Quarantine contest #1: fun and effective exercises - intermediary and basic

There are probably few chronic conditions outside war and genocide that can harm a person’s mental health as the combination of uncertainty, fear and boredom (or, rather, the management of unstructured time). If you exercise regularly and your exercise load and frequency dramatically decreased, this combination can lead to serious depression, confusion, anxiety or all of them together. Exercising is the default “setting” for humans, selected along at least 2 million years of evolution. Or 9 million: it depends on where you start to count as genomically relevant in the taxonomic tree. Well, screw that: you want to move and we’ll help you do that. Nothing like adding some goals to get your mind healthier. Here is a weekly contest. You can add it to whatever activity you are already doing or, if you haven’t chosen any yet, this is a fun way to start. Suggestions: (a) Post your score as a comment to this article (b) Get a few friends to join your contest and compete just for bragging rights (c) Compete with yourself by repeating the contest tasks every week for at least 6 weeks If you don’t know what a certain exercise is or you need help adjusting it, comment here and I will come to the rescue. If you are still anxious, bored, scared or feeling like you are losing your mind, ask anything. There’s a Q&A page here and you can ask anyone or someone in particular from the elitefts team. We’re here to help. If your question is about the pandemic, you can ask me (privately or on social media).   Day 1: BASIC:

1. Single hand overhead squat with potatoes (or equivalent random house item like canned food, full detergent bottle, etc) – 50 reps (25 each side), as fast as possible. Your score is the time.
2. Pushups: 60 in as few sets as possible. Your score: 1/(sets X total time in minutes).

INTERMEDIARY:

1. “Technical” burpees (true vertical jumps, true pushups): as many as possible in 3 minutes. Your score is the number of reps.
2. Pistols, alternating the leg: as many as possible in 3 minutes. Your score is the number of reps.

  Day 2: BASIC:

1. Crunches: 100 in as few sets as possible and as fast as possible. Your score: 1/(sets X total time in minutes)
2. Single leg RDL with no weight: alternating lets every 3 reps, as many reps you can do in 3 minutes. Your score is the number of reps.
3. Farmer’s walk pinch-gripping some canned food: as long as you can hold. Your score is the time.

INTERMEDIARY:

1. Knee jump to a squatted position: as many as possible in 3 minutes. Your score is the number of reps.
2. Hand-plant planks: as many hand plants (count one after completing planting both hands) as possible in 2 minutes. Your score is the number of reps.
3. Pushups: 200 in as few sets as possible. Your score: 1/(sets X total time in minutes)

  For your amusement and laughter (joke): I'm a fast writer, but a very, very slow editor. If I don't allow some hours between finishing a piece and revising it, horrible things will be sent to the publisher. By horrible, I mean very horrible. Therefore, I must always consider the deadline the day before the official deadline. It's that gestalt thing, I guess. The pack of cards with wrong cards? Yeah, I'm slow. Same goes for programming. I might think something belongs in a certain day, then transfer that to another day, but forget to delete it on the first day. (athlete): Marilia, I'm very fatigued... (me): why? (athlete): I don't know... squatting for 8 sets, then front squatting, then box squatting and with split squats at warmup... (me): why in hell would you do that?! (athlete):.... because you wrote it?.. (me): OH NO!!!! I didn't delete it?! (my dissertation was published and distributed to the committee members and libraries with a few footnotes containing the following note to myself: COMPLETE THE REFERENCE. Nobody in the committee noticed)