Client Testimonial – Sadie Stark

Check out this awesome testimonial from one of Julie’s amazing MAT™ clients, Sadie!  Sadie had been suffering from an IT band issue as well as a knee issue for a year and a half before she found Julie.  She had tried everything she could find to help with her issue, but it wasn’t until she tried MAT™ that she noticed significant improvement.  Now she is back to running over three miles and is running faster than ever!


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How to workout if you head to office from the gym

Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays where we are bringing you one exercise topic, talking about it for two minutes, and giving you three reasons why you should follow our advice.  This week we are talking to those of you who go from the gym right back to the office.  How do you workout if you are about to go see all of your colleagues at work?  What can you do to make sure that you still present yourself professionally?

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Short on time? Here’s how to exercise!

Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays where we are bringing you one exercise topic, talking about it for two minutes, and giving you three reasons why you should follow our advice.  This week we are talking to those of you who don’t have time or have very little time to exercise.  What should you be doing when you workout to maximize the time you do have?  How should you be exercising if you don’t have an entire hour to spend at the gym?


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Getting over an illness? Check out these exercise tips.

Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays where we are bringing you one exercise topic, talking about it for two minutes, and giving you three reasons why you should follow our advice.  This week we are talking to you if you have been ill.  If you have had the flu, a nasty cold, or any kind of illness and are just starting to get back into the swing of things with exercise, how do you start again?


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Meditation – 5 lessons I learned from doing it every day for a year

I always thought meditation was some woo woo kind of thing where you would sit in silence and pretend like you were floating while discovering the answers to your deepest questions.  I thought there was a perfect meditation position that you needed to sit in in order to attain the benefits of meditation.  And, most of all, I thought that meditation, while an intriguing concept, just wasn’t for me.  The “perfect meditation position” was extremely uncomfortable, my mind would be racing constantly, and I would often wonder how much time I had left before the alarm that I set for myself went off.

Then, back in 2015, I started using the popular app Headspace to guide me through meditation exercises.  I wanted to see if a regular meditation practice could help me manage my stress a bit better.  I was also starting to hear of the many health and brain benefits of meditating, and wanted to experience those for myself.

When I first got the app, I really enjoyed using it.  I completed the first 10 days in a row, then the first 30.  Somewhere between days 30 and 60, however, I fell off the wagon and stopped using the app altogether.  I would open it up every now and then for a 10-minute meditation session, but those times were few and far between.

But then, last April, I decided that I wanted to start meditating using the app again.  I wanted to see if I could meditate every day for an entire year and set the goal to do so.  The app has a nice feature where it measures your current meditation streak, so that would be easy for me to track.  It also has markers along the way at days 3, 10, 15, 30, 90, 180, and then finally 365.

So I started the “woo woo” activity, sitting in a more comfortable position than what I had originally believed was appropriate, and just dealt with the fact that my mind was wandering a lot during my practice.  And I did that everyday for an entire year.

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3 Cardio Tips To Minimize The Pounding On Your Joints

Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minutes Tuesdays where we are bringing you one exercise topic, talking about it for two minutes, and giving you three reasons why you should follow our advice.  This week we are talking to those of you who want to do cardio without the high impact.  You want to get your cardiovascular work in but you have to respect your joints and make sure that the load you are working with is not bearing down on your joints and is not high impact.


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Client Testimonial – Kaili Harding-Kaminski

Check out this awesome testimonial from one of Julie’s rockstar personal training clients, Kaili Harding-Kaminski!  Kaili and Julie have been working together for over four months now and Kaili has seen some awesome results.  Kaili describes the changes with how she looks and feels throughout the day as well as while she is working out.  She also speaks to the importance of the accountability that Julie provides for her on a regular basis and how that impacts her decisions when she is not at Muscle Activation Schaumburg.

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5 Ways To Tell If Your Personal Training Is Truly Personal

How personal is your personal training?  It can seem like a ridiculous question, but let’s explore.

A quick search on Dictionary.com reveals that there are multiple definitions of “personal”:

  1. of, relating to, or coming as from a particular person; individual; private
  2. relating to, directed to, or intended for a particular person
  3. intended for use by one person

The definitions continue, but, for our purposes, these will do.

When it comes to personal training, there seems to often be a disconnect between the type of “personal” that is marketed, the type that is delivered, and the type that could be experienced but is often overlooked.

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Former Athletes: 3 Tips for Exercising After Athletics

Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays where we are bringing you one exercise topic, talking about it for two minutes, and giving you three reasons why you should follow our advice.  This week we are speaking to the former college and high school athletes.  This is for those of you who used to compete on a regular basis and are now at a loss on how to exercise without that competitive model.

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