teis first challenge!

[tei_]

I am laaaaaaate signing up, but I am going to go for it anyway!

 

I just wrote out my overall goals for 2016-- not New Year's Resolutions, but a list of stuff I want to have accomplished by the end of the year that I can break up into smaller goals and even further into specific quests. 

 

My big, year-long quests for 2016 are:

 

- 200 lb deadlift (currently at 130, at a body weight of 113)

- Get some sort of a stripe or promotion in BJJ (I just started, so it would be hubristic to aim for another belt by the end of the year, but yeah, some stripes would be rad!)

- Get a kip in gymnastics. I stopped gymnastics at 14 and the kip was my nemesis for YEARS prior-- I could have moved up to the next level if only I had one, and every day my coach would tell me that this is the day you get a kip! You're so ready! And it just never happened. The first step to this is actually finding a gymnastics class. But I'm hopeful that all the strength training I've been doing will provide a new baseline to get my kip from once I do! (In case anyone hears "kip" and thinks of crossfit abominations, this is a real kip: 

)

 

...so, as you can see from the fact that none of my big quests are even in the same sporting discipline, I didn't choose the ranger life, the ranger life chose me 

 

ANYWAY, my quests for the next four weeks are: 

 

Fitness: 

- Strength train every other day. I'm visiting my brother in Spain for a week, so this might mean some bodyweight workouts if I can't get to a gym. 

 

Nutriton:

- Eat oatmeal for breakfast every day! Steel-cut if I'm at home, instant if travelling. 

 

Life: 

-Not look at my phone/internet while still in bed in the morning except to enter my basal body temperature into Kindara

-Write in my journal at night every night

 

Honestly, stopping myself from mindless half-asleep internet browsing as soon as I wake up is gonna be the hardest :/ But a good ranger's gotta get up with the sun and get ready for the day!

 

ETA: You can't edit titles? I forgot an apostrophe, it's a catastrophe D: 

[Niccolo]

Hi Tei!  Welcome to the Rangers!

 

Yay for your first challenge! 

 

Looks like you have some good goals for the future and some good goals for the challenge. 

 

For your deadlift goal, one thing that helped me up my deadlift was to make sure and squat and clean often.  Cleans help with strength at the top of the deadlift and squats help overall.  I went through a period of not doing deadlifts for months while focusing on squats and cleans.  Came back and upped my deadlift by 30 lbs!  May be something to think about to get closer there. 

 

And, your goal for the gymnastics kip sounds great.  I'll just ignore the "crossfit abomination" comment. 

 

Good luck!  You can do it!

[tei_]

Hi Tei!  Welcome to the Rangers!

 

Yay for your first challenge! 

 

Looks like you have some good goals for the future and some good goals for the challenge. 

 

For your deadlift goal, one thing that helped me up my deadlift was to make sure and squat and clean often.  Cleans help with strength at the top of the deadlift and squats help overall.  I went through a period of not doing deadlifts for months while focusing on squats and cleans.  Came back and upped my deadlift by 30 lbs!  May be something to think about to get closer there. 

 

And, your goal for the gymnastics kip sounds great.  I'll just ignore the "crossfit abomination" comment. 

 

Good luck!  You can do it!

Thanks! And that's good advice about squats and cleans-- I am definitely squatting, since I'm doing SL 5x5, but I haven't tried any cleans yet, and I'm kind of nervous to teach myself! I was hoping to hire a trainer just for one session to check my form, so when I find someone to do that with I think I'll ask them to teach me a clean!

 

Also, I guess posting this must have been motivating, since I just it the bullet and signed up for an adult gymnastics class. 

[Ballad]

Aw, yeah! I'm here & I'm looking forward to following along. You're going to rock this challenge!

 

 

ETA: You can't edit titles? I forgot an apostrophe, it's a catastrophe D: 

 

^ Ha! I feel you. #muchpain #suchregret

 

Also, I guess posting this must have been motivating, since I just it the bullet and signed up for an adult gymnastics class. 

 

^ Woohoo! That's awesome news. I'm looking forward to hearing all about it in your future posts.

