CheshireCrab

I've always admired heroes, but felt the traits that make one is rather ambiguous. So I ask you, what do you feel makes a hero? What traits must a hero possess and actions they should perform to become one? 

45 minutes ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

Classical Gas? That’s funny, I didn’t know anyone else remembered that song


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Gotta give credit to The Simpsons for that. Fell in love the second Lenny requested it.

On 12/4/2017 at 6:40 PM, Xena said:

So glad you're liking the Daily Dare :-)

 

Love your spreadsheets! You're killing it!

Thanks for putting on such a fun challenge! Feels like a constant neck-to-neck race on who becomes this month's daredevil

3 hours ago, jonfirestar said:

 

I don't consider them, or many exercises for hat matter, to be worthless. I just don't like the way the promote a really hard landing with the jump. I'd prefer, for example, a box jump. Not that they aren't without their risks, of course. Now my perspective may well be due to the fact that my bodyweight is not insubstantial so I'm a little cautious about getting too much impact from plyometric exercises.

To be fair, the knee jumps aren't encouraging you to do a hard land, just to jump a few feet in the air than come back down to the ground. It doesn't really cause stress on the knees. I feel that such a drop would only be problematic if you are jumping down from a height a few feet higher than waist level and landing on hard ground.

Week 1 Summary

This week has been going pretty dang swell! To really start off this list I wanted to go over my physical portion of the challenge.

Strength and Cardio - This week has been busy, I've been polishing off my capstone project for my final presentation next Monday(Have gotten a lot of compliments from testers so far!), but still managed to fill in some time for working out. Last Thursday, however, I went to the gym to work on my normal routine of legs, shoulders, and grip. After getting done with my barbell squat warm-ups I found myself feeling incredibly weak. I was feeling fatigue all week, but thought it wouldn't be a problem working out.

However, after doing 75% of my max intensity, I found myself struggling to get the full reps in. I talked to my body building friend who started asking me more about my routine and everything. He told me that it sounds like I should be taking a week off of weight lifting and calisthenics to recover (Bummer!). He said lighter workouts would still be good, but I really should not focus on doing more than 50% intensity.

Luckily, the PVP Queen @Xena had a Daily Dare Challenge going on. These were manageable so I started alternating these and walks/hikes for my usual strength and cardio days. Want to be in tip top shape for Thursday when I plan to do a heavy weight lifting day.

School and Work - With 2-3 hours cleared from my day from not exercising, I had more time to work on school work... So I invested a lot of this weekend on school work. I polished off my 2 Term Papers, 6,000 word essay, and did about 10+ hours of coding revisions on my app for my capstone project most of last week. I just have to give my application's final presentation and I'll be set on finishing up my homework for the rest of the semester.

Everything Else - I took that work flow and brought it into Guitar and Piano. I felt really focused and started hitting the notes really well in Piano, and managed to finish off my Guitar Basics book. I am moving on to now learning how to play more advanced songs(Like Classical Gas) to improve my speed.

Little late to the game, but I'll join in!

Squats Hops done with EC

Thank you @Rhovaniel! Rooting for you to do the same!

Well this is it. Since joining this awesome community back in January I have finally reached my final challenge of the year, and my final challenge before going on a medical hiatus. Since I will need to be taking a break next month I am going to give it my all to complete the remainder of my year-end goals in the next 4-weeks.

So without further ado...

Quest Challenges

• Wim Hof Meditation(10 Minutes a day for 30 days)
• Attend a Yoga Class
• Attend an Akido Class
• No drinkable calories
• Quest Master*

Quests

Non-Quest Challenges

• Keep up weekly habits(Spread sheet for tracking)
• Finish up Coursera Photography Course
• Finish Fall Semester

Post School(Dec 9th)

• Study for Google's Android Certification Exam(5 hours a week)
• Work on FreeCodeCamp's Back-End Certification(5 hours a week)
• Work on launching blog (5 hours a week)
• Contribute to Habitica's Open Source Project(5 Hours a week)
• Learn the JS React Framework(5 hours a week)

_______

There is going to be a heck of a lot more on my plate for this challenge, but that just means that much more of a challenge! Once school is finished up I am going to utilize that free time to work on project building and prepping up my programming skills.

*Quest Master - This is a special item on my list. Once the semester ends I am no longer going to be able to access the University's gym. Since I'll be breaking from weight lifting for a while I am going to start targeting as many Warrior Quests from Nerd Fitness Academy's list, as many Quests from Fitocracy, and as many Achievements from Fitocracy as I can in one day to knock as many of them off as possible.

23 hours ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

Sure, a meetup would be cool. I was thinking about getting some nerd together at Up-Down to play video games and have a beer if you're interested in that.

