MetalNinja

Oh okay so, if you're having trouble getting the weight off the ground you could use bands but then have the full weight towards the top, to help break a plateau? That makes sense. I also didn't realize sumo deadlifting was so popular! Learning new things! Thanks everyone!

Okay so I'm wondering if this is A Thing. Yesterday I'm in the gym, and I really like to use the power rack for squats because the squat rack's safety bars are too high, the barbell hits them because I squat deep so if I use the squat rack I have to back all the way out of it and thus don't have pins to save me. But this guy is in the power rack. He sets up to do deadlifts, though, and I'm like, "hey are you just doing deadlifts?" Because there's actually two barbells in a different part of the gym that have bumper plates and are for deadlifting, so I was going to ask him to move. But no! He's doing "negative deadlifts." He sets the safety pins up high and hangs a giant rubber band from each of them. So he gets the bar through the bands and I'm like, okay maybe he's going to push the bar down to the ground or something? But the bar is heavy enough that it's just... on the ground. And then he loads up the bar with plates, so it is very firmly on the ground. So basically he's just doing deadlifts with rubber bands, so... assisted deadlifts? I guess? Is this a thing people do? Is there a purpose to this? Has anyone else seen this? Also he was doing sumo deadlifts, which I first heard about from a Bro Science video like two weeks ago, and also did not realize were, like, a real thing people do. Doesn't that put more strain on your knees? Also with that wider stance you're not lifting the weight as far?

Just finished last night, did pull-downs and rows on Friday and then pull-downs/deadlifts yesterday! *pulls self out of mud at the last minute* Well, I don't know about you guys, but I could use a shower.

Midweek update: after the race on Sunday I took Monday to rest, and then on Tuesday I was on campus forever because of evening exams. I suppose I could have gone to the gym, buuuuut I didn't. Yesterday I went for a nice little bike ride, tried a new route and I sort of like it? The first seven miles or so seemed to have a lot of junk on the shoulder, like I saw a screw, a little piece of metal, some chunks of wood... as I just had to replace a tire a couple weeks ago I'm extra paranoid about hitting something. Tires aren't cheap, dammit. Today I hit the gym and did a bunch of back stuff because of the mini-challenge, and also deadlifts because woo deadlifts! I've dropped my squat weight all the way down to the bar because I wanted to really focus on form, it was feeling good so I'll increase the weight next time. So I'm going to have to go to the gym again tomorrow and Saturday in order to actually hit my goal for this week, since I somehow left all the lifting until Thursday, whoops. Foodwise I've got one outside meal left, and I've got plans to go to brunch on Saturday with a friend so that's when that'll happen. I had two meals out on Tuesday, again because of the exam. So I'm on track to pass this week. Job hunting has been going better, I've found some stuff to apply to and I'm not totally failing at it, so there's that. I need to actually apply to something, though, and I'm going to do that tomorrow, I have a couple of jobs that I think I can pound out an application for. I think I'm going to modify this quest into also including writing, as I really need to write that stupid paper and submit it already, I've been sitting on the data for two years I need to just do something with it so I can have it stop haunting me!

I'm counting hauling a 40 lb bag of cat litter up three flights of stairs as my first pull day, because dang that's awkward to carry! Also what's up Boulder people Sanitas is great if you do the loop including Dakota Ridge it's like exactly 3.1 miles! Mountain 5k FTW! Also some good bouldering up there!

Who's a winner? I'm a winner! Did a sprint distance triathlon this morning and I freakin' CRUSHED it, had an awesome race, set myself a course PR and a run leg PR, and I placed first in the Athena division! I have a shiny plaque that says "1st place" on it! This is the first time I've won anything! Like an actual first place finish! YEAH! *80's movie jump freeze frame*

Week One Summary Time! First up, today was race day and I placed first in my division! I got a plaque and everything! This is the first time I've won something and it's awesome! I also had my fastest run time ever for a sprint distance! So I am absolutely passing on my endurance quest, and I'm giving myself a pass on the strength training because it was a race week, and not overtraining has obviously paid off for me! So I'm at: 3/18 for endurance 3/18 for strength As for my "eat at home" challenge, I obviously had post-race food, there was that free seminar pizza, and then taco tuesday. That's the only meals that I had away from home, so that's a PASS on week one. Life quest was a total FAIL so, whoops. Shooting for a B now, I guess. I'm going to strategically block my internet access during the week and that will help, I can get back on the job-hunting horse! Motto for week two?

