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Welcome one and all - to Weirdmaggedon! Something you probably didn't know about me - I EFFING LOVE GRAVITY FALLS!!! Like seriously, probably one of my top 5 favourite shows of all time - up there with Buffy, Farscape and Doctor Who. The opening theme song was even Mr. Raxie's and my recessional for our wedding (I walked down the aisle to something off a Doctor Who soundtrack though so it's not like it was a startlingly nerdy thing for us). We also dressed as Dipper and Mabel for Halloween this year. Seriously, if you haven't watched it, even if you aren't into cartoons - just go do it. It's only 2 seasons and it's just so warm hearted and simultaneously nerdy and really down to earth, and the overarching plot is seriously pretty amazing and it ends so beautifully and I literally cry every time. Ugh so good. Ok anyway so after taking the last challenge off due to my life basically exploding (many many weddings/rehearsal dinner/bachelorette parties, about 900 extra dance lessons to prep for an upcoming performance, and some cat illness drama, and meeting Jonathan Van Ness which I needed approximately a full week to emotionally recover from) I am really hankering for a serious high spirited challenge. And what better than a Gravity Falls themed battle challenge to rev me back up and start prepping for the new year? I have the excites. So with all that said, here's my challenge. I'll be fighting Bill Cipher, the final and biggest of Big Bads in the show (he's the pyramid dude in my gif up top). He has brought Weirdmaggedon down on Gravity Falls and it's up to Dipper and Mabel to stop him! Each of the five weeks (starting this week!) they will be fighting one of Bill's cronies and gathering friends for the bigger fight to come. If I succeed with my goals for the week that week's minion will be subdued and a new friend will join the party. Week 4 all the party members I've gathered will fight Bill and any undefeated minions. If I've collected enough friends we will be able to handle some undefeated minions at the end, but also if I don't collect any friends but manage to beat all the minions then just Dipper and Mabel will be able to beat Bill on their own so that's where some flexibility on the challenge comes in. My goals will be the same each week so it's just a matter of keeping them consistent to take down Bill. The final showdown with Bill will have different rules than weeks 0-3 which I'll post in a follow-on post. Initial rules are below with my goals! The Goals: "Reality is an illusion the universe is a hologram" - Bill Cipher Dance 4x/week = 100 HP damage to enemy per party member Usually I don't set a goal for dancing because I'm going to be going anyway, but I really need to push myself to practice separately from my lessons and classes for the upcoming performance we have in December so I'll be tracking it. "This party never stops! Time is dead, and meaning has no meaning. Existence is upside down." - Bill Cipher Lift 3x/week = 100 HP damage to enemy per party member I've been pretty consistently been able to work back in 3 sessions vs 2 for the last 3 months ish, I find that the only time I fail to do this is when I don't plan ahead so I've just got to make sure I know when I'll be doing what each week ahead of time. "Songs Are Like Hugs that Mouths give to Ears" - Mabel Pines ROMWOD 6x/week = 1 new friend added to party I've been pretty good about ROMWODing, a few times a week but I need to get back to prioritizing it since I really started seeing improvements in my flexibility last time I did it almost every day and I want to be flexy. "If you're curious don't wait." - Dipper Pines Updates 3x/week = 1 new friend added to party One MAJOR thing I will be working on this challenge is my perfectionism. You know the whole "if it's not perfect why bother doing it" feeling that causes so many people (myself included) to say oh I can't stick to my meal plan so I might as well eat 100 slices of pizza? Or if I don't have time to clean my entire house why bother doing the little that I can? I've somehow gotten over all of this in my real life, but for the forums I somehow have not. I always want to post all my happy (or not so happy things) and battle-log style catalogue how things are going with me, to the point that if I don't have time or space to do so I just...don't. I need to seriously get over this because it has hindered me from keeping up with a lot of my past challenges, and ultimately I probably could have done the last challenge if I had just been OK with myself doing it all through Tapatalk. So this challenge I am redownloading Tapatalk, and I will be using Habit Bull to track my goals. If I don't have time to say anything, I can just post my Habit Bull progress screen shot and have that be that. Yes Tapatalk results in ugly posts and it makes me sad but it makes me sadder that I'm preventing myself from being here.

