#wegotgoals

April showers are bringing May flowers, we're also seeing running goals on the horizon. That's why we're running with hundreds of ambassadors from across the nation who are training for for a 5k. For some of us, it’s just for the fun of it, for some it’s to get faster, and for others it’s simply to do the thing.It can be easy to think of running shoes as another accessory for your fit-fit (see what I did there), but we know that for runners, shoes are your equipment for your sport. We brought Todd Falker into the digital studio to talk about shoes, innovation and why it matters for running.Todd is fast, and in the course of this conversation, I invited myself to spectate his next trail race. Because how often do you get to watch someone run fast, far and on trails?!References: Todd Falker on Instagram Puma Running innovation ft. Todd Falker Your guide to Running Shoes Ft. Conor Cashin The Ice Age Trail 50 in Wisconsin The Cheap Marathon, it costs $26.20 Ready for a super science-y review of super critical foa

As aSweatLife's #GoalForIt running program kicks off, we're bringing together aSweatLife Ambassadors from across the nation to train and run for a 5k. For some of us, it's just for the fun of it, for some it's to get faster, and for others it's simply to do the thing.We always say that everything is better with friends here at aSweatLife. And that especially applies to running. So today on the podcast, we’re talking about community and running. We've brought one of our resident community builders, Nimbe Juarez onto the podcast to talk about why community matters for running, where to find it, and how to create it for yourself.Nimbe has a self-proclaimed, "love-hate relationship" with running, but for her the idea of running with friends keeps her coming back. She organizes a monthly event that she calls "friends-running" to bring an all-paces community together to run.On the episode, we talk about our relationship with running, running groups we admire, and running with donkeys.References: aSweatLife ambassa

It’s the first podcast of the month. We're coming at you to share some things we’re thinking about. We’ll shoot the breeze, share things we love and try to crack each other up.This week, we're catching up on the podcast on food, friendship, fitness and fun. Each of us (Dana, Kelly and I) are bringing two topics we want to chat through to the episode.Here's what we cover:Cottage CheeseTraveling with friendsThe Barbie Movie, marketing, and trailerPassover foodJeana's #30Daysoffriends challengeLove is Blind Season 4And we all talk about our favorite comfort TVResources: Mt lions and what to know about them Good culture cottage cheese, because cottage cheese is trending Splitwise for all of your travel needs The Barbie movie trailer Greta gerwig, the director of Barbie Evan Ross Katz ICYMI, Barbie Girl by AquaFun things to do with leftover MatzoP.volveLove is BlindRewatching TV shows is good for your anxiety Pod meets worldSalty Face Tanning WaterAnd our very important list of comfort TVThe Office 30 RockTed Las

It's our favorite time of the breakdown of the State of Fitness - your predictions. We love to hear what you think is coming in the world of wellness and what you're over. First and foremost, this is a fun time for all of us to guess, joke around, and have a great time making wild predictions.This week, we dig into a few things you think are coming for the State of Fitness and we also share what WE think we'll see in the future of fitness.Here's a look at what you think is coming:Read more about the state of fitness predictions here. We talk through each other these and share some of our own thoughts on these.Prediction #1: We’ll title this “the robots are coming”Prediction #2: Digital fitness is Dead.Prediction #3: Fitness in gyms and studios will make a full comeback.Prediction #4: People need gyms to connect.Prediction #5: Pickleball.Prediction #6: We’ll title this, “In this economy?”Prediction #7: A new love for low-impact fitness.And also, for reference, I misled Dana with such confidence over the pronun

So, on the podcast all month, we've been talking about the State of Fitness and this week is no different, but we're delving into the mental health of it all.One thing we're been touching on all month is how venture capital flowed into fitness - which in its purest form is community. And while cash gives things like groeth, cash taketh away when it demands insane metrics.We saw that with connected fitness and talked about it on last week's podcast.This week, I said aloud, "I hope there's not a way that cash can ruin mental health and mindfulness ... except if it becomes a luxury."And then Kristen Geil who used to be our Editor in Chief texted me this profile piece about Peoplehood. That article in the LA Times states, "some experts express skepticism about these new programs, which could be viewed as commodifying human relationships."Fear not, mindfulness can be accessible to all until someone finds a way to charge for breathing.Regardless of the capital of it all, it was important for us to include mental he