 

Cheers,

Meaghan

[maegs]

I like your goals, and that you've figured out where you want to be by the end of the year so that you can plan out smaller steps.

One thing that's helped me with both squats and deadlifts is to really focus on hip drive on the way up. With light/warm up weights you should be popping up nice and hard - I warm up with just the bar for my first set and it comes off my shoulders a little for squats. Then when you get to heavier weights you'll have that movement pattern in place to help drive up hard

Sent by carrier pigeon

[tei_]

I like your goals, and that you've figured out where you want to be by the end of the year so that you can plan out smaller steps.

One thing that's helped me with both squats and deadlifts is to really focus on hip drive on the way up. With light/warm up weights you should be popping up nice and hard - I warm up with just the bar for my first set and it comes off my shoulders a little for squats. Then when you get to heavier weights you'll have that movement pattern in place to help drive up hard

Sent by carrier pigeon

 

Ooh, that's a good idea! I will try popping the bar more with my warm-ups tomorrow!

[tei_]

(This is a massive tl;dr... basically my journal for the day, haha.)

 

Day 1 was SO GOOD. I got up at 6, successfully didn't look at anything on my phone but Kindara, and then went for a walk while sipping tea (even though walking into Mordor isn't one of my challenges!) Had some of the big batch of slow-cooked oatmeal that I made yesterday for breakfast and lunch was pumpkin squash soup from the freezer (thanks for making that soup for me, past self!) I did successful career-related things during the day, and then WENT TO AN ADULT GYMNASTICS CLASS.

 

I was pretty nervous. This is a gym I started going to when I was 5 years old, when I was invited to a friend's birthday party. I was pretty much obsessed from day one; I had been signed up for kiddie-league soccer at the time, and after a few weeks of me hanging back "playing defense" but actually just ignoring the ball and doing cartwheels, my mom said, "We're paying a lot of money for soccer. Do you want to play soccer, or do you want to do cartwheels?" I answered that clearly, I wanted to do cartwheels. So she let me sign up for gymnastics. My parents were never particularly enthusiastic sports-type parents, though (at least to me... my brother was a different story) so they never let me do a competitive program, even though for a period of about ten years that was literally all I wanted in the world I did a bunch of "not-really-competitive" kind of classes, though-- advanced recreational, interclub, etc. 

 

The thing is, even though I loved the sport, like many young nerds I had a hard time fitting into the social atmosphere of the gym. I definitely made a few good friends, but there were always way more people that I was simply terrified of for no good reason than people that I was friends with. By the time my parents finally forced me to quit in my early teens (aka prime age for melodramatically declaring that I would never be happy again) it was probably a good thing, even if I couldn't see it at the time; having decided that my body, not my personality, was the main obstacle to fitting in, I had picked up some pretty fucked-up eating habits that it took me a long time to get rid of.

 

So when I walked in tonight I was scaaaaared. "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." I guess I was scared that I was going to find that I hadn't changed. 

 

Well, guess what. I have.

 

The minute my old coach saw me she started practically screaming-- she was so genuinely excited to see me, and all of her current girls were walking past and she kept saying "I coached her! When she was tiny! I can't believe you're back!" The coaches of the class I was in were both people that I kind of used to train with/know/be intimidated by, but it wasn't awkward at all-- we were all just like, "oh, I vaguely remember you, cool, hi!" And needless to say, i am no longer terrified of their unrealistic levels of coolness, or whatever I was so scared of as a preteen.

 

The actual gymnastics. Okay, I have been lifting since August. And it's done a lot for me. I mean, I originally started because I needed to pass a lift test to get my current job, so obviously it was pretty critical in multiple ways. But I only realized tonight how much it's completely changed my body already. There were so many things that I wasn't expecting to be able to do, that I would have been happy to work up to over the course of weeks or months, that I just... did. Like in the warmup when we were supposed to do handstand walking, and I completely unexpectedly went the entire length of the floor without falling. I haven't even tried to walk on my hands in forever! Or when I was warming up my roundoff on the floor, and another girl said "You can obviously put a backhandspring on that!" And I was like, "Well, I was gonna try it out on trampoline first, because I haven't done one for years..." and then as soon as I said it I realized, she was right. I didn't need to try it on trampoline because I was already 100% certain that I could do it on floor. My body just knew it in a way that my body didn't used to know things. I felt more confident about my ability to do that skill, which I hadn't done for years, than I had ever felt as a teenager about the skills that I trained every week. 

