Recent Articles
Practical Ways to Increase Daily Movement
Daily movement keeps our body functioning properly. To help you fight against the sedentary design of modern life, here are some practical ways to increase your daily movement.
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How to Get the Most From Your Workout
Workouts are a small portion of your week. Thus, you need to make the most of your time. Here are 5 steps to help you get the most out of your workouts.
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Overrated vs. Underrated: Recovery Edition
The “recovery” sector of the fitness industry is worth big bucks. The truth is, we believe most recovery tools are overrated. The good news? Some of the best recovery tools you can use are virtually free.
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5 Reasons Why Fitness Needs to be Personalized
Random workouts lead to random results. At OPEX Gyms, we offer personalized fitness. We believe it’s the best way to achieve your goals and stay consistent for years to come.
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5 Ways to Reduce Stress
Finding the balance between stress and rest provides your body with the resilience it needs to increase your strength and fitness levels. Here are five different ways to reduce stress to help you find balance.
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5 Things We Know for Sure About Strength Training
Strength training is a staple in all OPEX Gyms. But it isn’t just about building muscle or lifting heavy weights. Here are some lesser known facts of strength training.
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How to Balance Your Stress
How’s your stress balance? There are only 24 hours in a day, and you need to balance your stress and rest appropriately.
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Why Personalization Matters
Our gyms offer personalized fitness. We believe this is the key to consistency and achieving your fitness goals. But why does personalization matter?
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How to Hit Protein Goals
“Are you getting enough protein in your diet?” It may be the most common question asked in any fitness environment. Today, we will look at why we need protein.
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Why We Love Aerobic Training
Cardio gets a bad rap. But you won’t hear that kind of talk around OPEX Gyms! Here are seven reasons we love cardio.
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The Fitness Assessment
Every time a new client begins at one of our gyms, their first and second session is always a fitness assessment.
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What is Tempo?
Tempo is how fast you perform an exercise. To help you make the most of resistance training, let’s address what tempo is and its benefits.
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Do This, Not That
To help you demystify fitness, here is what you should do (and what you shouldn’t!) to reach your fitness goals.
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6 Movement Patterns to Create Balanced Workouts
What exercises should I do in the gym? There are 6 movement patterns that well rounded workouts always include.
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How to Make Fitness Stick After January
January is always a special month. As we usher in the new year, the hope for a brighter future is high.
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Fitness Support Network
Reaching your fitness goals is a long road. So to help you find success here’s how to build your own fitness support network in six steps.
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One Goal for The Next 10 Years
What is the one thing you want to work on for the next 10 years?
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A Daily Schedule for Fitness Success
To reach your fitness goals you need to take small steps towards them day in and day out. A great way to take those steps is to create a daily schedule that includes behaviors that get you closer to your goals.
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The Mental Health Benefits of Exercise
Exercise has a lot of physical benefits, but have you ever thought about the mental health benefits of exercise?
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Lose the Cheat Day Mentality
“On Saturday I’m having a meat lovers pizza for my cheat day and I can’t wait.” Sound familiar?
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A Guide to Carbohydrates
Here is why we recommend that you eat carbs, our recommended sources, and our guide to serving size.
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The Fitness Success Pyramid
The fitness industry is confusing. Trends come and go like the changing tide. Without guidance, it can be a challenge to reach your fitness goals.
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Learn to Unplug Daily
When was the last time you unplugged? Nope, not the last time your phone wasn’t plugged in. We mean the last time you took a break from technology.
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5 Smart Ways to Drink More Water
It’s safe to say that we love water. This necessary element of life has a host of benefits. Here are 5 smart ways to make sure you’re drinking enough water.
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Mythbusters: I Need Equipment to Strength Train
It’s a common fitness myth that you need equipment to strength train. However, you can effectively strength train using your bodyweight alone.
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How Often Should I Work Out?
It can be difficult to determine how often you should work out. If you listen to social media influencers you can quickly find yourself working out seven days a week.
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How to Train Anywhere with OPEX Gyms
OPEX Gyms are about so much more than just exercise in a facility. One of the best things about OPEX Gyms is the ability for our clients to train anywhere.
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Dietary Fat 101
So is fat healthy? The answer to this question depends on the quality and quantity of the fats you consume.
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Six Reasons to Squat
Dive into the six reasons you'll never want to miss a squat day in the gym again!
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How Much Carbohydrate Should I Eat?
How Much Carbohydrate Should I Eat? We’re dedicating today’s blog to one of the most common nutrition questions our coaches receive: “How much carbohydrate should I eat?” With the popular...
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The Cool Down
Recovery is king when it comes to results. If you’re not recovering, it doesn’t matter what you do in the gym.
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Seven Fundamental Nutrition Habits
We all know that in exercise it’s important to have a foundation of quality movement before we move to more complex endeavors. Nutrition is no different.
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The Morning Routine
Starting your day with a consistent morning routine is essential to a successful day.
