Reclaiming the chaos

[ErgoVoid]

I'm going to try this "workout log accountability" thing to see if it helps any with the "routine" thing. My last few attempts at making a habit out of exercising haven't lasted long.

I used to use this site (not the forum, just the site) a lot the last time I tried to get in shape, and I actually did a pretty good job of exercising regularly, cooking and eating balanced meals regularly, and achieved decent overall fitness but lost all that when my living situation became too unstable for a couple years. It's hard to have a routine when your life is all chaos and no stability, especially when you're someone who NEEDS routine and has a difficult time coping with change. I've had a very hard time creating and sticking to new routines since then.

Stress takes a toll on the body though, so I'm hoping that in addition to the regular physical benefits of exercise (strength, endurance, energy) it'll also help with stress.

Anyway I have three goals I'm going to try to stick to and log: exercise, meditate, 6-7 hours of sleep a night (ideally 7, but allowing myself 6 instead for now may be more practical). Regular meditation is going to be a part of my fitness goals, because I find it helpful at making me more focused and less stressed or depressed. I like meditating, so it doesn't make sense that I stopped.

Completed Spartan Trial I:
- Started Spartan Trials. I wasn't sure what the best program was to start. I feel like I'm really out of shape, but the I and II workouts looked too easy so maybe I'm not as out of shape as I feel? Spartan Trials says it's suitable for beginners, strength building sounds appealing, and the name, Spartan Trials, reminds me of my current video game I'm playing through: Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.
- Meditation - 12 mins. Only meant to be 10, but I liked the song that was playing so I finished it.
- Sleep - Numerically, it seemed to be seven, but it felt like only four or five so clearly it must have been restless. I hate when I wake up as tired as I was when I went to bed.

 

[Fremen]

Welcome

 

[aku-chan]

 

[Mianevem]

Welcome!

 

[Anek]

Hello and welcome!

 

[lofivelcro]

Welcome and good luck getting back into the groove!

 

[Lady Celerity]

Welcome @ErgoVoid ! You have some great goals!

 

[oneironaut]

Welcome!

 

[Froud]

Hello

 

[ErgoVoid]

Hello everyone! Thanks for the warm welcome.

Yesterday:
[X] Completed Spartan Trials II: Body Armor. I just realized today the trials are named. Sounds way cooler to refer to the days as individual trials as DareBee does in the description than to just count off days, so I'm going to be doing that the entire time. With Roman numerals for extra motivating power. (I'm happy to embrace the DareBee way of trying to make exercise sound cooler and more epic than it actually is. Treating it like an extension of my AC: Odyssey play-through will be far more effective than treating it like a chore)

I did Part I on difficulty 1.5 (15 reps each), Part II regular Level I. I'll be doing most of these trials on Level I, but when I can I'd like to push things a little further.

[X] Sleep: significantly more than 6-7 hours. Probably needed it but I hadn't been planning on losing that much of my morning to sleep.
[X] Meditation: around 18 minutes. Kept putting it off so I ended up doing it during the car ride to my birthday dinner. Obviously, I was not the one driving.

Today:
[X] Completed Spartan Trials III: Come and Take 'em: Five sets for Part I since the weights I had weren't really sufficient weight to make 8 reps as effective a workout as I'd like (they're a good weight for 15-20 reps). Unless I misunderstood and it's supposed to be a light day again? I did Part II at Level II with "body armor." Possibly should've done either/or since my form was pretty terrible at the end. Or midpoint.

[ ] Sleep: quite a bit less than 6-7 hours. Had nothing to do with yesterday's excess sleep, let's just say there's a reason it's included in my fitness goals.
[X] Meditation: Had a lot of trouble getting into the right mindset for this today so I kept restarting my timer. So either 20-25 minutes, or 5-7 minutes, depending how you count. It'll still count for the meditation goal since the goal is "daily meditation" and not a specific time requirement, though I'm generally aiming for 10 minutes minimum as a loose rule. Probably should've been expected - I suppose if my brain were willing to be restful I'd have had a full night's sleep?

I'm also now officially in "can I keep this up while working full-time?" territory. Today was a success.

 

[ErgoVoid]

Missed two days: First a 3 am tornado warning destroyed my sleep which destroyed the rest of the day. Thing is, we don't live in a tornado area - they don't even build houses with basements here. The way that storm was blowing, it absolutely sounded like one could land, and there's literally nothing you can do to protect yourself. So I only got about two or three hours of sleep. Second day I missed for much less dramatic reasons (just sick).

Worked out today though.

[X] Completed Spartan Trials IV: Balance and Coordination. Or at least did three sets of ten circuits of something LIKE it. I couldn't really make sense of the images for this and the moves in question don't appear in the video exercise library. After a few times trying doing different things, I came up with a sequence that is at least a rough approximation of what we were supposed to do.
[X] Sleep: 6 hours
[X] Meditation: 10 minutes.

 

[lofivelcro]

It probably doesn't help you any more, but still...
Day 4 is actually quite a fluid movement, if you understand it.
Image 1: You go into a deep lunge, like for the exercise, lift your arms up high and hold your upper body straight. No knee on the floor on the stretched out leg, other knee is bent approx 90°
Image 2: Stay in lunge position, lower your arms, bring the elbow of the arm on the same side of the bent leg down towards the floor, look down during that movement, arch your back a bit.
Image 3: From the lunge position, put your hands on the floor on the sides of the foot placed in front and push the leg behind into a straight position. You might feel a stretch in your hamstring.
Image 4: From that position, push through the front leg into a stand while bringing your other leg forwards, until your standing upright. Bring your knee to roughly hip height. You're balancing on one leg now.
Image 5: Still balancing, grip your raised knee with both hands and pull it towards your body and a bit higher. This results in a stretch in your quad of the raised leg.
Image 6: Release your knee and move into a horizontal position while still balancing. Stretch out your raised leg behind you while at the same time you lower your upper body and your arms into the horizontal. Try to aim for a T. You're still balancing.
Back to Image 1: Slowly move your upper body back into the vertical, your arms raising at the same time, while you bring your leg slowly back to the front and lower yourself down into the lunge position from the beginning.
If you have the body control, you can move fluidly and slowly from one position to the next. But that's practically the gist of it.