 

On bars, I actually jumped to the high bar-- which I hadn't been planning on doing for a few weeks!-- and put together some simple skills (pullover--back hip circle-- squat on--jump to high bar) in a way that actually had rhythm and flow and straight legs and pointed toes! 

 

Then, at the very end of class, after being exhausted by the conditioning we did for the last 15 minutes, I climbed the rope and touched the top

 

 

tl;dr:

 

 

 

 

 

Now I just need to decide what to do tomorrow... it's a lifting day, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to go in the morning seeing as  gymnastics ended at 9 PM and it's midnight now. I think I'll sleep in a bit (but still not linger in bed on my phone!), eat a ton, and then go to the gym in the early afternoon. 

[tei_]

Day 2!

 

Was not as productive during the day as yesterday-- I really need to get my mindless internet usage under control, as a lot of my life consists of unstructured time to be allocated into necessary tasks, which usually works better sans procrastination. That is a project to be extended in the next challenge, though-- I resisted my phone in the morning, and got to the gym in the early afternoon as planned. I just joined a new gym which is pretty rad. It's a co-op, pretty much pure weight training (there's one treadmill that nobody seems to use...) and has a pretty eminent bodybuilding history as well as being the oldest gym in Toronto. Oh, and at 2 PM I had the place all to myself. I recorded some form check videos, including capturing my new deadlift PR of 140 lbs! I started lifting in August with an 85 lb deadlift (at around 110 lbs BW, which i think has remained constant although I don't weigh myself often) and needed to get to 125 lbs for lift testing for work, which I did. Then I kinda stalled on 125-135 depending on the day for quite a while, but have broken through! Actually someone on reddit opined when I posted a form check there that I could add 5-10 lbs next time, and I actually agree I probably could have done more. I was just pretty surprised that I was having a good day at all-- I was expecting to be weak as hell because of soreness from gymnastics last night combined with not quite enough food this morning. So the fact that I PRed was a little bit

 

 

Tomorrow: BJJ at noon! At that point I might also actually sign up for the classes-- I'm on a free trial atm-- and buy a gi. I'm pretty sure I want to be in BJJ for at least the moderate haul, if not the long haul. It's easy to forget how awesome it is since I haven't ben in a week or so, but every time I roll, I just feel awesome. And addicted. Even though at this point I'm basically rolling with no technique, which I know some schools don't even let you do. But a thing I have realized about myself recently, which my gymnastics coach from way back probably could have told me was way obvious, is that I like launching myself into stuff and figuring out the details later. Especially when the thing I'm launching is my actual body. This is possibly something I will need to get under control as I get older and less bouncy. Again... a project for another day.

[Elastigirl]

Very impressive that you faced your fear and went to the class. So glad it was a great experience, and that your strength training helped your gymnastics skill

[Sam Ashen]

 

 

In case anyone hears "kip" and thinks of crossfit abominations, this is a real kip:

 

Nice troll!  

 

 

 

ETA: You can't edit titles? I forgot an apostrophe, it's a catastrophe D: 

 

This is news to me.  I used to be able to do it, but not right now.  

 

Good luck in you Challenge!

[tei_]

Very impressive that you faced your fear and went to the class. So glad it was a great experience, and that your strength training helped your gymnastics skill

 

Thank you!

[tei_]

Nice troll!  

 

 

Haha, I guess that is a risky thing to say in a guild full of crossfitters... I don't have anything against Crossfit, I would do it myself if I hadn't already spent all my money on other activities! I just have strong opinions on who gets to say they can kip

[tei_]

Day 3! All goals have been achieved except writing in the journal, which will take place after I write this I went to BJJ and oh god it's so scary walking up the stairs knowing that I am not only the newest person bus also the smallest, like even the rest of the ladies all seem to have at least 20 lbs on me, and I'm afraid that nobody will want to roll with me and I'm wasting everyone's time and BLAH BLAH BLAH GET OVER YO'SELF, SELF. Then it turns out that everyone is almost excessively nice, and higher belts come up to me and offer to roll just because they're nice and (presumably) remember being new having those feelings themselves. 