I think I may have done a Harry Potter themed challenge semi-recently BUT I'm doing it again because I have a dance performance coming up and it's to Hedwigs Theme so I'm feeling pretty Hogwarts inspired right now However since I probably exhausted all the good old fashioned Potter gifs in my challenge a few months ago, this challenge will be hilarious and no-good HP gif themed. #sorrynotsorry Yeah we will see how long this lasts. Some background on me - my two main pursuits are powerlifting and ballroom dancing. Powerlifting I've been doing for a long while now and ballroom dancing I just got into back in December. I did ballet for 15 years when I was growing up so dance isn't super foreign to me but ballroom is SO FREAKIN' different and it's been 13 years since I've danced at all so it's definitely a challenge. I've actually got my first ever competition coming up in September (AHHHHHHHH), even though it's a super friendly not serious between some studios competition and not like... a real one. I did something similar with a performance team back in March but this one it will be just me doing a showcase (it's the Hedwig's theme dance I am basing this challenge around mentioned above). I'm ascared. But also still pretty darn excited. Lifting wise I've been more or less doing as a maintenance activity but the past 2 weeks I've been starting to step my game up again because I want to be stronger and I am finally feeling I am in a place where my body is used to how much dancing I am doing and it won't exhaust me. So far so good. As far as my challenge goes I usually end up using them kind of as a glorified battle log but I here are some goals anyway: Goal 1: Clean Fly Lady Daily Tasks 5x/week Last challenge I mostly focused on decluttering and making my apartment presentable and I succeeded! I have had people over semi-regularly and don't feel a wave of nausea inducing panic anymore at the thought of house guests. My first goal this challenge will be to maintain this as the status-quo. Honestly, I've been trying to do the Fly Lady thing for 3-ish years but I've never had a good baseline to go off of and it always just feels so overwhelming. Now that I've got a clean baseline apartment I feel like I can *gasp* actually do some maintenance cleaning?!?!?!? Should be interesting. Goal 2: Lift Strength workout 3x/week I have generally failed every darn time I tried to re-up my strength training from 2 to 3 days a week over the last few months and I think it was because I was still adjusting to my new dance schedule. The last few weeks I've been actually doing it super successfully and feeling pretty great about it so I want to keep this up. Goal 3: Dance Private lesson 1x/week I probably don't need to make this a goal because I'm going to do it anyway, but it's an easy win and I want an excuse to talk about it so there you go. So there you have it, a few days late but what are you gonna do. Time to do the thing!

(yeah I know that title sounds real intense and then it's just a cartoon hahah - bait and switch!) Background: For those just joining - I'm Raxie! This will be my 33rd challenge here. I recently got really into ballroom dancing and have been focusing a lot on that, but my other love is lifting. I have three kitties that I love dearly and I have a severe case of RangerBrain(TM). So! I really love how I set up my last challenge where I went hard on the goals, but also gave myself a lot of cushion to fall back on if I needed it. I ended up really needing that cushion in the last week, and that's fine! I passed, and I had a high bar that was quite ambitious that inspired me throughout the challenge. This challenge I am going to do kind of the opposite. I am going to set up some really rigid rules that are simple and not too ambitious... but I'm not going to give myself much leeway in terms of a grab bag of freebies. I find jumping back and forth between these two approaches has really helped me up my game slowly over time and I love it! Part of my problem with a lot of my goals in the past is I have an x times/week goal and I'll push it off and try to squish it all in towards the end of the week, but then it's the weekend and then I either don't do it or rush it. This time around I'm going to assign specific tasks to specific weekdays. If I don't do them, I can't "make them up" later. I just didn't do it, move on and I will do the task for the next week day. AND THAT'S OKAY. My inspiration for this challenge is Rick and Morty's Get Schwifty song -- two of the most inappropriate non-musically talented people on the planet went for it and created a song that won an intergalactic song contest, saving the earth from certain doom. If they can do that... my sometimes uncoordinated self can certainly go out on a limb and do The Scary Thing that is different dance styles and start competing in the future! (OK so that's a stretch - real talk I actually I don't have a theme that relates to my goals for this challenge and just wanted to throw some Rick and Morty gifs around because I love that show.) Big Picture Stuffs: I will be dancing. A lot. My goal is to do a non-group competition before the end of the year. That may be under ambitious but knowing me and my imposter syndrome that line in the sand needs to at least be drawn somewhere. As long as that line is there I could be convinced to move it to sooner, but I want to have it far enough away for now that I don't feel like I need to push it back if that makes sense. I want to focus on Foxtrot, Jive and a yet-to-be-determined Latin dance (I'm thinking maybe Rumba because it's so darn pretty). I will also continue to lift because I love it so. I re-started the beginner Strong Lifts progression for my OHP and Rows last challenge since I've been not doing them, the other lifts (DLs, Squats, Bench) I'm in intermediate Strong Lifts, but I'm shopping around for a more progressive intermediate program that I'll probably move on to either this challenge or the next. ROMWOD has become my backbone throughout the last two challenges and I will keep on keepin' on with that as well. Cleaning. Ugh. My eternal enemy. I feel like I would be the perfect adult and have my life together SO HARD if I could just keep my freakin' place clean! Why won't it just stay clean?! I am going to go full Fly Lady this challenge in terms of daily tasks so I have more of a direction in my cleaning, since last challenge I feel like I cleaned every day but nothing really... got done. Food. I've been eating kind of boarderline bad lately. I was away a bunch last week and am feeling I need to be more accountable about it, so I'm thinking I will report every day what I eat. No calorie counting, no paleo-compliance, I've just got to say here what I ate. That's it. The accountability will inspire me more than trying to meet macros and probably forcing "compliance" upon something that I know I'm just trying to game a system with. Goals: Under the spoiler is my "skeleton schedule" that is my baseline. Each Monday I will post a slightly altered schedule based on travel or volunteer meetings I may have to skip stuff for (I'm traveling almost every weekend this challenge so that will probably be the biggest struggle for sure). Grading: Points for each week will be out of 14 - basically each day I did the things I said I'd do I get a point, and each day I report what I ate I get a point for a total of 2 possible points a day. At the end of the challenge I need to have accumulated at least 55 points out of a possible 70 to pass! I'll be starting now, in week zero. Let's do this thing!

