[foxinthenorth]

Greetings, nerds!

 

I've been hanging around on the Discord but it's been many months since my last forum challenge. I stopped weight lifting around December, due to schedule changes, followed by getting sick, followed by my husband getting bronchitis as a secondary infection, followed by some exciting trips out of town. It's time to get back on track, but I don't want to take the time to go to the gym....so it's time to activate---

 

✨ the home gym ✨

 

I've got a garage. I've got a pull up bar that doubles as a push up stand. I've got two 20lb dumbbells. I just bought gymnastics rings. So here's the plan.

 

Git Gud (muscle edition)

5 days a week, do a 20 minute circuit of:

• reverse row sit backs
• rings push ups (these are gonna be so hard lol...i'll report back)
• dumbbell squats
• that glute exercise my PT gave me
• that hip flexor exercise my PT gave me

 

AND:

• increase PT to 2x a day (I've been doing it every evening before bed, but it's not enough, so I'm gonna do a set with my morning workout)

 

The goal is to improve stability and overall conditioning. I threw my back out by sitting with bad posture last week--that's gotta stop.

 

Git Gud (digestion edition)

Also:

• 🥚 prioritize protein and vegetables at every meal (including breakfast and snacks)
• 🧋 reduce sugar consumption (say no to sweets, save it for boba) 
• 🦈 alcohol once a month only (I will designate a weekend or period of 2-3 days during which I am allowed one drink at a time)
• ☕ reduce coffee intake by 2g per week (starting at 15g for pourover, 20g for aeropress)

 

The goal is for my stomach to stop hurting 🫠 [melting face emoji here].

 

I definitely did not start today...I'm eating leftover tater tots for breakfast...but Week 0 is for calibration. Yesterday I swept the garage and put the rest of the mats down. Today I'll hang the rings. This week I'll figure out how much I can do in 20 minutes, if I need to bump it to 30 minutes to cycle through the whole thing with sets of AMRAP-2, what time I have to get up to warm up enough, get the exercise done, and still eat before work, etc. etc. and I'll post daily updates with my reps and how food is going.

[Artemis Prime]

Woohoo! I'm excited for home gym goodness!

[foxinthenorth]

21 minutes ago, Artemis Prime said:

Woohoo! I'm excited for home gym goodness!

 lets goooooooo!!

[shaar]

Less hurty stomach is always a good reason for anything!

 

AND YAY WELCOME BACCCKKKKK!!

[Snarkyfishguts]

45 minutes ago, foxinthenorth said:

 lets goooooooo!!

Where did you find this picture of me!?! 😂

 

cheering you on and all your Gudness 

[Jarric]

Gotta love some gymnastic rings! Look forward to seeing how you get on with them.

[foxinthenorth]

1 hour ago, shaar said:

Less hurty stomach is always a good reason for anything!

 

AND YAY WELCOME BACCCKKKKK!!

thank youuuuu and yes, stomach hurties are no good and i've been ignoring mine for too long.

 

1 hour ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

Where did you find this picture of me!?! 😂

so good, isn't it? 😂

 

1 hour ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

cheering you on and all your Gudness 

 

29 minutes ago, Jarric said:

Gotta love some gymnastic rings! Look forward to seeing how you get on with them.

It's going to be a challenge! I struggled with ring rows last fall. But I'm excited to get started with them because they sure are good for stabilizers and core/whole-body work. I just need to start at a high enough angle that I can make sure I'm properly activating all my muscles and keeping good form!

[Alanna]

Welcome back! I will be following along for the rings - I need to hang mine up too now that I have a pull up bar. 

 

Spoiler

 

[foxinthenorth]

17 hours ago, Alanna said:

Welcome back! I will be following along for the rings - I need to hang mine up too now that I have a pull up bar. 

 

  Hide contents

 

Ahahaha great shirt! The rings are hard! I don’t think ring push ups are gonna happen anytime soon. 
 

—

 

FIRST UPDATE!

 

This morning I slept straight through to the second snooze alarm, hung up the rings, messed around with them a bit, then did 10 ring rows and 10 goblet squats. 

 

I didn’t warm up. I wouldn’t recommend that. I know better, I was just not focused on actually doing good exercise. 

