Mad Hatter's tea party

[Mad Hatter]

For the ones that already know me - OHAI!  

 

 

For the ones that don't - Yay, glad you're here! I'm a dabbler in all the shiny assassiny things like circus and pole and climbing. Some say I get easily distracted -SQUIRREL!

 

 

Oh uhmm... yeah they're probably right. But that won't stop me from DOING ALL THE THINGS (badly).

I'll add some more goal type thingies when I feel like it, but for now I want to take off the challenge pressure and just hang out here in this battle log. Hope you're cool with that.  

[Mad Hatter]

Mini goals

TBA!

 

Rants and discussions

Mobility vs flexibility: https://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/104429-mad-hatters-tea-party/&page=3&tab=comments#comment-2287119

 

[Mad Hatter]

Friday 10 Nov

 

Backbends - for the first time in forever.  Trying really hard to not judge myself for the flexibility that I've lost, but it felt good to get started again.

 

Saturday 11 Nov

 

Cliiiimbing! I managed all of 10 easy ladders before my rib got cranky... And my headspace when it comes to climbing is SUCH a mess. It was bad enough after my finger injury but now my confidence is completely shattered.  I'm so tense and so awkward on the wall I'm climbing at max 20% of my capability. Once my rib is healed I'll really need to do something about it because it sucks the joy out of it and I can't have that.

 

After that climbing disaster we had dinner with the whole gang and it was awesome! I've really missed hanging out with all of them! It also gave me an opportunity to have a good chat about the rib with my physio friend. Obviously it's not an official diagnosis but what she thinks is going on is that my initial injury has more or less healed, but now I have a tendinopathy to deal with. Because I have good range of movement in backbends it's probably not my rib or intercostals as I initially thought but more likely that I strained one of the abdominal muscles. It's hard to tell exactly what it is because there are lot of muscle attachments in the area. Either way it doesn't really matter. What matter is that it's safe to load, in a progressive way. In fact her prescription was to do handstands.  Now that's how you can tell someone's an awesome physio.  

[WhiteGhost]

Following you here for sure  

[Echoceanic]

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Backbends - for the first time in forever.

 

Oh my god, I remember when I could do backbends. I was in middle school, and then for some reason I lost all my arm strength and couldn't life my weight up well enough to stay in the position, and now I am less flexible too. I am looking forward to seeing how you do it.

[RogueLibrarian]

Following!

[sylph]

Here of course.

[KB Girl]

I like tea! and I like your physio friend! 

 

Bit late, so I'll refrain from commenting, but I hope you're feeling good about the show decision. I think the language thing is really shitty (ok I'm commenting), the only complaints I've ever gotten here is that everyone will insist on speaking English and therefor people can't learn. Not that you'd want to learn dutch anyway, imho. But you did sound like you had a lot on your plate and despite the fun of the actual performance.. everything together didn't sound worth it. 

So.. I hope you're feeling good about it and I hope you'll find a better road to performance next time

[SymphonicDan]

Ooh, a tea party? I brought some cupcakes

[Mad Hatter]

19 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Following you here for sure  

Awesome!

 

17 hours ago, Echocheanic said:

Oh my god, I remember when I could do backbends. I was in middle school, and then for some reason I lost all my arm strength and couldn't life my weight up well enough to stay in the position, and now I am less flexible too. I am looking forward to seeing how you do it.

For most people it's the lack of mobility that makes it really hard to push up, not the strength. But it's definitely possible to get back!  

 

I can still do them, but I've gone from being able to touch my heals (a year ago or so?) to looking like a table... Too much sitting and too little circusing.  Hope I can change that! 

 

Also HI and welcome! 

 

16 hours ago, RogueLibrarian said:

Following!

Awesome!

 

14 hours ago, sylph said:

Here of course.

Yay!

 

8 hours ago, KB Girl said:

I like tea! and I like your physio friend! 

 

Bit late, so I'll refrain from commenting, but I hope you're feeling good about the show decision. I think the language thing is really shitty (ok I'm commenting), the only complaints I've ever gotten here is that everyone will insist on speaking English and therefor people can't learn. Not that you'd want to learn dutch anyway, imho. But you did sound like you had a lot on your plate and despite the fun of the actual performance.. everything together didn't sound worth it. 

So.. I hope you're feeling good about it and I hope you'll find a better road to performance next time

Yeah this must've been the first time I've ever got something fun prescribed from a physio.  

 

I can understand that complaint, learning the local language in countries like the Netherlands or Finland is really hard as most people speak such good English! And usually don't mind speaking it... Still, it's much better to have it that way round! 

