Darth Yoga

For me, it really helped to just accept that my ability to want to do things is broken. So when there is a thing that I intend to do, that furthers my life goals, and I don't want to do it, I just tell myself, "Yeah, that is normal. You don't have to want to do it. Just get up, do the first step, and keep moving." Not that it always works, but I used to get real bogged down in trying to feel motivated. What will motivate me? Why don't I feel motivated? Um, because I have clinical depression is why. I have gotten a lot better at not feeling bad about feeling bad, not criticizing myself for my emotional state. It is bad enough without me adding an extra layer of guilt and shame to it.

SUCCESS Okay, so I didn't post, but I DID do my squats 3x each week.

I got one of those at a thrift store years ago! I never tries steaming eggs in it but I make batches of "hardboiled" eggs in my vegetable steamer all the time and I can confirm they are way easier to peel than conventional. Plus the steamer is a "set it and forget it" cooking method, which I love.

Week one - SUCCESS! Three squat sessions. No meditation, but that is okay. Week two is already a partial success because the accountability of posting on NF has twice motivated me to exercise at an unreasonable hour when I had totally good excuses not to.

My secret is I really hate doing more than 5 of anything. 😄 Even 5x5 is kind of a drag. I like stuff I can do 3x5. (I'll sometimes do Pavel's 10x10 kettlebell swings but those are over really quick, with only very short rests so you don't lose forward momentum. Still kind of a slog though.) In my heart I prefer simple bodyweight work, with kettlebell as a distant second, but barbell is so simple to get a challenging workout quickly and efficiently, if you have the equipment. And people are always throwing away fitness gear, so over the past decade I've scavenged a lot of equipment. Skipping warmups, 3x5 squats 3x/week is a total time commitment of under a half hour a week. Spend the rests doing a little mobility work on my shoulders, and do 5 minutes of yoga every morning. That is about what I can manage right now. So far I have done zero meditation, but I will not feel bad about it. It was EXTRA CREDIT. Totally optional.

Yeah, I use MTWRFSN. I've never seen U for Sunday. Weirdo. 😄 Just here for spreadsheet love though. No wait. Squats. I'm here for squats. My Squatsmas is 3x5 barbell squats, 3x/week.

Despite being epically miserable (for other reasons) I got my ass under the bar on Sunday and Tuesday. Dropped the weight down to 110# instead of my usual 150# so I can just bang out three sets without warmup. No warmup is partly lazy, partly to maintain mental momentum, and partly because if I am not changing weights, I can be quiet enough that I don't feel rude doing it in the mornings. Good deep squats, not slacking there. It is enough to make my legs wobbly going down the stairs the next day, so I say that is enough to count as doing squats.

Oof! Good luck! Do you have a backup plan for mom? I always get nervous when my plans hinge on anyone doing anything they aren't already in a well established habit of doing. Is getting yelled at for moving the papers actually going to interfere with you doing your project? Is the project worth it? Because eating that might be your most efficient route forward. "Do something about.... (a thing I've been not doing for ages)" and "Move clutter" are both dAnGeRouS missions for ADHD brain. Be strong! Stay focused on the primary goal! Be ruthless about anything that doesn't directly further your mission.

Keeping it real simple. Just to keep my hand in and do SOMETHING. GOAL: Barbell squats, 3x5, three times a week for three weeks. SCORING: 10pt per set, plus 10pt for doing the whole week, makes 100pt/wk. Any non-trivial weight gets full marks, say over 100#. Extra credit: 1pt per 10m meditation.

WEEK 4: Success! 100/100 pullups Plus yoga every day. I am finding the GTG "do a few throughout the day" plan a little unsatisfying, but definitely sustainable at this level. Next challenge will be nutrition. Probably protein and veg at two meals a day, or a certain number of servings of each.

WEEK 3: Success! 100/100 pullups Plus yoga every day. Slacked off on posting updates, but not on doing the work.

WEEK 2: Success! 135/100 pullups Plus yoga every day. Definitely getting better at this. I was feeling pretty rough Thursday so I took it easy. Aside from that, volume is limited mostly by just not remembering to do it more often.

And happy birthday to me! I usually limit sweets pretty strictly (because I have NO BRAKES) but for my birthday I ate SO MUCH CAKE. So good. Picture doesn't show well but it was gold metallic.

WEEK 1: Success! 100/100 Plus yoga every morning. Good job! Having done two weeks of this, I am confident 200/week would have been physically doable, but actually getting it done would be a challenge. I'm not at all sore or tired with this volume. It is just a hassel to remember more than twice a day, so there would definitely be night-time cramming with a 200/wk goal. Doing a few sets in the morning and a few in the evening, nearly every day, seems like a pretty sustainable goal. Anyway, doing good.

Hey! I can now do sets of two overhand! These are getting easier.

