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Hello all! I am a 38 year old woman in Las Vegas, NV, new to this whole board and forum. I've been doing Keto or Low Carb off and on for the past few years, and have lost over 50 pounds. I had knee surgery over summer which set me back a bit so I am hoping to get back in the grind along with the new year. For fitness, I tend to gravitate more toward free weights, yoga and body weight workouts. I have gone through the Strong Curves program a couple of times, but am hoping to up my level and maybe even find a few local nerds to get my sweat on with. :D I work in Education, and in my free time enjoy playing DotA2 on Steam, listening to true crime podcasts or crocheting. Excited to be here, and nice to meet everyone! :) COME AT ME 2020!!! XD

The Ghost returns! I'm not super active around here as much anymore, but thought I'd still drop a meet report. F TL;DR: Went 7/9 (again) (failed 3rd squat and deadlift attempts (complete fail)), left some pounds on the platform but still set some 4 PRs. Amazing experience for my first meet and reinforced my stance that everyone who ever thinks about doing a meet, competition or race should just do it. PLAN YOUR WORK. WORK YOUR PLAN! TRAINING & MEET PREP: Going into this meet I ran Candito's 6 Week Strength Program, which has been amazing. Prior to that I ran Layne Norton's 13 Week PH3 program which was sweet. Decided to do this meet 6 weeks out, when @miss_marissa told me to just do it. This was my second powerlifting meet, first with AAU. Training went amazingly, especially squats. Bench, as always was a little rough. Deads weren't feeling great either. But overall, all lifts weren't on the decline and I had no lingering injuries or aches & pains. Here are my squats leading up to the meet: As you can see I was feeling strong in squats, which is by far my best lift. MEET: This was my first meet with a 24 hour weigh in, first meet I had to travel and sleep at a hotel for. The original plan was to feel like a bad ass and ride the motorcycle 2 hours South from Vegas to Laughlin, but the wife put the kabosh on that when weather reports were expecting 45-50mph gusts that weekend. So (no thanks to myself) I played it smart and drove down in the car. The day of the meet was a bit long, as anyone who has competed knows. Rules briefing was at 830 and then the meet started...the weightlifting meet. Didn't realize WL would be going first before PL. It's always amazing to see the skill, coordination and grace of weightlifters, but I was mentally amped to start lifting a lot earlier than I would get to. I had been worried about making weight as a couple of months ago I was push 200lbs and debating if I should just cross the border and see how big I could get. The "diet" was relatively simple; cut out beer (6-12/week), cut out fast food, cut out cookies and snacks. That got me down to the mid to high 180s, and then a week out I started to waterload, and water loading SUCKS BALLS. Drinking gallons of water is just not fun and causes so many trips to the bathroom and a few 90mph trips on the highway to avoid pissing myself. Thankfully, I easily made weight coming in at 178.6lbs on that Friday. After I weighed in and got checked into the hotel, I made a dash to the casino buffet and drank & ate ALL THE FOODS. So many carbs were consumed and everything was heavily salted to replenish all the stuff I had been peeing out for the past 5 days. SQUAT: Warmups for squat started while the WLers were on their 3rd snatch attempts. Training at a gym with typical plates in pounds sucks when doing a meet in kilograms. Warm ups were rough and I couldn't take the jumps I normally do because of lifting brain and having to accommodate other lifters as well. The most stressful part for me leading into a meet is picking my attempts. Again @miss_marissa gave me advice to just be conservative with my attempts and I chose not to listen. I really wanted a 435 squat and based my attempts on that goal. Opened at 175kg/386lbs and that felt smooth and easy enough. This was a meet PR, as my best squat last year was 374 or so. Once I racked the bar, any nerves and butterflies instantly disappeared. But as I did for my first meet, I got in my own head when going up to the scorers table to make my second attempt. The plan was for 185/408 or being conservative at 182.5/403, but ended up at 180 and this is where the wheels wobbled. Second attempt was 397 and felt pretty okay. This was another meet PR. Third attempt was 187.5/413 and the wheels fell off. My issue, I think, was not staying on my plan and then not just staying off of it. I should have just stayed conservative here and got a clean lift. Hopefully I will be better at the next meet. Tied for best raw squat at 180kg. BENCH: Warmups for bench was fast...because I'm weak and use light weights. I went 3 for 3 here, which as an improvement over last year where I missed my second attempt. No bench video because poverty bench can't afford recording devices. Opener: 95kg/205lbs Second attempt: 102.5kg/226lbs Third attempt: 105kg/231lbs (Meet & Overall Pause PR) DEADLIFT: Deadlift warmups did not feel especially well due to abnormal warmups. Opened at 375lbs just to make sure I got the first attempt easily and didn't bomb out. Second attempt there is no video but hit 185/408 which is a meet & overall PR. I was a mess. Chalk covered hands and baby powder covered forearms and thighs, I'm the weakest cheater. Third attempt was conservative at 187.5/413, but was a miss. Back started to round and I think I just gave up. RESULTS/WRAP UP: Went 7 for 9 with two complete misses. Ended up getting 4 PRs. Increased my total by 30lbs and increased my squat PR by 20lbs or so. Didn't do nearly as well as I wanted to, especially on squats. Not sure how I placed, as the results are not out yet but I think I came in 4th overall, with the top lifter have an equipped squat and deadlifts in wraps and ended up with a medal. RANDOM THINGS: Masters and youth lifters are still and forever will be the coolest lifters at any meet. 74 year old, 70% blind lifter set a couple of bench world records. 12 year old did the weightlifting meet and then came back and deadlifted. And a 14 year old set multiple world records for all 3 lifts. I was not thinking about competing or seriously lifting weights when I was that age, I was out doing things 12-14 year olds should not be doing, but none of them involved setting records. One lifter flew in from Nigeria to compete, thought that was crazy. Had the day not been so long, I would have participated in the MAS wrestling competition that was held right after MOVING FORWARD: Again I was really happy with this meet experience. I was looking at doing another meet in September that would be more local so the family could finally attend, but that has been pushed up to July. The Sept meet is AAU Worlds and is capped at 300 lifters, July meet is capped at 50. It would seem cruel to have anyone not into lifting sit thru that long of a meet. So the plan is to have a fuck around bodybuilding deload (starting today), run Candito with low training maxes and then run Candito with more accurate maxes.

