Some eaiser variations of push ups to help you build the strength to do a traditional one!

I don’t generally reblog ‘fitness’ stuff but gaddamn could I use some more arm strength.

Push-ups are my worst nightmare. I can only do 44 before I pass out on the floor.

“I can only do 44” hahaha omg I can’t even do one.

yes good

I was always frustrated how my P.E. teachers wanted all of us to go “all-or-none” and basically hurt ourselves without letting us build up from square-one like in the first gif.  Then they’d fuckin yell at us for not doing it right >:|

Knee-pushups is not square-one.

When I got my first personal trainer, she had me doing push ups almost standing upright in the weight lifting bars so that I could do 15 reps and 3 sets of them. It’s more about the technique of the push up, and if you’re pushing too much weight, you can’t exersize the correct muscles within their tolerances. This post is pretty important tto know cause of that.

I was introduced to the knee push-up last year and it was such a fucking game changer. I had NO idea it was possible to work those same muscles just with a slight variation in position. 

I wanna just verify that these are excellent for building strength, both as someone who took weights class in high school with a good teacher, and as someone who’s had a lifetime of physical therapy (not for my arms specifically, but I’ve spent a lot of time in sports medicine centers). And again, if the vertical one in the first gif is difficult, you don’t even have to lean into it like that. Start standing, and only lean as much as it takes you to lower towards the wall.

And remember, many exercises can be modified in this way! I did an image search for “modified pull up” and got exactly what I was looking for right away, which is this:

Doing pull ups on a lower bar, or from the straps with handles that gyms sometimes have (called the TRX - they can also be used to support yourself during squats and some balance exercises) is a lot easier than jumping straight into vertical pullups, and lets you build up that muscle with exercises that are still comfortable and safe for you, so you can do more sets of more reps.

As a general rule, always start with lower-strain exercises and practice good form before you work your way up. You don’t want to have to unlearn bad habits that could lead to injury later as the difficulty increases.

@imfemalewarrior I’m assuming you’ve seen this post but in case you haven’t—it seems like your kind of thing

Here are push up and pull up progressions! 

-FemaleWarrior, She/They 

Because I have serious issues with core strength and cannot do a sit up or a crunch without using muscles I shouldn’t and hurting myself, I looked up core exercises for beginners (because modified sit ups just have me ways to make it harder), and here’s what I found.

All from here, which also includes sit ups with the idea that you start up and don’t go all the way down.

This stuff on the bottom is some of the stuff I do for physical therapy, can vouch for it

Having done a few stints with PT myself, over the years, I can definitely vouch for that last set as ones I’ve incorporated into 2020 as “couch potato workout” to help get my core to recover from being out of work and less active. 👌

Reblogging so I can find this if I ever find the energy and motivation to do a light exercise routine every day.

stop telling your teenage daughters who say they don't want kids that they'll change their mind

reblog the shit outta this

I haven't been a teenager in over a decade. Mind has yet to change on the subject.

So please, please stop telling girls (or really kids at all, but especially girls) that they will change their minds. Please don't tell them that meeting 'the right guy' will make them suddenly feel broody, that their potential future husband's desire to have children will make her reconsider and see things his way. For one, a couple should have had that conversation and decided if it was a deal breaker, LONG before they got hitched. For another, it's her body that gets to grow and birth another human being- her husband's desire to be a father doesn't supercede her autonomy.

Please, let girls make their own choices? Girls are forced to mature too fast as it is and are bombarded from all sides with SHOULD (you SHOULD be a size 2, you SHOULD wear this dress, you SHOULD have a boyfriend to be a normal teen, you SHOULD always smile), they don't need another judgement from someone who hasn't walked a mile in their particular shoes. Respect teenage girls and their ability to look at the world, themselves, their situation, and their future, and make an important choice.

*gets off soap box, slides it back under the sofa, lets out a sigh*

Thanks for attending my TED talk. G'night.

