Founder Story Pt. 3: NARP Edition
When I think back on my athletic journey, I can’t help but laugh a little bit… I played sports in high school, but everyone played sports at my high school. I was always the last picked, the bench warmer, and a strong candidate for the “most improved award.”
Needless to say, I didn’t try to play a sport in college.
The next four years of my life, I learned what it meant to be what my student-athlete classmates called a “NARP,” or a “non-athletic regular person.” It was my first time visiting a gym without a team. I didn’t recognize any of the machines and watching other people use them felt completely foreign to me. Sign-up sheets, time limits, and the sea of judgmental gym-goers’ eyes burning holes in the back of my head certainly didn’t help. I started with a “cardio plus weights” routine I had practiced during my lacrosse and track days, but quickly switched to just cardio and abs to avoid the more public areas of the gym.
Then as the months quickly grew colder, and this California girl experienced the East Coast’s coldest winter in 70 years, I found that my arctic walks to the gym became less fun. I justified moving my body less so I could study more. Running from class to class became my only cardio and I started to feel heavy for the first time in my life. Flash forward one graduation, two jobs, and 7 years later, I was 25 lbs overweight and hopeless about how to get my old body back. I felt winded walking up the stairs at 24 years old and I knew something had to change.
Workouts felt like a test for a class I’d never taken. I’d show up thinking maybe a miracle would happen, get about 15 minutes in, huffy and breathless, and tell myself it was simply impossible to finish. So, I started with the simplest workout I thought I could enjoy- walking.
I was in the throes of COVID-19 living in San Francisco’s Marina District. Every morning before going into work, I’d make myself a coffee and walk by the beach to the Golden Gate Bridge. My walks were leisurely, but they were consistent. I would run into friends, cute puppies, and the occasional attractive man and that was more than enough to get my lonely single butt out of bed in the middle of the pandemic. My morning walks weren’t just budding workouts, they were my primary source of dopamine. I found hope.
Today, I’m 19 days into the 75 Hard Challenge. I work out every day, 45 min outside and 45 min inside. I just hit my 91-week streak on Peloton and I’m two weeks into their marathon training program. This week, I’m scheduled to run more miles than I ever have in my entire life and I’m actually excited about it.
My workouts became consistent because I found joy in my movement. I look for tips from different instructors, switch things up, and always come to a workout prepared with good listening content. I’m becoming the kind of girl I only dreamed I could be.
I joined Team Couro for college-aged Jacky, who showed up at the gym but didn’t see the results she wanted and gave up. I fight for Team Couro for post-college Jacky, who hated feeling sluggish at 24 but didn’t know how to get back to a routine. I know now that all I needed was guidance and motivation- an affordable way to pick a workout that looked fun for that day, a trainer I could check in with on my terms, and the anonymity of an online platform to give me the confidence I needed to get started. I needed consistent, sustainable movement I could enjoy from anywhere, despite my athletic capabilities, and I needed to feel love for myself again.
They say Cornell is a place where “any person can find instruction in any study.” It’s a motto that gave me the confidence to pursue studying hospitality despite knowing very little about it, and led to opening my own restaurant. In my role as Couro’s Chief Marketing Officer, I won’t stop until we create the same opportunity in sports: to help any person, NARPs included, find instruction in any sport. Welcome to our team.