Panther Strength
Personal training intention meets small group energy in Panther Strength, our new M,W,F, class.
We have a new class.
W,Th at 6am
This early morning class is designed to build functional strength and expand your natural mobility—the kind of capability that makes you feel ready for whatever.
Panther Strength blends the intention and guidance of personal training with the energy of tight-knit small group training.
Using minimalist equipment like sandbags, kettlebells, and boxes, mixed with proven movement patterns and bodyweight work, you'll train to be stronger and move better on any terrain—home, work, or wilderness.
Walk through Walls for winter
Just you, the ground, and five minutes a few times a day, how hard can it be? WALLS is back to start 2025.
The spot on the rug between the fire and the coffee table.
It’s all the space you need.
The glow from the hearth throws your shadow across the dark walls of winter morning.
The drop of sweat hanging from the tip of your nose glints with fire light.
You hold.
You exhale.
Your blood is pumping.
Outside, a whiteout sky of winter wind whips against the walls.
It’s a battering ram of cold eager to crack your will.
A wry smile flickers on your face and says no.
Your heat nips back at the cold.
The sweat drips.
You breathe.
You push.
It’s only five minutes.
It takes that long to make coffee.
And you’re on your third already.
WALLS is back, and begins December 30th.
You don’t need anything other than a spot on the ground the size of your body, and 5 minutes at time.
Enrollment opens soon.
More details to follow.
Classes are back September 28th
Class break is this weekend. We'll be outside finding something fun to do, ideally somewhere beautiful. Hope you’ll do the same, send us a picture.
No class this weekend September 21st.
Night’s coming sooner and the day’s growing cooler.
The Autumn Equinox is this weekend and it’s our favorite time for doing anything outside.
This is our first weekend without class since the last years Autumn Equinox so we’'ll be doing something fun outside, ideally somewhere beautiful.
If you get into something similar send us a picture with the subject Fall Fun to thedojo@thedojoofdowell.com
We’ll see you next weekend on the 28th. Sign up for class here.
The early Panther
Panther People like to get started early, even on the weekends, but not too early. Panther now starts at 8am on Saturdays.
Panther people have spoken. Earlier is better.
Saturday’s Panther HIIT class is now at 8am.
Body heat
It was snowy, below zero and a holiday, but you came anyway and we made our own heat. So much heat the furnace switched off and steam froze to the windows from floor to ceiling. Happy New Year ♥︎
In a blink we went from two classes on Saturday to filling a third.
It was snowy, below zero and a holiday, but you came anyway and we made our own heat. So much heat the furnace switched off and steam froze to the windows from floor to ceiling. Happy New Year ♥︎
We started a new ritual this year—hammering names and X’s into brass tags and nailing them to our wall. Showing up day after day isn’t easy. You’re body keeps score, and now so do we.
12 Xs earn you a free class.
Thank you for your energy, effort, and commitment.
The way out is through
More about the Walls in Walk Through Walls for Winter
Walk Through Walls for Winter starts in 4 days
What it is:
An online group training event that runs from January 1st to March 31st
It’s 60 bucks for all three months
You can do this from home without equipment-it’s roll your ass off the bed and start when you hit the floor accessible.
5 days a week you’ll do a few fierce, 5 minute bouts of exercise we call Walls.
What it isn’t:
Too hard for you- If you don’t have a training regimen Walls is the place to start. It’s potent, accessible, and a great way to build the habit of taking care of your body. And, every exercise has modification options to scale the intensity level while challenging you enough so you get the benefits of positive adaptation.
Too easy for you-If you train, Walls isn’t meant to replace your strength and conditioning program, but it’s an excellent supplement or complement, especially if you mostly lift heavy or focus more on zone1 or zone2 cardio.
Adaptation
So what’s a Wall?
Walls are the little 5 minute rounds of fire that we call each workout.
They help us get to the good stuff: mood boosts and better metabolism, stronger hearts, muscles, and minds, more endurance, resilience…
The qualities that help us keep doing the things we love to do, are all on the other side of a wall, a challenge, a little bit of struggle.
Our bodies adapt.
If we make our days too soft, we get soft, if we make things harder we get stronger.
A Wall is designed to check multiple boxes at once.
Intense enough to bump up metabolism, strengthen your heart, lungs, and improve mood.
Movement focused to increase strength, power, and overall mobility.
Short and bodyweight only to make them accessible.
Frequent enough to build a habit and help you reach the minimum threshold of recommended activity levels as supported by the current scientific literature.
Skin in the game
If you’re hoping to keep your body feeling good and going strong for the long haul, effort and consistency matter most.
While we’re setting up Walk Through Walls for Winter to be more about a group doing something challenging, through a season that can be hard, together, and sharing in the experience-that’s what it’s about for us-but we also want to reward effort and consistency.
We’re going to give a month of personal training, including one 1-on-1 session per week, whether in person or virtual, to whoever completes the most walls in 3 months.
If there’s a tie, we’ll draw a name out of a hat.
We start Monday.
A solstice playlist
When winter’s dark, your hands are numb, and your pockets aren’t deep enough, remember, the light comes back.
When winter’s dark, your hands are numb, and your pockets aren’t deep enough, remember—the light comes back.
Heather’s playlist for winter.
Tracklist below. Click here to listen on Spotify.