We recorded this podcast while I sat next to my Peloton, a machine that got me through the pandemic - Jess Simms, Tunde, Cody, Alex, Robin, all came at me live into my home while I - like everyone else in the world, looked for some normalcy.But cut to a more normal fitness world and there my Peloton sits, unused by me since July of 2022. And don’t get me wrong - I loved that thing while I loved it, but I am a person who uses fitness as a form of social connection.I use in-person fitness for high-fives, for small-to-medium talk - like the “How are you, we’ve met before, right? I love your set. It’s an amazon dupe? No way.” I prefer medium to deep talk if given the choice, But interactions like these are really good for you, according to Discover Magazine. And during the pandemic, I kept describing what I missed - barista interactions, check-out interactions, and yes, the casual, "I love your socks with the funny saying" interactions. So, when the coast was clear, I was back with a vengeance and I moved on from

This month on the podcast, we're breaking down the intricacies of the State of Fitness Report we published in February. There is a lot to unpack in all of the historical data we're comparing and in all of the incredible insights you share with us.Last week, we talked a lot about your fitness spending habits and this week we’re digging into what you’re doing with your precious time dedicated to movement.Because we want to evaluate how far we’ve swung back on the pendulum, we’ll be doing a lot of comparison and contrast between 2022 data, our 2021 survey, the mid-2020 pandemic survey, and pre-pandemic numbers.We take data-driven guesses on why walking is the number one fitness format, whether cycling will make a come-back to pre-COVID numbers, and why we're all picking up heavy things again.Hot takes on this episodeYoga Teacher Training is a pyramid scheme. (Don't @ us - we're not the first to say this)"Walking has cauliflower's publicist"a lot of women got into the true crime thing, thus, Dana guesses, there i

We've been collecting consumer data on fitness habits and spending since 2017, so we have numbers that show just how quickly things really did change over the Pandemic.We’re breaking down our State of Fitness survey and its results on our podcast all month, This week, we're starting with spending. We talk about how much we - the hosts - are spending, what you told us you're spending and what percent of you are getting your fitness for free. We also dig into a metric that is purely post pandemic: return-to-gym.I hate to bring it up again, but underlying all of this is the pandemic and its wax and wane. It did something to us and that something was behavior change on a massive scale.It’s a fact that behavior change is extremely hard, but it is the underlying principle that drives the fitness industry. Ans along with that, habit adoption is nearly impossible. We all know the stats around New Years resolutions - most people make them and drop them by February. And it’s not because we don’t WANT to adopt the behav

If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank or pitched your own business, you’re familiar with the concept of addressable market, or total addressable market (TAM). It’s an ever important metric to determine whether the thing you’re talking about has room for growth or - to put it simply - a way to quantify how many people care or could care about the thing you’re selling.I told you that to tell you this: Pickleball is booming.A couple of facts point us in that direction, but most importantly, market size. According to Marketwatch, The global pickleball Paddle market - that’s just paddles - was valued at $126.5 million in 2019 and is expected to reach $218.2 million by the end of 2026.People are making pickleball a business and business is booming. But outside of that, regular humans are loving the game: according to the Sport and Fitness Industry Association, it’s the fastest growing sport in the US. How big is it? 4.8 million people played it in 2021.There’s even a major league of pickleball, which - get this, wants

Content warning: we talk about sex on this episode.So recently, we started to notice Ashley Martens - a health and wellness writer who lends her pen to aSweatLife as well as Women’s Health, Red Book and Delish - covering more of what we'd call "saucy content."It started after some jerk ghosted her. By the way, human adults, don't ghost each other. Have a tough convo and move on. K? And as she pitched article after article that touched on sexual health, we were loving the angles she was exploring. Never before had we seen the word "orgasm" on the site so much. And as she digs into sexual health more and more, we wanted to know what she'd learned.And I think it's important in adulthood to re-educate ourselves. Sex ed focused on reproduction and diseases at best, and at worst, it completely demonized the act. Bad sex ed leaves kids with more questions and no one to ask about them besides the internet or other equally confused teens.But when you think of all of the things that come with sex, like relationships, b

