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Hi everybody! Snow Walker here. I'm new to the community and live in Florida. Originally from upstate New York and I dream of moving back to the cold, frozen North. Hence the name. I am am looking to get into some weight lifting and was thinking of building my own power rack. So far I have been doing everything inside in various places in the house, but I want a place for pull-ups, back squats, and benching. It would be preferable to workout indoors as summer is miserably hot and humid. However, hubby and I are in the middle of remodeling our house and there is not much room left between stacks of tile, 2x4s, and drywall. Depending what we work on, I have to find different places to workout or modify my workouts. So in an effort to get my rack and pull-up bar together, I found a designated spot outside. Humidity will cause metal to rust, so I was planning to build a rack with wood and just keep up with protecting/cleaning the pull-up bar. Pull-ups are a goal of mine and I want to be able to work toward them, even if that means just hanging around for a bit. (Pun intended). Does anyone have any experience with lifting/working out in the outdoors in Florida in the summer? I have lived in the Tampa area for 5 years. The most functional I am all summer is mowing the yard and getting the flowerbeds weeded, which seemed like a good start to being able to take the heat. Eventually I can get something set up inside, but we have been at this remodel for a year and a half now as a DIY and I don't want one more thing on the list of "someday after the remodel is finished I will ...(insert dream here)." I am hoping we could be done by January 2018 but we still have 2 bathrooms (read that as taking out the pipes and starting over from studs) to go. Any suggestions or tips would be appreciated. Thanks!

. I think I will try to make this post a little shorter than my introductory post So less about myself and more about the battle plan Main quest: Drop belly fat and flatten my abdomen I’ve already stick to exercise and diet before, with various commitment level but always disappointing results, so I think this won’t be easy But it’s something I damn want, so I’m going to work toward it. No excuses! 1st Goal: Workout 3/wk. I’ve already performed some gym before, but I think this is going to be tough, because I’m going to exercise A ) outdoor; B ) early (6 AM) in the morning and C ) before breakfast (a fasted workout is supposed to be more effective, is it? Any advice on this?) and D ) autonomously, without trainers or surveyors. I decided to use the Playground workout with a couple of exercises from the Beginner Bodyweight circuit that seems the right circuit completion to me. I think I should do the first level exercises in the first times, except for push ups: I'm pretty sure that I can handle regular push ups instead of assisted ones. Result of the blending is this: Explosive legs work: bench step ups (10 reps each leg) Push: push ups (10 reps) Pull: swing rows or, if managed, body rows (10 reps) Legs: lunges (8 reps each leg) Core: body plank (15 seconds, planning on working up to 60) Full body: jumping jacks (30 reps)Reward: +1 END STA. I’ve already built some muscular mass, so I think this will be more an endurance training, about waking up early, running to the park, performing more and more reps on each exercise. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this point Success Metrics: based on a total of 6*3 = 18 workouts A: Never miss a workout.B: Miss 1 workout (5% of the 6-weeks total)C: Miss 2 workouts (10%)D: Miss 3-4 workouts (25%)E: Miss 5-6 workouts (33%)F: Miss more than 6 workouts 2nd Goal: Adhere strictly to the diet, on food and quantities. I already have a non-paleo diet built by a nutritionist two months ago but the starting motivation is fading away, due to lack of sensible results. I’m sure that this diet, teamed with the workouts, will do its job, but I must strictly follow it for this to happens Reward: +1 CON Success Metrics: based on a total of 5 * 7 * 6 = 210 meals A: Miss up to 7 diet-clear meals (<5% of the 6-weeks total)B: Miss up to 11 diet-clear meals (5%)C: Miss up to 21 diet-clear meals (10%)D: Miss up to 52.5 diet-clear meals (25%)E: Miss up to 69 diet-clear meals (33%)F: Miss 70 or more diet-clear meals 3rd Goal: Drink at least 1,5 liters of waters daily This is part of the diet but it’s a separate goal: planning my meals is a thing I can manage to do but drink that much water is something I’ve never managed to do before… Damn, usually I drink from two to three glasses a day… And this already make me pee a lot! I can’t imagine what will be drinking 2 times more than that Reward: +1 CON Success Metrics: based on 7 * 6 = 42 days of challenge. I use days in order to prevent myself from drinking more than 1.5 liters a day to compensate a less-hydrated day. A: Don't hydrate appropriately for 0-1 day (<5%)B: Don't hydrate appropriately for 2 days (5%)C: Don't hydrate appropriately for 3-4 days (10%)D: Don't hydrate appropriately for 10 days or less (25%)E: Don't hydrate appropriately for 13 days or less (33%)F: Don't hydrate appropriately for 14 days or more Life Goal: Try to Stay in monthly money budget, adapting it to my needs but NOT to my whims. (Credits to 49er for the "try to" disappearance) That’s right, I’m budgeting my incomes and outcomes… And I really don’t like what I see I’ve written down a budget, using that budgeting software I bought some time ago (thank you steam sales! ) but I didn’t really follow it right up to now... In my next level-up I want this thing to be of some usefulness too! Reward: +1 WIS Success metrics: A: Overspend by 1% or less of monthly budgetB: Overspend by 2% or less of monthly budgetC: Overspend by 3% or less of monthly budgetD: Overspend by 4% or less of monthly budgetE: Overspend by 5% or less of monthly budgetF: Overspend by more than 5% of monthly budget Ok, I think this is it What do you think, for a first challenge? Feedbacks of all kinds are always welcome! Thank you very much!!!

