to train five different domains of physical fitness, Lt. Col. David Feltwell, the principal doctrine developer for the Army ‘s physical readiness program. Those domains include muscular and cardiovascular endurance — which is measured by muscular strength, explosive strength and agility.

There were a lot of difference choices to represent all of those types of fitness.

“We then selected somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 field-expedient tests — everything from pullups and sit-ups to bench press and dead lift, to vertical jump to sumo squats — and we administered those to a large sample at Fort Riley [in Kansas] in 2014,” East said.

They narrowed those options down to six:

1. A two-mile run.

2. A 250-meter sprint/drag/carry. Soldier begins in the prone position, stands up and sprints 25 meters to the far line, returns to the start line, pulls sled backwards to the far line, returns backwards with sled to the start line, grasps two 30-pound kettlebells and runs 25 meters to the far line, returns with the kettlebells to the start line, drops kettlebells at start line, turns and sprints 25 meters to the far line, and returns to the start/finish line.

3. A maximum weight deadlift.

4. The leg tuck. Soldier grasps a climbing bar with alternating neutral grip in the dead hang position; flexes with elbows, hips, and waist to bring knees up, touching both elbows with knees; and returns to the dead hang position. Repeat.

5. Standing power throw. Soldier tosses a 10-pound medicine ball backward.

6. T-pushup. The soldier begins in the down position, pushes the body into up position, lowers body to the ground, extends arms out to the sides into the T position, and then returns to the starting position

“The sprint/drag/carry is actually pretty rough,” said Sgt. Thomas Masi, of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. “I didn’t think it was going to be that bad.”

A 2017 Best Ranger Competition winner agreed that it was the most challenging event.
“I think the sprint, drag and carry — just because it’s an all-out event and incorporates a bunch of different muscle groups so it stresses you more than just an individual muscle group,

“When that test was developed, they were still under the guidance of zero equipment,” said East, the research physiologist at CIMT. “What we know is that we can’t assess muscular strength with no equipment. You have to pick something up and put it down.”

If in looking at this test you recognize the fact that it is pretty similar to a “HIIT” exercise program. (High-Intensity Interval Training) which has gained in popularity with fitness buffs over the past several years.

So, you don’t have to enlist to go through this grueling test. You can join a gym or fitness training group and see just how well you measure up against what the new army recruits are doing to get in the best possible shape to defend our country.

Keeping track of your results as you put yourself through the paces of a HIIT workout is important to make sure your performing at your maximum, and also that your rest periods are also being taking at the right time and right duration. In order to track these results properly using an Activity monitor with a heart rate function along with V02Max functionality can be beneficial to your end results. One such device is the Garmin Vivoactive 3 GPS Smart Activity Tracker  With help from Elevate™ Wrist-based heart rate technology², Vivoactive 3 lets you monitor key aspects of your fitness and stress to show how your body responds under various circumstances. For example, it’s able to estimate your VO2 max and fitness age, 2 indicators of physical fitness that can often improve over time with regular exercise. It also tracks your heart rate variability (HRV), which is used to calculate and track your stress level. Vivoactive 3 can make you aware when physical or emotional sources cause your stress level to rise so you can find a way to relieve the pressure.

So with using a fitness tracker like the Vívosmart, you can monitor your progress as you put yourself through your own PT training. Then you can prove it to yourself that you are really performing at your peak and being “All That You Can Be”!