Tag: featured

Features

Grunty Crush of the Week: Paparoxi Speaks Faith, Fitness, Triathlons

Author ByStarr

5 AM Club

Today’s Grunty Crush is Khaleeqa “Paparoxi” Rouse. I met her a couple of years ago through a mutual friend on Twitter after asking a fitness related question (to which she gave a helpful answer). We’ve kept in touch since then and she even created a mini documentary on me, as well as a moving photo collage of my wedding. She’s extremely talented, down-to-Earth and has an amazing sense of style. At first glance her killer style could throw you off from the fact that she is an experienced triathlete, but don’t let the smooth taste fool you!

Rouse, who is the executive director and founder of Paparoxi.com, was always active growing up but she got into a sedentary phase during a rough patch as an adult that kept her from being healthy and happy.
Eventually, she was over holding herself back, so she started a new fitness journey where she revamped her diet, got into extreme sports and started documenting it via her website where she explores fitness through faith, whole foods, and positive vibrations.

I caught up with her to chat about her fit life, her #5AMClub, and her passion for triathlons.

How did you embark on your current journey?

Fitness and being active has always been apart of my life. I grew up a girly tomboy wherever we would go my mom would dress us with incredible detail – super girly. I remember always having a change of sneakers or wearing shorts under my dress so I could race my friends, cousins or any other child that would be at family gatherings. In high school I was on the track team, swim team and volleyball team and I was varsity in all three.

My latest fitness journey and what inspired me to start Paparoxi was from a setback. I gained weight the end of my college career and into my young adult life and I endured the growing pains of being broke, overweight and ending a relationship. That is what prompted me to get back in shape and start a vehicle that would inspire other people to do the same.

interview3

Explain your journey of becoming a triathlete and what you learned about yourself.

I signed up for my first triathlon in 2010. I was going through a really rough patch in my life and I wanted to start doing the things I had always dreamed of doing. Since I was a child, I always wanted to do a triathlon, I remember watching Ironman Kona on TV dreaming of what it would be like to be there. My first triathlon was amazing, I had so much support from my family and I signed up to do the race with Team in Training so I had support from a team and a coach. I also raised money for Leukemia, everything surrounding my first triathlon was very special. That was the kickstart for my love of the sport and the community.

The biggest thing I learned about myself and continue to learn to this day is what discipline really means and how to take small steps everyday to realize a dream.

interview4

What’s your diet like and why does it work for you?

My diet is a bit harry right now, I am trying new things and working with a nutritionist. I use the word harry because I don’t have a title for what it is that I do, I just eat very simple foods. I try to eat things that are as close to nature as possible. A typical day includes tons of apples, bananas, avocado, quinoa, spinach, sweet potatoes, kale, coconut oil, salmon and whatever foods are in season. I really try to limit processed foods, high sugars and unhealthy fats.

Are there still habits from your past life that you struggle with? If so, how do you find balance? 

Yes! I struggle with over eating. I always want more, and that is a problem even if it is healthy. I recognize that I over eat when I am not focused or stressed so I try to be aware of my emotions going into a meal. It is a hard balance because I am training now for an Ironman distance triathlon and I am hungry more often then usual but I have to still be cognizant of my portions, so working with a nutritionist has helped.

What is the 5 AM Club?

#5AMClub is something I started February 2013 in an effort to start my day off better. I wanted to combine my mornings of worship and Bible study with my love of fitness. So every morning I started sharing via Instagram an inspiring thought that God laid on my heart and whatever fitness or healthy routine I am doing. I use the tag #5AMclub to keep track of myself and other people who have joined. It really has changed my life for the better.

Why is it important for you to combine faith and fitness? 

One of the things I noticed when I lost all the weight and became this ideal version of myself was that I was not satisfied. We all think that if we just get to a certain size, get that job, marry that person that everything is going to work itself out and the truth is it doesn’t. I found myself just wanting more, and never resting in being “good enough.” I know the hole I was trying to fill was a God sized hole in my heart, that no amount of exercise could fix. I had to find out the truth about God for myself and by accepting Jesus and letting his love take hold of my life my hole went away. I am not perfect, nor is my relationship with God but I have found peace. So that is why I share faith and fitness, because it is more than just looking good or being fit.

