Booty Camp Giveaway (11 DVD's!) And Sneaky Life Coaching Promotion

So when I discovered that the Booty Camp Fitness Ultimate Home Edition 2 program was available for a Cranky Fitness giveaway, I was psyched for three reasons:

1. An at-home DVD boot camp seemed like a nifty idea and this set looked quite promising;

2. The company is based in Canada and I love all things Canadian and it means our friends up north are finally eligible to win something too, hooray!

And finally:

3. I've been on the lookout for a good giveaway to use for my own nefarious self-promotional purposes, because I'm greedy resourceful like that.


So, what's the deal with the DVD giveaway, and how much Life Coachy Crap do you have to listen to in order to find out how to win? 

OK, first things first:

What's cool about the Booty Camp Fitness Home Edition?


It comes with Eleven, Count 'em, Eleven DVD's, for a variety of workouts!

The workouts combine circuit training, cardio, core strengthening, body sculpting and yoga, and "provides daily motivation for all fitness levels."  Programs include:

• Recruit Camp – A full-body introductory beginner workout (38 minutes);
• Basic Training – Intermediate level program (40 minutes)
• Ab-salute Core Vol.2 – Abs/Core (20 minutes)
• Booty Express – For squeezing in a quick workout (20 minutes)
• Bounce ‘n’ Burn – Jump rope for a total body blast (21 minutes)
• Burn that Booty – Targeted moves for glutes and  posterior (20 minutes)
• Tank Top Toner – Upper body program. (31 minutes)
• Dynamic Cardio Conditioning – Explosive interval cardio (35 minutes)
• MMA (Major Metabolic Accelerator) – Kickboxing workout (55 minutes)
• Sun Rise Sun Stretch – To loosen and relax (32 minutes)
• Special Ops – Highly demanding workout designed to push |limits (42 minutes)

Plus, it also comes with...

Bonus Stuff!
These include a Lifestyle Guide; a healthy e-cookbook, a jump rope, and a workout calendar.

What's Not to Like, Eh?

And did I mention this a Canadian program? In my experience, Canadians are really nice and polite and easygoing and far less obnoxious than most of us Americans. 

But apparently they're also really tough!

But wait, the DVD's were filmed in Puerto Rico... So if you add the Canadian boot camp and the Puerto Rican setting and divide by two I believe you end up somewhere like Indiana? Do they even have poutine in Indiana?

Gee I wonder why they didn't film it in Canada?

Oh, um, okay.

(Gosh I bet the booty camp folks are really glad they picked this blog to host a giveaway right about now!)

How to Win the Bootcamp Program:

This is going to be another combo of Random versus Non-Random winner selection.  So you can enter just by leaving a comment below.

Or you can increase your chances by using one or more of the methods listed below. And if you do, please alert me in the comments so you get full credit!

1.  Enlighten or amuse me with your comment;
2.  Tweet about this giveaway and link here;
3.  Link to this giveaway from Facebook;
4.  Use some other newfangled social networky thing to direct people here;
5.  Be a longtime Cranky Fitness commenter or a Canadian;
6.  Email me at CrabbyMcSlacker @ gmail dot com and allow me to collect your email address for a future newsletter thingy, should I ever get off my butt and put one together.  (In the unlikely event this actually happens you'll be able to unsubscribe immediately if it turns out to be crappy).
7.  Help me with some info!  I'm going to be redesigning my coaching website and would love to know what you'd be intrigued or repelled by if you were remotely considering Life or Wellness coaching.  Concepts that resonate? Buzzwords that make you want to Barf? All good!

But again, a simple comment can be enough to win. You'll just have a better chance if you do more.  I'll pick a pool of finalists using the random number generator, then will select the winner from that group by looking at the above factors. 

Winner will be announced in a week or so; if the winner doesn't check back and respond by the deadline mentioned in the winner announcement, a new drawing will be held.



And About That Life Coaching--yep, it's time for a message from our sponsor.  Which is, um, ... Me.

Here's the deal: Summer is generally a slow time for life coaches, and I'm still building my practice.  I've been totally impressed and excited by working with clients who've come from Cranky Fitness--not surprisingly, this crowd seems to be curious, determined, smart, resourceful, and charmingly honest about the personal and life challenges they're facing.  It's been a huge relief to discover (a) Life Coaching actually seems to help people feel better about life and start taking concrete steps to move forward; and (b) that I love doing it!

