Texelsaur

Sounds like a terrible box. Good on you for forging your own path forward. Every crossfit gym has rings and ring rows are a great starting point for pull-ups.

I feel the pain. I've always had terrible flexibility. My crossfit coaches joke that I'm "made of stone". In middle school during the sit-and-reach test, the coach had to get an extra ruler out of the desk so they could record a score. For most of this year I've been seeing a physical therapist once a month to plot out the most useful exercises and gauge my progress. It's been a helpful resource since there's a lot of information out there and I find it difficult to tailor it to one's specific case. Something not immediately obvious to me when starting is that tightness is usually rooted in two components: - Tightness of the muscle itself - Weakness in an opposing or supporting muscle. So in addition to trying to attacking my hamstrings head on, I've identified specific weaknesses in my ankles, calves, and hips which all contribute to an increased load on the hamstrings, continuously working against my stretching efforts. The theory, I'm told, is that strengthening those supporting structures will make flexibility easier to maintain. Some of my tightness is genetically rooted, but I've seen some improvement. Be consistent, set your expectations to 1-2 years out, and try to find someone who can give you an expert assessment, if possible. I think there's hope

I tried running a garden for a few years. The first year was moderately successful and I got cucumbers and more zucchini than I could ever know what to do with. I moved and expanded the plot the following year and it became too much work to keep up with, so it all went to hell. Two vegetables that I have routinely struggled with are tomatoes and peppers. The tomatoes always split around their tops and are halfway necrotic by the time they're ready to pick. The peppers always rotted on the plant once they were close to full-size. I'm currently in the market to buy a house, and I'm hoping to try another garden once settled.

Woo... a thread I can relate to. It's been on my mind lately how isolated I'm becoming. Even on the Internet, where I used to be a lot more sociable in the early-mid 2000s, I've lately had trouble connecting with people or integrating into communities. I either participate on the fringe, or I end up getting trapped in a kind of professional facade. For example, in the last 4 years I've been playing Minecraft and developed some popular mods for the game, but I've not really connected with anyone on a firstname/username basis. Since animal results are rad, my latest Myers-Briggs result is ISTP. I'm a strong I/T, weak S, and very weak P. My previous result was ISTJ. I guess that makes me one of these goofy snake/turtle hybrids: No wonder I'm having trouble making friends

So I made the first reply to this thread way back in February: Today I have atoned for my sins. “Chuck Norris†(But better known as the Filthy Fifty) For time: 50 Box jumps 24/20″50 Jumping pull-ups50 Kettlebell swings (35/25lbs)50 Walking lunges50 Toes-to-bar50 Push press 45/33lbs50 Good mornings 45/33lbs50 Wallballs 20/14lbs50 Burpees50 Double-unders LIII: as rx’d. Cut-off is 30:00. LII: Each movement a 3:00 AMRAP, but if you finish early move ahead and use the banked time on a more difficult movement. LI: 3 x 10 of each movement (stopping with wall balls), with 30sec rest between sets. Assistant instructor will explain each movement in turn.

We first week went something like this: (Figure 1: my momentum from the previous challenge flying off the rails) Missed a couple mobility sessions, didn't cook, and only hit my target bedtime about half the time. So, totally off in the weeds. I want to change my night tendency because I feel better with more sleep. I still have to be to work for 9:00, so if I'm going to bed at 2 in the morning, that leaves me -at best- 6 hours of sleep. Probably less.

Reserved for not-real-time status and grading.

Hello Rangers - a reptile is joining your ranks this challenge. I am working on the first arc of my "a better me" story. I'm trying to undo years of degradation in posture and mobility, which are now hindering my efforts to level up my fitness, and to build a better framework for success. If the future of my story is to get bigger, lift heavier, and endure even more grueling routines, then I need to be able to perform at today's level without pain. Main Quest: Building better posture, range of motion, and making myself more injury-proof. Goal 1: Reconstructing movement This is a continuation from Challenge 1. I started seeing a physical therapist during the challenge when my existing mobility exercises were not addressing all my problem areas, and my injury rate was creeping up in CrossFit. This goal is to keep my motivated and accountable, following all of my prescribed exercises each day. This is the main component of my current long-term goal, which is restoring a more "normal" posture and range of motion, so that I can keep progressing in CrossFit without a high injury risk. Goal 2: Stirring up my diet I rarely cook. Either someone else cooks, or I go out, or I just half-ass meals and snack instead. In order to have more control over my diet, I need to start learning to cook. At least once per week, I'll cook dinner for the family, and I'll post what I make here. I feel like this should be more aggressive, but given the dynamics of living with other people and getting home late, this may be sufficiently challenging. Goal 3: Bowing to the moon I have a terrible night owl tendency, and in January I was back to my 3:00-4:00 am bedtime habits. Over 6 weeks, I will ramp my bedtime down. For weeks 1-2, I must be in bed by 1:30 am. For weeks 2-3, I must be in bed by 1:00. For weeks 5-6 am, I must by in bed by 12:30 am. Life Goal: Fluorohydroxyapatite I have a history of cavity risk, despite generally good oral hygiene (probably I'm paying for teenage years of not so good hygiene). I was given high strength fluoride to use, and 6 months of consistent use gave me a checkup with no new problems. I've really slacked off using it lately, mostly because my bedtimes got so horrible. My challenge is to reincorporate the fluoride treatment into my routine every night.