You know that person who reminds you that Mercury is in retrograde and they ask new friends to share their astrological signs? It’s me.And we love leaning into the woo-woo in a fun and approachable way around aSweatLife. Each week, aSweatLife ambassadors get an email with everything fun that’s happening AND one of the Ambassadors, Mary Kessinger, writes a horoscope.So when Twyla Adkins raised her hand to write a piece for aSweatLife about the right workout for your sun, moon and rising sign, we were all about it. Quick, a primer on sun, moon and rising from Alex Caiola, or the high priestess of Brooklyn, who Twyla interviewed for this piece: "The sun sign gives insight into your personality and what naturally attracts you ... The rising sign also known as the ascendant sets up our first house, which is the house of identity, our body in some respects ... It’s how we encounter everything and move through the world. Your rising sign is important when it comes to exercise or how we want movement to fit into our

On the pages of aSweatLife in 2020, Kensli Diggs penned a piece that called on readers to use friendship to see the perspectives of others from different walks of life. It was titled Why it’s so Important to Diversify Your Friend Group.She said, “It’s important to diversify your friend group because it’s important to develop a familiarization and understanding of other people’s backgrounds.”Since, we’ve seen that piece get more traffic than any other on aSweatLife, which means that people around the world have read the piece that starts with a big question. Kensli writes, “A Reuters poll completed in 2013 and cited by NBC News states that “about 40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race.” The United States still remains very segregated today, and racial prejudice is at the heart of this issue. But how do we break past these barriers to form genuine friendships?“So, this week, nearly three years after publication, we revisi

Chances are that if you're reading this, social media was introduced in your lifetime. Whether or not that means you have vivid memories of retrieving the AOL CD ROM from the mailbox and begging your parents to set it up on your Gateway PC (which came in a cowprint box) is another thing.If all of that resonated with you, email me at Jeana@asweatlife.com to commiserate about the series finale of Full House or your lower back pain.A considerable amount of time has passed since connection to the internet came after you endured a minute of dialing-up. And in that time, we've seen wifi prevalence,MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. This week, we cover TikTok, which came onto the scene in China (or a version of it, anyway) in 2016. And in the U.S., TikTok was largely popularized as families, COVID pods, and pre-teens danced and danced and danced again during the pandemic.And TikTok has been called addictive, which can be in part to its extremely intelligent Algorithm. It gains a quick understanding of

Trigger warning: on this episode, we discuss pregnancy and loss. If you're not in a place to hear that, skip it and come back next week. Take care of yourself.Amanda Lauren, a contributor at aSweatLife and a lot of other publications, has covered a tried and true beat for about five years around here: Wellness and lifestyle. We love reading her take on the way movement bumps up against fashion, self care, and trends.But over the last year, she's been sharing a look inside something really personal - her experience trying to conceive. Last February, she shared the raw feelings around her pregnancy loss. She tackled conversations around infertility in June. Then, in December, she shared how being pregnant now is changing the way she looks at her body and what it can do.And pregnancy loss, pregnancy, and parenting are all such a personal and complicated topics - hello, we're coming to you from the United States in the year 2023. But Amanda's candor on the issue and her willingness to share her own internal monol

Welcome to Season 8 of #WeGotGoals, the podcast by aSweatLife.com. We’re doing things a little differently this season, featuring topics from our crew of expert writers, responding to moments in pop culture, or whatever the hell we feel like talking about.This week, we’re talking about body image … and since our team is practically all female and a lot of our readers and ambassadors are female, we’re going to be referencing body image for women - although we know men deal with their own complicated set of body image stuff too.This week, you'll hear from Amy Potter, an aSweatLife Ambassador, Professional trainer and the author of the article on aSweatLife.com that inspired this week’s episode: 7 Steps to Build a Better Body Image. That’s the kind of how-to content we need more of in our lives.Resources:How to Improve your body image on aSweatLifeAmy Potter on InstagramLadies Who LiftNEDAA history of body image ideals on Katie Couric MediaWomensHealth.gov resources on body imageHow to compliment a female witho

