Uber VS Taxis - Who Gets Your Business?

The recent arrival of Uber – the ridesharing service that connects riders to drivers through their app – seems to have had a polarizing effect on the good people of Ottawa.  Some see Uber as a great way of getting from point A to point B more quickly and conveniently than cabbing. Others are, let’s say less-enthusiastic about their arrival, questioning the safety and reliability of an unlicensed car service already taking major heat from Ottawa bylaw. So where does this leave Ottawa riders?

Shaken not stirred

Uber announced their official arrival in Ottawa on the weekend with a promotional program offering free rides up to $20 value. The public was intrigued. Ushering in a new system of hailing a ride, Uber allows customers to use their app to arrange a ride without leaving their comfortable surroundings. For those of us who have gone on the great adventure of trying to hail a cab in the market - or on Rideau St - of a certain hour – on a Friday or Saturday – in the dead of winter will know how this is a major point in Uber’s favour.

Reserving a cab, especially close to last call in a high-traffic area like downtown Ottawa, is really not an option. The chances of you actually getting a cab before someone snags it first is unlikely to say the least. Stumbling over to the taxi stand is an option but you’ll have to expose yourself to the elements (and by elements I mean weather and people with impaired judgement) and jostle between drunk bros to get at the next available car. If you live in a low-traffic area, your odds could be even worse. Long wait times and no-show cabs are a common occurrence. Just ask Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird

Uber is also claiming a more cost-effective approach than Ottawa’s taxi service, comparing rates from the Rideau Centre to the airport at $22 with Uber against the much steeper $40 standard taxi ride. With rates up to 40% cheaper, they are offering some bottom-line competition by providing a more wallet-friendly option. On the flip side, Uber has been known to jack up their prices on high-demand nights like St Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve.

Breaking the law

Upon Uber’s first profitable transaction, the company was met with the steel fist of staunch opposition by city of Ottawa regulators. Of Uber’s three types of services – UberTaxi, UberBlack and UberX – only UberX is currently available in the city, and it’s the only one that the city claims to take issue with. Considered an unlicensed taxi service to Ottawa By-law, drivers are operating illegally and are subject to steep fines, including two $650 fines doled out in the first day of operation by undercover by-law officers (undoubtedly an exciting day on the job). While Uber is taking care of the fines on behalf of their drivers and claiming to support them 100%, the city has said they will continue to fine any drivers operating without proper taxi licensing, possibly even taking them to court. Uber’s other services, UberTAXI – fully licensed cabs operating with Uber’s app technology, and UberBLACK – professional chauffeurs with commercial licenses and specific vehicles, are not available in Ottawa.

Supporters of the city’s position cite the troubling lack of screening, training and licensing that Uber provides to their drivers, distancing themselves from responsibility by claiming to be a provider of technology rather than an unregulated taxi service. Uber has been criticized for “flooding the market” with drivers at the expense of proper licensing and public safety. They may have a point…

Fans of Uber (or at least people who are NOT fans of the city’s taxi services) have slammed the city, saying it’s perpetuating a monopoly and refuses to evolve.

Safety First

The issue of rider safety  seems to be the main sticking point in the minds of both  the supporters and critics of Uber. There is a plethora of material at their disposal to cite harmful interactions between both licensed taxi drivers and their fares, and Uber drivers and their customers. So should we be concerned about the lack of credentials Uber drivers need to meet to use the service? Let’s break it down.

Cab Driver Requirements

To legally drive a cab in Ottawa you need to pass a driver training program at Algonquin College, which requires an English language proficiency test as a prerequisite (as well as hold a valid driver’s license and be over the age of 19). Drivers are also put through a criminal background check and must have an acceptable driving record.

Uber Driver Requirements

According to the recruitment page on Uber’s website, “In order to drive with Uber, you must have your own car with proper insurance. You must also have a valid driver’s license and pass a DMV and background check.” Do these requirements really weed out the unsafe drivers? Data particular to other cities that have both Uber and taxi services seem to lack any form of consensus. For Ottawa, it’s just too soon to tell.

One article in the Daily Beast summed up the real problem with Uber’s claims it operates a technology business.

“Uber is not a car company, but a technology company. They do not own vehicles, but software. Thus, they operate in a gray area where they claim they should not be subject to the same regulations as traditional private transportation services.”