 

BUT I do need to grow a pair and actually learn to ask people, at some point. Because it's pretty lame to just stand around like I'm hoping to be asked to the prom or something. So I added it to my quest list on my newly created character page: next class, I am going to go up to someone and do like Rener says: 

 

just say "hey, do you have a partner?"

 

Then I will also imagine Rener shouting "BOOOOM!" and all will be well. Also claim my 2 XP

 

Tomorrow is a lifting day, then the day after that is a rest day mostly because I'm working from 5 AM to 5 PM    Also probably the day after... because I'll be on a plane to Spain. My brother is a pretty dedicated gym bro, though, so maybe I'll go visit a Spanish gym while I'm there... 

[maegs]

 

The actual gymnastics. Okay, I have been lifting since August. And it's done a lot for me. I mean, I originally started because I needed to pass a lift test to get my current job, so obviously it was pretty critical in multiple ways. But I only realized tonight how much it's completely changed my body already. There were so many things that I wasn't expecting to be able to do, that I would have been happy to work up to over the course of weeks or months, that I just... did. Like in the warmup when we were supposed to do handstand walking, and I completely unexpectedly went the entire length of the floor without falling. I haven't even tried to walk on my hands in forever! Or when I was warming up my roundoff on the floor, and another girl said "You can obviously put a backhandspring on that!" And I was like, "Well, I was gonna try it out on trampoline first, because I haven't done one for years..." and then as soon as I said it I realized, she was right. I didn't need to try it on trampoline because I was already 100% certain that I could do it on floor. My body just knew it in a way that my body didn't used to know things. I felt more confident about my ability to do that skill, which I hadn't done for years, than I had ever felt as a teenager about the skills that I trained every week. 

 

On bars, I actually jumped to the high bar-- which I hadn't been planning on doing for a few weeks!-- and put together some simple skills (pullover--back hip circle-- squat on--jump to high bar) in a way that actually had rhythm and flow and straight legs and pointed toes! 

 

Then, at the very end of class, after being exhausted by the conditioning we did for the last 15 minutes, I climbed the rope and touched the top

 

This is amazing! 

 

[tei_]

Day 4:

 

Lifted. Discovered that my bench press form is terrrrrrrible-- I had been focused on and worried about form in my squat and deadlift, and for some reason bench press just... escaped my notice somehow? Anyway, I am gonna get it under control. Next time I bench I am going to make my grip wider and focus on pinching my shoulder blades and keeping my wrists straight.

 

I am going to sleep at my parents' house tonight, because my parents house is half an hour closer to my work base than mine, and my shift starts at 5 am tomorrow D: I also haven't worked in a while, which usually makes me nervous. But this is the first shift that my official deadlift number has been more than the 125 lbs officially required for the job, which makes me feel pretty good. I don't know if I'm ever going to get to the elusive point where I'm no longer even slightly nervous that the next patient will weigh something just under 250 lbs, just shy of qualifying for a lift assist crew, and it'll be my turn to lift the stretcher into the truck and I won't be able to do it. According to the numbers alone, I SHOULD be able to do it-- but because I'm so short, the stretcher lift has to go waaaaay higher than a deadlift does. So it's more like some sort of deadlift-to-bicep-curl thing, and then I literally have to stand on my toes to get the wheels over the lip of the truck. Not the most ergonomic lift. But I'm going to master it eventually. (Either that or get some platform steel-toes  )

 

Now time for some meal prep for tomorrow... usually I don't actually need that much food in a day... but the quantity I can consume over the course of a 12-hour shift is ridiculous.

[Terra]

Hi - I'm gonna follow ya because BJJ!  I'm also new to BJJ starting in November and I really love it!  What great goals!!!  

