Please check back soon!

I’m off to St. Louis this afternoon to appear on Great Day St. Louis tomorrow morning. My 6 year old son Seth is helping me demonstrate some fitness activities that families can do together. We will be showing an obstacle course and his favorite, hitting mom with boxing gloves. Look for it on the Great Day St. Louis web-site or check out the post to this site in the next week. I’m looking forward to some mommy-son time. Happy Mother’s Day!

I have read over many months of the philosophies and training methods of Tracy Anderson. To her and her followers I have to ask, “What is wrong with being a strong, fit woman that looks the part?” Why is she trying to promote being super tiny and small even to people that may not be built like that? I find it odd that taking up less space as a woman makes you more powerful while men are encouraged to take up more and look like an action hero. It’s hard for me not to find this insulting. As my nicknames over the years accrued, from “Macho legs” dubbed by my gymnastics teammates when I was nine years old to “Earl Campell” by some boys I attended high school with in Clinton, Iowa, my appreciation for my legs increased. For those that don’t know, I guess Earl Campell was some kind of famous pro football player in the 80s. The boys meant it as a compliment and I took it that way. Shout out to Eric Bartels:) I admit that in my younger years I wish I had teeny-tiny legs but at 19, I made a concerted effort to mentally pursue being positive about my strong wheels. I figured if I couldn’t change them i might as well learn to love them. Genetically I have muscular, long legs. I don’t train with heavy weights but do pilates and recently, began jogging. Which, BTW Tracy does NOT make your legs “bulk up”. Have you ever seen a Cross country runner, marathoner or Kenyan runner with big legs? They usually have long, lean legs but no one would consider them “big” unless they have some kind of wierd hollywood body-image distorted syndrome. Until two months ago, I had never run more than 5 miles consecutively. Because I’m having a big birthday coming up in July (I’m registered at our local jewelry store Reis-Nicols for gifts- I’m KIDDING!) I committed in January to run the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon. It’s the biggest Half Marathon in the country and included in the course is a loop around the historic and famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 35,000 people from all across the country ran and completed the race this past Saturday, May 2nd. I happily, for the first time in my life ran 13.1 miles in a row! As I was running to the finish I thought of how grateful I was for my big strong legs that carried me this far. It doesn’t help my running or my pursuit of water skiing to train to have skinny, weak little teeny-tiny legs as I starve myself to less than 1,000 calories a day and workout 12 hours per week. As I stated before, my legs weren’t meant to be scrawny. My children have the same buffed legs that I do. If your goal is to be healthy, strong and a good fitness example for your children, keep looking on this blog for more posts. If your goal is to be teeny-tiny and scrawny ask yourself why? It doesn’t sound like that much fun. Why not be healthy, able to pursue athletic endeavors and have great balance created from training legs on your feet not just doggy hydrant lifts from recycled Jane Fonda.