We all love our morning workouts. What comes after a good NP workout? Breakfast. And as they say, “feedback is the breakfast of champions”.
One of November Project’s community agreements is to Lead Together. For this movement to keep growing and to remain successful, hearing different voices and perspectives is key. This is why we asked for your input at a recent workout (and follow-up online form for additional thoughts). We’d like to share the key trends from this input, and how we plan on incorporating all of this into your workouts.
Make workouts more challenging, including more focus on the same muscle groups. We got requests for more core, more arms….oh, and MANY comments for more burpees!
Y’all want to have a hard workout. Y’all love feeling sore the next day. Mad respect! This is why we show up. To push ourselves, to be waiting for the sweet sound of “time” to be called because you’re so dang tired. Expect the difficulty notch to be ticked up, while also respecting that you should always do what you can and what you feel comfortable with. Listen to your body, be mindful of injuries, and define what you giving it your all looks like. AND we’re looking to add more variety in the “spice” to also include more full-body exercises and ones working multiple muscle groups at once.
The opportunity to scale the amount of spice.
See above – yes! We will be mindful to offer options for certain moves (e.g. for plank stacks, being explicit that there is an alternative here), but also please feel comfortable to scale as you’d like – there is always that option! Even if we do not explicitly mention a modification to a certain workouts, please feel empowered to modify based on what your body needs, as long as you are putting in your strongest effort. If you need to modify a particular move but don’t know how, please don’t be shy to ask us or other members of the community.
We understand everyone comes to NP with different goals and objectives. Some folks LOVE running. Some folks LOVE the bodyweight exercises. Our workouts will always have elements of both. This being said, we opted to test offering two PR Day options to be mindful that we want our workouts to be ones you feel like you can really gain from. We hope this offers a day that you can look forward to really pushing yourself on to seeing yourself getting stronger in either area (or both! Alternate tracks each month if you’d like).
Finding a balance of themed workouts with our other regular favorites – circuits, Tabata, stripped back NP classics, etc.
In the last few months, you’ve played Jenga, made words with Bananagram tiles, right-swiped and left-swiped on workouts for Valentine’s Day, and traveled around the moon and unchartered space territories. Part of what makes NP unique is how much creativity we can inject into our workouts, which we have heard positive feedback about and want to continue doing. We also will keep an eye to not compromise the quality of the workout while adding in these fun elements.
For each month, we will be thoughtful to have a balance of these different workout types. Spacing these different workouts will get more into the rotation, hopefully without feeling like every workout feels the same each time. Let’s get strong, and let’s stay silly 🙂
More focus on form in our exercises.
Yes, yes, yes! Poor form is a form-idable threat. While explaining the best form on each workout move in every explanation would take too much time, expect to see a form-focused workout in the next month or two. We’ll also aim to speak about form more in new moves we introduce, and encourage you to ask us if you feel uncertain about something. In addition, there are awesome online resources if you want to learn more about form in a particular move (push-ups, burpees, squats, lunges, etc.).
You all LOVE the community (Yay!) and we can continue adding more workouts incorporating teamwork and getting to know each other.
Hey, we love this community too! We had a lot of great feedback on the “Match.com Warm-Up” where you learned where other people grew up, who was born in the same month as you, etc. We hope to do more of these types of get-to-know-you activities and opportunities to connect with folks while working out. We encourage you to reach out to folks more as you’re working out in the same stations, running next to someone, or going to post-workout breakfasts.
We also will have more social events coming up, and are always looking for folks to volunteer to organize and lead meet-ups or community service events. Please reach out to Gina & Scott if you have an idea for an NP Event, and of course please do post in our Facebook social page if you want to organize impromptu gatherings or find friends to join you at an event.
THANK YOU so much to everyone for your input. Please do continue sharing your ideas with us, and we have the feedback form still open if there’s anything you’d like to share anonymously.
And updates re: COVID-19
The well-being of our community, both NP and beyond, is always our top priority. We will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation and use best judgment in our workout planning. For the time being, we will be swapping out recommending hugs and high fives for things like toe taps, and limiting physical contact while still ensuring there is interaction with partners, groups, and your community members. And of course, we all should use our best judgment as it relates to staying home if you feel sick & washing hands before and after workouts. If you need to stay home but want to workout, please reach out and we can help you modify that day’s workout so you can join in spirit <3
UPDATE: Please see the most recent messaging online ” November Project workouts in all cities are canceled. Join our weekly workouts online that you can do from home that will be posted each Tuesday. Use #NP_Continues to keep us connected. Thanks for your support. “
Here are more resources on the local COVID-19 situation from the City of Austin website. Let us know if you have any questions or input.
Much love as always,
Scott & Gina
Share via socials:
