Referral Reward: Refer "The TriumFit Community" to just 3 friends & get one of my training plans for free ($20-$35 value). Just reply to this email with subject line: "Newsletter referrals" and list the emails of your 3 amigos, and I will add them manually! (Ideally you tell them how awesome it is first, of course...)
Now you have a proper training plan for the body you want to get your swagger back.
What I've Learned So Far:
SEPTEMBER STUDY: THE STAIRS WERE ACTUALLY GOOD FOR (some of) OUR BRAINS
If you joined us for Remember, Remember, the Stairs of September, you spent about 60 minutes questioning your life choices while climbing 110 flights of stairs.
Turns out we may have gone slightly above the minimum effective dose.
This month’s study looked at what happens to your mood and cognitive performance after a very short bout of stair climbing. And when I say short, I mean SHORT.
Researchers took 32 healthy young adults and compared a day of sitting around with a day where they completed:
3 × 1-minute bouts of vigorous stair climbing, with 1 minute of recovery between each.
Three minutes.
Meanwhile, we chose a 60-minute death march.
Same general concept. Slightly different interpretation.
WHAT HAPPENED?
The biggest finding wasn’t physical. It was how people felt afterward.
After the stairs, participants reported feeling (on a Visual Analog Mood Scale):
Or as a percentage, they felt ~57% more energetic, 36% less tense, and 24% less tired compared with the control condition.
That last one is my favorite.
They exercised.
Then reported feeling less tired.
...which feels wildly disrespectful to everyone who finished the "Stairs of September" Challenge with me and immediately needed to find somewhere to sit down and cry.
But that’s also the cool part of this study: exercise doesn’t necessarily have to be long to change how you feel.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR BRAIN?
They also tested executive function, the stuff your brain uses to focus, inhibit responses, and switch between tasks.
This part was more mixed.
Men improved on a cognitive switching task after the stair climbing, while women didn’t show the same effect. There wasn’t a significant improvement in inhibitory control for either group. So I’m not going to tell you stair climbing suddenly gives you a 200 IQ.
But there was another interesting finding:
The harder people pushed on the stairs, the better their switching performance tended to be, and the more energetic they felt afterward.
THE TAKEAWAY
Obviously, this was a small study, just 32 people, ages 18–24, so let’s not pretend three minutes of stairs is some miracle drug.
But I think there’s a really simple lesson here:
You don’t always need a full workout to get something from movement.
Three hard minutes mattered.
That’s worth remembering because most of us have days where 30–60 minutes feels impossible. Work is crazy. You’re tired. You’re stressed. You don’t have your gym stuff.
Cool.
Find some stairs.
Go hard for a minute. Recover. Do it again.
And if you’re one of the psychos who came out and climbed 110 flights with us for the 25th anniversary of September 11th…
September 11th, 2026 was the 25th (damn, I'm old) anniversary of the Twin Tower attacks. I still remember being in 4th grade, my mom waking me up in a panic at 6 am from my top bunk, and showing my brother the I the TV.
For some reason I still went to school that day, not sure why. Thanks mom.
But this challenge is especially meaningful to me because my dad worked for the Los Angeles Fire Department for 38 years (20 as a paramedic + 18 as a paramedic/firefighter). I am only 34 years old, so that is longer than I have walked the Earth.
Insane work.
This was also officially the LARGEST TRIUMFIT EVENT ever, with ~26 participants. Truly astonished by the commitment from the group.
Jon Preng took amazing video of the challenge, PLEASE CHECK IT OUT!
I will have a DONATION LINK provided on the bear_crawl_across_america instagram page the entire month of October, so go directly to that.
If you don't want a patch:
1) support by liking/sharing any of the mission
2) bear crawl 1 minute a film it and tag, or invite to collaborate with the Bear Crawl IG page. If you bear crawl for 1 minute (60 times in the month) I will still count that as a mile towards the team goal of 3,000 miles!
3) donate to the link without bear crawling at all
Only making 50 of these for the first year!
I will be filming as big of a group on OCTOBER 4th, at 10 am at Stadium High for the promo video of the challenge to kick it off.
SHOW UP! It will be and awesome hang. Bear crawl or not.
My personal goal is to bear crawl 26.2 miles in the month of October (a Bear-A-Thon) as I like to call it, and donate $2,620 personally to the campaign.
YES EVERY SUNDAY IN OCTOBER IS A BEAR CRAWL CLUB! BECAUSE OF THE "FALL BEAR CRAWL ACROSS AMERICA" CAMPAIGN
10 am, Stadium High Football Field
P.S. the first 3 badges are IN! These look incredible.
If you show up to Bear Crawl Events you can earn these bad boys
(or bad bears rather) ;)
Cub arm bands are free, suggested $5 for each actual badge =)
What is Bear Crawl Clubs purpose?
America is Broken. Not beyond repair, but cracked where it matters most. We’re politically polarized, physically unfit, and angry at anyone but ourselves. We’ve lost the muscles that made us: grit, grace, unity, humility. So let’s rebuild it. Not with opinions. With actions. Introducing: TriumFit’s Moonshot Challenge “The Fall Bear Crawl Across America” 3,000 athletes. 3,000 miles. $300,000 raised for charity. One mile at a time. In October the goal will be to get every day athletes to register to commit to Bear Crawling 1 mile in 1 day, and raising $100 for GiveDirectly.org It will be a completely VIRTUAL challenge, no location limitations. One day it would be cool to actually pass a baton or something across the United States, but not yet. We start on all fours — bear crawling across a divided country to prove something simple: We don’t need to agree on everything to move in the same direction. Because strength isn’t found in shouting louder. It’s found in those who bear their weight and keep moving forward.
🧭 What Training For This Looks Like (local to where I am) Every 2nd and 4th Sunday of the month. Unless otherwise noted. 📍 Location Stadium High Football Field, Tacoma WA 🕑 Time 10 am - Noon Hour 1: Fitness (Bear Crawl Challenge) Hour 2: Fun — bring a nostalgic snack + drink combo to share 🐻 Distances (choose your level) ¼ mile · ½ mile · ¾ mile · 1 mile 👉 Gloves recommended Each crawl contributes to our national mission, one local effort at a time. This is where community meets commitment. Where fitness becomes a statement. Where America begins to rebuild. Join the mission. Crawl for a cause.
p.s. If you paid for and completed a TFC event, use this editable document to keep track of your completion times after each event, to see how your fitness is improving!
