Suzaqu does it again, only this time...better!

[Suzaqu]

So this challenge may look really familiar…as in almost identical to the last one. Last challenge went so well, and I made good progress in everything, so I want to build off of that energy again. And with it being a slightly crazy month, I want to keep this challenge somewhat familiar. (No theme yet, I almost want to do Drag Race again, but that's undecided.)

 

I’m going to go with a Monday start again, and I’m going to get started right away during zero week. I’m traveling during the first week and from the middle of the third week to the end, so I’m keeping things a bit more simple/flexible for those weeks by dropping my numbers for the “times per week” requirements.

 

Quest 1: Splits: I will do stretching work 4 times a week, for 6 minutes minimum. I can work on whatever feels tight, but I have to sit in the almost splits for at least 30 seconds per side. During traveling weeks, this will drop down to 2 times a week. I also want to be sure to focus on middle splits and not just left and right this round. [+2 DEX]

 

Quest 2: Mobility-two components

•   General: At least 4 times per week, I want to roll out my muscles (Travel drops to 2/week). I have to hit at least my calf (which will hit the other part of this challenge too), hips, glutes, back, shoulder, and bottom of my foot (this one loosens the front of my calf to help with splits flexibility). [+1 STR, 1 DEX]

•   Ankle: I realized that ankle mobility is one of my main issues in my squats, so 4 (2) times a week I need to do some ankle mobility work for a minimum of 4 minutes. I currently cannot touch the wall as discussed in this article  so my mobility definitely needs some work. I'll probably take my stretches from that article and others. [+1 DEX]

 

Quest 3: SIDE Crow: Last challenge I made great crow progress, and I want to try something new. I want to practice my side crow 4 days a week (2 when traveling). I also need to look up one new article with crow advice a week (unless traveling) as I found last time that finding the right cues made all the difference. [+1 STR, 1 WIS]

 

Quest 4: Alcohol: This new form worked well last time, so I want to try it again under potentially more challenging circumstances. So I will not drink at least 3 (2 when traveling) days of the week. The other 4 days of the week I will keep myself from going insane because I'm still trying to fit into my calorie count, so I won't overindulge on those days. [+3 CON]

 

Generally it will be my goal to get all this done during the weekdays because that's when I have the most motivation and time, but I'll have the weekends to catch up if I need.

 

 

Tracking:

Splits:                0/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 1:         0/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 2:         0/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow:                0/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow research: 0/1, 0/0, 0/1, 0/1, 0/0

Alcohol-free:     0/3, 0/2, 0/3, 0/3, 0/2

[lucky fire dragon]

In for the awesome

[Mad Hatter]

Fun challenge is fun!

[Elastigirl]

Ooooo, side crow, so cool. I tried that at one time, but wasn't flexible enough. Following along for the flexy inspiration.

[Suzaqu]

On June 6, 2016 at 5:27 PM, lucky fire dragon said:

In for the awesome

Yay! Glad you are here!

 

On June 6, 2016 at 6:07 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Fun challenge is fun!

I'm hoping it's fun, we'll see how it all goes

 

7 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Ooooo, side crow, so cool. I tried that at one time, but wasn't flexible enough. Following along for the flexy inspiration.

It's going to be a lot of side body work. Probably both strengthening and stretching for me. I hope that I can provide some good info at least!

[Suzaqu]

Week 0 Days 1 and 2

 

So Monday involved nothing challenge related...at all. My husband is out of town, so it was a lazy day to celebrate some me time with a nice rosé. 

 

 

But today I got it all started. I did my rolling and mobility work, followed by the splits stretching. I'm still at the same spot as i was at the end of the last challenge, so I'm calling those my starting measurements for this challenge. 

 

My initial measurements

Right (turned in): 4.5"

         (turned out): 1"

Left   (turned in): 2"

         (turned out): 0", but back leg still bent, 1" with it straight.

Middle: 12"

 

I also did my first rounds of side crow and it didn't go so well. It seems my first challenges are going to be getting my thigh onto my elbows and figuring out elbow placement for balance. So I think those will be my first areas of research for the week. I'm also planning on not drinking tonight (and until Friday to get the challenge started right).

