Intrepidus Fitness

Today’s program calls for a 1-Rep Max back squat. The catch? No lifting belt, no knee sleeves. Completely raw.

Here is why training heavy without a belt or sleeves is a great tool for your long-term progress:

1️⃣ Core Stability: A belt gives your abs something to push against to artificially increase intra-abdominal pressure. Going beltless forces your transverse abdominis and obliques to do 100% of the work to protect your spine.

2️⃣ Knee Health: Knee sleeves provide compression, but they also give you a subtle “rebound” out of the hole. Squatting without them forces your quadriceps, glutes, and patellar tendons to stabilize the joint through the entire range of motion.

3️⃣ Exposing Form Faults: Supportive gear is great for hitting PRs, but it can mask technical breakdowns. If your hips shoot up, your knees cave, or your torso collapses today, you will feel it instantly.

Stripping away the gear forces you to stay honest, scale back the ego, and earn every single pound on that bar. Let’s squat!

Say goodbye to sitting down comfortably this weekend🍑🔥

Pretty sure his ego is moving faster than his actual pace.

Proper hand care isn’t complicated, but it is SO important if you want to be a master of grip! Whether you are cycling reps on a barbell or trying to hang on the rig for pull-ups or toes-to-bar, our hands do heavy lifting every workout. To keep them ready for anything, you only need to do one thing - tame those calluses!

If you’ve been putting in the work, your hands have built up layers of skin. But hardened skin shouldn’t take over! So do the “Ledge” Test: Run your fingers over the top of your palm. If you feel a sharp ledge, it’s time to thin the skin. You don’t need a specialized callus shaver—Coach just uses a regular foot file! Scrape the skin down until it feels smooth and flush with your hand again.

What if you rip? Even with great care, you will likely experience a tear at some point when pushing reps to the limit. Here is how to heal up fast:
1. Wash hands with soap and water immediately. It will burn, but getting it clean is the most important step.
2. Snip the Flap: Don’t leave that skin flap on to “protect” the wound. It will dry up, get caught on things, and cause further tearing or irritation. Snip it off as close to the unharmed skin as possible using sharp medical scissors or even cuticle cutters.
3. For the first day, applying petroleum jelly can work to start the healing. But a zinc-based diaper cream or specialized balms (like RipFix Hand Repair Balm or Callus Performance Salve) is your ticket to durable, fast healing!

How do you manage your hand care? Let us know any of your tips in the comments below!

We can’t believe it—this is our 1,000th post! To celebrate, we want to help you hook up your friends with fitness.

We are selecting one lucky winner at random to receive a FREE MONTH of class membership!

How to enter:
1️⃣ Follow us
2️⃣ Like this milestone post ❤️
3️⃣ Tag a friend who needs a free month to crush their goals with you (each tag is a new entry!) ⬇️

Bonus: Share this post to your story for an extra entry!

The winner will be selected at random and announced on Sunday, June 28. Get your tags in now!

Thank you for continuing to be a part of our health and fitness journey!💪

Looking to move on a Sunday, but don’t know what to do? Or maybe you just can’t get to the gym one day during the week and need a workout that you can do at home or outside. Look no further than our Sunday programming in Wodify!

In case you haven’t noticed, at the start of the June cycle, we have been programming “bonus” outdoor workouts on Sundays. So next time you’re looking to get one in but can’t make it to the gym, pull up one of these Sunday workouts, get outside, and soak up that sunshine!😎