 

So, notes from this morning: 

1) Warm up! Do PT as part of the warm up

2) Rings push ups are way too hard, gonna start with push ups on a stand or the dumbbells

3) Get more mats for the floor

Diet-wise:

I’m having a Zoa this morning. It’s the last high-caff energy drink in the house. I had strawberries instead of chocolate last night. 

[foxinthenorth]

DAY THREE

 

💪 muscle report 💪

I warmed up, did 2 rounds of 8 ring rows, 8 goblet squats, 5 glute thingies, and 5 push ups on a stand (had to do negative push up and then up on my knees bc too hard).

 

I need to start ten minutes earlier in order to get 3 rounds in without getting too late. Hubs is reluctant to set the alarm ten minutes earlier so that means we have to get up at the first snooze alarm.

 

I did not do my PT because I didn't want to lie down on the mats in the garage and didn't bring the yoga mat down. I'm not sure if the solution is to warm up inside the house and do the PT there, or bring the yoga mat to the garage. The garage mats have my dusty shoe prints all over them now so I'm leaning toward doing PT indoors. That way I also eliminate the chance of forgetting the elastic band in the garage when I need to do the evening set (which I do upstairs immediately before brushing my teeth).

 

tl;dr

• get after snooze alarm goes off (6:20am)
• try doing PT indoors before moving to garage gym

 

🍳 food report 🍳

I had a little alcohol last night because we sampled the aquavit we got at a local distillery while our friends were over. At first I decided it was too small a quantity to count (half a shot), but then my friend forgot to drink hers so I finished it, so now it counts. No more till next month!

 

I had a couple chocolate covered blueberries leftover from last week (5 or 6). Otherwise resisted sweets.

 

We did meal planning and got sandwich stuff for lunches this week. Eating at a friend's house tonight, tacos tomorrow, Friday TBD since my husband has to work late, and Buddha bowls on Saturday.

 

tl;dr not bad not bad

 

 

Cheers nerds, have a good Wednesday!

[foxinthenorth]

💪 muscle report 💪

 

I warmed up, did 8 ring rows, 5 push ups same as yesterday, then saw my husband doing squat+OHP with the dumbbells so I did 8 of those. That turned out to be a mistake, as 20lb is the upper end of what I can press over my head and any OHP-type exercise activates muscles that are already overactive and tight, that I have specific PT exercises to counterbalance. So I went to go do ring rows again and my upper back spasmed. Fortunately I already have a chiro appt scheduled for this evening but that put an end to my workout and I'm irritated because this is the very reason I'm exercising. This is what I do my PT exercises for and I've got a 62 day streak and that's still not enough.

 

I mean, the way habit formation leads to positive change is that now that I've comfortably got doing PT into my evening routine, I need to increase sets and reps, and add it in to my morning routine so I can get two separate sessions of activating those muscles. I can't expect stage 1 of habit formation to have the final effects. I learned that when I read the first three chapters of Atomic Habits. That's how I talk myself out of feeling discouraged over small steps. You don't take only small steps forever. I got my small steps down, now I have to take bigger ones.

 

🍳 food report 🍳

 

I planned ahead of time to eat the cake our friend baked last night. It was so good, omg. It was a chocolate rum cake with a rum butter glaze. I said no to the wine. My stomach did hurt a bit this morning.

 

Eggs and english muffin for breakfast. I added cheese and chipotle Bitchin' Sauce because I didn't feel like eating scrambled eggs and didn't want to make a struggle of it.

 

Still on 15g coffee for pourover. The pourover set up is new, and the bag of beans is new, and I really don't think I have it dialed in yet...

[shaar]

Aaaa I hope your back is feeling better after your appointment!!

[foxinthenorth]

I did not succeed today. I was sore and tired and went back to sleep instead of working out. I've felt foggy and sluggish all day and it's frustrating. Eggs and leftover waffles with peanut butter for breakfast, coffee midmorning from this Yemeni place I'm obsessed with, and nachos for lunch. Nachos instead of taco salad was an emotional decision...

 

9 hours ago, shaar said:

Aaaa I hope your back is feeling better after your appointment!!

