Discover the Power of Moving Meditation in Nature
Transform your running experience with Spears Strong’s outdoor training series. Whether you're new to running, looking to refine your form, or eager to challenge yourself on rugged terrain, our Form Awareness Run Workshop and Access Road Run Series offer expert guidance, motivation, and connection to nature. Learn how to move efficiently, embrace the rhythm of the trails, and build strength and confidence in every step. These sessions are more than just workouts—they’re an opportunity to reset, recharge, and rediscover the joy of movement. Join us and elevate your running journey!
Form Awareness Run (jog) Workshop
Spears Strongers on a Form Awareness Run. Photo by Sara Westby
“The Form Awareness Run is harder than you would think. Not huffing and puffing hard but more mentally challenging and getting you to fully connect with your body. You learn what to think of and how to hold your body at a slowed down pace. It works your body too. Even though it’s slowed down, expect your muscles to work and get firing in the right way.”
This is great for the avid runner who has recurring running injuries or is interested in mixing it up and slowing it down, someone getting back into running, and anyone else who is looking for a different way to connect with your body in nature. The FAR is done in complete silence except for the cues from your trainer and questions and guidance during the group warm-up and cool-down.
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One of our mantras at Spears Strong is “Practice when it’s easy.” So what would be the easiest way to practice working on connecting with your body and breath while running? Slowing it way down and having someone guide you through a moving body awareness routine. Helping you not just connect to earth or where to pick your knee up from on your body for the next step but how to connect and engage with your upper body including your arms, hands and head to minimize the stress on your lower back, knees and feet.
But check it out, that last paragraph is actually just the floor of what you are going to get out of this five week series. Spears Strong definitely wants to give you the guidance and confidence to know when you are going out for your next run you are progressing your body with the runs after effects rather than regressing your body and getting closer to a runner’s injury as the after effects of your run.
So what could be even better than that? Moving meditation progressing from a FAR to any and every run you go for in the future. The more connected you are to your body while running or moving through nature in any manner the less connected you are to the rest of your life. Your responsibilities, your desires, your shortcomings, your hardships, your stressors.
Turning future runs into opportunities to stay connected and paying attention to how your feet are reacting when connecting to the ground, where your torso currently is compared to your ankles and hips while calculating how high you should, or shouldn’t, pick your knee up for the next step down a decline, the less opportunities you have to contemplate solutions for the current problems in your life outside of your runs. Your runs, or time in nature, becomes an opportunity for you to recharge rather than just ruminating and rummaging through the drama of a modern life.
Improve your running, get into running, and connect with your body.
Learn all about running form with an educational demonstration by a skilled trainer and experience the FAR for 90 minutes. You'll get focused attention and cueing during this moving meditation in nature.
Saturday, April 12, 8-10 am
Location sent upon registration (in Camas/Washougal)
Cost for this limited space workshop: $40
Spears Strongers and those who completed our Form Awareness Run Series get $5 off by using code FARWORKSHOP
Moving meditation in nature is the easiest way to describe this experience. The Form Awareness Run is led by a Spears Strong trainer who will guide you through a body awareness cycle of cues to help you connect with your body. Awareness of how your foot is connecting to the ground and what your shoulders and hands should be doing while connecting to how you are breathing. To accomplish this, we slow it down and focus on creating muscle memory on how to disengage your foot from the earth in a non-ballistic way with a solid and supple posture.
Access Road Run Series
Dial in Pacing, Hills, Twists and Turns.
Nothing feels quite like gravel and dirt under your feet while running. Slight dampness of the morning as the sun is rising makes for a tacky interaction with your feet and the ground while the denseness of the air adds to the denseness of the forest around you. Enjoy the wonderfulness that the PNW outdoors has to offer guided by a Spears Strong Trainer to supply the motivation, expert run cueing and creativity within each week's group training runs in nature to keep you looking forward to getting up early every Friday morning.
April 18-May 16
Every Friday at 6-7:30 am
Includes at-home video workouts assigned by your trainer to do between sessions to recover and progress you.
Runs take place on access roads in Camas. Location sent on registration.
Cost for this limited space series: $170 (no drop-ins available)
Personal and small group training clients can use code ACCESSROADS for a $25 DISCOUNT
“The Spears Strong trail running series equipped me with the skills and confidence I needed to take in the beauty around me while on the trail, rather than focusing on my feet. Among other skills, I learned proper form for ascending and descending hills, which enables me to run more efficiently with less shock/stress to my body, and the camaraderie within the training group made the series a fun and encouraging experience.”
A perfect transition step from Spears Strong’s Form Awareness Run training program to take body awareness while in motion, or moving meditation, to a level of higher physical effort. Learn to become one with the ups and downs, twists and turns as well as each step your foot comes down on the imperfect terrain underneath. Feeling tall and strong from your glutes of the leg connecting with earth while your foot splays and your ankle calibrates and adjusts to every off camber pronation or supination mother nature is throwing at you. Knowing what to do with your arms and hands to counterbalance the terrain and giving your hips and lower legs the confidence to be free and run!
Instead of being discouraged by hills, Spears Strong’s Access Road Run Program will teach you how to let go of control of what you think your pace should be and how hard you should be pushing and let the inundations of mother nature along with your breathing, take over. Learn to use your upper body weight, instead of your feet and lower legs, to control your speed and guide you around turns. Integrating into your nervous system to take more steps going uphill with your pace slowing down and you being able to have the confidence to look around at this slower pace and appreciate the real reason you are in the woods with a group of like minded people early in the morning in the first place.
This program is running, make no mistake. That doesn’t mean you need to be a track star or marathoner to participate though. Training runs will be set up for runners of different speed and levels to not only challenge themselves the appropriate amount but also be able to be a part of the group. Camaraderie while challenging yourself in nature early in the morning releasing so many feel good chemicals the rest of your day and weekend will be positively amplified.
That being said, if you currently have injuries let us know and we can get you set up in a program to get rid of said injuries so the next time this program comes around you will be ready to go. Expect to run anywhere between 3 -5 miles at the beginning of the program and 5 -8 miles towards the end of the program. We’ll teach you how to hydrate, layer and fuel yourself with supporting material. You will also get an accompanying training plan with supported and individualized virtual workouts to keep you from having to guess what to do in between group training runs.