I’m going through all the submissions from the Summer Shred contest this week and I want to say I’m so proud of everyone. The feedback has been incredible and it’s so inspiring!  I’m still accepting after photos until Sunday this week so make sure if you haven’t sent them yet, please do so as soon to make sure you’re entered to win when I randomly select people on Friday, July 10th.  That reminds me, if you aren’t subscribed to my channel make sure to do it now so you don’t miss the alert when the video goes live.  Also, if you haven’t joined ZGYM yet or tried one of these workouts yet, I just put the Summer Shred #1X workout for free so people can try it and start the series now if they want! 🙂

Anyway, I wanted to take a minute and share this story with everyone.  This email I received from ZGYM member, Olga, from Russia:

I am very glad to send you my before and after photos for the contest and that I have these photos now because I had doubts that when I finish the contest I would see a difference in my appearance. First of all, it was very stressful. I started to follow you in April 2015 and have never felt that one or another your workout was easy to do. Never. Each and every day I sweat and I’m out of breath, I even scream sometimes (if you could see my cat’s eyes that moments, he really fears for my life). The summer shred series was really hard to do, the workouts were sometimes longer than previous ones and for me it’s psychologically difficult to do exercises for a certain amount of time instead of a certain number of reps. I do not use a timer clock, I just follow you, so I thank you very much for telling me how many seconds are left so I don’t go crazy! 🙂

What was more challenging was that two out of five weeks coincided with my summer vacation. When everyone had already prepared their bodies FOR beach season, I was doing it DURING the beach season.  It was an all-inclusive Turkish beach resort, where even garden cats were constantly lounging on the grass and eating in front of me… my sweaty and heavy breathing marred their pleasure. What is more, each and every evening, when all the paradise citizens went for over-indulging  themselves with meals, I went in the opposite direction carrying a heavy dumbbell on my shoulder with silent reproach.  I have only jump rope with me so each and every morning, I borrowed a dumbbell from the hotel’s gym. (They didn’t have kettlebell so I did with dumbbell all the exercises.)

Please, do not think that I’m complaining because of course I am not, I just share with you stories of my zgym life. It’s only for 10-15 minutes, if I compare them with day duration it’s nothing. And now, the summer shred series have finished and we returned to our regular schedule and I do the regular schedule with more ease and pleasure! I get a great buzz from training. This week I went to dance school to dance a bit. I have not gone to fitness studio for ages. The coach gave us a twenty-minute set for all the muscle groups. That set just killed other girls in the end of the first five minutes. And I was just smiling. I just couldn’t believe that it’s so easy to do! And even in the end of the set, when some of the girls started crawling towards the exit, I was keeping on smiling, because it was still easy to do. It’s incredible!

On the whole, you can’t imagine how many times I thought of you with gratitude and your significant contribute in my life! When I have to run, because I’m late; when I have to pick up something heavy; when I have do something late with my last bit of strength; when I dress up and look good; when I play with my children… By the way, today your army enlarged with one little warrior (see the video I attached of my daughter where she is jumping over the box.) That morning, I as usual was training with you, when my daughter woke up and came to me at the exact moment I just jumped over the box. She is 2 years old. It was not the first time she see me training, but that was the first time she said: “Wow, how are you doing that?!”. I interrupted my training, gave her a little box, some instructions and she started to jump over. You may not know this but children of her age have very poor jump abilities, it’s pretty difficult coordination movement for them, but she took the box, listened to instructions and carefully started to jump over. Just because her mother jumps. On the video you can see (but you cannot translate, unfortunately) that just after the first jump she asked me: “Do you love me?” and I answer: “Of course, I love you so much!”. That moment I feel it so clear: this is the main result for me. For me, a beautiful body is just a good bonus; the main path is to boost my body performance and abilities but now I think that to be an example for my children is as important as to be stronger to me individually.

So, Zuzka, thank you very much, I wish you all the best! And I am looking forward to Arm Balance Challenge so much!

I’m so thankful she sent this to me and I hope you all can get some inspriation from her too.  Even though she was on vacation at an all-inclusive resort she still enjoyed herself while staying consistent with her training and she had incredible results.  Not only with her appearance but physically and mentally.  There is a lot more to gain from being fit than just a good body, it affects confidence and happiness too.