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Ok, seriously. If you haven't seen Avengers: Infinity War and you don't like spoilers ....... move along ....

So I'm building from my critical roll last challenge. It is time for the Avenger in me to Assemble! Cause I'm a bit of comic geek and hey I wanted a fun theme Quest 1 : Run like QuickSilver (Sta+3) Like Quicksilver I'm a runner first so I need to keep that going. I want to be accountable for my midweek and long runs as well as push myself to get to my sub-2 hour half marathon goal come November. Midweek runs I want to run at around 9m10s pace and/or long runs I'd like to keep under a 10 minute pace. I'm realistic about this and know I'll have a bad run or two in the mix so I'm going to give myself a bit of leyway and say that if I hit either of these run it'll count. A : 5 runs at goal pace B : 4 runs at goal pace F : less than 4 runs at goal pace Quest 2 : Get Black Widow's Flexibility (Dex+3, Con+1) I'm not Russian spy assassin (I leave that to starsapart), but I respect the flexibility that Black Widow has. Building on my previous stretching challenge, I'm going to add a bit of yoga to my life. Once a week I'm going to do a yoda flow/routine to help prevent injury and increase my flexibility. A : 6 times B : 5 times F : 4 times Quest 3 : HULKBUSTER Smash Diet (Wis+1) Booze and sweets have been creeping back into my diet and like Tony dealing with the Hulk I need to smash this right in the face. I know I'm not going to remove all the bad overnight but I've got to get myself into a better place. So I'm going to talk with the wife about working towards cleaning up the diet. I'll fill in the goals and such after said talk. UPDATE The wife and I talked and we decided that after we get back from Austin (this comign weekend) we'll refocus on the fooding. We're going to start doing Sunday meal preps like so many do round here. As this is our first time really doing this i'm going to allow for a week of it JUST not happening ... cause well life. A : 4 weeks of meal prep B : 3 weeks of meal prep F : 2 or less weeks of meal prep Life Quest : Create a Vision (+2 Wis, +1 Chr) Unlike Ultron I don't want to upload my conscious to an advanced robot ... but I do want to get back into my photography as my camera has been gathering dust for far too long. I'm going to start going back to group photo shoots and doing my work photog'ing again so I'll be posting pictures! A : 6 photos posted B : 5 photos posted F : 4 photos posted

Here lies my workout battle log!!! "Operation Avenger" is something I started in my head about a month ago but was touch-and-go with for the first two weeks. I want to collect all the Funko Pop! Avenger bobbleheads, but can't really justify just purchasing all of them. So Operation Avenger is my reward system! Whenever I go down on the scale by five pounds (reward scale subject to change as I get more involved in strength training), I get to buy the next bobblehead! I started with Captain America, and he's proudly sitting on my desk at work. (Shut up, Steve, you know you like it up there with my stapler) Next one will be Black Widow. Because BAMF. Aside from the beauty of bobbleheads, though, Operation Avenger is also a silly-wonderful-geeky way to label my road to superhero fitness. Get stronger. Faster. Better. Time to level up.