It is much, much better. My neck doesn't feel quite right, I'm not sure if it's just tight and irritated from everything or if it went out again from how I was sleeping. My chiro said I have some inflammation he felt while doing the adjustment, which is additional reason for me to clean up my diet!

[Elastigirl]

Hoping you feel better tomorrow!

[foxinthenorth]

5 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Hoping you feel better tomorrow!

Weirdly I perked up at like 4:55pm. Since my husband is gone this evening I just worked late to finish what I needed to do. 

 

--

 

I updated my goal because I had internally resolved to only drink once a month, as in, one weekend per month, not one drink per month, and tried to kind of push myself to the stricter end in the goal statement, but I am actually just not motivated to that at this point. So, I'm allowing myself something tonight, if I choose to. I haven't yet since I'm writing. And then next month I'll see if I'm ready to narrow it to one drink per month.

 

Hubs is gone this evening so I had rice and kimchi and seaweed for lunch. Not exactly protein heavy, but vegetarian and tasty. 

 

I've been trying to move around, flex my joints and move my spine, throughout the day, to keep my back from getting too angry right after last night's adjustment. I walked around the block a couple of times.

[Amandaba]

Here for the home gym, rings, and back support! (Injured my back, let's see....4 times? 😬)

[shaar]

I hope your weekend was WONDERFUL and your body feels a little less cranky!!

[foxinthenorth]

On 5/7/2023 at 7:34 AM, Amandaba said:

Here for the home gym, rings, and back support! (Injured my back, let's see....4 times? 😬)

oof! back problems are such a pain! and not just literally — i feel like it takes so much effort to manage a bad back. my husband talked me down a little bit when I was feeling so frustrated about having to do more PT. the PT is helping, and there are just certain things I need to be careful about. I do hope someday to leave the desk job life behind and get myself a completely different set of back problems 🙃

 

big +1 on the rings so far!

 

23 hours ago, shaar said:

I hope your weekend was WONDERFUL and your body feels a little less cranky!!

thank youuuuuuuu I did have a good weekend! i went to  the Huntington botanical gardens because the roses were in full bloom, got lunch with some friends, ran errands, and made brownies for my church community group. my back feels a lot better.

 

==

 

OKAY! UPDATES!

 

💪 muscle report 💪

After Week 0 I have some Lessons Learned:

1. My original strat of AMRAP in 20 minutes is good. Expanding the time to get 3 cycles in isn't going to happen yet. Right now, just getting 20 minutes of movement in every morning is a huge win.
2. Ring rows first, reverse row sit backs when I get a little stronger. I'm doing sets of 8 rows.
3. I can't do full push ups; I'm doing full body down and then up on my knees, only 5 reps per set.
4. It's too much to add in a second set of PT right now, in addition to the 20min circuit.
5. I'm not doing the hip flexor exercise because I don't want to sit down on the garage floor. I actually just need to get over this. I'm already kneeling on the floor.
6. Adding calf raises into the circuit takes minimal time.

So what this means is my updated workout plan is:

• Get out of bed and put on workout clothes at 6:30am
• Warm up (shoulder circles, hip circles, bodyweight squats, stretching)
• 5 each side of glute exercise
• 5 full reps of hip flexor exercise
• Circuit until 7am:
  • 8 ring rows (spot marked on floor for consistent angle)
  • 5 three-quarter push ups (down full body, up on knees)
  • 8 goblet squats with 20lb
  • 10 calf raises

And I will also start counting reps of my PT in the evening so that I can have a measurement for increasing vs maintaining:

• 2 30-second sets each of flutter kicks and bicycles
• 2 sets of 5-second pyramid count back extension
• 2 sets each of 10 front facing pulldowns and single arm pulldowns
• 4 kneeling rotate-bend things each side
• I don't know the technical names for any of these exercises

 

🍳 food report 🍳

Lessons learned after Week 0:

1. My resolve is not yet strong enough that I say no if my husband asks if I want ice cream with a very cute hopeful face. I asked for a small scoop and couldn't finish it...because again, my body is really begging me to stop with these foods.
2. Couldn't finish my coffee yesterday and my stomach started hurting a third of the way through this morning's cup. I did 14g this morning and plan to do 13g for the rest of this week and continue with 2g reduction, but I may actually need to switch to tea sooner than that.
3. Having week 0 be the week during which I allotted alcohol consumption was unintentionally a good call...because my body hasn't had any time to recover yet, I had a little alcohol twice this week and felt the inflammation effects both times. So now that's done, and the next 4-ish weeks will be healing weeks.

