Sygil

Gah! Injuries are the worst. We should banish them from this world....some...how. Sounds like a job for a brigade... of sorts... *looks around*... why yes, I think we are all here. HMMMM. <insert :thinking: emoticon which is somehow not in the set?!> oh... and hi! Hope you heal quickly!

OH HI! Such timing we have. I just logged on to start all over again with this madness once more. Glad to see you're back at it as well! Baby steps are very good indeed - don't forget about the rules of the rebellion: where you're going is the important part

OH HI THERE. I heard you like unicorns. Does this count? So awesome to see that you're back! Sorry to hear about your knee though :/ I blew up my ankle completely and just started walking again, so you're not alone! No thread for me (yet), since I imagine you'll ask Keep up the ranger-woop-wooping! (I don't know what this means - rangers seem pretty odd as far as I can gather, just kick ass okay? )

Oh look, it's the first awesome person I actually got into contact with on here Yep, you found my "thread" for now.

I haven't been active (on the forums) lately, but I looked at my old "before" picture and... November, 2014. 190lbs. Feel exhausted, unproductive, steadily gaining weight. I do not believe I will ever be fit, but I bought me a weight set and decided to DO SOMETHING about this nonsense. In my quest to do something, I found Nerd Fitness and began a magical journey. In the meanwhile, I Ate clean (majority vegetables, fruit, protein, "healthy fat"; avoided carbs and added sugar like the plague) Took up bouldering until I injured my ankle in December Stronglifts all the way through Ankle rehab Swimming (lately) Thought my ankle was healed a lot earlier than it was and slowed down healing (it finally has near-full ROM back) 8 months later, it is July, 2015. I am 152lbs and made of muscles. I have more energy than I could have ever dreamed of. I cannot imagine going back to the way things were. My entire life is transformed a thousand times over. To anyone who is new, I seriously hope this inspires the shit out of you. You can do this too - and then go even further. Oh, and GET INVOLVED WITH THE COMMUNITY It was a serious part of this journey for me. You guys rock!

WOW, YOU PEOPLE ARE ALIVE, HI. I hope you're both doing awesome <3

Excellent Nothing wrong with that - you clearly have bigger fish to fry, and are frying them quite thoroughly! Also.. where are these restaurants anyway? As... everyone probably knows, I didn't participate in the challenge - BUT, I am now practising guitar for 7+ hours every week and actually learning new and useful things and getting better at it, thus completely shattering my prior goal of "play 3 times a week and maybe learn something or whatever." I also did get my squats back up to 225lbs 230lbs tomorrow!

You're probably figuring this out already, given the pristine example above, but how you feel is a direct result of what you do and what you eat. Keep improving those two things, little by little, and you will begin feeling like a million bucks in no time. If you aim for minimal but measurable improvement, and then do it more and more often as you get comfortable with the small changes you make, you get to improve yourself all the freaking time with very little effort. Keep kicking ass! Oh, and P.S. Those who do train with weights on consecutive days do so by targeting different muscle groups, thus working one part of the body while another recovers. This isn't necessary to achieve significant results until you are reaching your limits, and making gains is much more difficult, which I imagine takes many years. It also has a higher demand on your time, so not particularly recommended. Recovery is very important, just ask my silly injuries from overdoing it.

MAYDAY, MAYDAY, BRIGADE DOWN. Weeks 3, 4, and 5, were excellent though, I assure you. I also have no idea what happened, but my calendar says I was busy. I'm also getting my squat back up to 225lbs after having to deload though I did notice my knees caving in on a rep. Boo!

Yep, the real ones can look kind of scary. I would likely avoid them As for me and NF challenges, the shortest explanation is that I decided to lay out every last one of my life goals and work on at least one every day in some way, while continuing to maintain all of my health and fitness goals (which don't tend to change very much recently). This exploded into me constantly being busy to the point that I seriously do not have time to post about anything. This train must keep on trucking. I shouldn't even be posting this right now I might return after I've knocked a few of the bigger goals off the list. Until then, it's really great to hear from you. Good luck with everything! Oh, and thanks again for your help when I first joined NF - this snowball effect of "most productive I've ever been in my entire freaking life" did start there

OHI! Welcome back to NF land. <insert water unicorn> I'm really too lazy to find one... Edit: I lied, and although it was easy to find, it's purdy: Or... apparently there are real ones.

Yeah, I've been tracking my progress using trello boards... Not sure I'd recommend doing it that way though, it can be a little weird to make it work for you.

