Kris

Hi Raijin, Great that you want get off your butt ;-) Becoming a parent is a real good motivator. I've been there myself. During my wife's pregnancy there were millions of things to do and I knew from friends that several weeks after birth would be exhausting/challenging. The thing that kept me going was lowering the bar to get started every day to an absolute minimum. For this I simply made some space in the basement, bought a real great app/book combination for bodyweight and started following it. Like that I could simply say: "I'll be back in 30 minutes" and I would go down do my sh*t and be back in a flash full of super power to manage all tasks at hand. Also I could exercise at very late hours. Anyway, what I want to say is that in the beginning you need to make things easy for yourself and after 4 weeks, when you see and most of all feel the first changes, you can adapt things. On the other hand. Some people need extra motivators, like paying for a gym membership ;-) Good luck and have fun. P.S. Life as a new parent can be tough. Do not give up your exercise routines. They GIVE you energy. They do not take it away!

Thanks Purple_Panda. Will do! I'm going to check out the new online game now. I love the idea of having quests to complete and I hope it will give me cool new things to do and lots of incentives to continue and grow. Or do you think trying a fitness challenge here on the forum would be a good way to go? Since I have a few hours already under my belt, I wouldn't know where to start?

So. After lurking around for a couple of weeks, I thought: What the hack! This is a great community and I want it to be MY community. Do I have the prerequisites? Let's see: Tons of fantasy books in the basement? Check! Tons of fantasy books in the attic? Check! Owned every major console since the NES, most often several different in parallel? Check! Dressed up as LotR character at least once? Check! Know what WoT means and where the dragonmount lies? Check! Religiously followed Star Trek TNG, GoT, BTVS, BSG, …! Check! Ability to use nerdy acronyms? Double check! Spent hours in front of a glass, trying to move the thing with my freaking mind?!!!! Double check. Build a batcave with a rope attached to the wall for pull exercises/torture? Bodyweight check. Went out to join a gym after watching “300â€? Check! Be proud when somebody calls me a nerd? Mega awesome check +1!!! So you people call yourselves rebels and do nerd fitness??? Hell, yeah! I wanna be part of that! Ok, let's do this (again be warned: incredible lengthy prose ahead) Like so many others, I fell into the “need to look like Gerard Butler in 300†trap and got a gym membership. I even spent a substantial (for a student) amount of money to get a personal trainer for 4 sessions. This was 2006: - Trainer: “So...what's your goal?†- Me: “Uhhhm, did you see 300?†- Trainer (rolls eyes and points a finger towards a row of bizarre SciFi torture machines): “Treadmill, 30 minutes to warm up then we learn good stretching and then I'll show you some dumbbell movements ...†After 4 weeks and lots of being yelled at in a positive way, I went so far as to buy my own bench and some weights to train at home. I canceled the gym membership and “went to town on the belly!â€... for exactly 9 weeks and 2 days (more about that magic number later) ... and than I stopped! Because of a girl! Or the sudden lack of one... FAIL! Not the first fail actually. One year before that, while doing my PhD, I needed a stress reliever. I chose to get heavy weights and lift them. It couldn't be that difficult, could it?...FAIL! People, let me tell you about proper breathing techniques: they matter! I forgot to breathe while lifting a weight far too heavy for me and “Pop, goes the weasel†or actually my left ear. Yes, it turns out you can get hearing loss and a tinnitus from heavy lifting and holding your breath like “you're on the toilet trying to push something ugly out†at the same time. In my case it was something about neck muscles closing the blood vessels to my ears which caused my brain to ring the big alarm. To be fair, it seems I have a genetic predisposition which gives me narrow neck blood vessels, which also made me afraid of strength training and jumping into the mosh pit at Korn concerts, which, to be honest, I've only done once in my life. Came back out with a bleeding knee! Ouch! Anyway. 3 years after the 300 debacle I got into running. Being a nerd I had my exact heart rate at lactate threshold determined by a sports physician, I bought a book with clear “become a great runnner in 10 weeks†steps and set out to follow them religiously. I'm kind of like that: Once I start something, I do it 100%. Until I get bored or “life†interferes. After exactly 9 weeks and 2 days. I'm not kidding. It has been scientifically proven that every time I start something new, my attention span will have an exact length of 65 days. This is the time it takes for “life†to prepare something big that completely derails me. Examples include but are not limited to: Getting a new girlfriend, losing the new girlfriend, hearing loss on my left ear, “Angel†being canceled after only 5 seasons, appendicitis, jumping off of a (luckily immobile) car and spraining my ankle, (stupid move!), changing jobs, becoming a father, moving into a new house,... Wait! Did he say becoming a father? Yes indeed, thanks for asking. Becoming a father is a glorious thing to do. It's the ultimate leveling up which automatically switches your class. And this class grants you two special new abilities: General cluelessnessness (yep, it's a word) and insomnia. The latter can have its good sides. Like you get to read throughout the night, or walk around with a little baby in your arms for hours, in the dark, improving your assassin stealth skills! Usually it goes away after 6 weeks. Except, in our case it didn't. It ended after two years (yes, it took a bit more time for “life†to prepare that punch, thanky ou very much) with me becoming unconscious in the middle of strangers on a crowded street not once, but twice in a month! What glorious times! - Emergency room doctor: “So you like science fiction? I've got a real big magnet that I'm going to put you into and its got lots of shiny buttons. How about that? Now please hold absolutely still for 15 minutes or it will burn your eyes out...just kidding... Zzzzzrrrxrrxzzxzxrrkkkk...