So much all of this.

I have a wonderful daughter, currently 9 years old, with autism and ADHD. Even if I WAS the kind of person that would say 'you'll change your mind' I obviously would be telling her 'you shouldn't have kids, you'll be having enough trouble as it is'.

Well, I don't tell her that either. When talking about her future, dreaming/planning her life, my daughter doesn't want to be pregnant and give birth but she DOES want to give love and care to children and plans to adopt.

In our country she will not be allowed to adopt kids considering her diagnosis. Also, she will most likely need at least a service dog to be able to live on her own.

I don't tell her she can't adopt. Maybe she'll change her mind, maybe the rules will change, maybe friends of hers will have kids and be happy to let her babysit often. Maybe that'll require me to be around to take care of unforseen troubles and if so I will absolutely be there.

It's not my place to crush her plans for the future based on current facts.

Also, she doesn't want a boyfriend/girlfriend; maybe just someone to smooch with on occasion.😂 <3

Whatever happens in the future I'll support it and as long as she's happy with her life, so am I.

So I do wonder how many children growing up during this pandemic are going to end up with like six thousand allergies.

My mom was a severe germophobe and it got worse as she got older and she got my dad into the habit of sanitizing everything. So when I was a baby I was allowed to hang out in dust and eat dirt and lick the cats back or whatever like a normal baby but my brother, who was born six years of germaphobia later, was constantly cleaned and living in a sanitized house.

I developed a slight allergy to bananas in my early 20s. That’s it. My brother as soon as he started eating was allergic to wheat, milk, every kind of nuts, bananas, avocados, peas, peanuts, and most kinds of beans.

After my mom died my dad kept up the sanitizing and my brother’s allergies seemed to keep getting worse. He ended up going to an allergist about it and she basically told him “Stop sanitizing everything and let him play in dirt.”

So we stopped sanitizing everything and my brother was let loose on the backyard were of course he did toddler stuff like eat dirt and chase butterflies.

Nowadays, he’s only allergic to nuts, peanuts, and bananas. And that’s not just a result of him growing up. His allergies started dropping off one by one months after he was allowed to get dirty and we stopped sanitizing everything.

When children grow up in a sanitized environment their immune systems find other things to fight. We’ve already got people saying that they’re gonna keep sanitizing their homes and their hands constantly even after the pandemic is over.

I’m not a doctor. I’m just repeating things that my brother’s doctors have told us.

Don’t sanitize everything forever. Let your kids play in the dirt and hang out with your dog. It’s good for them. Don’t turn your home into a bacteria-free hellscape. It’s bad for you.

My youngest is the only one of my kids that has allergies and our home has been in the lower end of pretty normal standards of cleaning always. 

He’s also the only one of my kids that I managed to breastfeed an entire year as WHO recommends.

Still, he’s the one with the asthma and allergies.

So I know there’s statistics and stuff that basically confirms this original post. That means, it probably has some truth to it.

But just, if your kid has allergies, don’t feel guilty. Don’t think you caused it. Because really, most of the time, allergies just happen, in my totally anecdotal experience.

Only available on AO3. Do not repost to other sites. 

| Under the Hood; Into the Heart | a love story of motor oil and telepathy

Dean loves the Impala. And she- She loves him. When Baby unexpectedly turns human, that love will change into something neither ever planned for.

| The Hunters’ Rose | a love story of second chances and changes

Becky Rosen learned her lesson after almost selling her soul to a demon and has spent the last three years helping hunters do their job, even if she’s stuck to the sidelines. When Sam Winchester shows up on her front porch with his sick brother, they’ll both realize how much they’ve changed.

| Beyond the Steel | a love story of innocence and desire

Dean is losing himself to the Mark, and he needs Pala more than ever. A run-in with a genie and an unspoken wish leads to the unexpected.

| Into the Shallows | a love story of loose ends and fears to be faced

Becky lost a good friend and nearly lost her life because a man died on her watch. It’s time to tie up loose ends. Will Becky face her fears, or will she drown?

| Suffer the Brand | a love story of influence and devotion

Dean searches for his wife, Pala, as she cuts a path of destruction across the country.

