Show me your moves!

[Captain Fabulous]

I'm really starting to regret my name choice - I'm having a hard time writing the phrase "Hey guys, I'm Captain Fabulous."

Hey guys, I'm Captain Fabulous. 

Nope, definitely didn't feel any better outside of quotes.

I've been lurking around here for several weeks now, and I definitely spend more time than I should stalking threads and finding lots of nuggets of great work out advice.

------ Physical Stuff-------

I've always been pretty active - I swam competitively from elementary school through high-school, ran competitively in high-school, and did taekwondoe for a few years in elementary school. Running is something I haven't managed to do at anywhere near a competitive (or even recreational level) since my growth spurt in high-school when I quit cross-country due to shin splints and knee pains. That was almost 7 years ago now. 

I bought Starting Strength and started weightlifting two years ago as a way to strengthen my leg muscles and hopefully correct some muscle imbalances that were keeping me from running - it was great, but for various reasons I stopped doing it after about three months. With the same goal in mind I picked it up again last semester ... and I fell in love harder with weightlifting than with pretty much anything I've ever done. I've been weightlifting consistently for the past 6 months, and I'm planning on keeping it up until my arms stop being able to pump iron. (My physical therapist once told me, "You don't want to be that jacked grandpa." - pfft, I'm going to be the most jacked grandpa one day). Currently a fan (in order of preference) of deadlifts, weighted dips, squats and weighted chin ups. 

I'm working on correcting the bad running form I developed when I started running as a kid with no-one to tell me better - long strides, heel striking (sure, it's graceful and elegant - but I don't weigh 105 lbs anymore and my knees aren't too happy about trying to stay stable with 70 lbs of extra weight) - and I want to race my first 5k in 7 years next fall - and I want to do it faster than I've ever run one before. Hell, I hadn't even hit puberty when I ran in high-school, these man muscles should help me out somehow! 

I've always had an embarrassingly weak grip - to the point where my 45 year old, tiny mother has a better chance of opening a jar than I did. I've been working to correct this with focused grip work and strapping lots of weight on my waist and trying to do chinups.

 

Max level CaptFab goals (nope, don't like that name either):
500lb squat
600lb deadlift
250 lb weighted dips
140 lb weighted chins
One arm chinups 
Crush an apple with my bare hand (because, why not?)
16:30 5k
Sub 10 minute 2 mile
4:15 mile 

(These were the races I ran in highschool, I want to destroy highschool me)

 

---------Dream Stuff----------------

 

I also love learning languages, I currently speak (in order of skill) Japanese (adv), Spanish (intermediate) and French (intermediate). I'm planning on learning these then Chinese, Korean, and Esperanto (coolest invented language ever? Yep.) at least to professional fluency before I'm 40. 

--------Game stuff -------------

In case you couldn't tell, I'm a huge fan of SSBM - I main Captain Falcon - I do not play at a competitive level (though I am going to a tournament in April so I can pay $10 to get beat hard). I'm probably going to try to wean myself off of smash entirely so that I can focus on fitness and Japanese.

-------------

I'm hoping that sticking around here and being surrounded by all of you motivated people will help keep me accountable to my own dreams - and teach me more about fitness

Edit: 

I also want to share the stupidest thing I've ever done:

Was making dinner one night, feeling super productive, so I decided I'd run the trash out to the street while waiting for my rice to finish. I was barefoot in just sweats and a shirt - because I was home and anything more than sweats is a monkeysuit to me. I didn't feel like bothering to get socks on so I could put my shoes on so I decided "screw it, I'll just do it barefoot. How much could 10 seconds in the snow hurt?".

Before I continue it's important to recognize that we had one of the coldest winters on record in quite a while in Pittsburgh and this day it was around 10 degrees outside. 

So I went out through the garage, closed the door behind me so that I wouldn't waste any heat, ran the trash out the to the curb and ran back, satisfied with my little adventure, went to open the door .... annnnd it's locked. It's one of those doors that turns on one side even if it's locked, so I hadn't noticed it was locked before I closed it. Luckily for me my keys were ... in my coat pocket in my room. Well, it's a good thing I have my .... phone upstairs on the table playing music. At least I have two roommates .... one who just left for the night and the other one who might not come home until midnight (it was around 6:30 at this time). Well, at least I always leave the porch unlocked! So I ran outside, around the house throw the four or five inches of snow in my barefeet, pulled myself up on to the second story porch ... only to find out that the sliding glass door was locked. With nothing else to do I climbed back down and ran back to the garage (which was probably about 30 degrees, so much better than 10) where I let my feet warm up and seriously considered just kicking the garage door down.

I realized, after my feet warmed back up, that my friend and his wife live less than a 2 minute jog away from me and they, being responsible adults would probably home and eating dinner by now (seeing as they normally sleep around 9:00). So, I decided, "Screw it, I'll just run over there and have one of them call my one roommate! One of them is bound to be home." I'll just tell you right now, it turns out they both have the same night class on Tuesday. That day was a Tuesday. So I left the garage slightly open and ran over to their house - I lost most the feeling and mobility in my feet about halfway there - and then I had to run back.

I spent the next two hours in the garage until my roommate came home massaging my burning, aching feet and humming to myself to distract myself from the pain (yes, it looked as crazy as it sounds). Luckily we had some extra blankets outside so I managed to get wrapped up pretty well.

My feet ended up being getting severely chapped and swollen from the experience, resulting in blisters all up and down my feet (and between my toes) including a marvelous blister the size of a golf ball on my left foot. I spent the next two weeks walking very slowly, limping everywhere, and hoping that my coworkers didn't think I was too much of an idiot - considering I managed to do this a week after work started.

If anyone is seriously interested, I do have pictures of my blisters.

So, to sum up - barefoot running is cool - doing it in the snow? Never. Just. No. Never again.

[LightningBruiser]

Having done the barefoot snow run (though with less ... dramatic flair ;-) ) I can say I truly feel your pain... it took a few days for the burning to subside, partially due to the fact I worked for 72 hours straight following my misadventure... changed socks every 12 hours, but my feet were in boots for the whole time, and boy, did it feel like h*ll.

[Captain Fabulous]

I feel like 72 hours of working immediately afterwards more than makes up for any missing dramatic flair. I only had to walk a mile to the bus stop the next morning and around the office at work ... and that was enough for me. I can't even imagine being stuck on my feet for 72 hours after that. The blisters D: THE BLISTERS D:

[Guzzi]

Bahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D

Thank you *wipes tears from her eyes* There is sympathy in that laughter, if you listen very carefully you might just hear it.

I love that you posted that, and that you kept the photos of the blisters. *highfive*

I like the name, I think it gives you something to live up to, good for the motivation. Of course you can always change it, but you gotta have a certain number of posts to do it. So looks like you're stuck with it for now