It's happening!

YMCA Parkour Classes

I won’t bother burying the lede here. The leadership and the insurance rep at the Sturgeon Bay Program Center (official name of my local YMCA location) have all signed off!

I’ll be coaching parkour in Fall 2025! 🎉 

I’ve started an email thread with the program exec with thoughts on the class name, age group, etc. Needless to say, there’s no rush. Plenty of time to plan.

But it seems like I’ll be coaching kids ages 11-14. Secretly glad I’m not coaching kids any younger than that 😅 I work better with older kids.

First Aid/CPR Certification

I got it done!

ADAPT Level 2 Course Prep

With the First Aid/CPR cert out of the way, I officially meet the prerequisites to go take the ADAPT Level 2 course in June 💪 

I was booked for Boston either way, though. Would’ve been a massive waste of money if I turned up without that done.

Excellent example of “burning the boats” ⛵️ 🔥 

I’ve also started reading the ADAPT Level 1 Learning Pack! So far, it’s reminded me of an important truth of parkour that my training doesn’t currently reflect:

Training holistically.

I’ll speak on that in a moment.

Weight Loss

This isn’t going well. After making some changes today, though, I think it’s about to.

Training

I haven’t done distance running since my injury, and I have never been big on sprint work. I also haven’t been swimming in months. I don’t throw or catch to work on my manual dexterity. I also have been putting far more emphasis on weight training than calisthenics.

Parkour training is meant to train the whole animal and avoid overspecialization of movement. In avoiding activities that were once too demanding for my left knee after my injury, I’ve unintentionally become overspecialized in weightlifting at the expense of other ways of moving.

I’m not even on Unit 1 of the ADAPT Level 1 Learning Pack yet and I’m already inspired to vary up my training approach.

This week I’ve been changing up my workout schedule to be easier to adhere to. Instead of working out before my wife wakes up, I work out after I drop her off at work at 7:15.

There’s an entire 2 hours where I don’t have to be at work yet, and I’ve been using it to start work earlier. I can see myself still using some of it for that, but the YMCA is only an extra 2 minutes of driving after I drop her off, so it’s silly to not take care of my workout then instead of practically making the same drive twice in one morning.

Nutrition

I met with my nutritionist! She’s cool, and we’re already adding some simple changes to my daily routine.

Her approach is to find the changes that feel easy for me to introduce, and one of them has been working super well so far:

Making sandwiches.

I know, it sounds simple, but you have to understand — I haven’t made myself a sandwich in at least a year. I’m not a “sandwich guy”.

But I decided the novelty could make it fun and I agreed to give it a try. Been enjoying the “sandwich life” and honestly it’s quite filling as a lunch:

• whole wheat bread

• tomato slice

• romain lettuce leaves

• red onion slices

• dijon mustard (or spicy avocado spread + jalapeños)

• turkey breast (slightly upscale lunchmeat)

• thinly sliced cheddar cheese

Both times I’ve made the sandwich I’ve thought of taking a picture for my blog, but didn’t. Oh well 😛 

As far as what she told me about the results of my blood test, she said she was more concerned about my LDL cholesterol and triglycerides than anything else.

Mostly she said to avoid saturated fats and processed carbs, and to watch for unnecessary coconut oil I might consume from products that were made with it.

I thought that was a weird suggestion until today when I almost got a bag of popcorn before I saw on that bag that it was “popped with coconut oil” 🤪 So I decided to hold out for my usual bag with olive oil & sea salt instead.

Aside from that, she gave me a few other pointers I’ve started implementing:

• Add fruit to every lunch

• Keep added sugars to <25g per day

• Batch-cook grains & freeze them, thaw 1 portion at a time during the week for grain bowls (I bought some grains today to cook over the weekend)

This all feels easier now that I have someone to hold me accountable. I plan to email her this weekend to start correspondence, so I’ve been trying my best to follow the plan in the meantime so I’ll have good news to report.

Mental Health

I’m still meditating!

Tomorrow is the last day of the 30-day challenge for “touching grass” (aka, going on 30-minute walks outside), and I’ve been listening to meditations on my walks instead of YouTube videos lately.

The Happier app has been a godsend. Really loving the clarity and relaxation I get from meditating on walks outside. I feel like I’m getting in touch with a part of myself I haven’t sat with consistently before. It’s becoming easier to avoid snacking urges and I haven’t been argumentative lately either.

The 2 meditation playlists I’ve gone through so far are related to work stress management and healthy habit formation.

Biggest takeaway so far is that I have the power to widen my awareness in times of stress or craving. I’ve done this before but I didn’t know how to describe what I was doing. Now I can do it intentionally as a way to deal with difficult situations. It’s been surprisingly helpful in multiple contexts so far.

Looking forward to exploring more of the benefits I can get out of this meditation practice.

I also started taking an ADHD medication! Today was Day 5 of taking Strattera. It’s a non-stimulant drug, which is different for me, since I’ve only ever taken stimulants for ADHD.

So I’m not used to the fact that this kind of medication takes several weeks to truly “kick in”. It needs time to build up in my system, apparently. I’m willing to give it a chance since I haven’t had any adverse side effects, and to be honest, I’d welcome any appetite suppression if there is any 😂 

Turns out all I had to do was call to leave a message for the doctor to follow up, because he gave me an Rx within 24 hours after I called.

Anyway, hoping for the best! It’d be great if I could get some of the distractibility and emotional dysregulation under control for once 😮‍💨 

What’s Next?

Now that all the stuff with the YMCA class is finalized, I’m going to turn my focus to the ADAPT Level 1 Learner Pack for some reading material when I have down time. Plenty of time to get through it all in the next 2 months so I’m not going to chart a learning plan or anything. I’ll just take notes in the book as I go through it.

More of my energy can go towards nutrition and exercise now, and maybe my ADHD meds will help curb my appetite, though I don’t feel any significant reduction in appetite yet.

I’m planning for my next blog post to have some exciting news about how I’ve gotten under 100kg and stayed there. Maybe even under 98 kg.

We’ll see 😉