 

What's it like at your gym? Do you have any expats?

 

4 hours ago, SymphonicDan said:

Ooh, a tea party? I brought some cupcakes

YUM!  

[Mad Hatter]

Sunday 12 Nov

 

Nothing exciting, went for a long walk and tested a couple of handstands. I'm super wobbly, not just back and forth regular handstand wobbliness, but also side to side wobbliness. It got better after a few attempts, but I seem to have a bit of motor control issues right now. Of course warming up and doing wall drills would've helped.  

[LouCarJo]

I've just stumbled upon you here!  I'm so happy for you that you had a nice post-climbing session with your friends!  And good news that the injury won't prevent handstand practice :-).

[KB Girl]

9 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

What's it like at your gym? Do you have any expats?

Not at the moment.. well we have two people from Germany but they speak dutch so it doesn't really count... and they still live in Germany,  it's only a 20 minute drive

We're such a small town, so it's not something we'd see regularly. But in my circle of friends there are a lot of expat girls. One from Sweden, one from Slovakia and someone from Scotland. I think we're usually really good about all switching to English, even for the group conversations. But maybe I should ask them how they experience it. 

[Echoceanic]

12 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

For most people it's the lack of mobility that makes it really hard to push up, not the strength. But it's definitely possible to get back!  

 

I could and can do it if I just use my head instead of my arms, though I don't look like a circle anymore, but it gives me a headache.  

[WhiteGhost]

19 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

For most people it's the lack of mobility that makes it really hard to push up, not the strength. But it's definitely possible to get back!  

 

I can still do them, but I've gone from being able to touch my heals (a year ago or so?) to looking like a table... Too much sitting and too little circusing.  Hope I can change that! 

I can push up from the floor into a bridge (table) but wouldn't dare trying to fall backwards into the position yet.  Nowhere close to reaching my heels either.  Definitely a flexibility issue for me!

[Mad Hatter]

23 hours ago, LouCarJo said:

I've just stumbled upon you here!  I'm so happy for you that you had a nice post-climbing session with your friends!  And good news that the injury won't prevent handstand practice :-).

Yeah hopefully that will put me back in the habit of working on them again.  

 

17 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Not at the moment.. well we have two people from Germany but they speak dutch so it doesn't really count... and they still live in Germany,  it's only a 20 minute drive

We're such a small town, so it's not something we'd see regularly. But in my circle of friends there are a lot of expat girls. One from Sweden, one from Slovakia and someone from Scotland. I think we're usually really good about all switching to English, even for the group conversations. But maybe I should ask them how they experience it. 

Well if you ever do get more international people you'll know what not to do.  Not that I would expect you to do anything but be welcoming and inclusive!  

 

It's cool that you have such an international bunch of friends. And since you still are friends I expect that you do just fine with how you communicate.  

 

14 hours ago, Echocheanic said:

I could and can do it if I just use my head instead of my arms, though I don't look like a circle anymore, but it gives me a headache.  

Haha, maybe better stay away from them for now then.  

 

6 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I can push up from the floor into a bridge (table) but wouldn't dare trying to fall backwards into the position yet.  Nowhere close to reaching my heels either.  Definitely a flexibility issue for me!

Well falling into backbends is not something I'd recommend.  It should always be a controlled movement. It's not actually that hard but it's a quite technical movement and requires a fair amount of flexibility to do properly.

[Lara]

Yay for backbendings! And tea! And hanging out with friends!

[Mad Hatter]

Monday 13 Nov

 

Stretched my hamstrings in the morning, that's about it. I'm experimenting with shifting my sleeping patterns but at the moment my body's just confused.  What I'm trying to do is to wake up earlier, with the reasoning that when I get home from work all I want to do is to curl up and read books and eat cookies. Work has been so intense that it's quite often left me drained at the end of the day and the darkness doesn't help. It's not even that I've necessarily been physically tired, it's more like I simply shut down and enter hibernation mode, and then it's soooo hard to motivate myself to do anything strenuous. But maybe if wake up early enough I can do the strenuous things in the morning? That's the idea anyway. The problem there is that the sun doesn't rise until 8:30 so now it feels like it's the middle of the night when I wake up and that makes me want to go back to sleep or at least snuggle up in bed even when I'm not actually tired. As I said, my body's confused.  Could be worth a try though.

[Mad Hatter]

1 hour ago, zenLara said:

Yay for backbendings! And tea! And hanging out with friends!

Yay!

