New Rebel Scum, ready for her quest!

[Kyalii]

Hey, Rebels! I'm really looking forward to coming back to the NF forums and focusing on achieving my goals! When I was here before, I was sort of a part of the monks guild, but I rather like the idea of the rebel guild, so I think I'm going to stick around for a while.

 

Its been an insanely difficult year for me, both life-wise and fitness-wise. 2015 has been the year of injuries for me: I started the year with some persistent achilles tendon issues, and then in March I strained by right hamstring. Just as that hamstring had finally healed, in June, I tore my left hamstring. >.< I'm a martial artist and a dancer--none of these injuries are conducive to those things. I spent the entire summer doing almost nothing, and I've struggled to get back into things as the summer turned to fall, and fall turned to winter. As a result of the inactivity (and probably more junk food than I typically eat), I've gained probably close to 25-30 lbs (I don't own a scale, and I don't really want to know...)

 

I'm hoping to test for my third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do late this summer, but I definitely am nowhere near where I'd like to be for that, fitness wise. Luckily, I've been there before (and not too long ago), so I know I can get there again. My fitness quests this month are designed to help me get back into old habits--so they're all things that I used to do in some way, shape, or form.

 

I'm also in my last semester of law school, which definitely complicates my life more than I wish it would. My "level up your life" goal is related to that--I hope that by adding some structure around the most stressful part of my law school experience, I can relieve a little bit of anxiety for myself. So, without further ado, I present you, my quests!

 

Dance goal: perform 3 rounds of a warmup/strengthening routine before each dance class. (I have it written down here at home, and I could publish it if people are interested, but it basically is just a few simple core/back strengthening exercises, some feet/ankle exercises, and some PT exercises to help strengthen my hamstring/supporting muscles)

 

Tae Kwon Do goal: perform a 100 pushups workout 3 times/week. Note that I'm not actually doing 100 pushups--I can barely do ANY unmodified pushups right now (I used to be able to do like... 50). I just like the 100 pushups format as a way to build strength and endurance

 

General Fitness goal: swim 1000 yds or more 2 times/week. I started swimming after I tore my hamstring and decided I was done with running for good. I love it!

 

Life goal: Create calendar with all of my Law Review Editor assignments on it by January 10, and complete all of my assignments on time. I really effing hate being an editor on law review. Worst decision I ever made. But at least if I organize things, I can make myself less anxious about getting it all done?

 

Soooo, yeah, we'll see how this goes. These feel ambitious, but since they're mostly things I've already done in the past (save for that law review thing), I think I can do it. 

[Rebel_Timelord]

Here's to a new year and new success for you... Sounds like you have a lot of demands on your time. Your organizational goal is an excellent way to regain some sense of control and reduce anxiety. Good luck! 

[Kyalii]

Thanks! Time is always an issue for me--maybe saying "no" to more things should be a quest of mine in the future!

[Kyalii]

Success! I've officially created a calendar for my editorial assignments that I currently have. It only took a few minutes, and was shockingly painless. Now, of course, comes the actual doing and sticking to things, but a calendar was the first step, so I'm going to go on ahead and congratulate myself. Go me.

[CJ the (soon-to-be) Mighty]

Good job adulting!  It is one of the things that I am trying to improve about myself this challenge.

[Kyalii]

Adulting is HARD

 

Also, even though I seem to largely be speaking to myself here, I'm putting this out here in writing that in 20 minutes, at 1 PM my time, I'm going to the pool. Or else. 'Cause oh my god my brain is coming up with a million excuses right now

[Kyalii]

So my public berating worked--I made it to the pool by 1 PM yesterday, and swam 1100 yards! I haven't been swimming for very long, and I definitely haven't been in the pool since probably... November, so that was TOUGH, even though I did it in 100 yd increments (100 yds swimming, ~25 or so breaths, and then go again). It felt good though. At first it was a major strugglefest, but by about the halfway point, I finally remembered my freestyle form, and things got much better, so yay for that! 

 

I did make the major, major, MAJOR mistake of weighing myself at the gym yesterday. I knew I shouldn't have, but I just got so curious... The damage is much worse than I thought--I'm nearly 40 pounds over what I want to be at. Soo, that sucks. 

[Kyalii]

Week 1 update:

 

Dance goal: perform 3 rounds of a warmup/strengthening routine before each dance class. 

This went fairly well. I did this on Monday with no problems, had to miss dance on Wednesday for a job interview (important stuff), but then I woke up a bit late on Saturday, so I had to modify my warmup in order to get it done before class. I was only able to do 2 rounds fully, and then I added the most important exercises for the third time for a sort of abbreviated circuit. So, it got about 80% done, which I think is a fairly decent success. I'm most proud that I didn't just give up after I woke up late, and that I at least did SOMETHING instead of just rushing off to class. 

