The Jenky, Split-squats & a Summer Bored Box

3 Things I'm Loving, Reading, Watching or Doing

Essential Exercise: Split-Squats

At FitWit, we love single-leg exercises—and the split-squat is one of the best. There are tons of variations to try, including the rear-foot elevated version (a personal fave). A great starting point? Isometric holds with your back knee just an inch off the ground. Then progress to controlled reps, and when you're ready, add a load.

👉 Check out this tip from one of our coaches if the movement is causing any knee pain.

Reminder! Father’s Day

As we lounge about on Sunday getting grapes fed to us, let us not forget our own dads! It’s easy to do when all the attention’s on us. My pops? All he really wants is a quick phone chat. He has little, needs nothing, and just likes to hear from his kids.

Hope all you dads enjoy a well-earned Sunday—and maybe a little Father’s Eve

celebration on Saturday, too.

Project: Build a Summer "Bored Box" with Your Kids

Roughly 18 seconds into summer break, you will hear it: "I'm bored.”

Now, I’m a big believer that boredom is good for kids. It sparks creativity. But, sometimes they’ll need a little guidance. One way to avoid losing your mind (or ending up in prison) is to build a Bored Box. Fill it with activity cards: "Draw a comic strip," "Write a letter to a friend," "Build a fort," "Learn to juggle," etc. Let your kids contribute ideas too. When boredom strikes, they can pull a card and have an instant activity. The key is involving them in creating it—they're more likely to use suggestions they helped come up with.

2 Quotes Worth Pondering

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. —Pablo Picasso

If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.

—Lemony Snicket

1 Big Dad Idea

Growing up, I thought my dad could fix anything. He could use a screwdriver as a gear shifter, get the power back on, and diagnose even the most mysterious lawnmower ailments.

Now, as a dad myself, I've learned the truth: he was mostly just winging it. Trying things out. Figuring it out through trial and error. Much like I'm doing now with my own family. The difference is, I have YouTube. You can solve almost anything if you're willing to invest the time and have some patience.

And that's a lesson I hope my kids learn too. Because central to that "figureitoutability" is an appreciation for the jenky.

I drove this idea home in my weekly email to my teens last week, and I thought it would be helpful to share it with you, hoping it sparks similar conversations in your own homes. At its heart, it’s about fostering gratitude and keeping entitlement in check . . . and maybe a bit of forced frugality as well. Here’s what I wrote:

I loved being with family on our Ohio visit last week. But if I'm honest, I also just loved being in the house itself—quirks and all. I know every nook and cranny of that place. The squeaky stairs. The locks that don’t work (or never did). The toilets and vanities built at toddler height. The patchwork cabinets that don’t quite close. The spots where duct tape has become a structural material.

It’s jenky in the truest, most lovable sense of the word.

And that jenkiness is in my blood. Growing up in a house of ten on a janitor’s salary, you didn’t replace things—you figured them out. You made do. You kept it running. And whether you like it or not, some of that DNA runs through you too.

It’s probably why I light up when I see an old beater car still rumbling down the street (keep in mind, I bought my 1986 Chevy Celebrity from the lunch lady for $600). And it’s probably why I get irrationally frustrated when your first instinct is telling me that we should replace the whole oven instead of just trying to fix the thermocouple (whatever that is. To be fair, it still only works intermittently after I “fixed” it. 🤷‍♂️)

I don’t need you to fall in love with broken stuff. But I do want you to fall in love with figuring things out. With solving problems. With getting your hands dirty. Because there’s a certain pride—maybe even joy—that comes from making something work when it probably shouldn’t.

I can’t say all this any better than my guy, Ross Gay (The Book of Delights). He writes:

“Shouldn’t we pause to admire the onomatopoeicness of jenky? Because no word I know sounds more like a crooked shed door. Sounds more like duct tape being ripped from the roll.

To be clear, my efforts at the jenky are modest compared to my folks’, from whom I learned it in part, probably to their upwardly mobile chagrin. Which is a good place to say the plain, which is that jenky is a classed designation. It often implies a degree of judgement, often by people still haunted by and sprinting from the tendrils of poverty, about broke people. About broke people things. . . .

My folks were, mostly, mostly broke people who had neither the time nor the resources to always fix things the boring way, which is called replacement. And so the hatchback cracked up by a trash truck, the insurance money from which they needed to pay some bills, got fixed (affixed) with a bungee cord. Me and my brother’s wristbands were made of the tops of striped tube socks. The hammer we kept under the seat to tap the stuck starter until it went completely kaput. . . . Oh, I could go on.

I think I am advocating for a kind of innovation, or an innovative spirit, which seems often to be occasioned by deprivation, or being broke. Or broke-ass. Which condition I am adamantly not advocating. But I am advocating for the delight one feels making a fire pit with the inside of a dryer, or keeping the dryer door shut with an exercise band . . . Which is also called figuring something out. Which is something we all go to school, some of us for years and years, to forget how to do.”

So my children, let us raise a glass of water to figuring stuff out. Here’s to The Jenky!