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Blog

“You look great! What are you doing?”

Have you gotten the compliment “YOU LOOK GREAT! What are you doing!?” Here’s what we want you to say… “Thank you! (Blush) I workout at CrossFit Jungle Gym, I love it! What are you doing tomorrow? You should come with me I’ll introduce you to my coach!”. When they say yes, text us: your friends name, date and time, phone number and/or e-mail… We’ll take care of the rest! Or you can just have them book a No Sweat Intro on our site!

Our Mission

We’re trying to improve the lives of our community through training and nutrition. Your friend… is our community, your family is our community, your neighbor, your co-worker are part of our community. We’d love your help to change more lives! All your friend needs is an invite from you… personally.

Ease their minds about how they get started… we have a very specific route to achieving the results they(and you) want. All they (you) have to do is follow the process!

Here’s how new members get started at CFJG.

  1. No Sweat Intro
    • The point is to meet with a coach who wants to understand new prospective member goals, the obstacles they face in achieving them, what they’ve tried before, what has worked and hasn’t worked for them.
    • After understanding Guide them to the best possible training program for them that includes: the right programming, measurements that pertain to their goals, an appropriate amount of accountability, the right about of intensity, that fits their schedule.
  2. First 60 Days
    • Teaches new members how to train, how to maximize results within CFJG, prepare them for a smooth transition to group sessions, create new positive habits and routine.
    • Learn more about the members individual needs and preferences for training as it relates to their goals.
    • We have 5 different service levels… each are differentiated in levels of accountability, individual vs group coaching, amount of nutrition guidance, amount of goal specific training
  3. Next 90 Days
    • Analysis of what you’ve been doing, the progress that has been made, what was working, what wasn’t working with a 3 month plan to make measurable progress towards the set goals!
    • The continuous cycle of here was the plan, here was the execution, here were the results, what’s next?

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Workouts

WOD 9/10/2020

Strength:
  • 5×5 Back Squat
Workout:

For Time – 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

  • KB Goblet Squat 70/53
  • Russian KB Swings
  • Pull-Ups
Categories
Blog Nutrition

My current actions become what future

My current actions become what future? Society has ingrained in our minds that weight is important. Somehow “we know” if we are getting fitter or closer to a body transformation if the number on the scale is going down. Is the scale really the most important thing? Are we taking the actions that put us on the right track for the future we want?

Measure current actions

Here at CFJG, we are all about ditching the scale as our sole measurement. Instead we take biometric measures for additional data points and to help us speak the language that most relate to when thinking about improving their health. Weight however carries less value to us in the grand scheme of better your overall health. Don’t get me wrong, since it matters to you, it matters to us. But we never zone in solely on this number.

In our experience, the number on the scale is the most common number that people reference when trying to gauge their current level of health. Striving to add 10lbs to a deadlift, cutting time off your 1 mile run, or getting a strict pull up sounds awesome. But many who are starting with us may not be able to see how improving physical performance translates to improved biometric measures.

If you’ve been with us for awhile now, we hope we’ve convinced you to chase performance and trust in us that by doing so you will be healthier. A better version of your former self.

Base for the future

We use the Theoretical Hierarchy of Training Development to help guide our athletes to success. This model helps us analyze our members shortcomings or more positively put, areas for improvement.

When you’re looking to get fitter or change any of your biomarkers we recommend you consult the hierarchy first! This will direct you the right current actions that become what future you’d like to have. Those actions will give you the most bang for the buck. Ask yourself, how strong is my base (nutrition)? If you haven’t fine tuned your nutrition yet the good news is you have a ton of potential! May you have done some fine tuning, but it hasn’t stuck. I think we can all admit that our nutrition could be better. The good news is, since nurition is the base, it only takes small changes to start seeing the rewards.

Many people come to us and they tell us of a variety of different nutrition plans they have tried and WORKED. Only for a short period of time though. The probelm is whatever these plans asked of them was management in the moment. Not over the long haul. We’ve run nutrition challenges in the past and the results have been amazing! Each time around we are shooting for the same amazing results and improve our guidance to get long lasting results. Our nutrition challenge has a goal… to make changes that feel less like a diet and more like a new simple lifestyle.