Another article in Forbes features these somewhat troubling statements:

“When I got to one of the onboarding sessions at a local hotel, it was like, ‘Here’s your papers, go to the other room, get your phone, and great — get on the road and drive,’”

"No one from Uber looked at Coe’s car or had more than a passing conversation with him before he was set to give what the company calls “the world’s safest, most reliable ride.“ ... That means a new driver could, in theory, submit paperwork online, pass a Social Security and driver’s license check, and be cleared to download the app and hit the road without Uber ever seeing or talking to the person."

Supply and demand

Uber swept into Ottawa knowing that they were meeting a demand for a service that was not being met. There is a limited number of licensed cabs available in the city and no other option for many of that want to get where they’re going safely, quickly and comfortably. The bottom line is that the cab industry in Ottawa is archaic and static, keeping with the status quo at the expense of customer satisfaction and largely ignoring available new technology. An Angry Fan asks a great question.

Facing the new econcomy of crowd sourcing,Coventry Connections, owner of Blueline, DJs, Capital and Westway has signed on to TaxiHail, an app that offers similar benefits to Uber by allowing people to book and track cabs without going through a centralized dispatch. However, this system seems to be still unrolling, with not all cabbies up to date on the service. It would seem that some efforts are being made to bring Ottawa taxicabs into the 21st century - long wait times and poor customer service notwithstanding.

But the Ubers of this world are no shrinking violets, and it truly does appear that the monopoly Ottawa taxi service has enjoyed is coming to an end. And when it comes to this whole Uber VS Taxis thing I think I agree with M.A.

According to the Ottawa Citizen another app-based ridesharing service Hailo has its eyes on Ottawa as its next expansion.

Hailo claims they have had plans to expand into Ottawa for some time, dating back to before Uber made headlines with their planned arrival in the city. Hailo connects riders to fully licensed taxi drivers through a mobile app similar to Uber and TaxiHail. They say they will comply with Ottawa’s taxi rules to the tee, including city mandated fares. Justin Raymond, spokesperson for Hailo, told the Ottawa Citizen,

“There are a lot of markets in North America that require an overhaul of the service levels and Ottawa’s definitely one of them. . . . It’s a delicate situation in Ottawa and it takes time to do it legally and properly,”

So it seems whether you are for or against Uber’s brazen entrance onto the Ottawa transportation/technology scene, the shake-up has only just begun.  

Under: Blog

By phyatt with No comments

Craft Beer Take-Over

Is Craft Beer Creeping up on Big Beer Brands?

Between tap takeovers, countless new beer festivals, brewpubs appearing on every downtown street and a major expansion of the craft beer section in your local liquor store, it sure seems like craft beer is taking over. Beer lovers are certainly enjoying the increase in diversity, experimentation and availability of these unique smaller-batch beers. But what does the growth of the craft industry mean for their famous competition? I’m talking about the well-established behemoths of “Big Beer” brands like MolsonCoors and Anheuser-Busch, that control more than 90% of the total beer sales in Canada? Furthermore, what does it mean for the future of the Canadian beer industry as a whole?

The Emergence of Craft

While the recent boom in craft beer might make it seem like a new phenomenon, craft beer actually predates its “Big Beer” brethren by generations. Small-scale craft brewing dates back to the middle ages and beyond when every pub or inn brewed their own ales on site. This is a practice that naturally made its way to North America. In fact, before World War One there were over 110 independent breweries in Canada alone. But with the industrial revolution and large-scale production taking over, the number of separate breweries dwindled down to only 10 by 1980. During this time the top three brands in Canada, Molson, Labatt and Carling O’Keefe, owned 96% of the market share, leaving little room for variety.

With the market monopolized by easy-drinking, highly-carbonated, low-hop brews, the desire for diversity reached critical mass. The top two beer brands – Molson Canadian and Labatt Blue were produced with mass-consumption and commercial appeal in mind. Made with large amounts of corn and rice while steering clear of the traditional, more bitter flavour of barley and hops, they became rather limiting for the new generation’s connoisseurs. Faced with a growing number of options, the craft beer aficionado was born.

The resurgence in the popularity of craft beer has been on a slow but steady incline over the last three decades. In Canada the first two microbreweries opened in Vancouver, BC with Horseshoe Bay Brewing arriving on the scene in 1982, followed by Granville Island Brewing in 1984. That same year Brick Brewery appeared in Waterloo, Ontario. Over the next few years the craft market gradually began to gain notice with the opening of around 40 more breweries in Ontario and British Columbia. Imported and cheap domestic beer remained the drink of choice throughout the 1990’s, yet craft growth continued, and by 2001 over 163 breweries were operating in every province of the country and the Yukon.

