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The new year is traditionally about reflecting on the past year and looking forward to the next, and that's exactly what this first mini-challenge is going to be about. As lifters of heavy things, our training is arduous and our gains slow over time. It's not uncommon for it to take months to increase a lift by just a single increment, especially after you've been lifting for a while. On the other end of the spectrum, when first beginning, the lifts may increase quickly at first, but then you stall out, have to reset and decrease the weight, and take weeks to work back up to where you were before. Same deal with finding you have a form fault where the weight has to drop so you can drill it while you work back up. Strength training is a long bumpy road with lots of ups and downs, and takes much dedication, perseverance, reflection, and planning to be successful at.Over the next 4 weeks, I'd like everyone to discuss in this thread their experiences from the last year (or less if you're newer) when it comes to strength training, what they learned, and how you each plan to improve over this next coming year. Take this information, both that gained from self-reflection and from the trials of others, and come up with a goal for the year and a plan on how you're going to achieve it. What did you do wrong last year? What can you do to improve upon it? What habits can you work on developing that will help you?That brings us to the Letter of Intent. All of the above should culminate with you posting a Letter of Intent in this thread. It doesn't have to be for a competition like in the link (though I agree completely with all the points in that post and competing will be part of my own letter), but it should include some hard date to do SOMETHING related to strength training by (but can include other things as well), preferably in front of a bunch of people, even if it's just virtually here in one of our virtual lifting competitions. This is about accountability, and about building a long term strength training and overall fitness plan and goals, that you can then use to set up incremental training goals and plans (sounds like a way to plan your 4/5 week challenges better, huh?). Of course, you can always post the dates of your comp right here!

Bro's and Swolemaidens, You have fought wars, slayed epic monsters and rescued fair maidens or squires. But, now it's time to feast in the halls of Bralhalla. Now, there are a couple ways to feast! Challenge 1: MFP High Score That's right. You know you're going to eat it, we know you're going to eat it, Grandma knows you're going to seconds, might as well as add up all those calories of Boar and Mead. Track all those calories (best reasonable estimate) and post it here. Name total cals consumed 1st: 2nd: 3rd: 4th: Challenge 2: 1 drink for me, 1 water for me The Mead and Wine over flows yea cup, but you want to be up and hunting monsters at daylight. How do you do both? After you drink your 1 pint of mead, you have 8oz of water before you move onto your next glass of mead or wine. Tell us of your journey! Challenge 3: The true believer Now this one is not for the faint of heart. This challenge is for the true believer of nutrition. You have your macro's and you're only going to eat that. Grandma and Aunt Sally be damned. To do this, you must attend a holiday party and remain within 100 cals of your daily goal. (no, you can't add 3000 cals to your daily goal for one day!) You can make multiple attempts at all 3 challenges, show your work so we can celebrate your success (and judge what you ate!) This Challenge will expire with the new year...

Hey, all-- I'm planning to do NaNoWriMo this year and wondering if any other Rebels are going to as well. I'm pretty intimidated by it and am planning to make it part of my next challenge--thought maybe we could all form a little guild and encourage each other. For those who are not familiar: NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month, when a bunch of people all try to write a novel in one month. www.nanowrimo.org.

Bro's and SwoleMaidens, We Warriors have a little bit of a reputation of being a little isolated from the rest of Nerd fitness guilds. We know what we like to do, put our earbuds in, listen to loud music, make ugly faces and loud grunts as be bang our heavy ass weights around. Talking to others is verboten. But are you getting the most out of your workouts? Are there things the other guilds do that maybe help you recover? fix deficiencies? change the monotony of your workout? Maybe increase your conditioning? This Challenge period, I challenge you to try something new. I want you to look at all the other guild's mini-challenges are participate. Make new friends, learn new skills, maybe... just maybe you'll do some cardio. Adventures have Mario Cart Games Assassin's are playing Sonic the Hedgehog Or do "Conditioning" with the rangers Then come back here and tell us how much fun you had, or (unlikely,) how much you hated it. Now, go forth and show these other guilds how awesome Warriors are. You will keep all the loot you achieve in these quests plus 1 point for wisdom when you complete a challenge.

braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnsssssssss..................