[tei_]

Hi - I'm gonna follow ya because BJJ!  I'm also new to BJJ starting in November and I really love it!  What great goals!!!  

Yay! *high-five* *fist-bump* nice to meet you!

[tei_]

Day 5!

 

Waking up at 4:15 AM was not as bad as I feared; I still got around 6 hours of sleep-- not good, but not debilitating-- and somehow I actually managed to spontaneously wake up 2 minutes before my alarm went off, so I didn't have that groggy woken-up-in-the-middle-of-a-sleep-cycle feeling. Then me and my partner for the day spent the first 2 hours of our shift sitting in my favourite hospital parking lot on standby. (Not being sarcastic; I really do have a favourite hospital parking lot.) Must have been a slow day because we did 2 calls and then dispatch told us to go home early. I must be getting used to this job, because my first thought was "I got up at 4:15 for a shift this short?!" and then realized once I had clocked out that it had actually been a total of 7 1/2 hours with no lunch break, aka... a normal length shift for lots of jobs. 

 

I didn't take advantage of my free afternoon as well as I could have, but I did the one pressing adulting thing I needed to do, so, whatever. Then I was considering going to BJJ, since I was suddenly free for it, but decided not to on the grounds of the policy I just made up, which is, 

 

1) If I've decided it's a lifting day, it's a lifting day.

2) If I've decided it's a BJJ day, it's a BJJ day. 

3) If I've decided it's a gymnastics day, it's a gymnastics day.

so,

4) If I've decided it's a rest day, it's a gorram rest day.

 

 

So instead of BJJ I went to a grocery store and got some salmon to make for dinner.

 

I'm not usually down on myself for food decisions (or rather, haven't been recently), but I did feel kinda unhappy that

 

1) I bought a muffin with my coffee this morning while on standby. I only drink coffee when I have a smaller-than-average amount of sleep, so I'm fine with buying it instead of making at home, but the muffin was pure sugar and didn't even taste good, and also did not make me feel more full. Fail.

 

2) Got a Starbucks Caramel Apple Spice in the afternoon, which I'm mostly mad about because IT'S JUST HOT APPLE JUICE AND SYRUP, WHY WOULD I PAY $4 FOR THAT BULLSHIT. Faaaaaaaail.

 

 

 

Tomorrow, lifting bright and early, gotta get to my parents' house for around noon so that we can go to the airport together and leave for Spain! 

[Ballad]

2) Got a Starbucks Caramel Apple Spice in the afternoon, which I'm mostly mad about because IT'S JUST HOT APPLE JUICE AND SYRUP, WHY WOULD I PAY $4 FOR THAT BULLSHIT. Faaaaaaaail.

 

Hahahahaha, I actually just burst out laughing. Much as I enjoy my Starbucks coffee, I completely feel you here.

 

PS. Have an AMAZING time in Spain! How long are you there for?

[tei_]

Hahahahaha, I actually just burst out laughing. Much as I enjoy my Starbucks coffee, I completely feel you here.

 

PS. Have an AMAZING time in Spain! How long are you there for?

 

I don't mind eating "unhealthy" food, and I even sometimes don't mind paying too much for food, but I am not down with paying too much for garbage food that I could easily make myself in a microwave! I ended up buying some apple cider at the grocery store, in case I was struck with a craving again

 

I'm going for a week! My younger brother is living there so we are going to visit him!

[maegs]

Enjoy your trip! Spain sounds great

[Terra]

Enjoy Spain! Looking forward to hearing about it when you get back....

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Terra]

Patiently waiting for updates on the Spain vacation......

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[tei_]

I am baaaaack! I arrived home around 9 PM last night. My flights were timed perfectly for minimal jet lag, since I basically just had a day with 6 extra hours in it yesterday, made sure not to nap on the planes, and went to sleep at 10:30 in Toronto feeling extra-tired. Thanks Terra for the nudge to update!

