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Greetings Rebels! Following on the back of a reasonably successful challenge in May, I've decided to step it up a notch and get my fitness back into gear. My main focus to help me push through the sloth and excuses is the thought of returning to Kendo. I've been wanting to get back into it for most of the past year, after the stresses of life and conflicts with unavoidable events caused me to pause my illustrious Kendo career. When I watched the Kendo Workd Championship, last week, it re-galvanised me and I've been on a one-track Kendo trip ever since. So, in preparation, I'm dedicating this challenge to getting fit and ready to get back into it. By the end of this challenge, I want to be all signed up, and starting back on a regular training schedule. I have several goals ready to help me get there: EDIT: After speaking to my sensei, I have modified my goals for this challenge Increase Base Fitness: Being a programmer, I lead a pretty sedentary lifestyle; I sit for most of the day. I need to ramp my basic fitness level way up if I want to be able to hold my own in a shiai. So, to this end I'm going to be doing HIIT in various formats, including sword strikes, burpees, running, and squats - whatever moves me really. I'll be aiming to use a tabata-style 8 minute workout to really nail myself. I'm going to test my fitness before and after with a 7 minute burpee AMRAP (I haven't forgotten, @Endor). For desert, I've got my kettlebells out, so I can do some swings and holds, though I won't be tracking these. Following on from advice given by my sensei, I have laid out a more specific training schedule to help me get ready for Kendo. It overlaps quite a bit what I had in mind already. I'm aiming to do at least 4 of these exercises per week, with the number of reps being AMRAP to failure and a minimum of the week number of the challenge: Exercise 1: 10 pushups, 10 squat jumps Exercise 2: 10 Men Uchi, 10 Kote Uchi, 10 Dou Uchi Exercise 3: 10 kettlebell lifts, 10 kettlebell swings Exercise 4: 10 Shomen Suburi, 10 Yoko Men Suburi Exercise 5: 5 burpees, 6 sprints Gear: One area I neglected early-on is care and feeding of my equipment. For this goal, I want to master the terminology of every bit of kit I have, Make sure all of my knots are Japan-perfect, and be able to assemble and disassemble my shinai without needing to look it up. I've recently purchased Kendo: A Comprehensive Guide to Japanese Swordsman, which seems like an excellent resource for this sort of thing. Oh, and I also want to built a shinai maintenance kit to help me with this (and so I can make a trip to Bunnings - yay!) Lifting: I spent my last challenge getting back into lifting, and really enjoyed it. I plan to keep up going to the gym, at least once per week, and get my form down pat for squats, deadlifts, bench press and overhead press. I'd also like to beat my PB in all of these, though this will be a bonus, and not my main focus.Bonus Goal: This afternoon, I was honoured by receiving one of the coveted 'Rebel Hero' t-shirts. In recognition of this, I've tracked down (part of) one of my very first challenges. This was back before I ran my first 5k, and well before I took my shoes off to do one. So, for this challenge, I will complete at least 1 5k run I'm really looking forward to this challenge!