 

All right, that's it for now! Cheers and may the Mondays be kind!

 

[foxinthenorth]

All right, week is going okay. Yesterday we messed around with reverse row sit backs so only got through one round of exercises, but that's okay because I'm doing for time instead of sets. (Still did not figure out how to do the sit backs properly though.)

 

Counting my PT exercises was a good move.

 

Got through two rounds of exercises today — except for some reason I skipped the glutes. :<

 

Tomorrow I have to leave for work half and hour early AND do my makeup because I'm giving a big presentation, so no weights tomorrow morning. I think we're going to go for a walk in the evening, though.

 

Cheers, happy hump day everyone!

[Alanna]

1 hour ago, foxinthenorth said:

All right, week is going okay. Yesterday we messed around with reverse row sit backs so only got through one round of exercises, but that's okay because I'm doing for time instead of sets. (Still did not figure out how to do the sit backs properly though.)

 

 

I saw that exercise on GMB's instagram - need to try them once I get my rings out. How are you finding them? 

 

On 5/8/2023 at 8:06 PM, foxinthenorth said:

• I don't know the technical names for any of these exercises

 

 

I've encountered this problem so much since switching to bodyweight strength training - it makes it tricky to report back on NF 😅

 

Great reflections from Zero Week!

[Artemis Prime]

1 hour ago, foxinthenorth said:

Yesterday we messed around with reverse row sit backs

I was not familiar with those, but when I looked them up they looked hard to me. Kudos to you for tackling them.

[Elastigirl]

I find it's best to do the reverse row sit backs slowly, and  pause slightly at each section. I could never do more than a few at a time . I think they are tough , but great at working all the muscles.

[foxinthenorth]

On 5/10/2023 at 12:28 PM, Alanna said:

I saw that exercise on GMB's instagram - need to try them once I get my rings out. How are you finding them?

I'm having trouble transitioning to the sitting part. I think the rings need to be lower, even though I thought based on the video I was watching that they were low enough. My legs were just basically extended by the time I finished the row, and I couldn't figure out how to place them such that I could then transition to a vertical posture.

 

On 5/10/2023 at 12:28 PM, Alanna said:

I've encountered this problem so much since switching to bodyweight strength training - it makes it tricky to report back on NF 😅

I don't think I even call them by the same made-up names consistently 😂

 

On 5/10/2023 at 12:42 PM, Artemis Prime said:

I was not familiar with those, but when I looked them up they looked hard to me. Kudos to you for tackling them.

I will report back if/when I figure out how to do the whole motion!

 

On 5/10/2023 at 4:00 PM, Elastigirl said:

I find it's best to do the reverse row sit backs slowly, and  pause slightly at each section. I could never do more than a few at a time . I think they are tough , but great at working all the muscles.

Working all the muscles is exactly what I'm after. I think I'll probably try to do a few of them independently, not part of the circuit. That way I can work on them a couple times a week, but slowly and mindfully, and keep the simpler exercises for the circuit.

 

==

 

No workout today, as planned. I crushed my presentation and stayed strong in the face of sweets. I'm soooooo tired. I pumped a lot of energy into my presentation and then ended up talking to a lot of people throughout the day as at least a dozen people came up to me to thank me or tell me I did a good job and I even got a question! So, good day, and then I crashed, and thankfully it's just about bedtime now. 

[Elastigirl]

11 hours ago, foxinthenorth said:

Working all the muscles is exactly what I'm after. I think I'll probably try to do a few of them independently, not part of the circuit. That way I can work on them a couple times a week, but slowly and mindfully, and keep the simpler exercises for the circuit.

 

==

That's a great idea.

[foxinthenorth]

Overslept by an hour and did not have time to workout this morning. If I get even 15 minutes in tomorrow I'll still be at the pre-planned 4 sessions this week though. We're off to a wedding this afternoon/evening. Fourth and last one of the spring! I'm not in this one, fortunately.