Don't Let Raptron in the House

[KB Girl]

4 hours ago, raptron said:

And while being 100% alone in the gym blasting pop bops does not SOUND like a party, it felt a lot like a party. 

Those are the best  

and what a weekend! 

[bigm141414]

8 hours ago, raptron said:

alone in the gym blasting pop bops does not SOUND like a party, it felt a lot like a party. 

 

The Deadlifting Deity delights in dancing demonstrations. It is known.

[raptron]

21 hours ago, AgentsSka said:

And, ugh... that Bruins game was depressing.

FOR REAL. Just because the stakes are low right now doesn't mean we should just not... play hockey.

18 hours ago, miss_marissa said:

That instagram challenge looks fun yet I definitely would be unable to do it # hipflexorssoweak

My hips are still sore -- there were very many takes and keeping the leg up in the walk over was almost impossible after not really training gymnastics for the last several months. 😶

18 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Those are the best  

It felt like such a treat.

13 hours ago, bigm141414 said:

The Deadlifting Deity delights in dancing demonstrations. It is known.

IT IS KNOWN.

 

Okay, it is the challenge now! Cool! 

 

WFH Day 21.1

Work is super busy and will stay super busy because we have a big launch on September 1. I am a bit behind on a couple of projects, which is bad because I'm about to take some time off, so there will be a lot of hustlin' the next few days. The cats woke me up early and wouldn't let me fall back asleep, so after work wrapped, I took a little nap before going through another chapter editing of my friend's mom's scifi manuscript (which counts as reading, of course!). I went to the gym around 7:30 PM and got to work.

 

Squats: 5 x 3 x 255# 

Paused squats: 4 x 4 x 185#

Bench: 2 x 4 x 135#, 2 x 3 x 145#, 2 x 2 x 155# <-- I got a handoff for my top sets and they were 🍰

Single leg RDLs: 4 x 12 x 65# KB

Pull-ups: 2 x 6 and 2 x 5

Toes-to-bar: 4 x 8

 

The front/bottom of my knee felt kind of bad by the end of squats. 😐 But it seems okay today. I'm not excited about the prospect of squats irritating it, but I'm just going to keep tabs on it for now. I ate an easy bro dinner (hot sauce'd canned tuna, blistered green beans, rice), showered, and went to bed around 11-11:30. 

 

Lift: 1/3

Bike: 0/1

Run carefully: 0/2

Green spaces: 0/1 

Get in the water: 0/1

Read 30 minutes: 1/7 days

 

[Mike Wazowski]

Oof, I'm sad that that's how the GC saga has ended. But also, now you have Bike Boi? (I want that to be his nickname and I want it abbreviated BB for...reasons that may or may not have to do with making me giggle).

 

GL on that work hustle - and figuring out how to appease the grumpy knee.

[KB Girl]

8 hours ago, raptron said:

 

 

The front/bottom of my knee felt kind of bad by the end of squats. 😐

Nooo.... ugh. 
 

8 hours ago, raptron said:

I ate an easy bro dinner (hot sauce'd canned tuna, blistered green beans, rice),

Perfect! 

[raptron]

18 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Oof, I'm sad that that's how the GC saga has ended. But also, now you have Bike Boi? (I want that to be his nickname and I want it abbreviated BB for...reasons that may or may not have to do with making me giggle).

Ended is a strong word, but I'm definitely trying to clear up some mental real estate. IT'S NOT EXACTLY WORKING, hahah. We still text a bunch, go to the same gym, and are hanging out again soon. 🤷‍♀️Plus like, all of his life plans are up in the air right now so whoooo knows. 

 

BB is a great acronym for this one. 😂

 

Day 21.2

Got through a lot of good shit at work and was in a good flow around 5 so I stayed working until 6-6:30, which was more to make up for the fact that I had to hang around the vet for an hour and a half around lunch time. My cat had a nasty, wheezing cough in June, so I took him in for a full assessment with bloodwork and all of that, plus they did x-rays and put him on antibiotics ($1200). He seemed to improve a lot, but they wanted to do a follow up 6-8 weeks, so he went in again today for x-rays and a different round of antibiotics as he's not fully clear yet ($500). Why, cat. Why. I wish I could apply these costs to my own health insurance deductible, ha. 

