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Ooh, this is so cool. I've been looking at her stuff for a long time, and... am never going to buy it because I'm just not the demographic for buying anything on the internet, let alone internet-only training, but it's good to know it's good stuff! And I've never heard neck tension talked about much as a factor in handstand training, but that makes total sense. Maybe I'll think about my neck a little bit when I'm handstanding.

Woah, I've never even heard of the idea of a private police force floated. Is that actually something under discussion in the US? (I mean, I'm sure it is in the sense that there are always going to be "privatize this public service! (and hire my company to do it!)" people, but like... as a part of the "abolish the police" discussion?) (I guess it goes without saying that my response to attempts to privatize public services is always going to be a massive no thank you, and I've never seen or heard of an instance where it has led to increased accountability or better services.)

I have been terrible at updating, because a) I have not been not doing all my challenge goals every day and b) apparently the less time I spend talking to people the less capable/desiring of talking to people I feel, including substantial conversations on the internet. So. But, some good news! 1. I found two different parks on my walks with two different heights of bar-- a high one, and a chest-height one. And it took me a few days of trying, but yesterday I finally managed to eke out some kips on the high bar! Gonna go see if I can do it again today, and if the feat is repeatable as a glide kip on the lower bar, or if it's something about the swinging lead-up that lets me kip on a metal bar. 2. THE GYMNASTICS CLUB IS REOPENING ON THE 6TH! I have no idea what that might mean for me personally, but hopefully I can at least convince a coach to take pity on me and let me come in while they're in with a group and the gym isn't too busy, if there's no adult gym. 2.5 Also, theoretically the Goodlife in my province also re-opened this week, and I happen to be at the tail end of a year-long union membership I bought more than a year ago but is still valif because they froze the memberships when they shut down. Buuuut you have to sign up for a workout time online, and I'm locked out of my online account and waiting for customer service to get back to me.

I mean, to be fair, the Canadian response has been so much better than the US "response" that it feels dumb to complain about anything in the presence of Americans. And my province is sparsely populated, shut down quickly and is reopening slowly-- the entire province currently has ~100 active cases, six people in hospital, and one in intensive care. re. food scarcity mindset-- honestly, what happened for me was just that I hit rock bottom psychologically with calorie counting. I ended up in a place where I was willing to try anything (including this crazy "eat when hungry" concept) because I had reached a point where I would rather get fat than continue living the way I had been. But I specifically realized that when I suddenly burst into tears walking down the street listening to a podcast interview with nutritionist Georgie Fear, where she was talking about pretty much what she writes in this article: the very act of monitoring calories will make you more likely to feel dissatisfied and overeat. I also liked this article. But yeah, ultimately... I did gain a bit of weight, at first (and eventually lost it without noticing or really trying) but I just ended up deciding that would be worth it, if that was the way it had to be.

Hm, this is a very interesting question! I think what I mean at least when I think "defund the police" is more along the lines of this article, by a co-founder of BLM Toronto. It raises the question very naturally of "should there be people in society whose job is to be able to exert violent force over others," and I think the answer is actually... yes? There do need to be people willing and able to do that-- if a vulnerable person is being threatened with violence, they need a response from authorities that is capable of responding with violence: Someone being murdered on the street actually is the kind of incident that probably requires the intervention of a "specific tactical rapid response." So it doesn't strike me as odd that citizens want murderers who also happen to be police officers to be arrested and tried as the violent criminals they are. It's just that, the vast majority of the incidents police are called to respond to don't require a violent response, and sending people who are set apart from society mainly by the definition that they are allowed to exert violent force on others is a completely nonsensical reaction. (I assume this happens in the US too, but right now a major topic of conversation in Canada is people, most often black and indigenous people but not exclusively, dying or being severely injured during "wellness checks." Why would you need to bring a gun to check on someone's wellness? You don't, of course. Checking on wellness is not a job for a response for specifically trained in the use of violence.) So maybe it's just that I don't mean quite the same thing as the poster of this tweet by "defund the police," but...I'm okay with that? I was reading a lot about the Freedom House Ambulance as an example of what defunding the police means in actual practice-- i.e., the creation of an entire other branch of emergency services, which we today see as being obviously essential, doing work that police are clearly not qualified to do-- and that seems like the way forward, at least based on the incidents and discussions I see in my specific context.

Not having time for "intentional movement" usually means you're moving around all day anyway! And building desks is exhausting, haha. At least in my experience. Maybe I have just chosen exhausting desks to build.

OMG THE PUPPET HAIR FLIP.

