Nymeria joins the Quidditch team

[Nymeria]

I'm continuing my studies at Hogwarts, with many of the same themes.  Hopefully, this time I don't pull a 3rd year Hermione and bite off more than I can chew.

 

New Classes:

 

Herbology:  Goal is one new cooking recipe each week.  Also, evening snack must include a veggie.  I'm hoping to reduce and make my snacking healthier, and add a little bit more excitement to my diet.  

 

Arithmancy:

Goal: Complete the entire 3rd problem set 8 problems selected from the 3rd problem set on cryptopals.com or from projecteuler.net (difficulty rating must be 40% or higher).  Complete at least 3 more chapters in my crypto book, along with the corresponding problem sets.

 

History of Magic:   This is where I'm putting my sleep goal.   Sleep has been terrible lately, so I'm going to revisit some tried and true methods of improving my sleep.  Drink tea and stop eating at 9:00.  Reading only after 10:00.  

 

And, here's the meat of my challenge:  I'm joining the Quidditch team, and I'm determined to win the Quidditch cup.  Quidditch is largely going to represent my (flying) goals of parkour and now silks classes.  I'm also going to gain points for any supplemental activities that support parkour or silks.

 

Gryffindor (courage): + 10 points for every new flow or new thing attempted at parkour.  +10 points for doing anything at the parkour gym that scares me.  + 10 points for doing anything at a greater height than I normally would.

Ravenclaw (intelligence): + 10 points for drilling down into techniques at parkour or silks class.  + 20 points for any home reviews of technique.

Hufflepuff (kindness (to my body)): + 20 points for any yoga or mobility work.  I'm not flexible, and it's hurting my performance at the parkour gym.

Slytherin (nastiness): + 20 points for strength workouts.

 

The goal is to net 200 points in each, and see which house wins the cup!  

 

 

 

 

 

[Elastigirl]

First! And loving the idea of seeing which team wins the cup

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

#teamhufflepuff 

Following along again.

 

[Terra]

Love your house cup challenge...  Which house do you want to win???  

[Wild Wolf]

Gotta go with #TeamGryffindor here . Quidditch will always be apart of my life...I did break my shoulder playing it IRL afterall, lol. Love the new challenge, Nymeria. Keep it up!

 

 

Wolf

[Charlie_Quinn]

Following of course.

I love that you put Slytherin's quality as nastiness! The sorting hat might as well have just said "you're a bit of a git. Slytherin for you!"

[Morag]

Silks, parcour, hufflepuff... yeah, I'm in.

I'll try to keep up, we'll see how it goes. I can't just only ever follow the same few people. There is so much awesomeness right here.



---

Stay strong. Dream true. Walk tall.
-- Charles de Lint

[Nymeria]

I'm glad the challenge hasn't started, since my workouts over the last two days have been a bit underwhelming.  Monday, I took a nice walk, and did 20 minutes of broga.  Today, I did a 20 minute cardio and strength module and another big walk.  A large reason I've been taking it easy is that I'm still quite sore from Saturday.

 

Saturday, we worked on Kong-precision jumps (a kong where you land on an obstacle behind the vault box.  We used a folded crash mat as the landing obstacle.)  I felt like I was doing fairly well with these, but I somehow got really off with my timing and then ate it hard on the vault.  It was a pretty epic parkour fail.  Like, my whole body snagged, my back was bent pretty severely, and I face planted.  Somehow, I ended up being completely fine, though (yay, crash mats).  After parkour, I did silks class, which was all strength and conditioning.  We learned a lot of cool moves, but it was complete murder on my grip, forearms, and core.  I'm planning on doing parkour open gym tomorrow, so I hope my forearms, hips, and lower back are feeling a bit better.  

[Raxie]

Wow your challenge set up is so cool! I love the whole which house will win set up, without putting any pressure on it as long as it's 200 points.  Really fun!

[Nymeria]

I'm glad I still have time before the challenge starts.   I'll probably start on Saturday, though, so I can count a parkour day!

 

Wednesday, parkour open gym kind of sucked.  I didn't have much space to work on the things I wanted to work on, and I'm having some sort of mental block with my wall runs.  I did manage to scale the still under construction warped wall at the gym, but then my bubble was burst when I learned that it is only 11 feet high (so far).  I'm also wondering whether some of the parkour sucking is due to weight gain.  I'm up about 10 lbs from where I was last summer/fall, and I'm sure that's throwing a lot of things off.  I feel like I'm just not getting the jumps or pushes I did in the past.   Either way, I'm sure I managed a decent cardio and strength workout, even if it was really frustrating.  