Tuesday, January 6, 2015 I began the new routine today. They say it takes like 20 to 30 some days to break old habits and to make new ones - I don't care what the exact numbers are, just as long as I get it into my routine. So I'm going to try and log what it is I'm doing when I can remember. Seeing it everyday hopefully will make me realize just how bad off I am and how desperately I need to do this! Fasting Blood Sugar: 105 Water: 16 oz so far Exercise: Walked 15 minutes - alternating minor incline Food: I've only eaten when I've been hungry and I've made sure to cut what I do eat in half. Type of food hasn't been great, but I have felt real hunger today which is the first time in a long time. The quest continues....

Greetings, fellow warriors! I'm brand new here. Ooh shiny new, as in just joined today. I thought I'd give a brief intro to my warrior kin before I lay out my challenges. My geekery I'm a Tolkienphile. I love the movies, the books, the collecting - the whole bit. I even study Tolkien via online courses. I have many nerd passions, but this one runs the deepest. I also love playing MMOs, which I can happily combine with my Tolkien love in Lord of the Rings Online. My icon is my dwarf Rune-keeper, whom I capped just a couple of weeks ago. I'm into a lot of other geeky pursuits, including attending SDCC yearly, but I could be here all night listing them all. I'd rather getting this posted and jump right in! About my journey My goal is to get fit. Or rather, get fit again. Just 4 years ago I was lifting weights and even did a couple of triathlons for the challenge of it. I was pretty fit. Then I just let it all go. I can't even say why or how it seemed to happen quickly, but I've spent too much time remembering how fit I was and thinking of doing something about it "next week." I think connecting with other nerds who are similarly motivated is really going to be the motivation and encouragement I need. I'm so happy to be here! I have about 80 lbs to lose, and some serious reworking of my eating habits. I know I can do it - I've done it once already. I just need to get back on that track. My goal is to get back to my previous fitness and then improve on it. I want to return to Olympic lifting, my favorite, and better all of my previous PRs. I also want to lose enough weight that I feel comfortable returning to crossfit, another love. Right now, I Current challenge I'm going to take a few suggestions from the Level 1 challenge page for my first challenge. Diet Eat a vegetable with at least one meal per day Eat one fresh fruit every day Fitness Strength training 3x/week (I think I read that there are suggested workouts on NF - I need to find those) Level Up Your Life Meditating 5 minutes a day So there it is, and here I am! I look forward to getting to watching my progress and cheering everyone on in theirs!

Having Daily or weekly class challenges for EXP would be very motivation to game minded nerds like myself.

NOTHING IS TRUE, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED. I have always fought alone. But one man cannot defeat the templar order, so I have joined with my fellow assassins. Together, we will cleanse the corruption from the holy city of Rome. Together, we will forge the Brotherhood. If the title and opening lines didn't give it away, and since this will be my first Assassin Challenge (did my first with the Rangers), this challenge is going to be Assassins Creed themed. Based off of the pure Epicness that is Ezio Auditore. A little backstory, this will be my 2nd official challenge, and since I ended up unwillingly quitting my first one (went to teach at a summer camp without internet) I am going to dominate this one. So far my workout are primarily strength based, trying to loose fat while building up muscle slowly. Mainly weighted pullups, shoulder presses/ handstand pushups, deadlifts, & squats. I've also begun training for the NC Rugged Maniac which is May 16th so I've been trying to get my 5k time down and jog a little bit more. Anyway here are my goals: An Assassin must be able to move fluidly though his surrounding, & let no objects stand in his way: To do this he cannot be caring around any extra weight. Therefore my first goal is to drop 6lbs and/or 2% body fat. (+ 3 CON) An Assassin must be agile with excellent balance and strong stability. Be able to climb and hold his position for long periods of time. So my second goal is to practice handstand training at least 3 times per week, and I will know I've succeeded in this goal if I am able to hold a free standing handstand for at least 30sec at the end of the challenge. (+4 DEX, +1 END) An Assassin must be strong, determined that his way is the truth and motivated to carry out his plan. Thus my third goal is to maintain my strength training workouts 3x per week, while also maintaining an average weekly step total of 10,000 per day. [as measured by my Fitbit] (+3 STR, +2 STA) An Assassin's resources are sometimes his best allies. Money weights us all to the ground so to be truly free he must build up his resources and lessen his burdened of debt. Consequently my final life goal is to pay off extra $500 towards my student loans or $300 per month. (+ 3 WIS) I will begin posting my workouts and some other stuff later today. I am also participating and an awesome new RPG/ accountabuddys group: The Assault on Brightwater, which should be some extra motivation and help towards achieving my goals and I'll let you guys know how its going once we start! So who's ready to join the Brotherhood?