 

Tracking:

Splits:                1/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 1:         1/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 2:         1/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow:                1/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow research: 0/1, 0/0, 0/1, 0/1, 0/0

Alcohol-free:     1/3, 0/2, 0/3, 0/3, 0/2

 

[Akuyo]

I tried a side pike for TRX today.. my hips moved about half an inch and probably didn't leave the ground. Your side crow shall be inspiring! Good luck on your challenges, I'll pop in randomly for fun.

[Suzaqu]

34 minutes ago, Akuyo said:

I tried a side pike for TRX today.. my hips moved about half an inch and probably didn't leave the ground. Your side crow shall be inspiring! Good luck on your challenges, I'll pop in randomly for fun.

Oh man, TRX is intense! I've never tried it, but I've watched friends do it and was intimidated. I'm hoping the side crow happens! 

[Suzaqu]

And because I got excited about my challenge after writing up my first two days, I went off and did my crow research for the week.

 

I like the first three steps in this list as a good way to strengthen the side body for the specific side crow position. I think I'll try that out tomorrow.

 

And for arm positioning I found these tips which say your back elbow should be in your hip joint groove, which is much further back than I was doing it. So I'll work with that idea tomorrow as well.

[Elastigirl]

Crow research= awesome!

Have you asked @Nymeria for tips on side crow? She is pretty much the yoga ninja pose master.

[tei_]

yay for same-old Challenges! I think it's awesome to do the same thing month after month, because it means you're working consistently towards goals you care about!

[raptron]

Yes at continued goals! 

[Suzaqu]

21 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Crow research= awesome!

Have you asked @Nymeria for tips on side crow? She is pretty much the yoga ninja pose master.

I haven't asked her, I will have to track her down!

18 hours ago, tei_ said:

yay for same-old Challenges! I think it's awesome to do the same thing month after month, because it means you're working consistently towards goals you care about!

Yeah, I really like how well the goals worked last time, so hopefully it works out again! 

8 hours ago, raptron said:

Yes at continued goals! 

Yaaaaasssssssssssss! Definitely seems to be a theme this challenge

[Suzaqu]

Week 0 Day 3

 

It was a good day! Good stuff happened  I went back to my assassin roots and did a bodyweight workout, inspired by the mini-mini-challenge (aka the zero week challenge). I'm shooting for 1600 Russian twist reps and 400 superman reps this week, I've almost got my portion for today done.

 

I followed that up with my rolling and stretching. Doing PNF on the middle splits is helping a bunch so far, I'm hoping it continues and isn't just beginner gains. 

 

I also tried out the crow tips and got up for half a second on my right side! I'm still having trouble getting up onto my elbows, but it's getting better. I've found you definitely have to lean a lot further forward in side crow, so there's some fear of faceplanting, but these things happen. I also tried that modified mountain climber thing and was able to do about 5 reps each side. So I think that will be good training and strengthening for the pose.

 

Alcohol-wise, planning on not drinking again tonight, so I'm counting it below for motivation .

 

Tracking:

Splits:                2/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 1:         2/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 2:         2/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow:                2/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow research: 1/1, 0/0, 0/1, 0/1, 0/0

Alcohol-free:     2/3, 0/2, 0/3, 0/3, 0/2

[Akuyo]

So much progress! Keep at it! I must work up motivation for the mini-mini challenge. Your rep goals inspire me!

[Mad Hatter]

Nice job on the side crow! If you can get up for half a second already then it's just a matter of practice and you'll have them nailed by the end of the challenge!

[Suzaqu]

13 hours ago, Akuyo said:

So much progress! Keep at it! I must work up motivation for the mini-mini challenge. Your rep goals inspire me!

Thanks! I like how the mini mini only has you competing against yourself, so I figured goals would be a good way to keep me going. Well precisely, the public sharing of goals guilting me into completing them  Plus the Russian twists are good for my side crow, so I figure it's killing two birds (crows?) with one stone.

 

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Nice job on the side crow! If you can get up for half a second already then it's just a matter of practice and you'll have them nailed by the end of the challenge!

Thanks! I'm hoping that's how this will go  I think once I can reliably get up for half a second on each side I'll do a video for form check and post it here.