Create the actions

Your task for the rest of this week… is get real with yourself and your food. Journal your nutrition habits… WRITE IT DOWN. At the end of the week ask yourself…

  1. My current actions become what future? What does my future look like if I continue eating exactly how I am today?
  2. Am I ready to make a change?
  3. If the answer is yes… book a Nutrition Intro session.

Our Nutrition Program and our Nutrition Challenge aren’t anything crazy or cold turkey type of programs. They are programs built on progression. Programs we can confidently and easily promote as life changing.

Realize the future

If you’re ready to make changes, we are ready to hold you accountable!

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Blog

Shed Body Fat Fast

Let’s make an action plan to Shed Body Fat Fast. This article should serve as a base of knowledge to work from.

The 3 Objectives to Shedding Body Fat

Shedding extra body fat is a goal of many Americans. CrossFit Jungle Gym uses proven methods to help get you there! So let’s outline the changes you should be making in order to shed the body fat. Your extra body fat may be holding you back from living the life you want. Whether it’s getting more pull ups, feeling confident at work, running faster or keeping you from going to the beach. We are going to focus on 3 key objectives: higher activity level, increase muscle mass and improving nutrition inputs. These 3 things are going to make losing that extra body fat simple and improve your fitness!

Higher Activity Levels

The first thing we want to achieve is a higher activity level. Doing so is going to expend more of our energy leaving less to become stored as fat. This will help keep us from attaining more fat and begin the process of slimming down.

Increasing your activity level is quite simple. Do more today than yesterday, more this week than last week, more this month than last month. This change in activity level is needed to break your state of homeostasis (staying the same, plateau). This increase will force your body to burn more energy than it did before. Then we’ll begin tipping the balance towards losing unproductive body weight. There are several ways to do this.

Add more movement to your daily activities. You’ve heard it a million times by now but don’t be afraid to park at the back of the parking lot. Don’t be afraid to take the stairs or to walk, run, jump or skip to where you are going. Don’t be afraid to do a couple push-ups, squats or sit ups when you have a couple minutes. Just take advantage of any time that you have to MOVE. There are so many other benefits to body movement besides increasing you activity level it would be silly not to!

Start by committing to a schedule. If you don’t currently workout, commit yourself to doing two workouts a week and pick the days! Don’t go too crazy at the start. We just need to do more than we were doing before we don’t need to go from 0-60! We have all the details sorted out for you in our First 60 Days program.

Build more muscle mass

Secondly, we are going to want to build more muscle mass. Having more muscle mass is like having a larger engine. It burns more fuel, leaving less to hang around to be stored later. Not to mention it shifts the body composition quickly in the right direction!

Nutrition Inputs

Finally, we need to take note of our nutrition. This will ensure it aligns with our goals of losing body fat. It will also allow us to maintain more muscle mass, the good stuff.

The value of a coach

Find a coach or a personal trainer. There are good coaches and trainers all over the country. Finding one is going to help you improve all 3 objectives. Here’s how…

Accountability = Shed Body Fat

Having an appointment or paid session is another commitment that you make that will force you to go.

Knowledge = Efficiency = Shed Body Fat

A good coach is also going to help you be more productive with your time and efforts. Experienced coaches will know the best movements, rep schemes and be fluent in modifying for your needs. Shorting the time to your desired results.

Meet with a CFJG coach and building your plan to shed body fat fast!

If it’s time for you to shed body fat fast start here! Increase your activity levelbuilding more muscle mass and changing your nutrition. This will lead to a fitter and healthier you for years to come. You will be able to enjoy more physical activities and reap the benefits of your newly found active lifestyle!

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Blog

Finding the Right Fitness Program

The hardest part of getting fit? Finding the Right Fitness Program

Finding the right fitness program to achieve your goals can be a little daunting. Here we breakdown the major points that will help you select a program that fits you and your needs. In an age when time is money finding a program with a proven track record is the most important place to start. Programs that have a good track record likely have systems in place to ensure you: follow the program, recognize your progress, has a feedback loop for continual improvement, knows and identifies what metrics are important to your goals and builds the habits that will help you succeed not just in the short term but also the long run!

