The Best of 12 Minute Athlete From 2016

It’s official: 2016 is finally coming to an end.

It’s been a pretty crazy year, to say the least. A lot has happened here on 12 Minute Athlete, in our own lives, and all over the world.

Here on the site, we’ve covered a ton of topics this year, from staying motivated, to learning new skills, to getting balanced with nutrition, and of course we’ve had lots and lots of kickass workouts. Our goal, as we hope you know by now, is to help you unlock your full potential as a person and an athlete.

So as usual, to help remind you of some of the best of 2016 on 12 Minute Athlete, we wanted to share some of our very favorite posts we’ve published here this year.

Here’s what we think is the best of 12 Minute Athlete from 2016:

Nutrition

In February, we started our first 12 Minute Athlete shared challenge, the 6-Week Fuel Your Body Nutrition Challenge. We covered a lot in this challenge, including everything from filling breakfasts to healthy desserts, and we were super happy to see many of you on board in our brand new Facebook group. It was a healthy way to start the year!

Speaking of healthy eating, most of us know important it is to get all three macronutrients with our diet, including protein. However, it’s not always easy to figure out how much of it we should be eating, and where to get it. This post helps you find the best sources of protein.

Unfortunately, not all people around you may be as excited about your healthy eating habits as you may be. If you have to put up with someone who’s judging your eating habits, check out our article on How To Deal With People Who Judge Your Healthy Diet.

Working Out

While the first challenge of the year was about nutrition, the second one focused on fitness—in particular, handstands! We love handstands, and we also loved seeing the progress so many of you made during The 12 Minute Athlete 6-Week Handstand Challenge. The discussion and encouragement in the Facebook group was great too!

In fitness, working out seems to be the number one priority for many of us, so stretching is often forgotten. However, it’s super important to stretch often, because it helps to keep our muscles healthy, posture good, and bodies pain-free. It was awesome to see that you took the Get Bendy 6-Week Flexibility Challenge seriously, and hopefully were quite a bit more flexible by the end of the 6-week challenge.

A lot of us travel a lot, or live in small apartments in a city. If that’s you, make sure to check out our post on How to Work Out in a Hotel Room—it’s doable, really!

If you’ve ever struggled with exercising too much, we can relate. This post on how to deal with overtraining and how to recovery quickly can help.

And if you still think that running is the only form of exercise, our if you just need a little encouragement to get started with resistance training, go ahead and read this post how to transition from only running to HIIT and strength training.

Getting Inspired / Being a Badass

Comparison is a huge trap that slows down our progress. To really discover your full potential, stop comparing yourself to others! If you want to get somewhere, just put the head down, keep your eyes on the prize, and keep working.

But no matter how hard we may try, things don’t always go the way we expect them to go. We’re fast to label ourselves as failure, but it’s important to remember that even if we fail, that doesn’t make us failure. Here are the three important lessons I’ve learned from failing.

Other times, life throws totally unexpected things to our way. They can be things that make us appreciate all we have, including health and fitness, even more. Read how being healthy and fit helped me to recover from a pretty scary car crash.

And to finish on a more positive note, here’s our friend Amy’s guest post on how to badass up, even if depression hits. We’re our own heroes and with the help of a strong body and mind, we can deal with anything.