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After a packed holiday season, including 1rm testing to find opening numbers (fueled by Christmas cookies of course), my first competition is 27 days away. This challenge will entail me posting battle log style updates for my last normal training week (2nd-6th), overload week (9th-13th), taper week (16th-20th), liiiight week (23rd-25th) and comp day (28th). Outside of slinging iron, I'll be blerping (exciting new verb) on weekly chiro visits and yoga classes, and daily Mint/MFP/Duolingo/Meditation/yoga practice. There could be check boxes, stay tuned. Less quantifiable output will be ramblings on books, recipes, cracked philosophy, and puppy pictures.

Wow... so it's been a long while since I posted one of these babies. But I figured it's time to come outta my Daily Battle Log "shell" for this new goal. What is the new goal you asked? For those that follow my Daily Log, you already know, but I'm going to qualify for Raw Nationals in the USAPL this year as part of the NF Powerlifting team. No if's, and's, or butt's. 1067lbs at 205BW. Simple as that. During the 2V2L, I did a 1042.5 @ 217 to give you some perspective on where I need to get by August 22nd. So yeah... time to hit it hard. What's the challenge? Nothing related to working out. I do that consistently enough now, I'm not concerned. Lifting is the easy part. It's recovering and fueling my body to get down to 205 while actually yielding a net gain in my lifts that I'm concerned about. So yeah... first 6 weeks. Let's do this. Challenge 1: Mobilize 6 out of 7 days for at least 10 minutes, aim for 20-25 minutes. I'm still dealing with a knee issue. The more and more I go back and watch old squat videos the more I'm amazed it didn't happen sooner. So while I'm taking it easy with the lower body workouts for the next few weeks, I want to make sure that I work really hard on trying to equalize my legs. I've noticed my right leg (i.e. the injured one) is tighter and worse off in about every aspect. Calf, Hip, Quad, Hammy. They are all worse off. I need to get the right leg hard, but I want to work on everything as a whole as well. Challenge 2: Stop the suckage while eating. So really, my diet isn't terrible. My wife usually makes some delicious food. Most of the time it's all home cooked meals with veggies and plenty of protein. That said, I drink loads of beer. And it's not that light crap. I'm a full fledged craft beer lover. So 350+ calories per pint isn't unrealistic. That and I also tend to get a sweet tooth at work and find my way into the cafeteria after lunch hour to buy either a cookie, or the occasional soda. So yeah... I don't want to go back to full fledged macro tracking yet, so I'm going to just try cutting back on those two consumables. 3 beers per week. 0 snacks per week. Challenge 3: Hit 210lbs. Sort of the same as Challenge #2, but in order to not be fighting my weight super hard near my meet peaking, I want to get the weight loss stuff out of the way. This one is either pass or fail. Either I'm below 210lbs or I'm not by May 25th. I hope to be there long before May 25th, but if I'm not there by then, weight is going to be an issue. Life Challenge: Clear out 3 items from the house. Sort of an on-going project in our lives, but we have been trying to get rid of the crap that just lingers (see Rock Band instruments). With the warm weather coming, it's time to clear out some more of the clutter.