Find a fitness program with a proven track record

When finding the right fitness program for you, start first with narrowing the field down to programs that get the results as you want for other people. Has the program got results for somebody else? If you’re interested in in weight loss, find a program that has produced weight loss for others and has a bunch testimonials saying… “I’ve lost 15 pounds in two months”. “I lost 50 pounds over the course of a year and I’ve kept it off”. How do we do that? How does anyone do that? It’s through collecting objective data. here’s your weight on day one. here’s your weight on day 60. here’s your date on day 150. here’s your here’s your weight on day 240. here’s your weight on day 365. If you want a body composition change, it’s what’s your body fat percentage on day one, day sixty, then 150… you just keep on measuring. You’re wondering well, I want to “get stronger” well let’s take some measures. How strong are you now? How much weight can you lift off the floor? That’s called a deadlift. Alright, you lift 100 pounds today, then you lift 150 pounds a month from now. Then hey look 200 pounds and then eventually you lift 500 pounds. Guess what you got stronger. If that’s the metric that you wanted to measure your success by, then you’ve been successful. You define a good program by it’s ability to produce the result that you want to get.

Follow the program

Here’s another secret when finding the right fitness program… DO THE PROGRAM, FULLY! What program should you go do? Go do the one that has got that results for other people. Then, KEY, do ALL the steps that got those people those results. You can’t just sign up for the program and then hope it happens for you. You have to actually DO exactly what the program is. For example, we have had people come into our gym and go “Hey, I want to lose 50 pounds”… cool awesome. “Here’s what you need to do… you need to do this exercise program, and do this nutrition program.” and “Let’s make it happen!” and then there’s guidance all along the way. Here’s the steps that you need to take then you don’t take those steps. Guess what’s going to happen? You’re not going to get the same results as the person who took all the steps that they needed to take!

Seeing, acknowledging and measuring wins…

We’re here is to help guide you through the steps to success. We’ve taken others on the same path you’re at, helped them jump over hurdles so we know what progress looks like. To someone who hasn’t been on the path before a lot of times you can’t see progress or the signs of improvement because you don’t know what to look for yet. So a good coach is going to show you the success that you’re having. Then give you step by step instruction to hit the next milestone. When you get to your big goal it’s a big celebration but we get there by celebrating all those little victories along the way. Then when you get there, we look back at all the little steps that we took along the way.

Starts with success and builds upon it

When a client succeeds, we document it #whatworks. When a client fails we document it #whatdoesnotwork. What works… the system is built or improved for the next person who has the same goal. All we’re doing is going and asking the coaches. “What were the factors that made John Doe successful in losing 50 pounds?” Asking the client “What were obstacles that you were facing that we helped you overcome?”. Then emphasizing and improving those aspects within the program to create better results. I take that same exact plan and now I’m going to go back through it, I’m going to look and look and look and look and look. Here’s where we can make improvements! Here’s where we can make improvements! I think this caused the problem that John ran into. Let’s make a small adjustment and see if when Jane Doe goes through it if we can make this happen a little bit faster. Ultimately, all we want to do is know what your objective goal is. Have we helped somebody accomplish that before? Then we’re going to replicate that same plan. Then we’re refining it to make it make it faster and more effective for you. If you’re looking for a program that produces results, go check out the results! You also want to see that the facility of that program is not only producing results but trying to make them happen faster or make them better. Ask your prospective programs… how has your service improved over the last year, 5 years. Consistent improvement is very important!

Builds habits

What we want to see is that you’re making continual progress towards your goal. It doesn’t necessarily matter whether you hit your goal tomorrow or in three months. If you’re making progress towards your goal then you’re on the right track. A program must build habits if you’re going to get where you want to go AND stay there. Whether or not you’ve reached that end result exactly how you defined it in the beginning is not as important as making the steps that over the course of two years. I mean if you want to lose 50 pounds, lift 200 pounds or get ripped six-pack abs, some of those are really long term goals. If you hope to maintain the goal as the new status quo, it’s not going to be about: what you’re doing today. It’s going to be about what you do consistently over the course of a longer period of time. If you can create the habits that default you to your goals that’s when a program becomes infinitely successful.