WEEK 0. STATUS REPORT. Pullups done: 135/100 Morning yoga: 7/7 days These don't count towards my total. Just calibration. I didn't always get my 3 sessions every day, but if I can get a minimum of two 5-rep sessions each day, I can get three or four on other days to make my 100. Sets of two are feeling more comfortable. For ease of tracking I am doing blocks of five. 1-2-2 or 1-2-1-1. Short pause between. The first 1-2 of each five overhand, then switching to underhand for the sake of my elbows. No specific goal for morning yoga beyond, do something every day. Scores listed are the same as last challenge, just for tracking purposes, but I am not worried right now about when I do the practice (before 9am =5pt) or if it is before breakfast (=5pt). I'm sticking with ONE GOAL AT A TIME for now. Next challenge will be nutrition related, and AFTER THAT maybe I'll have a challenge integrating two previous challenges. Scratch that. After that will be January, and starting work full time at the tax office, on top of my two part time jobs. we'll see where I am at.

Nope. Keep it at 500, over five weeks. If I do more, I do more. My elbows and shoulders are fine after doing 100 in the past five days, but remembering to do them throughout the day is a challenge all by itself. Despite having two pullup bars in the house. One in my bedroom. And I mostly work from home... But being judgey at myself doesn't motivate me to do better, so, let's quit that line of thought.

Seriously considering bumping it up to 1000, and including this week in the total. We'll see if my elbows/shoulders are complaining this weekend... I was planning on alternating overhand and underhand grip, but am finding that I have to mostly do an underhand grip because my elbows really don't like doing high volume overhand grip. So on 5 singles, I'm doing overhand grip on the first one or two.

Maj. Posey's Pullup Plan has been in my "Programming" folder since the early days of this journey. It is a high volume, low intensity plan. Multiple short sets throughout the day. A "Grease the Groove" plan, as Pavel's folks say. My max is currently 6 reps, which puts me just barely into the 2 reps training set range. That last rep maybe was too sloppy to count anyway. I've been testing it out these past two days, and I had to drop it to singles, to keep my form solid. (My shoulders are complainy enough.) So we'll put me in the 1-5 max rep level, which has a target of 90-180 reps per week, over 3-5 sessions a day, 3-5 days a week. That makes 500 reps for a five week challenge. I currently feel confident doing five singles with very short rests between. 3-5 of those on most days seems very doable. This week I am just playing around with it before I firmly commit to a target. My week 0 challenge is to do 3 sets of any size each day and track how many

FINAL REPORT. WEEK 5: 7/7 days! 10pt on 4 days . Avg 8.7/5 I've just started teaching a course on basic income tax preparation, so I have been waking up early and spending hours going over notes and slides. Thursday I was just like "Fuck it. I'm having breakfast NOW." but I did my practice before 9am. Next challenge, scoring will just be the number of pullups done per day, tentatively with a goal of 40. I'll set the goal at the end of wk 0. I'll track the asana practice, but just a "yes I did" / no I didn't" with no other criteria. I think the best setup is to cycle between improving a meditative practice, improving physical fitness, and improving nutrition. Try to keep the other habits going in the background, but reduce the standards so I can focus on the next thing. I have really struggled to make ANYTHING habitual, so I am trying to really grind in each habit. This was a good one.

This has gone really well. Next challenge will be pullups, multiple short sets throughout the day. Following "Posey's Pullup Progressions", which I have done in the past. She advises 3-5 short sessions a day, 3-5 days a week. Current max set is 6, so that is training sets of 2 reps, with total volume of 40-70/day, 120-210/week. I'll probably do them as pyramids, 1 rep, 2 reps, 1 rep, with short pauses between. Easier to get the volume in that way. Do three of those, 4-5x/ day and I am good. 5 days a week is reasonable for me. I am likely to do a few easy sets on the off days. I've got a pullup bar in my room and another downstairs, and a session is max 5 minutes, so this is doable. I've done high volume pullup training before, and I like it. Week 0 will be doing a couple of pullups 3x/day.

WEEK 4: 7/7 days! 9.8/5. One day of dallying in my room past 9am, but consistently it is the first thing I do after leaving my bedroom and hitting the bathroom. I do screw around in my room for a while most days, but generally wake early enough that I still get it done before 9am.

UPDATE! Great week! 9.3/5. This really is an easy goal if I focus on it. But I go months without doing it anyway, so it is worthwhile. Next challenge I'll likely add some modest number of chinups each day... I'm tempted to do a diet goal, eating more veggies or something, but honestly I already fuss too much about what I eat. My diet is not that bad right now, and I am so sedentary. It is the low hanging fruit. Besides, I'll be way more happy about getting back some of the upper body muscle mass I've lost, and exercising generally encourages me to eat better anyway.

UPDATE: All good! 9.7 with a goal of 5. I've been getting up early, but making this a "before breakfast" thing really helps.

That is why I do these challenges. I'm really stubborn and competitive when I've got some public short-term goal. It isn't sustainable, but it helps reinforce the habit during the challenge, and shows me that I actually CAN do the thing, no excuses. Then, outside the challenge, I can honestly face that I just don't actually want the long term goal badly enough to do the thing.