Social Workout

Feats

The World's First Wheelchair Double Backflip

18-year-old Aaron Fotheringham, born with Spina Bifida, landed the world's first wheelchair double backflip last week. And caught it on film. 'Nuff said. 

(via Outside)

Online & Video

Feats

Walking The Amazon In 859 Days

What's your longest walk or run? 26.2? 10K? How about 6,000 miles? That's the length of the walk completed yesterday by former British Army Captain Ed Stafford, who followed the entire length of the Amazon River on foot. Starting from the origin of the Amazon at the peak of Mount Mismi in Peru in April 2008 to the mouth of the river at Meruda Beach in Brazil yesterday, he kept slogging despite 50,000 mosquito bites, a bow and arrow attack by the Ashaninka Indians, and some other freaky tropical insect and skin disease situations. You can read about Stafford's adventures on his website. On a much more reasonable note, yeahredgymnast beat her personal longest run record yesterday. Congratulations! (via Outside)

Feats

Redefining Girl Pushups

A little inspiration for all you pushup challengers:

(via Conditioning Research)

Online & Video

Feats

Build Your Plank Prowess

In one of the greatest acts of buffness ever witnessed on Social Workout, body electric once held plank for 15 minutes. (I feel buff when I hold it for like 90 seconds). For most of us, five minutes of plank would be amazing, and the video below is all about getting you there. For the easily bored, good news — you get to shift a tiny bit every 15 seconds. If the video soundtrack isn't exactly revving your engines, plug in spindig's awesome five minute plank playlist.

(via Conditioning Research via Physical Living)

Online & Video

Workout

changing it up without changing it much

Sadly, I haven't done any day rides during the MMM. My cycling minutes have mostly been commuter minutes except for a handful of spinning classes and a few 7ish minute stints on the rowing thing.

Caffeine Free

Social Workout 2.0 Wrecks My Morning

Last Thursday I got all cocky. Tooling around Social Workout 2.0, I enthusiastically whipped up the "28 Days to Caffeine Freedom Challenge. No sodas, no coffee, no tea, no yerba mate, and no tears!" and without much thought about the consequences of my rash action, I set the start date for that very day. Today marks my first caffeine-free Monday morning. And I'm not crying, but I am drooling on my keyboard. I just picked up my wallet and told Oliver I was caving, for the sake of the blog. He recited a bunch of Wake Up Call quotes and suggested I try some pushups. I complied. Image above: What I'm dreaming of right now. After the jump: Video of a peppy person who has given up coffee in a much more reasonable fashion. Apparently the secret is "determination" and "sports drinks."

Feat Suggestion

Here's my Feat idea:  For the duration of the challenge - no Fried Food.  No French Fries, no Chicken Fingers, no fried ANYTHING.  I'm trying to do that for the month before my wedding and its hard, but do-able.   And its uber healthy :-)

Challenge that i am doing this summer

I am already doing a challenge, it started today in fact.. oops yesterday, the intenSati Rise & Shine challenge... For the month of July, I have to commit to 4 intenSati workouts a week... 2 of them MUST be 6:30am classes, no matter what! this is incredibly difficult challenge bc i go to bed late and to wake up at 5:00am... is so HARD..

Joesgirl Feat Suggestion #3: If you could achieve any feat this summer . . . what would it be?

Wow, did a million things float into my head the minute Oliver posed this question, but this is what it all boils down to for me: if I could accomplish any feat this summer, it would be to find a way to have faith that all in the Universe (and my world) is working out as it should, and that I can trust in that conclusion continuously and always.

Deep Thoughts

On Feats

There are different kinds of feats. "Process" feats involve sticking to a routine. Sitting for ten minutes in silence each day, for example, or going Paleo, or giving up "food on the run" for a month. Such feats lend themselves to daily tracking, to "hold oneself accountable." Other feats involve acquiring a skill or achieving a result, such as being able to dive fearlessly into a swimming pool or crushing a certain workout (or wearing out one's dog), or, say, losing five pounds. The achievement of any sort of feat, however, whether process or result, feels good — and it stands forever, even if the skills, results, or processes, atrophy with time.

People need goals to focus their mind. It's true that some people seem to maintain a routine, simply for the sake of the routine, without regard to any notion of progress. Many of us pay very little attention to our sleep habits, for example — we sleep without setting goals for that sleep, or we eat, or go to the gym, or have sex without any ambition for those activities beyond the status quo. Perhaps that's fine, and our sense of progress comes in other areas: work or family or politics. Or perhaps some of us resign ourselves to phsycial and intellectual stasis across the board, simply seeking an extended repetition of the same comfortable routines. But surely even those of us in this group have some implicit goals, some secret sense of progression or decline.