Juliebarkley gets flexy

[WhiteGhost]

6 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Thanks. Now, hopefully, I will actually shut up about these things as I keep saying I will. I have been far too attention-seeking and no one needs or wants to hear it I am sure. It is not anyone's job here to play counsellor to me (though the help that has been given has been gratefully received and appreciated).

Plot twist: we're paying attention to you whether you share your feelings ir not

 

[PaulG]

7 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Thanks. Now, hopefully, I will actually shut up about these things as I keep saying I will. I have been far too attention-seeking and no one needs or wants to hear it I am sure. It is not anyone's job here to play counsellor to me (though the help that has been given has been gratefully received and appreciated).

 

What would our threads be if we weren't writing all our gory personal details down, whether our peers want to read them or not? That's just part of the NF Challenge deal!

 

I too am glad you managed to find some good resources, and it sounds like potentially a good therapist. I'm sure we could all use one of those... I'll have no qualms about picking one up myself right around the time Canada lends me their socialized healthcare system

[juliebarkley]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

Plot twist: we're paying attention to you whether you share your feelings ir not

Yeah, I know.

 

10 minutes ago, PaulG said:

What would our threads be if we weren't writing all our gory personal details down, whether our peers want to read them or not? That's just part of the NF Challenge deal!

 

I do find it engaging when other people do it. Hmmm.....

 

11 minutes ago, PaulG said:

I'll have no qualms about picking one up myself right around the time Canada lends me their socialized healthcare system

That's... not quite how it works. When I hear Americans talk about Canada's socialized medicine, I am often struck by the romanticized view that they have (no offense meant!). Here in Ontario, if you don't have private insurance, most counselling is considered non-medical and you will pay out of pocket. I don't have private medical insurance, so if I decided to go that route it would be $125 a session I think, unless I got a discount for having a low income. If you have a serious mental health condition (ie. something where you are a danger to yourself or others), then your treatment is free at point of use, but the wait often very long (ie. hope you have family to keep you from killing yourself, because you won't get to see anyone about it for another four months unless you end up in hospital!). It is not legal to pay to get treatment sooner, so some desperate people will pay what they have to to get their loved ones help in the States. It is the same for other conditions. I know a few people who mortgaged their houses (and others who strongly considered spending big bucks) to get treatment in the States that they couldn't get here, or for which the wait list was stupidly long. So our system won't solve your woes; you'd just get different ones.

 

Shortly after I woke up, I heard the loud rumble-rumble of a thunderstorm blowing in. So what did I do? I ran outside to make sure that I got my rolls in before the storm hit. Four on each side, done pretty quickly. I was not able to stand up for a minute or so, but it passed fairly quickly. No handstands though, and no walk. It started raining pretty hard not long after, hard enough that even I was reluctant to go walking in it.

 

I haven't done a stretching session yet, more shame me! I'll get to that once this post is done.

 

I have a project to get done tonight, so I may or may not get some sewing done. Roughly half of those masks are finished, and tomorrow is the first day that the public comes back in force, so I shall need a steady supply soon! I have a feeling I shall lose time to my son's schoolwork though, as he has once again procrastinated a great deal of work to the last minute. I guess one of the consequences of allowing him to be responsible for managing his own school time is that I have to accept that he'll sometimes be pretty crappy at managing his school time.

[WhiteGhost]

3 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

So what did I do? I ran outside to make sure that I got my rolls in before the storm hit.

Perfecto!

 

3 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I have a feeling I shall lose time to my son's schoolwork though, as he has once again procrastinated a great deal of work to the last minute. I guess one of the consequences of allowing him to be responsible for managing his own school time is that I have to accept that he'll sometimes be pretty crappy at managing his school time.

Same here.  His summer homework is due in less than two weeks and I'm pretty sure he has barely started on most of it.

[juliebarkley]

I did not get in any rolls today, as I used my before-work time to finish yesterday's project, and my after-work time was wet and dark.

