Search the Community

Gah, I'm late! Seeing as I recklessly abandoned my first 6 week challenge, it's time to try again; this time with a tangible goal at the end of the challenge. Main Quest: Improve strength and endurance for karate and lifting. As some may know, I'm in love with powerlifting and I also practice Shotokan karate. The two don't particularly go hand in hand, but they do complement each other. While I'm psyched I've gone from deadlifting 135lb to 205lb in less than a year's time, my squats fell prey to poor form and I'm not at all where I want to be for bench presses. Shotokan is all about strong, low stances and quick and powerful punches. Here's how I'm gonna do this:Dedicate 30 minutes each day to karate basics (kihon), focusing primarily on blocks and leg position, holding for 10-15 seconds each.Squat with purpose. While there's little more satisfying than driving up from a heavy squat, my focus here will be maintaining balance and form while driving up from the squat at about half my normal speed.Pass my karate exam on May 17, 2015! This is my end goal for this challenge. If I pass, this will push me into the intermediate level. If I don't, I'll try again during Fall exams .Life Quest: Memorize kihon (basics) commands in Japanese. Since this next exam will push me into a somewhat more advanced level of training, I'm expected to know at least some of the movement commands in Japanese. So why not study them all? In lieu of flashcards that I'm sure to lose, I'll use my nerdy know-how to build a electronic mini-quiz for myself. Maybe this will even morph into another side-quest where I actually fiddle around with my Raspberry Pi!Accountability: I plan to update this thread every Wednesday with my overall progress for the week and recap the previous Tuesday night's karate class. **Last Update: 5/20/15 (see comments)**

Still the same things to work on, but I really want to keep it simple this time, so I get rid of the established good habit. I will still track them, since tracking is a good habit in itself, but not as part of the challenge. Again I am focusing on building habits, so what I list is to be done every day (unless otherwise noted). As usual, scoring will be based on the done vs missed ratio. For the challenge itself I'll do the following: Sleep: at least 6 hours each day and 50 hours/week STR +2, CON +2, WIS +1Monk's stuff: I am using the figther's codex as a template to work on my basics (plus some endurance and strength as side effects) DEX +2, STR +1, STA +1Assassin's stuff: the usual 15 minutes of balance&stretching work DEX +2, STR +1Clean table and counter. This is the thing that my wife does always, no matter what. I under estimated it in the previous challenges CHA +2, WIS +1Last August I started tracking my weight every day. I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I consider it a good habit that helps me in staying on track with my long term goal. From the beginning of the year I lost 2 Kg, which is nothing and easily lost in the noise. I know that some rice/potatoes at dinner makes me 0.6-0.8 Kg heavier the day after, for example, but as long as the long term trend is kept, the small gain is ok. All the rest just followed. A nice scattered plot keeps me motivated. So, out of the challenge, but still tracked: weightweekly house choresmeditationeating according to scheduledaily walkFinal note: on 9-16 May I will have some family time. On those days the goals will be: walk at least one hour every daydon't go for seconds (but no limits to veggies)Not part of the challenge, more a rule to survive a week of my mother feeding the "prodigal son who returned home"