Okay, so like my title implies, it's been a lot of half-assed (or less) challenges lately. Also to note, I think this is the latest I've ever posted a challenge, wheird. Anyway, this challenge is going to be 100% commitment. If you want to see changes, you need to make changes! I'm really trying to put myself, and my health and fitness goals first. I live by myself and don't have kids, so right now it's quite realistic to do. I know that in my last challenge I talked about trying AIP (autoimmune paleo protocol) but I spend a weekend ago prepping for it, and I don't think I can do it (right now anyway), especially because there is no "real" reason I really need to. That being said, here's what I'm looking at this challenge: Goals 1) Whole30+ - For where I am right now, I think a whole30 is what I need. It's strict (which I need) but not over the top (aka AIP). I've completed one good whoel30, and my second one was a bust! I do like how good I feel when I do it, and losing weight that I feel like I never can. 2) Exercise 3x per week - I teach fitness classes and therefore have a hard time working out for myself, but also the exercise I get in by teaching isn't very intense (because ya know, I have to demonstrate with great form, and be able to talk the whole time). So I want to work out three times a week for myself doing quick, high intensity workouts, for me! 3) Journalling - I made this a hard hat challenge a while ago, and by the end I really liked it. Especially the crap that I'm working through right now, I think this is really what I need! (more on my crazy-ish situation later...I have to run off and teach soon!). 4) Prioritizing to work towards my career goals - this one is a bit more vauge and unmeasurable, but what I would really like to accomplish within this is completing my paperwork to get my P. Eng, finishing up my dad's estate crap (aka compile 3 or 4 years of taxes and take it to my accountant), and continue to purge crap I don't need in my house and paint the walls. Basically i'm going to be moving across the country this fall to pursue my actual career goals. It's scary as hell because I'm finally doing it, and not just thinking about it. Other stuff that I would like to do here, but not quite as high on the list is: look into entrepreneurial schools where I'm moving, talk to people here doing what I want to do in another city, and looking for jobs in fitness that I could apply on when I move (ie. scouting out gyms and other centres to teach at). ...more to come later, but I've got to go kick some butts now! Tracking: 1) Whole30: 7/7 7/7 7/7 7/7 4/7 2/7 = 34/42 (81% A-) 2) Workouts: 3/3 1/3 1/3 0/3 0/3 0/3 = 5/18 (28% F-) 3) Journaling: 7/7 4/7 5/7 5/7 5/7 5/7 = 31/42 (74%B )

Hello, all. I'm not brand-new to the Rebellion, but I'm recommitting today for the coming year. I am 31, and hoping to have my first child in the next few years (I'm not trying now, as I'm teaching abroad in Japan, but will probably start next year or a year and a half from now). For those of you who were into fitness before and during pregnancies, what kind of goals did you set for yourself? i want to be in the best place physically ( my doctor is already giving me the "older first-time mother" rigamorole) for the challenge of being a healthy mum throughout the whole process. If you were given a year to prepare for your first kid again, what goals would you set for yourself? BTW - I am a pescetarian living in Japan, with limited Japanese skills. I tried in America to eschew additives, but it's difficult to be very label-conscious with limited reading skills.

Not quite sure how to do this. I thought it started today, not yesterday. Oh well... Okay, going to start. My main quest is to get to a healthy weight and be fit enough for my future which will hopefully be in a job as a prep cook and for being a better cosplayer. To do this, I will stay on Weight Watchers and start by slowly losing ten pounds, although I plan to lose fifty or so. I will also keep up a regular exercise routine that will give me strength and energy to last for a long time. (CON, STR, STA) Thirdly, I will study hard in my classes and do my best in whatever task I need to perform. (WIS, DEX and CHA) My life side quest is to finish my project for Front-of-the-house class. I really hate those sorts of things and I'll give myself some wisdom and willpower for finishing it. Charisma as well, if I do well in the oral report. My fitness side quest is to get skilled in DDR enough to do five "feet" songs easily and comfortably. Yeah, I'm not that great at DDR yet, I can barely do four "feet" songs, but I'm getting there. (DEX and STA) I'm doing this challenge to be a better person inside and out.

