Renegade/Paragon, Burpees/Squats, Make your choice!

[sailorflares]

Hey there everyone, 

 

Title is in reference to this shirt, which I think is hilariously awesome (and don't choose Nah!) http://www.lookhuman.com/design/76687-burpees-for-paragon-squats-for-renegadepint

 

Always been in decent enough shape, but definitely wasn't into any sports or anything physical in school. So there was a long time where I didn't 'identify' as someone who went to the gym. I started exercising casually when, in a period of a lot of stress, I was hit with a freak, really bad case of acne practically overnight. My college had fitness classes, so I started aerobics. It was pretty awesome to dance to music twice a week, but then I graduated and started volunteering and didn't have money to be in any kind of fitness class. I was still scared to 'exercise myself', but I started running and was able to run a 10K. I quit running right after that because of knee pain. I wasn't really too consistent for a while - I also did a 6 month stint at a CrossFit gym, which I also loved, but I had to quit that when I was laid off from my job.

 

It was a few months after this that I casually went to the gym while visiting my brother for a mostly easy workout and what I thought was a light weight deadlift for me. All I can say is that either I was horribly imbalanced or just forgotten my form, and I came home and thought "Something is not right with my hips." A couple of weeks later, when the hip pain still hadn't subsided, I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with hip flexor tendonitis. For a while I stopped exercising completely, and that came along with its own issues of anxiety and depression.

 

Now, I spend all of my time at the gym stretching and strengthening so that I can get my body realigned and reverse all the years of bad posture and bad form. I see a chiropractor twice a week. I'm also hitting my diet pretty hard - which part of this challenge. As an overall focus, these 6 weeks are going to be to reset and refocus.

 

Goal 1: Something physical every day. The idea is consistency. The end goal and focus in this is to heal my hip and adjust my body for maximum awesomeness!! I can't actually burpee or squat right now - At the end of 6 weeks, my goal is to be able to again!

 

Goal 2: Home cooked meals. Again, consistency.

 

Goal 3: Sleep before midnight, if not sooner. 8 hours a night goal.

 

SideQuest: Kill the laundry monster of doom.

 

Let's get physical

7%

7%

Home cooked goodness

7%

7%

ZZZZZZZZZZ's

7%

7%

 

[sailorflares]

Well, here's my update. 

 

Goal 1: Happy to say I've actually been doing well on this front! It helps that I don't have to dedicate so much to intense workouts. I am basically focusing completely on mobilization. Not saying that stretching is easy, just definitely not the same energy demands as an endurance workout. I have figured out different ways to practice my squat - wall, boyfriend, hanging ropes has all been helpful in stabilizing myself. 

 

Goal 2: 8/10? I was awesome during the work week, but definitely ate out over the weekend.... Not sure how to feel, because I noticed that my no carb diet was really affecting my energy levels (I would just come home and sleep) So, now I"m not sure if I should try and stick it out and just, well, have no energy for a while until my body adjusts, or if I should incorporate a little bit into my meals. I brought some rice with my meat and veggies to work today.

 

Goal 3: Basically fine. I probably actually sleep too much.

 

Laundry monster of doom: Actually, I think there's only one load of dirty laundry sitting around, which is awesome. But, the rest of my apt is kind of in shambles so... gotta keep hitting that one.

[Kagemusha]

Sounds like you've got a good plan for this challenge.

Nice and simple. A good focus on building that consistency, something I struggle with myself so my next challenge will look a lot more like this one methinks.

 

As soon as I read your first goal my mind went straight to natural movement. There's a lot of stuff on YouTube and around the web about it all. I've been using it to alleviate my years of sitting badly and generally having awful posture. I used to be a wild child (up until about the age of 20 or so if I'm honest, still not quite an adult I like to think) and climbed trees and rolled around on the floor a lot and never suffered from my 8-10 hour gaming stints every other day.

 

Then I accrued injuries and the wild child died and the sedentary child/adult hybrid was born. Fast forward 8 years and I have pain in a good percentage of my joints and often have to stretch after more than an hour in a chair or I suffer for it later. Longish story shorter, I'm now trying to return to that playful natural "exercise" that simply involves 're-wilding' myself back to that natural movement.

 

Things like resting squats and rolls are great ways to realign everything in the body. At least i think so. So if you wanna have a look at it and maybe incorporate some of it into your daily exercise a quick google search will find some good basic stuff.

 

Eating better is also all sorts of good for us. I've always been a little anti the philosophy of completely cutting something out of our diets, unless of course that something is refined sugars or liquid calories. Those things are just plain evil. I think the trick is finding a good balance and ensuring we get all those macros.

 

You say you're feeling tired with a limited carb diet and from what I've read that is pretty normal for the carb withdrawal phase since the body has to convert over the internal systems for generating energy. Give it another week maybe and see how you feel. With me I always find that my energy levels get better and better the more exercise I do whilst reducing any stimulants like sugar or caffeine. Give it another week, if you're still feeling like a zombie then consider getting some healthy carbs in there. Sweet potatoes for starters.

 

 

Sleeping is a crazy beast in my opinion. So many of us have such disparate habits. For most of my life I got about 2-3 hours of sleep a night. I had severe insomnia and couldn't initiate or maintain sleep very well. Got to the point where I had anxiety and panic attacks when it was 'bed time' as a child because bed time was an awful long time spent lying in a bed unable to sleep and unable to switch off. I hallucinated and and waking nightmares in the dark. Eventually sleeping for 20 -30 minutes and then being awake again for an hour or two then asleep for 30 minutes to an hour. The second the sky started lightening I was up and about.

 

I've mellowed out in my 'old age' and now get a good 6-8 hours of minimally interrupted sleep, but cannot sleep any more. My one partner on the other hand could sleep for 12-14 hours and probably go straight back to sleep, she can't function on less than 8 hours of sleep where I function almost better on less than 6 hours. Something in my system just works. My other partner can't go to sleep before midnight most nights and generally sleeps between 3am and 7am work days and weekends 3am until 11am. All makes for some odd sleeping habits all around.

 

This anecdotal evidence is leading into my sleeping habit transitions. I spent years measuring and testing and experimenting. To the point of timing sleep and doing some pretty crazy stuff to condition myself to sleep. I've found a good method has been to enforce a waking time that is non negotiable and never changes, weekends included. Holidays even.  This initially needs a single alarm at that time and an expenditure of will to get up immediately. And start doing things; dishes, laundry, exercise. After a few weeks you start waking up before the alarm. Your body adjusting to that alarm like we would adjust to the sun rising. Slowly bringing us out of sleep. This leads to good mornings. The secondary effect is that our bodies start realizing that since that wake up time is set and unchanging it needs to initiate sleep when it needs it. This way every evening I start feeling sleepy quite consistently at the same time and then go to sleep. I fall asleep within minutes (most nights) and only wake 2-5 times a night now. 

I am more relaxed about it if I have to work late or have emergencies in the evening. So no alarm is set for those mornings but usually the body wakes up anyway if it is rested enough. 

 

Just realized I'm blathering rather a lot. You say you probably sleep too much so maybe sorting out a sleeping regiment might establish the times involved. Too much sleep I find makes me very lethargic and too little sleep makes me grumpy (grumpier).

 

 

Laundry monsters suck 

Mine has a habit of distributing it's innards all over my apartment and then the effort of cleaning up all those pieces and then doing laundry takes a lot of willpower. At least yours is neatly in a cage ready to be fought. 

 

 

Keep at it.

Sounds like a good challenge to develop those consistencies and the muscle/joint alignment to get back on the path to wellness.

Keep at it.