Okay okay so my job hunting is going absolutely terribly and I am definitely failing this week. Believe me, I have a whole long list of excuses, but what it comes down to is... tumblr. Damn you, tumblr! Plus side is I went for a run today, so I'm 3/3 on endurance this week! Did not go lift yesterday or today, my quads are quite sore and I am not going to do any more lifting this week because of my race on Sunday. I'm giving myself a pass anyway, because having a race day is Exceptional Circumstances and I'd rather do well in that than get in some lifting sessions. Next week I'm using leechblock to block Tumblr during the day so that I have no choice but to work on job stuff. If it gets bad I'll leechblock EVERYTHING FUN. Unfortunately I need internet to do the job searching, so, I can't just log off. But I shall succeed next week!

I have finished! Thanks, living on the 3rd floor! And teaching in the sub-basement! And having a lab on the 3rd floor! Actually this challenge started just as I discovered where the elevator was, sooooo way to stop me from giving in to laziness!

Okay yeah let's climb some stairs! Or some other steep thing, right? 600 vertical feet!

Mid-week update time! Monday - played ultimate frisbee for two hours, got in PLENTY of running! Tuesday - got that membership at 24hr fitness, lifted with my friend. Now I have someone to watch my squat form yaaaaaay Wednesday (today) - went for a bike ride (on my brand new tire that I got because I hit something that shredded my old tire last weekend) New tire is good, didn't get a flat, really nice day for a ride! As for food, I technically had "restaurant food" for lunch on Monday because I went to a seminar and there was pizza. But, free pizza! If it's free does it really count? Also got tacos on Tuesday of course, so I've either got one or two outside foods left for the week. Life quest is less good. I'm counting the seminar I went to on Monday as job-work because I didn't have to go and I learned about a new thing that I'd like to do, except apparently they're in a hiring freeze, but I have a contact to name-drop in my cover letter. Tuesday... I didn't really do anything. Today... I did actually do some stuff, but, not that much. It is clear that I need to take this job searching thing a lot more seriously, like I was back in the summer. The comfort of "but I have a job now!" is tricking me into not dedicating myself to finding more permanent work. So I'm going to give myself a pass for Monday and today but I have to make up the time for Tuesday later on if I'm going to get a pass on this week.