Did you get your bike fixed? Are you riding through the winter? How'd your challenge end up?

A meet-up sounds sweet!

Bike is still broken, would love to ride in the winter otherwise! My fiancee and I have been making it a weekly thing to go hiking and found some awesome mountain biking trails around the Twin Cities that would be awesome to take a ride on.

Looks like it's time to wrap up another 4 week challenge!

 Week 4 Round-Up

This last week was a bit hectic. On Sunday my car overheated and died on the way home. My fiancee and I had to get it towed home then eventually taken to a mechanic. It ended up being without my car for most of the week. I was able to get it back at the end of the week, but without a car I was not able to make it to my Akido or Yoga class for this challenge. Going to be pushing it to next week.

In addition to my car being repaired I also spent a lot of  my leisure banging out a large chunk of my code so I can push my Captsone Application to the Google Play Store and get it set for Alpha testing. Won't be too long now until it's all done and ready for my final presentation. Although, during the weekend I got got so caught up in programming I ran out of time to put in some Guitar practice.

Final Thoughts:

Was pretty bummed out I wasn't able to complete enough habits due to the rough patch I had in my last week of this challenge, but I did expect to hit some sort of snag this month due to it getting close to the end of the semester. Fortunately, I only have a few more weeks until the semester is over, so here's hoping for a successful 4-weeks next challenge!
 

Nerd Fitness Academy Stats:

Fitocracy Stats

Body Shots

Measurements

Moving Forward:

Next 4 -week challenge will be my last challenge before I need to take a brief hiatus from everything. With 4 weeks left I want to wrap up some stuff left on my list for the year, specifically some Academy Quests. Will be shooting for hitting a rather large list of things next challenge!

Anything that pumps me up. Very much into EDM, but I also really dig Rock music which lyrics are about getting stronger, conquering, or exploring new lands.

On 11/17/2017 at 8:17 PM, Cataleya said:

 

Everything is finally set and I'm gonna be doctor Cat, assassin extraordinaire.

 

Congrats, Doctor Cat!

On 11/12/2017 at 8:24 PM, Sloth the Enduring said:

Duck tape really held the air in?!?

Do you live near South Minneapolis? I can come over and show you how to fix a flat.


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Hey Sloth!

I do not live in South Minneapolis, but I would be up for making the drive to meet-up.

You can re-size it with a photo editing software(i.e. Photoshop, GIMP, MS Paint).

You guys ever hear about the November Project? I was reading about it's history going from two college students wanting to work out in the cold and expanding to this global movement. I was interested in showing up to one of their meet-ups in my area. Has anyone gone to a November Project workout? What were your thoughts on it?

8 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Well, I only need 3 for those per week, so I am passing. But I really should try to do one a day. They add a little variety to life.

 

Thanks! I just followed you on Fitocracy, and wow, you have a lot of points! I'm still trying to figure out how the quests, achievements, and even the workout selection works, so if you have any tips, please send them my way.

 

Sure, hit me up any time you have questions! Your Quests and Achievements can be found by going to your profile and looking towards the left-pane where your About, Feed, and Activities are located. The Quests require you to do specific activities described under the Quest list. Completing a Quest will give you Bonus XP for leveling up. The Quests have a link for each activity to show what exercise qualifies towards that Quest(e.g. Heroic Half Marathon can be achieved by logging either Running, Treadmill Running, or Trail Running).

The Achievements are basically milestones and do not grant XP. They are only unlocked by reaching certain exercise goals(i.e. Running X amount of miles, Bench Press X-amount of your body weight, Doing X-Amount of pull-ups). There are certain Quests and Achievements that differ by gender. It's mostly the ones that involve weight lifting.

They also have groups available if you go to the top-menu and click on "Connect". The WTF - Welcome to Fitocracy, Ask A Fitocracy Coach, and Fitocracy Knowledge base are great groups to help with questions about general exercising and about the Fito App itself.

Week 2 Summary

Skillin' Like a Warrior

Strength and Cardio -  The Powerlifting workout I did last Saturday ended up being such a tremendous benefit! This week was a weightlifting week and I managed to see some drastic improvements in my Bench Press, Squat, and Deadlifts. It feels like that goal of hitting a 305lb Deadlift before the end of this year is looking more realistic.

For cardio I started alternating running with cycling and rowing. With the seasons getting colder it's been hard getting my headphones to stay in my ears, and running without music has not really been that fun...
 

Skillin' Like a Wizard

FreeCodeCamp -  I didn't get any progress done for this challenge. I had a Quiz in my Thursday's class and have my 3rd Capstone presentation happening this upcoming Monday. I wanted to get the back-end portion of my project done for my presentation and opted to work on that this weekend instead of my final FreeCodeCamp Project. I am hoping to work on the last of my FreeCodeCamp project this Saturday so I can submit it and get that sweet certificate all in one go!

