(note:  for those of you that watch “The Bachelor” and remember from Ben’s season the screech from that brunette gal when Shawntel walked back into the room to meet back up with Ben, and let out the verbal diarrhea of “Who IIIISSSSS she?,” then you clearly fully appreciate the title of this post!)

I figure before I start preachin’, I should at least convince you as to WHY you should even bother listening to me in the first place.

My name is Claire, and I am a Sports Physical Therapist living in little Omaha, NE.  From a young age, I have always been involved in sports.  Gymnastics, Junior Olympics Track and Field, select basketball all through middle school, high school cross country and track and field, as well as high school softball, and then rowing as a NCAA Division I athlete at Creighton University (Go Jays!).  After graduating with my Doctorate in Physical Therapy (DPT) and passing my NSCA Sports and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), I was immediate drawn into using my own background as an athlete to help athletes recover from their own injuries and return to their sports.  That inevitably lead to me sitting for (and PASSING!) my Board Certification in Sports Rehab Specialty (SCS), and now I spend my professional days treating athletic and orthopedic injuries.

(yup, that’s me with Gabbie Douglas.  I take my work for reals).

When I graduated from undergrad, my life went from being scheduled down to the minute (practice on the lake at 5:30-7:30am, post workout breakfast and shower 7:30-8:30am, classes 8:30-3:30, afternoon weights 4:30-6pm, post workout dinner 6-7pm, study/homework 7:30-9:30pm, and bed by 9:30-10pm), to being a bit more…free.  Now all of the sudden I was in charge of my own workouts, my own nutrition, my own health.  I admit, I freaked out a bit.  But after I realized I actually had the education and knowledge to figure this stuff out on my own, I realized I had the amazing opportunity to take 100% control over my own health.

I am in the unique opportunity to know what research is worthwhile on nutritional supplements, and what information is total BS (sorry, I’ve never seen any study that shows benefits of drinking cinnamon and lemon and hot water and cayenne pepper to help you lose 10 pounds in 1 week).  I know how to cycle my workouts to gain muscle mass or to tone up.  I know how to alter recipes to lower calories and up protein to support muscle, as well as which supplements are worth the money and which are worthless.  I know how to NOT injure myself during workouts, how to rehab an injury when one does happen, and how to train DURING an injury without letting all that hard work go to waste (hey, they don’t call me doctor for nothing). I’ve been through the educational process of all of that, I put that information to use, and I live that life every single day.

But perhaps what makes me worthwhile to listen to, is more of what I am NOT.  I’m not a personal trainer who has unlimited time and access to workout for hours on end.  I’m not a fitness model who has a coach controlling everything they eat, lift and metabolize.  I am a normal person, with a (quite demanding) full time job, a (wonderful) husband who is just as active as I am, 2 high maintenance cats, and a household full of laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, and general home improvement projects on our home.  I don’t look like a Victoria Secret’s model, I don’t wear push up bras to work out in, and I don’t have unlimited time at the gym each day or unlimited access to nutritional supplements.  I am a normal person, with a normal person’s schedule, but I take my fitness seriously.

I want to show you that you CAN fit in eating healthy, that you DO have time to go to the gym and get in a realistic workout.  I want to show you how you can take control of what you and your body look like, and take control of your weight and your health.  I want to show you that you no longer have to be scared or intimidated or confused by the gym, and to make you comfortable  among the barbells and dumbbells (and to roll your eyes and some of the “other” dumbbells at the gym as well).  I want to share my knowledge, my experience, tricks, recipes, research and workouts to make YOUR fitness a priority and an obtainable goal in YOUR life.

And that is why I started this website.  Forget those websites that show workouts completed by sweaty girls with fake boobs wearing tiny little sports bras with spaghetti straps.  You want serious workouts for home, at the gym, with weights, with bodyweight only, for cardio, for strength training, for sports performance, for your first workout since middle school?  You want recipes for healthy snacks, meal planning, pre workout supplementation, post workout recovery, calorie conscious options, muscle building options?  You want injury prevention warm ups, cross training during injuries workouts, injury treating taping and stretching?  You want technique on lifting, instruction for program design, education on anything and everything gym related to put you at east when you take that first step?

Well then damn girl, you’re in the right place.  Grab your towel, put on your cutest sports bra…we’re about to get our fitness on.

Repeat after me:  “The gym is not a scary place.  The gym is not a scary place.  The gym is not a scary place.”