Hello, everyone! I discovered this site about a week ago, bouncing from a link an American friend of mine posted on Facebook. Lurked around, read posts, watched Steve’s tutorial on YT… “Damn, this seems too good to be true, where’s the scam? It has to be nearby…†(no offense intended: every nerd knows that the internet is a big source of scams and phishing attempts ). But after one-week check I can’t really find anything wrong here, and this is a really pleasant surprise! So first thing first: I must congratulate to Steve himself, for putting up his efforts in giving birth to this site, and to you guys, for building up this enthusiastic community And, above all, thank you all for being nerds and rebels simultaneously: the “air†I breath in there is clean and full of potential and willpower. This is really good for my lungs Ok then, let me start the core part of this introductory post! The just-past me I’m Marco, from northern Italy, a 27 yo male who’s never been too concerned about his appearance no, let me correct myself: who never believed in his appearance or other physical qualities. Except for the music. I have a pretty good hearing for rhythms and melodies I tried out many sports, starting from judo, when I was a kid, then stepping to karate, jujutsu, aerobic class, heavy machine-oriented gyms, but except the first one no one has endured much in my daily routines... I guess this comes for my big lack: I still didn’t believe that my appearance could change significantly. Obviously any effort is too much if you don’t think you can obtain any result. Now I have a full-time desk job as a Game Developer, which make me stand still the major part of the day, watching at a screen and thinking… And gaining weight After hitting the too-damn-high count of 86 Kilograms for my 1.75 meters (excuse me for using metric system, can’t really think in other ways :-P anyway, google tells me that they’re about 190 pounds for 5,74 feet height) I put myself been on a diet since the first of september, but I still couldn’t see a good trends in results, so my determination started to fade away, and exceptions started to leak in my food plan more and more often… As today something has drastically changed, though, from a spark I never expected to come: my girlfriend said to me “I love you, and I wish you could love yourself tooâ€. Something to barf a rainbow in her face, huh? Well, it actually is, let’s face it but it’s also something that managed to move something around both my guts and my brain. The current me I think that time for procrastination and indifference has ended, because for the first time in my life I damn want a flat stomach, and I know for sure it’s not going to appear automagically (not a typo ) under my Christmas tree. My work routine do not allow me to go to be productive in a gym, so I’m resolved to exercise myself autonomously (beginner bodyweight circuit, here I come), but this requires a lot of task-tracking skills, which I think I have, and motivation, which I’m pretty sure I have but I’m still a little afraid to trust So here I am, signing in for the next 6-week challenge, the first step on something that I want to be a new path for my life to follow! As a big fan of RPGs I couldn’t resist to build a character sheet, following the mechanics described in other posts ;-) Feel free to take a look at the link in my signature for my main quest, motivation and first challenge goals, and let me know what you think about it: feedbacks are always welcome! Shortly I will also open the opportune thread on the 1st challenge section [uPDATE] 1st challenge online! Again, thank you all, and… Hope to see you around for a long time PS: I apologize for the long text but, honestly, I really can't reduce myself to a little bunch of words... I need at least a medium bunch of phrases ;-) PPS: no matter how much I try, I can’t persuade any browser into showing me the members map. Is anybody else from Veneto, here?

So yesterday I tried a new HIIT workout called X's. It's where I go down to my local soccer field and do the following: X’s On the infield of a football, track, or soccer field, sprint across the diagonal of the field, jog along the end, and sprint back along the other diagonal, and jog back to your starting point. Do 2-3 sets of 3 of these with 6 minutes rest between sets and 4 minutes rest between reps. This workout kicked my butt! Give it a shot and let me know what you guys think.