The growth continues with British Columbia (38% increase in craft beer sales over the past year and over 80 craft breweries expected to rise to 100 by the end of 2015), Ontario (over 110 craft breweries with a market that has more than tripled since 2003 and continues to grow by upwards of 10% per year) and Quebec leading the way. Let's not forget the Maritimes and Prairies, also seeing major growth in craft beer production and sales.

What is a Microbrewery and What the Heck is a Brewpub?

With the boom in popularity of any industry comes terms and jargon that can confuse us mere plebs. Perhaps I can be of service by clearing up two terms that have been thrown around a lot lately.

Craft beer is “crafted” mainly in two types of places. You’ve got your craft breweries - or microbreweries, and your brewpubs. What does that mean and what is the difference? Well…

Why a Microbrewery?

The term microbrewery can be used to specify the size of the brewery or, more generally, the overall attitude and marketing strategy of the brewery. In Canada the Brewers Association of Canada defines a microbrewery as one that produces less than 250,000 hectalitres of beer annually.

Microbreweries (AKA craft breweries) can also be identified by their more experimental, hand-crafted, creative approach to beer production than macrobreweries or “Big Beer” brands. They compete more on the merits the quality of their ingredients, hands-on production, and the variety of beer they produce - rather than using the big brands’ marketing strategies based on price and high budget advertising.

...A Brewpub?

More simply, the term brew pub is a simple compound word combining brewery and pub (public house) into one. Why? Because a brewpub is a pub that brews its own beer on its very premises. Perhaps that’s oversimplifying it a bit. Brewpubs range in size and style, from humble old-style pubs to upscale restaurants offering gourmet beer and food pairings. Many brewpubs also run shops where they offer small-scale commercial sales of their products as well as merchandise celebrating their brand. Naturally, with the booming popularity of craft beer, brewpubs are also on the rise.

Big Beer VS Craft Beer – It’s On!

The beer world has long been ruled by “macrobreweries” or the multi-national conglomerates of the industry, endearingly referred to as  “Big Beer”. It’s no surprise then that taking on these corporate giants is no trifling matter. Today craft beer makes up roughly 6% of the beer industry’s total market share in Canada - an all-time high and a major feat considering the immensity of the output of big brands. And it’s expected to continue to creep up, reaching as high as 10% by the end of the decade.

Big Beer strikes back

One strategy used by big beer brands to curtail receding market share has been to buy up successful microbreweries outright. The first two to be snatched up were Creemore Springs and Granville Island, purchased by Molson in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Quebec’s Unibroue was absorbed into the Sleeman portfolio in 2004, now owned by Japan-based Sapporo. More recent strategies include producing their own “craft-style” beers, as Moosehead has done with their Hop City line of craft beers. Molson debuted Molson Wheat in 2013 and Labatt-owned Alexander Keith launched their Brewmaster series of specialty hopped beers.

Bigger beer brands often invest in successful, competing craft beer brands to keep profits up. However, despite the efforts of macrobreweries, the little guys keep popping up and the slowly eroding market share of the big brands is expected to continue.

The Future of Beer

So – Craft beer is growing, big beer brands are plateauing or waning. What does this mean for the future of beer? Well. Despite the growth of the microbrewery industry, beer sales and consumption was actually slightly down this year (0.1% according to Statistics Canada).  There were pockets of growth in some regions, including PEI seeing an increase of 4.6%. The culprits of this dimished growth? Wine, spirits and ciders are taking a small but significant bite out of beer consumption in Canada, despite craft beer’s double-digit growth - seemingly more bad news for the big brands.

Despite a general setback in sales experienced in 2013, the boom in craft sales is expected to benefit the beer industry overall, with regions experiencing the largest growth in craft sales also increasing in domestic sales and imports. In regions with little to no craft sales there is a decreasing trend in beer consumption overall.

Though big beer brands are taking measures to ensure their share of the beer market remains in the 90th percentile, they claim the recent boom in craft beer is not threatening, but rather a boon to the industry representing an overall renaissance in the beer world benefiting each player. It seems likely that we will see a continued increase in the diversity of products available, aided by growth in trends like gluten-free and fruit-infused beer. Relaxing liquor laws will continue to aid in the sales and production of small-scale breweries, while a lack of import taxes on foreign beer will continue to keep large international brands on the shelves.

