Matariel

Thursday, the elements program had me putting together a freeflow excerise from the 3 movements I practice in it. It was a great way to start the morning. Thursday night I had Judo. We did some grappling moves (I don't know the japanese name for it yet) which worried me because I ended up with some soreness in my elbow/bicep area. Then we did Randori and sparring is great. In the last fight I attempted a Sasae (shortened from Sasae tsurikomi ashi) Only for me while I ended up completing the throw I also gave myself an awesome bruise on the shin from his knee. I'm learning and one day I will learn how to not injure myself in this process. So with a banged up elbow and a bruised shin I went home and showered and rested. Either today was just a poopy workout day or the fear monster is all up in my head taking up residence in the weightlifting area. Both options have merits. I'm going to go with today was just a bad workout day because my shoulder and shin both still feel weird and I was getting my knee pain even in bodyweight squats today. So today became mobility day. Hung up the rings on the frame out back. worked some range of motion stuff for legs and shoulders. happiness. Monday I shall return and crush the gym.

Great Job Man! All your talk of running is making my brain say "A run would be good for us." Now I happen to know... I hate running. A lot. The only reason I run is to get the exercise over with as quick as possible. All that being said my girlfriend and I have a 5k fun run toward the end of this month. I should probably put some miles in.

Squats are starting to feel heavy, but the sets felt good form wise. I'm still pretty excited about the growth possible. Overhead Press is still feeling awesome. 95 went great 5 reps 3 sets BOOM Deadlift got in my head. At camp I deadlifted 275 on my 3rd attempt and I remembered this right before going into my workset. This got in my head and my brain was like "you want us to do WHAT!? 10 lbs less are you crazy!!?" So this affected my breath and my form and I pulled 2 times, they were solid but I was feeling distracted. Having to reset before going for my 3rd then still in my head. Try to pull got it off the ground but not up. I'm debating if I just try the same weight again next time or if I go down 5 lbs or what. My brain doesn't like when I approach limits. It wants to keep me safe and not push them too much. I don't feel that my brain and my body are in sync with what we're capable of.

End of the day yesterday was a lot of fun. I got to experience Randori (sparring) in Judo for the first time ever. It was a lot of fun, also super exhausting. Monk cardio is best cardio though. I had forgotten how much cardio is necessary for fighting shape. I look forward to building it back. Apparently I have a lot of good instincts, but because of my skill level I'm not noticing the things I am instinctively doing and am more focused on not getting thrown on the ground. It was super fun, have historically hated tournaments and martial arts competition, but I might try out one for Judo and see how I feel. Went to Chipotle for dinner after and got my burrito for $3 because my judo uniform counted as "dressed up". #winning Apparently my roommate didn't know that leaving the porch light on during Halloween is a signal that you're giving out candy in our area. He's from South Africa and lived in Maryland before moving here I guess I'll forgive him. Luckily no tricks were played on us. We had no candy, he just said he ignored them when they came to the door. We were that horrible house this year Sleep overnight still sucked. Woke up with a small headache, I don't know why. Eat more, drink more water, sleep more, is the game plan. I made up for my elements this morning. I did Monday's and today's workouts this morning. Frogger strength hops were fun to figure out. As with all things squat oriented it's a lot better on the knees if you let your butt do the work. Bear flexibilty going from an A-frame position to cobra took a while to figure out too because my lower back wanted to do work and in the video they explicitly talk about how your lower back should not do work it should all be in the arms and chest. Yay new neural paths for my body. Hopefully tomorrow I will not feel like crap and will get up and Deadlift like I'm supposed to.

ALL ABOARD!!! Note to self: increase stealth tactic training.

TIME TO DO THIS THING!! Okay except maybe not right away. Took some self care this morning. I too many sugary drinks and too little decent food this weekend compounded with not enough quality sleep last night to be a disastrous wake up this morning. I'm working on learning the difference between laziness and a need for self care, this morning felt very much like it would have been a bad idea to lift on. I did my headspace meditation though!! I'll try to get Elements in before Judo. Meal planning also a thing I should work on. Anyway lets get clear about the wins on these goals Starting Strength I saw a good solid start post camp. A couple of things I did notice though were that my bench is absolutely the worst lift I work on. I can get the weight up, but I really need to work on getting it right. At camp I didn't feel any problems with my bench and mistakenly thought I must have figured the lift out with all my body-weight push-ups but apparently not and I'll try to get some form check videos. I also realized I was cheating on power cleans, so I'm going to work on getting those properly. Goal: SS at least 2x per week. Form check bench press. Elements: Stick to the program. Elements is only a 6 week course so my first run-through will finish this challenge. I'm planning to maintain the program for the rest of this barbell strength development cycle I'm in right now. This is really more of a "make the time" priority of active rest. These workouts are 20 minutes-ish long and not very taxing, but are great for mobility in the wrists, hips, and shoulders. Goal: 6x a week. Do all the workouts. Headspace: Meditation app. 10 minutes a day. November 21st is the last day of my 3 month special. I need to check in and determine if this app is right for me or if I should save my money. Goal: 10 minutes of meditation at least 3x a week. Eat in: This one is pretty self explanatory. Go to the grocery store. Make 3 meals for the week. I think I might make nomnom paleo's kalua pig recipe into a burrito bowl like meal. That'll take care of at least one week. I'm open to suggestions of other quick cheap throw together ideas. Goal: Eat in 3x per week. (The girlfriend cooking for me doesn't count even though she is a life saver for cooking and saving us the money) Week 4: The week of Thanksgiving here in the USA. I'll be traveling to the Ohio/West Virginia border to meet my girlfriend's grandparents and extended family. I'll be spending the week there with her/them. I'm calling it a rest week. I'll do elements and headspace if I have the space, but I expect a week of socializing and making a good impression.

