Blog

The last time we wrote a blog post on here was May 1st, 2020. COVID rates were still quite high in NYC, and we encouraged our readers/fellow Risers to exercise from home with a challenge. It was the “100 of anything” challenge, where we picked an exercise to do 100 of every day. Some of us logged our exercises on a spreadsheet! But this was a chaotic and frightening period in all of our lives, so we’re not mad if you dropped off halfway or never started. (Self-care above all else when you’re living through a once-every-hundred-years pandemic!)

When New York began its phased reopening in June, we started holding some low-key workouts with regular members of the Rise community over the summer, and eventually started inviting newcomers to the party. Doesn’t it look fun??

BK Body Circuit is now in Fort Greene Park!

Wednesdays at Columbus Circle (we’ll be back at Bryant Park in June)

Back at the Willy B on Fridays!

Reopening: the “new normal”

Now that vaccinations have been open to all for some time, we’re entering the final reopening phase of The Rise!

But that doesn’t mean it’s back to the old normal.

In the past, The Rise did everything pretty much uniformly. All workouts were at 6:30 AM, and they were never cancelled or rescheduled last minute due to bad weather (aside from the brief hiatus our Hills workouts went on). COVID gave us the help we never asked for or wanted to do away with that approach! As the initial wave subsided and we started holding small classes again, each workout re-emerged in a distinct way. Mondays and Fridays were organized via Facebook chat; Tuesdays via mailing list; and Wednesdays via Google group. The start times were variable, and workouts were sometimes cancelled or moved to a different day based on the weather forecast. Though it was a fragmented approach, we believe it was the right one, because it gave our leaders the flexibility to do things their own way while everything was still up in the air.

Going forward, we’re going to keep some of that flexibility while removing some of the disjointedness. All the workouts will be listed on Meetup just like in pre-COVID times, but each workout will be run more independently. Two important points on that:

• Starting May 31st, you must RSVP on Meetup to attend a workout. This will allow organizers to communicate with all interested attendees instead of spamming the entire mailing list. Also, some leaders may prefer to have temporary caps on attendance (especially while we’re adjusting to large crowds again after a year of relative isolation!).
• Make sure to check your emails and Meetup accounts for schedule changes (or, related to the first bullet point, messages gauging interest in schedule changes). Rest assured you will be given sufficient notice if this does end up happening!

A word on face coverings/vaccinations

Last but not least, our current policy on face coverings and vaccinations:

In light of the most recent CDC outdoor guidelines, face coverings are optional for vaccinated individuals during our workouts. We still encourage wearing a face covering at idle times to offer some protection to those not vaccinated. We aren’t asking whether individuals are vaccinated, so please do what you’re comfortable with.

Let’s do this!

Now that we got all that out of the way, we are excited to welcome more of you back to our workouts! Look for our offerings on Meetup, watch out for more frequent blog posts, and hopefully we’ll be back at it with happy hours and special night/weekend workouts soon.

Thumbs up for the return of happy hours!

RISE UP!