The metrics that match your goals

If your problem is you don’t know how to define what a good workout program is, well then you’re at the right place. You should be here because we’ve already defined it. You have one of six goals, we’ve had success getting people to all of those goals. Some metrics are max weights on specific lifts, times on specific workouts, BF%, Sketetal Muscle Mass, Weight, Inches… all depending on your specific goal. Getting 6 Pack abs and toning up your legs have the same metrics and the base program isn’t that different. Start with the plan and refining from there. If the first thing you think about a program is “do I like it” “is it fun” then you’re looking for entertainment not training (which is OK, but not the same thing… ps we make training fun and get results at the same time). What is certainly not fun is never getting results. A great program is going to be more enjoyable because you get to the goals you set. I’m not saying that like you can’t have both you should hopefully have both because it’s going make an enjoyable process. How you define what you want your fitness program, needs to be guiding the program you’re signing up for. Whether you want to lose weight, add this amount of lean body mass, get stronger or being capable of carrying groceries up the stairs… you’ll need to use that as your measure and then measuring your success or failure off from that.

The Right Fitness Program for you

If you don’t have somebody guiding you along the way, you’ll need to be you need to be very scientific about so choosing the right program. Simply find a place that:

  • Has helped other people accomplish what you want to accomplish.
  • Can show you progress every step of the way.
  • Focuses on improving your habits.
  • Can demonstrated continual improvement of their processes.
  • Knows and tracks the metrics important to your goals.

Our First 60 Days and Next 90 Days programs came about through this process. Goal setting, objective measurement, determine obstacles, prescribe the service that meets and exceeds the obstacles you’re facing. The value in this process is IMMENSE! Without it you’re shooting in the dark. This is the way to do it. All the individual details about what you need that are specific to you are navigated with a coach at your side. If the hardest part of getting fit for you is finding the right fitness program. Start by booking a No Sweat Intro with one of our coaches and see if one of our programs will meet your needs. We know the data, we understand your obstacles and we’re experienced in making it happen for people just like you!

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Blog

How do I Stay Motivated?

The hardest thing about getting fit…

Getting Motivated

How do I get and stay motivated? Getting motivated and staying is one of the most important things you’ll need to have success in fitness. To get and stay motivated you’ll have to have some emotional connection to succeeding at your goal. Almost every time somebody that comes here for their No Sweat Intro there has been some life event that said “Hey it’s time to take action now or there’s gonna be problems later”.

Examples of Emotional Why’s

“I need to take care of my child. I’m realizing I’m not physically able to do that in the way that I could a couple years ago. If we keep going on the same track I’m not going to be able to take care of my child the way that he or she needs”. Now, whether your childs care is running around the yard playing with them and giving them a happy life in that regard. Or it’s they have some special needs and you need to physically carry them from wheelchair to the toilet for example. Those things require some physical skills that you’re emotionally attached to.

Busy People

Maybe you’re a really busy person. You own a business and you don’t have time. You haven’t had time to exercise for the last five years and now all the sudden go to the doctor and your cholesterol is really high. Now you’re saying “I’m borderline diabetic and holy crap! I need to do something and I need to do something fast! Or all of that work that I just did on my business for the last five years is going to be worth nothing because I won’t be around to enjoy it”.

6 Pack Abs

If you want six-pack abs… just to pick up chicks. You’ve got to create some emotional connection to that. Do you really want six pack abs? Or is it because you want to pick up a chick and you think six pack abs will help? If you’re wanting to pick up girls you don’t actually want six-pack abs you wanna be able to pick up girls (2 different goals) maybe all you really need is confidence. Either way you’ll need to connect an emotion strong enough to overcome the why not’s that stand between you and your goal. Maybe you just want to look good, so you feel confident, so that you can find your life’s love and live happily ever after.

The hardest part is we need to make connection emotionally with why we want to accomplish any of our fitness related goals. If you don’t have an emotional connection, it’s going to be very very difficult for you to stay motivated for any reason. You need to keep the emotional reason at the forefront of your mind of why you want success and a coach will help you do that.

Staying Motivated

Making Progress

Staying motivated for any real length of time is going to require progress towards the goal. So first you must have an objective measurement of what progress will look like. Then you have to recognize progress when you’re making it. Finally you have to celebrate it. In order to celebrate it you have to recognize it. In order to recognize it you have to measure it. One of the great things about what we do here at CrossFit Jungle Gym is we take measurements, we have benchmarks, and we celebrate wins daily (PR board), weekly (Bright Spots Friday) and quarterly (goal setting sessions).