 

Tae Kwon Do goal: perform a 100 pushups workout 3 times/week. 

Check and check! This is such an important movement in the martial arts, so I'm glad that I'm working towards building my strength up again to be able to do unmodified pushups. Not that there is anything wrong with modified pushups, I just used to be able to do a bunch unmodified, and as a young and healthy second degree black belt, I feel like that's something I SHOULD be capable of doing. So this is going well, and I feel encouraged.

 

General Fitness goal: swim 1000 yds or more 2 times/week. 

I did it! Getting to the pool on Wednesday was super hard--I wanted nothing to do with going there, but I dragged my butt over anyway, and I'm glad that I did. My workout on Wednesday was 10x 100yds, and my workout on Friday was a ladder: 3x 50 yds, 2x 100 yds, 1x 150 yds, and then back down again. Not counting my warmups, that means that I swam exactly 1000 yds in both of my workouts. I'd like to get to that "or more" point, but I need to remember to take it slow--I haven't been swimming for long, and I haven't been in the pool regularly in a couple of months, so for now, 1000 yds is just enough of a challenge. 

 

Life goal: Create calendar with all of my Law Review Editor assignments on it by January 10, and complete all of my assignments on time. 

Weeeeellll.... I DID create a calendar for this. I then immediately missed my first deadline. SO, there's that. I just feel absolutely no motivation to do this stuff. I really hate it. 

 

I've been doing some thinking on larger quests--like, what exactly am I hoping to get out of all this nonsense? Where will I be in six months? Well, I have one answer for certain now: in six months (almost to the date, actually), I'll be testing for my third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. This is a huge deal for me--I really want to be able to own my own studio and teach in the future, and to do that, I need to be a fourth-degree black belt, minimum. So, this is the next step, and it's a pretty big one. Now, in my organization, there are plenty of 2nd degree (and even some 3rd degree) black belts who are not what I'd call super fit--I don't belong to a group who believes that you need to be 25 and at the peak of fitness to be a good martial artist. We believe there's a lot more to it than that. But for me, personally, I am both young and capable of a high level of performance, so I believe it would be wrong of me to show up and be anything less than that. I've been struggling for the past year to be focused on improving myself for a number of reasons--chief among them being law school, and crippling depression/anxiety, complete with suicidal ideations at one point. But that's under control, and I'm in a place that I would safely deem "recovery," so I feel good about challenging myself again. That's the main driving motivation behind my general fitness goals. And at least after this week, it feels really good to be back at it again. It also feels really good to be sitting around doing nothing today (yay rest days!!!). I have a date with my foam roller later...

[shaar]

Your TKD quests make me so happy~ <3  I'm a 2nd degree black belt that's out of practice since I moved away from my school... there's very few options where I live now, so I can't wait to get back to a bigger city so I can start practicing again!!!  I really miss martial arts so much.  Augh.  I always wanted to test for 3rd but the timing was never right.  I'll cheer you on instead, I think!! ^_________^

 

What kind of dancing do you do??  We have lots of those types in the Assassins.

 

Week 1 complete, now onto 2!!!

[Kyalii]

Aww, yay, thank you! The nice thing about martial arts is that they're always there waiting for you when you come back to them. I started when I was a kid, but fell out of it in my early teens--I was self-conscious, and my instructor heavily played favorites, so I kind of lost my love for it a bit, but I came back to it in college! When I was younger, I never expected to even test for 2nd, so to be looking down the barrel at 3rd is a little terrifying, but exciting too. I really want to achieve 4th so that I can teach at my own school someday, so 3rd is the next step.

 

I started attending classical ballet classes a couple of years ago, and I love it. On one hand, it's totally different from martial arts, but at the same time, there are a lot of parallels, especially with the focus on technique and details. It's helped me get so much more confident in my own body and my movement capabilities Plus I'm waaaaaay more flexible now! 

 

I don't think I realized assassins included dancers I'm kind of eclectic, so I was thinking I would stay with the rebels, but maybe assassins is where I'll end up instead... :-p

[shaar]

Ballwt, awesome!! Our guild leader had been taking ballet classes before she got injured, she danced as a kid too. We would love to have you!!! ♡

I feel like I still have a lot of martial arts 'muscle memory', but my flexibility has gone to crap. XD I attended Camp Nerd Fitness last September and there were some basic martial arts classes that really rekindled the fire - I got to break boards and everything!! I would love to do TKD again, or maybe try something different like Kung Fu....??

I can see how ballet would segue SUPER nicely into martial arts!! What a graceful and powerful pair of disciplines. ^^

Sent from deep within the wilds of Ascalon...

[Kyalii]

Yeah, I've definitely made my instructor a believer in the dance/martial arts cross training. He was super skeptical when I first told him what I was doing, but 2 years later, he can't deny how much I've improved... :-D

 

ALSO, here is an early week 2 update!

