A Wild Nerd Appears!

[Deleted Account]

Hey all! I've been stumbling on the NerdFitness blog for ages now, but only recently decided to actually follow it - and even more recently decided to really get my butt in gear when it comes to getting fit. Before I kinda-sorta had goals, but having a vague goal of "run a 5k" doesn't really help me improve. Now I've got a whole list of them and a deadline to go along with it. I was initially not going to join the forum until I had achieved what I considered to be a baseline level of athleticism. But I need to get some people around me who are actually supportive. Every friend or family member I've told about my goals so far has been skeptical at best, or openly laughed at me. So. Screw them.

I've been a little overweight since highschool, but as the most active (with the exception of one) person in a group otherwise composed of people who were either armchair intellectuals or overweight gamers, neither of whom were interested in exercise, I was pretty satisfied with where I was at. Then I hit college and started making friends with people who were outside that group; athletes and fit nerds alike, and I'm no longer satisfied with being just comparatively sort-of fit.

With that in mind, I've decided to go about 85% paleo (I still eat raw oats and yogurt as a snack sometimes, and I'll eat out at Chipotle with my gamer friends once every couple weeks, but otherwise I'm good; I even gave up drinking milk!) and have set up a gym schedule again, which I'll be looking for a critique of soon.

I started sort-of weight lifting a few months ago at the YMCA. I had a few personal training sessions, in which I was given workouts at the smith machine (bench press) V-squat machine, lat pulldown cable, and a bunch of dumbbell exercises like shoulder shrugs, bicep curls, forearm curls, etc.

When my knees, which have always been iffy but never really given me trouble, started acting up, and when I developed tendonitis in my right wrist shortly thereafter, I decided to reevaluate what I was doing. So I did research outside the gym on the InterTubes, found websites like Fitocracy and NerdFitness, and now I feel like I've gotten a real idea of what I'm doing.

The tutorial level, as it were, where I bumbled around doing things that had nothing to do with the "main plot," is over. I'm ready to get serious (also what I say when I die in a video game a few times and decide to stop farting around and actually kill the BBEG).

[Crunchy Mama]

Awesome! I'm just starting out as well. I did a lot of cross country in high school but I haven't ran in 3.5 years now. I just had my second baby and I feel it is time for me to get back into it. Lol! So I haven't officially started back yet but I am after Christmas (I don't even own a pair of tennis shoes anymore but my awesome hubby is getting me a pair of vibrams. Woot!). So just know we are all here as support and we all come in different shapes and sizes and different athletic abilities.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Welcome to the rebellion! Glad to have you aboard. As you said, it sounds like you did a lot of the groundwork before you got here. You might want to look into the adventurer's guild, its a good place for beginners if you're getting into the next challenge. What's on that list of goals you mentioned?

[Deleted Account]

Thanks for the welcome. My list of goals:

Achieve 15% body fat (still need to accurately measure my current)

Bench body weight (140; currently at 75x5 or 70x8)

Squat 1.5x body weight (210; currently 115x8 or 115x10 if I'm fresh)

Deadlift 1.5x body weight (currently 115x10; need to improve grip strength more than anything else, since my back can take the load just fine)

5-10 pull-ups in a set (currently I can do about 95% of one pull-up; I can get my chin on level with the bar from a dead hang; getting my chin over the bar requires a tiny boost)

10x3 plyometric push-ups (currently I can do 5, then 3 reliably after breaks. If I try five I've got to be fresh and the last couple are just barely an inch off the ground)

I'm also trying to achieve the suggested starting points listed in the NerdFitness Beginner Guide to Parkour; jump 24" up, longjump 4-6', and leap onto a waist-high obstacle from standing.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Those are good goals. The next step is to break them down into bite sized chunks so you can get an intermediate goal you can reach in six weeks so you can get in on the challenge. From what you described either the warriors, assassins or rangers might be for you as well as the adventurers. Warriors focus on strength training, which is where most of your goals seem to be. Assasins work on parkour, which is what it sounds like your last goal is about. Rangers are multitaskers, so if you want to do strength training and parkour that might be the place.

[Deleted Account]

I think I'm probably going to aim for the ranger camp; seems the best fit for me. I hadn't even thought about the challenges; breaking things down that way will make it way more fun! I'll be posting a couple of threads in the "build a workout" and "diet and nutrition" locations asking some further questions, and one of them will certainly be about breaking things down this way - I have no experience with fitness deadlines and could use some further advice in that regard.