Hey! The rules must have changed because I was finally able to update my username. Now I'll just have to be more intentional in telling people who know me who I am.

This is Will. I was the one with the ginger beard. there were a lot of camp faces I don't blame you

I like hanging out with the rebels for now. It's a fun place . Plan is to do more lifting for a while before switching back to gymnastic movement goodness. Maybe next Challenge I'll check out the Warriors then move to Asssassin's page. Elements is great. 1) It's fun to do 2) take 20-30 minutes 3) A lot of wrist, shoulder, and hip mobility in the warmup section 4) My squat has gotten better 5) once I get a better hang of all the things I might use it as a warmup to my regular workout.

Following for awesome

Yup... poverty nerds convinced me to join in this time. We'll see how I can pull this together. Really want to update my username to my usual character name of Matariel, but apparently I have to post 150 things first. Looking forward to all the awesome in this thread

So I was told by @Raxie that it's 0 week and I need to get on the hype train so here I am I'm seeing a bunch of other people with all their super creative DnD/FF alter egos so I'm trying to think of what mine would be. Gymnastics Training Rings Training Martial Arts Archery It's all pretty rogue assassin ish to me. Anyway Goals More of the same from last challenge Continue Starting Strength Weeks 6 7 8 9 Continue Elements Week 3 4 5 6 gmb.io/e Meditation 3x week Headspace Diet Eat in 3x a week For real I saw the trend of my money spent on eating out and cried a little over how much I'm just eating my money. More detail later. Maybe...

I LOVE DRAGONS! Also Dragon Disciples. Now you and @Big_Show both have me thinking about how to incorporate DnD into this shindig. I'll have to study up on some things....

Following for inspiration, cat .gifs, and Madi sightings.

Oh hai there poverty fort friend

TRAIN ALL THE THINGS!

Following for Viking inspiration.

I can't believe the 4 weeks is up already... Even more I can't believe camp was already a month ago Anyway I think I came out alright on this one: Quest 1: I managed to keep track of this thread at least so that's a win. Quest 2: Week 1: 3oo3 Week 2: 3oo3 Week 3: 2oo3 Week 4: 2oo3 Overall 83% = Winning Quest 3: Picked up Elements from GMB. Love it, So fun and feels so good on rest days. Quest 4: JUDO! Awesome times throwing people. No BJJ though because I'm taking care of all my joints and don't want to do something stupid with them right now. Quest 5: 75% on track! Hey it's improvement. Alright so how does this whole week 0 thing work...?

Quest 1: Learn to forum. I disabled notifications from Tapatalk and I think that killed my awareness of forum life. So now I need to find that middle ground. Quest 2: Starting Strength 2 out of 3 last week. To be fair to myself though, Thursday was a rough night and a Friday workout was pretty much just out of the question. My car battery died. After multiple jump start attempts it was declared deceased. My girlfriend picked me up and cooked food for me and then we went and bought a new battery for the environment killing machine. (VW Jetta TDI that's part of the recall emissions scandal.) When we got back to my car, well first the sprinkler systems were running and crossing over the hood of my car. After waiting 5 minutes and they thankfully turned off! We tried to swap out the battery, but we were defeated by the restraining bracket that keeps the battery from sloshing battery acid everywhere . After these adventures I had to go back to her house and do my late night software deployment call for work from her place. So after all that mental stress I was up till 1:30 AM and still carless. Moral of the story my body was stressed enough. Good news is that it means this week should be a double deadlift week! But I have another software deployment call for work Tuesday night so Wednesday's workout might get scratched. This mornings lifts all went well though. Squats - 135 lbs. Back squats at no pain all happy. Overhead Press - 85 lbs. Starting to feel heavy. First 2 sets went fine focused on keeping shoulders in the right position. Last set was good but the last 2 reps felt real heavy. Now to keep my brain from getting in the way and telling me I can't lift more when my muscles can. Deadlift - 245 lbs. for 5. Reps 1 and 2 went quick and clean, but I lost bracing after the 2nd rep. Reset and reps 3 and 4 were more difficult. Reset again and pulled the 5th rep lift went up double overhand grip starting to have a breakdown. Debating if I want to keep working my grip strength in double overhand or move to switch grip now. I've noticed that completely resetting (standing and re-bracing) between reps dramatically increases difficulty. I first noticed this when I reset between each rep of 225, then I did 235 without standing back up and it felt super easy/awesome.... so now I'm just asking all sorts of questions on how I want to keep going.... and still freaking out that my worksets are above 225. Quest 3: Elements I've decided to use GMB's Elements program for my active recovery days. They're easy 20 minute workouts that are really building motor control, they're fun to do and aren't too taxing. Quest 4: Judo Went to class Monday but missed Thursdays class because of super car drama ruining everything. Quest 5: Reduce eating out for lunch. No plan yet for this week. Last week I won so I want to keep that up. Just don't know where the necessary meal prep will happen.

