[spezzy]

Welcome!

 

Overview

 

Our Challenges are completely free to join

 

They are self-driven, and self-ruled for the most part. This means that while I've written out an outline of how they work, and suggestions on how to complete your challenge, your challenge thread is yours. As long as you follow the general rules of this forum, you can do whatever you want with your challenge. 

 

So if you're new, and you've noticed that everyone's challenge is different, that's why! It can take a few tries to figure out the format challenge that works best for you, too - so don't get discouraged. 

 

They are run for 5 weeks, with a 1 week break in between each challenge January through November. In December, we run a 3 week mini-challenge, and then have a week break the last week of the year. You can start a challenge late if you want. 

 

Helpful Links:

2024 Challenge Dates/Calendar

Forum Rules

Guilds, Clubs, Adventure Parties, and PVPs

 

Pick Your Goals

 

Pick 1-3 goals related to workouts, nutrition, and/or mindset to work on over the next 5 weeks.

 

You'll see challenges with a lot of goals - while you can choose as many as you'd like, we find people are most successful when they laser focus in on a few each challenge. 

A few tips:

• Try to picture yourself at the end of your challenge - what would you like to have accomplished? 
• Are you creating goals based off of life being perfect over the next 5 weeks, or are you creating goals that are realistic to fit in with your life? It's better to create goals that are realistic that you can easily complete and then build on
• Your goals can change throughout the challenge - so you can "level up" each goal each week if you were successful the previous week. This method often works better than trying to do everything all at once at the beginning of the challenge. If you want to end the challenge eating a vegetable with lunch and dinner, maybe start with the first 3 weeks having a vegetable with 1 meal a day, then the next 2 weeks aim for having one with 2 meals. 
• Instead of focusing goals around how many times you can do something in a row, its often best to focus on the percentage of the time you were able to be successful. To keep with our vegetable example, it doesn't matter how many days in a row you are successful - if you increase your vegetable consumption even by a small percentage each week, that's progress in the right direction. This method also focuses more on removing "I'll try again next week" - every second is a chance to respawn. 

 

Create Your Thread

 

Start a new topic in the current challenge forum. You can find the current challenge forum here:

https://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/forum/251-5-week-challenges/

 

Name it whatever you want, but we recommend putting your name in the title!

 

Write Up Your Goals

 

You can write as much or as little as you want here, but the most important piece is writing out what your goals are.

 

Some other things that can be helpful to include are thinking about how you're going to accomplish these goals, some things that might get in the way, and how you're going to kick those things right in their behinds. 

 

Tag Your Thread (Optional)

 

Under the title box, there's a button labelled "Add Tags". Click that and you can add tags, separated by commas. 

 

We use tags to separate ourselves into groups based on fitness goals, called guilds. (If you've done a challenge in the past, we're tagging our threads instead of putting them in guild specific subforums)

 

So, how should you tag your thread?

 

If your goals	Use the tag...
Are getting back into fitness, this is your first challenge, or you're respawning after a longer break	rookie
Are focused on general fitness, or you aren't sure about what guild you'd like to be in, or don't want to choose one	rebel
Revolve around hiking, geo-caching, travel, exploration, rock climbing, etc.	adventurer
Focus on bodyweight strength, gymnastics, dance, or parkour	assassin
Your goals center around movement based disciplines like yoga or tai chi,  or are focused on balance or mindset	druid
Are martial arts focused (any discipline)	monk
Cover a wide variety of interests, as your ultimate goal is to be a jack-of-all trades	ranger
Focusing on endurance sports, such as running, swimming, or biking	scout
Revolve around getting as strong as possible	warrior

 

Yes, you are allowed to multi-class, or be in multiple guilds (whatever you'd like to call it )! Just tag your thread with multiple guilds if you have goals around multiple areas of fitness (we just ask that you try to limit yourself to 3 different guild tags). This includes multiclassing in the Rookie guild (so you can belong to any of the guilds, AND tag yourself a rookie). 

 

Note: You can see full guild descriptions and examples in this thread.

 

A few notes on tags - 

• Case doesn't matter - it will default to lowercase after you use the comma.
• They are optional, but if you do want to show up in searches for threads from that guild, you need to tag your thread. 

 

Submit Your Thread

Hit submit!