As always, I'll be logging all of my parkour classes, rock climbing sessions, hand balancing, yoga, swimming, and all of the stuff I normally do. But, the main focus of this challenge is actually controlling my headspace, not being too much of a perfectionist, and just taking joy in all of the fun stuff that I'm doing. 1. Be mighty like Thor and the Hulk - If I ever want to be able to do large sets of pull ups or even reach a muscle up one day, I need to give my pull ups a little more care and attention. For the most part, I've been just getting my pull exercise through climbing, parkour class, and messing around at the playground. Goal: Pull ups after every climbing session using the rock holds. A total of 3 pull up sessions/week, with a full session filling out any remaining ones after the post-climbing pulls. 2. Be agile like Black Widow: To be agile, I need to be more flexible. Goal is to do splits progression stretches (low lunge, half monkey sequence) + pancake 3x /week. 3. Take aim like Hawkeye Goal: archer stretches and shoulder dislocates 3x/week to keep my shoulders nice and healthy. 4. Be industrious like Iron Man I waste too much time on my phone. This will only get worse when the kids are out of school and underfoot all day. I don't want myself or the kids to be lazy lumps. So, the goal is to spend more time reading, drawing, playing the piano, practicing German, cooking, cleaning, or other productive tasks rather than being lazy. If possible, I need to turn these into family activities. 5. Be virtuous like Captain America. The Cap wants me to watch my language. Goal is to do 20 burpees as punishment (or if my leg isn't up to it, do V-ups) every time I use a "naughty word" in front of my kids. Since I hate burpees, this will hopefully encourage me to clean up the language a bit. 6. Defeat Quicksilver To defeat Quicksilver, I need to be fast. To be fast, I need my knee and leg to function properly once again (had ACL reconstruction 16 months ago. Still dealing with IT Band syndrome by throwing myself into too much parkour too soon). Goal is to do my leg prehab routine (hip opener stretches, calf stretches, quad stretch, IT band rolling) every day and my PT strengthening stuff (lateral band walks, one leg squats, clams) 3x/week. 7. Defeat the Scarlet Witch I've really been struggling with controlling my headspace lately, and at times, my anxiety has been out of control. To keep myself better balanced emotionally, I'm going to aim for these two rules: a. No office visits with Dr. Google. If I'm that concerned about something, I need to see an actual doctor rather than make myself paranoid after symptom searching on the internet. b. If I'm in a bad place mentally, I need to do one of my headspace balancing activities, like: yoga, walking outdoors, mindless household chores, or comfort reading, rather than sitting around, brooding, and making it all worse. 8. Defeat Ultron - In Ultron's view, if humanity can't be perfect, it should be destroyed. I often fall into the same trap of expecting too much perfection from myself and becoming too negative as a result. Rather than being down on myself because I couldn't execute whatever move in parkour class or couldn't send whatever route when climbing, I want to just stop comparing myself to others, stop letting myself get overly frustrated, and instead just take joy in what I'm doing. It doesn't need to be perfect. Instead, I just need to be having fun. Whew. 8 goals sounds like a lot, but basically I just need to do 5 minutes of PT every day, have a session 3x/week where I do splits stretches, shoulder stretches, and PT strength, do more pull ups, stop swearing, and adjust my thought process a bit. So really it's not so much. I don't have a set schedule, but generally it'll be: -parkour class and/or parent& child aerial silks - 2x/week (will probably be 2 hours of parkour one day and silks another day) -climbing + swimming 2-3x/week. In the summer, we like climbing for an hour, followed by swimming for an hour. -home yoga when I feel like it. I'm also going to be on a 1 week vacation right in the middle of the challenge. I haven't yet decided how I'm going to handle that with my goals.

So, I’m just a little excited for the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron in a matter of weeks! As I was going back over some old 6 week challenges, I was reminded of Steve’s blog post about the Avengers from 2012. This led me to some of his other posts about becoming a superhero: How To Become A Superhero In 4 Easy StepsHow to Create Your Own Super PowerCombining my excitement about Age of Ultron with my desire to be a superhero, I shall become tenaciousglee: The Skinniest Avenger! Before I can take my place among Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, I need to hone my body and skills to be more like them. As such, here are my goals for this challenge: Goal 1 - posture as straight and true as Hawkeye’s aim As most desk jockeys do, I often find myself hunched over my keyboard, or sometimes just beating my head against my desk. I also find myself slouching when I stand, so I want to improve my posture. I am going to attack this goal by completing daily posture exercises (tracked on HabitRPG). Hat tip to Phayze for the exercise suggestions and push to join HabitRPG.I also recently discovered the site Bony to Beastly, where they are all about fixing posture to improve not only your appearance, but also your muscle-building ability!Goal 2 - the neighborhood friendliness of Spiderman While I would love to crawl on walls and swing between buildings, that powerset still eludes me. So how does a non-web-slinger get around the neighborhood? Walking! My reason for making this a challenge goal is to build the habit and also because walking is a good way to burn calories without catabolizing my precious muscle. I’m stealing a page out of Waldo’s book for this one. He always seemed to walk regardless of whether he was bulking or cutting I’m going to track my steps with my UP by Jawbone wristband with a goal of 30,000 steps per week. It’s a little over 4,000 steps a day, but I’m still a desk jockey and trying to start small to build the habit. My plan is to either walk 15 minutes on my lunch break, or potentially after work with the kiddos to boost my numbers.Goal 3 - the genius-level intellect, mystery-solving ability, and body recomposition powers of Ant-Man/Giant Man/Hank Pym My longtime goal has been to pack some muscle on my skinny frame and that’s not about to change. I’ve been trying to eat above maintenance calories for the last few months, but I have been slack about tracking my calories. I’d like to pack on 5-6 pounds over the next six weeks, so that means 500 extra calories a day, or some variation to get to a surplus of 3500 calories per week.As for imitating Hank Pym’s intellect and mystery-solving ability, I’m going to continue to analyze the data I’ve collected over my past 19 challenges to look for patterns of what worked and what didn’t as I tried to gain weight or get lean. I’d like to have the ability to know what needs to be done diet/exercise wise based on my goal at any given time.Goal 4 - the indomitable spirit of Captain America I’ve been fighting a bit of burnout at work and it carries over to my home life as well. I’ve been working on a project for almost 18 months now and we’re already 3 months past our original Go-Live date and struggling to pin down a new Go-Live date. There are a lot of reasons to be stressed out.So my goal is to shift my focus from things that are stressing me out to things that make me happy. My plan is to list at least one thing by the end of the day that has gone well, either something positive at work, or something that I enjoyed about my kids or my wife that day. I’ll be tracking this in HabitRPG as well.I’ll be working out 3 days a week, following a modification of the Avengers workout from Steve’s article. I’ll do the A and B days on Monday and Friday, with a bodyweight progression day on Wednesday. Trying to keep everything simple: push, pull, legs, core. On a final note, I'm succumbing to peer pressure from my last challenge and posting this in the Assassin's guild instead of the Rangers because so many of my NF buddies are now Assassins. I'm looking forward to seeing what all of you are up to this challenge!