My mantra going into 2023 in general is "this should be fun." It's meant to be a not-so-gentle reminder that I started aSweatLife for joy - I wanted to fill my own life with joy and hopefully help others do the same too.For me there are too sides to this idea: the first is actively seeking out ways to add fun to my life and the other is eliminating the stuff that is depleting my joy. Don't deplete my joy, you guys.When it comes to aSweatLife's podcast - #WeGotGoals - I've been interviewing people by myself for a while. When thinking about adding more joy to the experience of podcasting, I remembered one of my other favorite catch phrases: Everything Is Better With Friends.So I asked, nudged, pushed - whatever - one of my favorite people on the planet Kelly Matkovich into a co-host position. Kelly is aSweatLife's Head of Community, so she brings with her that experience of what folks in our community want and need. I'm already having more fun.All seasons, you'll hear us diving deeper with authors and experts w

This is the final episode of the seventh season of #WeGotGoals and we’re excited to kick off our annual State of Fitness survey with this episode. We’ve been keeping our fingers on the pulse of what you do to stay fit, recover and how you spend your money on wellness. And this year, we’re adding some questions about mental health.On this week’s episode, you’ll hear references to data from our state of fitness survey.A key number we’ve kept our eyes on over the years is the trend of our mostly female readers spending more and more time picking up heavy things and putting them back down. We’ve loved watching strength training grow in popularity. Obviously a few things have led to the ebb and flow of women in the weight room.Historically, women often felt welcome in different spaces in the gym - namely the aerobics studio - and there were a lot of reasons why that is. But the ‘70s were a pivotal time for women in sport and exercise. It was that decade in which we saw the invention of the sports bra, the passing

This week on the podcast, you’re going to hear a lot about “the universe” and listening to intuition from Robin Samples, the Founder of Bare Feet Power Yoga.Robin Samples and I both got into business around the same time - about 10 years ago. And over these 10 years it got easier and easier for me to scootch into the territory of woo-woo. I get the feeling that Robin’s journey to the spiritual was quicker than mine - she just brought her community along with her when she felt it was ready.And that’s the thing about Bare Feet Power Yoga - for Robin, the yoga has always been important, but I’ve heard her talk a lot about getting beyond the physical practice for years. You’ll hear us talk about a few of the ways Bare Feet has tapped into yoga off the mat, from retreats to workshops to programming that revolves around cannabis. Robin’s focus has always been on building community and giving that community what it needed, which allowed her to make subtle changes when she needed and big changes when the world demand

I’ve gotten to chat with Brrrn co-founders Johnny Adamic and Jimmy Martin a few times since meeting them in 2018. I’d like to remind you that 2018 was a time before the proliferation of zoom, so our first interview was conducted via freeconferencecall.com. I remember vividly chatting with the pair in 2018. They were equal parts entertaining and excited about a super-specific niche in fitness (cold temperature training). I have a memory of the thought, “it’s a shame that I’m the only one listening to this recording” as I wrote the article for aSweatLife.com.Call this take two. I genuinely like these guys. I looked forward to this interview for the past couple of days because I knew it would be a really good time. And I really like every person who comes onto the podcast, but some people make me nervous in a way that Jimmy and Johnny do not. They’re a mix of charming, smart and funny that you know endears people to them. And I think that is the essence of the brand they’ve created. Charming, welcoming and smart

This week on #WeGotGoals, I’m speaking with the woman behind [solidcore], Anne Mahlum. And before that, she started the not-for-profit Back on My Feet, and soon to come, she’s heading up her new venture in the fitness space: Ambition. One thing I noticed the first time I met Anne Mahlum on a lobby bench at the opening of Chicago's first [solidcore] is this: She fills up a room with her presence - and the name of that presence is the same name of her coming in 2023 concept: ambition.Ambition. A word that is often spat out of the mouths of those speaking about women along with competitive or loud. In a Harvard Business Review article that featured the findings from interviews with high achieving women, “ambition” was, for these women, associated with egotism, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, or the manipulative use of others for one’s own ends. For men? Ambition was considered a necessary and desirable part of their lives.Anne Mahlum is not shy about her ambition, that is one indisputable truth about her. She