Photography - I ended up getting ahead in this class and finished weeks 2 and 3 all in one week. I have one more week left until I move onto the next course. For week 2's assignment we were suppose to do a photography experiment. We start out by taking an image as we normally would then play around with different camera angles and surrounding environment to take a series of images. We then give a brief description about what drew us to taking out our camera and snapping the first image then what led us to taking what we considered the best image in the series.

First Image

I took this first image after my fiancee commented how the snow on the trees made it look like it was something out of a comic book. After playing around with the landscape around us I noticed the pathway ahead had trees to the left without any leaves and trees to the right with its leaves still on. The two opposing sides ended up giving a very contrasting look and prompted me to take a picture of that.

Best Image in Series

Reading - So far I am halfway through a book I picked up called What Doesn't Kill Us by Scott Carney. This is a book that dives into meditation guru, Wim Hof, and his renowned method used to achieve seemingly superhuman feats: Scaling mountains with nothing but shorts, meditating under the waterfalls in the dead of winter, and running a desert marathon with no water. He also has been able to teach various other people how to perform these same stunts as well as to use his method to prevent themselves from getting ill after being directly injected with a viral disease.

This book has been very interesting and goes into a lot of scientific analysis on Wim Hof's Method. What I found most fascinating from his book was his study on Brown Fat. Scott mentions that humans have two kinds of fat: White Fat, the fat that stores caloric energy and is most commonly linked to obesity, and Brown Fat, a much leaner fat that uses white fat to help insulate the body. He talks about how humans have this brown fat when they are younger but lose it as they get older and adapt to an "Eternal Summer", described as living in houses with cranked up heaters and minimizing going outside in the winter as much as possible.

Scott mentions that this Brown Fat was much more commonly found in our ancestors. The people who have practiced Wim Hof Method has found themselves losing several pounds of pure fat and having a larger than normal brown fat. As a result they are able to stay lean while enduring extreme weather conditions. Scott mentions that one of the ways to build this brown fat is to endure the cold while doing some form of physical exertion.

This has inspired me to start training my body by going outside as much as possible during my workouts. Likely going to implement it in my next 4-week challenge!
 

Skillin' Like a Monk

Yoga and Stretching - So far so good! Planning on doing both my Yoga and Akido classes on week 3
 

Skillin' Like a Bard

Guitar -  I started to hit my stride again and started to enjoy playing guitar once more. It was a bit tedious last week but I got over that hump and am finding myself improving a little faster than usual.

I also ordered a new power cable for my keyboard so I can start practicing piano again. Although it's likely not coming in until next week.
_____

Week 2 has been pretty solid so far. If everything goes according to plan I should be seeing a few rewards unlocked by the end of week 3!

21 hours ago, PinkNinja said:

 

If I have to guess... You're a bear optometrist!

On 11/2/2017 at 1:29 AM, juliebarkley said:

That's pretty awesome - and you have so many goals racing towards those choice cubes!

 

Are the yoga and aikido classes individual drop-in sessions?

Thanks! I am getting pretty excited to see what my reward at the end of this challenge will be!

The Yoga classes I looked for around my area seems to have a 1-week free trial to their classes. I am thinking of taking advantage of that offer to fit in two classes on both of my yoga days. The Akido one I need to look into. Hoping there's a free drop-in!

16 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Week 2, Day 6:

 

Physical: Strength for the journey ahead. Gargoyles are heavy!

1. Move every day. 5/7. Tried out the Fitocracy app that @CheshireCrab mentioned. It's kind of neat, but I will have to be careful to avoid exercises with weights, since I don't own any.

Glad to hear you're liking it! If you're down, send me a link to your Fito profile. Would love to see your progress!

Also, keep up the great work! You have been producing awesome numbers, that gargoyle is cheering you on!

Programmer

2 hours ago, Mallorey said:

Oooh I like your version a lot more.

 

The other idea I had was to specifically design a fakemon to represent each stat. I had invented Spartoi->Achillio->Herculon for Strength and a Monkey doing tricks for Dexterity haha

But I much prefer your system although perhaps it fits raising a single pokemon better? and you need to raise exp in multiple stats for it to lvl up?

What about leveling up each challenge and linking stats based on @Anim07734's suggestion? Like similar to the deprecated leveling up system NF used for challenges.

Just need a way to get Pokeballs so I can start trying to capture other Rebels, haha!

Hey Vendetta,

First off, congrats on staying strong and taking up the proactive mindset again to better yourself!

Myself and the rest of the rebellion here would love to offer you any help you need. Was there any specific things you wanted tips on?