BlackMetal

Welcome and I look forward to hearing that podcast. I'm pretty new here, also wanting to be a ranger.

Down the road I'm sure I'll want to work in other exercises. But as someone who is coming into the gym with zero experience from a sedentary lifestyle I'd like to keep it simple. Until I build some strength I'm really not interested in performing more than a couple lifts per visit to gym. Given my inexperience and lack of strength, what would you recommend I focus on? If I performed two or three lifts per trip to the gym what would they be, ideally?

I eat around 3500 calories worth of food a day. A lot of that is from bread, noodles and pasta, cookies. I also have been binge eating a bunch of ice cream lately. I could reduce my calorie intake, while lowering my carbohydrate intake, by eliminating grains from my diet. (Obviously I shouldn't eat three cups of ice cream in one sitting either.) So I've decided to check that out for the next challenge. Cooked lunches for the week on Sunday to pull out of the freezer. Chicken Thai Curry and and Swedish Meatballs (sans the bread). I like the sweet potatoes I put in the curry and while I miss rice, it isn't a deal breaker at all. The meatballs are very good with sauerkraut and steamed brussels sprouts. Eating all this fragrant food at school had me feeling a little awkward at first, but when I smell the greasy Burger King or that steamy, poo stank of McDonalds everyone else is eating I don't feel too badly about it. Hehe. Working with just the barbell and no plates to learn the bench press, overhead press, deadlift, and squat. I'm going to add weight on Monday and I really look forward to it. Been enjoying yoga on Saturdays. This job search is slaying me. I'm devoid of confidence, anxious, and have ran into a couple companies who won't work with me on the basis that I got a DUI years ago. That's an update.

Anyone here from the Phoenix area? Since joining NF a couple weeks ago I've been thinking of how beneficial it could be to have another person lift with me while I learn how to properly get under the barbell and make it move. And if lifting weights isn't your thing, hello anyhow.

I'm staring GSLP. Right now I'm working on form with just the barbell -squats, benchpress, overhead press, and deadlift. I haven't worked out exactly what I'll be doing yet, but I want to limit my lifts to the basic four mentioned above, at least until I've built some mastery with them form-wise. This is my first experience with a barbell and it's pretty exciting.

Been slowly working into it, using just the bar to practice squats and bench presses. I could try and get some video, though I'm at a gym and am unsure how well that would work. Using a broomstick doesn't provide a very good mock-up for me so if I could find a way to weight it down with 45 pounds I could shoot a couple clips at home.

Not really, using different machines will just come from experience. I let the fear overtake me and was too nervous to just say, "Hey I've never welded with one of these before, where do I adjust the wire speed?" so everything would have went a lot better for me. I think I'll add the Litany Against Fear to my pre-interview checklist: "I must not fear/Fear is the mind-killer/Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration/I will face my fear/I will permit it to pass over me and through me/And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path/Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Haha.

Oh man... I headed to my school at 7:00 to get comfortable (I graduated but I can use their shop whenever I want) and was running welds I'd figure a fabrication shop would likely test me on. These aren't particularly hard welds for me and everything was coming out well. I got a phone call at 9:00 to go test for a company. When I showed up I felt fine, passed the written test (weld symbols, blueprints, decimal-to-fractal inch conversions), met the person in charge of the welding dept., and he showed me my machine and told me what I needed to do. All of a sudden I froze up, like at the gym, and began feeling like I was in a tunnel. I had never welded on this machine and I couldn't find where the wire speed control was. I didn't want to ask the dude for some reason and I just rushed through the test with the machine set wrong. It was pretty terrible. Voltage was too low so I had these tall beads running down the metal with minimal penetration and tons of cold lap. It looked like a great place to work, too. The boss was a nice guy, the employees were busy but no one looked like they were being worked to death. I can test again in 30 days, the boss seemed to get that I was just nervous about my first test. This is still a huge hit though.

Went to the gym on Wed to lift some weights around 5:30p. That didn't work out at all and I felt pretty bad about it. I was too scared and anxious to manage anything but a meandering loop back towards a stationary bike. So I cycled for 20 minutes. I left feeling pretty disgraced, but also recognized that I had picked a difficult time slot to learn how to lift weights in. Today is Fri and I will go in the relative calm of the daytime. Still logging my food each day. Haven't counted actual calories, but after a week of recording everything I eat I can sit down and put numbers to each day. Created a formal mindfulness routine/regimen/plan/what have you. These are skills I (most everyone, really) apply throughout the day to varying degrees of effectiveness. But to actually set time aside to cultivate a couple of them is helpful to me. My job search has really accelerated this week. I have a couple of weld tests coming up and it makes me nervous. I worry about tests, about buckling under the pressure. So it's a risk and it's also an opportunity to showcase my skill set and get a pretty decent job. It's both a source of anxiety and a step in the direction I want to go.

I will definitely give Stronglifts a closer look. I do want a basic program that will allow me to master a few essential lifts. I wish I had a lifting friend where I'm at who could watch me and give feedback. I can't afford a trainer. Thanks for the response.

Today I ran through a light body weight routine consisting of pushups, lunges, squats, and planking. The squats were done with a mop handle to practice barbell form. The same went for a simulated overhead press and I gotta say the plastic mop handle didn't do it for me. I'm heading to the gym tomorrow to work on my form with an actual bar, sans weights. I've logged everything I ate today. I haven't designed a formal mindfulness regimen yet, and every day I use skills from the mindfulness module of a therapy I just graduated from. So really I have no excuse but to sit down tonight and list three mindfulness activities I can be sure to do every day. Then I can be, like, mindful of being mindful duuuuuuuuude. Yes my username references thee actual black metal, lol. I am very much into the RPG aspect of NF but was under the impression that my first challenge needed to be done as a recruit before I chose a class (which will be ranger). I'm also not clear on how we accumulate experience and increase our abilities.

I was thinking cardio. I'd like to lift for strength, fewer reps/higher weight. Tomorrow I'm planning on starting my strength training, and I've been in yoga for a couple weeks now and that's been nice. I've heard of Couch-to-5k but am not a huge fan of running. I love cycling though, so maybe I can find a similar program for bike/stationary bike.

Realizing that I missed the start of this challenge by quite a bit I'm still going to participate to the extent that I can. I don't know how this works with my showing up 2/3 of the way through, but please give me advice and suggestions. Thanks. MAIN QUEST: To become stronger and go longer. SPECIFIC GOALS: 1) Weight training three times a week. 2) Yoga at least once per week. 3) Begin counting calories. I really have no idea what I'm eating, and simply getting in the habit of monitoring my food intake is going to take getting used to. SIDE QUEST: To develop and stick to a daily mindfulness regimen. Get a decent job.

I'm new to strength training and was looking into Greyskull LP. Anyone have any experience with Greyskull and care to share? My interests are building strength with a beginner-friendly program while burning a little fat developing some extra muscle. I'm not interested in becoming huge, but I do like being functionally strong and want to have a trim, hard body someday. I'm probably 20% body fat right now, I can't put numbers to any lifts but I've never been particularly weak.

New to Nerd Fitness and new to working out in general. I'm temporarily located in the desert and have been most sedentary -I'm really not into heat and constant sun. I'm interested in developing my stamina (and maybe my endurance, as soon as I learn what the difference between the two are), building my strength up with a lifting program, and staying loose with some yoga. Looking into the Rangers Guild. Anyhow, this is me. Hello.