Free Fitness Movement. All you need to do is show up!
I hope everybody hasn’t put their long sleeves and sweaters away quite yet because they needed them this morning. A chilly May day gave us perfect weather to wear our hockey gear and green to remember NP legend Ben O’Meara as we bounced, laughed, hugged, and sweat just like he would have wanted.
Short and sweet blog today because I want you to spend your daily reading allotment on Monday’s Blog post about the recruiting challenge. If you have not read it…please do that HERE.
Workout:
The Name Game was the name of today’s game. Draw a name out of the bucket (Go Pacers!!) of another one of the tribe members in attendance and you were set to go. Each letter in the name corresponded to an exercise and after each letter you did an up-and-over. Brutal…yes. Fun….also yes. Lot o’ stairs were served up today.
Spring is officially here!! The mornings are getting warmer, brighter, and, as the kids says, LIT! It’s time to start cashing in all those “I’ll come when it’s not freezing out” soft verbals that we’ve been getting and just start ramping up the recruiting effort. So, to help with this, we are going to sweeten the pot a bit with a little recruiting challenge.
April showers bring May flowers, and there was a break in the showers for our NP Indy flowers to bloom this morning. The energy was HIGH on the south stairs as we broke out the ever so deceivingly hard Hot Mess Workout.
Partners took turns, while one was doing three laps (up the south stairs to the gold door), the other was doing push-ups, flutter kicks, and burpees after each lap. Once three laps was up, they switched. We added in a fire-drill which included 30 second planks when the whistle was blown which meant if you showed up to the workout this morning, you knocked out 3 minutes of your plank challenge before 7am.
Well today was the first workout of spring and how could we tell? For starters, OG/NP_IND Founder, Bobbie Werbe was here on Spring Break from grad school in Hartford and second….well that’s it. More below freezing temps for the workout this morning which turned into a frozen speaker, BUT we still managed to find a partner and heat up the monument.
While the theme of the workout was St. Paddy’s Day, many people had to forgo their green for whatever the hell they could find to keep them warm as the winter winds have decided to stay through the middle of March. With snow flurries and temps topping off at 18°F, our card flipping-with-glove dexterity was tested. After reciting an old Irish NP_IND blessing, groups of 5 or 6 gathered around a card bucket like it was a garbage fire flipping cards until an actual fire drill whistle was blown for an up-and-over. The lucky clover (clubs) signified a short rest while spades meant burpees, hearts – leg raises, and diamonds called for a full group hoistee sesh. We warmed up soon enough, sadly, the speaker did NOT warm up and stopped working just in time for us to do our ‘Thunderstruck’ burnout. So we improvised.
March started out with a bang…actually several bangs of lighting and thunder. One of which sounded pretty damn close to us when we started the 5:28am workout. So we taunted the sky, Lieutenant Dan style, and got going with an especially messy Hot Mess workout.
(Pictured above – a shit load of rain)
#NP_IND decided to add a little #spice this morning with a “Choose Your Own Adventure” workout. 
We broke out the decks and let them dictate what exercises we did (pretty standard) and which direction to run (not standard). Stations were set up with the rules and cards and went as follows:
It seemed injuries, illness, surgeries, as well as a few excuses kept a few core tribe members from #raceday today, but we made up for it with a pretty good newbie showing. Being that it is race day and it is the middle of winter, any time we have fresh meat this time of year it is noteworthy.
The Workout:
Three years ago today, NP_IND became an official November Project tribe!! It’s amazing all that has happened since a bright-eyed (and haired) Bobbie Werbe started pledging this tribe the previous fall…and, it is all a testament to Bobbie, those OG’s who showed up in the beginning when it was just a few people, and everybody who shows up to support #freefitness now. We look forward to continuing the growth and spreading the NP love in Indianapolis into our fourth year and BEYOND!