Ooh, all of those front lever progressions look super controlled! (I was half-convinced you had for foot on the ceiling for the split one )

aaaaa, that is a LARGE pal!

Oh man. This is such a good idea that I feel a little embarassed about it, because yeah, leaps and jumps are absolutely something I should be working on, and would be relatively easy to work on in isolation. I just. Never feel motivated to do it, because going to the park to do even shitty backflips looks cool, whereas going to the park to do mediocre split leaps looks... really stupid. Ahahahaha. Like. There are so many THINGS on the grass? What if I put my hand on a stick? Or a pile of dog poop? Or a patch of dampness and then slip and break my neck???? (More to the point, I had a few weeks of trying every day to do back tucks, and always landing on my hands and knees, and eventually it got old both psychologically and on my angle and toe joints.) Is today day one of the challenge? Or maybe that was yesterday? Anyway, I think I have some actual goals for this challenge, along with the news that I probably did not achieve all of them today. But I like the idea of having fairly low-effort stuff that I can do throughout the day, instead of needing to block off huge chunks of time. It feels like... what I can do right now. Daily stuff: -10x10 pushups/pike-ups -Go on some sort of walk -While on walk, do some pullups and leg lifts at the park if there aren't, y'know, children -2 1-min handstand holds, one with each leg -Stretch Anyway, I'm probably not going to get to all the sets of pushups/pike-ups, because I had an exam all afternoon. I applied as a part-time science student at the local university last semester, and was intending to do... some sort of science courses and see where it went. But then where it went was that I had to take a prerequisite, "you never did ANY of this shit in high school???" math course before I was allowed to take any first-year science courses, and then I accidentally really liked that math course, and essentially dared myself into taking calculus this summer semester on the grounds that it was the single thing on earth that would have seemed the least likely to my sixteen-year-old self. So! I was busy doing the final for that this afternoon. Which went okay, except it turns out I have absolute garbage test-taking skills, and kind of freaked out the entire time. Which was fine, because... it's a home exam, so really any resource is in bounds, and I could look up reminders on how to do all the things that I panic-forgot how to do. Still, not thrilled about that, and will have to get a handle on it if I end up taking more classes of that nature where the exams are, y'know, real. But I went into the exam with a 94 and I doubt it will drop too significantly from that, so, all is well.

Today... I think for the first time, I managed to do two 1-minute free handstand holds? Two because I can't do them with my legs together, only split, so I made sure to do one with each side split. Still! I have really fallen off the wagon of going to the park to do gymnastics, but... maybe that's okay? Maybe I will get more out of really focusing on strength and handstands at home than doing shitty backhandsprings on grass and hurting my joints.

Oh god, I need Friends With Airtracks. And... I feel you on the tamping down pessimism. Yeah.

Yeesh, that sounds really thought with the food supply situation.

I have never heard this before, but I have to admit it would never have occurred to me to put a can of beans in a fire. The more you know!

Ooh, wow! Are you using a course or method for the drawing? Where do you get the studies from?

👋 I LOVE your art! That snail is so cute? The bulging eyeballs? Aaaaaaa!

Ha, it's true! Though, I really need to get some more pulling going. Playgrounds are finally opening back up (they reopened pubs at half capacity before it was technically allowed to go to a playground 🙄) so I'm starting to do some more pullups, too.

Here! And yeah, and hour of duolingo sounds like a lot. Even to placate the guilt-tripping owl. (I should get back to it, though.)

Oh my gosh, handstand puppetry is such a freaking cool idea. (And sounds incredibly hard. I'm always shocked by how much minute movements from a position in HS throw me off-- but you've clearly got that under control!)

