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So I originally had ideas of making this a "Jocko" themed challenge thread, centered around Jocko Willink and some of the lessons he preaches on his podcast as well as his book Extreme Ownership. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was inappropriate. I don't want to give out this impression I've got my stuff together. I'm messed up at the moment. My low back hurts. I'm not working out with any regularity. I'm using alcohol in ways that I don't feel comfortable with. So, here I am. It's time to be honest. It's time to face the facts. Fact #1: I'm broken & unhealthy right now. I keep looking at myself as a strong healthy young man. Sure I'm strong, but when your lower back starts screaming in agony any time you go anywhere near 75% of your strength, you aren't strong. You are broken. At the beginning of the year I wrote about how I was going to fix myself this year. And here I sit nearly 4 full months into the year and I'm no better than I was on January 1st. It's time to go back to the Challenges in hopes of getting a short term goal to spark some long term discipline. I'm not going to focus on elaborate long workouts, but rather the short simple stuff that I should be doing before bed. I want to spend time doing McGill's Big 3 once per day, as well as getting in some sort of random mobility work for at least 5 minutes per day. McGill Week 1 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ || Mobility Week 1 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ McGill Week 2 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ || Mobility Week 2 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ McGill Week 3 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ || Mobility Week 3 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ McGill Week 4 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ || Mobility Week 4 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ Fact #2: I'm signed up for the Hammer Race in October. Running is easier if you lose weight. I'm going to do my IF windows as it seems to be a simple way for me to stay focused on what I'm taking in. Overall goal is to lose 3lbs over the challenge, but as long as I'm sticking to the IF window, I'll call this a win for now. If I have to start cutting calories outside of that next challenge so be it. Giving myself Saturday to break the window. IF Week 1 ☐☐☐☐☐☐ IF Week 2 ☐☐☐☐☐☐ IF Week 3 ☐☐☐☐☐☐ IF Week 4 ☐☐☐☐☐☐ Fact #3: I still suck at pull-ups. I really started to get good at them awhile back when I was crushing some GTG work. I'm going to get back to that. Plan is to do 3 Jumping Pull-ups, 20 Push-ups, and 5 CoC Closes with each hand per session and do those sessions at least 3 times per day. GTG Week 1 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ GTG Week 2 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ GTG Week 3 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ GTG Week 4 ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ Fact #4: My daughter's vision sucks. I won't go into details. Some of you know the backstory, some of you don't. Her vision is not good and she's going to be learning braille eventually. I need to learn braille to be able to help her. I want to spend at least 15 minutes 3x per week to learn the letters of the braille alphabet. Braille Week 1 ☐☐☐ Braille Week 2 ☐☐☐ Braille Week 3 ☐☐☐ Braille Week 4 ☐☐☐ Totally hi-jacking this format from @wovercast. Also, I still plan on trying to get in my Gymnastics Bodies workouts, but as I've had zero luck being disciplined with them for now, I'm starting with stuff I hope I can do.

So I'm not going to strictly adhere to NF's standard 3 Fitness/Diet related, and 1 Life goal. I'm going 2 and 2. And I'm starting with a Dale and Tucker vs. Evil theme as I just watched that movie and it was amazing. Highly recommend for those that haven't seen it. I even had to create 2 of these GIFs. I'm dedicated this time around. Fitness Goal #1 Stopping throwing myself into the figurative woodchipper and start doing activity again. It's time to get back to working out although it's going to be a bit different than business as usual. I've been a Warrior since I joined NF. And yet, here I am in the Assassin Mini-Challenge threads. Well, lower back issues have sort of sidelined my heavy barbell work. So I've been researching and finally pulled the trigger on buying the full GymnasticsBodies package. So I'm starting and committing for at least 9 months to this training. I've always wanted to work towards the truly epic gymnastics movements (iron cross, planche), but I'll never get there doing barbell training. Likewise, since the barbell training is on such a hiatus at the moment, this seemed like as good of time as any to switch it over and get a bit more flexibility while working on my BW movements. Goal is to get in 4 workouts per week. Fitness Goal #2 Let's clean up the diet a bit more. Been drinking a lot of craft brews lately, and in general not really caring too much on my diet. I did quit breakfast as a minor experiment in becoming more fat adapted and just getting less calories, and so far I have no complaints about that. But at the same time, I need to be better. I know enough about diet and what keeps me full, what is good for me, and what isn't, that I should take damn ownerhsip. I'll take a photo of the scale next Monday morning. Goal is to lose 5lbs total in the challenge. Life Goal #1 Try and do some of that socializing thing. I've been thinking a lot lately about how few relationships I have. I see my co-workers, but I don't socialize with outside of work. And I've got a handful of people I IM with on a daily basis, but otherwise, it's my wife and kid. I think I want to have more people in my life. So I'm going to leave this goal a bit vague as I haven't fully ironed out details, but I'll be mostly strict about it. Goal is to do 3 extroverted things during the challenge. Life Goal #2 Keep working on my woodworking projects. Right now, I'm trying to build 2 of benches using this Youtube video to get better at dovetail joints. I'd like to get all the dovetails cut for this, which has been surprisingly hard to find time for lately. I've going to make time. Goal is to get all 32 Dovetails cut on the tops of the 2 benches. That's about it for now. Will update more next week.