 

Today was the first day with the public back in for browsing at the branch I am currently working at. When I arrived, I found a huge (for the location) crowd of people outside with the staff member I was going to be working with that day. Turns out she had gone outside and accidentally locked herself out of the building 45 minutes earlier, so it was a bit of a mad rush to get everything ready as it was now past opening time. It took about 30 minutes to work through the initial line of customers (only 5 people allowed in at a time), and then shortly after that we got another tornado warning. Turns out we only got the rain, no lightning or even high winds, really. That all hit further north. After the initial rush, there was a lot of time with no one around and nothing to do. Seriously, in the last 90 minutes we had one customer who dropped things off then left. I need to find a way to do something productive while standing and waiting for customers to show up or I might go a little crazy over the next few weeks. I think I could draw the garage across the street from memory. I did do a few stretches until I had to hide under a narrow ledge from the rain. I'm open to suggestions here.

 

Today's exercises were fine, nothing remarkable except for when I stepped on the cat and almost fell down the stairs. That is how exercise support cat do. She learned her lesson the second time and vacated quickly. I really hate the plank that I am on. I think I need better side abs, or I am not using them right. It feels like being on one of those balance ladders at the fair, where any tiny bit of lean will make you twist and fall over. Other than the plank of doom, every exercise is strengthening up nicely and I'm quite happy with it. I'm not sure I'll advance in the progression in most of them this time around (probably just leg raises, military presses, maybe pushups), but they are all noticeably stronger than last time through.

 

No stretching unit done yet. I have missed my Duo again, ah well. I really do need to work on sewing rather than that. It is a finite job; every stitch brings me closer to completion.

[Red1263]

On 8/16/2020 at 8:09 PM, juliebarkley said:

Shortly after I woke up, I heard the loud rumble-rumble of a thunderstorm blowing in. So what did I do? I ran outside to make sure that I got my rolls in before the storm hit.

Priorities! 😆

[juliebarkley]

5 hours ago, Red1263 said:

Priorities! 😆

Damn straight.

 

Stayed up way too late last night. I found out why I wasn't getting any more email notifications from Youtube - they cancelled them all on August 13. Since I am apparently one of the 0.1% of people who relied on those emails, I spent my evening (and beyond) using IFTTT to set up email notifications for every channel. What a pain in the butt. And no sewing, so that MUST happen tonight. I still have a little time.

 

Gently (I hope) nagged my currently lagging D&D player, who has created a character but not shown up in the story thread yet. Why do people say they want to play then not show up?? If this person flakes, I need to find someone else. Anyone here want to learn Esperanto? 'Cause I have a fun activity for you...

 

Went for a night walk after work and I think I interrupted a drug deal. Twice. The main part of our street has no houses on it and due to the bends in the road, some parts are hidden from view. Because of this, we get people coming in occasionally who want to do things that won't be overseen: drug deals, prostitution, affairs, or just skiving off work. No one really cares unless they damage things, leave trash, or threaten people. On my way out, there was a car idling on the side of the road with its lights out, and another vehicle parked in front. When we passed by, the idling car pulled out and left. About 15 minutes later, a new vehicle pulled in, and then the first car returned (I recognized the license plate). When I had walked to where they were stopped, the drivers were both out of their cars talking. They got back in, I walked on by, and all was well. Despite the weirdness, it was a nice walk with my son and we had lots of laughs. And the evening was nearly bug-free! I even did my rolls when I got back despite the dew on the grass.

 

Stretching happens now. Tomorrow I shall try to do some sort of halfway-challenge checkpoint thing since I have not done anything resembling a weekly update in God only knows how long and it seems like a wise thing to do.

[juliebarkley]

Got my rolls in after an uneventful walk. I did these ones really fast, and they hit me a little harder than the last few times. I also almost hit a tree, lol. I found a little pile of nature detritus on my chair when I got up afterwards, which is the first time that has happened. The rolls are always in the same place. Does this mean that fall is coming?

 

I did my single unit of stretching: lat twists, moon the sky, something I don't know the name of which is a low lunge, then shifting to the other side and back while staying low. The lat twists felt sooo good. I probably worked the muscles a lot with all the books I moved the day before.

