🔎 In This Fit Tip Friday 

 Inside you'll find:

• Stories of Strength - The first El Capitan free solo

• Lower back pain and your hamstrings

• A Reformed Design Partner

• Something I've enjoyed 

• Quote for the Week

📖 Stories of Strength - The First El Capitan Free Solo

Nestled within Yosemite national park are daunting rock formations that invite only the bravest climbers to ascend their granite faces.El Capitan is one of these imposing monoliths that stirs the climber's spirit. From base to summit, El Capitan stands a chilling 3,000 feet.For reference, the Empire State building in NYC is ~1,500 feet from base to tip. El Capitan is two Empire State buildings tall.  Over the decades, several climbers completed a summit of El Capitan, but no one attempted a free solo climb. A free solo climb is just like it sounds; it's an ascent with no ropes, harnesses, or bolts.Just shoes, chalk, and rock.  On the morning of June 3, 2017, climber Alex Honnold began his free solo attempt of El Capitan at 5:32am. At the time, Honnold was known as one of the world's best free soloers. In 2008 he was credited as the first free soloer of Half Dome. In fact, he was so committed to this dangerous sport, that in 2014 the company Clif Bar decided to drop their sponsorship of him. For almost four hours, Honnold worked his way up the 3,000 foot granite face, one motion at time. Each hand and foot placement required preparation, precision, skill and strength... not to mention an absurd amount of trust that the granite wouldn't crumble when touched. At 9:28am, Honnold summited El Capitan, becoming the first climber to free solo the rock face.This incredible feat was captured in the 2018 documentary "Free Solo". But if you want the cliff-notes version (pun... kind of intended), start with Honnold's 2018 Ted Talk.

❗Lower Back Pain and Your Hamstrings

Your body operates as a system. Paul understood this (1 Corinthians 12-14), using the body as a metaphor for the church. And this concept is incredibly helpful when trying to understand your body's physical function. To illustrate this, we'll look at your body's posterior chain (PC). The PC is everything from your heels to your neck, running along the entire backside of your body. Any tightness or muscle imbalances in any of these PC areas can cause pain or discomfort on another. Take lower back pain for instance. If you have lower back pain, chances are something down the chain is causing it, and I would recommend starting with your hamstrings.Tight hamstrings can oftentimes pull down on your lower back, causing discomfort and pain when exercising. Here are two of my favorite warm-up exercises I do to get my hamstrings going before my workouts:

• Forward leg swings

• Side-to-side leg swings

🖋️ A Reformed Design Partner

I'm passionate about entrepreneurial work by Christians. We need more of it. And I want to share some of the work Rob Hewitt is doing with Livingstones. ➡️ Do you know someone who is looking for a design partner? Livingstones Studio offers full-service design solutions to communicate your values visually, set you apart, and convey the good, true, and beautiful.Leave behind cookie-cutter templates and build with cathedral-style aspirations, like living stones, crafting lasting beauty at every turn. Livingstones can help you create a standout brand, complete with a world-class logo; custom website; marketing materials, graphics; and more. Learn more at livingstones.studio or contact Rob Hewitt directly at [email protected] for a free consultation.

📃 Something I've Enjoyed

Black-out curtains. Boy do I wish I got these sooner. When my 3rd daughter was born and she was in our room for the first few months, my wife and I installed some simple black-out curtains to help her sleep. But of course, they ended up helping us out way more. 

📜Quote for the Week

"Seems scary? Yeah it is, which is why I spent so many years dreaming about free soloing El Cap without actually doing it."-  Alex Honnold, 2018 TED Talk on his El Capitan Free Solo