clubhouse chat: taking a stance

day two of block one, and your twenty squats have already survived a monday. squat's up handed you the schedule; tonight the club hands you the form, because movement tuesday's whole love language is making every rep count.

the glow file

how do you do a squat properly? feet just wider than your hips, toes turned out a touch, chest proud, hips back and down like you're hovering over a bench you don't quite trust, weight spread through the whole foot, then stand up like you mean it. that is the entire move. the gossip lives in the details: a 2024 biomechanical review in the international journal of sports physical therapy found that widening your stance to about one and a half times shoulder width can raise glute activation by 13 to 61 percent. same rep, same weight, more glute. and the old playground rule about knees never passing your toes is officially retired: per the review, what matters is that your hips and knees split the work and your spine stays long, so a chest-forward lean from the hips is fine and a rounded back is the only real foul.

captains, this one is yours too: squatting well is the same prescription bone appétit wrote for your skeleton, and clean form is what makes the loaded version safe to grow into through perimenopause and far past it.

the rep sheet

rep sheet no. 2, taped inside your locker: one, plant your feet a little wider than your hips, toes out. two, brace like someone is about to tell you gossip. three, hips back and down, knees tracking over your toes. four, depth is wherever your form holds, not wherever instagram says. five, push the floor away and squeeze at the top. run this week's twenty-squat waves through those five checks and block one starts compounding quietly.

the piggy bank

in spokane, washington, olive garden server elysium pham kept showing up to her shifts while her family's home burned in the wildfires. a table of california firefighters, in town to fight those same fires, heard her story and left her a nearly one-thousand-dollar tip on their way out. she teared up at the table; so did we. members taking care of members, even in someone else's clubhouse.

heard at the clubhouse

monday's paper left the cincinnati final politely unspoiled, so here is the ending: coco gauff beat jessica pegula 6-2, 6-4 for her second cincinnati title, opening the match five games to nothing before pegula knew the meeting had started. their head-to-head now sits at five apiece, and pegula's own scouting report says it best: a dangerous, confident coco is going to new york. dating desk: the term of the season is wildflowering, letting a connection grow with no labels and no timeline. romantic in theory; the fine print psychologists keep adding is that no-timeline can quietly become no-conversation. the club ruling: let feelings wildflower. your training block keeps its labels.

the sunshine page

two wins to carry into tuesday: california's ocean salmon comeback is holding, with commercial boats back on the water after a three-year closure and sacramento river chinook finally trending up. and in utah, the great salt lake is not expected to hit a new low this year, the first summer in a while the lake has been allowed to just be a lake.

the dress code

daily fit: squats ask your clothes to keep up, so tomorrow runs in the base crop tank in sage, forty dollars, cropped where it counts and unbothered through all five checks of the rep sheet. night out: the sage tank under an oversized blazer, gold hoops, and a vintage hermès birkin doing the heavy lifting. what's trending: two-tone shoes, per who what wear's fall list, a cap-toe finish that makes even gym-adjacent fits look on purpose.

the passed note

prop your phone at hip height and film your last set of squats from the side, once a week, same angle. form is a habit too, and november you deserves the before-and-after.

send this to a friend. that's how the club grows.

health is hot.