The future of beer looks bright, as the renaissance continues and the brewmasters and creative marketing of craft beer keep big beer on its toes. Craft breweries are simultaneously taking beer back to its roots, using traditional ingredients and brewing techniques, while pushing the industry into the future through innovation and experimentation. I, for one, am looking forward to the next chapter. Bottoms up!

Sources

Statistics Canada

Brewer’s Association of Canada

Thedrinksbusiness.com

Wikipedia

TheCanadianEncyclopedia.ca

Under: Blog

By phyatt with 2 comments

Infographics: More than Just a Pretty Picture?

When was the last time you logged onto social media and didn’t see an infographic? They. Are. Everywhere! Perhaps they may seem easy to dismiss as simply the latest design trend but with big companies like Google and the New York Times making use of their engaging method of relaying information – I don’t think they are going anywhere. In fact the smart money says you will be seeing more and more of them in the years to come. Infographics are a powerful way to communicate a lot of information to the public in a way they can easily digest. Ignore infographics and you ignore the tool that brands large and small are using to engage with their audience and improve their SEO.

What is an Infographic?

 Infographics as we know them might seem like a relatively new thing. Infographic wasn’t a household name until the last three or four years in the online world. However, it might surprise you to know that the main concept of infographics as a method of visually conveying information has been in popular use for hundreds of years. An infographic can be defined as a visual presentation of information that is used to convey a multitude of complex facts clearly and concisely to the intended audience.

You could correctly identify a map as an infographic. Weathermen have been pointing at infographics for decades! They are all over school textbooks, transit stations, newspapers and trade shows. The idea of turning data visual for easier consumption by the general public has been with us for ages. But infographics took on a new meaning in the last few years with the emergence of the “social media infographic”.

Infographics are everywhere. Even resumes!

The infographics I’m talking about developed with the popularization of flash-based programs allowing graphic designers to create and implement visually attractive infographics that could be placed strategically on social media sites. People like a good piece of entertaining eye-candy with a valuable message, so the things started going viral. Now one can hardly log on to Facebook, Pintererst, Google+ or Twitter without seeing them. So we know people like a pretty picture, but can they really deliver what matters for your business?

Return On Investment 

They are pretty, colourful, full of captivating imagery and can communicate complex information to the general public quickly, and - if done well - memorably.  But what does it take to create an effective infographic - one that has the potential to go viral and have a significant role in your digital marketing arsenal?
It should be top of mind to any marketing professional worth their weight in business cards. When it comes to infographics, what is the true return on investment? In order to implement these beauties, you need to be able to evaluate the benefits of infographics as a marketing tool to your business.

The common challenge we run into as marketers today in the digital social marketing world we live in, is assigning measurable value to every communication tool we use. Many of the benefits to engaging an audience online are intangible and relate more to “relationship building” or building “brand credibility”. It’s difficult to connect those directly to revenue. In this climate so much more is expected of a brand’s communication (Rightfully so!).  Quality content and meaningful engagement are the status quo, but difficult to assign a dollar value. However the value of a communication initiative that connects your brand to your audience is difficult to downplay.

A projected 60% of Business to Consumer marketers are increasing spending on content. Business to Business marketers are pegged at an increase of 54%. Obviously there is perceived value there.  Why else have we been going to trade shows, galas, festivals and conferences for generations? It can often be difficult to equate an exact ROI on those as well.

That being said, there are many ways one can measure the success of an infographic sent out into the online ether. One could start by setting clear analytical objectives and milestones for as many elements as possible.

What elements might those be?

No-Nonsense, Measurable Returns

Even in the hippy dippy emotional world of social media and digital marketing there will always be hard-fast ways to measure their success - this is still business after all.

Awareness (Inbound Links, Searches, Page Views, SEO Ranking, Subscribers)

You can’t spell infographic without “info”! One of the key objectives for any endeavor that includes the implementation of an infographic will be to convey information to your audience. We have ways to measure the success of awareness building through gaining attention from Google, improving your page rank, and simply tallying how many people are looking at your work of info-tainment.

Audience Engagement (Likes, Social Sharing, Average Time Spend On Page, Comments)

So people are coming in contact with your infographic. But do they really like what they see? Find out by taking stock of how many are taking the time to absorb the info, think about it and provide feedback, share it with a friend or click the like button.