Hello everyone! This is my second third challenge as a Ranger, I bailed on the first second because turns out writing a doctoral dissertation is really time consuming. Now I return to resume my quest to be an awesome Viking, but with a more specific goal in mind: In January I'm going to Guatemala to backpack through the jungle! It's going to be exactly like this. Exactly. So there is no way that I am going to become Arnold, ever (not in my genetics as a lady-type person) but I'm going to need some Strength and Endurance to get through my jungle trek. Especially if I run into a Predator. Quest the First - Endurance Endurance is not built up overnight, it is made by consistency and perseverance. As I am a triathlete I'm going to stick with cycling and running. I actually have a race on September 21 so the first week of this challenge is going to be pretty mellow, but to fulfill this quest I'm going to Run or Cycle 3x/week. Quest the Second - Strength I'm not sure yet how heavy my pack is going to be, but I do know that even a light pack feels heavy if you carry it all day. So I am going to do Strength training 3x/week. I am probably going to get a gym membership at 24-hr fitness, since that's where a couple of friends have memberships, but I will count any at-home bodyweight training as long as it's at least 30 minutes. Quest the Third - Fuel up Right My very first challenge, I challenged myself not to get delivery food, for I have a weakness for delivery food. In the jungle I will not be seeing any friendly people with boxes of pizza. So Restaurant/Delivery food max 3x/week. I'm not giving up Taco Tuesday because it is the best lunch when I have to teach morning and afternoon labs, and then I get two other times. This is pass/fail per week but I'm going to be a little more forgiving on this IF it is an outing with friends that's spontaneous, like I don't want to stay home because I already had my restaurant food that week, but then that will carry over to the next week, so I can "pass" going out 4 times in a week if the next week I only go out twice. The point is to make food myself at home! Quest for Life - Get a Job This is less related to the trip, but trips cost money! I am currently working part-time, which means my other part-time job needs to be finding a permanent (ish? Post-docs can be like one year) full-time position. I want this job to start in January, after I get back from my trip, which gives me basically three months to find it. This quest means 30 minutes every weekday of job searching/resume building. I mean ideally I'll do more than that, but there's the bare minimum. I didn't do an RPG thing last time, so I think I'm going to go back and edit my signature to start doing that. Here's my grading system for this challenge: First: 16-18 runs/rides = A, +5 STA13-15 runs/rides = B, +4 STA10-12 runs/rides = C, +3 STA7-9 runs/rides = D, +2 STA6 runs/rides = you tried? +1 STA<6 runs/rides = F +0 STASecond: 16-18 lift = A, +5 STR13-15 lift = B, +4 STR10-12 lift = C, +3 STR7-9 lift = D, +2 STR6 lift = you tried? +1 STR<6 lift = F +0 STRThird: Pass six weeks = A, +2 CONPass 4-5 weeks = C, +1 CONPass 3 or less weeks = F, +0 CONLife: Pass six weeks = A, +3 WISPass 4-5 weeks = B, +2 WISPass 3 weeks = D, +1 WISPass <3 weeks = F, +0 WISEXCEPTION: Finding a job = automatic A+! And that's my third challenge! Hopefully this time I'll manage to...

Yay for concerts! I also see a bunch of people who also like metal! The two bands I've seen the most are Children of Bodom and In Flames, I actually don't know how many times I've seen each of them. Other than that: Metallica (Summer Sanitarium 2003 with Mudvayne, Deftones, Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit) Rammstein (in Berlin! Also in Denver.) Judas Priest Ozzy Osbourne DevilDriver All That Remains (like three, four times?) Black Label Society Trivium (they keep playing with other bands I want to see so I've seen them like three times) Rob Zombie Motionless in White Epica Alestorm (not to be confused with Halestorm, which I've seen some other people list) Eluveitie Killswitch Engage Amon Amarth Mastodon Tyr Thin Lizzy Job for a Cowboy Between the Buried and Me Black Dahlia Murder Kreator, with Overkill (won free tickets!) More that I don't remember because they were openers or something. Like I went to the Rockstar Mayhem Festival last year and I don't remember who all was there. Some non-metal shows: Cherub El Ten Eleven Con Bro Chill (I have hugged two members of this group) Paul Oakenfold And then a bunch of crap when I was in the concert commission in college: Taking Back Sunday Ludacris Mos Def Jimmy Eat World Guster Kanye West Snoop Dogg Reel Big Fish that guy from Dashboard Confessional who did some acoustic set after Reel Big Fish They Might Be Giants Sooooo yeah I like concerts, hooray! Still need to see King Diamond, who apparently is coming to Colorado in October but I don't know if I'm going to be here arrrrrggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Not overheard, but today I noticed little stickers on the power rack in my gym. So, you can adjust the safety pins (obviously) and they're numbered. I was doing my full squats, you know, alllll the way down, and I had the pins at 16, although I probably could have had them at 15 and not hit them when I got to the bottom. The stickers were at the 12 setting and said "do not set pins below here for squat exercises." They looked like manufacturer's stickers. Like... what? Is this a thing anyone else has ever seen? It's like they want you to only do power curtsies.