 

Feeling in a better place after churning out some project work, I left for the gym around 7 PM. It's wayyy more quiet on Tuesdays and Thursdays than MWF.

 

ALSO, I maybe pestered our gym owners enough to agree to having gym sign-ups for time slots (with the caveat that no one will be enforcing them because we don't actually have staff), but as we all know, sometimes when you suggest a thing, that means you become responsible for actually implementing it. If you know of good, FREE, class or open gym sign-up software to use, let me know. Picktime is my frontrunner right now but it doesn't do a client-facing calendar view that I can tell.  @KB Girl - I know you linked me one earlier this pandemic, but could you chime in again pretty please? 🙏

 

Anyway, here's wonderwall  my lifts. The reward for having heavy AMRAP deadlifts last week is a lighter deadlift week (with more volume 🙃). I love deficits.

 

Deficit deadlifts: 4 x 5 x 225#

Deadlifts: 4 x 5 x 265#

Close grip bench press: 3 x 10 x 120#

DB rows: 3 x 10 x 40#

Single leg elevated glute bridges: 4 x 25 per side

Dips: 3 x 7

 

I don't consciously try to bulk or cut weight (except an occasional mild water cut before a meet if I'm busting my weight class) FOR VARIOUS MENTAL HEALTH REASONS, but I think I've been at a bit of a surplus lately and that combined with all the upper body work I've been doing (plus the tan, let's be honest) has me looking swole as heck. I may be jacked enough to buy my favorite tank soon: 

 

 

 

Lift: 2/3

Bike: 0/1

Run carefully: 0/2

Green spaces: 0/1 

Get in the water: 0/1

Read 30 minutes: 2/7 days <-- forgot about finishing Bill Buford's Dirt and my library book is due so I am trying to cram it down 

 

Ok, so how am I tackling this goals this week? First off, I'm saving biking, green space, and swimming for the weekend. Secondly, I am planning on jogging today and maybe Friday. I'm lifting again Thursday and maybe Saturday. I still don't know how to lift all the times I want (which is ideally 4x/week) and also jog 2x and bike. That all sounds like a lot. I maybe overreached in setting these. 🤷‍♀️ Plus I'm taking some vacation to stay with a friend next week... Which will definitely include green spaces and water! Maybe biking. Maybe jogging! Maybe lifting! BUT IT IS A LOT OF MAYBES. Week 2 may be a weird one on the books. 

[Mad Hatter]

3 hours ago, raptron said:

I may be jacked enough to buy my favorite tank soon: 

😂😂 You can absolutely rock that.

[Mike Wazowski]

Yessss BB will ride on as a nickname!!

 

Love the ironic tank and the idea of swoletron rocking it! Pics for the ‘gram are a must when it arrives.
 

I have zero idea how it’d work for a gym with multiple people able to sign up for a time slot, but I used calendly to handle scheduling private lessons when I had a buncha kiddos needing makeup lessons and it worked...ok. Definitely not ideal, but miiiight work? GL either way herding the barbell cats!

[sylph]

Could you just use google sheets? or would folks abuse their editing powers?

 

 

 

Looove the idea of 'Tron in that tank.

[KB Girl]

7 hours ago, raptron said:

I know you linked me one earlier this pandemic, but could you chime in again pretty please? 🙏

I linked you ours, my brother made it.. it's a very simple setup, but very effective. I'm sure my brother will let you have the code, but he said it's really ugly, just something he threw together and patched up over the years.. you'd only need to change the hours a bit I think, should be easy enough to figure out? 

[raptron]

19 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

😂😂 You can absolutely rock that.

19 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Love the ironic tank and the idea of swoletron rocking it! Pics for the ‘gram are a must when it arrives.