NIGHT’S CHANGING
1. Silver - Pixies
2. I Dream in Neon - Dirty Beaches
3. Kim's Sunsets - Fat White Family
4. Black Sunday - Federale, Meghann Hegna
5. Lovely Creature - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
6. Like a Stone - trentemøller Remix - Tricky, trentemøller
7. The Secret Sons of Europe - ROME
8. Apple Pie - Puerto Muerto
9. Brutus (Instrumental) - The Buttress
10. Me and the Devil - Soap&Skin
11. As You Wish - Public Memory
Bowl sessions together forever
We vow.
The first day of fall began like any other. Wake in the dark, move in the dark, bring life back to our bodies. Then, sort out coffee.
We weren’t home so we traded making pour overs and reading while the sun comes up for walks to the lighthouse at dawn, with a stop by Verve, our favorite East Side roaster, on the way.
We sat in our spot, talked, watched the bay come to life as the marine layer burned away while we sipped notes of citrus and chocolate from our cups.
This was our clock.
Empty cups and more glow in the sky meant the kids should be stirring back at the house.
Proof of a good yesterday.
There were signs of life when we arrived: bathroom doors open with the lights left on, random explosions of Tik-Tok audio coming from the loft, and new dishes on the kitchen counter, but everyone was still in their beds.
After a quick check-in with mom about the day, they were moving and we were rolling down the street to the skatepark for a few late morning laps.
Our last doubles run as bachelors together.
An empty skatepark is a dream most days.
The two of us, maybe a few friends, or even couple strangers there to rip–anytime the skatepark hasn’t morphed into a daycare-that’s the best.
Lucky us, an empty Mike Fox park awaited our arrival.
This day could’ve been chaos. The 50th anniversary jam for Santa Cruz Skateboards was going down in a few hours, but the park was empty, mellow, and the air was a cool breeze with warm light.
Ramp sessions were scarce leading up to the trip so we avoided the temptation to ride everything, opting instead to groove in the same lines again and again, going faster, higher, leaning more each turn—to get barreled, pitted, etc.
Tires over body is ideal. Acceptable.
Sweaty and happy, we called it before the crowd showed up, scooped up the kids, and headed to a cave in the ocean to tie the knot.
Third season sounds
When dead leaves blow and the sun gets low.
Seventy Seven is a playlist for Fall.
Twilight comes early. The breeze carries the musk of dead leaves, dragging the dry bodies behind, skittering on bricks.
Seventy Seven Heather’s new playlist for fall.
Tracklist below. Click here to listen on Spotify.
Seventy Seven
1. Intro - Zeal & Ardor
2. Hey Now - When I Give You All My Lovin' - Romare
3. Total Depravity - The Veils
4. Cavaliers - Mansfield.TYA
5. When That Head Splits - Remixed by Woodpecker Wooliams - Esben and the Witch, Woodpecker Wooliams
6. Feu - Flora Fishbach
7. Maria's Theme - The Limiñanas
8. Cemetery Rain - Jaye Jayle
9. Call to Arms - The Huntress and Holder of Hands
10. Hold My Hand - :Of The Wand And The Moon:
11. I Am All I Got - The Dead Brothers
Dojo at dawn
The place itself works on you. The Dojo is more than a room to move steel, hold form, and sweat.
lucky us
Grand ditches and tiny, tarnished stars. The best days start in the dark.
We plunged zombie-armed through the fabric of night, a homogeneous, untouchable, lightless velvet that cloaked the pines. We groped for a spot to pee, fingers extended, ready to touch god or be obliterated against blackjack trunks.
We felt our way back to bed with cautious steps until we jammed our digits into steel and slid them along the truck's body, feeling for the door.
A last look at the sky through the window revealed towering silhouettes, pine shaped cut outs in the stars. So many stars. None of them ours.
The sun is a black pinhole.
Half that, actually.
Betelgeuse floats in the night sky. It’s Orion’s shoulder, and from where we’re standing the Sun looks 40,000 times larger. And compared to Sirius, the brightest star we can see, the Sun shines 10 billion times brighter. Both are illusions.
Betelgeuse is at least 700 times the size of the Sun, and Sirius is nearly twice as bright. And if the Sun eclipsed the biggest, brightest stars it would vanish in a solar system sized sea of blue LED light. Not even a low watt speck of amber incandescence would remain. Like the prick end of a sewing needle transiting a beach ball. And if that pin pricked the ball and let out a single red blood cell, that would be Earth. And that lost, pin prick, mote of orange would be a black hole that could swallow about a million Earths. That’s our star, and it was rising soon.
Meanwhile, 60 miles north, the Grand Canyon sprawled silently in the dark. A wonder of Earth, a shelter, a grave, an ecosystem, a ditch carved by weather and time. But, it’s our ditch, over a mile deep and twice the height of any building we’ve ever built. And we weren’t going to miss the chance to watch the orange speck rise above it. We rolled out of the Coconino under twilight and headed north to catch the show properly from the South Rim.
After the solar rim ritual our pilgrimage took us to another ditch. Man made. An overlooked feat of civil engineering that quietly spares the city from snow melt and monsoon floods. A heroin den or wayward home for some. A bordello, prophet’s tablet or canvas for others. For us, the megalith beneath the street was a shrine to the carve, where we paid tribute in turns, offering sweat for joy until lunch.