...........yeah, hells no to that. I mean, I've never had a parent go off on me, but maybe I'm just intimidating? That just sounds awful, good on you for giving him a tip! I've never had a parent go off on me, but it's probably only a matter of time, haha.

Wow supercool that you build your own bras! Bras are the worst, like, how hard could it be to find something to hold these boobs? Well, super hard because everyone's boobs are different!!! Argh! Although none of my bras are made of metal. ...YET.

There's actually a bit of a trick to it. It's sort of an "authority" kind of thing. You have to get this bark in your voice plus an intense, dead serious face, with an attitude of "you are going to stop this right now because I know you're going to stop this right now because there is no conceivable reality in which you do not stop this right now." I was once out at a cafe having a coffee and drawing in my sketchbook and there was this kid being really loud and annoying. She was running around and bumped into me and I just used the above and went "Hey! Cut that out!" And her mom, no joke, looked at me and mouthed "THANK YOU" and was all "see you're bothering other people! Now sit down and color!" It's not yelling, it's just sort of a "Nope not taking your bullshit" tone that rebuffs them. Your mileage may vary, but this has worked for me for young children up through 13-year-olds.

You guys make me feel so much better about this. It's not just meeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!! I think the deload has been good for me. I totally went for a run yesterday (although I almost forgot!) and I definitely felt that I hadn't actually been running in a couple of weeks. I'm not in running shape at all any more, oops. This is what happens when there's winter and weight lifting and snowboarding and grad school! But I went and that is what counts. Today I kept with the deload and it felt much better on the squats. I kept it at 85 and I'm feeling it a lot more in my upper abs, which is probably a good thing. Next time I might bump the weight up a bit, but I don't know, it's nice not pushing really hard for a bit. Also I totally made a dentist appointment! Hooray! Hard hat challenge indeed, I really had to make myself do it even though it takes like five minutes to make an appointment.

Well, don't eat out of boredom... *rimshot*

Ugh. So. I decided to do a "deload week" after reading that one thread in the Powerlifting forum and after how crappy I felt yesterday. Well, good for me, because today was just, like, not happening. I decided to go super deep on squats, since I wasn't lifting heavy, and I was having a lot of struggle with 85 lbs going knee-to-boob, as it were. Now I'm thinking that, oh no, I'm probably not going deep enough on all of my squats, because otherwise this wouldn't be so very hard, and does that mean I have to drop all the way back to 85???? Noooooooooo! Then overhead press I wasn't going to deload on, but after a set with the bar to warm up, I went to do 60 and my left shoulder was all "NOPE." And I don't know why. I did change my grip and form because of what that guy said in the gym last time and I looked up a video of Rippetoe teaching people how to press and was all "oh my elbows have to be forward?" and the 45 definitely felt easier, but I don't understand why the left would feel so crappy with 60. I think I may have tweaked it somehow doing squats, because ducking under the bar once I felt a tweak, but if anything I'd expect this from the right, not the left, since that's the shoulder I had surgery on. Stupid shoulders. Deadlift was okay. I worked up to 155 and it felt pretty heavy but I was like "screw it!" and went for my next weight, 185. Well, now I know what it feels like to fail a deadlift. I got in 3 reps and then the 4th was like "no this is not coming off the ground at all, nooooope." But at least deadlifts felt okay. And hey that's deadlifting more than myself, so, hooray! That makes me feel a little better about the squat/OHP problems. I just wish I knew why I felt all crappy and drained. I'm hoping this deload week will help. I guess I'll find out.

I'm also doing StongLifts, I started in January and I had some of the same thoughts. "ehhh why bench with just the bar it's so easy! Why squat with 50 lbs I feel like such a weenie with these tiny 2.5-lb plates on the bar!" But I was patient, I listened to the advice of people here, and the weights kept going up. I got to have the pleasure of seeing steady increase in weight before starting to stall. If you increase the weight by more, you're going to stall out that much sooner. And building up the weight gradually has definitely made me stronger than I was, back in December I could do 5x5 with 65 lbs and not 70, and 80 was my one rep max. I dropped back to the empty bar with this program, blew past 5x5 on 65, 70, and 75, brief stall on 80, now I'm doing 85. I definitely credit the incremental increase for this.