But I've been fairly sucky at the marketing aspects, which I plan to work on.  Meantime:

Time For a Summer Sale!

Could you benefit from having a safe, fun, confidential and empowering place to explore ways you could move closer to the life you really want, rather than the one you may be stuck in?  You may have a goal that's easy to define  (I wanna get my butt off the couch and run a 10K!) or one that's complicated and fraught (I hate my job but have no idea WTF else I might want to do with my life!) 

You may have noticed that there are plenty of self-help books out there, but it's hard to keep motivation and momentum going with a book that doesn't give a crap how you're doing or what might be getting in your way.  And professional help, whether it be therapist, consultant, counselor, or coach, is pretty damn expensive...and there a lot of weirdos out there to be wary of.

If any of this is true, and you can whip up some motivation to get going within the next few of weeks, you may want to take advantage of the summer slowdown.  Instead of my normal Life Coaching rates for the next couple weeks I'm offering a discount.

Quick Mover Incentives: For the first three clients who get all signed up and pay, the rate for a package of five 45-minute sessions is $95 ($19 per session);

For anyone else signs up and pays by July 4th (think of it as your personal Declaration of Independence from Inertia) it's five sessions for $145. ($29 per session).


And, should you decide to you continue beyond 5 sessions, prices will not increase dramatically but will slowly move up.

To find out more about my qualifications, background, coaching philosophy etc, please visit my Not Yet Redesigned Life and Wellness Coaching website. I'm also happy to answer questions you may have via phone or email, or even offer a free 30 minute try-it-out call.

Advanced Travel Warning:  I will be house-swapping in Scotland for a good part of August (yippee!); clients who do not have Skype accounts may need to switch to email for a couple sessions or take a break depending on whether I can get reasonable phone service there.

So that's it for the commercial!


If you are a Canadian or U.S. resident, be sure to leave a comment to be eligible for the Booty Camp giveaway (sorry, Rest of the World), and good luck!

Canada Photos swiped from here; I'll be happy to credit to more original source if anyone knows of one.

The Healthy Hedonist

Photo: Joits

With a name like Crabby McSlacker and a blog called Cranky Fitness, it would be easy to assume that I'm always whiny when it comes to good nutrition and exercise.

And, okay, maybe most of the time I am. If someone were to compile a bitchy-to-cheerful ratio of my posts, it would probably be a very large number. Or heck, how about a pie chart?



Of course a lot of my orneriness is a reaction to what's out there already in the media. With so many health magazines and books shouting "Easy!" and "Fun!" and "Effective!" and "Instant!" and "Permanent!"and "Young!" and "Sexy!" you'd think adopting a healthy lifestyle would take maybe two weeks, tops. And that it would never involve sacrifice. And that when you were "done," you'd be totally fit and strong and hot and lean and smart and energetic. Oh, and immortal. Because we all know that if you eat enough antioxidants and do enough high intensity intervals you will never, ever, die.

So I try to provide a counterpoint. But sometimes I just have to come out of the Cranky Closet and admit: sure, at times it can be a pain in the ass but there's a lot to love about healthy living! And the funny thing is that so many of the pleasures feel just as self-indulgent and sensual as vices, only somehow, they're not.

So for a change of pace, here's a random list of a bunch of things I recently remembered that I love that aren't even bad for me. Some of these I've written about before, but what the heck, Cranky Fitness readers are noted for their patience with, and kindness to, repetitive Crabs.

Things Crabby Enjoyed Recently That Weren't Bad For Her:

1. Getting high on the elliptical again, and not even caring that I was making a fool of myself by dancing and mouthing the words to my iTunes songs. (But not singing them out loud. I'm not a complete ass).

2. My breakfast:

Surprise! Crabby's photos still look like crap.

Actually, by "breakfast" I don't mean the very first meal of the day, which is always liquid because to me, the thought of solid food first thing in the morning is totally barfy. Instead, I start with a gigantic cup of strong coffee that also contains almost two cups of warm nonfat milk, plus a small glass of orange juice. Then after I work out, I eat breakfast number two.

I've been obsessed with this breakfast (or similar variations) all summer. I look forward to it starting the night before! (The Lobster is often amazed at how much I love food. I truly do. Eating is one of my favorite past-times).

The first item is a fruit and vegetable smoothie. (This one: 1 cup frozen blueberries, 1/2 cup raw cauliflower, 1 1/2 cup raw spinach, 1/4 cup frozen banana, 1 cup nonfat milk, some vanilla and some Truvia (the newfangled stevia that doesn't taste as nasty).

