For the Body:

4 rounds for time with coupon – RX is 30# kettlebell, Ruck, Cinderblock, but get creative – we all have something 20-30 lbs lying around the house…

1.) Run 200 meters:

• 10 Manmakers (burpee with a block + OHP)
• 20 Overhead presses
• 30 KB swings
• 40 Goblet Squats (or ruck on squats)

2.) Run 400 meters:

• 10 Manmakers
• 20 Overhead presses
• 30 KB swings
• 40 Goblet Squats (or ruck on squats)

3.) Run 600 meters:

• 10 Manmakers
• 20 Overhead presses
• 30 KB swings
• 40 Goblet Squats (or ruck on squats)

4.) Run 800 meters:

• 10 Manmakers
• 20 Overhead presses
• 30 KB swings
• 40 Goblet Squats (or ruck on squats)

For the Heart:

I feel like vortex is a fitting description for the emotional state that I find myself in currently. A vortex is more than just a massive mess – it’s a force of air, or often fluid, centered around a singular space or curve. I have a cacophony of things racing through my head and find myself currently with lot of time to contemplate each of them in excruciating detail. At first it seems like these thoughts are sporadic or arbitrary, but they’re ultimately all focused around the crisis we currently find ourselves trapped in. No matter my efforts to divert thoughts or to distract myself, Covid-19 ultimately pulls everything back into its singular, rapidly spinning force.

It took donuts to realize this.

Yesterday my wife and I groggily pulled our eyelids apart and ordered Monuts, our favorite brunch spot in Durham. They had announced earlier in the week that they’d be closing for at least a month, even for to go orders. We order early to guarantee one last strawberry-lemonade pop tart and chimichurri egg on everything bagel. I leave Annie in bed and take the 20 min drive to pick it up. The daily litany of news podcasts stream through my device into my car stereo and I digest it bit my depressing bit. On an unusually empty I-40 I drive under one of those electronic signs dedicated to updating motorists from a different time on road conditions: “drive sober – it’s the law,” “heavy congestion, next 10 miles,” “Accident ahead, prepare to stop.” . . . . . . On this morning it says only “Covid-19. Stay Home.”. . . . . And it all just kind of hits me. Teary eyed and alone on a road typically frustratingly swarming with cars all I wanted was a return to normalcy.

But a return isn’t coming. Not in the next few weeks. And if we’re honest with ourselves a full return to the way things were is not likely. The world will be permanently reshaped by this event. But a string of submicroscopic RNA code replicating and mutating throughout our species is only a catalyst. It is up to us to actually do the shaping.

What does this moment tell us about ourselves, individually and collectively? What does this tell us about our need for others? What does this tell us about our healthcare systems, our political systems, our mental health systems, our personal and societal values?

As we are forced to do less, what does this tell us about a world that has always focused only on more? 

A mental exercise to go with your physical one above: Think about 3 things you’re extremely grateful for and you’d like to go back to the way they were after this is over. Then think about 3 things that you’d like to see change as a result of our current crisis. Come back to that list when we finally begin our slow collective slog towards normalcy.

Further Reading:

https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief