Despite the hugs, November Project a fun workout

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This article was published 02/09/2015 (3903 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every Wednesday, at 6:15 a.m., a group of Winnipeggers meets at the skate park at The Forks to work out. They are the members of November Project, a fitness movement that began in Boston and has spread to 22 cities in North America.

And on this Wednesday morning, I am one of them.

I am the first to arrive at 6 a.m., a time at which I’d prefer not to be arriving at anything. There is no one here yet, which leads to some vague anxiety about some sort of terrifying November Project hazing ritual. But slowly and surely, people of all ages start wandering in from all directions. We are 43 people strong by 6:11 a.m., which is when I lost count. Some people are wearing November Project T-shirts. Everyone greets each other with giant hugs.

Hugging, I will soon learn, is kind of November Project’s thing. Everyone hugs. I normally dislike hugs, but I am also a very good sport, so I manage to awkwardly hug several fellow exercisers. They cease to be strangers. Now, they are strangers I have hugged.

I mentally ask myself the important question we should all ask ourselves while bouncing up and down in the spot with a group of weirdly enthusiastic people wearing matching clothing: is this a cult?

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November Project workouts are free, year-round, open to any age and fitness level, and are challenging without being inaccessible. The movement effectively eliminates two common barriers to fitness: cost and intimidation. Everyone is quite literally welcomed with open arms. The ethos: just show up.

Rick Duha, 26, and Thomas Hall, 25 are the affable leaders of the Winnipeg “tribe,” as they call it. They’re longtime athletes, having played basketball and football together in high school at St. Paul’s. Hall went on to play football for the University of Manitoba Bisons for six years, while Duha went on to pursue a bachelor degree in outdoor recreation from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. The pair has since taken up half-marathons and triathlons. (Hall conducted our phone interview on Tuesday during a run, which made me feel simultaneously impressed and bad about myself.)

Hall and Duha decided to bring November Project to this city in 2014. It began in earnest last June under the name Winnipeg Gone Rogue; fitness groups seeking an official November Project designation must complete an eight-week pledge process to demonstrate both appetite and momentum for the format. Winnipeg Gone Rogue was minted as a November Project tribe in January, and it has swelled from eight participants to more than 100, just via word of mouth and social media. Hall estimates they’ve had more than 700 visitors.

Duha and Hall encourage and motivate — the common call and response is “All good?” “F— yeah!” — but they aren’t bootcamp-style trainers.

“It’s the group that pushes people,” Hall says.

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We are working through squat jumps and mountain climbers as the sun rises which, I admit, is actually pretty nice. I am no stranger to group fitness classes — shout-out to the Saturday step aerobics crew at GoodLife — but this is different. This requires teamwork. That’s how I meet Shannon Wiebe, a stranger whose ankles I’ve now held onto while doing reverse abdominal crunches. It’s her second workout with the tribe and she’s hooked.

My workout is made more challenging by the fact I am being photographed by a Free Press photographer and therefore am hyper-aware of the terrible faces I’m probably making. We run the stairs at Scotiabank Stage. We compete in a “triathlon” — bicycle crunches, stationary swimming and more running. We sprint down the Esplanade Riel. In addition to disliking hugs, I also don’t like running. Same with Maylee Jacob, an acquaintance of mine who has been coming for a while. “Last week, they made us run 5K,” she says.

She isn’t amused.

The hour goes by quickly and, at the end of it, the weekly positivity award is passed out. Our little community disperses for the week.

“How was it?” Hall asks me. “It was a lot of fun,” I respond. And I mean it.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca