I joined Fitocracy back in mid-February. Quoting them: “Play Fitocracy to track your fitness activities, earn achievements, beat quests, and compete against your friends.” My emphasis is on tracking my fitness activities–the site gives you nice charts of time or distance or reps–but I’m happy that I’m almost to level 14 and have completed 9 quests.
There’s also groups, for different sports, or anything… There are two writers’ groups that I know of, and a couple health at every size type groups (one nice thing about the site is it’s not focused on dieting/weight loss, although there are groups for that). I joined a bodyweight strength training group. I find strength training dull, but the group follows a book called You Are Your Own Gym, which lays out training plans. It’s a lot more interesting than dumbbell exercises or endless pushups.
Of course I started at the most basic level in the book. I’m in week 6 of 10, and ran into some workouts that require a pull-up bar. (Or a door. But I found that difficult to hold onto.) So last week I bought a bar, and yesterday I put it up, with a lot of help from J on the last three incredibly stubborn screws. Getting them to go in was a workout in itself.
Right now I can’t actually do a pull-up. I can’t even do a negative pull-up–standing on a chair and starting with bent arms and just lowering myself down. I can’t even do those flexed-arm hangs from the junior high school fitness test. My plan is to do a couple assisted pull-ups (feet on a chair and some of my weight on my legs), or at least hang from the bar and move the 1 inch that I can, a few times a day, every day, until I can do one pull-up. It might take a while.
Even hanging from the bar hurts my hands right now.
And that’s why I have blisters on my palms.