 

How to Participate Once You've Submitted Your Thread

 

From here on out, it's really what is the most helpful for you. Update as much or as little as you want with how your goals are going, struggles you're facing, or - how you're kicking them right in their behinds. 

 

Some people find it helpful to keep a checkbox style tracker, some people like to use their threads as more of a journal.  Either way is fine - it's what's the most helpful to YOU. 

 

There are no "shoulds" on how to update your challenge! As long as you're working on your goals, you're doing it right! 

 

For a community aspect, other people will read about and comment on your goals and your thread, too - that's part of the fun! You are not required to comment on other's threads, especially not all of them - so don't feel bad if you can't . You can make some amazing friends here, though (I know I have!) so I recommend stopping by at least a few people's challenges and saying hi! We also have a General Chat thread where everyone, regardless of guild, can chat and share tales of their adventures during the challenge, or even request a helping hand should they need it.

 

A few important items for participation (in addition to your individual threads):

Guilds, Clubs, Adventure Parties, and PVPs (that was a mouthful!) - 

 

These are all in one forum, and can be found here.  There is a detailed thread on how these work here, but the general gist is to go over there and see if there are any guilds/clubs/pvps that you'd like to take part in, and if you don't find what you're looking for - create it!

 

FAQ

 

1) Can I pick more than 3 goals?

You can! However, we recommend to focus on just a few - as it's easier to master one thing at a time. 

 

2) What goals should I pick?

It's really up to you! We recommend building goals off of systems that will help you achieve your goals. Here's one of the best articles on goal setting on the internet. 

 

3) Do I have to have goals in each category (workouts, nutrition, and mindset)?

Nope! Those are just the main three areas of fitness! You can work on all nutrition, all workouts, all mindset - it's really up to you!

 

4) Can I start early (or late)?

Sure thing! The forum goes up the week before the challenge (which some people refer to as 'zero week'), so you can start anytime you'd like!

 

5) Are there other elements of the challenges?

Guild Leaders may put out mini-challenges which are completely optional, but are a fun extra if you have the extra bandwidth and like group challenges!

 

In addition, check out the Guild Chat Threads that can be found here. 

 

6) What's all of this role-playing stuff I see? Is there a Role-playing Game element to the challenge?

The short answer is that there is no official RPG system that we use in our challenges.

 

The long answer is that many challengers create character sheets, assign themselves attribute points, and/or make a character/RPG based system for their challenges.  Every challenger who does this has their own system. 

7) What's the point of tagging our threads? 

Tagging our threads helps organize ourselves into like-minded challengers who are focused on similar exercise goals! The tags allow easier sorting using the forum software to link anyone tagged under a guild together so they can all be found by anyone wanting to organize by guild just in case you're looking for something (or someone!) specific and don't want to hunt through every single challenge on the forum. 

 

8 ) Didn't we used to have individual guild sub-forums to split out into guilds instead of tags? 

Yes there was - now we do all of our challenges in the same subforum and tag our threads per guild, and then use the links above to sort the threads by guild. 

 

9 ) Is there an easy way to form a group of people who want to focus on their challenges together? 

 

Absolutely! Create a thread in the Adventure Parties and PVP section where you can either create your own or join a party/pvp that is already going!
 

 

10) Is there a place to chat with my guild? 

Yes - check out the guild chats here.

 

11) What are the dates of future challenges? When do the forums go live?

Here are our 2024 Challenge Dates

 

The forums for the new challenge will go live by the Thursday before the challenge starts. This gives you a few days to close up your previous challenge, think about how everything went, and start to plan your next challenge. It also allows our team to have a maintenance window that does not affect a live challenge. 

 

10) I'm feeling a bit lost, overwhelmed, and don't know where to start.

Don't worry - you're not alone! I felt that way in my first challenge, too  Over the years, though - I've found this to be the most welcoming and kindest community on the internet (I wouldn't have stuck around for over 10 years if it wasn't!)

 

Remember the rules of the rebellion - We don't care where you came from, only where you're going. You're here, which means you're one of us already.

 

We don't care if you've been here for 10 years or 10 minutes - everyone is equal here!

 

Post up your challenge - if you can't decide what goals to pick? Just pick one. Walk every day, drink a glass of water in the morning - start small and build on that.