[sylph]

1 hour ago, Mad Hatter said:

Monday 13 Nov

 

Stretched my hamstrings in the morning, that's about it. I'm experimenting with shifting my sleeping patterns but at the moment my body's just confused.  What I'm trying to do is to wake up earlier, with the reasoning that when I get home from work all I want to do is to curl up and read books and eat cookies. Work has been so intense that it's quite often left me drained at the end of the day and the darkness doesn't help. It's not even that I've necessarily been physically tired, it's more like I simply shut down and enter hibernation mode, and then it's soooo hard to motivate myself to do anything strenuous. But maybe if wake up early enough I can do the strenuous things in the morning? That's the idea anyway. The problem there is that the sun doesn't rise until 8:30 so now it feels like it's the middle of the night when I wake up and that makes me want to go back to sleep or at least snuggle up in bed even when I'm not actually tired. As I said, my body's confused.  Could be worth a try though.

I'm not as far north as you, so it's not quite as extreme, but VERY soon it will definitely be at the point where I wake up and go to work in the dark and drive home after work in the dark. It definitely messes with motivation levels. I've been debating a daylight spectrum lamp this year to see if it makes a difference.

 

 

[karinajean]

I'm a big fan of waking up early and getting things done ASAP! I'm not as far north as you are but we are in that period of time where it's dark in the morning and dark after I get off of work, so there's just nothing good to do. Something that helps me is to have a not-super-bright light on my nightstand, and when my alarm goes off I switch on the light so I can start to feel a little more like it's daytime and I should be waking up. I use one of these: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30356409/ and it's just glowy enough to get me going in the morning without being harsh and confrontational.

[Mad Hatter]

1 hour ago, sylph said:

I'm not as far north as you, so it's not quite as extreme, but VERY soon it will definitely be at the point where I wake up and go to work in the dark and drive home after work in the dark. It definitely messes with motivation levels. I've been debating a daylight spectrum lamp this year to see if it makes a difference.

I've had one of those before but I didn't feel it was enough. I felt a bit like a moth, when I was close to the light it was fine, but then I really didn't want to leave my little light sphere and face the darkness.  

 

31 minutes ago, karinajean said:

I'm a big fan of waking up early and getting things done ASAP! I'm not as far north as you are but we are in that period of time where it's dark in the morning and dark after I get off of work, so there's just nothing good to do. Something that helps me is to have a not-super-bright light on my nightstand, and when my alarm goes off I switch on the light so I can start to feel a little more like it's daytime and I should be waking up. I use one of these: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30356409/ and it's just glowy enough to get me going in the morning without being harsh and confrontational.

You were actually the one that got me thinking about it in @zenLara's thread!  Don't get me wrong, I still think you wake up a silly time, but maaaybe it makes some weird sense? Today I lit some candles when I woke up as I found my regular lights way too bright. Especially since my flat was a mess haha.  It wasn't conducive to waking up quickly but it was cozy at least.  I'm thinking that I could have some cozy time (screen free!) and eventually I'll get bored and start doing something? (Not what I have in mind, but today I at least cleaned up said mess. ) I  definitely couldn't force myself to wake up and do things straight out of bed, I'm a sloooow starter at the best of times. 

[raptron]

In for some flexibiliteaaaa.

[Echoceanic]

3 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

What I'm trying to do is to wake up earlier, with the reasoning that when I get home from work all I want to do is to curl up and read books and eat cookies.

 

I suck at waking up early when I don't need to. If i need to go somewhere, my body will wake up at 7-8am no problem, I don't even need coffee, but if I don't, I hit snooze and sleep way more than I should, get a headache and feel like crap. And no amount of sunlight fixes it. So I guess I lack discipline? 

I am not that far north so so far it has been getting dark at 3:30 pm ish here.

[LouCarJo]

On 13/11/2017 at 4:28 PM, KB Girl said:

Not at the moment.. well we have two people from Germany but they speak dutch so it doesn't really count... and they still live in Germany,  it's only a 20 minute drive

We're such a small town, so it's not something we'd see regularly. But in my circle of friends there are a lot of expat girls. One from Sweden, one from Slovakia and someone from Scotland. I think we're usually really good about all switching to English, even for the group conversations. But maybe I should ask them how they experience it. 

I stayed in Germany on the Wallonia border a couple of years ago and was surprised that it was all German one side and all French the other.  I was a good English tourist and spoke their languages though ;-).  We actually stayed in a Dutch hotel where most stuff was written/said in Dutch only - I just about managed to guide my husband round the buffet but had no idea what was being said on a little tractor tour we were taken on after dinner at the middle of which everyone drank some purple liquid - ranks as one of the weirdest experiences of my life!

 

I miss expat friend circles.