19 hours ago, sylph said:

Looove the idea of 'Tron in that tank.

Maybe I'll play with the idea of this whole "reward" notion instead of just buying things for myself willy nilly like I normally do. 🤔

 

19 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Yessss BB will ride on as a nickname!!

Haaa. I saw that. 🚲

 

19 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

I have zero idea how it’d work for a gym with multiple people able to sign up for a time slot, but I used calendly to handle scheduling private lessons when I had a buncha kiddos needing makeup lessons and it worked...ok. Definitely not ideal, but miiiight work? GL either way herding the barbell cats!

I found a bunch of 1-on-1 appointment type software, but most don't seem to allow for multiple bookings per session. Class sign-ups seem more akin to what I'm looking for than appointment schedulers. 

 

19 hours ago, sylph said:

Could you just use google sheets? or would folks abuse their editing powers?

I feel like Google Sheets would have more manual monitoring/editing on my end on the administration side to make it easy for folks to sign up for the days/slots they want -- especially since we're trying to do 12 timeslots every single day. 

 

But I admit that I am not exactly a spreadsheet wizard so I could be missing some cool feature or addon that would help out!

 

15 hours ago, KB Girl said:

I linked you ours, my brother made it.. it's a very simple setup, but very effective. I'm sure my brother will let you have the code, but he said it's really ugly, just something he threw together and patched up over the years.. you'd only need to change the hours a bit I think, should be easy enough to figure out? 

Oooh, yes. Yours! It does look like it could be a good solution. I'm still going to poke around the like free services to see if we can't figure out something that will work without having to host it ourselves, mostly because I don't have access to our website, etc. etc. but I may DM you if we decide to borrow your brother's code for it. ❤️ 

[raptron]

WFH Day 21.3

I took 45 minutes in the late afternoon to join a gymnastics Zoom call about ANKLE STRENGTH, as we all know ankles being my biggest regular weakness. There were lots of toe raises in various positions with eyes opened and closed, bent to straight toe raise things, toe curls and reverse curls, down dog to table type transitions trying to keep your heels on the ground as long as possible, and this horrible mobility exercise where you kneel your knee to the wall at the point where you can just barely reach and then try as much as you can to lift your toes for 10 seconds. It is impossible (it is supposed to be) but you're like LOSING YOUR MIND trying to do it, ha. It was all very tough. 

 

I worked a bit late and then suited up (somehow wearing a sports bra and running shorts was wearing more than I've been wearing while WFH) for a jog.

 

You know what sucks? Trying to run with an upped cadence!

 

I could barely eke out .5 miles at a time trying to get closer to 175 steps per minute instead of my usual 160. So, I approached this as an interval workout. The whole intent was to adjust my running so if I started to lapse back into a slower cadence, I just had to stop. I wound up doing 7 "sets" of .5 miles running, with some walking in between as I tried not to die from STEPPING TOO FAST?! My knees did feel ok, but I normally don't REALLY notice the pain until I get to longer distances, so no verdict on how helpful this will be in the long run. (Ha.)

 

In D&D, our kobold fighter did manage to convince two members of the Gnomish Council to sponsor him and he was elected on as part of their diversity initiative (I can't help who I am), agreeing to serve on two committees, and also volunteering his party to take on a winged demon menace that piggybacked out of the infernal planes with them way back when this campaign started. It's been roosting nearby and causing havoc for quite some time. I'm excited for this because they're planning to fight it in its roost which means I get to make up some ⭐LAIR MECHANICS. ⭐Muahaha.

 

Lift: 2/3

Bike: 0/1

Run carefully: 1/2

Green spaces: 0/1 

Get in the water: 0/1

Read 30 minutes: 2/7 days <-- I missed yesterday because of D&D prep, but I am going to allow myself to cram reading on other days even though that isn't the intent of this goal 😛

[AgentsSka]

Cadence and speed can definitely go hand in hand.  This is a pretty reasonable overview of working on increased cadence without increasing speed.