Hurray Harihead! Now someone just needs to make a new brigade... I want to do a challenge on here and not have it take somuchtime I don't think that's possible, though?! Maybe I'll get less busy... eventually... I'm kind of in the same boat with the "scheduled allofthetime"

Thanks! That's exactly what I realized not long after posting that. I can't wait (but obviously will need to).

I could write a whole paragraph about this, but TL;DR - I plateaud at 5x5 200lbs due to bad form, figured it out, started again from 160lbs, and just easily did a set of 5x5 @ 200lbs. I do also weigh 5lbs less than I did back then, so perhaps 205lbs is the true test? I'm not particularly concerned about nailing that either, so meh Update: 205lbs was fine as well. Onward to 225!

Yes, plenty of metal guitarists started with classical training and a foundation in music theory. Many also did not WHY IS IT SO QUIET IN HERE? I'm not even doing a challenge and I seem to be more noisy... (well, I am - just not one that is tracked on here? )

I certainly counts for something. I never got close I don't know why, but I never actually thought about trying to learn power metal songs... probably because I can't stand them after a while. But learning to play them is something else entirely!

Yeah, pretty sure I don't have the patience for that I've been working on my guitar skills though. I found out it feels amazing to play melodies at high speed shred like a badass and actually not screw it up. It's as if I've become one with the guitar. Must find more songs to play... *drool* I wonder what happened to our martial arts friend from a past challenge... I've been pondering doing that recently, too. Oh, swampling! I had a dream I was walking around on my hands and could actually keep my balance it was fun. Maybe I should try that... I can't see it going as well as in the dream, though.

Well, there is all of that raw fish, and the rare blue steak, but I'm sure I'm fine! All of the malnutrition brought with tape worms probably makes it rather difficult to lift increasingly heavier things. Though I'm still not quite up to where I was with squats and deadlifts before I took a 2.5 week "heal ze ankle" break Although I suppose I'm squatting a lot more with better form, so technically I'm ahead of where I was? 200lbs should be easy when I get to it... How's everyone else doing?

I'm really not here, but definitely still doing things... like hitting an all-time (okay, I was obviously lighter as a child) body weight low of 156lbs (-31lbs from when I started on NF, bwahaha). Not sure if due to lifting things and eating clean, or tape worm... but I'm hoping it's the former. I started trying to spin chopsticks... it... didn't go so well. At least it wasn't in a restaurant ?

Those moments where you discover something you didn't know existed that happens to be freaking awesome. Did I mention that's awesome? It's awesome. Seriously, it's nothing more than a self-inflicted barricade. SPIN THEM PENS.

I have no idea what you're talking about! Explain? WHAT'S IT WITH US PEOPLE AND INJURING OUR FOOTSIES? GAH! I hope you heal soon. I'm certainly taking my sweet time Eww, bodyweight exercises I attempted to do a thousand pushups and (as expected) failed not so long ago. My shoulders died, as did muscles I didn't really know I had. It does kind of make me want to do stupid amounts of pushups more often though... What kind of craziness are you learning about your diet? (clearly too lazy to go read anyone's thread because they all have a thousand posts in them)

Awesome work DWD! How's everyone else doing? It's rather quiet around here I may not post very often anymore, but I'm damn well keeping at it and attacking all of the goals one by one. I feel like I've grown wings and I'm learning to fly now... or something! Clearly Gargoyle was the right choice

Hurray! I pretty much program exclusively in C++, going so far as to invoke the black arts of C++11 bestowed upon the particular compiler at hand. I do however use perl, python, and bash scripts for a number of smaller things as well. Building stuff that works is incredibly hard. Building stuff that works correctly in all cases is much harder. Yay programming! Programming aside, I have amazing news. AMAZING NEWS TIME I saw the podiatrist this morning, who verified I've been doing almost everything right with my ankle, and can continue all manner of weight training and even climbing so long as I ice the evil thing and avoid maximum ROM. My only mistakes were judging by pain while climbing rather than strictly avoiding full ROM, and the fact I wasn't icing my ankle after. I should be able to climb with full force if I follow these simple modifications for what I shall just assume is a full 8 weeks. I can officially stop slacking off and just lift things, starting tomorrow! All of this thought about lifting things has made me quite hungry.... *wanders off to the fridge that conveniently follows the team into battle* ...I just pondered making an actual RPG for the brigade where we can target our planks at friendlies who actively take damage and so on. I so don't have the energy to do this, but it'd be so much fun!...I think. *runs away*