 

Today, I did a mini tabata session, then some silks strength and skills stuff, and then broga.  I'm going to think pretty hard about some mini silks workouts I can do using my basement rig.  Eating is slowly coming back under control.  At least with any luck, I'll start to see a little bit of weight loss soon.  

[NightWatcher13]

 *Waves from the Slytherin stands* Good luck!!!!!! I love the Hogwarts theme here \

Wow, silks look like so much fun but also seem like they'd be really hard

[Nymeria]

On 2/8/2018 at 7:56 PM, NightWatcher13 said:

Wow, silks look like so much fun but also seem like they'd be really hard

 

I'm really fortunate from doing rock climbing and parkour for several years beforehand.  The learning curve seems very steep if you start without having the upper body, core, and grip strength for the moves.  

 

I'm going to start my challenge today, since it's a parkour and silks day!  Gryffindor should hopefully be scoring some points.  

[Nymeria]

Quidditch cup results:

+50 points for Gryffindor. 

+10 points for Ravenclaw

 

Gryffindor points: Parkour class involved some tacs and laches at height.  I successfully did a jumping lache on rails 10' off of the ground, a cat leap from a rail to a wall, and a wall run tac to a pole grab (pole 9-10' off the ground).  All of these were high and fairly scary, but I did them anyway.  Also, at silks class, I climbed all the way to the top of the fixture, and I took a few of my moves to 6' off the ground (you climb up a bit, do a foot lock completely in the air, do the moves, and hope you don't fall.  )

 

Ravenclaw points: At silks class, I spent a lot of time drilling down into how to do footlocks in the air without using any hands. 

 

So, the longer review is: Parkour was awesome.  I was worried that since I had a horrible wall practice on Wednesday, I would suck today.  I didn't do any wall runs, but everything else was great!  I landed my laches, cleaned up my techniques, nailed a few high vertical wall to vertical wall cat to cats, and otherwise things were awesome.  Silks were a bit more subdued, since it was a huge class and I had to share my silk with 2 other people.  I learned a lot of new moves, but I'm also feeling like I'm getting a bit of whiplash from learning too many moves but not having sufficient time to drill them into muscle memory.  

 

Tomorrow, I'll have to make a point of looking through recipes for something interesting to try.  I just discovered today that the kids actually like red curry, so this might open a few doors.   

 

[Xena]

Your parkour practice sounds awesome!

 

(Go Ravenclaw!)

[Nymeria]

Today: 20 points for Ravenclaw  10 points for Hufflepuff.  

I did a home silks workout, and while I'm having trouble uploading and sharing photos, I can share the link for my (new) nerd fitness photo album. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/4DT5h9VKdgB5M42K2  Both of these were moves that we worked on in class yesterday, and fortunately, they are still possible to do in my basement.     I also did a short stretching session, and made the executive decision that I get 10 points for short sessions and 20 for long ones.  And I did KB swings for the mini.  I have to work on my technique quite a bit, since I tend to avoid straining my hamstrings.  

 

The challenge is still young, but the eating seems to be going well.  I'm looking into various recipes using broccoli slaw for my first cooking experiment of the week, mostly since I have a bag of it that I need to use soon.  Any ideas or cool recipes?  I honestly slept pretty horribly last night, but I did all of the right things.  I just have to be patient and try to get my sleep under control.  A lot of the problem is that my Saturdays tend to be very overstimulating, and then I can't shut down my brain enough to fall asleep.  

 

Current standings: Gryffindor: +50 points; Ravenclaw + 30, Hufflepuff +10, Slytherin +0.  Good thing I'm planning on strength work tomorrow.   I'm also planning on sometimes double tapping for my points.  Like, if I do a broga session, I'm counting it as both strength (Slytherin) and stretching (Hufflepuff). 

[Elastigirl]

Such pretty stretching moves with the silks

[Nymeria]

The theme of today is...  Slamming it for Slytherin.