Fuzzy, Happy Intangible Returns

Of course, some of the benefits to providing an entertaining bundle of colourful information to your online audience might not be easily summed up in digits. Emotional currency’s stock is rising.

Building Relationships

If you take the time to dig around you will find in the comments, the likes, the shares, a sense that people are getting involved with your brand, that a conversation is taking place. The beauty of social media is that it can be a two-way exchange between brand and audience. If this is done in a positive, impactful way it leads to brand loyalty - the holy grail of communication objectives.

Creating Brand Credibility

When you provide information, facts, opinions, feedback, a two-way conversation between employees of your company and the potential customers you wish to reach, you are creating credibility – trust in your brand. People like to place their money where they can place their trust.

Brand Experience

When you give your audience valuable content like an infographic, it allows them to spend time with your brand, get a better feel for what your brand is about and what its values are. When done well, providing value to your audience at no cost to them can give them the warm fuzzies. Positive associations with your brand are a natural outcome and when people have as many options as they do today – positive brand experiences can make a big impact in sales.

Getting the most bang for your infographic buck

Companies are pumping out infographics like confetti but not every infographic is created equal. So what does it take to get an infographic that will connect with your audience – maybe even go viral?

The Investment

Depending on your resources you may opt for creating an infographic in-house or contract an agency. With a plethora of online applications available to build your own infographic, the option is certainly available to DIY. However, design agencies are having no trouble drumming up clients to pay anywhere from $500 to $10,000 depending on the scope of research and design involved in production. So what’s involved and is it worth paying the experts?

How to Create the Best Infographic

Let’s talk about the criteria that make an infographic valuable.
An effective infographic conveys information to the target audience in a way that is not only entertaining and clear, but most of all memorable.

The point of producing an infographic as a communication tool is to create a buzz that will help a company increase awareness on social media and engage with their audience. In order for that to occur it’s important to ensure that what viewers retain from the infographic is the intended message and not solely the visual impact. When an infographic hits the mark it will drive traffic directly to the source of the information – ie the company website, great for social media analytics and linking. So what are the ingredients of a great infographic?

 Good Infographic VS Bad Infographic

The Factors:

The way info is presented, i.e. charts, graphs, photos, illustrations

The method you choose to represent your info is key. Bar graphs? I could make one in Excel in 5 minutes - doesn't get the public’s blood pumping. Designers are coming up with creative, unique new ways to represent that data in an eye-popping way. How about a pie chart that looks like a speedometer? Whether using charts, photos, or vector illustrations it must be cohesive, dynamic, attractive and original. Getting an idea why people are forking out the $$ now?

Use of colour and typography

Obviously it is vital to an infographic to be visually dazzling and the use of colour and typography will have a large impact on the overall design. However important this is, it is far from everything. Focus on the story, the layout, and the facts first. This stuff is the icing. Important, delicious icing, but icing nonetheless.

Layout and clutter

This is the trickiest and most important part of presenting an impactful infographic. The info should be presented as a storyline. It must be engaging and include all the vital data. On top of that it has to be intuitive, dense-while not over cluttered, and original. It will help to map out the information in a wireframe before handing it over to designers.

Factual, Relevant Information

Your infographic is nothing without accurate, relevant data. Fact check. Double fact check. Do everything you can to present the complete truth. Misleading or inaccurate information will be outed at the first opportunity. Providing false data to your audience will do the opposite of building brand credibility.

Infographics are a valuable, ubiquitous part of online communication and engagement between brands and their audiences. If your brand has information to share with the public why not do it in a fun, memorable, easily digestible way. A way that is mobile, shareable, and easily identifiable. Everyone else is doing it!

Under: Blog , Branding

By phyatt with No comments

What is Willpower and Why is it So Difficult?

After prattling on in my previous three articles about sticking to fitness resolutions, I present an excellent article from the TED blog about the science of willpower - how it works and how to choose the right one.

The science of willpower: Kelly McGonigal on why it’s so dang hard to stick to a resolution

Under: Blog

By phyatt with No comments

Getting Past Arrested Development: How I Stuck To My Fitness Resolution *And You Can TOO!* Part 3

Falling Off the Wagon

I talked at length in Part 2 about how easy it is to get off track with your workouts and nutrition. Whether it’s for a legitimate reason (injury, illness, the chance to party with Vanilla Ice) or you simply weren’t feeling it, you’ve neglected your plan. It can only take one day, one slip to throw off your whole game, so I can’t stress enough how important it is to stay in control of your schedule.

