Brazen Fitness

Fall vibes 🍁🍂

More mobility is not always the answer.

You’ve probably dealt with minor joint pain or injury in the past, and your first thought was: “I need to stretch it”.

We’re here to tell you that you might’ve gone about it the wrong way.

Set aside for a second how ineffective static stretching is according to the current scientific literature and let’s pretend for a second that stretching is awesome at increasing mobility (and that the earth is flat).

There’s still a twist: more mobility may not actually be what you need to get rid of the pain.

In your body, there are joints that are meant to be mobile and others that are meant to be stable.

Hips and shoulders? Mobile joints.

Knees and lumbar spine? Definitely want them to be stable.

In fact, the stability in some joints is necessary for the neighboring joints to be mobile. And vice versa.

Take your “scaps”, for instance, a.k.a your shoulder blades. When stable, they allow your shoulder to move freely and safely. When your body doesn’t have the strength to stabilize your scaps, it will fall on your shoulder’s rotator cuff (a collection of tiny tissue) to stabilize whatever load you’re working against.

Problems like this have cascading effects. Your elbow is a stable joint that relies on your shoulder to be mobile. If your shoulder is now stiff, your elbow will now have to compensate for the lack of mobility. Hello, new inexplicable elbow pain.

The bottom line: you need to be both supple and strong.

Building strength in the stable joints is not sexy work but it is the absolute key ingredient in sustainable performance and being injury free. Take the time to incorporate stability work in your warmup and your training, do tempo work, do unilateral exercises, learn to properly brace before movement, you’ll save yourself a lot of pain.

There is no debate anymore, the best way to achieve fitness is clear and proven:

- Strength training
- Endurance work
- Some high intensity workouts
- Good sleep
- Quality nutrition

Show us someone who's not doing one or more of the above and we'll show you someone who could be getting much better results.

Whether your goal is fat loss, improved blood cholesterol, or even simply feeling less anxiety, the prescription above is the way.

There will always be fads and trends, new group fitness models that promise real change in 6 weeks, social media accounts distracting you with the next workout craze. Some of it works temporarily, until it doesn't. A lot of it doesn't work at all.

And it won't be for a lack of effort on your part. It's just that those programs are missing key pieces of the fitness puzzle. They're not based on sound evidence and they don't believe in you enough to know that you'll go through the hard work to do what's best for your body.

Strength, endurance, intensity, sleep, food. These are ingredients. Skip some and the cake won't bake. It is what it is.

Within the walls of Brazen Fitness, you will find people who are ..

SMART enough to discern effective sustainable training from fads and gimmicks
CONFIDENT enough to take on a challenge outside of their comfort zone
GRITTY enough to keep fighting when setbacks happen

Do you think you are that kind of person?

Then come join us. Let’s make awesome sh*t happen.

“The gym staff makes you feel like family and the members are super supportive and encouraging. What an amazing atmosphere to feel and be motivated.”

Were you looking for a gym that’s more than just a gym? Are you missing that people connection and the right environment to find joy in working on your fitness? You should come to our classes.

Our coaches will meet you where you are. Every movement instruction includes modification options to keep things challenging for you while keeping you safe. The staff knows your fitness journey and is here to guide you along. Our community is one of humble, honest and driven people who place an emphasis on self improvement and want to have fun while doing so.

Does that sound like something you want to be a part of?

Then come join us! Hit the link in our bio to schedule a quick no-sweat intro with us. We'd love to learn more about you and tell you about how we can help you achieve your goals!

Brazen's ten general fitness rules:
1. Show up
2. Functional strength first
3. Fuel appropriately
4. Progress the load
5. Switch it up
6. Have a coach
7. Make it fun
8. Leave the zone
9. Get sleep
10. Keep it simple

Only stick to these if you want results.

Have you been away from training for a while?

What has it been? A couple of days? A couple of weeks? A couple of months?

It doesn’t make a difference. Whatever that time period is, you are a resilient person and now is the time to get back into the groove.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.

But wait.

We know we just convinced you to put on your sneakers and fill up that water bottle right this very moment. But you can’t simply pretend your body is ready for full intensity just because you read a few words on the internet.

No, you are smarter than that. In order to reduce your injury risk and maximize the impact of your training, you are going to plan an EBRU phase.

A what now?

EBRU. Ease Back, Ramp Up.

Here’s how this works. The first few workouts you perform need to be kept at approximately 50-60% intensity. Call them “Ease Back” workouts. What’s 50-60% intensity? Basically, the effort should feel moderately hard. Like you could actually have a conversation with someone, even though that might be a somewhat taxing thing to do. When you’re done with the workout, you should feel slightly winded yet rejuvenated. Energized not depleted.

We did say “the first few” workouts, but it gets more specific than that: for every “off” week, plan for five (5) Ease Back workouts. Off for 1 week? Great, do 5 workouts at 50-60% first. Off for 3 weeks? That’s fifteen (15) Ease Back workouts when you start back up.

We’re not done. Once you’ve completed all of your Ease Back workouts, you will perform three (3) Ramp Up workouts. Just as the name implies, you will gradually build your intensity up to 70-80% (conversation very hard, weights challenging but speed maintained), then 80-90% (talking not possible, heavy weights), and finally 90-100% (near max to max effort). Now your body is ready to push its limits again. Normal training can fully resume.

There you have it: EBRU. An Ease Back period (varying length), followed by a Ramp Up period (3 workouts).

That’s what smart training looks like.

Ok, now you can put your sneakers on. And don’t forget that water bottle.

Our training proceeds in 3- or 4-week waves.

Each wave, we select 3 BUILD movements (example: the Front Squat, the Pull-Up and the Romanian Deadlift).

On week 1 of our wave, we start off easy. We focus on technique, we establish a baseline.

Weeks 2-4 of the wave, we push the progression forward. We add reps at the same weight, or we increase the load, or the time under tension. By the last week of the wave, hopefully we’re pushing everyone’s limit.

In addition to the BUILD movements, we layer on the conditioning work.

We mix and match TILT, PULSE, SUSTAIN and FLOW workouts, on top of our BUILDs. This is where you get lean and you stop getting tired going up a short flight of stairs.

Over the course of 12-16 weeks, we complete 3-4 waves. At the end of it all, we do Base Week.

Base Week is a week of benchmark workouts that cover all facets of fitness. Everyone in the gym attends these workouts. We track everyone’s results to see where we’re making progress and where we need to focus more.

Come see it work for yourself.

In the group functional fitness space, there are two general types of programs:

Variance heavy:
These are programs where everyday is a completely different workout. The emphasis is on the continuous exposure of the body to new stimuli and on the fun factor of new workouts. Example: your typical group functional fitness gym. The upside here is obviously novelty. But as any serious training program director can attest, you cannot build performance with random workouts, not beyond the first few months.

Progression-based:
These programs stick to a small selection of movements and focus on repetition + overload every week to achieve adaptation, and ultimately mastery. Examples: weightlifting clubs, high school / college athletics, gymnastics schools, etc. If you want the highest level of performance (read: if you’re an athlete), that’s probably where you want to be. But the majority of us have busy lives with plenty of stress already. We need our workout routine to keep us engaged while also pushing our limits. All work and zero play means everyone’s avoiding the next soul-sucking training session.

Our program falls in the middle.

Its uniqueness is in its combination of both of the above into a new concept: Progressive Variance.