Psykamaholik

So I know this challenge has well and truly finished, plus I kind of dropped off the map and got slack with updates. But for those that might still be interested I got my black belt on the weekend. I didn't get to the 100 pushups because my elbow injury came back to haunt me, but I made up for them with squats. But I graded and got the belt!

Week 2 Summary: Pushup workouts: 4/3 3 crossfit workouts that were pushup intensive then one martial arts session that began with 5 x 20 pushups, crunches, squats Calorie counting: 7/7 Seems to be the easiest one to keep going and doing it's job preventing me from eating the delicious looking treats at work 5km run: 1/1 PR Had to do this without music because the only clean shorts had no pockets for my MP3 player, but still took heaps of time off my PR Overachieved this week, still have much work to do with the pushups though as they are still nowhere near where I need them to be. I'm going to modify the pushup requirement of my challenge now Support Mission 1 UPDATE: Train pushups 3x per week stopping 1 short of failure with an end goal of 100. Twice daily pushups of a single set until rest is needed The idea of this is the "grease the groove" concept where doing a repeated activity daily gets the body used to it and can perform it more easily. But only at a very light intensity compared to the other workouts of repeated sets to challenge the muscles

Good to hear the lacrosse ball worked, tight back/neck can definitely cause issues in your hands. Another suggestion I have is to have a look at your posture, if you are spending lots of time at the computer hunched over the source of the problem back actually be the front of the shoulders. By hunching it will shorten the muscles in the front of your shoulder and cause your back to feel tight over a period of time. Maybe try stretching the front of your shoulders out too. Lie face down on the ground with one arm outstretched perpendicular to your body and roll towards it until you feel a stretch in your shoulder/pectorial area, repeat for the other side. Hope that helps

Kicking goals there mate! Keep up the good work!

Yesterday's run I smashed near 30 seconds off my time! BEHOLD! Also ended up with 4 days of workouts that had lots of pushups/burpees in them, overachieving this week! haha

Thats good you can recognise what isnt working properly and tweak accordingly. Just a speed bump!

Part week update: calorie tracking is still running at 100% run is scheduled for saturday between martial arts training and sleeping before night shift crossfit workouts on monday and wednesday both involved many burpees so I'm counting them as pushup work, monday I did 48 throughout the workout and wednesday was around 55 with many of them having questionable form, no idea what tomorrow's workout is but if it involves pushups and/or burpees that would make things a bit easier on time. So far on track to have a 100% week!

Week 1 Summary: Pushup workouts: 1/3 due to overdoing it on day one (true to my style of doing things), current total at 66 in one workout with a max run of 6 Calorie counting: 7/7 Kept it reasonable each day and as consistent as I could be with my shifts and zombie day 5km run: 1/1 PR Really impressed I beat my PR by 4 seconds as I was feeling so beat up and tired I was just focusing on not slowing to a walk pace Overall a good outcome, hopefully now that the overwork injury is gone things will improve on the pushup front. Also found a youtube video that has me concentrating on better form now by comparing it to bench press form.

How did you go with the mindful eating?

You butter believe it!

I could totally go for a weekend of camping right about now.... Good job having food planned, removing food decisions at the time of hunger makes everything run smoother

Well wait no more for running comparisons! Benchmark: Today's run: Not sure what's happening where the pace line divebombs off the bottom of the graph, I think it may just be a GPS glitch because it's happened in two different places and I definitely didn't stop at any point. I'm also a bit skeptical of my heart rate reading hitting 194BPM on today's run.... 180ish? sure! but I'm pretty sure 194 was my watch tripping out. I'm really pleased with today's result of knocking a few seconds off the total time because I'm feeling pretty beat up and tired today. My last run of 6 shifts added up to about 75 hours and up til yesterday I'd had about 3 days worth of sleep over 5 days. Lucky for me last week was an anomaly because I swapped some shifts around. I''ve still done two crossfit sessions and one martial arts session this week and feeling every bit of it! As for my other challenge missions, tracking is on track with logging everything this week so far and just to up things some more I've signed up for what is being called a 10 week nutrition challenge at crossfit but I've been told is more of 10 weeks of brainstorming how to improve nutrition for the long term, not something to do for 10 weeks then revert back because it's too hard. Pushups I still haven't done a second session yet, triceps are still a bit tender now (6 days and counting) so this was definitely an overuse pain, not just regular DOMS. I'll give some a try later today and I'm calling tomorrow a rest day (but still tracking food). There were pushups involved at my martial arts session the other night, but not enough that I'd call it a specific pushup workout, there was much legwork though (oh so much!). Otherwise back to the pushup grind monday as I feel I should be recovered by then.

Kept track of all my food intake yesterday but looks like the pushup session will have to be tomorrow as my triceps are still so sore I can't even do one right now. oops.... haha If they are still painful tomorrow I'll scale them to incline pushups so that I can still get the work done and by working them it should help with the soreness recovery. Last night shift in a couple of hours then nearly a week off! woo! The run is scheduled in for saturday morning as well as the final pushup session for the week sometime saturday too. I know we are all excited about tables and data and stuff so I'll do an end of week summary one of some sort as well as an end of challenge one.

Just a speed bump mate, is it possible the pain in your quad is because you are tight in the back of your leg somewhere and your quad is what's compensating for it?

When you find a way to relate to these kinds of tragedies personally is when you will take them to heart. Those kids being from somewhere you taught would be enough for you to start questioning things like "what if it had been ones I knew personally", "what if it were my friends/family" and making that connection in your mind can be enough to take it personally even though you didn't directly have anything to do with them. Empathy is a great quality to have and I read recently about two kinds of empathy: first being the sort of person who takes on problems as their own and the second as those who recognise where empathy is due but can keep a wall in place to stop them taking on that problem as their own. This doesn't mean other people don't care when they go about their daily gripes, that may be part of their coping mechanism. If we were all to take on every terrible event as our own personal problem it would be nothing short of overwhelming and debilitating. I also read somewhere a hard life truth that terrible things happen to good people in this world and that can't be stopped by you or I, and I have witnessed this many times in personal experience. Sometimes there are things we can do about it and that is where we can make a positive change in the world. As for some advice what to do right now I'd say don't bottle up the things that are bothering you, let them out by either talking to someone or writing it down to let the pressure out. Basically you sound as though you have taken this loss on personally and need to grieve over it, let that process happen but know you aren't alone. Feel free to PM me about it if you feel like you don't want to speak with people you do know about it, happy to help out. Hope my walls of text can be of help.