Seeing Progress

This is built into the service we provide… you can achieve on your own using the same framework. Setting objective goals, measuring them, observing progress and celebrating are built into our service. To continue to have results, this process is ultra important. What’s awesome is if you can see minor little things on day one you’ll build more and more motivation.

Celebrating Progress

An example… “I learned to squat without knee pain and that’s the first time I ever squatted without any pain”. That’s that’s huge, it might seem like a really small milestone but it is a milestone and we should recognize and celebrate that win. All movement in the right direction should be celebrated. We’ve had people who’ve been unable to do daily activities without pain for 40 years. They tend to celebrate these small things more readily. Progress is what helps keep you motivated and any forward progress is better than regression, which is what you’re doing if you aren’t progressing.

Exponential Shift: Double wins

If we can get you to move a little bit instead just sitting at your desk and not doing any exercise for a week. By sitting you’re actually regressing. The gap between not doing anything and doing something or feeling a little bit better it’s widening. If we think about this gap over the course of a month it’s even wider. A year? Even wider! Now consider a daily 5 min walk… those little tiny small wins are actually double in comparison to doing nothing. Seeing that “small” progress and celebrating it… yes we’re celebrating over the first double under you did… it’s a big deal. It’s progress in the right direction.

Example: “I only lost one pound this week”… yeah and if you lost one pound every week for the next year we’re talking about 52 pounds. That is a great result! You have to celebrate them and you have to recognize them or they don’t really exist.

The Worst Enemy of Motivation

If you don’t measure, see or recognize your progress you’re going to end up being salty and mad. You’ll believe “I’m not getting where I want to go and I’m not getting there fast enough”. That’s the best way to become your own biggest enemy. When it comes to staying motivated and you have a body composition goal, measure the right metric. Then recognize progress… if you add one pound of lean body mass, that’s awesome. Then you lose one pound of body fat lost. You’ve made a 2lb swing in favor of better body composition. Though if you’re measuring (incorrectly) with body weight you’ll feel like you’ve made no progress. When in fact, your body composition has changed significantly it’s changed by two pounds.

The Power of Recognition

This stuff is incredibly powerful and you need to know that information in order to continue to recognize progress when it’s happening. This recognition is the difference is success and failure. Success equals motivation, it doesn’t happen the other way around. Motivation can only happen with success. When getting started you need to have a little bit of success. Then you get more motivated and then you have more success you have more success you get even more motivated. It keeps going like that, then the closer you get to a goal the more irresistible it becomes. Most goals have a lot of little steps that happen before the large goal is accomplished. So you have to recognize the little successes otherwise you will become unmotivated.

Not only does like celebrating those small wins keep you motivated it also keeps you happy. You realize that there’s progress being made and that’s the spice of life. To be happy and recognize improvements are being made big or small. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re getting better, you’re getting better. Every time you get better it’s an improvement on your life. Whether that’s in body composition, attitude or getting stronger. Recognize your progress. If you take one thing away from us ever… let it be that you recognize the positive in your life. Be grateful for it, don’t don’t miss out on the bright spots!

Who helps you succeed?

Great coaches at CrossFit Jungle Gym.

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Blog

How to Become Healthy

What does being healthy mean?

There doesn’t seem to be a concensus answer on the topic. Below is how we produce successful returns on being healthy regardless of how YOU measure your health. Though we have a singular definition of health most other care providers do not. Whether your goal is to improve your health metrics, quality of life or stay absent of disease and pain we’ve got you covered.