[Suzaqu]

Week 0 Day 4

 

A good day  I took an extra long walk, motivated by my podcast and the glorious weather, 71 with a slight breeze! Stretching and all that went well, again seeing improvement on middle splits. Again, aiming for no drinking tonight and pre-reporting for guilt purposes

 

I got my crow practice in, and realized that when I was falling, I was only falling towards my feet. When I was doing normal crow, this was a sign that I needed to be more over my fingers and that really improved my holds. So I put a pillow under my face and took of my glasses and tried it. I faceplanted and survived  And I got a good hold in for what seemed like a second to my count. So maybe I'll make a video tomorrow of where I'm at. No promises, but I'll try.

 

Mini-mini challenge-wise, I'm almost at my goal numbers for the day, just a few rounds more to go. I'm hoping to get it all done tomorrow, maybe with a few reps left for Saturday.

 

Tracking:

Splits:                3/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 1:         3/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 2:         3/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow:                3/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow research: 1/1, 0/0, 0/1, 0/1, 0/0

Alcohol-free:     3/3, 0/2, 0/3, 0/3, 0/2

[Suzaqu]

Week 0 Day 5

 

Whooo! A good first week! I got everything I planned done this afternoon, so splits, rolling, mobility, and crow practice. I even filmed it!  

 

 

The poses look better than I thought they would, which is always nice. I think I definitely want to keep working on side body strength and especially flexibility, that will help make it more stable. I think I also (once again) need to work more actively through my fingers to help with balance. I think I may also try to open up my chest a bit more, especially my front shoulder, but I don't know if that is actually good/possible. Any other observations/advice? (I also need to film from further away, but that would have required relocation, and I was feeling lazy.)

 

I have to do more Russian twist reps for the mini-mini challenge, but supermans are exactly where I want them to be. Hopefully I can get that done today as well and have a relaxing weekend before my break week of travel

 

Tracking:

Splits:                4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 1:         4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 2:         4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow:                4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow research: 1/1, 0/0, 0/1, 0/1, 0/0

Alcohol-free:     3/3, 0/2, 0/3, 0/3, 0/2

[Grayspeed]

Your crow progress over the last couple of challenges has been crazy, nice work on that side-crow!

[karinajean]

wow, that crow is looking amazing! and thanks for the resources, I've saved them to look at later

[Mad Hatter]

That looks really good! It looks like the only problem you have is slipping off your elbow. Could you get your knees a little bit higher on the arms you think? Or get grippier pants.  It's easier to see the shoulder position from the front, but honestly I don't think it matters that much. I do think it looks better when they're even from the front, but I don't think you'll injure yourself or anything if they're not completely square. Pushing through the fingers is always good, but you're actually giving yourself an extra challenge by doing it on a rug as it absorbs some of the force going through the fingers. A squishy surface also reduces the amount of feedback you get from your fingers. So if you can try it on a hard surface and it should be easier to balance. Congrats on super awesome progress!

 

Have a great trip!

[Suzaqu]

I swear I'm alive! And I'm back! I'm slowly going to catch up on everyone's threads, but I wanted to get my week summarized first of all.

 

Fitness....didn't happen. I did a ton of walking when not taking advantage of the awesome public transit system and I ate reasonable amounts. Not healthy whole food, but reasonable amounts. I even had a day of no drinking (primarily due to a travel day, but still counts). So the tracker didn't really change much, but I'll post it below. I could have done a session of everything yesterday, but I blame jetlag. We took a redeye back to the east coast (sat-sun) so mentally I wasn't worth much on Sunday and didn't even think of it.

 

But this is a new week and I'm hoping to get rolling on all this stuff tomorrow.

 

Tracking:

Splits:                4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 1:         4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Mobility 2:         4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow:                4/4, 0/2, 0/4, 0/3, 0/2

Crow research: 1/1, 0/0, 0/1, 0/1, 0/0

Alcohol-free:     3/3, 1/2, 0/3, 0/3, 0/2

 

Portland summary and adventures, feel free to skip if desired 

Loved it! The weather was cool and beautiful and we stayed downtown, so I got to explore a lot.

