Not a Blogger: A Corporate Fashun Blog

We wanted to take today to discuss the benefits of one of the most useful (and hated) of all exercises: the push-up.  First off, why should you even care? It's a great exercise to do any time, any where. No equipment needed. It targets multiple muscle groups. Get a lot of bang for your workout buck. This is really 2b: It's good for your core. A strong core improves your posture and can help prevent lower back pain (something you will struggle with if you sit a lot during the day and as you're getting older).  Calorie-torching! (Let's call this one "2c".) Because you're using so many muscle groups, you burn more calories with a push-up than you will for other strength exercises that involve only one muscle. (Want to burn even more calories? Do a burpee- a push-up and a squat jump. They're awful. Katie 1 says that Katie 2, the primary author of this post, is evil for even mentioning burpees.) They can be done no matter your fitness level. Yo...

Orangetheory Fitness is all the rage. When high intensity internal training (HIIT) came onto the scene with a vengeance, OTF was one of the first studios to really gain traction. Around our office, several women rave about it. As does Heather Dubrow. So we decided to try it for ourselves, since Orange Theory locations are everywhere. We each went separately, so as to not impact the other's opinion with our own. Our experiences were fairly similar, and surprisingly we all ended up with very similar opinions. A quick note to start: Orangetheory offers a free class your first time, but this offer is only available at your local studio. For most people that isn't an issue, but it was a little annoying for Katie 2 when she wanted to try the class when she went to Michigan to visit family for the weekend.  You can go online to get information or you can just show up at the studio and tell them you want to try a class. They will let you know what class is available. Once you...

The weather is (finally) changing for the better. If you need some advice on dressing for the mercurial temperatures, go back and take a look at our post on winter workouts because Katie 1 did a great breakdown of what layers you should be wearing. Today we want to talk about rain. After many months of indoor workouts, we are finally ready to feel the wind in our hair and the sun on our faces. But it seems that every time we schedule an outdoor run, the skies open up and and drop a bucket of rain on our heads. Katie 2 is preparing for an April race, so outdoor runs are a necessity at this point. But how can you make it bearable to be outside? Here are some of our tips: Stay away from cotton. Period. But especially when it comes to your feet. Wet feet make everything miserable, but wet socks will make your feet miserable long after the workout ends (hello blisters!). We recommend these UnderArmour no show socks that are 97% polyester and 3% elastane. They are Katie 2's go-to ...

By know we've all read (or read about) that New York Times  opinion piece shaming women for wearing anything other than sweatpants to the gym. We're not going to link to it here because we don't want to send additional traffic to the website; however, THIS article from Jezebel  sums the article up quite nicely (make sure to check out the comments, they're gold). In short, the author of the opinion piece wears sweatpants to the gym, doesn't see anyone else wearing them and then proceeds to shame women for (1) wanting to look nice in their workout clothing; and (2) wearing anything other than baggy sweats to the gym. The article also cultivates the very thing that the author claims the proliferation of the yoga pants culture seems to cultivate: it shames women for dressing how they want, when they want.  The overarching theme of women shaming aside (because we don't have the time to go into that), most of the points that the author makes in the article are jus...

This was a topic that we have wanted to write about for some time. For one, we know quite a few people that work out during their lunch hour (and not just men) and we've always been impressed by their ability to do so. We also know that working out in the morning  either is your thing or it isn't (for us it really isn't, as much as we try). And getting your sweat on after work can be difficult either because you end up working late, or you have to get dinner on the table (or, let's be honest, you just want to have a cocktail instead). We starting asking ourselves if we could possibly get in a workout on our lunch break, so *we decided to try it. (*The Katies. Elizabeth chose not to participate. We will explain below.) Why are we trying it? Because we like The Try Guys. Oh, and because we are #dedicated to answering all your questions that we make up ourselves because you don't really ask us any. (We know you're out there! We see the page views!!) We've ...

Yes, we know it's supposed to be Shoesday Tuesday; however, in planning our posts for 2018, we realized 2 things: (1) that we were quickly running out of substantive Shoesday Tuesday posts (and we want our Shoesday Tuesday posts to have some substance); and (2) we have a fair number of travel related posts that we wanted to feature. As a result, we're going to start splitting our Tuesday posts between shoes and travel. We hope you enjoy!  To be fair, we initially were going to introduce Travel Tuesday w/ a Shoesday Tuesday crossover discussing our favorite shoes for travel. The flu determined that post wasn't going to happen so here we are introducing Travel Tuesday with advice on how to pack for a ski vacation. #lifehappens Given that we've recently discussed how to survive winter workout s and Katie 1 is going to Lake Tahoe in late February or early March (dates are still being discussed) we felt like now is a good time to discuss what she's planning on ...

We had several great ideas for our first Workout Wednesday of the new year, including trying a new workout and sharing our thoughts. We were going to try out SWEAT, but realized that they are only offered here in Chicago, which isn't much help to those of you not here. But while perusing their website, we came across a section called "On-the-Go Workouts" . The page lets you pick from nine different categories, based on your location and what equipment is available to you.  Each category offers six different workouts. That's 54 new workout series you can try for free! So if you're on the go, or looking to jump start your fitness, or just looking to mix it up, try it out and let us know what you think! We may still end up trying SWEAT, and we will let you know what we think if we do. But in the meantime, this may be a good way to cross train.

When we first envisioned our Workout Wednesday series, we thought about bringing you real reviews of workouts that we've always wanted to try. We haven't really gotten around to that (we came close with the November Project , but we'd never heard of it before we started researching free workouts). Until now. We threw out some ideas of workouts we've always wanted to try, and you can expect to see honest reviews on all sorts of things in the coming months. One idea that came up and that I (Katie 2) was especially excited about was boxing. I kept imaging myself as Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. (Minus the whole breaking your neck, assisted suicide thing. More the amazingly toned back in that jaw dropping blue dress, yes I realize that the dress is non movie related.) So when a boxing gym opened up right down my street, I happily volunteered to try it out. I will start my review with a caveat. There are a lot of different types of boxing gyms out there, a...