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What can you do now that you never thought you could before you got super fit? 

Last weekend I had to do a 4 hour bike and 8 mile run back to back and I just did it. Looking back to 2008, I couldn’t even run a mile without breaking out in a coughing fit and feeling as if I were going to vomit. So I really have come a long way. I don’t really think about it often because I am surrounded by people doing the same crazy weekend workouts; but it is incredible looking back to that time.

Share some of your plans and goals for the rest of the year.

This year I will be doing my first ultra distance or ironman distance triathlon. This includes a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run. So my life until July will revolve around this training. Through my training I am raising money for an organization called Rahab’s Robe that helps with the prevention and rehabilitation of women and children involved in human trafficking in India. I will be traveling to India in August to volunteer with this organization. I am looking forward to these experiences, its the ultimate combination of faith and fitness.

What advice do you have for women who want to get serious about their health?

My advice would be to just give yourself a chance. I think many women settle, thinking this is it, that life has no more to offer and this is just who I will be. However, I changed my whole life when I got tired of just settling for the hand that life had dealt. So if anyone reading this is truly tired of being unhealthy and broken than you have what it takes to turn your life around. Use that emotion to fight every day for who you want to be.

Fun Fact: “Paparoxi” got her name when she pledged Delta Sigma Theta.

Features

Throwback Thursday: Dolvett Quince’s Quick Workout Wisdom

Author ByStarr

Dolvett Quince

I interviewed Dolvett Quince last year for JET, and we talked mostly about the Biggest Loser, which was prepping to air its season finale at the time. This is a quick left over that didn’t make the interview where he shared his favorite fat-burning workouts, and answered the popular quandary about whether we should eat before or after working out.

On Fat Burning Workouts
I’m a huge advocate for body confusion. I feel like if I do a comination of strength training and cardio in my workouts I’m gonna maximize the benefits to my body. A lot of female clients that I’ve trained in the past are geared tward cardio and wanna train this way. The guys that I’ve trained in the past tend to want to just strength train. The benefits of both sides is to do a combination of both.
On Eating Before or After Working Out
It depends on the person. It might be trial and error but listen to your body.

And boom goes the dynamite!

I prefer to eat after a workout but sometimes my body needs it beforehand so it varies. How about you?

Before you go…

Scroll back up and ogle admire his physique to ensure your good day.

Food

Nunn Electrolyte Tablets For You Who Hate Water

Author ByStarr

Nunn

If you don’t know anything else about how to nourish your body, chances are, you at least know that water is important. However, there are a lot of people who surprisingly don’t like it. I love it! I’ve struggled with terrible eating habits my entire life but drinking a lot of water was the one good habit that I formed, despite that.

But back to you people who don’t drink it…

A relative of mine had a health scare due to a preexisting condition. ICU doctors discovered that he was also dehydrated while they were trying to bring his body back to a stable condition. That was definitely a contributing factor to why he ended up in the hospital. I was worried and found myself explaining his condition to a confidant. When I mentioned the dehydration thing, she said she hated water.

My response: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE WHO DON’T DRINK WATER?

She said it didn’t taste like anything, something I hear a lot.

Sigh…

I still don’t get it but if you absolutely positively need some kind of flavoring for your water without sugar, try electrolyte tablets. My favorite is Nunn, pictured above in berry, orange, lemon-lime, and citrus. My favorite flavor depends on the day but berry and citrus seem to impart the most flavor. I already drink enough water, like I said, so I don’t use these often but they are a nice addition to that good ol’ H20. They come in packs of various sizes and half a tablet goes a long way. I get mine on Amazon.

Water has numerous benefits for your body. Mmkay? Start here.

Pole Dancing

Grunty Crush of the Week: Pole Dance Inspiration From Juliette

Author ByStarr

Pole Dancing

I stumbled upon Juliette’s page on YouTube and got taken with her pole dancing videos. We’ve never been in contact, I just admired from a distance. What I do know about her is that she’s based in France and she’s kinda amazing. Most of her videos are pole practice videos and contortion progress but she’s so strong and graceful, and motivates me to keep practicing so I’m sharing.