Even if you are having “one of those days” or something messes up your normal routine, it’s rarely impossible to stay true to the plan. It may just require some creative tweaking. And who couldn’t use a good tweak once in a while?

Let me give you a “for instance”

Problem: Your alarm clock failed to activate/ You hit snooze too many times/ You slept in like a lazy bum and missed your morning workout. No time for breakfast. Egg McMuffin, here I come.

Solution: Get yourself to work or school, or wherever you go during the day. Adapt. Fit that workout in at lunch or in the evening. Plunking down this workout where it doesn’t belong in your routine may mean changing the workout as well. Maybe your weight session at the gym will become a body-weight/cardio session at home. Maybe now it’s a run. But whatever you do, do something. Also, everyone has time to blend up a quick shake for breakfast on the go. But if you did a complete stupid, and have also run out of shake groceries, and you have to pick up something on the go, make it something relatively healthy. Don’t be a dummy.

Problem: You planned an evening workout but were thrown a curveball at work and now there’s no time! You’ll be grabbing McDonald’s on the way home for dinner that you’ll eat hunched over your laptop, crying tears of grease.

Solution: Even if you’ve only got 15 minutes you can throw in a quick circuit or interval cardio session and get back to work. You can whip up a healthy salad in less time than it takes to go through the McDonald’s drive thru, or hey, get one from the McDonald’s drive thru (skip the dressing). If you really, really have no time to spare, try your best to get a good night’s sleep and make this your “rest day” muahaha.

If you had no choice but to skip a day, or two, or three, and that turned into a week, or two, or three, you may be sitting in the dusty trail watching that wagon move on out of sight. So now what? Give up completely? Hells no! You’ve come this far. Most of us falter at some point. And it can actually be good for your body to get a rest from training every once in a while. Some studies suggest it can even improve your results once you get back into training (beast!) mode. Changing your lifestyle for the better is far from easy. If it was, there wouldn’t be an obesity epidemic. Think about it.

Getting Back on the Wagon

You’ve stumbled, fallen, the wagon has left you behind on its way to Happyfittown. Nothing left to do but chase that old cart down and hitch yourself back up. (Thus concludes the use of the rapidly-tiring wagon analogy).

After having started the exciting, exhausting, invigorating journey of changing your lifestyle and working towards a goal, it can be completely depressing to get off track. So many people quit at this point and go back to their old ways. Look at the odds you’re up against, as mentioned in part 1!

On my journey to meeting my fitness goals (losing 25 lbs and being able to run 15km) I fell off the wagon more than once. And as I mentioned this is my first successful fitness plan after years of arrested development. What I’ve learned might seem like common sense, but is much, much easier said than done. Brush all that negativity aside and push through. Regain the determination, revamp your plan if necessary, and get right back out there. If I can, anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can.

The first step is the hardest and you know what that is:
Putting on the runners and heading out to your next sweat session.

Maintenance

If you are following your plan you will notice that after a couple of weeks this magical thing starts happening and your workout routine clicks into a sort of autopilot setting. It will become just part of your typical week and you will put in a lot less time stressing about it and playing the mind manipulation games necessary to get yourself to the gym. This is what I call ‘getting into the zone’.

That is not to say that you won’t have moments where you don’t feel like hitting the gym, but you do it anyway after little thought. If you miss a workout you will easily reschedule it and move on with your day. This is a great place to be but it is also a fragile state. There is the constant danger of meandering off track completely if the pattern is interrupted. Naturally, one must not let that happen.

Keep Yourself Interested

I find a key thing that helped me in this stage was to keep it fresh. I mix up my cardio when it was gets boring. Different cardio activities I alternate between include:

·         Swimming 50 laps in a 25m pool

·         Running 5k outside

·         Running Intervals

·         Hill Sprints

·         Distance Skating

·         Rowing

·         Distance Cycling

·         Interval Cycling

·         Spin Class

·         Step Class

·         Dance Class

·         Elliptical Intervals

·         Circuit Training

·         Skipping Rope

·         Squat jumps

·         Combinations of any of the above

I switch out healthy meals and snacks in my diet to curb the temptation to venture astray – including finding some boss healthy recipes on Pinterest and comparing the calories in my favourite adult beverages on getdrunknotfat.com.