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When is the Best Time to Workout?
What does science say about the ideal time to train? There are definite pros and cons to each training time, and we’ll lay them out for you so you can decide for yourself.
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Setting Fitness Goals Through COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major disruption to the lives of people around the world. However, with a little bit of reframing and reprioritizing, you can still move forward with your fitness journey.
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Your Fitness Passport
With gyms closed around the world in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we want you to know that we’re here to help.
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Success is the Sum of Small Efforts
Fitness routines and daily schedules have been thrown through the loop as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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How to Stay Healthy at Work
Being physically active and eating well can be challenging in an office environment. Here are seven implementable steps to help you stay healthy in the workplace.
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Long-Term Fitness: Trend vs. Truth
Getting fitness results isn’t as hard as you might think. What can be challenging is knowing the best way to hold onto those results for life.
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How to Win at Long-Term Fitness
Long term fitness success means aligning your actions today with results that may not manifest for years to come.
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The Relationship Between Food and Exercise
There is an undeniable relationship between food and exercise. But exercising only to “burn” the calories you consume can make it feel like there is a direct transaction happening between the foods you eat and your workouts.
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How to Meal Prep - Your 1 Hour Plan
Meal prep is the foundation of any successful week. Setting aside an hour on a Sunday to prepare healthy meals takes decisions during a busy week off your plate.
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The Best Bang for Your Buck Recovery Tools
Recovery is a hot topic in the fitness space. Whether it’s supplements, mobility tools, or of course, CBD cream, the market is flooded with hacks and magic pills to speed up the recovery process.
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What's In Your Supplements
The supplement industry has us believing that their magic pills will make us stronger, faster, and healthier. Fish oil and Vitamin D help us fight the inflammation and maximize all the essential fatty acids we consume in our diets on a daily basis.
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How Much Protein Do I Need to Eat?
Variety is the spice of life, and it couldn’t be truer when it comes to the foods on your plate! But it’s not only about combining food groups like veggies, meats, fruits, nuts, and seeds. It’s also important to vary the type of each food group you eat on a regular basis.
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Basic Lifestyle Guidelines: Holiday Edition
The holiday season is well and truly underway. Here are a few simple tips to help you enjoy the holidays and continue to progress towards your goals!
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Our Favorite Aerobic Workouts
There’s an endless number of cardio machines out there, but at OPEX Gyms around the world there’s a few options that are staples.
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How to Beat Sugar Cravings
It’s all too easy to let sugar cravings get the best of you, especially around the holidays. But a diet high in sugar is not connected to longevity, feeling great, or looking great! Here is how to beat sugar cravings.
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Our Favorite Work Capacity Test
Every new client at an OPEX Gym goes through work capacity testing to measure their aerobic system.
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The 3 Pillars of Personalized Nutrition
When you think about nutrition, what comes to mind? At OPEX we boil it down to three pillars of intention for personalized nutrition: Brain, Body, and Life.
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Do I Need Cardio?
Do I need to do cardio? This is a question clients ask a lot. But the answer is, as always, it depends. Moving your body in some way, every day is vital for your health. But the kind of activity and the intensity is determined by your goals.
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Got Sun?
We’ll admit it. We’re vitamin D addicts. Daily sun exposure is one of the simplest ways to increase recovery, mood, digestive health, immune function, neurological health, and performance.
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Resist Entropy
The aging process is an inevitable part of life. We all have a “peak” for physical performance within us, and at some point, we switch from climbing towards it to heading down the other side.
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The Goal Setting Roadmap
Goal setting is an incredibly important part of the OPEX coach-client relationship because it holds both parties accountable to the training program. Here is the roadmap for goal setting used in OPEX Gyms.
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Behaviors over Bandaids
Here’s a crazy idea… What if we all stopped looking for the hacks, magic pills, and silver bullets to answer our health woes and started examining the behaviors that caused us problems in the first place?
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5 Reasons Why Every Program Should Start with an Assessment
If you’ve hung around OPEX for long enough you’re bound to have heard someone say the words, “assess, don’t guess.” Here are 5 reasons why we insist that every fitness program in an OPEX Gym begins with an assessment.
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Is Keto The Answer?
What is the keto diet? Chances are you’ve heard of the ketogenic diet by now. The keto diet is a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. There is a time and a place for a keto diet, but is it the right nutrition approach for everyone? Absolutely not!
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The Essential Movement Patterns
A well-designed resistance training program incorporates a variety of movement patterns to create structural balance. Here are the six essential movement patters you can expect to find in an OPEX Gym near you.
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It's Not Gluten's Fault
Gluten-free diets are all the rage. The letters “gf” have become ubiquitous on restaurant menus and grocery stores are littered with gluten-free options, from cauliflower crusts to cookies. But it may not actually be gluten that is causing you to feel ill.