Food

I am Officially Gluten Intolerant

Author ByStarr

Bread

I have always been athletic but with a bad diet. I have a sugar addiction and love fried, doughy delicious but bad for your body items. I also yo-yo eat. Basically, I have always looked fit but felt like crap. At one point I became a raw food vegan, a journey that lasted for three months. I felt great and got to a point where I no longer needed any of the four medications I was prescribed for asthma and allergic rhinitis, but I was too lazy to be consistent with that level of discipline, not realizing that dietary mental toughness was inevitably kismet.

Fast forward to the gluten diagnosis…

Now I’m forced to be disciplined. That is, unless I want to deal with indigestion, hives, rashes, depression, extremely dry skin and a host of other symptoms that had me convinced that I had stomach cancer. I wrote about ti for Ebony. Here’s a snippet:

Hives, random skin eruptions, fatigue, indigestion, anemia, painful cystic acne, and extreme stomach pain. These are just a few of the inexplicably increasing symptoms I had grown accustomed to over the years. My skin was extremely dry and itchy, to the point where lotion and oils were useless. I suffered from depression and had extreme nausea and occasional vomiting after eating. I was in so much pain toward the end of last year that I stopped eating for days, convinced that I had stomach cancer. Even when I did eat, salad was the only thing I could consume without experiencing severe discomfort. Finally, I went to a gastroenterologist.

The first gastroenterologist I saw wasn’t convinced that it was cancer. I was sent to an allergist about my skin and given a prescription for steroidal pills for my alleged eczema since I had a history of allergies, sent to a therapist, told to take prescription iron supplements, given probiotics and tested for celiac. My dry skin didn’t respond to the steroidal pills, and the probiotics helped with a lot of my stomach pain so I was able to eat more but still noticed that I’d vomit or experience extreme nausea shortly after eating things like pizza, sandwiches and even crackers or toast, and my indigestion wouldn’t quit, even with prescription antacids.

Read the full story over at Ebony.

 

 

Fit Life

Chrissy K Fit Teaches You How to Breathe Through Workouts

Author ByStarr

Chrissy K Workouts

The headline here probably should have read something like, “Chrissy K Fit Teaches You How to Breathe Through the Pain.” You know how it is when it’s sometimes hard to keep up with a workout because you feel like your body is shirking its responsibility to supply you with oxygen. Part of that could be because you need to build stamina, or because you’re not breathing properly. I’m afflicted with both issues but I find that learning and remembering to breathe correctly helps, so here’s some good advice from Grunty Crush Chrissy K.

Get to know Chrissy K via her Grunts and Glam interview here.

Playlists

Grunty Workout Playlist March 21, 2014

Author ByStarr

elaine jimmy leg

Music can make or break your workout, no matter what you’re doing, so I’m sharing a few ideal songs for a workout playlist that may strike your fancy.

Enjoy!

Sasha Go Hard – “Out the Bottle”

This is a great playlist for ratchet. Turn up while lifting, doing intervals, running or even during a warm up.

TemiDollface – “Pata Pata”

I could see this being a rhythmic hit in cycling.

SZA – “Babylon”

This was made for a pole freestyle pole or cool down.

Alex Isley (yes, of that Isley family) – “Retro-Wilhelm”


Another hit for pole freestyle or cool down.

Of course, you can do as you’d like with these songs because we interpret art differently, but at the very least, I hope you found some new tunes that you like!

Body Image

Planet Fitness Drama: Woman Told to Cover up For Being Too Toned

Author ByStarr

Planet Fitness

Planet Fitness prides themselves on being a judgment-free zone but it seems that they’ve taken this concept too far. I stumbled upon a news story about Tiffany Austin, from the Bay Area, who was told to cover up because her toned body was intimidating. Yes, people actually complained about the woman’s body being scary, according to KTVU.