Assassins! Hi! It has been *checks own signature* two years since my last confession. I mean, challenge. Reading back the second-last challenge before dropping off the Nerd Fitness earth, in March 2018, I'm actually really proud of what I accomplished in that time and how much I can see I was on the right track when I posted that. At the time, I had finally hit the psychological breaking point at the end of a few years of calorie-counting, and was facing down the daunting task of figuring how to just... eat. I wrote at the time: So, moment of gratitude: I've basically done that! Over the past few years I've worked to dismantle the food scarcity mentality I installed in myself with calorie counting, and the extra weight came off. I'm pretty happy with my body and my ability to eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full. Sport-wise, the updates are: last year, a coach that I met at adult gymnastics night ended up inviting me to train with her advanced rec group. This was perfect, an absolute dream, because for a year I had access to ~10 hours of gymnastics a week, depending on my (very irregular) work schedule, and best of all it was during the normal gym times. Which meant that I met and became friendly with a lot of the competitive coaches at my gym, all of whom viewed a nearly-thirty-year-old who got serious about gymnastics as an adult as a fascinating and charming oddity. (Sometimes they would ask me to demonstrate skills to their little JOs, with either the implication or the actual admonishment, "See? If she can do it, you can do it!") I even got to compete in a little end-of year, just-for-feedback intraclub meet: Then, in the summer, I met up with a friend from my old gym across the country and drove down to Adult Gymnastics Camp in Portsmouth, NH. We go to Trader Joe's and each buy chocolatethat we're only allowed to eat if she flips a tsuk onto a mat, and I do a double tuck somewhere. So, 2019, just all around a bang-up year for gymnastics, A+, would ride this ride again. Unfortunately, it turned out the coach who had invited me to train with her group, um, was charging me the wrong price for the entire year. And the actual price was supposed to be a lot higher. So I just couldn't justify financially being in the same group for this year, as much as I wanted to. Okay, no problem, thinks me, I will shell out to get my comp 1 coaching course, and then I'll be able to sub as a coach at my gym. Great plan! Coaches get to go to adult gym night for free, and I made an arrangement with one of the comp coaches that I could also come in and train on my own on a night when he's alone in the gym with a cheer tumbling group. So I start coaching when other people ask me to fill in for them, and I have two nights of gymnastics a week for $0. ...which lasted for about two weeks before the lockdown started. So now I'm... pretty much where everyone else is, I suppose? I'm lucky to live in a province with very low COVID numbers, and a very slow re-opening. And objectively I know it's a good thing that the gym isn't open yet-- neither the gymnastics club nor the university fitness centre-- but man, I miss everything. So! I don't really know what my goals are going to be for this challenge yet, but I'll figure it out in the coming week. I want to make a habit of stretching: flexibility is the one thing I could really get better at right now, dammit! And I need to build habits of getting to bed earlier. My exercise lately has been walking a lot, attending the occasional protest, and-- strangely-- doing pushups. Re. the pushups, it seems the extended enforced break from gymnastics let my left shoulder actually heal from whatever was making it hurt all the time, and now I can do pushups with no pain, so some switch in my brain flipped (very possibly thanks to reading Gideon the Ninth) to "I WANT HUGE GUNS" position, and now I'm doing 10 sets of 10 pushups a day, which I feel pretty good about 😁 Well, this was a damn novel about me, so I'll leave it there. Looking forward to challenging with the Assassins again!

hahahaha yeah we don't usually do stuff like the 200 bodyweight squats, but we do sometimes do kipping pull ups and "toes-to-bar," which is basically just a leg lift where you get more praise the more efficiently you cheat. We don't do that stuff super often though, usually it's a compund lift for a few sets of between 5 and 12 reps and then some accessories and gymnastics-type stuff. Thank youuuuu!

I've never been made to take my shoes off, lol! They usually solve the heels issue by laying a carpet between the door and the chair. OKAY SO I'M TERRIBLE AT UPDATING CHALLENGES SO I MADE BATTLE LOG:

SO, I am going to just accept that I am crap at updating Challenges, and leave this here to update when the fancy strikes me! Currently: Freaking out because TOMORROW I get to try out my new gymnastics class for next year! I had been planning on joining provincial/JO for next year, and had the head of the program reluctantly convinced to let me do so, but then I got some extra job responsibilities and am now unsure of how much free time I'll have next year. Just as I was pondering this, another coach at the gym actually approached me and asked what my goals were, and suggested that I join her group, which is a semi-competitive-type program. It will be less stressful and time-consuming, and the age thing isn't a problem at all (I'm 26, the oldest athlete in the group currently is 15, but since they don't compete provincially it doesn't matter.) And the coach is really excited to have me and keeps telling me so! Which is a nice contrast from the "well I guesssssss you can join but you realize everyone will think you're weird and maybe hate you" that I got from the provincial coaches. Also, since I posted last, been doing a lot of crossfit. Or... a crossfit-like substance not officially branded crossfit, and somewhat more intelligently programmed, but still. SHAME ON ME. It's so fun though.

Seconded, amazing progress and congrats on the milestone!

THIS IS MEEEEEE. Super inconsistent and the lickup is at least partly to blame. Do you do it starting standing, or with both feet and hands on the ground? I’ve been finding lately that the latter is easier, although I don’t know if it’s the good kind of easier or the cheating kind of easie.