 

Dance goal: perform 3 rounds of a warmup/strengthening routine before each dance class. 

This is going well! Part of this routine involves a plank, which I had planned on starting at 45 seconds, and increasing in time as I felt stronger. Well, this week I did a 50 second plank! So... yay, five extra seconds!!! I'm getting a little concerned about some of the foot exercises, because I think they're exacerbating the effect that the extreme cold weather is having on my formerly-injured-but-sometimes-still-gets-inflamed-achilles, so I think I might sub them out this next week in exchange for eccentric heel drops and some extra calf stretching. I don't want to stop working on my feet entirely, but maybe I'll do one round with the feet and two with the heel drops. We'll see. 

 

Tae Kwon Do goal: perform a 100 pushups workout 3 times/week. 

This is going swimmingly--the last workout I did called for ten pushups, which I haven't been able to do ten unmodified pushups unbroken in quite a while, but I managed it! I'm glad my pushup strength is coming back quickly. Twenty, here I come!

 

General Fitness goal: swim 1000 yds or more 2 times/week. 

This is also going... swimmingly (hah!) I very much wanted to skip today's swim, because I was feeling all depressive and anxious, but I finally managed to drag myself over to the pool about an hour after I had originally scheduled my swim for today. So I'm super proud of that. Of course, I immediately channeled all of my emotional energy into my swim, which was a TERRIBLE idea because I gassed myself on the first half and had to do the second half feeling like somebody had attached lead weights to me, but I made it through. So, my two swims for this week looked like this: Wednesday, I did 100/200/100/200/100/200/100, and today I did another 3x50/2x100/1x150 ladder. OH. ALSO. Despite my gassed state of being, I decided to challenge myself and do negative splits on the last 3 50s--something I've never actually attempted before (I never said I had good judgment). But to my surprise, I DID IT! I dropped 5 seconds off of each 50 at the end, for times of (don't laugh, actual swimmers, I know I'm beyond slow) 1:05, 1:00, and then :55. So, cool!

 

Life goal: Create calendar with all of my Law Review Editor assignments on it by January 10, and complete all of my assignments on time. 

HAH. You know how I'm doing SO WELL on all of my fitness goals? Yeah that would not be here. On the plus side, I have the assignments I needed to complete this week done, but I in no way shape or form did them according to my calendar. I'm struggling with this. Any advice much appreciated. 

[shaar]

Welcome to Week 3!!  (HOLYCRAP)

 

Awesome fitness completion!!   I'm actually struggling with Getting Shit Done too... it feels overwhelming sometimes!!  I sat down this weekend and created a weekly calendar so I could allot certain days/times to specific tasks - it's oddly motivating (and calming) to see everything written out on paper and think, ok, I can fit this all in!!.. instead of relying on "maybe tomorrow".  So you have a calendar like this, but are finding it hard to stick to it?  Is there a way you could maybe implement a small reward system for getting things done on the days/times they are supposed to?

 

*puts on thinking cap*

 

[Kyalii]

Hmmm, that isn't a bad idea at all. Problem is that I just like the fitness stuff so much more than -real- life! Maybe I need to rope my fiance into this... see if she can some up with a carrot for me 

[Kyalii]

Okay, well just knowing that somebody is checking in actually helps a bit--I adjusted my calendar to match new dates, and I got my last assignment in on time! Yay!!! Next assignment will need to be taken care of starting Saturday so it can go out by Tuesday, so I'm just putting that out there now. I'm awesome at public guilting 

[shaar]

WOO HOOOOO!

 

Awesome - you tried a thing, it didn't work so well, so you're trying a new thing.  If it works, sweet!, and if it doesn't, at least you know what doesn't work and you can adjust accordingly... trial and error, oh boy!

[Kyalii]

Here we are at the final stretch!

 

Last week was not great, fitness-wise. I think I was fighting off some sort of illness (my fiance was sick all week), and I spent all of last week feeling exhausted and run down. I didn't swim at all as a result, but I did do my ballet warmup and my pushups, even though they weren't pretty. So now that I write that out, I guess it wasn't THAT bad. I'm feeling better this week, and I have enough energy to focus on my nutrition again, which is key to me being able to meet my fitness goals (I have a horrible tendency to either not eat, or eat way too much unhealthy food--food is really hard for me, guys). 

 

On the plus side, I got all of my law review stuff done on time!!!! YAY ME!!!!!

[shaar]

Ugh, sickness!  There is definitely something going around  Glad you took care of yourself and are able to push a little more this week!

 

Food is always hard... always... always..... baby steps, and remember it's ok to mess up once in a while - it's going to happen!!  No guilt, just move on and keep fighting the good fight.