And the other item is a whole wheat english muffin with a little almond butter, a little honey, and a bunch of walnuts on top. I'm especially proud of the walnut invention, because I don't tend to like walnuts in most settings. If I'm eating a brownie or cookie and come across icky walnut pieces, I will spit the intruders right out, precious Omega 3's and all. But when paired with almond butter and honey, walnuts become suddenly lovable!

(Note: those of you on calorie restricted diets must be going: WTF??? How the hell much does she eat every day? The answer: a LOT. Weirdly enough, as I've switched to healthier foods and gotten smarter about high intensity exercise and weights, I can eat way more calories than I used to when I weighed an extra 25 pounds.)

3. Tea Dance, which will have to be the subject of a post of its own sometime. Basically, it's a high-energy summertime dance party at a local waterfront gay bar. The coolest thing? It's full of boomer-aged folks (mostly men, but plenty of women too) so we don't feel out of place on the dance floor. And, get this, it takes place before it gets dark, from 4-7 p.m. When I was in my twenties, "going dancing" meant heading out late at night to a smoke-filled bar, and it involved more standing around feeling self-conscious than it did dancing. To have rediscovered bopping around to great music for an hour or two, cooled by fresh bay breezes and surrounded by other folks having a blast? It's hard to count it as exercise it's so much fun.

(And okay, the pre-dancing low cal mojito we have before we get there may have something to do with it.)

4. Bootcamp. Well, not while I'm in the middle of doing push-ups or lunges or burpees or whatever. But the feeling of camaraderie and accomplishment more than makes up for the temporary burning muscles and the gasping for breath and the wanting to die.

5. Biking. Why am I always reluctant to climb on my bike at the beginning of the season? It takes me half the summer to get back in the habit, but once I do I spend the rest of the time congratulating myself for discovering such a pleasant, efficient form of transportation.

6. Shrimp and broccolini pasta. I make it with tons of garlic and olive oil, a bit of whole grain pasta, and I garnish it with a ridiculous amount of pine nuts and some parmesan cheese. Heaven! The Lobster opts out of this one, being a broccolini hater, so it's my go-to meal when it's Fend For Yourself night.

7. The Rock Walk. I wrote about this walk along the breakwater when we first moved to Provincetown, and I was afraid I might burn out on it. Nope! Still beautiful and peaceful,only now it's even better: lush and green instead of staid and brown.

8. Looking forward to running on my favorite trail again. So this is kind of a cheaty one, because I'm only enjoying the memory of it. My actual runs now take place on a high school field that hosts a flock of geese and a lot of goosesh*t. But soon I'm gonna try my old route, which is a gently rolling foresty fire road that goes by several ponds. The stupid mosquitoes stole it from me in the height of summer, but I'm ready to take it back.

9. Watermelon. What's not to like about fresh sweet watermelon?

10. The Gym! I know I've been blogging about how much I hate the gym, but getting a good break from it helped to make for a great recent workout. I know soon enough I'll be hating it again, but, note to self: all that stuff about "mixing it up" and "trying new things?" Er, not actually a bad idea!

Anyone else find stuff to love about healthy living?

Crabby Goes to Boot Camp?

Long-time Cranky Fitness readers (all 3 of you; hi there!) may wonder if they've somehow been sucked through a wormhole and transported to an alternate, upside-down universe. Because for the second time in less than a week, the stubborn Crab is trying something new! First it was Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred and now...

Boot Camp??!!!

I'm shocked myself about this latest development. Here is how I always pictured Boot Camp:

Photo: muscl_mc

And I did not envision myself ever having to endure this experience! Unless maybe I was forced to at gunpoint. But since there are very few gun-toting thugs roaming around my neighborhood forcing people to go to exercise classes, I felt pretty safe assuming Boot Camp was something I never had to worry about.

But I was wrong! (Not about the roaming gun-toting exercise thugs. Still haven't seen 'em around).

So, what curious set of circumstances conspired to drag my cranky ass down to a local Boot Camp class this last Saturday morning? And what did I think of it? And does this story have a moral, or a happy ending, or a humiliating conclusion, or is it just going to be one long continuous bout of whining and silly digressions?

(And the answers are: yes, yes, no, yes!)

