First NinjaFit Gym Workout. The Power of Story and Voice.

​Mornings on Saturday are an adventure. The adventure starts when I leave the driveway. Nearly every Saturday morning for the past year, I've left at 7:00 am to pick up a group of boys from Parramore in Orlando. Not long ago, Parramore was named one of America's 25 most dangerous neighborhoods. The question every Saturday is, how many boys will I be getting? I'll send a text the night before asking who's in and sometimes I'll get a response. This week, I know I'll be picking up Jeff and Paul. Not sure about Jean or Chris. And I know Akim won't make it because he committed to help his mother at her shop. And while Jeff will be present, he's about eight weeks removed from ACL surgery so won't be fully participating.

Chris is a wildcard because his phone is unreliable and it's anyone's guess when he'll be checking his Snapchat account on his sister's phone. Jean is an unknown because he doesn't respond regularly. Sometimes he responds via Snapchat and sometimes via text. Sometimes not at all. The Give Team has two primary channels where we communicate as a team - a group text thread and a Snapchat group. We've flirted with other channels like Instagram and Facebook (which we use to communicate to the community) but Snapchat and the text thread get the most consistent response.

If I knew where Chris and Jean were, I'd show up and pull them out of bed myself. Chris' family just moved to a different unit in the same apartment complex, and I don't know which apartment is his. Jean sleeps in a different place every Friday night, and I don't know where he'll be found on this particular Saturday.

The sky was brightening to blue with an edge in the air as I called Jeff letting him know I was in the driveway. As he climbed into the seat and buckled his seat belt, he told me Chris would be joining. We drove to get Chris at his new home, which is a two bedroom apartment across the parking lot from where his family used to live. We then picked up Paul who informed us Jean was attending a volleyball clinic. Looks like it's four of us this week. Jeff won't be at full capacity since he's still recovering from his ACL surgery in November, and bronchitis relegated me to the role of cameraman and cheerleader.

This week was the first workout at NinjaFit Gym in Orlando, Florida. Last spring our workouts were intense, utilizing nothing but the ground and park benches. The reason? YOU determine your strength. You don't need a gym to get strong. All you need is your body, a little creativity and a will to build strength. While that's true, following The Green Beret Challenge last July we realized we need to be more creative. Without training grip strength, we weren't as prepared for ropes, wall climbs and net climbs as we needed to be. That's where NinjaFit Gym comes into play.

NinjaFit is the only gym in Central Florida focused on obstacle course training. They have all the equipment and obstacles to train strength and learn the skills to conquer any obstacle. On top of that, their trainers are Spartan OCR certified, and that showed in the direction given during Saturday's workout. Late last year, I connected with Dan at NinjaFit and arranged to have The Give Team work out at the gym on the third Saturday every month. The NinjaFit workouts Dan put us through combined with more creativity on our regular workouts should give us the grip strength, endurance and overall skills to nail the Green Beret Challenge in May. Overall it's a great facility with an impressive community of gym members there to help while they also work to get stronger

Chris and Paul completed the workout, which included a 400M run, a climb up a 20' rope, a climb over an 8' wall, 10 runs up their Goliath ramp, 20 burpees, Holy Sheet (a sheet wound tied to two 15' rigs ten feet off the ground - you need to climb across hand-over-hand, or otherwise shimmying our way across without falling), 30 pull-ups, 40 sit ups, 50 walking lunges, battering ram (three segments of 15' where a 2.5' strip of PVC pipe is over a narrower pipe, creating a sliding / rotating obstacle - where you need to hang on and shimmy the PVC pipe across the 15' section and transfer to the next pipe), 40 sit ups, 30 pull ups, peg board traverse (cross a 30' peg board section, one peg at a time, 10' off the ground), 20 burpees, 10 more runs up the Goliath ramp, one more climb over the 8' wall and 1 more climb up the rope. 

It was a wake up call. Paul almost threw up after the last run up and down the Goliath ramp. Chris struggled a bit also, needing an assistance band on his pull ups. I reminded both of them we haven't done a tough workout since the spring, so the struggle should be expected. The good news? We don't have to run The Green Beret Challenge today. We run it on May 5th.

It was also a wake up call for me. I haven't pushed myself since the beginning of December, thanks to an intense year end at work and a sickness I've been fighting in my chest since January 1. Those are excuses. There is work to be done, and we're grateful to have Dan and the NinjaFit Gym team to help us along the path to GBC.

Following the workout we usually have breakfast to discuss the topic of the week. The topic this week was THE POWER OF STORY AND VOICE, borrowing heavily from concepts in The Corporate Athlete Program, the book by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz titled The Power of Full Engagement and the book by Jim Loehr titled The Power of Story. The stories we tell ourselves determine the trajectory of our path. The story of where we're from explains the beginning, and colors why you are where you are and perhaps how you got here. The story where you're going should define what you do day-by-day, moment-by-moment, and how you do it. 

Are the stories we tell - and the words and voice we use - empowering, strong and motivating? Or are they something different? Many times our stories are told from habit. Perhaps they're stories we heard our parents tell. Or our teachers. Or our friends. Sometimes they're good stories, but in writing these stories we need to make sure of three main things: 

FIRST, understand life is nothing but a series of habits and experiences, so make your habits intentional and your experiences amazing. That means be INTENTIONAL about telling your story and controlling the message it sends to YOU and to those around you. Make the story you tell part of a NEW habit focused on intention. And take STRONG action to create amazing experiences aligned with who you are and how you define yourself. Inspire others not only by what you do, but how you do it. 

SECOND, make them YOUR stories. Make them factual, but YOU'RE the one controlling the message. You're not a victim. You're a product of your thoughts and actions. So own your stories. 

THIRD, we are NOT the product of our environment, or the stories we tell, but of the ACTIONS we take. Ensure the actions you take are aligned with the story you tell about where you're going. Understand every action is made from strength or weakness. ALWAYS choose strength. Choose strong thoughts. Choose strong actions. Build from there.

Next week we continue workouts at the northeast corner of Lake Eola Park in downtown Orlando. In the event there's a conflicting event, the backup location is Audubon Park Elementary School.

The topic next week is The Power of Why.

Be strong. Give more.