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I'm serious - it's happening! For the past 4+ years I've been a software developer at a pretty cool company, but it's time for a change. I've always wanted to spend some months travelling around the world, and now is my chance I also compete at the international level at mental calculation and have big competitions coming up in September (in Germany) and November (in Las Vegas). My intention is to travel around Europe in September before the first competition while training, and somewhere more exotic before the competition in the USA. As an introduction for everyone new, I'm a 25-year-old British guy who enjoys gymnastics, handstands, bodyweight training, climbing, slacklining, piano composition, football, salsa dancing and Spanish. I used to work out ~5 times per week but recently I've lost motivation My peak was about a year ago when I created the training video but not sure I could do 100% of the moves there anymore... At the end of July I'm also competing in the Urban Ninja obstacle course race ...and I have a driving test in early August. So this challenge I have two main goals: Prepare for my travelling adventure Regain the exercise habit The challenge is simply a checklist of items - with points for each: any gymnastics or strength workout, climbing, slacklining or salsa session (1 point each) : 7 (last updated Aug-04) finally learn to do a bar muscle-up (5 points) quit my job! (1 point) make plans to move out (2 points) create detailed packing list (1 point) plan destinations for Europe trip (2 points) book flights for Europe trip (1 point) plan destinations for October trip (2 points) book flights for October trip (1 points) more Spanish practice (2 points) update CV (1 point) compose a piano version of "Sahara" by Nightwish (6 points) create a recording of "Sahara" like the one I made for the Hopak dance (3 points) grade A: 50+ points grade B: 40+ points grade C: 32+ points grade D: 25+ points Good luck everyone!

After 18 consecutive challenges here, I've made lots of progress but the challenge format is no longer motivating me, so I've decided to make a shiny battle log to track the projects and habits that I'm working on As an introduction, I'm a 25-year-old software engineer from Cambridge, UK and I like to do: gymnastics & handstands trapeze, gymnastics rings & slacklining weightlifting & bodyweight bouldering football healthy eating & living spanish salsa dancing piano composition travelling competing for Britain at mental calculation The colours are used to distinguish topics so my posts are easy to read. So my format for this battle log is to have a few projects going on at any time, which I'll start/stop whenever needed, and set specific goals/challenges when I want. When I need accountability, or have something cool to share or something to ask, it will go here There's also potentially a new cool thing that I'll mention later on if I think about it more seriously... ~~~ Current projects (updated May 12th) ~~~ Climbing / bouldering: I'm going on a mountain-climbing trip in Italy in June, so I want to get my skill back to make the trip as enjoyable as possible. There's going to be via ferrata, a glacier, and probably rock climbing involved so I want to be prepared! Healthy eating: although I like eating healthy foods, in practice I have too much unnecessary foods - that make me over-full, have energy spikes or bad skin quality. When I ate super well in 2013 these things were never a problem. not impulse-eat desserts eat bigger portions of healthy food if needed find a greater variety of foods to eat at home (otherwise I default to 4 bowls of cereal, which cant be good). Training outside regularly: in 2014-2015 I was training regularly at the various things in green and red above - and the zenith of my training was probably last Summer when I made the compilation video (in my signature). Since then I moved place and we had a long cold season and I'm out of the habit. I want to be doing handstands/rings several times per week, and getting stronger again!

Whoa, for the first time I'm actually late posting my challenge Anyway, welcome everyone - if you followed my last challenge, this is going to be quite similar, and for everyone else here's a brief introduction: I'm 25 from the UK, and I specialize in gymnastics, weightlifting and bodyweight skills of various styles (video: summer training sampler). I'm also a software engineer, mental calculation competitor and amateur composer. Goal #1: the list: yep, I'm having another list of goals and workouts, as this format seems to work well for me This time I'm adding in a few extra things that count as workouts. +0.25 for each. Overall we have: weightlifting (double points!)bodyweight (10 exercises)jumping training (6 exercises) <-- something I need to focus on for gymnasticsbouldering1-arm push-up, handstand or bar muscle-up training session <-- summer 2016 goals!gymnastics classAnd bonus items - mostly stolen from my previous challenge - are: cartwheels: learn decent cartwheels on each sideround-off: learn this gymnastics movefront handspring: do this consistently on floorfront flip: land this safely on floorfront flip: bonus points for landing it on floor800-metre run: in 02:50 or less (02:47 into a headwind yay)fix my bike: the gears are getting slowly worsechange phone contract: I should be able to move to a cheaper onecreate piano cover: of the death metal piece "Lost Reality" by Mercenary. It's the heaviest song that I actually like, even though it starts with some aggressive vocals. In fact, that's one of my reasons for wanting to make this piano cover - I'd like to find a way to provide an equivalent effect with a piano (whilst hopefully making it pleasant to listen to)create piano cover: as above - but just the first 00:55create piano cover: as above - but just the first 03:25create piano cover: with recording and sheet music Goal #2: mental calculation: I compete internationally at mental calculation, and I have two potential competitions this year: Mental Calculation World Cup 2016 (September, Germany)Memoriad 2016 (November, Las Vegas)I'm only going to enter if I think I'll perform well (the standard is much higher than when I last competed, in 2012) so I'm currently training for that. Firstly I have a challenge to train using some of the custom software I've created. For each week: 5 days with 5 mins training before midnight: +0.25 WISThere are also some specific goals to be scored alongside the list for +0.25 WIS each: calendar dates: 42 in a minute (before challenge, 41)calendar dates: 44 in a minutecalendar dates: 46 in a minutecalendar dates: 48 in a minutecalendar dates: 50 in a minutesquare roots: second-best score of 315 (during challenge, improved from 308 to 325+)square roots: second-best score of 330square roots: second-best score of 345square roots: second-best score of 360 (maximum possible)binary digits: learn algorithmbinary digits: memorize 500 digits in 30 minutesbinary digits: memorize 750 digits in 30 minutesbinary digits: memorize 1000 digits in 30 minutes Goal #3: rest properly: Laptop off by 01:00 every day. I did this last challenge, and I had much more energy and was happier and more successful as a result. It means I'll get about 8 hours of sleep but won't have rush around brush teeth etc. just before sleeping! Scoring: for each week: 7 days with laptop off by 0100: +0.50 CON5 days with laptop off by 0100: +0.25 CONI'll start this at 2015-02-01 01:00:00 for 28 nights. So I'll never complete all of this before the end of the challenge, but I'm hoping to make good progress and get 8+ of the available stat points. Good luck everyone!