5 Good Reasons I Thought I Would Never Go to Boot Camp:

1. The name "Boot Camp" itself freaks me out. It invokes a military training experience specially designed to break down recruits, both physically and mentally, rendering them exhausted, humiliated, obedient and pliable. Boot camp is supposed to be awful--that's the point! And how do I know this? Um, well, I go to the movies!

(Apparently they don't let women wear bras there either).

2. I've already paid for a gym membership this summer. To pay for an exercise class in addition to a gym membership when they offer classes at the gym? Unthinkable! So what if the classes are the wrong kind and are offered at inconvenient times and I have yet to go to one--it's the principle of the thing. I ALREADY PAID!

3. There is no Music in Bootcamp. (At least not this one).

4. Unlike Jillian Michaels who is imprisoned inside the tv and doesn't even know I'm watching her, a Bootcamp instructor is an actual live person who can see me. This means I can not totally blow off the instructions and do something completely different unless I want to look like a total assh@le.

5. Exercise that is grueling or unpleasant violates my religion, Crankyism, and Boot Camp sounded like a surefire recipe for Sin.


Why I Went Anyway:

1. It's offered a block from my house.

2. The Lobster wanted to do it and we have friends in the class.

3. I have been having trouble motivating to go to the gym lately.

4. Like, really, a LOT of trouble. I'd rather go for a colonoscopy.

5. I mean, seriously, it's like I HATE HATE HATE the gym all of a sudden. WTF is up with that, anyway?


And so here's a list I never thought in a million years I'd be making:


What I Loved About My First Bootcamp Class!

1. The Instructor was motivating and fun without being excessively perky.

2. The class drew a range of ages and ability levels but no one was really hard-core superfit. And we were encouraged to customize the intensity of the exercises, so everyone got a good workout but no one got their butts totally kicked.

3. Everyone was really nice, plus they all whined and complained companionably about anything that was the least bit difficult, just like I do. Paradoxically, this made me weirdly motivated to work out harder!

4. It was a nice mix of functional exercises which, when done intensely enough, I think counted for HIIT. Or at least they counted for SHIIT.

5. And I didn't have to think! It's been a long time since I've taken a class, and I'd forgotten how freeing it is to have someone else order your ass around for a while.

In summary: boot camp unexpectedly ROCKED! I believe I will be back!

And the moral of the story is: sometimes the Gun Toting Thugs take way too long to show up at your door! (Or something like that).


Any one else out there have a good boot camp experience? Tempted to try it? Or No Way In Hell?

The 2nd Annual Cranky Fitness Exercise Review

It's time for the second annual Cranky Fitness exercise review. Once more we have assembled experts on various forms of exercise to give us their best suggestions, and once more they have disappointed us by turning in serious, researched, and well thought-out reviews. Since that sort of thing would make the rest of our posts look bad by comparison, I decided the only thing to do was conduct the review myself.


Boot camp

Pro: Some of them boots are pretty stylish looking.
Con: There are no happy boot-campers. Not until the muscle soreness fades.
Tip: Don't show up in drag.

It's not that kind of 'camp.'

Burpees

Pro: This can really work the diaphragm muscles.
Con: You can't have a burpee without a burper, right? So methinks this form of exercise is not suitable for all social occasions.
Tip: Drinking a lot of carbonated drinks beforehand can help with this workout.


Crossfit

Pro: This fitness program will make you feel like a martyr to exercise. No wait, sorry, I was confusing this with Crucifix-fit. Crossfit is a fitness program designed to make you feel cranky. And fit.
Con: You might feel like a martyr anyway.
Tip: Sounds like it would be a good idea to get fit, at least a bit, before trying crossfit.


Doga

Pro: You don't have to worry about Fido canoodling with the couch while you're at the gym.
Con: This is a form of yoga where your partner might lick your face. (I understand this is not common in other forms of yoga.)
Tip: Do not wear the burger-scented cologne to the gym.

Mmmmm... smells good...

Parcour

Pro: Can be done on your lunch hour.
Con: Unless you're a cattle farmer or someone else who doesn't live in a city.
Tip: Do not try vaulting over a police car, especially if you're running away from a bank.

Parcour dress code FAIL.
(Note the bolt cutter between his legs, and no that's not a euphemism.)

Pole dancing

Pro: Really works the arms and core muscles.
Con: Wearing a helmet while learning to dance might make you look silly.
Tip: Make sure your outfit has pockets in case people want to stuff money into your clothing.

I still think that's rather sweet...

Editor's Note: If anybody has any other, better exercise reviews, please let me know.