 

I have only five masks left in my sewing pile. The sewing is kind of fun, and it gives me bonus podcast time.

 

After the YouTube notifications thing, I found out that my email hasn't been deleting properly for almost a month. I fixed the problem, and it all came back again. Did I mention that I send everything to my email? I have created a lot of work for myself by not catching it before now, but at least my email is working properly again.

[juliebarkley]

Halfway Challenge Checkpoint:

 

1. Don't miss workouts. 6/8. This is somewhere between good and not so good.

2. Improve flexibility. 12/19. I have not been good about getting in the flexy on non-work days, and the early part of this was theory rather than doing. I am looking forward to benchmarks again at the end! Fingers crossed for some improvements.

3. Do a chinup, pullup. It appears that if I am kneeling on the ground with my arms up (this being the lowest I can get with my setup), I can indeed do a pullup. However, if I lift my knees a little so that I am in a dead hang and then try, I can barely lift myself up at all. Guess I know where I need to practice.

4. Do parkour rolls (weather permitting - I don't do wet grass) to fight dizziness. 9/19. I am a wimp when it comes to rolls in the rain. Most of these were missed due to wet grass or darkness. But I have now done rolls in darkness and they were good! And when I wore a jacket even the wet grass ones were okay! So I shall be pushing myself more with these.

5. Continue posting here every day. 19/19. I am the master of talking about myself apparently. I did post at least something on someone's thread almost every day as well. And going back to read all the posts gave me a chance to like some of y'all's posts as well. Cuz I appreciate you taking this ride with me.

 

I might have missed some things and I think I included some of zero week, but it's not too far off. If you take into account the fact that I excluded wet days from the initial roll requirements, I'm doing pretty well at two goals, decent at a third, not so hot at one, and one is a question mark till challenge end.

[juliebarkley]

Today was a generally successful day, but not an interesting report.

 

Rolls were done in the dark, which was fine. It is probably good to get the practice in figuring out where I am in relation to the ground when I can't see it well. They are still pretty dizzy-making; I had to crawl part-way across the lawn, then just gave up and rested a bit. I was tired anyway, so it was nice to imagine just falling asleep there on the grass.

 

On my schedule today is an exercise day, but the schedule is gonna have to change, because that is not happening today, won't next week due to a D&D game, and likely won't after that either because I'll be just as tired in future weeks. Starting now, the schedule is changed to Wed-Fri-Sun. Which means I missed yesterday. Ah well.

 

Today's stretching ended up being all hamstring-ish stretches, which is fine because I suck at those: Jefferson curls, hamstring variations, moon the sky. Jefferson curls are a warmup exercise for vocal work too, fun fact.

 

I have six chapters left before I am finished the Harry Potter series. It is getting hard to read only one chapter a day when I make the time to read it!

 

I have a new mini-project: put together a personal finance curriculum for my son. I have a good idea of what I want to cover and have gone through with him what he would like to get out of it as well. I have a few resources to evaluate already. Since the topic is a personal interest of mine, I am not worried about coming up with things myself to fill the gaps if something isn't covered well or is too American to be useful. And he is interested in learning it too, which is always a big help. While trying to figure out what he knew, he gave me a very good description of how futures markets work when used as originally intended, which is not common knowledge and which he apparently taught himself at some point. I was impressed and proud.

[juliebarkley]

Rolls were done outside, along with prayers, one set of stretching, and a single handstand, just to ease myself back into them. I have been focusing on going more forward on my rolls, such that I need to tuck my head. I was getting sloppy and going a bit too sideways. Doing it right makes the dizziness worse, which sucks but is also kind of the point of the whole exercise. Also, question for anyone who knows about these things: is it normal for your toes/feet to tingle a lot during a static hamstring stretch?

 

Exercise will be a bit later; I will report back.