Not sure if The Woot Room is the best/right/most suitable place to put this. But in a way it felt right, at least more so than just making a post in my current challenge thread. Anyway, here's a look back at my first year of challenges here on Nerd Fitness. On May 30th, 2013 I decided to start off with a challenge. It definitely got modified a little bit during the time, but that was the beginnings. I had been a reader of the Nerd Fitness blog for many years, and had previously had some false starts that were inspired by the writings of Steve Kamb. I was definitely aware of the Challenges for a long while, but hesitated going into the community, I used a variety of different excuses some of which were based in my own introverted nature. I had tried various public displays of attempts to get healthy in the past, and they had all failed. I had even attempted to create an event similar to the NF challenges on another online community I was a part of. But having to run the whole thing and focus on my own goals caused me to burn out quickly. I don't recall the mindset I was in but I came across yet another post about the challenges from Steve, and that very day my challenge thread was created. That step created the most self-aware year I've had in my entire life. For the first challenge, I went all in, dragged in my prewife , as well as one of my good friends (who was recently featured on the NF Blog). I wanted to try to get as many people involved as possible, but I still planned to keep to myself. However one of the early mini-challenges was to reach out to other people, become social, join or create an accountabillibuddy team... since the ones that appealed to me appeared to be full, I decided to take the leap and created Rogue Squadron, which true to it's namesake is still going strong even with major shifts in the membership (although there's still a holdover or two from the original group). The first challenge included a lot of figuring out how to handle it, I tested out trying to add a story to the challenge, and that ended up falling flat for me, than I looked into possibly creating a thematic trend that I'd try to keep up with for several challenges, but ended up adding nothing to the challenge for me. Looking at the ending of this first challenge it looks like things were going awesome. I aced all my challenges, I lost four pounds, many inches in some areas, my Body Fat % went down by 4%. It was brilliant, at least on the surface. In truth it wasn't nearly as great, I had been fluctuating up and down the whole challenge, not making amazing progress. I'm sure many things were inconsistent. Furthermore I wasn't honest, I cheated, I adjusted things to claim I fully performed the challenge when the truth was I hadn't. I didn't earn the scores I gave myself, didn't complete everything to the full level that I said I did. I failed to truly learn much from the first challenge. I jumped in pretty heavy, patted myself on my back at the progress I made, cheated myself out of valuable learning experiences and the truth about where I was at. Took the psychological boost of all those high scores and moved on. Between my first and second challenge the challenges had a bit of a change. The Level 1 group was introduced and the way the individual challenges were created were changed, thusly I had to look a bit harder at my gameplan heading in for it. Challenge 2 proved to be my learning experience. I started off trying to keep up with everything, but eventually I started to slide a little bit, at first I thought by altering my own statements of my challenge I could make things work, by cheating myself out of the goals I had initially set. Eventually I got to a point where I couldn't lie to myself anymore, I had to admit that things weren't at the level I was pretending they were. While I did excellent with some areas (Like Cold Showers!) I did poorly with the others. There was some slight improvements during this challenge, but the most important aspect is I started learning about the truths about what I was capable of, but I was allowing myself to be impacted negatively by it, viewing it all as bad things instead of welcoming the failures as merely tools to learn by. I was debating if this should be my final challenge or not, but thankfully the debate was relatively short lived and seeing the support of the folks in the community helped me to come back for more. The start of Challenge 3 had me in an odd spot, I had backpedaled a bit in the measurements department from where I ended the previous challenge. But I was still here, I was trying to refocus, find that place where I could go. I returned to a few goals from the second challenge, toning some down, and trying to move forward. My friend and my prewife dropped out of the challenges and I no longer had their support on the forums, and the overall support I saw was lower than usual, perhaps I wasn't going out and being as supportive as I had been previously, but whatever the cause I was missing a bit. I ended up going up and down each week was a struggle to do some of the challenges, and some of them I just rushed in towards the end, but I managed to do decent enough scores, and for the most part earned them. I know that about halfway through the challenge I was about ready to give it up, but one of the mini-challenges for the Adventurers was to shift your weekly update around and look at it in a positive way only. Having done that it had altered my entire opinion on the previous week and helped bolster me through to the end of the challenge. Challenge 4 is when I finally started to step away from the thematic elements a bit and decided to focus on the challenges themselves more when setting it up. My between challenge period had hurt me yet again, it's a period that I'm still struggling with even now. But I came in with a positive outlook for the challenge. It was built upon the previous challenge and tried to continue forward. I actually had a wealth of support during the challenge...at least while I was still posting, but I found myself moving in the opposite direction. I became overwhelmed with everything I was doing. The challenge proved a mixxed bag and I had decent parts and parts I outright failed. I didn't want to come back...I felt I had started to fail myself, I had been sick, and I hadn't been posting. I was all set to skip the next challenge. I ended up perusing the forums for the new challenge and people were asking after me in the Rogue Squadron forums created by others inspired me to jump in and create Challenge 5. During this challenge I ended up stopping my measurements and tracking for a while, and continued on with the various things I was hoping for. I had decided to really focus this time, and didn't do a side quest. It wasn't the best results, but it ended up being a decent following. My diet was still proving difficult, and my exercise was proving problematic I still ended up with decent results. In the end I wasn't super happy with the results, but they were enough and I started to realize that the learning experience was the important part, building upon what had come before. With Challenge 6 I finally nailed down a specific main goal, brought back a side quest to focus on a major part of problems that were causing me depression (financial woes...whee!) I brought back my measurements and realized I had jumped back up nearby the starting weight...but saw much lower measurements, my assumption was that it was just errant scale numbers, especially when the end of the first week had measurements that were fairly close, but 5 lbs lighter. I'd end up staying at roughly the same numbers through the challenge, at least when I recorded. I tried doing daily updates for a while, but ended up dropping off, it's something that just doesn't fully work for me throughout the whole challenge. At the end I was still struggling with my diet and exercise, and I was trying to figure out ways to continue from there... This of course brings us to Challenge 7, the final challenge of the yearlong period. I had been taking the lessons learned from previous challenges and building upon them. I finally aced my diet, I just barely managed to ace my exercise...I aced almost everything, there was one B in there (for a secondary diet goal) that did throw me into a bit of a down bit, the end of the challenge planted me on a bit of a plateau, but overall it turned out to be the best challenge I had here. I was honest to myself, I did well and it was built upon the work from the previous six challenges, and it felt awesome. Of course I'm sticking around for now. my thread for Challenge 8 is already up, and it's completely built upon past challenges. I'm bringing back the cold shower from Challenge 2, finally moving forward with the main diet challenge, going back to the exercise routines from my earliest challenges and bringing back the no-snacks from Challenge 6. Overall I'm hoping that it'll be an even better challenge than #7! Now I spent a lot of time going up and down, but let's take a look at my numbers. START: (Challenge 1 Start) Height: 68" Weight: 226 lbs Waist: 47.25" Hips: 42.5" Chest: 45" Neck: 17" Thigh(Left): 22.5" Thigh(Right): 22.5" Bicep(Left): 14" Bicept(Right): 14" Body Fat %: 36% It's also worth noting that at the time I was wearing size 44 waist pants, but they were the ones with the elastic band, so who knows what size they went out to, and they were generally tightish. End of Year: (Challenge 7 End) Height: 68" Weight: 213 lbs Waist: 39" Hips: 40" Chest: 40" Neck: 15" Thigh(Left): 22" Thigh(Right): 22" Bicep(Left): 13" Bicep(Right): 13.24" Body Fat %: 27% I currently have one pair of pants that fit, because I went out and purchased a single pair because I was getting tired of the ones I had slipping, and they're a size 38 waist. Also since I'm focusing on weight loss, but also gaining some muscle strength I'm not to worried about the measurements for my thighs and biceps. Not all of the measurements are at their lowest, but there's definite progress over the year, and that's awesome. I'll probably take some pictures for my initial measurements for the new challenge, and if everyone is interested I can post up the starting ones from the first challenge and the new ones up here as well. So that's my first year here, a year of mostly plateauing, learning, and slow progress...but it helped me get focused, figure out some paths, and start getting into a better mindset, and for all that...it's definitely a win. UPDATE: Here's the promised pictures for y'all. Old on left, new on Right