I'm only 17, but my parents say i'm blessed with the body of an athlete so they want me to do football. And I just don't eat right, just want to get strong enough to be a Off lineman. tbh I never lifted weights before this so I don't have enough experience to know :/ I decided to start working in a weight training class 5 months ago and I want to know if my progress is coming fast enough Height: 6'4 Weight: 295 Age: 17 How Long have I started training: 5 months Bench: 225 Power Clean: 245 Squat: 465

So I wasn't even going to do a challenge. Just to infrequently that I post because I'm busy usually, but screw it, you're not working out if you don't talk about it. This challenge is very simple and is captured by the photo below. Goal 1: Step #1: Lift things up. Step #2: Put them down. Step #3: Repeat. I've decided to use the Danger Method Base Block 1 , made by our very own JDanger. So far it's been working, I've only started it last week, but I feel good so far. It's a 4 day split, with an optional 5th day for addressing weaknesses (which luckily for me is upper body, so I just bro out). GOAL 2: Eat things, try not to get fat. Finish out challenge under 205lbs. I just went through 4 months of strict dieting, so now I'm trying to find a happy medium where I am slightly at a surplus. I'll throw in some cardio if I start gaining the LBs. I don't want to get fat again like Brodin.

So My first Challenge So a quick background on myself. I use to be very fit about 6 years ago when I played basketball but then I moved to Glasgow (The big smoke), started drinking, smoking and eating junk food. I had also stopped exercising at this point. I put on the weight. Eventually I said enough was enough and started running, quit smoking and practically quit eating. Otherwise known as the completely wrong thing to do. I then quit running and started eating again (properly this time) but sadly someone dropped a T.V on me and I injured my shoulder badly enough that I've been out of action for the past two years. Well I've got the all clear again and while 6 years may have past since I was last in decent shape I'm determined to make myself fit again. Here's a before/After photo from when I first started my diet and lifting (Date of photo is 8th June) http://imgur.com/vQQojWn Main Quest Getting Bigger and Stronger. Goals To lift 10% heavier for my 1 Rep Max for Deadlifts (To be determined), Squats (85Kg/187lbs), Bench Press (50kg/110lbs) and Military Press (40kg/88lbs).Brackets show current 1 Rep Max not target. To lower my body fat enough so I can see my 6 pack. To stick to the Paleo diet and have 180g of protein a day. Side Quest Pass my driving test on the 8th July. Motivation To become fit again, To become strong again, To get the most out of life.

Good day fellow Rebels, After starting building a base strength for my legs with squats, I decided to give it a try and start deadlifting. I've build up the weight on my deadlifts during 3 months and I'm currently lifting 135lbs for 5x5 reps twice a week. However, one of the gym instructors approached me last week and "corrected" my form, instructing me to keep my legs straight and not to low the barbell all the way to the floor, lifting only with the lower back. He said, and I quote: "A deadlift rep should never touch the floor or you'll ruin your knees and back" After some research, I found this is called a "Romanian" deadlift. What's the opinion of the more experience lifters on the standard deadlift versus the romanian deadlift?

I started doing free weights at the beginning of this school year. I fell in love with squats right away. I started at 30 kilos and got up to 60 quickly and with no problem. Here's the problem. I've set a goal. I want to squat 100 kilos. I don't care how long it takes me, but I want some advice on how to get to that goal. Where better to ask than in a group of powerlifters? So, what do you think? I only lift about 2 times a week, I could try to make more time for it if necessary. Has anybody been in my situation before and has some age-old advice for a n00b? PoisonStrudel

Hey guys! I've read the article about Staci's story, and although it was truly inspiring and motivational, the diet part didn't help much just because I'm not big on going Paleo. I began powerlifting about 4 months ago. I really want to compete eventually. My biggest goal right now is to get my body fat percentage down and get my strength up!! I'm currently counting macros to a T and training daily (with one rest day/week) using a powerlifting split. I am a 21 year old female college student. I'm 5'5", 136lbs, 22% body fat (I want to get down to about 14% body fat!!). My current daily macro and calories breakdown is: Carbs: 94g Fat: 50g Protein: 169g Calories: 1500 That's a 25%/30%/45% breakdown. And if it matters, my bench/squat/deadlift (REPPING!) is: 8X85/12X180/8X180 --> I've only maxed out on squats and my 1RM is currently 245! Keep in mind I just started lifting about 4 months ago!! I'm looking for any advice, comments, concerns, or suggestions about my current plan. I want to get strong and lean!! Thanks for reading and thanks for your feedback!! Abby

I filmed myself doing some back squats so I could check my form. Overall, I think it's pretty good except that I round a bit in my back as I drop below parallel in the squat. Also I could make less of a 'pain face' in the later sets. Any feedback is welcome <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Z_qzfEKELIA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>