You blink, uncertain of your whereabouts. Waking has never been so disorienting, especially since the Serum. Normally, you jump straight out of bed with the energy of a million suns. This morning feels like a morning following 50,000 nights - and as you become aware of your body (so slowly aware... such a strange feeling) you realize your body also feels the weight of 50,000 nights. Your need for the 3S routine that comprises the morning of any active duty solider has never felt so intense - you may die if you don't get to shower, shave, and sh... well anyway, you could really use some hygiene time. ------------------------------------------------ We're all guilty of it. Between work, interests, family, and trying to stay fit, we might let an extra day slip by without a shower. Maybe some of us get forgetful on those simple little tasks like brushing, flossing, or deodorizing. Maybe we're good on the basics but would benefit from an extra five minutes of hair styling in the morning, or trimming the mustache and nose hairs regularly. This week, pick one of these details and focus on doing it with the regularity you think you should, or just get it done this week if it's a "once in a while" thing you've been putting off. If it's personal and you'd rather not tell us what the thing you're forgetful of is, that's okay. Just tell us you're in and let us know if you were successful or not. Take stock of how long this thing actually took and remind yourself of it next time you procrastinate. (For instance, I sometimes leave for work without make up because I think it will make me late. I timed it - my normal make up takes about 3 minutes. That's not why I'm late!!) --------------------------------------------------------- We need Emcees for this Challenge's Mini set! My challenge is based on a little snippet of a Captain America story - our mini's will all focus on an Avenger this go around. For the sake of ease I've chosen "movie" Avengers for the list below, but if you want to Emcee based on a "comics" Avenger, that's okay, just alter as needed in the list when you repost. Copy/Paste the list below with your name beside the week you want into a new post Week One: Captain America - Kailer Week Two: Bruce Banner/The Hulk - [Your Name Here] Week Three: Thor - [Your Name Here] Week Four: Tony Stark/Iron Man - [Your Name Here] Week Five: Hawkeye/Black Widow (dealer's choice) - [Your Name Here] Week Six: Nick Fury/Agent Phil Coulson (yes, his first name is Phil) (dealer's choice) - [Your Name Here]

Hi all, My name is Chris and I am new to the Nerd Fitness community. I am looking for a support team to back me up on my endeavors! First, a little bit of my story up until recently. While going to high school and being an all around teenager, I suffered from depression. This led me to drop out of high school, work crummy jobs through my twenties, gain a lot of weight, and never finish college. When my Grandma passed away when I was 13, I never realized how much it had affected me. I had gone down a path of depression. Until a few years ago I decided enough was enough. I decided to go back to college, dropped fifty pounds, took up weight lifting, and running, made new friends, got back in touch with old ones, took the Fire Fighter exam in my state (NY), branched out to new jobs like teaching, and read tons of self help books. Until recently it all seems to have fallen apart. I quit my job in November because I hated it, my girlfriend dumped me a few weeks later, and I had a hold on my account at college so I missed a full year. Not to mention my sister tried to commit suicide in December. So far I am back in college after fighting the hold on my account and looking for work all of the time. I am diving back into fitness heavy like before as well. All-in-all I am looking for some people to be on my team, and help me while I help them. If anyone is interested please email me/IM me at csouter02@gmail.com or contact me on here. Thanks guys!