 

For strength work, I completely changed gears away from little modules and instead am keeping it simple.  I have a list of arm exercises, a list of leg ones, a list of core, a list of conditioning, and a (small) list of hip hinge.  I need to pick 3 arm, 3 leg, 2 core, 2 conditioning, and 1 hip hinge, and then do 3 sets of those exercises. It ended up working pretty well.  Today I did: (some were first set, second set, third set)

Arms: Ring rows (but using the silks), push ups (regular, diamond, pause), accessory set (skull crushers, DB fly, lateral raises)

Legs: Deep squats, cossack squats, calf raises

Core: straddle leg raises (on silks); Russian twists

Conditioning: High knees; mountain climbers

Hip Hinge: KB swings, for obvious reasons.  

 

I followed this with 15 minutes of stretching.  I actually intended to do 30, but felt kind of queasy halfway through the yoga program.  

 

So, +30 points for Slytherin, and +10 for Hufflepuff.  

Current Standings: Gryffindor: 50 points; RavenClaw and Slytherin: 30 points; Hufflepuff: 20 points

 

Herbology is fine so far, and I'm succeeding with this one.  

Arithmancy: I finished a chapter in my cryptography book, but I haven't done any of the problems or started any of my required computer programs.  

History of Magic: I failed to "fall asleep in class", since I stayed up too late watching the Olympics.    I'm going to have to ramp up the discipline, because I ended up sleeping horribly after all of that.  

 

15 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Such pretty stretching moves with the silks

Thanks!   Have you hit the mines yet?  It should be right up your alley.

 

[Elastigirl]

11 minutes ago, Nymeria said:

hanks!   Have you hit the mines yet?  It should be right up your alley.

I know, so excited for this week's mini. I start today.

[raptron]

I LOVE THIS STRUCTURE. 

Have you had those silks in your workout room for a while or are they a more recent addition? 

[Wild Wolf]

On 2/10/2018 at 5:13 PM, Nymeria said:

Gryffindor points: Parkour class involved some tacs and laches at height.  I successfully did a jumping lache on rails 10' off of the ground, a cat leap from a rail to a wall, and a wall run tac to a pole grab (pole 9-10' off the ground).  All of these were high and fairly scary, but I did them anyway

 

Dayum! Making me proud!! Get it, Nym!

 

...also, #Gryffindor

 

Wolf

[Nymeria]

Tuesday update:

Herbology: Great!  

Arithmancy: Major progress here.  I finished a cryptopals problem, and I'm also nearly finished with a project Euler one.   

History of Magic: I did everything right, but woke up with some hot flashes.  I think I'm starting perimenopause.  Blah.  

 

Quidditch: + 10 points for Hufflepuff.  I completed one of my 30 minute yoga programs.  

 

Current Standings:  Gryffindor is winning with 50, and everyone else is tied right now with 30.  Keep in mind, though, that most of my Gryffindor points can only be earned on Saturday, so the other houses will probably overtake Gryffindor before the weekend.  

 

[Nymeria]

On 2/12/2018 at 11:14 AM, Elastigirl said:

I know, so excited for this week's mini. I start today.

 

You're such a KB beast!  

 

On 2/12/2018 at 12:09 PM, raptron said:

I LOVE THIS STRUCTURE. 

Have you had those silks in your workout room for a while or are they a more recent addition? 

 

I've had them for about 2 years, but they've mostly been a toy for the kids (who have taken silks classes for about that long).  They're too short to do many moves, but they are okay for others.  

 

On 2/12/2018 at 1:25 PM, Wolfpool said:

 

Dayum! Making me proud!! Get it, Nym!

 

...also, #Gryffindor

 

Wolf

 

Thanks!

[Nymeria]

Wednesday update:

 

I'm checking into the hospital wing today.  I seem to have caught whatever sinus bug is going around, so I feel woozy and have a splitting headache.  At least I no longer have any fever chills.  Blah.  I was hoping to strength train today.  I may still give myself some hufflepuff points for letting my body rest and heal.  

[NightWatcher13]

1 hour ago, Nymeria said:

Wednesday update:

 

I'm checking into the hospital wing today.  I seem to have caught whatever sinus bug is going around, so I feel woozy and have a splitting headache.  At least I no longer have any fever chills.  Blah.  I was hoping to strength train today.  I may still give myself some hufflepuff points for letting my body rest and heal.  

I hope you feel better soon; hopefully Madame Pomfrey can make your potion taste like pumpkin juice (or chicken noodle)

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Heal up as quickly as you can. Hufflepuffs make the best healers, I'd say giving yourself some Hufflepoints is fair.