The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
New Year's goals/resolutions.
Fitness Goals for 2026
-- Enter a BJJ Tournament This spring/summer is probably the best time to do it, maybe in my entire life because the weirdness of the belt system. The odd structure of the sport, with tournaments gated by experience through belt level, means that right now I would compete at white belt. Looking around my gym, I'm rolling about the middle of the blue belts nowadays, some vastly better and a couple clearly worse but mostly I can hang these days. I'm realizing that my coach seems to stick to the two-years-a-belt rule of thumb, not to kvetch on the internet about things that don't matter, but there are recently promoted blue belts that I smoke every time we roll, so I figure if I keep going I'll probably get stuck with a blue belt some time between November and next February. Which promotion I'll accept or maybe even be happy about in itself, but it also means if I wanted to enter any tournaments next spring I'd be competing at blue belt, and I won't be that good for another year or more after that, and at that point who knows. All of which adds up to the ideal dip-my-toe-in comp window being this spring/summer. Some people recommend competing immediately, but last year I felt like I still didn't know enough, I still felt like there were too many positions where I was just out of ideas. Now I know at least a few moves from any position. Achieving this goal and putting in a good showing will mean managing my weight to a target, keeping overall fitness high, and tightening up a lot of my BJJ technique.
Sub goal: attend open mats at six gyms other than mine.
--Ride a Full Century I've documented my efforts so far here. This spring or fall I want to do the full 100 miles. Got bored of my username, need a cardio challenge to update it. Next up is a 100km ride for a metric century, and if that goes well I'll go for the 100 miles. I have the bike dialed in for it, I have the route planned, just a matter of sticking to it and putting in the work. Achieving this goal will require sticking to my cardio routine, practicing longer distances, and disciplining myself not to dilly dally on a longer trip.
Sub goals: finish a 100km ride, finish a sub 2hr 50km anywhere.
-- Hit an 1100lb powerlifting total This isn't terribly impressive, and honestly it's something I could have supertotaled already, but I've never done it all in one day, and I need to get back to lifting after a year fucking around with BJJ. Part of the problem is that with BJJ I"m constantly picking up some minor injury that interferes with lifting. Nothing major, but under ordinary circumstances I would basically avoid or scale back lifting if I had a stiff neck or a sore elbow until it got better, which is good advice when lifting is the only source of injury, but doesn't work when BJJ is the source of injury.
Good luck with your century! I think you'll find very doable and perhaps pleasant if you pick a good day and fuel well!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link