Articles by Amanda O’Brien
The Pitfalls of Fast-Tracking Your Fitness Journey
17 Sep
For most people, setting a new goal is exciting. It’s motivating and gets them to take action towards something they want. Oftentimes it’s the impetus for people to begin their fitness journey; the...
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Measuring Success Without a Scale
29 Jul
Maria started training at a new gym and decided to weigh herself after a month of working out. She stepped on the scale and saw that her weight had not changed and took this as a sign of stagnation...
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6 Essential Nutrients for Healthy Infant Development
08 Jul
As most of you know, I am a first-time mom of a six-month-old baby boy named River. Wow! Where has the time gone? My husband and I have been working in the health and fitness arena for over a decad...
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3 Reasons Sleep is Essential for Performance
18 Jun
Lebron James, a professional basketball player, and three-time champion sleeps 12 hours per night. Rafael Nadal, who owns 14 grand slam titles and nine french open championships, sleeps 10 hours pe...
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How to Develop a Routine to Get The Most Out of Your Day
11 Jun
What if there was a surefire way to reach your goals without all the fancy bells and whistles? Believe it or not, research suggests you can actually improve your performance, health, productivity, ...
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20 Unconventional Bodyweight Exercises
29 Apr
There is no denying that things have changed drastically over the past few weeks and what we thought would be a couple of weeks of doing workouts in our garage has turned into months. Every Globo-g...
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Work Smarter, Not Harder: Meal Prep Edition
16 Apr
Meal Prep! We’ve all heard these two words too many times to count and they often come with a sense of panic and procrastination. Who really wants to spend their entire Sunday in the kitchen? As I’...
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From Preconception to Birth: Supporting a Healthy Pregnancy
05 Mar
Pregnancy is a miraculous time in a women’s life. To be honest, I never truly understood the complexity that these nine months involved until becoming pregnant myself. It’s amazing that as women, w...
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8 NEW Meal Prep Recipes for 2020!
16 Jan
Eating healthy does not have to be difficult or boring. One thing my husband and I used to do is cook the same healthy meals over and over again week after week. The problem was that by the middle ...
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5 Tips for Making New Year's Resolutions That Actually Stick!
12 Dec
The New Year can feel like a fresh start for many people as they start planning all the ways to make the next 365 days better than the last. People start making vows to go to the gym more, journal ...
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The Secret to Long-Term Success
05 Dec
Did you know that training is only a small component of your health and fitness success? It is common to think that working out is the primary building block to reaching your goals, but in actualit...
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Using Nutrition to Manage Inflammation and Stay Healthy
28 Nov
Inflammation can cause a number of issues such as pain, swelling, redness, the damage of healthy cells, tissue, and organs, and more. It even plays a central role in diseases such as cancer, arthri...
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5 Tips to Stay on Track with Your Goals During the Holidays
13 Nov
The holidays can be a magical time but unfortunately, they can also come with a lot of stress and anxiety for individuals striving to lose weight or improve their health and fitness. Thanksgiving i...
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Six Effects of Alcohol Consumption
07 Nov
Alcohol has become a huge part of American culture and is now the center of many social events, both personal and professional. Alcohol is also used as a means to boost confidence, wind down after ...
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The Power of the Sun
10 Oct
Nature has given us potent therapies that are scientifically proven to decrease the risk of disease. They don’t require a prescription, are completely free and dramatically move the body toward hea...
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3 Phases of Nutrition to Ensure Long-Term Success
26 Sep
Nutrition prescriptions can be both simple and complex depending upon the individual’s starting point and their motivation for change. At Central Athlete, it is no secret that our mission is to bui...
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Have You Been Doing Your Aerobic Training All Wrong?
19 Sep
If you are a client of Central Athlete you have most likely seen the word “MAP” used to describe aerobic conditioning within your personalized training program. Coined by James Fitzgerald of OPEX, ...
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Seven Hacks for Living a Healthier Lifestyle
12 Sep
It seems as though human beings are the only mammals who are no longer honoring the biological necessities of life such as daily movement, sunshine, hydration, proper food sources, and adequate sle...
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When to Prescribe Food Quality Goals vs. Macronutrient Goals
05 Sep
There is a reason why babies crawl before they learn to walk. This biological order of operation sets the child up for success as they begin learning how to run, jump, skip, ride a bicycle, etc. Ea...
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10 Unconventional Core Exercises
21 Aug
Traditional core exercises can become mundane and oftentimes useless in their translation into increased performance and injury prevention. Without a deep understanding of the ever-growing list of ...
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The Four Benefits of Conscious Breathing
25 Jul
On average, you will take around 16 breaths per minute. This means you will take 23,040 breaths just today and 8,409,600 breaths this year. Out of all those breaths, how many can you remember takin...
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10 Progressional Core Exercises
17 Jul
The benefits of having a strong core span far beyond chiseled abs and improved confidence during swimsuit season. By now, we already know that six-pack abs are made in the kitchen, but a strong cor...
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Stop Dreaming About Your Goals and Make Them a Reality
27 Jun
Are you continuously sitting around, just hoping for your dreams and fantasies to come true? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately, those fantasies will never become a reality if a...
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The Top 10 Glute Strengthening Exercises
19 Jun
It is safe to say that the stronger the posterior chain (the muscles along the backside of your body, such as the spinal erectors, glutes, and hamstrings) the stronger the individual. There are bod...
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Quick, Easy & Delicious Meal Prep Recipes
11 Jun
One of the biggest challenges for those looking to improve their nutrition is finding recipes that are not extremely time-consuming or difficult. Lucky for you, the only type of cooking that happen...
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The Power of a Fitness Assessment
06 Jun
Great fitness programs can only be created through a deep understanding of each individual client. A comprehensive fitness assessment and ongoing assessments and consultations are truly the gold st...
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How to Prevent Getting Sick
30 May
Progressive overload is imperative in order to see long-term progress and success within a training program. Unfortunately for some, there may be things standing in the way of the ability to contin...
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Understanding Food Intolerances For Better Results!
20 May
Many of the individuals at Central Athlete have the common value of continual growth. For some, that means working towards increased performance inside the gym and for others, it means using health...
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Cluster Training: A Complex Method of Progression for Intermediate and Advanced Athletes
09 May
There comes a point in time where linear progressions and simple undulations in volume and intensity are no longer effective in producing progression. After several years of consistent strength tra...
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Big News At Central Athlete!
15 Apr
In the fall of 2014, I was into my sixth year of coaching, owning and managing a gym and was on the verge of a serious burnout with something that I was deeply passionate about. Amanda and I decid...
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