Austin said she was trying to get back in shape after recovering from a recent car accident, and felt that Planet Fitness would work out. However, her first workout only lasted 15 minutes. She was running on a treadmill at a slow speed, wearing the outfit that you see in the photo above, which I don’t think is bad (especially considering some of the things I’ve seen). Eventually she grew self-conscious because she noticed other people staring at her, and then a staff-member stopped her and said, “excuse me we’ve had some complaints you’re intimidating people with your toned body. So can you put on a shirt?”

Here’s the full story:

I used to think the Planet Fitness commercials were gross exaggerations of the extreme personality types you come across in the gym but I guess the rumors are true. There are people in the gym who’d rather be seen and judge other people than actually focus on their work out. I’ve been a member of a few gyms and have seen it. That behavior always makes me laugh but most of the time, I encounter more people who are just there to mind their own business.

I prefer lifting and classes, and have been a member at Bally, Crunch, Lucille Roberts and a New York City Parks Gym. Bally was a Lunkhead central meat market. I got hit on a lot and a lot of the people there seemed like their purpose was to get picked up. There was one time when I was doing intervals on a treadmill, where this buff man who had been staring at me since I walked in, stationed himself on a treadmill next to me and kept questioning my various speeds, not realizing what I was doing. Another at Bally, I was doing preacher curls and a PERSONAL TRAINER told me not to do them because I’d get too bulky. WTF! Crunch was cool because I really enjoy their classes but my only beef is that here in NYC their classes are often too crowded for comfort. Lucille Roberts was entirely too girly and didn’t really encourage overall fitness. They were more about weight loss, which I think is vapid. The New York City Parks gym might as well had been Riker’s Island but I digress.

Planet Fitness never appealed to me based on the commercials, especially not the dance one (dance is one of my favorite ways to work out and I like to get down without having to think about who’s intimidated by my presence so that set off a red flag for me). I get that they want to encourage people who may otherwise be too insecure to workout, to stand feel safe and comfortable but isolating one group while judging another doesn’t makes sense–fit-shaming at it’s finest. It’s ironic, considering their tagline is “No Judgment.” I’m absolutely not the fittest person in the world but I prefer places that encourage wellness from a balanced, well-rounded perspective as opposed to environments that keep people at a beginner level.

I got sucked down a rabbit hole on YouTube researching things about Planet Fitness and not only did I discover that they have designated days where they give out free pizza, bagels (BAGELS!), and also have bowls filled with Tootsie Rolls laying around. I believe in a balanced diet and I am not a nutritionist but common fitness knowledge is that pizza can be tricky (you can make healthier variations of it but it’s still not ideal for fast toning and/or weight loss) and bagels are full of empty calories. Let’s not even start on gummy candy. You can eat what you want but is it really productive to eat these things after working out? Shouldn’t we be nourishing our bodies with fruit, vegetables and protein post work out? So, yeah…I do have a problem with that. They also have a Lunk Alarm that goes off whenever people display what they describe as “lunk-like” behavior. One of the things they describe as lunk-like is grunting or breathing to hard while lifting. Huh? Anyone who has done heavy lifting knows that both are unavoidable. You can control the volume but not doing it at all is absolutely ridiculous! One of the things that stuck with me from the trainer who taught me how to lift is that breathing is integral.

Planet Fitness is free to do what they want but they should consider remodeling how they put their plan into action. Perhaps create an environment where those who are more experienced serve as inspiration for those who aren’t. The Lunk Alarm could still be fun for actual meat heads but nitpicking every little thing, including the way someone’s body looks, is ridiculous. Isn’t part of the point of working out to achieve your desired figure?

Whatever.

In related news, none of this stops me from being amused by their policies. Like I said, I got sucked down a rabbit hole on YouTube where people were ranting against PF. In one case, someone said that a location removed squat racks because people were intimidated, and in other situations there were several people trying to make the alarm go off.

It. Was. Hilarious. I almost want a buddy pass to PF so that I can try to set off the Lunk Alarm too.

Anyway, enjoy the shenanigans:

This one is a Daily Show skit:

YouTube Commenter Buildsomemuscle86:

“My buddy has a membership there and asked if I could show him an arm workout(never being in a PF, I did not know what to expect). I picked up the 75lb DBs and started hammer curling, people went up and complained to the front desk that I was too itimidating! Really? i was still warming up! jesus … hahah.”