 

1. Spain was fun, and a total crash and burn in the health/fitness department. My brother let his gym membership lapse because he's going backpacking soon, so no gym for me, my luggage got lost for a while so I didn't get into the habit of doing bodyweight stuff when I got there because I didn't want to sweaty up my only set of clothes, and LITERALLY THE ONLY FOOD served in restaurants in Spain is various arrangements of white bread, cheese, and processed meat. My terrible eating was honestly not for lack of trying-- I was seriously craving my usual oatmeal, lentils, and vegetables fare, tried to find it where and when I could and usually simply couldn't, or rather couldn't without massively imposing on my brother and parents, who were all about the white bread-cheese-processed meat life. Also, I really wanted to go hiking-- apparently there are some great spots outside of Madrid that you can bus to!-- but my dad's arthritis is now bad enough that he has trouble keeping up with the rest of use even when walking around town. I was a little taken off guard by this since I hadn't really spent much time doing physical things or going places with my parents for quite a few years, so I didn't realize how much my dad's physical abilities had deteriorated in the past few years. So... let's not dwell on the total lack of healthy anything that transpired on this vacation

 

2. I started reading about Intermittent Fasting while bored in airports yesterday. At first I was all "But... breakfast! Most important meal! You should eat it at least three times a day!" Then I read this. And, while the explanation itself is just an untested hypothesis and makes no claims to being anything more... it PERFECTLY describes me. I am ALWAYS starving almost immediately after eating breakfast, and I've always interpreted it as just not eating enough, or not eating filling enough foods, which is clearly BS because it happened even when I was eating sausage and eggs for breakfast. And by "eating" I mean "reluctantly choking down," because eating eggs first thing in the morning always makes me feel nauseous, but I tried to eat them anyway because "It's good for me!" So... the idea that maybe if you're not hungry you shouldn't eat should not be as revelatory as it was for me, but for some reason I'd always just assumed, based on the phrase "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" which turns out to have been conceived as a MARKETING SLOGAN, that I had to override what my body was telling me in the morning about food. HEY-O, something smells like bullshit deposited in my mind by the forces of the Empire!

 

So... I am going to give it a try. At the very least, I am going to give working out fasted a try-- my plan is to just drink tea before working out in the morning, and I'm also going to research BCAAs, which is what the Leangains guy recommends having before a fasted morning workout. 

 

3. I kinda tried that this morning! Not completely-- due to timezone-related weirdness I hadn't eaten for a while before going to bed last night, and I started feeling like I wanted to eat something about an hour after I woke up, as I was on my way to the gym, so I ate the other half of a clif bar I had in my pocket from yesterday, which felt like the amount of food I wanted at that moment. Then I worked out at it was fine! I went a bit light today because my body clock isn't totally on yet, because it was my first time working out on so little food, and because I hadn't lifted in a week, but I actually didn't feel remarkably weaker!

 

4. In fact... this isn't something new that I can do, since I could probably do it before and just didn't try. BUT-- I decided to see where I was was on doing a pullup this morning. I haven't been training them at all, and probably haven't even tried one since I quit gymnastics as a preteen, where the fashionable way to do them was with as much cheating as you could get away with without the coach making you start over... not quite this bad, though. Goodness me. We just added a small beat swing at the bottom. Anyway, I decided to try. The first one I started with a beat swing, on the assumption that I wasn't going to make it up otherwise-- and it was EASY. So I tried it for real, from a dead hang... and I did it! Tried once more and the second one just barely made it all the way up. Still-- I can work with that! From now on pull-ups are actually going to be a part of my workout routine! Woohoo!

[tei_]

Guess who Rangered the fuck out of her first tumbling line in ten-ish years?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73L_sDl-nY

 

I had been doing the roundoff backhandspring last class and was pretty confident with them, but adding the back tuck was terrrrrrifying. My legs were actually shaking from adrenaline afterwards. But then I did it a bunch more times, and I also did a front tuck out of a front handspring which was not pretty but I did land on my feet. And I did a straddle dismount off of bars, which isn't a hard thing at all but was scary because it involves torque versus grip strength, which I wasn't at all confident in, which is silly since I'm pretty sure my grip strength is better than it ever was as a teenager thanks to deadlifts. 

 

Anyway, the ro-bhs-bt plus the straddle dismount netted me a total of 6 XP on my Quests page. A productive evening!