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5 Reasons You Need a Coach
In OPEX Gyms every single client is matched with their own personal coach. Regardless of your starting point and your goals, the fastest way to achieve success is through personalized fitness.
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Is Personal Training Worth It?
In this article, we take a bit more human approach to help you determine how much personal training and your personal trainer are worth to you. Because that is so unique to each person, we want to give you a formula of sorts to determine how much you value personal training. That way, you can be confident whether personal training is worth it for you or not.
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What Are You Training For?
Have you ever stopped to think, “What am I training for?” It is common knowledge that exercise is something we “should” do because it’s good for us. But through experience coaching many thousands of clients, we know that “should” is not a strong enough reason to keep you inspired to workout when life gets busy or stressful.
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Why We Love Aerobic Training
Aerobic training is an important part of any OPEX program. From an evolutionary perspective, as humans, we are made to travel long distances and sustain work for an extended period of time. Whether your goals are longevity and vitality, increased strength, or improved endurance, individualized aerobic work has a host of health and performance benefits.
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Do Your Short-Term and Long-Term Goals Align?
It is common for clients to come to us with specific goals in mind. While it is good to have specific short-term goals as they aid in inspiration, it's also important to make sure that your short-term and long-term goals align.
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We’re Here When the Newbie Gains Wear Off
Been hitting the gym on a regular basis for a few months now and feeling great about it? As you should! Unfortunately, these incredible newbie gains, as they’ve become known, are inevitably short-lived. Thankfully, we’re here when the newbie gains wear off.
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Personal Training vs. An OPEX Gym
When it comes to personalized fitness you have two choices. Personal training and personalized fitness through an OPEX Gym. Learn the differences and why we prefer an OPEX Gym.
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Unpopular Opinion - It Depends
Many gyms promise to be the solution you’ve been looking for all your life. The truth is that what you need depends on you. It’s relative to your unique body and life.
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Higher-Order Nutrition
At OPEX Gyms we don’t buy into diet dogma. Instead, we teach our clients how to embrace higher-order nutrition. So what’s higher-order nutrition? It’s nourishing your body with foods and habits that help you live your definition of a larger life.
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Drink Water
Do you want better performance, recovery, sleep and energy levels? Drink more water!
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The Journey to Fitness Autonomy
It may sound a little strange, but at OPEX Gyms our goal is for you to reach the point where you don’t need us anymore. Our ideal journey for you as an OPEX client is to learn and internalize the behaviors and tools that will help you live long and prosper so that you develop autonomy over your health.
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What Are Macronutrients
Macronutrients supply the body with calories. Different foods contain varied ratios of the three macronutrients–fat, protein and carbohydrate. Understanding why each macro is important and what kinds of foods contain large amounts of them will help you put together meals that support your body composition, performance and health goals.
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Eat the Rainbow
Eat the Rainbow. It’s no secret that vegetables are good for us. Eating a diverse array of colorful veggies is a great way to boost your intake of fiber, a variety of micronutrients and phytonutrients. OPEX Gyms provide personalized nutrition coaching, but one thing every client can benefit from is eating the rainbow!
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Step-by-Step: What It Looks like to Be a Client of an OPEX Gym
Step-by-Step: What It Looks like to Be a Client of an OPEX Gym. You will be teamed up with a professional coach—someone who has been through the comprehensive OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP)—to meet you exactly where you’re at in this moment of time, mentally and physically.
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Mental Health Benefits of Exercise
We all know that working out offers a host of physical benefits, but did you know that it can also nurture a healthy mind?
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We Know Why You Can’t Sleep
The greatest workout is only as effective as your ability to recover from it, and the most important factor in your recovery is sleep. Sleep-wake cycles are in our DNA. Honoring them is essential to our physical and emotional wellbeing. We are wired to sleep with the moon and rise with the sun – our natural circadian rhythm.
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Strength Training for Women
The tides are slowly starting to turn, but too many ladies are still shying away from lifting weights. In this blog we’re going to address three common fears that stop women from using barbells and dumbbells, and six amazing reasons to embrace resistance training.
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The Best of Both Worlds
Over the past 20 years, the OPEX method was developed through the coaching experience of our Founder, James Fitzgerald. James has worked with thousands of clients in both personal training and group fitness environments, and eventually created his own approach to fitness by blending the positives of these two worlds.
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What is Progress?
Progress in the fitness world is typically measured by lifting heavier, losing pounds or running faster. But not all goals are so quantifiable. In OPEX Gyms, we look beyond just the barbell, the scale and the timer when tracking progress.
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Fixed Vs. Growth Mindset
There is an important distinction between approaching life with a fixed versus a growth mindset. The former limits progress, while the latter fuels it. Having a growth mindset is integral to seeking progress. Those with this approach to the world see failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.
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Easy Swaps
It is a common nutrition myth that to make progress, you need to make big changes. Learn how OPEX Coaches uses small swaps to make a big impact on the nutrient density of your meals while making it easier to remain compliant.
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