So, some of you might have noticed it from the previous challenge’s Courtyard thread, right at the very end, and some of you might have not. It’s understandable. Heck, even if you DID see my posts, and the accompanying video, there’s an excellent chance that you still had no idea what was going on. It’s a little bit insane, but it’s my kind of insane... not necessarily anyone else’s. I have an amateur boxing bout this August... in Vegas... in front of 5000 people. The Ellis Show, for those of you who don’t know, is a Monday to Friday, 12pm to 4pm show on Sirius channel Faction 41. A former world-record-breaking skateboarder, he ended up on his buddy Tony Hawk’s radio show a few times, and was popular enough that he got to host his own block of music where everyone discovered that due to decades of devastating drug abuse and absolutely no internal filter, he was INCREDIBLY entertaining when given a microphone. Over the last seven years people have listened to him go from nearly-dead ex-extreme athlete with countless broken bones and worn out joints, to an undefeated MMA fighter, chart-topping metal songwriter and vocalist, loving father and husband and incredibly NSFW entertainer. I credit him as the biggest influence in me dropping close to 80 pounds of weight (my kids were the reason I did it, but it was Ellis that kicked my ass to actually try). Once or twice a year now, he hosts a “comedy fighting extravaganzaâ€, called Ellismania. There’s absolutely ridiculous fights (six-man musical chair fights, Taco vs Pizza, blindfolded shock collar fights, Master Blaster fights where four people are DUCT TAPED TOGETHER and made to fight another four-man robot, and so on) and really incredible real fights (Brian Deegan vs Dave Mirra, Jason Ellis vs ex-UFC star Gabe Bruediger (who lost... twice), Kit Cope vs Mayhem Miller, etc). ... I could go on for pages and pages about this. It’s pretty ridiculous. And it’s a dream come true. ... So, to get back to THIS challenge: this is a Biggest Loser fight that I’m in, so I am in a competition with a dozen other guys to see who can lose the most weight before Ellismania. A lot of the guys are bigger than me, and they’re pro-wrestlers, or rig pigs, or bouncers... they’re stronger than me, and probably tougher than me. I’ve got a long way to go. There’s not many Ellis gifs I could use to accompany my challenge, and I’ve been stockpiling some specific kinds of gifs for weeks, so the gears are going to downshift slightly from X-rated fist-punching insanity to... Adventure Time! Thrillho’s Whistling Choir Death Match Championship Challenge #1 - Use Your Karate Biz! (combat) Now I really, really do have a good reason to keep up with my fisticuffs training... I’ve got some upcoming fisticuffs! The exact details of this will still need to be worked out, since the boxing gym at the Sports Centre is still almost always busy during the rare times I get to go in there, so I will be using the (less awesome) punching bag in my basement. Right now, it’s: three 30-minute boxing sessions, per week. Challenge #2 - The Baby-Eating Fox, And The Babies! And since this is a Biggest Loser fight, I need to lose weight. I’ve probably gotta lose about 30 lbs to be in a good running for the Final Four. 16 weeks, 2 lbs per week, I can probably pull that off, but it’s really going to be a bit of a hardcore experience for me. And you know what? I need that. I need this. I really need something in the back of my head, yelling at me to stop sneaking chocolate chips, stop sneaking ‘real’ pop, stop eating Power Bars when I could get the same protein from a little bit of cottage cheese or peanut butter. Stop BREADING everything. You don’t need fries. This is your chance at ridiculous televised glory. There’s no set ‘achievements’ for this, but every single day I have my little checkmarks on my Shepell Fitness Coach website for ‘portion control’ and ‘vegetable intake’, and my calorie tracker, so it’s just... stick to this. HARD. Challenge #3 - Running Is Evil! For the weight loss itself, it’s not just diet, it’s exercise. Boxing is all well and good, but I need more than that. I need WHOLE BODY workouts, especially jogging. The snow is almost gone, the gravel and sand is getting cleaned up, and the sun comes up at 6:45 am now, so it’s easily light enough to jog in the mornings on days I don’t go to the gym, and I can jog at night now. That’s been my habit lately: “Damn, we’re out of eggs. I’m jogging to the store!†My fitbit records my steps, and my goals are “5000 on non-gym days, 10,000 on gym daysâ€. I want to up that to 6000 and 12000 for this challenge. There’s going to be a lot more jogging going on here. Challenge #4 - I Can Dance Like A Man! My fitness coach said that, considering my size and everything I’m trying to do, I really need to stretch a lot more. 15 minutes per day, EVERY day, even on rest days. I hate stretching, because I suck at it, but I used to be able to drop into full Van Damme splits back when I was sempei. I miss that... and I want to do that in front of 5000 people this August. I need to do 15 minutes of stretching, every morning, gym AND non-gym days. Bonus Challenge - The Glasses Of Nerdicon! Over the next six weeks, read my “Music Theory†e-book, and one of my Adobe CC “Classroom In A Book†e-books (the exact one to be determined... either Flash or Photoshop).