joedog

It's going to be a good month for you, RP. At least one more monk is returning this month. 7FG, I'm glad your tour of the states included a stop by my town. Love you!

Coaching as an introvert is really hard. I spent the first 2 hours of the coaching clinic fighting the "you can't do this, you don't know enough, you aren't fit enough, you'll never be good enough, you shouldn't even be trying because you'll just fail." I mostly just rely on the fact that the people who selected me wouldn't have done so if they didn't think I was capable. Thanks, I'm equal parts excited and terrifed. Thanks! I hope no one decides I'm the boss battle. Yay for attack hugs! You're not a loser, I haven't been to ANYONE ELSE's thread yet. It's good thing I'm on facebook with most of you people!

So week 1 didn't really get off to much of a start. I was officially named head coach of the women's team and I've now coached 2 practices. It's pretty terrifying for me, being such an introvert and all. It's all going to be okay but until I get through all these "first" milestones it's going to be rough on my anxiety. I ran at practice last night and it felt ok. My food has still been a mess. I'm not sure this week is going to be much better nutritionally. Nowhere to go but up from here!

Missed you too and glad to be back! Running for rugby is a never ending process. Anyone who actually manages to reach the top levels of cardiovascular endurance then have to work twice as hard to keep it. But it's more fun to run when there is tackling at the end. *hugs* I like hugs It was a good break but I am so happy to be back and see most of my friends are still here! Totally not forgetting to post. Totally.

If only anyone in my town was doing judo. I've started working with a new nutrition person who works does bjj and I really want to give it another shot. So I'm thinking bjj may be my offseason training. Thanks! It's good to be back! It's a fantastic sport. I'm not sure anyone is every fully in shape to play unless it's those folks at the top who are getting paid for it. Thanks! I'm happy to be back. You're job is to poke me if/when I disappear again! YAY!! Excited to see you too, friend! We'll just take turns picking each other up in hugs! You know me, I'm never too far away. But I think the break was good for me.

Hello friends! I missed NF a lot but I think I needed a break since I had fallen in the habit of writing magnificent goals and not ever actually working on them. For those of you who are joining me for the first time, I have done some boxing but I'm currently an honorary monk since I'm not actively training a martial art. Right now I'm pretty active with my new rugby team. Last summer I realized that I was out of shape, about to turn 40 and would likely never play rugby again. Four days after my 40th, I got a message about a new team and would I be interested in helping get them started. I quickly went from "helping out" to "starting player". I'm hoping to transition into coaching soon. I still love playing but I really am getting kind of old and also really too out of shape. So that's why I'm here. As of right now, I need to keep playing since we need my experience and my brute strength on the field. (I AM the brute squad) Goal 1) Rugby practice 2-3 times per week. It will depend on how many practices we have scheduled. Goal 2) Gym 3 times per week. I'm doing rowing to build cardio endurance and strength training. Goal 3) Food. My eternal struggle. As usual, I know what I want to do, I just need to find the right way to structure it for a goal. I will get that sorted before the challenge starts. Goal 4) Rugby knowledge. I've got a level 200 coaching certification clinic on July 30. I need to make sure I'm prepared for it. This will include studying the materials, assessing my own strengths and weaknesses as a potential coach and coming up with a plan to improve my weak areas.

Welcome to the Rebellion! I'm in Springfield too. I haven't been very active in the forums lately but I'm about to respond. Sent from my SM-G935R4 using Tapatalk

Hi gang! Thought I would jump in and say I'm still alive and stuff. I might start a challenge thread this month. The jury is still out. I'm doing well but I miss you all!

Oh man...this is what happens when I take a break from NF. I freaking miss the trip to Elephant Rocks.

Week 1 was a week of dreadful rage-anxiety-crying-depression. I survived as did most every living thing around me. (I did kill a wasp. It failed to live up to our peace accords.) Week 2 I have been on nights. Again. Seems like I just stopped being on nights. I haven't made any strides toward my specific goals but I've been having a lot of good conversation with friends about my happiness and how I'm not very good at sticking up for it. I've gained some real insight into myself and what I need to do to keep me a glued together human. So goals as laid out, fail but long term life goals have been win. I have been doing a little better with food, at least being present about what I'm putting in my facehole. I tend to eat less overall when I'm on night shift but it's a lot of empty calorie junk. Nights will be over after this week for a while. Hoping to get to the gym some in the near future.

I don't like change. I just don't. I'm adapting to it. I'm still rugbying but the rage-anxiety-cry for no reason is persisting. I'm a bit like Kathy Bates' character in Fried Green Tomatoes. I'm going to have a bad menopause. Lol Yay!!!! It is good to be found! Now I need to come find you back! I fully understand that your bed is stupid. @TheShogun makes everything better, right? I approve of picture experimentation in my thread!

I sort of started this challenge without any plan so the first week has been a little discombobulated. Now I've got a plan so I can charge ahead. My anxiety/depression has been incredibly bad this week. I'm going to have to get with both my therapist and my MD to see if we can figure something out. I can't keep having mood swings like I've had over the past few days. Especially since it is happening to some degree every 2-4 weeks. I just don't understand how I could feel so certain the world was crashing down yesterday and wake up today and feel so much better. Yesterday there was no point, today everything is manageable. It's exhausting. I missed you all so much while I was away. I'm one of those people who doesn't handle change well, so as soon as I figure out how to navigate the new design of the boards I'll be around to say hello to you all! Much love!

