2009 Lenten Challenge

[RickMatz]

How is everyone doing with the Challenge? Sometimes the first few days are the most difficult. If you get off to less than a perfect start, there is a temptation to throw in the towel.

Don't do that! There are no grades given for his exercise. If you missed a day to two, just begin again today. Begin again and again, as often as you need.

[Mr Punch]

Quick update since I'm on the board for a question... oh, OK, I just can't stay away

Fuller version on my blog thread.

25th: seated office yoga set: 45 mins

26th: Kurz/Aunkai stepping drills, intense, hard: 25 mins. Evening: yoga sectional breathing set, eye set: 25 mins

27th: Fat Loss 2 + 8 x chin-ups – small milestone! (couldn’t do more than 3 when I started this programme ): 40 mins. Evening: neck rehab yoga set: 1 hr. Sectional breathing, eye set : 25 mins

28th: Yoga: 10 mins. Fu punching: 10 mins. FAIL!

1st: 45 mins carrying bulky 16 kg box with one hand, and often squirming 12 kg 2 yr-old in the other… 10 mins yoga. FAIL… but I’m giving myself a pass!

2nd: Fat Loss 2 (last workout! – next Hypertrophy 1). Small (pitiful!) milestone! – hit BW deads for 5 (first time hitting anything BW unassisted)… finally made it to a novice lifter!

3rd: aching from yesterday so don’t want to push it and mess up the gain… kung fu + Aunkai footwork drills; the WC forms; seated and eye yoga sets.

[Reverend Tap]

Ack, forgot to do my run yesterday.

Gonna be making up for it tonight with forearm conditioning.

[Joe Mantis]

Come on man, make it about the Christianity.

While we're at it, let's make it about politics too!!!!

[Mr Punch]

Come on man, make it about the Christianity.

If it's what you want to hear, I'm quite sure that at some point during my weights tonight I'll be staggering around going 'Jeeeesus H Christ'!

[bawang]

i made my mongolian rapist work out face and scared everyone at the gym just for you guys

[RickMatz]

How is everyone holding up?

[Mr Punch]

4th: Thomas Kurz’s warm-up stretching routine, wing chun footwork drills, wing chun forms. 40 mins or so, not intense enough. An hour’s hard bike ride in the pouring rain.

5th: Kurz’s warm-ups (morning workout! – first time for about 6 years I’d decided to do one and acted on it!): 30 mins. Couldn’t get to the gym as planned (family commitments) so the evening was just Kurz’s again, some harder versions of the Sun Salutation (really should do that every day: great little sequence) and Aunkai’s Tenchijin.

6th: Morning training again: 30 mins Kurz warm-ups; SLT; Sun Salutation five times various versions. Lots of picking up and swinging round 1st and 2nd grade kids at work, sometimes several at a time! No way to make time in the evening.

7th: Morning - 30 mins Kurz, Sun Salutation a couple of times. About 1 hr of Hypertrophy 1A from ‘New Rules of Lifting’. Upper body split, went on too long, partly as I added a few practice sets of narrow grip benches and high pulls (or upright rows as they seem to be called everywhere else - first time I’d tried these – they’re good!). 5x5 alternate sets of opposing exercises. Felt good.

8th: Morning – short Kurz. Yoga – 1 hr at gym. Sleep deprived – sick daughter. Washed out all day except for a wee bit of revivification at yoga.

9th: Morning – Kurz and yoga: 30 mins. After work: gym – Hypertrophy 1B (lower body): squats AND deads, Bulgarian split squats and step-ups. Hard but good: another small personal milestone – squatted my own BW for the first time apart from using machines.

10th: Morning – Kurz, Sun Salutation; daytime – fu forms; night – chi sao, systema drill, Aunkai bits n bobs.

11th: Morning – Kurz, McGill; daytime – Kurz, fu forms and footwork drills.

12th: Kurz morning. Evening; 10 mins of eye yoga, and 10 mins of breathing exercises. Bit of a failure - busy day.

13th: Total failure! Daytime chucked loads of little kids about if that counts (in class). Tired, and busy all day with back to primary school classes, then a contract meeting, then a private class with a party after. Got home at gone midnight.

14th: Kurz morning. Minor fu through the day.

15th: Kurz morning, followed closely by 45 mins heavy lifting (lower body split: upped PR again: 5x85 kg squat and dead) then an hour of yoga for a warm down.

16th: Kurz morning. Lazy day with my family.

17th: Kurz, McGill, cat asana, sun salutation in the morning. Office yoga in the daytime. Weights between work and part-time job. Good session. No kung fu tonight tho (often meet fu-bros on Tue). Shame.

[RickMatz]

Here's a tip to finding enough time to easily keep up with Lenten Challenge: get laid off.

[dnovice]

don't need the lenten challenge. I practice everyday except sunday. I roll out of bed and just do it do it do it. ;-)

keep up the good work though guys.

[Mr Punch]

Here's a tip to finding enough time to easily keep up with Lenten Challenge: get laid off.

D@mn! Have you?

don't need the lenten challenge. I practice everyday except sunday. I roll out of bed and just do it do it do it. ;-)

keep up the good work though guys.

Those were the days. I have a full time job, full-time childrearing duties straight after work on three days at least, two part time jobs, and enough freelance work to keep me busy until 1-2 am most days.

Although, it's going ok, so hopefully I can make the time to continue after Lent - that was my reason for taking the excuse of the Lenten challenge in the first place: to test its feasibility.

[RickMatz]

D@mn! Have you?

Although, it's going ok, so hopefully I can make the time to continue after Lent - that was my reason for taking the excuse of the Lenten challenge in the first place: to test its feasibility.

Well, I'm looking forward and not backwards. I don't need to find 3M jobs, I just need to find one, and that one can meet my short term requirements (paying the bills) until the economy recovers, then I can look at taking care of my longer term goals.

In the meantime, I AM taking advantage of the extra time for training, reading, etc. after I finish my job hunting for the day.

I'm taking advantage of the time for a general reset. A break in the action isn't necessarily a bad thing to have.

About continuing after Lent, it's just one day at a time, and they add up!

[dnovice]

Those were the days. I have a full time job, full-time childrearing duties straight after work on three days at least, two part time jobs, and enough freelance work to keep me busy until 1-2 am most days.

Craziness. Do you even get time to sleep?

[Mr Punch]

Well, I'm looking forward and not backwards...

About continuing after Lent, it's just one day at a time, and they add up!

You seem to have a good healthy attitude about a lot of things. I'm sure you'll find something by and by.

Craziness. Do you even get time to sleep?

Yeah, usually about 4.5 hrs a night. It isn't ideal, though if work goes well I can sometimes get 45 mins in in the afternoon.

[Li Kao]

Rick,

This is an excellent idea -- count me in! Better late than never, right? And there is still almost a month to go, so still plenty of time to make some gains and progress. At the very least, I think a concerted effort like this is helpful to get exercise back into a habit behavior. I'm in the middle of Physician Assistant school right now, and it is sooooo easy to blow off exercise sometimes when you feel like you should be studying every waking minute. The pressures can really overtake me sometimes. And I'm a single guy with no kids, living in my own apartment 3 miles from the university, so my responsibilities outside of school are minimal -- I know anyone who has a family or multiple jobs is probably just as or more busy and stressed, so I really have no excuse. Still, I find myself 10 lbs heavier than on my birthday last November, and so this is as good a time as any to get back in the game.

Sorry to hear about your job -- I'm originally from Michigan, and still have most of my family there -- I know times are tough everywhere, but even more so there. Best of luck in finding something to keep you sustained for now.