Silly Dolph Lundgren title is inspired by my friend who is joking about me becoming Dolph Lundgren with my new lifestyle. I don't really want to look like him, but let's call it like that To avoid spamming challenge thread and keep all exercises in 1 log, I will log all here. 2.1.14 Warmup 10min Pushups 3x20 Hanging leg raise 3x5 Pistols 3x3 Pullup hold 1x15sec Chinup hold 1x25sec + 1x20sec Plank rotation (front, side and bridge in each set) 3x30sec each / bridge only 15-20sec possible Stability ball back extension 3x20 Stretch 10min 3.1.14 Warmup 10min Burpees with pushup and jump as many as possible in 10min = 93 Stretch 5min 5.1.14 Running + HIIT sprinting (10 x 80-100m with rest 1.5-3min fast walk / slow jog, sprinting "all out" effort) + 3x5 hanging leg raises on the goal post before fast walking / slow jogging home from the track. 6.1.14 Fitness test before the challenge 1. military pushups - 20 2. pushups with feet on stability ball - 123. diamond pushups - 154. plank hold - 90 sec5. hanging L sit hold - 30 sec6. chinup hold - 29 sec7. chinups - 0 (almost there, can do 2-3 half ones without hanging all the way to bottom position)8. pullups - 09. frog hold - 32 sec 7.1.14 Second part of the fitness test:10. pistol squats - 8 right leg, 5 left leg (imbalance that must be taken care of)11. deep squats (ass to the ground / as low as possible + stopping before full leg lockout position) - 41 8.1.14 warmup handstand practice L-sit on 2 chairs (legs still not in horizontal level) L-sit with support on floor (unable to lift feet from the floor) 3x8 slow and controlled diamond pushup 3x5 horizontal row with feet on stability ball (try that, interesting experience... also pushups with feet on the ball) 3x5 dips on 2 chairs (not very comfortable and with poor technique... gotta get them rings) 3x3 half-chinups and negative chinups after first ones become impossible (total 4/5) 3x frog position 15-20sec stretching (legs ignored after yesterday test to failure) 9.1.14 Burpee madness with video of my suffering for your enjoyment Today tried tabata protocol but nothing good came out of it. Just 82 in 9 minutes and then after last rep my legs have refused further cooperation. For the next 15-20 minutes I could barely stand up. With burpees I always warmup before and do a bit of streching later. This is the first time I made video of my burpees. Now seeing it, my technique obviously needs improvement and I should also go deeper in the pushup phase (preferrably touch the ground with my chest). Must think about breathing too. I will start recording all of my exercises so that faults can be corrected in the future.