Under the Hood turns 6 today! Happy Birthday to our baby, @anne-jo-madeline. Thank you, @hot-topical-castiel, @rizlowwritessortof and @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid for sticking with me to the bitter end. ❤

Under the hood was one of the most captivating SPN fics I’ve ever read.

I’m going to go read it again now, and it’s younger siblings!

4K Celebration Masterlist

Drabbles and ficlets ahoy for the lead up to 4K followers for me!  Thank you to everyone who happened to see the flag go up - I didn’t tag anyone coz I was scared of having too many to turn down.  I said 10-tops at the start and ended up doing 16 19!! 

The prompts were awesome!! I loved it!!  I loved them!!

Thank you everyone for following and enjoying my stuff.  It’s so appreciated!

It was too much fun so, if all you want is a drabble, send me an ask and I’ll let you know if it’s a goer, but otherwise no proper oneshots due to the Next Big Thing - a series using the plot of The Princess Bride with spn characters and verse, centered around Sam.  Chapter 1 is here.

Keep reading

OKAAAY So I missed a few and have updated the list.  This time I’m actually tagging my folks, seeing as I didn’t hound you all with every ask I got.  Please ignore if you’re someone who’s ever so kindly indulged me with your reading time - you really have made it all worthwhile.  I’m so glad I did it!

Keep reading

This signifies a temporary return to the tumblr pit for me. <3

petition to rename the usa ‘south canada’

what about alaska

are we then normal canada

canada a bit to the left

What about South America? Is that just America? Or South South Canada?

i cried my ass of laughing

WARM CANADA

i caN’T BREATHE OH MY GOD

I’m not even from Canada but I approve this change of names

M ILKY E H

IT HAS RETURNED

FOUND IT

IT IS AN HONOUR TO HAVE THIS GRACE MY DASH

reblogging from myself bc i found this when scrolling through my blog

Reblogging again because this is too god for not reblog

this is one of the few posts you have to reblog or else you’ll never see it in a million years besides screenshots

How many notes must this post get to effectively enable Canada to take over the world? I feel like Canada is the only country in the entire world (perhaps barring Bhutan) whose government isn’t a corrupt bunch of secret billionaires lining their pockets. Can’t we at least be allowed to apply for honorary Canadian Citizenship if we agree with Canadian values?

As a fat person who is rarely ever complimented for my physical looks (aside from acceptable compliments for fat people), it drives me absolutely fucking bonkers when conventionally attractive people fish for compliments from me. They’ve got a whole society that worships their body type and tells them that they’re inherently amazing, just for being born with a good metabolism and no hormonal (or other specific health) issues. But they’re gonna come to me and tell me how they don’t look good, or they feel ugly, or no one loves them, and I’m supposed to make them feel better. I just want to tell them to open a fucking magazine, or turn on the tv. You’ll get to see virtually every person there looking similar to you. I didn’t see a positive role model (ie. not the butt of fat jokes) that was beautiful and funny and successful and that never had their body questioned and who looked like me till I saw Melissa McCarthy in The Heat (came out in 2013, fyi). I’ve never seen clothing models built like me till last week when I found the GRRRL clothing line (plus size models for most fashion companies are acceptable fat, ie. big boobs and ass, barely a stomach, thick but not too thick legs). As a kid, I never dreamed of being a princess because the only people who looked like me in Disney films were evil, or side characters who took care of the princess. If conventionally attractive people are looking for a partner, they don’t have to worry about being fetishized, they can be loved for themselves, and their partner won’t be questioned as to HOW or WHY they can love them. Their relationship will not have to be justified or explained, they will not face questions of “so… Like, [the fat partner] is never on top, right?” or “doesn’t it kinda ruin the sex when you can’t just move [the fat partner] around?”. They won’t be the running joke among their friends. If both partners are fat, they get even more wonderful bullshit to deal with. When dating, conventionally attractive people won’t be accused of lying or misrepresenting themselves if they don’t post a full body picture and show up to a date fatter than what the date anticipated. Their bodies do not need to come with disclaimers. I can count the number of times my former partners told me I’m beautiful without a “but” following it (3. With a “but” following it; 5). I remember almost every compliment given to me by friends that was explicitly about my physical appearence and that didn’t skirt around me being fat (there’s acceptable ways to compliment a fat person. Ie. You have a nice face/personality, that clothing is slimming on you, you look healthy, etc. I’m tempted to include cute, but I’m on the fence about that one) I’m tired of being the bastion of self love, confidence, and body positivity for people whose only barrier in the way of their own self love and confidence is themselves. I didn’t have anyone to push me to this point where I can love myself and others completely, regardless of size. The only reason I am the way I am is because I’ve made myself this way, facing a society that’s continuously told me it’s wrong to be happy and love myself as I am.