For SURE, there are scary aspects of the gym.  There are people who sit naked on the locker room benches for an unnatural amount of time, seemingly doing nothing except sitting there naked.  Scary.  There are strange looking machines with seemingly endless options of resistance, adjustments, positions, and motions.  Totally scary.  There are girls wearing teeny tiny bits of spandex (and little else) that look friggin’ AMAZING and make you feel bad about yourself, never appearing to sweat, looking like their work there at the gym is clearly already done.  Scary AND intimidating! And on top of all of that, there are rows upon rows of dumbbells, barbells, and pieces of equipment that you are clueless about, scared to use, and completely stupefied by because you have NO CLUE what to do if you use something, and you’re pretty convinced that you’ll either get hurt or use it incorrectly or you just flat out don’t want to look like a dumbass.  Scary scary scary.

Where’s a girl to go to get information without either 1) interrupting someone else’s workout and likely pissing them off with the questions, 2) googling it and inevitably landing on a Fitness Pro’s website and feeling utterly overwhelmed with too much information, or information that doesn’t apply to them (not EVERYONE needs to carb cycle or eat gluten free or know the benefits of Jackd 3D versus N.O. Xplode) (but I’ll get to those, and you’ll understand the difference between them I swear!) and/or 3) scrolling through pinterest and pinning multiple workouts with the tag line underneath “pin now read later” knowing that you’ll probably never “read later.”

What’s a girl to do???  Resign ourselves to push ups and sit ups at home only?  Let our fear and intimidation get the better of us, and vow to never step foot into the scary brick building that others refer to as “The Gym?”  Continue to flip through endless amounts of internet information that either doesn’t apply to us or isn’t enough information to be useful?   Dammit, don’t you want to know what to do?  How to do it?  How to get strong and fast and make your body do things you never thought possible?  And how to do it all correctly, safely, without giving up too much of your life, and get a smoking hot athletic body in the end?

That place is here.  You found it.  You’re here.  “Girl In the Gym” is about to change some stuff up in here.

Enough with the bullshit of misinformation towards women when it comes to fitness.  Those pictures of girls in magazines with the A-MAZ-ING abs that are holding the cute little 5 pounds dumbbells?  Guess what – they didn’t get to looking how they look by lifting 5 pound dumbbells.  They got it by spending time lifting weights – not cute, “fits in my hand so nicely and never gives me calluses weights,” – but real weights.  Think Jessica Simpson got thin for Dukes of Hazards by doing 20 minutes of “light aerobics” in her living room every other day?  Nope.  Think Allison Felix sat around looking at internet workouts for cross training on her way to Olympic gold?  Not quite. This website is for TRUTHFUL and HONEST and ACCURATE information for athletes of ALL LEVELS.  Whether you are beginning and needing information on what to do, where to start, and how to do it, or you are a competitive athlete looking for an additional edge through new and challenging workouts, nutrition and injury prevention/treatment, this is the place for it all.

There is an appreciable lack of information in the middle of the road for fitness related “stuff.”  I wholly respect the blogs on those who have made AMAZING life changes and lost 100 pounds/the weight of a small person.  I also am insanely jealous of those like Every. Single. Girl. on the “BodyRock” website, but someone in there middle, there HAS to be someplace that you can get accurate, correct, helpful, AWESOME information on getting and staying fit without giving up anything non-paleo, all carbs, alcohol, and/or your entire life.

Throughout the course of this blog and site, I hope to share information, workouts, meal plans, and education on just about everything fit-related, through both my professional training, as well as my real life mistakes and successes.  I want to take the scariness and intimidation out of a place like a gym while pushing workouts and fitness  and, basically, YOU, to your limit.  This is the place for anything fitness related.  Beginners, competitive athletes, those inbetween, this is your place.

I do not make a living as a personal training (although I have had my certification since 2004).  I spend my days at my full time job helping athletes overcome injuries and get bigger, faster, strong, and better in their sports, and then I work a part time job on top of that.  And then I teach spin classes on top of that.  I do not spend hours and hours at the gym. I am a real person with a real husband and a real schedule and a real life outside of the gym.   I falter on my diet and gain weight, I get frustrated and refocused and lose weight.  I don’t do 2-a-days for my workouts, I don’t do steroids, I don’t do posing in front of the mirror, and I don’t do painted on tan.  There’s nothing WRONG with that (except for the steroids part, just don’t go there ever please) in the right context, setting, and enviroment, but that’s not what this blog and site are about.  This site is about a REAL girl who does REAL workouts on a REAL timeline and schedule, and lives a REAL (read: nonideal) life and eats REAL food. Real information for real people who just want to be fit, REGARDLESS of what THEIR OWN PERSONAL DEFINITION OF FIT IS.

Ladies, its time to “Man up.” Lets go be the “Girl In the Gym.”