†After one week in a boring white room they let me out again and I promptly went back to not sleeping and insisting on keeping up my weekly mileage while juggling the little one at night. Stupid move. A week and a few strangers' feet on a crowded street later: Same emergency room doctor (it really was the same one): -“WTF! (I just love acronyms) Your body is trying to tell you something and it's got nothing to do with improving your pace to something below 10min/mile which is really slow anyway. Now you go back to that boring white room and stay there for another week. And here's some Xanax and Cipralex to keep you happy. Get your shit together! Fast!†He also told me to stay at home for 4 weeks which I used to develop my Fallout 3 skills! Yay for scorpion headshots with laser guns! (I'm a nerd before and after all, but you knew that already.) That was the same time we at last found out that our son had severe multiple food allergies and bloody ulcers in his stomach, which caused him lots of pain and made him not wanna sleep at all. Thanks life for that one. It also showed us that many pediatricians should be shot on sight with laser guns like the scorpions they are because they think that all new parents are stupid and for saying things like “you know some parents can be too anxious. It's normal that kids do not sleep†or “you've just got an angry child. It'll go away with time.†Yeah. Like my sanity and my resistance to shoot total strangers in white lab coats with my freaking laser gun!!! Pooh... I had to keep my left hand from going to the Caps Lock key there. In the end, what I went through was just a classical by the book burnout, and who doesn't love one of those? ULTRA FAIL! All this happened around 2011 and let me tell you: I kept on being a physical and emotional mess for two more years. You would think the aforementioned events would have pulled me out of my stupor. On the contrary. I delved ever deeper: I felt weak, driveless, overworked and in general lacked mojo in every imaginable way. My daily meals were merged into one big unhealthy pleasureless food intake ceremony in the evening with nothing in between. I smoked a lot, drank a lot, sat around a lot and worked my ass off a lot every day coupled with a massive TV show and movie watching a lot in the evenings and lots of not sleeping a lot. I tried to find new hobbies because I felt bored. I started dabbling into electronics (arduino anyone?) but lost interest after 65 days. I started doing lots of web development but lost interest after 65 days. I even started bodyweight training after seeing that dude in that (IMHO horrible) TV show Arrow but again lost interest after 65 days. In addition I was sick a lot. Normal flu, but it would keep me in bed for days. I had the most beautiful bestest wife and son in the world, I had a good job and some real great friends but still I felt unhappy and generally afraid. You see where I'm going here don't you? MASSIVE GIGANTIC FAIL! All over the board! I had slipped into a major depression and everybody who has been in one of those knows they are ultra tough to get out of since most of the time you don't even know you're in them and worst of all, for some people, me included, that state of mind can become addictive. I've seen it before and lived through some similar states as adolescent. But hey! Don't we all? As an adult you should never let yourself sink that low! Absolute no go! I can be happy that my genes give me super no weight gaining ultra fast metabolism powers, because all my life I've been below (78 kg at 181 cm). I should have been over 100 with all I've done to my body. So how did I get out of it and today I can say with pride. I did! One word: “Warrior†I mean the movie, not the class. One evening I sat there with my sixth beer while watching that movie. I knew nothing about it. It hit me like a hammer! It was the acting of Tom Hardy but also the simple story about fighting, strive and overcoming your own limits. You've all seen Rocky. This is the new Rocky. I could even identify with the father/brother strained relationship. I absolutely fucking loved it. I got up the next morning and did push-ups. A grand total of 8. I tried crunches: 2. I tried a pull-up on the door: 0.5. What a mess... Now, an awesome 105 days later, I do 70 pushups, 8 non-assisted pullups and 70 crunches plus a boatload of deadly assassin squads. I go running 3 times a week (very slow, because I have to be stealthy!). I've passed my personal attention span limit 40 days ago and I'm still swinging with my head held high! I am a fucking 80 kg monster warrior and yesterday! People of all the worlds and realms! Yesterday, for the first time in the recorded history of elven- and mankind, I saw my abs! And they are beautiful!!!! Okay, now I'm exaggerating...but you catch my drift. I'm overspilling with testosterone and serotonin and I'm simply very, very happy. Thanks to Tom Hardy and of course my BFF Mark Lauren from YAYOG. I am depression free and ready to head down the rabbit hole. That's where you people come in. Nerd fitness might be the best thing since sliced bread (oops, …should I say sliced chicken?) And I want to be a ninja assassin good at semi-fast stealthy running). I hope you'll have me and after this very long introductory post, which oddly was more exhausting than 70 pushups I leave you, most valued reader who kept on till the end with me, till our next visit. Kris (34) from Luxembourg.