I did the Xterra Lory in Fort Collins, CO a couple of years ago. The transition area may or may not be very level. I mention this because if you have stuff that may roll away you want to keep it safe. Make sure that you have a good bike - I probably had the worst bike there and boy did I notice it. Also, the race I did had no aid station midway through the run. The run course was up up up then down down down and was like 4.5k, so in the hot sun after that climb I got dehydrated and it wasn't fun. There were aid stations, they were just right at the beginning and end. I definitely recommend looking at the run course ahead of time and bringing your own water if the aid stations are spaced far apart. Also, get used to riding MTB with other people around. I don't know if you've ever done MTB races before, but I'd never really shared a trail with other people, and while I was fine it did up my race anxiety. Drafting isn't really a thing but it's a lot harder to pass/be passed on MTB, and I ended up leapfrogging people who were slower than me on descents but faster on climbs (I'm big and heavy, so.) It's a lot different than on a road bike with all that pavement! Good luck to you! It was one of the most brutal races I've ever done and the feeling of crossing the finish line was amazing!

It sounds like you've got a solid plan for week 2! That dressing sounds interesting. I think when I was four I didn't like the yolks either, heh. And hey after a week like that it's pretty much gotta be all uphill from here! Or is it all downhill from here? You know, whichever one of those means "better." (I believe that downhill is generally negative, but going uphill is harder, so...?) Let's kick some week two butt!

All right so week one was okay. I did all my lifting, so yay. 3/3 for me and that is good. I got two bike rides in, both on the indoor trainer, both on the weekend. One, I need to stop leaving it to the end of the week. Two, the only reason that I got this in is because I didn't go snowboarding. Yesterday I did a good ride and got in 12.5 miles, today I had to force myself to get on there for 3.4 miles. I feel crappy today. It's not like I'm sick, I don't think, but I just have no energy. My alarm went off to go snowboarding and I was like "no" and then my other alarm went off at regular getting-up time and the answer was still "no" and I stayed in bed until 11am. But whatever that's 2/2 on cycling! And I literally just laid on the couch all day. I feel like even sitting up is hard and I feel bad for not going snowboarding but I also just feel crappy. I'm wondering if I just didn't eat enough? I'm low on food in the house and got delivery lunch yesterday and today, although today was because it felt like way too much effort to turn things into food myself. I don't know what's going on, but I didn't even get anything done on my thesis, my brain was too fuzzy for it. And no, it's not a hangover. Sigh. Aaaaaas for life stuff, I did do some things. I got three professors for my committee (emailed the last one, yay) and then I emailed my advisor notifying him of this, plus my original research proposal that I also have to do for this stupid doctorate. Which I really don't want to rewrite but probably will need to. I also cleaned my bathroom and did my laundry *including* sheets, although sadness, one of my snowboarding socks is apparently missing. I may have left it in Steamboat, which means I may get it back if the dude there has found it and... I may be looking at getting a new pair. Which I'll probably do at an end-of-season sale. Oh and I took out that big pile of recycling. What I didn't do was make any doctor appointments at all, and I can't even say why this is apparently so hard for me, but turns out it is. I give myself a pass on adulting this week, but if I do not make these healthcare appointments next week then I get a FAIL for the WHOLE CHALLENGE because one of my teeth is cracked ffs. Next week: I am lifting M/W/F, I want to do my run/cycle days on Tu/Th because spreading things out is good. This is a mini-goal for this week which I shall call "keeping on course" because no one sails anywhere drifting most of the week and just rowing on weekends, am I right?

Only weak men are intimidated by strong, intelligent, independent women. The kind of men who have the fragile definition of masculinity as "whatever isn't girly" and therefore can't deal with women doing awesome stuff. But then, why would you even want to date someone that's so insecure you have to pretend to be less than you are just so they find you "attractive"?