We got this thing, twinsie! Glad you are back too! I've been talking to this girl from another team that we played with over the weekend. I said something about being a huge introvert and she said she would have never guessed that about me. Rugby is the only place where my anxiety doesn't get totally away from me. To be honest, despite my extremely poor fitness, I'm playing some of the best rugby I've ever played. It feels great. I really am. It's so hard for me to do fitness-y stuff without some big thing to work toward. Somehow that vague notion of being healthy isn't enough. Even if I don't play much anymore, I need to be fit enough to coach. I might also end up being a ref someday which requires quite a bit of fitness to be in position to call the match. I have a reason. It's very good.

This weekend was incredible. I played in a rugby tournament in St. Louis. My legs look like I was used for a pinata. I played well for an extremely out of shape and somewhat aged rugby player. Still haven't had much chance to plan out exactly what my goals are but my long term goal is to get my body ready for next fall so I can continue to play and make small women reconsider their decision to play rugby instead of softball.

I did that to a few girls this weekend. It was fun. Right up until I got kicked in the nose. Nah, who am i kidding, that was fun too. Apparently when I carry the ball, I make small women shout profanity. It's sort of my purpose in life.

It's good to be seen! Slightly less than half the people participating in the video didn't have any idea either so no worries. It was awesome. I'm in a tournament this weekend and I'm really excited about it. My rugby children have dubbed me their fairy squadmother after some tumblr post thingy they found. Just because I'm literally old enough to have borne part of them and I give them important wisdom like "shave your legs before the match". I will be doing some strength type stuff but machine based so probably not warrior approved.

Joedog plays rugby if you're interested in some extremely mediocre to poor rugby. I'm number 17. I come in at about 4:20. We started this match with 2 veterans in brand new positions and 13 virgins. So it's okay that we did extremely poorly.

Okay, since week 1 is winding down, seems like I should post goals or something. I really hadn't planned for this one so my goals are probably not going to be all that SMART. I just had such a huge crash and burn at the end of last year. I just need to rebuild some habits and then really attack my long term goals once I get a plan going. The long term goal is to do the things I need to do to continue playing rugby into my 40s. The first 2 steps to that are to get my weight down and my cardiovascular endurance up. I also have a problem with glute activation so I need to work on that too. Turns out it's hard to push 1500 pounds of scrum off you when your glutes don't want to participate. Goal 1) I've got a gym routine that is Coach approved. I will do it 3 times per week. It involves weights and long, slow cardio. Goal 2) Attack the lazy glutes. I've got a routine set up to attack this whole area of my body. It's drawn from Joe DeFranco's Limber 11 and a website I found about hamstring dominance. I'm not sure how many days a week I need to be working on this. Will check that out. Goal 3) Food. Sigh. The neverending problem for me. For this challenge I'm going to work on getting back to tracking using MyFitnessPal. Just starting to track usually helps me cut down on a lot of stuff. I also want to work on identifying the triggers or habit cues that are causing my binges. That seems good for now. I need to take some new measurements. I haven't done that in a while. I know that my weight is roughly the same but clothes are fitting me differently so it seems like the fat is moving around a little.

It ended up roughly where it started. My weight is still dropping so I'm happy. Going to work on my goals today. I got some direction from my rugby coach on what she wants me to work on. I've done some research along those lines. As soon as I map out what I'm doing, I'll get the next challenge up. I think I'll even be around for all of March.

Forum difficulty here too. I love my rugby kids but they are eating all my free time and some work time too. But I'm super stoked we're going to be in StL at the same time.

The big emotional thing I've been vague-booking about seems to be resolving in a satisfactory way. I didn't make up workouts and my eating got away from me last week. Shark week surprised me and I wasn't prepared. I'm back in a good place with everything and hopefully can start moving forward again now that The Thing is calming down. I joined a new fitness boxing place. I think I'm going to start focusing my training towards more rugby specific but this place will help with my urge to hit things. I think having 3 really difficult emotional months is going to lead to me being able to make some progress.

I've managed 3/4 days this week on breakfasts and lunches. Doing well there. I'm also down about 2 pounds. We had a good rugby practice Monday night. We were inside so I held the pad and let the other girls bounce off me. I've missed one workout from coach. Will make it up on Sunday. 6:30 is getting closer but I'm still just not quite there yet.

That sounds like a pretty good motto to me! I was really emotional last week. This week I'm okay. Next week will probably be really emotional again. It's a little rollercoaster-y right now. I went to my first al-anon meeting on Tuesday night. I don't know how much it's going to help but hearing about common experience is always a bit of a relief. Yes it was! I was really happy about that. I've kept it going this week and done better with breakfasts.

You have inspired me to take up lock-picking. I also got my bonus check recently and I need new toys to play with. Hope the tax situation gets resolved. That is an unhappy thing.

I think my chiro bought a new car when I told him I'm back to playing rugby. A lot of times I will feel worse right after an adjustment, then feel great the next day. Hope you're feeling better soon!