 

I gave my D&D group a bunch of info to work with about the lost adventurers, so fingers crossed they run with it and chat amongst themselves. At the moment I have to work to keep them chatting, and when they do they are interacting with me rather than each other. It feels a bit like I am forcing people to participate. I think they just don't really know what to expect from the format and the game itself, since they are all new. I hope that's all it is anyway, and that they will find their stride soon.

[Red1263]

Fingers crossed for the DnD group!

[juliebarkley]

I have some D&D chatter, and all the characters are finally in the same room! It is such a relief. Fingers crossed it will keep going nicely.

 

Exercise is done, minus the planks because I just really, really don't like them and chose to skip them today. Plus I was wiped by the end; that is what I get for missing a couple of session in a row.

 

Had a bit of fun impromptu exercise as well. My son needed to do an experiment that demonstrated waves using a long cord, so we went out to the shed to look for a skipping rope. We didn't find one, but we did find an old telephone cord, which did the job. Swinging that around got me in the mood to try some skipping though, so we tied one end to the door handle and took turns jumping while trying to keep the motion sensor light on so we could see what we were doing. Now I should really look for a real skipping rope!

 

And, for the first time, I got the second set of stretches done! This time, hamstring variations, calf stretch, pigeon pose. Still not quite sure where the stretch is supposed to be in pigeon pose, but I can always get one somewhere. And pigeon pose=outdoor session, so that was fun as well. There were so many jumping fish!

 

I tried some pullups again with the same result as before: kneeling on the floor with virtually straight arms - no problem. Lift my knees to a bit of a tuck to try again from the dead hang - absolutely nothing. Help?

[juliebarkley]

Rolls got done. I realized partway through them that my neighbour was watching me. Oh well, they have seen me do handstands so I assume they know I'm weird anyway. I did remove myself quickly afterward despite being quite dizzy still.

 

Did both sets of stretches. I may remove a couple more from the collection as they don't stretch much or are too similar to ones that are already there.

 

Experimented with scapular retractions to get out of the dead hang as suggested by the good folks on the chinup thread, but I don't think I'm doing it right. Could be the fact that rings put your arms in a different position than a bar, could be that I'm doing the move wrong, could be just that my lats are extremely weak. If anyone has any suggestions for strengthening this area, please help. I'm stuck.

[WhiteGhost]

On 8/21/2020 at 2:48 PM, juliebarkley said:

a personal finance curriculum for my son

Nice!  I am of the opinion that this is probably one the most important classes a person can take and you are doing him a great service in teaching it.

 

On 8/22/2020 at 3:18 PM, juliebarkley said:

I tried some pullups again with the same result as before: kneeling on the floor with virtually straight arms - no problem. Lift my knees to a bit of a tuck to try again from the dead hang - absolutely nothing. Help?

If you are lifting your knees in front of you as you do that, you are changing the entire dynamics of the shoulder as it pulls.  That is why L-sit pullups are so much harder than regular ones - it isn't because of the core activation (although that is part of it).  I would suggest pulling up our knees and then rotating your hands between a pronated and supinated grip (palms forward/ palms back).  Another useful exercise is similar to the scapular retractions but is focused on the rotator cuff - In the hand with your knees up, roll your shoulders forward as if trying to hunch your back and then roll them back like you are trying to puff out your chest.  Those are the things that helped me get more strength in the legs forward pulling position.

 

Also, good luck with getting your D&D group communicating amongst themselves  

[juliebarkley]

I got a poor start on the day, with my brain getting overwhelmed and trying, and almost succeeding, to convince me that everything I touched was going wrong or failing and it would be better to just go back to bed and forget that the last couple of days ever happened. Instead, I remembered that going for a walk generally improves my mood, so why not give it a try? It did help a bit, but mostly it gave me the momentum to continue doing good and productive things, and the rest of the day has been much better. Though I still haven't managed to find the energy to make any food, which is soon going to be a problem since I had little to eat yesterday either. Perhaps I can magic up some egg fried rice.

 

During my walk, a storm was building. I immediately did a set of stretches, and it started to rain just when they ended. I had sort of mentally given up the rolls as a lost cause, but my the end of the stretching I had enough motivation to go out and do them, despite the rain and thunder.