Health Metrics

If you define being healthy by the below health metrics we’ve got you covered. We’ve met our fair share of “cholesterol” guys. There’s been plenty of “I’ve been on BP meds for the last 15 years” gals. One thing is clear… people really like to pick one metric and roll with it. Here are the most common health metrics tracked and asked about at a Dr’s office:

Correlates measure but don’t define health

The problem is when you chase success in one of the metrics it doesn’t guarantee success in the others. Detailed in hundreds of client interactions the story goes… “I went to the doctor and they said I have high XYZ. Then they prescribed me XYZ. I’ve been taking it for 5 years now.” Have you heard the advertisements for medications? The possible side effects read at 10x speed take longer than the ad itself at normal speed! Guess what… then when your ABC levels go up… you’ll get another pill with another long side effect list. It is not a solution… it’s a bandaid. Let’s go upstream and solve the problem. Phil had high blood pressure…

If any of the health correlates listed above are more important to you than fitness, that’s fine. Fitness will still be the solution… We regularly accomplish health metric goals because we help improve our clients fitness.

Quality of life:

If you define being health by “quality of life” here’s your guide! Quality of life can loosely be defined as being able to do all the things you love about life. If you have a high quality of life, you can do all the activities you love without fear.

Is Quality of life Pass/Fail or Low Threshold

So you like to do 4 mile runs as a hobby, great! “I could run 4 miles today, life is good.” “I can’t run 4 miles today, life is bad.” Insert your favorite hobby in place of running. Are the above statements true? If so you’ve found a thing worth living for, AMAZING!

Where does running 4 miles (insert your thing!) rank in difficulty? It depends an individuals personal physical capacity. If you’re physically capable of running 8 miles and run 4… 4 miles feels easy. If you’re capable of running 2 miles, 4 miles is impossible. So you’re capable of running 4.25 miles, 4 miles is difficult, maybe less enjoyable?

What if the things worth living for are out of your physical capacity? Life sucks. If the activities you love are within your capacity? Life is good. Is your capacity slowing degrading or increasing? Without measurement… you don’t know.

Capacity and measuring your physical functions

If being healthy is about quality of life and quality of life is about being able to do the things that make life worth living and those things require having physical capacity, then you must develop phyiscal capacity to maintain quality of life. Any capacity above the minimum threshold is called buffer. If you’d like to do the things that make life worth living until you’re 90… you might need a good buffer.

What if you find out there’s other activities that would make life more enjoyable that have greater physical capacity requirements. You’ll place a limit on your ability to have a higher quality of life.

What capacities should we have?

We can create unlimited categories and sub categories to test and measure. Upper body, lower body, core, squatting, pressing, pulling etc. What is important is that we’re developing capacity at each of the 10 general physical skills. We use Level Method to distill down the categories to least amount necessary to gain the full picture of your physical capacities.

Functional movements are the movements most capable of delivering those capacities.

Absence of Disease or Pain

Do you have a disease or are you living in pain?

It’s a simple and straight forward proposition, yes or no? But as discussed above however with disease there is a continuum on which the health metric rides… when you reach the threshold you have the disease. Example Blood pressure at XX/XX you have hypertension, XX/XX pre hypertension, XX/XX normal. Normal or Good blood pressure is representative of a buffer zone before hypertension. Is medication the best path to reduce blood pressure? Have discussion with your doctor. Improvements in fitness are always a safe bet.

Is your pain a problem? or lack of knowledge?

Pain is definitely a limiter in feeling healthy. If being pain free is how you define being healthy consider that pain might not be the problem. Your lack of knowledge of body maintainence might be the issue. Is your joint pain coming from bone, muscle, tendon or ligament? With basic knowledge of how your body systems work you can conquer 98% of your pain.

Mobility helped when Ed had “shin splints” for years… then had it solved in 30 mins.

Post PT Rehab program helped Laura get back to normal after knee injury and back injury.

The case for medication…

We absolutely 100% encourage you to follow your doctor’s advice. With that said there are many things that you have control over, specifically fitness. If you’re taking care of your fitness (as defined here) then you’re doing your part. In the event that genetics, traumatic event or terrible luck are the cause of your disease… that is what pharmaceuticals are for! In our observation, many people tend to go straight to pharmaceuticals. Why? They are easier, require less life change, you submit your will to the expert doctor… all things that are hard to argue. It’s our contention that the right thing to do is usually a hard thing to do, usually… also better.

Actions to become healthy

Whether your looking to improve a health correlate, improve quality of life or reduce pain or disease, fitness is your surefire bet.

Book your No Sweat Intro with CFJG Coach today!

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Client Stories

Sam Kuhles

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Client Stories

Chris Burkholder

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Client Stories

Valerie Harr