• Portland Art Museum- Loved it, it was interesting museum and I liked how they had things primarily arranged by geographic/cultural category instead of time period, so there were things from the last 50 years mixed in from things from 500 years ago and it was really interesting. The feature exhibit was Native Art Now and it was amazing! I have a secret love of fashion, despite not having talent or ability to dress myself fashionably. Favorite outfit in the spoiler. 
• Washington Park/Rose Garden/Japanese Garden - Great escape from the city yet easily accessible from the city. The roses were amazing and I wish we had scheduled a full day to explore the trails. Also I have a samurai in my garden now. In case you were wondering, the TSA will stop you and inspect your carry-on bag if you have a concrete samurai in it.
• Powell's Books- I had to do it and finally bought a copy of The Three-Body Problem which I have been meaning to read for a while. It was indeed amazing!

I also ate and drank all the foods and beers

• Favorite coffee was from Case Study Coffee (also I loved the name). They were super nice and informative and the coffee was amazing.
• My two favorite breweries were 10 Barrel Brewing and Base Camp. They were both recommendations from hotel staff and I loved them both. 10 Barrel had really good food and an amazing cream ale (notes of honey and vanilla) on nitro which was really unique and amazing.  I've never had a lighter beer on nitro and it surprisingly worked. My husband who is a hop fiend, said it was the most impressive/memorable beer of the trip. My personal favorite for uniqueness was the Smore Stout from Base Camp. It's a good chocolaty bitter stout, but they serve it with a charred marshmallow on the rim. It adds primarily a great char and sweetness to the nose of the beer and takes it to the next level. I recommend having more self control than I do and saving the marshmallow to the end. I ate it about 1/4 of the way into the beer.
• The cocktails at Pepe le Moko were amazing, especially the Grasshopper which my husband got. It was essentially an alcoholic mint milkshake
• I ate all the salmon, since it was the salmon run. So so good. I'd say the best was the trio of salmon sashimi at Yama Sushi and Sake bar.
• I hit up the farmers market and found some amazing blueberry wine, which was a new thing for me. 
• I made the obligatory trip to Voodoo Doughnuts and it was worth it! I appreciated that the base donut was delicious, it wasn't just all about the toppings. I got the lemon chiffon cruller and bacon maple bar and would highly recommend both.
• My one regret is that I didn't make it to the Cider House cider pub, it wasn't near anything else I wanted to go to.

I had too many pictures of the deliciousness and fun to upload them to NF, so I ended up making an imgur album if you want to see. Overall, it was an amazing vacation. It's been a while since I've traveled for fun and I enjoyed adventuring on my own while my husband was at a conference. 

 

 

[Suzaqu]

On June 12, 2016 at 7:15 AM, Grayspeed said:

Your crow progress over the last couple of challenges has been crazy, nice work on that side-crow!

Thanks! It has felt slow, but at least it's been steady. Now I want to do all the hand balances!

On June 13, 2016 at 0:14 PM, karinajean said:

wow, that crow is looking amazing! and thanks for the resources, I've saved them to look at later

Thanks I'm hoping to keep sharing more resources because they help me too.

On June 14, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Mad Hatter said:

That looks really good! It looks like the only problem you have is slipping off your elbow. Could you get your knees a little bit higher on the arms you think? Or get grippier pants.  It's easier to see the shoulder position from the front, but honestly I don't think it matters that much. I do think it looks better when they're even from the front, but I don't think you'll injure yourself or anything if they're not completely square. Pushing through the fingers is always good, but you're actually giving yourself an extra challenge by doing it on a rug as it absorbs some of the force going through the fingers. A squishy surface also reduces the amount of feedback you get from your fingers. So if you can try it on a hard surface and it should be easier to balance. Congrats on super awesome progress!

 

Have a great trip!

Thank you for the feedback! Grippy yoga pants would be the dream, why doesn't anyone sell those? I'm working on getting my knees higher, I don't think my flexibility is quite there yet, I need to find some stretches. I didn't think about the carpet changing the feedback, I was assuming carpet=more "grip" so easier to balance, I'm going to switch to hard floors this week!

[raptron]

Man, what a blast! Love the pictures.