Vidd Clears His Name (And Learns the Front Lever)

[juliebarkley]

On 8/24/2020 at 9:46 PM, Vidd said:

Anyway with all this said, there are peaks and valleys when it comes to motivation and I've been hitting goal after goal for awhile now. This is a bit of a valley, but I'm not going to stay here. The front lever hasn't been abandoned. I have managed to start to shed some pounds as I planned to in this challenge. I believe I am 3lbs down, and so as long as I preserve my strength and muscle, each lb lost is going to make the lever easier when I am able to consistently train it.

This is a good way of thinking about it. My progress toward various fitness milestones (handstands, pullups, etc.) has been very slow, probably because I don't put in the time that many others here do. But there has been very noticeable progress over time. If you keep working on it, even a little, you are still walking down the road that will bring you to your goals eventually.

[Vidd]

Thank you everybody. Building a pull up bar may be a good idea, though I do expect the parks to clear as fall and the start of winter sets in. Of course, even I wouldn't want to be out there during the winter.

 

I've been thinking a lot on things. At first I wanted to try to bounce back even stronger and more motivated than before, but I think my next challenge will be something more of a building block. When you think of the front lever there is a lot to unpack with that move. And it became apparent when I started following the guide I'd found that even just mastering the requirements Chris Heria wanted me to do could take me awhile. It's true, the front lever will always be there, and I shouldn't of made it into some high pressure thing that I needed to get done before I turned 30 lol.

 

My sleep has admittedly not been nearly as good as it was during my first challenge where I closely monitored it, so I'm going to develop a plan to get this back on track.

 

I'm going to get old school with this and take out a pencil, eraser, and some paper and write out a full plan of attack for my third challenge. This challenge was a bit of a wash. What I did gain though was at least some improvement on the L-sit, and lost about 3lbs of mostly fat. There are a lot of holes in my physical fitness that keep appearing out of nowhere. I actually only recently found out - as crazy as this sounds, I can't do a pistol squat barefoot. This blew my mind because I've been doing this as a primary lift during all of quarantine for my legs and I thought I was great at them, only to one day decide to do my leg workout in my room due to rain, and find I couldn't do them... Turns out, my lifting shoes have a bit of an elevated heel, allowing me to get into pistol squat form, despite not naturally having the ankle mobility necessary. I'm rambling now but it's little things like this that I need to work on for me to ever be truly physical fit.

 

Anyway thanks to everyone who stuck by even with my intermittent updates. I truly appreciate it and wish I was around more this past month. I'm going to at least try to finish strong. I've got 5 days left of this challenge and so that's enough time to lose another lb of fat, work on some of the front lever requirements when I can, and catch up with everybody else that I've been missing out on.

[PaulG]

Yeah, winter sucks for park workouts in the PNW. When I built my bar I looked up several plans on the googles, though ultimately none of them were quite perfect and I had to modify them a touch to suit my specific doorframe. If you need some help, just say the word.

 

I hear you on the pistol stuff. I’ve been there, and I know pistol mobility is something @WhiteGhost has been working on too.

[raptron]

On 9/1/2020 at 12:44 AM, Vidd said:

I've been thinking a lot on things. At first I wanted to try to bounce back even stronger and more motivated than before, but I think my next challenge will be something more of a building block. When you think of the front lever there is a lot to unpack with that move. And it became apparent when I started following the guide I'd found that even just mastering the requirements Chris Heria wanted me to do could take me awhile. It's true, the front lever will always be there, and I shouldn't of made it into some high pressure thing that I needed to get done before I turned 30 lol.

We love basics. Everyone does em, needs em, etc.

 

On 9/1/2020 at 12:44 AM, Vidd said:

My sleep has admittedly not been nearly as good as it was during my first challenge where I closely monitored it, so I'm going to develop a plan to get this back on track.

SLEEEP. 🤘

 

[Vidd]

Alright last day of the challenge. Time to take stock of this month regardless of how it all ended up. So let's go down the list:

 

Goal #1 Lean Down: My original weight was 171.5lbs and my goal was to lose 5 lbs by the end of this challenge. This morning I weighed in at 167 which is 4.5lbs lost, but everyone knows you round up, so FIVE LBS!!(I'm just trying to get at least one win this challenge ok? ). I actually am happy about this. A lot of it was maintaining the dietary regimen that I put in place in my first challenge which is to fast until 12-1PM, eat lunch, then a super tiny snack prior to workout(such as a banana) then big 1k+ calorie dinner to trick myself into thinking I'm eating like a king. I am still enjoying the intermittent fasting. As for how my body is looking, I did have a feeling this would be the case, but for me to be at my goal level of leanness, I will need to be around 160-162lbs, so I'll need to lose at least another 5lbs.

 

Goal #2 Get to know the other Inmates: I really dropped the ball here. In fact I did a lot better job at keeping touch with friends, family, and all the friends I've made on NF in my first challenge. I slipped into a slump and withdrew myself more than usual. I think I made a valiant attempt early on and was regularly calling friends/family during my walks, but as soon as the foot injury set in, of course the walks stopped.

 

Goal #3 The Front Lever: Whelp I think I'm locked in this prison for a looong while haha. So I did make a little progress when it comes to the L-sit but that was supposed to be secondary to all this. I am able to do an L-sit off of parelletes on the ground which is a first for me. I am going to be taking more of a long term approach with this move going forward as many of you wisely suggested I do. I am still new to calisthenics and truly don't know what it takes to nail a move until I try. I think what bothers me about this goal the most is me not being able to give it my all to even see what might happen. But like @Whiteghost had said, the front lever will always be there for me. I'm not gonna get hung up over this.

 

The future:

 

This coming zero week I'm on a corticosteroid my doctor prescribed me for the foot problem and have a lowered immune system so instead of risking it and working out at the park anyway, I'm going to take this full next week off, until I'm done with this prescription.

 

After that week it's game on again. I'll be entering into my third NF challenge and I'm already planning on one of the goals being flexibility. When I first saw @PaulG and @Juliebarkley's challenges centered around flexibility I really wondered why I didn't make that a priority too. My second goal is tentatively going to be to do 1 thing/errand a day that needs to get done, but I keep putting off.

 

But what about skills?

 

Goal#3 might still be skill oriented. That's one of my favorite things to turn into a goal for these challenges because you can see all that hard work manifest into being able to do something you could never do before... but I'm not sure. I want this challenge to be me taking a step back to recover, and rebuild. And so goal #3 might be another life improvement goal instead. The way I see it is, challenge #3 may position myself to have a more exciting challenge #4...

 

Anyway for the time being I'll be planning things out and maybe do some zero week updates over in the battle log.