Over the last couple days of teaching virtual classes, I’ve watched proudly as our members have come together with homemade fitness equipment and the expectation to move and have a good time. In a time of high stress, it feels so good to see people smiling, laughing and moving their bodies. Now is not the time for perfectionism or high expectations.
For a while, I’ve been twiddling with how to measure success at Ascent. In the fitness industry there is a lot of pressure to provide results; results of increased performance, weight loss, weight gain, burning calories, changing bodies. While I believe our fitness programming can do all those things for people it's not what I choose to focus on. I’m more interested in building lifelong movement skills, enjoyment of movement and maybe most importantly the freedom to move past these restrictive and perfectionist ways of thinking about fitness.
The result we can guarantee is the mentality that we move for fun, we move because it makes us feel good, and we have the skills to move in many ways and contexts. This transition to virtual coaching has made me realize we are succeeding in this result. Even though we temporarily don’t have access to the diversity of equipment that we normally have or the ability to lift heavy with barbells we are still able to challenge ourselves, have fun and be there for each other. Through this social distancing, we are all challenging our ability to adapt, to find new and diverse ways to move, and to make space for fun and enjoyable movement.
If you are feeling stressed about not being able to practice your heavy squats join us for other ways to challenge your squat. Hint we squat three different ways in today's workout and have seen everything from a fifth of alcohol to a bag of dog food as peoples weight.