Some of my Go To Snacks Include:

      

Avocado Chocolate Mousse

·         Hummus + Veggies

·         Dark Chocolate

·         Spicy Kale Chips

·         Crispy Minis

·         Apple + Cheddar Cheese

·         Cucumber + Goat Cheese

·         Yogurt + Berries + Low Cal-High Fibre Cereal

·         Baked Apple with Cinnamon + Oats

·         Banana + Peanut Butter Wraps

Dealing With Schedule Changes and Interruptions

Let’s say you are humming right along in ‘the zone’, completing your workouts consistently, eating well, seeing progress and generally feeling awesome when – CLANG – here comes the wrench, that thing that throws your schedule and workout plan into chaos.

Be it a new work or class schedule, vacation, assignment, book club, etc – it can be a lot more damaging to your plan than it sounds. For me, it threw me right off the wagon. Suddenly, with little warning my work schedule went from solid consistency to spastic flip-flopping. Instead of my cozy 8-4’s I was suddenly working evenings, weekends, and making time for evening classes. It was easy for my plan to go by the wayside in the midst of all these changes. Depending on how well you adapt to change in your routine, even the smallest thing can throw off your training and nutrition goals.

Modify

It sounds like simple common-sense but what worked for me was to re-evaluate my week and reposition my workouts within my windows of free time. Suddenly Mondays and Thursdays weren’t going to work for my lower body workouts because I could only get to the gym during peak hours when the equipment I needed had a wait time – something I do not have the patience for. I swapped them out for my upper body days when possible and found alternate exercises for the weeks when I couldn’t accommodate that switch.

This is just an example of one thing I had to modify. For you it might be learning to get up extra early in the morning to fit in a workout, or go for an evening or lunchtime run. Possibilities are endless, but the idea is to be flexible and plan ahead. If I know I have an impossibly busy Saturday coming up, my whole week’s schedule will have to change to allow me to stay on track. The super-intelligent-organized folks among us may even plan contingencies for just such occasions before they occur. I do like a back-up plan.

Taking it Up a Notch

When all goes according to plan and you reach your goal it is indeed time to celebrate this wondrous accomplishment. Against the odds, with a literal buttload of hard work and dedication, overcoming obstacles and just plain doing it - you’ve done it! That is huge and you deserve every good feeling and compliment that comes your way.

Now what?

Resting on your laurels and letting all that hard work go to waste would be a shame. 

Maintenance is option one.

If you are happy with where you are at physically, you may choose to maintain it by continuing to do what you’re doing. However, be careful not to backslide by continuing with the same exercises at the same intensity. Your body may adapt to your workout to the point where it needs to be challenged or you will stop seeing results. Here is a great article about why and when you should vary your routine. If you are getting bored with it, chances are your body is too.

Remember to stay aboard that old wagon. This is a time when it is common for people to regress, especially with diet. You may feel you deserve a break or a treat from your healthy meal plan but this can be a dangerous slippery slope. Reward yourself for your hard work and then get back to eating the best way for your body.

Maybe you have achieved step one in a slew of fitness goals up your sleeve and it is now time to move on to the next item on the agenda.

New goal is option two.

Don’t you feel like a million bucks after what you’ve been able to accomplish? You should! For me, this gives me the confidence to pursue things further. Suddenly running a half marathon doesn’t seem like the impossible, leg-buckling task it once did. You’ve proven that you can push yourself to greatness – now what else is out there that tickles your fancy? Plan it and do it! Just make sure you have that same determination that will get you there. There is a plethora of sites that are excellent sources for finding new workout routines and training plans for things like triathlons, fitness competitions and races.

However, before I tell you that you can do anything and the sky is the limit – please be smart and consult a health professional if you are going to do something extreme like any of the above. Realize that the body does have its limits and they are different for everyone.

Although staying fit and active is not everyone’s idea of a good time, for some (like myself) it becomes the only way to live. After all kinds of false starts and wagon falls, I have finally gotten to the point where I enjoy my time at the gym or wherever my active lifestyle takes me. I met my goal and continue to up the ante. But I will be the first to admit it isn’t always easy. I have had to work through the same challenges and pitfalls that fall on so many of us out there. 

If there is one thing I hope I can give you through these articles, it is the full confidence that you CAN do it. I hope my words can help in some small way to get you there.

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By phyatt with No comments