Monday, October 6, 2014 - Workout & Day 1 of Fall Partner Challenge

Today is the first day of our fall partner challenge.  It is always incredible to see how much change athletes are able to realize in just over a month when they pay closer attention to their nutrition and their training.

In this challenge we are doing it a little different than we have in the past.  We are really putting an emphasis on your nutrition, but adding the accountability that comes with having a partner that sees everything that you eat.

We are also adding in scoring (on an honor system) for daily activity.  What it comes down to is that we only have you for about 3 hours per week, which is not near enough training for most people to reach their goals.  For one, 3 hours is not enough to offset poor eating choices in the other 165.  We are looking for every one of you to do at least 15 minutes of activity on your own every day.  This can be playing a sport, running, cycling, working on bodyweight exercises at home, following a fitness video (P90x), etc...  Even though 15 minutes is the minimum, we will give more points for 30+ and even more for 60.

Instead of having everyone post their own food logs for this challenge we are going to encourage accountability by having you text or email your food log to your partner every day and have them post it on the website.  I will randomly choose approximately 10 days of the challenge and score the food logs as either yes or no.  We will not be grading you based on the quality of them, but I will give you eating guidelines that I would highly recommend you follow for the duration of the challenge. Even though today will not be scored, I highly recommend you practice posting your food log today to make sure you don't have any issues with it so we can work them out before tomorrow.
 
Remember to write down everything you eat or drink for the remainder of the challenge.  You will need to send it to your partner every day and your partner will post it on the blog each evening.  I will post the details on the scoring in the next few days, but it will comprise of your  team's combined:

- Percentage improvements on the workouts
- Food logs being posted every day
- Performing and posting daily activity

You must be at workout all 3 days this week or arrange with a coach to make-up the workouts.  Everyone must perform all 8 workouts by next Monday.

Here are the partners for the challenge.  They were chosen at random with the only criteria being that we wanted every team to have an equal opportunity to compete.  I will send you your partners email address and cell phone number today.

Rodney/Kale
Jackie/Julie
Amy/Gabby
Angela/Jessica
Renee/Margie 
Hannah/Rocio
Gerald/Bethany
Ashley/Thresa
Kim/Donna

I'm open to input, but I'm leaning towards a low and manageable fee of $20 per person which would give $300 to the winning team and $100 to the 2nd place team.  As usual, we would be very flexible on when you pay the entry fee.  I'm okay with increasing it, but to a max of $50.

I highly recommend taking before and after pictures in the same outfit and getting good waist, hip and neck measurements as well.  Even though we decided not to score those things this time, measuring is a very effective way to measure progress.

Warm-Up:
- 300m Run
3 Rounds -
- 3 Pull-ups
- 6 Push-ups
- 9 Squats

Challenge Workout 1 -
- 2000m Row for Time

Challenge Workout 2 -
- 1 minute AMRAP of Sit-Ups

Challenge Workout 3 -
- AMRAP in 9 minutes of -
- 3 Pull-Ups
- 6 Push-Ups (to abmat)
- 9 Squats (to medball)

Please post your partner's food log and your workout results to comments.  Include the band you used, if any, on the pull-ups.