 

I may have reached the limit of my energy though. I am not sure if I can pull off exercise day, or the last set of stretches. I do intend to get to work on the last of the masks, which has become a sort of unofficial challenge goal. Maybe it will make me antsy enough for movement and progress to get me off the couch afterwards? We shall see.

 

I will try out your suggestions @WhiteGhost, if not today than tomorrow. Thank you.

[juliebarkley]

My goal for the day is to finish the last mask in the pile, which is also the most annoying and fiddly as it was the guinea pig.

 

The bright side of these face masks is that they give us a new outlet for fun and creativity in these pandemic times. I would love to see pictures of cool masks that you all have made or purchased (or even just your favourites that you've seen online)! @Scaly Freak posted hers (and they are delightfully geeky), but I can't recall seeing any others. Would anyone else like to share theirs?

[WhiteGhost]

9 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Would anyone else like to share theirs?

I just have the regular old boring light blue surgical masks.

[juliebarkley]

2 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I just have the regular old boring light blue surgical masks.

They are comfortable, I'll give you that. I based my cloth design on the disposable ones.

 

I finished the last mask, hooray! Now I can get back to my regular repair pile, which has had a couple of items added to it whilst I ignored it.

 

No rolls, walk, or any outdoor shenanigans. There were dramatic thunderstorms for eight hours from the time I woke up, and when they were done the ground was saturated.

 

I have done one set of stretching so far. The hamstring stretches seem to be loosening things up and I end up touching the floor after most sessions. I'm excited to do the benchmarks again at the end of the challenge as I think there will be some improvement there. I also looked up pike compressions as mentioned on @PaulG's challenge and well. Well well. I think I shall be adding those to my regular exercise day. They are quite fun when you don't go too fast on the first one and cramp up your quads, ahem.

 

I tried your replacement shoulder exercises, @WhiteGhost. Because I have the rings tied absolutely as high as they will go, the tie itself restricts and I can't get a full pronated to supinated twist going, only from neutral to the reverse of neutral. I can do the chest out/hunch back one though. I wish I had a place that I could hang the rings that's higher than 5 feet off the ground, but it's better than having nowhere to hang rings at all, even if it does make trying to figure out proper pullups a royal pain.

[juliebarkley]

Went for a night walk tonight. While admiring the stars and the Milky Way, I saw a huge shooting star! I presume it was part of the Perseid shower. Then I did my outdoor rolls. I think I will sit on 4 rolls per side for the remainder of this challenge. They are making me fairly dizzy right after, but it fades after a few minutes of floor time. I hope that's a good enough level to build up a tolerance over time.

 

Sadly, that was the last thing resembling exercise I did today. Unless browsing kettlebells online counts as exercise.

[WhiteGhost]

6 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

While admiring the stars and the Milky Way

I don't know that I have ever seen the Milky Way.  It's on my bucket list, though.

 

6 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Unless browsing kettlebells online counts as exercise.

Depends on how heavy they were  

[raptron]

8 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Went for a night walk tonight. While admiring the stars and the Milky Way, I saw a huge shooting star! I presume it was part of the Perseid shower.

Ahhhh, love. 🤩

 

8 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Then I did my outdoor rolls. I think I will sit on 4 rolls per side for the remainder of this challenge. They are making me fairly dizzy right after, but it fades after a few minutes of floor time. I hope that's a good enough level to build up a tolerance over time.

It should, I think! 

 

 

[PaulG]

10 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I think I will sit on 4 rolls per side for the remainder of this challenge. They are making me fairly dizzy right after, but it fades after a few minutes of floor time. I hope that's a good enough level to build up a tolerance over time.

 

I don't have much experience with that level of volume, because your dizziness issues seem to be more severe than mine were. But I'd imagine as long as you are increasing volume over time, at whatever rate you feel good about, you'll be making progress.

 

On 8/24/2020 at 11:03 PM, juliebarkley said:

I also looked up pike compressions as mentioned on @PaulG's challenge and well. Well well. I think I shall be adding those to my regular exercise day. They are quite fun when you don't go too fast on the first one and cramp up your quads, ahem.