Playlists

Trey Songz Enlists Our Favorite Fitness Stars For ‘Na Na’

Author ByStarr

Trey Songz Na Na

Trey Songz recently released the video for his single, “Na Na” and he tapped into some of Instagram’s most popular fitness stars including, Mankofit, Rosa Acosta, The Bella Twins (from E!’s Total Divas), and Jazzma. I don’t know how on Earth I missed this video but props to Black Girls Guide to Weight Loss for posting it. It’s a steamy and sensual song featuring Songz in sexy workout situations with each of these women. Brace yourself, it’s not raunchy but it’s still extremely sexy to the point where you may squirm and shout out, YAAAAAASSSSS!

Very nice, Trey Songz. Let’s get those workout dates on and poppin!

Anyway, props to Trey Songz for choosing a variety of women for this video and for celebrating physical strength. By the way, this is a great song for a pole dance, stretch or sexy seats class.

*Immediately starts working out.

 

Here’s a closer look at his features via Instagram photos.

 

Mankofit

 

Rosa Acosta

 

Nicole and Bri aka “The Bella Twins”

 

i_Heart_Jazzma

Beauty

Five Muscle Pain Relief Products For Blasting Post Workout Discomfort

Author ByStarr

photo Insert_zps37c985f9.jpg

I often feel and look like I got crushed by an anvil hours after exercising or even when I wake up the next morning (it gets that real). This is especially true after pole dancing where I often bruise, or hardcore Pilates and H.I.I.T., where my muscles may feel stiff or strained.

Check out this doozie following a pole dancing class:

So, yeah…don’t ever believe the hype that dark skin people can’t bruise but I digress.

Anyway, I’ve amassed an arsenal of sore muscle pain relief products that I want to share them with you because they need angel wings even though they’re inanimate objects.

1. Shea Moisture Joint and Muscle Relief Balm

The Shea Moisture joint and muscle relief balm has a nice lavender and wild orchid scent, and they’ve added shea butter for moisture. As per the container, lavender has anti-inflammatory properties that can help alleviate muscle spasms, shea butter moisturizes and heals skin, and it also contains peppermint, which is anti-inflammatory and good for muscle tension. It’s greasy but there’s no testing on animals and it doesn’t contain petroleum, synthetic fragrance, parabens, gluten, paraffins, phtholates, and other chemicals I can’t pronounce. It’s simple to use. You just rub it into the affected area and wait until that good numbness starts to take effect. I like this stuff because it won’t leave you smelling like an 80-year-old woman (no shade to grandma, but I’m just saying), thanks to the nice floral infusion.

2. Arnicare

Arnicare is a creamy white homeopathic medicine that is also paraben-free and scent free. It’s good for general massages as well as bruising, swelling and stiffness.

3. Traumeel (by Heel)

Traumeel is similar to Arnicare in that it’s a white, creamy, homeopathic and scentless. I find that it’s excellent for bruises and according to the Vitamin Shoppe, it’s also paraben-free.

4. Tiger Balm Ultra Strength

Tiger Balm Ultra Strength is a miracle in a jar. It’s a white petrolatum-based herbal infusion of goodness. This is my go to for so-sore-that-I-can’t-move muscles.

5.  Tiger Balm Cream

The cream is not as strong as the jelly but it still works. Tiger Balm is best for soreness and stiffness but the thing I hate about the cream is that it smells like toothpaste. That’s not the worst smell in the world but c’mon son, you don’t want to walk around with your entire body smelling like toothpaste. Keep this one in the house!

I don’t think any one is better than the other because they’re suited for different things, and different levels of pain, but that’s trial and error based on the individual, hence why I have so many (that and because I’m a product junky). From my experience, my favorites are the Traumeel for bruises and the Tiger Balm Ultra for sore muscles, because it gets that serious for me. The Shea Moisture Balm has the best scent and I enjoy using it for massaging muscles at an intermediate level of pain. If you’re the type of person that doesn’t like grease, because I know some of you are texture freaks, then you’re better suited for the creams.