Author: Messy Jesse

For more than 6 years I was thrilled to live my #westcoastbestcoast life mosquito free. The only time I would ever come close to the blood suckers was if I was foolish enough to visit home in the summer. Luckily, no one wants to go to Jersey in the summer. I remember teasing my friends back home in Philly and South Jersey. They’d complain about their itchy bites, and I would laugh and bask in the dry California sunshine. Then the rain came. More rain than I had seen since I first moved to San Diego in August 2010. I was happy about the rain. The drought was wreaking havoc along the coast, and water shortages were so real they were pumping water in from other states. After a couple weeks of rain, the trails were even more awe inspiring than before. Sure the sunrise over Griffith Park is beautiful any day of the week, but when it rolls over plush green mountain sides it takes it to a whole new level. Then we went back to the Griffith Observatory, and there were a few mosquitos. I was disappointed, but figured it wasn’t so bad. I mean I can’t ask for perfect weather AND no mosquitos or flies. That brings us to this morning. read more

I woke up this morning in a state of panic. I didn’t hear my alarm and I immediately thought that I slept through it or worse turned it off in my sleep. I glanced over and clicked my phone on. 4:34am. Whew, I’m ok. Then I struggled to get out of bed. I thought to myself “just five more minutes.” Quickly after that thought I had another scare when I closed my eyes for what was probably two seconds. When I opened my eyes and looked outside of my window it looked brighter. I began scrambling for my phone again, and this time the clock said 4:35am. Groggy, I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes. read more

Today’s workout was tough, and the trickery that went into the burnout definitely caused a lot of side-eye shade to be thrown my way. BUT, the absolute best moment came after all was said and done.

We’re the weirdest tribe, and this morning we showed why. The best part is we had a few traverbalers witness our shenanigans. Sebastians had ended with R Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly just beginning. As we got you guys to gather up for announcements I kept singing until Steve turned the speaker off. Nothing out of the ordinary there. You guys have heard me sing so he was really doing you a favor. So it was time for announcements right? Wrong. Without skipping a beat someone picked up singing, and then another, and another. Before long the whole tribe was singing and swaying back and forth. It was magic, and of course we followed choir practice with a deadly murder whisper rendition of Happy Birthday. I’m still smiling from ear to ear. read more

My mom always told me to remember the k.i.s.s. method. Keep it simple, silly. Stairs and burpees, burpees and stairs. Seems simple enough, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sure we through in a random sprint to the corner every five minutes or so just to keep you on your toes, but overall today was about putting in work and crushing some stairs. read more

Today continued our exploration of Grand Park in lovely downtown LA, and it may have been my favorite part of the park. Seriously the park is huge, and I’m excited to have two more weeks there. Shout out to 5:30 crew who have been showing up in numbers lately ready to crush it before the sun comes up, and then the crazy few who stick around for a double session. read more

Today we held recess elementary school style! We learned our ABC’s in an open field and crushed a workout during playtime. Before we began though we held a brief class review consisting of burpee freeze tag.

Today’s lesson plan was built around spelling. You picked a word out of our class bucket and spelled it out through exercise until you spelled the full word and moved on to the next. Naturally we included some NP Vocabulary. Bounce, Sebastians, positivity, verbal, and you know I had to throw supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in there. Oh and lots of words with the letter Q because that meant that you had to recruit friends to help you complete 100 burpees. Everyone was loving plank-jack donkey kicks and bananamans. The energy in that field today was infectious, and the silly factor was through the roof. By the way Donkey Kong let me know that he feels comfortable retiring today after seeing all of the impressions of him today. read more

Well it’s that time again. New month, new Wednesday location. Today began our downtown adventure in Grand Park. Grand Park is awesome because it is spread over 4 different levels. Each one providing a different landscape. In wanting to keep everyone on their toes today we started out with some Sally squat action before the workout. GOOD MORNING QUADS! Moving into the workout we revisited level 2 with our simple but effective Fish Hooks. Run down the stairs, turn and run up the next set of stairs, bust out a quick set of pushups before heading back to the start and getting in some dips and box jumps, finally a set of burpees waiting for you at the top and then repeat the circuit. read more