 

 

[raptron]

2 minutes ago, AgentsSka said:

Cadence and speed can definitely go hand in hand.  This is a pretty reasonable overview of working on increased cadence without increasing speed.

 

Oh, don't worry. I was not going faster at all. 🙃

[PaulG]

5 hours ago, raptron said:

and this horrible mobility exercise where you kneel your knee to the wall at the point where you can just barely reach and then try as much as you can to lift your toes for 10 seconds.

This exercise sounds AMAZING/torturous for ankle dorsiflexion. Calling out @WhiteGhost as I know he’s looking at solutions for his ankle dorsiflexion too.

[WhiteGhost]

10 hours ago, PaulG said:

15 hours ago, raptron said:

and this horrible mobility exercise where you kneel your knee to the wall at the point where you can just barely reach and then try as much as you can to lift your toes for 10 seconds.

This exercise sounds AMAZING/torturous for ankle dorsiflexion. Calling out @WhiteGhost as I know he’s looking at solutions for his ankle dorsiflexion too.

I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition style torture

[Manarelle]

23 hours ago, raptron said:

took 45 minutes in the late afternoon to join a gymnastics Zoom call about ANKLE STRENGTH, as we all know ankles being my biggest regular weakness. There were lots of toe raises in various positions with eyes opened and closed, bent to straight toe raise things, toe curls and reverse curls, down dog to table type transitions trying to keep your heels on the ground as long as possible, and this horrible mobility exercise where you kneel your knee to the wall at the point where you can just barely reach and then try as much as you can to lift your toes for 10 seconds. It is impossible (it is supposed to be) but you're like LOSING YOUR MIND trying to do it, ha. It was all very tough.

 

O.o Ankles are a weak point for me, too, so I was reading this like yeah, good idea, nice, ok, I can try that OH WHAT THE HECK NO. Which probably means I need to try it, at least.

 

On 8/5/2020 at 10:22 AM, raptron said:

I don't consciously try to bulk or cut weight (except an occasional mild water cut before a meet if I'm busting my weight class) FOR VARIOUS MENTAL HEALTH REASONS, but I think I've been at a bit of a surplus lately and that combined with all the upper body work I've been doing (plus the tan, let's be honest) has me looking swole as heck. I may be jacked enough to buy my favorite tank soon: 

 

Fully support this purchase decision.

[raptron]

WFH Day 21.4

We're still wildly busy, fam. I was planning on taking off M-W, but we have a ton of strategic calls on Wednesday, so I'm just going to do Monday/Tuesday instead. Oh well, oh well.

 

Depending on how launch and the post-launch ramp-up goes (I do a LOT for the onboarding team), I'll try to take more real vacation time later on in the year. The pandemic summer put a big damper on the typical vacation time spend. I've taken 4 days off so far (which is already fewer than I would have taken off just for gymnastics meets alone, ha), so it'll be 6 after this. I wanted to aim for at least 15 days my first year to make sure I'm not shorting myself with the move to unlimited vacation time at this company, so hopefully I can prioritize a bunch of time off this fall. It just has felt harder to take the time with working from home -- I'm sure I'm not alone in this even a little bit. 

 

Anyway! Lifts were a repeat of Monday, except that I kicked up the top bench sets up a TINY bit because why not. Bench and I have been real pals since I came back from 3 months off. I think all of the chin-ups were super helpful. Next week has RPE 9 singles. 👀 👀 👀 which sounds likeeee a new PR on the horizon maybe. 

 

Squats: 5 x 3 x 255#

Paused squats: 4 x 4 x 185#

Bench: 2 x 5 x 135#, 2 x 5 x 145#, 2 x 2 x 157.5# (this was an easy PR)

Chin-ups: 4 x 5 

Glute-focused hypers: 4 x 25 x 65#

 

Lift: 3/3

Bike: 0/1

Run carefully: 1/2

Green spaces: 0/1 

Get in the water: 0/1

Read 30 minutes: 4/7 days <-- SO close to done with Dirt. It's an odd experience of a book -- they just seem to have... so much money? And the idea of luxuriously, for funsies, spending so much time (and MONEY!!!) in French kitchens is just wild to me, especially in the hyper awareness of financial instability of the vast majority of our country from the lens of the pandemic. 

