Free Fitness Movement. All you need to do is show up!
Hey y’all!
If you’re reading this, you’ve almost made it through February. A month usually reserved for cold snaps and a lot of gray days, we’ve felt some warmth from the sun this month and took in many beautiful sunrises together. We’re really glad you’re here and showing up – the winter days elevate us to a whole other level of beast mode that challenges us both physically and mentally. But we’re here, we’re doing it, and most importantly, we’re doing it together.
Your MSP Co-leaders having absolutely NO FUN in Boulder, CO at MoM last summer. Photo by Jonny Wong.
Welcome to November 2022. This month we celebrate November Project’s origins and 11th birthday.
And we announce that we’re bringing back the #Verbal.
=&1=&: originating from the late Latin word verbum, meaning “word,” the term verbal means to give your word to #JustShowUp, to commit to coming to the workout by commenting “#verbal” on the social media post about the workout.
Pre-pandemic there existed a thing called “#verbal culture”
The practice was simple:
1)Co-leader posts on social media (twitter/facebook/instagram) about an upcoming workout
2)You comment #Verbal
3)If you wanted to go above and beyond you’d tag a workout pal and ask if they were coming (example: @smileformesarah86 comments: @em_minge_official you IN for tomorrow? I heard @erolfpleiss might make an appearance)
4)If you didn’t #JustShowUp after verballing, you would get tagged in a post saying we missed you.
As we all learned to understand our capacities emerging from and adjusting to life during an active pandemic, we began to see fewer and fewer verbals. And for good reason — the active pandemic made us more cautious about our health and others, and the prevalence of burnout made us all rethink our boundaries.
But we three co-leaders in Minneapolis said absolutely fucking not* — let’s bring back this tradition we loved.
We’re bringing the #Verbal back — with modifications.
Our community is better when you show up. The more folks that show up for an early workout make it seem more like recess than serious fitness. The more folks that show up means the more folks that are creating deep and meaningful relationships with their fellow NP community members. The more folks that show up, the more smiles that light the morning.
We get it— everyone’s lives look drastically different than they did in January 2020. So maybe, coming to NP looks different, too.
Maybe you get there at 6:34. That counts.
Maybe you bounce with us, go for a run, and make it back for announcements. That counts.
Maybe you do your PT exercises at our home base. That counts.
Maybe you challenge the friend you brought to a race to see how many reps you can do. That counts.
Maybe you stretch your social fitness muscles and walk the workout and catch up with a friend. That counts.
Or maybe, you verbal only to find you have a cough in the morning — so you do the responsible thing and stay home. We’ll miss you, but we’re still proud of you for making the commitment ahead of time.
We, as your friends, as your peers, as your co-leads know that sometimes you just need a gentle push/nudge in the right direction/subtle, gentle and loving peer pressure to commit to yourself and your community. So here is that push.
We want you to set those alarms early. We want you to lay those fits out the night before. We want you to text a friend and make sure they’re coming too. We want you to throw your #Verbal down and then we want you to (respectfully) get your ass to the workout.
YOU make up this vibrant community and in order for us to shine bright, we need YOU.
To throw down a #Verbal.
To #JustShowUP.
To hold this community up.
Let’s practice bringing back the #Verbal when it’s easier to #JustShowUp and then we’ll be ready when it’s January and it’s -12 and the last thing you want to do is get up and get out. Let’s find your group of accountability buddies that passes “you in for tomorrow” texts around like notes in class.
We’ve got big dreams and even bigger plans for 2023 and we need you. So…In short,
You in? Ya’ll good?
Let’s Fucking GO,
Sarah and Tickle and Emily
*Emily has never cursed, not once in her life so she said “Oh gosh, in the name of all things Ben Bauch, absolutely not!”
Writer’s note: This morning I woke up to a text about Abvember, an activity I have successfully avoided for the last 5 years. BUT, I can’t say no to the people I love when it is something I have capacity for. So I said sure, I’d be their accountability buddy.
It is the greatest joy of our lives to welcome your doggos at NP and we are so excited to meet your four legged family members that have been a part of your family for awhile or came to live with you during the pandemic.
Since we have so many new tails around here, we wanted to share some best practices/tips/general etiquette reminders to ensure that NP stays a safe place for all two and four legged animals in attendance:
It’s been a great few months of seeing your faces in person so first, we want to THANK this community: for being safe and patient as we navigated timing for starting up workouts again; for continuing to be safe and patient as we opened up Wednesday workouts in a socially distanced/masked/small group capacity; for showing up for each other time and time again throughout the last year of unknowns. THANK YOU.
Here, we go on a run with Sarah Stuhr (they/them), newly announced addition to the November Project, Minneapolis co-leader crew, as they reflect on early life as “the fat kid” and how that kid never could have dreamed of leading a group like this.
It was balls cold on Christmas Day 2020, one of our first subzero temp days when the windchill was factored in. Woulda been a great day without the wind (I’m from Minnesota so I’m morally obligated to mention that). Windchill is occasionally something you can avoid in the concrete jungle of downtown Minneapolis where I reside, but you can not escape the wind in the small farm town of Walters, Minnesota. My home town, you can probably Google where that is but they took us off the paper maps when our post office closed. Home is a little more than two miles from Walters and surrounded by fields.