Fit Community Project: Recent Episodes
Ayn
The Fit Community Project is an initiative by Pioneer Valley CrossFit to build community beyond the 'box' focused on wellness, health and fitness. Using a podcast format, we will partner with local community organizations and individuals to build connections between our members and organizations. We will foster those connections by creating and working on projects that support a local community of well, healthy, fit members.
Systemic racism has no place in a fit community. Chris Landry is a PVCF member who is taking seriously his responsibility to listen, to learn and to support the Black Lives Matter movement. He talks to Ayn and Tony about the efforts underway in Northampton to address BLM concerns through budget reforms. Ayn then discusses unaffiliating from CrossFit and what more she is doing to provide a space where Black Lives Matter. Find out what is happening and what you can do.
Scientist Meg Stratton, Ph.D joins the program and explains Covid-19. She discusses what it is, how it works, how we're trying to fight it, what a vaccine might look like, what to watch for as we open up the economy, why we take the precautions outlined by the CDC and what idiosyncrasies make CrossFit boxes more or less likely to be the center of an outbreak. And yes, you will understand it, because she had to explain it to Tony and Ayn and they seemed to get it. Get your Covid-19 overview, with practical tips, here.
Ayn and Tony welcome Annie Doran to the program to brainstorm about the challenges of the pandemic and the opportunities for building better communities it brings. Annie sees a need for communities to come back into balance, with better, more resilient relationships. That change may begin with small, local movements which will be knit together to form a larger whole. She believes that we need to find balance within ourselves in order to implement build it in the new world that will be created on the other side of this crisis. Just as adding wolves to Yellowstone Park restored ecological balance, we are all looking for our wolves.
Community drives lifestyle, and diet drives health. Liz E. joins the program to give her take on eating well now and after the pandemic, how to build good eating habits and where we can have the biggest impact in our community. PVCF - and the Fit Community Project - are are taking eating well to the next level.
Access to locally grown food has become a mainstream consideration for everyone in this time of pandemic. Guest and local farmer Ben Perrault has been using the Community Sustained Agriculture (CSA) model at Mountain View Farms for years. As he explains, this way of doing things is healthy for our bodies, our environment, our communities and our wallets. We want in on this, and Ben is ready to partner up.
Times of social upheaval create an opportunity to plan for a better world. In this episode of the Fit Community Project, Ayn and Tony discuss a number of specific projects that will build community focused on wellness, health and fitness.
The Fit Community Project didn't have to look far to find its first ally. Perry Cohn is an avid CrossFitter at PVCF. He founded and runs a company that brings the queer community together through wilderness trips. One lesson? If you create the right setting, community building is spontaneous. Oh, you want another? If you want to live in a way that builds the right kind of community, you might have to give up the wrong kind of job. The real magic happens after you hear your partner say, "I'm sorry you just quit your what, now?"
What if we built communities focused on fitness, health and wellness instead of, well, what we do now? In this first episode of the Fit Community Project, hosts Ayn and Tony lay a simple foundation: Start with a CrossFit box and build out from there, partnering with others focused on the value of healthy lives and healthy communities. Be open to a broader definition of wellness and start connecting with the many people and groups fostering it in our crazy world. And then see where it goes...