I started replacing my diet soda habit with flavored seltzers (the kind with two ingredients: carbonated water and natural flavor). I never really liked seltzer so it took a week of concentrated effort to accept drinking it, and I'm still not in love with it so my intake is self-limiting. But having something fizzy and flavored to sip is enough to substitute some of the diet soda drinking. Might be helpful to try if you're breaking a mental habit.

Today was a lovely strength wave. Back squat 3-2-1-3-2-1-3-2-1 Press 3-2-1-3-2-1-3-2-1 Weighted Chin-ups 3-2-1-3-2-1-3-2-1 Work down and across, so 3-3-3, 2-2-2, 1-1-1, 3-3-3 ... Tweaked my back 2/3 through the wave and now it's killing me. Learning injuries.

Week 6 recap: For the first time this challenge I only managed to hit two workouts. A Monday snow storm closed the gym and an injury later in the week coupled with really high strain metcons just wasn't going to work out for me. The mobility exercises went without a hitch, although there were several nights that caught me doing them at 12:30 or 1:00 am because it's a drag to do. And with that, this challenge is complete. Let's review goal by goal. Quest 1: Follow the mobility regimen I was given every day. This is really the highlight of the challenge. Years of bad posture, computer work, scoliosis, and maybe some crappy genes have robbed me of my range of motion. A lot of basic exercises in CrossFit thus give me pain in my shoulder and hip, especially on my left (non-dominant) side. I started this quest with a guide from another CrossFit gym member going for his physio, and towards the end of the challenge I started seeing a physical therapist and swapped out some of the work. I did my mobility work every day without fail, which means I pass with a perfect score! Do I feel any different after 6 weeks? I knew this would be difficult to evaluate, but paradoxically I feel worse than when I started. While I feel some of the support in my shoulders is stronger, the pain triggers haven't changed, and I've injured my hip twice doing basic rowing, which wasn't a problem before. I can't really explain this, other than my body's natural programming is rebelling against my attempts to correct structural problems. If I hadn't already set up PT appointments, this would have been my trigger to do so. Where do I go from here? I think mobility still needs a prominent role in my next challenge, especially with the ongoing PT work. The exact nature of that work remains to be decided. Grading: A = 32 days, B = 27 days, C = 22 days I receive an A! +1 CON Quest 2: Attend 3 CrossFit classes each week. After a month of poor attendance in December I wanted to make sure I was maintaining momentum with my workouts. This also meant occasionally committing to workouts I don't like. The last three weeks became challenging because the Winter pattern in New England has brought major snowstorms every week and the gym has been closed the past 3 Mondays. A couple injuries also made this more difficult and I've been modifying most workouts as a result. In the last week I only made it to two workouts, so my score is passing but not perfect. Where do I go from here? The one thing I don't like about CrossFit is the uncertain nature of strength work. I could help fix this by attending an open gym day each week to supplement that. Grading: A = 15 days, B = 13 days, C = 11 days I receive a B! +1 STA Quest 3: Add an extra foam roller or lacrosse ball mobilization every day. The point of this was to not get caught up purely on my PT exercises. Sometimes I would use this to focus on a body area that I really beat up during an exercise, but usually I just pulled from the same few exercises, like the couch stretch, T-Spine smash, and pec smash. I'm sure I missed at least one day of adding something. Where to go from here? I don't think I need to follow up with another quest like this. Instead, I should focus on something like sleep or diet. After PT is behind me, I can consider another quest that deeply focuses on exploring mobility instead of this half-hearted attempt at variety. Grading: A = 32 days, B = 27 days, C = 22 days I receive a B! +1 CON 3-Week point assignment: I'm allocating myself 8 points instead of 10 for the B grades above. 1 STR, 1 DEX, 2 STA, 1 CON, 3 WIS, 0 CHA Mini-Quests: - SMART Goals. +1 WIS - Making Friends. +1 CHA Thanks to fellow rebels erosan and JamesCoombs for following me through this challenge.

Nice work, nice analysis, and a good transition to new goals.

Oh hell, tomorrow's workout is 14.4. Today's followed a similar pattern. Mobility Review - Olympic wall squat and triple bully. Clean Practice - 5-10 minutes "Barb Wire" 4 rounds for time: - 40 sit-ups - 30 push-ups - 20 pull-ups - 10 dead lifts - Rest 3 minutes Hard Cutoff at 28 minutes. If you fail to do the first round in 4 minutes, drop all the reps by 10 (except deadlifts). Everything scaled as appropriate. It wasn't as bad as it looked on paper, but I did scale the reps down, and I subbed out sit-ups for 1:00 planks due to re-injuring a hip flexor during yesterday's rowing.

Am I reading this right? Did you precompute the reps or is that 500 burpees?

Today we started with 10 minutes of Turkish get up practice. I have all kinds of problems doing these. Then some push jerk practice followed by a 20 minute EOMOM of: - Calorie row (even) - 5 push jerks (odd) Doesn't look bad on paper, but surprisingly brutal. I had to sub out the push jerks for light dumbbell pressing since I'm not supposed to be doing major overhead work right now. I'm not sure how everyone else's gyms do it, but everything is always broken down into 3 skill levels. This one for example is scaled as: LIII: 20/15 calories, PJ @ 155/108lbsLII: 15/12 cal, PJ @ 115/83lbsLI: 12/9 cal, PJ or push press as appropriate Almost no one does LIII, almost everyone does LII but might scale weights further down.