[Mad Hatter]

I don't understand how you managed to pack so many things with only 4 days off. I also don't understand why I'm still surprised/amazed.

 

2 hours ago, raptron said:

Anyway! Lifts were a repeat of Monday, except that I kicked up the top bench sets up a TINY bit because why not. Bench and I have been real pals since I came back from 3 months off. I think all of the chin-ups were super helpful. Next week has RPE 9 singles. 👀 👀 👀 which sounds likeeee a new PR on the horizon maybe. 

Niiiiice! That's really cool to see considering the long break. Goes to show that no you don't lose all your strength by taking a few days off. 

[Mad Hatter]

2 hours ago, raptron said:

Read 30 minutes: 4/7 days <-- SO close to done with Dirt. It's an odd experience of a book -- they just seem to have... so much money? And the idea of luxuriously, for funsies, spending so much time (and MONEY!!!) in French kitchens is just wild to me, especially in the hyper awareness of financial instability of the vast majority of our country from the lens of the pandemic. 

Book aside, it's quite a problem that the people with the most power in our world don't actually live in our world...

[WhiteGhost]

11 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Book aside, it's quite a problem that the people with the most power in our world don't actually live in our world...

So true.  I have been complaining for years that the people who design our roads don't actually drive on our roads which leads to them being a huge mess.  I think this can be expanded to most of the world at large...

[KB Girl]

On 8/7/2020 at 4:45 PM, raptron said:

so hopefully I can prioritize a bunch of time off this fall. It just has felt harder to take the time with working from home -- I'm sure I'm not alone in this even a little bit. 

Makes sense.. can you also take half days off? That might be nice and maybe easier?

[raptron]

Super short write-up right now because I'm still out of town, but things are going pretty smoothly, except for biking. I didn't manage to get on my bike last week and won't have an opportunity to do so until the weekend.

 

Week 1 Wrap-up

🌲Hiking on Sat morning

🏖️Beach on Sat afternoon

🍦Soft serve with cookie dough and soft serve with bitter yuzu preserves (omg)

🏃‍♀️A bit shy of a 5 mile run on Sunday with a big hill in the middle (basically running stairs) -- knee felt ok!

 

Lift: 3/3

Bike: 0/1 (Dang it)

Run carefully: 2/2

Green spaces: 2/1 

Get in the water: 1/1

Read 30 minutes: 6/7 days 

 

Week 2 Start

🏋️‍♀️Lifting on Monday morning:

• 4 x 4 x 255# deficit deadlifts
• 4 x 4 x 275# deadlifts
• 4 x 3 x 155# bench (paused)... this might have been a PR?? I think so! 155# was my best bench in competition, so that's definitely been exploded out of the water 😎
• Chin-ups: 4 x 6

🌠Perseids star-gazing (we got 2 at once at one point which was EXCELLENT)

 🌲Hiking on Tuesday morning

🧀Invention of the tres queso sandwich which is a turkey cheddar sandwich on jalapeno cheese bread with crushed cheddar & sour cream chips. 😂

 

Lift: 1/3

Bike: 0/1 

Run carefully: 0/2

Green spaces: 1/1 

Get in the water: 0/1

Read 30 minutes: 1/7 days <-- missed reading on Monday 

 

I'm going to run and go to the beach (water~) today; lift tomorrow + Saturday (and maybe Sunday); and I think I'm riding bikes on Sunday. Plus, run... some other day. Maybe on Friday? 

 

[raptron]

17 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Makes sense.. can you also take half days off? That might be nice and maybe easier?

I can do half days! It could definitely be an option going forward. 🤔

[Mike Wazowski]

10/10 would eat a tres queso sandwich!