There were about 500 people who showed up to the NP & The North Face #FrostFit event on Friday night. It was huge, it was chilly, it was loud, it was weird, it was sweaty, it was full of hugs and running around, and it was a good time. A really good time.
It wasn’t just any old workout though. I mean, the actual exercises were pretty familiar to most: burpees, pushups, situps, partner wheelbarrows, squats, and sprinting. But the way we emphasized the pillars of NP through the various rounds of the circuit helped both the most experienced of NP’ers and Newbies alike feel how intentional all this shit is. The 4 Pillars we talked about were: Community. Weatherproof. Weird Fun. And Racing.
Community: we do this together because it’s just so much better than doing it alone. It’s why NP got started by BG and Bojan in the first place…when you know someone else is going to be there waiting to run/climb stairs/burpee/whatever with you, it’s easier to get up, lace up, and show up. And the collective community of people who value fitness and healthy movement in their lives becomes a haven in the midst of an often chaotic, disconnected, uber-fast-paced world of busyness. It reminds us that there’s somewhere we want to be, where we can be seen, connect, get hugs if you want them, and do all this awesome fitness and movement shit together.
Weatherproof: it’s a good time to remember that all the awesome shit we do in the warm-weather months, we can also do the rest of the year here in New England, we just need more layers and gear on our bodies while we do it (unless you are Malcolm and then a shirt is definitely optional year-round). Let’s put it this way–we do not let the weather be an excuse that gets in the way of our movement. We can find fitness, enjoy running around, adventure through the winter months NO MATTER WHAT.
Weird Fun. Not just plain old fun, but NP has a weird hue to the color of fun we enjoy most. It can be unpredictable and unexpected or it can be the stuff you thought you had outgrown and that only kids at recess do. It can be costumes or themes, cowbells or hand hugs, nose “boops” or birthday booms, tortilla face or no-hands burrito eating. Sometimes it’s skipping while holding hands with a partner or doing somersaults through the puddles, making the “weeeeee” sounds as we jump over stuff, or like we did on Friday, partner pushups with a thumb-wrestle during the last rep. The point is that we don’t take ourselves or this fitness thing too seriously, because if we did it just wouldn’t be fun. Let’s keep it interesting, keep it weird, and keep it fun.
Racing: NP isn’t about trying to be faster than everyone else–because only one person can do that. But it IS about trying to race with each other to be faster than ourselves. Our community makes us faster, stronger, fitter, and better because we always have that butt carrot ahead of us to chase and we know we’re being chased by someone else, so we work harder and don’t give up. Therefore, racing is an important–an essential–part of the culture. If we don’t race, how do we know if our efforts are moving us to make forward progress? We race for our fastest time on a full stadium tour. We race for our fastest completion of 3 full hills on Summit Ave. We race ourselves on timed burpees when we do #Sebastians and our Monday Rando Die/Rando Guy efforts. This also means we can race ourselves and challenge each other when we do …anything! If we’re doing things for speed, do them as speedily as you can. If we’re doing things for reps, do as many as you can. We’re always doing them for quality, so your speed and repetitions should never be at the total expense of quality technique. Racing is good for us, especially when we use it to see and acknowledge the ways we are making strides and training well.
Today’s workout was a great example of both the simplicity of our workouts (sometimes!) and how it hits on all these pillars of NP. We did a classic Destination Deck of cards, with black suits meaning pushups and red suits meaning sit ups. The number value of the card means the number of repetitions of the exercise, for 2-10, and J =11, Q=12, K=13, and A=14. If you finish the deck, you complete 208 pushups and 208 situps.
And this morning there was some firedrill spice, which caused everyone to run around and meet new people while burning their abs and arms through more of the deck. Our Rando Guy picked 4 minutes of burpees and the racing ensued–Dana and Malcolm topped out our burpee totals with 74 and 73 respectively. Since Anna’s Taqueria opened about 3 minutes before that, right next to our deck location, we offered to buy them breakfast burritos before going home. Sometimes those burpees pay off, right??
We always hope that the best of NP comes out in every workout. It’s all the pillars that make this shit so good.
If you happened to miss the workout this morning, then here is your homework:
1. find another human being
2. Find a deck of cards (real or digital)
3. Do a deck! Black = pushups, Red = situps.
4. Smile and say “fuck yeah!” because you did it.
5. Hug or high 5 that human being
6. Show up at the stadium on Wednesday, because it’s really hard to make up for those stairs at home.
Keep changing the world, friends.
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