 

Glad you like them! For a long time, they were the only mobility drill for my hamstrings that worked.

 

They do tend to cause cramps when you first start them, though. FWIW, I have always just dealt with the cramping by tackling it head-on and accumulating as much volume as I can. Hold the compression for 3-4 seconds until I cramp up, shake it off, obligatory expletives, and go right back to it with no rest. I do that 5 or six times in a rapid-fire cluster of short holds. Then rest/stretch for a minute or two, and go back for another cluster or two. It sucks, but I stop cramping within a few workouts.

 

I've noticed cramping tends to rear its head a lot when I have some muscle weakness that's causing a lack of mobility. (For example, when I do a couch stretch for my quads/hip flexors, then try to flex my hamstring to bring my foot away from the wall, my hamstring and calf cramps like crazy.) Because I now associate it with mobility gains, I'm actually starting to welcome cramping when it happens to me. Frankly, it's perverse, but it works.

[juliebarkley]

7 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I don't know that I have ever seen the Milky Way.  It's on my bucket list, though.

5 hours ago, raptron said:

Ahhhh, love. 🤩

Walking at night is good for the soul. I would miss it dearly if I moved somewhere where I couldn't do it any more.

 

5 hours ago, raptron said:

It should, I think! 

3 hours ago, PaulG said:

But I'd imagine as long as you are increasing volume over time, at whatever rate you feel good about, you'll be making progress.

Slow but steady is working for now!

 

3 hours ago, PaulG said:

They do tend to cause cramps when you first start them, though. FWIW, I have always just dealt with the cramping by tackling it head-on and accumulating as much volume as I can. Hold the compression for 3-4 seconds until I cramp up, shake it off, obligatory expletives, and go right back to it with no rest. I do that 5 or six times in a rapid-fire cluster of short holds. Then rest/stretch for a minute or two, and go back for another cluster or two. It sucks, but I stop cramping within a few workouts.

Once I got past the initial cramp, which was from moving too fast with a muscle that was probably cold, I had no issues. That cramp really stuck around though. I was doing 10-15 second holds and experimenting with hand positions, pulses, etc. The sort of thing you mess around with on a new move.

 

3 hours ago, PaulG said:

Because I now associate it with mobility gains, I'm actually starting to welcome cramping when it happens to me. Frankly, it's perverse, but it works.

I love this attitude!

 

Fingers crossed that I will get something done today, since it is supposed to be a workout day and I have missed the last 2? 3? I've not been consistent. However, I have meetings and a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm supposed to do tonight to figure out how we're running Beavers this year (looks like I'm going back for a ninth? year now). I'm actually pretty excited to see how it goes because they've decided to make all of the Scouts 100% outdoors until January. Many of us were feeling that Scouting, for a variety of reasons, had been slowly drifting away from its traditional strengths, with many groups spending too much time on things like indoor arts and crafts. This could be a really great (forced) opportunity to get us all reconnected with our roots: having fun outdoors, working on camping skills, and other traditional scouty things.

[juliebarkley]

Quick summary:

 

I finished up Wednesday with all my stretching and exercise done! I'm still not done the Scout training. So. Much. Training.

 

Thursday I got home, ate, and had a D&D session to make characters for @WhiteGhost's new game. When I had my character mostly put together and Ghost was helping other players who needed more hands-on assistance, I did something useful and folded some laundry that had been there for a bit too long. Unfortunately, that must have stirred up some dust as I became an allergic mess shortly after the call and went to bed early. Nothing challenge-related got done that day. Note to self: fold your laundry early or it fights back.

 

Today I did more Scout training, then went for a walk and did rolls. Unfortunately, I ate right before the walk and the full stomach meant that I ended up with longer-lasting dizziness after the rolls than normal and also a headache that is still hanging around. This evening I had another live D&D session, which brings us to the present. Today is scheduled as exercise day, but I will wait a touch and see if the headache fades more. I'm not going to get in more than one stretching session though.