PDXStrength News

Courtney is back with a workout you can try at home. Set your timer for 24 minutes and let us know how it goes! Thanks again for all your support strength tribe. We are currently in the process of bashing out our reopening plan and can’t wait to see your faces! ???

Blog 18 – Finding the Time to Meditate

So you may have noticed that we added three more points to the weekly challenge. 

• Drink water. (Fun facts – Every time I hear the word “water” I hear Neil Young shouting the word, like Morgan Freeman saying “penguin.”)
• Read. (I recently purchased 2 books – Strength Training Anatomy and Going Right.) 
• Meditate. (The reason we’ve all gathered here today. Now generally speaking, people fall in to one of two categories when it comes to meditation. The I-could-do-this-shit-all-day camp or the I-DON’T-HAVE-TIME-FOR-THAT-SHIT CAMP. – Yes, the ALL CAPS vs. no caps is intentional. Get it? Because the meditators are already meditating, so they are calm, and non-meditators ARE YELLING… AAARRGGGHHH!!! – The funny thing here, though? Everyone starts in the latter. Even yours truly. That switch came about 3-4 years ago, and really it wasn’t a decision to meditate or not. It’s just kind of been a progressive understanding about meditating; starting with a conversation with friends; then to a few YouTube videos to other online resources; then through a Palouse Mindfulness course – free online for those interested – and finally on to a better understanding of what meditation is and is not. Really what I learned is that I’ve meditated all of my life in some form or another. I just never thought about it as meditating. Add to that my new found understanding and I-could-do-this-shit-all-day.  

My favorite daily meditation routine is almost first thing in the morning – Fritz has a little bladder – and as I go to bed. My morning meditation is something I’ve actually done my entire life. I wake up … and do nothing. That’s right, literally nothing. It used to frustrate my parents like you wouldn’t believe. I’d wake up and just sit in my bed cross-legged until the last possible second to get out the door to school. My family still gives me a hard time about it. Now, it looks like sitting on my patio and watching the birds and squirrels come up for breakfast – for the record, I am also a huge fan of journaling first thing in the morning. At night, it’s a general rotation of a few varying types – counted breath, landscaping/imagery, or body scans are usually the go to. I’m not so great at the middle of the day stuff, but sometimes do a meditation as pain management for my arthritis and I do really enjoy a good guided meditation with headphones in. None of this is everyday, but it’s most and I can there’s a huge difference in the flow of my day and my ability to fall asleep if my day starts with less intention than I need. 

In reality, the list of types of meditations is relatively short – google “headspace types of meditation” – but the ways to accomplish them are many and they all accomplish, or are intended to accomplish, a greater connection to self by setting a little time out of your day for Number 1. )

Any questions about the new challenges?

D

Team AND INDIVIDUAL Challenge Update. 

Well, as of this week Oregon is moving forward with a phased opening approach. While this doesn’t give us an opening date, and we (both Multnomah County and PDX Strength) might be the last to phase in, it DOES mean that we are a little bit closer to converging down by the river. Speaking of the river… I hope you all had a glorious Mother’s Day this weekend, and were able to get outside (safely) and enjoy the 80˚+ weather. We thought it was a good idea to take our new pup for swimming lessons, instead of painting our bedroom. While I conceded that the swimming lessons took 30 minutes and there is roughly 48 (or more) hours in a weekend, I will just say we feel very accomplished and no dogs were harmed in the process. 

But on to the Challenge – you know, the reason you’ve made it this far and past my rambling. I want to reiterate that the coaches would like to commend all of you for participating as you can and how you can. None of this is a race to the maximum points per week. We are trying to build some guidelines that we think continue to move us towards long-term physical activity. What you might be finding as the hardest part is trying to fit it all in somewhere. New routines bring, new priorities and uses of time.  It’s hard to exist in the same way with new circumstances. You should all give yourselves credit for moving forward through this without judgment. I do also want to acknowledge that some of you may not feel that way, and you may also be having more bad days than good. That is ok too. 

This week’s team challenge is going to circle back to a few blogs and one of the points in the challenge – no it doesn’t, directly, involve your pets… though I suppose it could:

• For 5 points, you and team members must post/share photos of you trying something new, or doing something outside of working out that brings you joy. 

For example, for me I have been finding time to play guitar. I started taking lessons about a year ago, but have only recently (and many thanks to Fender for releasing their Play app during the shutdown) started to actually practice more diligently. Again, this isn’t going to be a gym related activity, but still would love the tags and hashtags. While this may seem to be somewhat of an off-brand challenge, don’t forget that we are always here for you as people first. You aren’t singular people, so we don’t expect your life to revolve around the gym. We’re on a path of growing brains AND butts. And you never have to workout to kick it. 

Also to show how serious we are about adding little jolts of inspiration in to our routines, we’re also adding points for individual achievement this week. So *drum roll* … *suspenseful pause* … 

…

In addition to the activities currently worth 1 pt (if you are in a great routine, keep it up!), each of the following will earn you an additional one point:

• Drink 8 cups of water/day – this is about 96 ounces. If that seems like too much, you have the freedom to lower the amount you drink. In practical application this means that if you are all of a sudden having a hard time controlling your bladder (ex. waking up in the middle of the night not being able to make it through a meeting) you’re likely over your necessary daily intake. 
• Read (anything) for 30 minutes, 3x/week.
• Meditate for more any length of time 3x/week.

That’s right! We’re up to 13 total points for the week! For those triskaidekaphobics out there, I guess you better hope for extra credit zoom sessions…

Talk to you Thursday!