So, I know what I want to aim for, and I know my overall rules for it ... I just can't figure out how to quantify a way to track it. I want to eat cleaner. I feel better when I eat cleaner. I think I actually have a pretty loose definition of clean all told too, but still I can't seem to figure out how to track my progress or lack thereof, when it comes to my challenges. Starpuck's Eat Clean Rules - AKA "Not quite Paleo enough." 1. Whenever you can, mimic paleo as best as you can. 2. Lean meats, fish, nuts, fruits and veggies are awesome. Eat 'em up! (But mind the nut portions.) 3. Whole grains like quinoa and brown rice are okay. But red potatoes, couscous and 'whole wheat' breads should be occasionals, not staples. 4. Dairy is okay! Since I'm a skim girl anyway. And we're going to be okay with yogurst. OMG NOOSA I LOVE YOU. 5. Boxed stuff is NOT ok. Lean Cuisines, Smart Ones. YOU FAKERS! 6. That said, exception to the rule. Winter sucks, so if you need a last minute hot meal that's not fast food, Kashi Frozens will be tolerated. They at least "try". 7. Treats. I refuse to live a life without milkshakes. But I need to be sensible with this. This goes for other special occasions to. They're not off limits. They're just in a mine field that has to be carefully navigated. So that's pretty much how I go about my thinking of where I want my food rules laid out, and my challenges are typically 'Eat clean at an 80/20 ratio'. But how do I keep track of what 80/20 is? Hoping that folks who have worked to clean up their diets can share with me how they've quantified their goals for their challenges. Thanks Rebels.