You know... I'm okay with that too.

Mondays workout went great. Switched to back Squats and maintained 0 knee pain! OHP even felt good. I wanted to jump up more weight but decided to work the program instead. 235 felt easier than 225 did on DL! This mornings workout went okay. Alright well actually it went great for 2 lifts. Squats were back Squats and just keep feeling better. Happiness Bench Press was horrible. Felt super heavy. Didn't have control of the bar. Elbow pain came in. Shoulder pain came in. I went down to 135 and did my work sets there but I probably should have just walked away. I think I'm going to go back the just the bar and focus technique. I'll go up 10 lbs a workout until I catch up with OHP then I'll keep pace with them. Power cleans are fun. I like them a lot, but I worry I'm not standing straight enough in the last position but I'm working on it. Deadlift again Friday! Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Good to know I'm not being viewed as anti-social or at least abnormal. Quest 5: Already crushed for week 3. Had lunch from home Monday and Tuesday! #Winning Helps when you made Kalua Pork for a dinner party Saturday. Fed 9 people and still had leftovers for 2 days

End of week 2 Check-in Quest 1: Learn to forum. So as far as my own personal foruming world I think I have a better handle. Now I'm creeping on other people's posts (people I met at CNF really) and getting notifications (so many notifications). I need to start reaching out and checking other conversations and actually say hi to people. Also need to start responding to people. This isn't a diary is it? It's supposed to be a conversation right? Quest 2: Starting Strength I'm 2 for 2 on Friday workouts feeling rough. I know I overworked myself the first week but maybe I'm in general doing too much? I guess we'll find out this Friday. I also dropped my progression jumps from 20 lbs on deadlift down to 10 now that I'm in what I called "stupid weight" range up just 3 weeks ago. Now the stupid weight range is 315+ but we'll see what happens going forward. Quest 3: Mobility GMB's Focused Flexibility program is information overload. I'm still working on piecing together all that is involved/included. While I'm figuring out all the extra stuff offered I've picked up some new stretches that I should do everyday but at least make sure I do Tuesday Thursday. Quest 4: Judo. 2 days a week 1 hour a day of throwing people. It's great. It's also a really great way to see how tiny tiny changes can completely throw off momentum and balance in a human body. I'm even starting to remember people's names! Next step remember move names! Quest 5: Food Last week was a learning experience. Work offered me free lunch one day but other than that I ate out a lot. My wallet frowned disapprovingly at me.

Quest 1: Tapatalk gives a lot of notifications. I need to figure out how to filter down so I'm not getting 6 notifications an hour from the nerd pages Quest 2: My knee was all sorts of upset about squats today. I think I'm keying in on what is the making a difference though. I'm noticing my glutes aren't as active in the reps with greater knee pain, and if I can get my glutes and my torso "canister" all firing correctly I don't have knee pain that rep. I'm also wondering if sometimes I'm getting the pain signal as a warning and not actually an issue. I tried videoing https://goo.gl/photos/eMohEUUH8JPNr9k38, https://goo.gl/photos/5jxLCzrAuuSpGSSw7, https://goo.gl/photos/wroRMnbdM9Tvqudf7 but since I was also using my phone for tracking and rest times It got really annoying taking it out and putting it in the tripod so I think I'll wait until my Pixel comes in before I start videoing everything. Also I know my left side is my problem side and I filmed from the right. Doh! Bench was SO MUCH BETTER today. I focused on making sure my shoulders were mobile and not pinned in place. If I can get that feeling squared away the next step is making sure my chest is the driver not my triceps. All of my videos were too close to really see anything. Other than my arms shaking much more than what they felt like they were doing when I was under the bar. Added Power Cleans today! The app said I was supposed to warm up with 4 sets of 3 at 95 so in the interest of time I just skipped that. I also just focused on getting the lift to feel right since it was the first time so no videos. Quest 4: Judo continues to be a fun learning experience. Yesterday we did a standing practice where we did everything except complete the throw. Then we worked combinations where we go for one throw, get blocked for it, and immediately followup with another throw. It was fun. I really enjoy this class. Fun fact! My studio (dojo?... class?... I'll have to clarify the name with my instructor) has a family that trains there. The dad is a 9th degree black belt in Judo and is an official coach for the Olympic games. His wife and his 2 boys train with us. I figure if someone with that level of knowledge and reputation lets his kids learn there, I might have found a good school.