Book One I have lived in hopelessness for so long now. I often thought that there was no way I was getting into shape. It's impossible, right? Well, I refuse to accept such a concept! I've already completed my first six-week challenge, and I'm getting ready for my second challenge starting this Monnday! I really can't wait to get started, so I already have...kinda. As an aspiring assassin, one of my goals is to become light on my feet, stealthy like a ninja! So when I went down the block to the mailboxes to check the mail, I walked as quickly and quietly as I could, sticking to the shadows. Boy, that was fun. So stealth training, yoga, wall climbing and dieting will be the way of my next challenge, and I'll try to keep up with the daily entries. ENTRY NUMBER ONE! That's right, we're starting right now! Here we go! Skipped breakfast (a habit I am sorely tyring to break.)Went for a light jog.The wife and I went to my friend's baby shower. We talked Doctor Who and Marvel movies with the new dad.Had fast food in the first time in weeks for lunch.Checked the mail...like a ninja!Went on a double date with some friends. Loaded up at the salad bar.All-in-all, today wasn't the most ideal day in the way of dieting. But I did get some excercise, and that is good.

Quick post to let everyone know that i'm sitting out this challenge, but not sitting back during this time. I was sick with a respiratory virus for the first week of the challenge so didn't get my goals planned. However, I had a lot of time to think while I was recovering, so here's what I'm doing with this time: Taking a writing course to get my book started and well underway. Moving my exercise equipment (treadmill, kettlebells, etc.) to a room above the garage. It will make a perfect home gym and will give me more room to do bodyweight exercises comfortably. Looking back at what I've learned and what has worked so far (and what hasn't) so I can have a set of goals ready for the next challenge that will be pretty finely tuned. Trying to finish reading "Becoming a Supple Leopard" by Kelly Starrett. Mobility and flexibility and balance are issues for me that I haven't yet found good ways to approach. I'm still very much experimenting, and hope to have a program worked out for the next challenge. Rearranging my living space so I can work sitting crosslegged on my meditation cushion. I had a serious back problem during the last challenge, and I think they way I sit to work at the computer was a large part of the cause. I don't want to do that again, but it's going to take some major furniture moving. I'm fixing some other living space problems at the same time that have been bugging me for awhile, too.I'm finally able to work at the computer again now without major coughing spells, so will be popping in to see how friends are doing from time to time. Wanted to let everyone know I haven't dropped out, though. Hope the Rebellion continues as strong as ever for all of you!

After a year of stops and starts, I'm really starting to get discouraged. I am a career music producer and performer. So I tour 120-200 days a year. When I'm off tour, I'll slowly grind to a start getting back into fitness routine. Usually by the time I have to leave again, I'm doing terrific - yoga four times a week, doing isometrics weight circuits three times, running a couple of times, or just being active. Then, I go into my craziness of travelling and all hell breaks loose. Although that expression is too active. More like - all hell slowly grinds to a sluggish stop. All the stuff about hotel room workouts and normal "keep fit when you're traveling" doesn't really apply to me. I don't get to sleep a decent night, get up and go to bed at normal office hours... or even always have a hotel to work out in. Most of the time, I am performing and up till 3-4 am. Then I will wake up, exhausted, five or six hours later and I have to start driving again, or get on a plane. Usually I'll get to the next show just in time to do soundcheck, go for dinner and repeat. I'll maybe get less than an hour in the hotel, in which I am already half asleep while I have my only opportunity to shower and get ready. At the end of February I was fit and energized, I trained every day to go on a 37,000 mile crazy spate of touring which took me through Chile, Argentina, all across the US, Hawaii and Canada. I did manage to fit a set of resistance bands in the suitcase, but any time I was stopped and in a place where I might be able to drop and do a few push ups, I was tired to the point of throwing up. Came back for the summer, and haven't even been able to get back into my usual routine as my partner suddenly started having seizures the day after I had my "break" and I've been in and out of the hospital with him. Now, I've just booked another three months away. Mostly by car, some plane rides, and a few weeks where I'll be on a tour bus pretty much every moment I'm not travelling. I have one more week before I leave and keep thinking I'm going to get up and do my weights and think "what's the point? I'll just be back to square one in November". I don't even want to go into the stress of trying to eat Paleo around all this, hah. I guess I don't know if there's really a magic answer or advice, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experience maintaining a successful fitness routine in the face of a lifestyle like this. Maybe a "two square feet inside a moving bus" workout routine? Hah. Feeling incredibly discouraged and depressed about the black hole I see my fitness falling into and the lack of opportunities to do anything about it. E.