Thin privilege is a huge source of social capital for many people. Some people come to depend on it, so much that they’ll go begging to people with no thin privilege for it. 

A lot of effort can go into building your whole identity around looking thin enough to be 1) employable 2) dateable 3) medically treatable 4) some hipster’s muse. If tomorrow people stopped responding to social capital begging in the name of thin privilege then the value of that capital would drop and suddenly all that effort would be for nothing. 

People whose thinness is a major reason they were employed or had their pick of romantic/fucking partners or were able to get the surgery they needed know, at some level, the value of thinness in their lives. That’s why you’re not going to find the vast majority of thin people doing any true work to devalue thin privilege. If anything, they’ll do a bunch of things that strengthen or maintain the value of thin privilege, whether they are engaging in those behaviors knowingly or not. Including horribly rude things like begging for thin privilege social capital from people who don’t have access to that social capital.

-ATL 

I can so relate to this. Until I got into my 50′s and thus became invisible, I would get the “you’d be pretty if you’d just lose some weight” or “you have a pretty face, but..” compliments-which-aren’t-really compliments. 

I also want to throttle every thin person who has ever done the “ugh I’m so faaaaaaaat” bit in the presence of me, an actual fat person. When I was younger, this upset me. Now it just irritates me. How fucking clueless can you be? What the fuck do you want me to say to you?

I’ve also come to the point where I just plain don’t like or trust physical appearance based compliments. If you like what I’m wearing, fine. If you include the word “slimming” in your assessment of my attire, I may well tie you into a pretzel shape and feed you to sharks. Fuck “slimming” and fuck “flattering” as well.

If someone (usually a guy who thinks I’m desperate and will give him the time of day and also sex) tells me I’m “beautiful,” my reply these days is usually “yeah tell me something I don’t know.” In truth, I don’t think I’m beautiful. On good days I think I’m about average. On bad days I think I’m a hideous monster. However, “beautiful” doesn’t mean jack shit to me. Compliment me on my work ethic, my creativity, my determination–anything but my looks. I don’t trust or appreciate appearance based compliments. It’s who we are, not what we look like that matters.

I hear you, ladies. Also, this, about daring to live in the here and now when fat:

https://www.facebook.com/sofiehagen.komiker/posts/1335976266510723

Favorite quotes: 

“ You are not allowed to live in the present when you are fat. You have to be constantly preparing for the future, in which you are hopefully thin.”  “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Not even being alive.” 

on fanfic & emotional continuity

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions. 

The fact that ficwriters en masse - or even the same ficwriter in different AUs - can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative. 

So I was reading this rumination on fanfic and I was thinking about something @involuntaryorange once talked to me about, about fanfic being its own genre, and something about this way of thinking really rocked my world? Because for a long time I have thought like a lawyer, and I have defined fanfiction as “fiction using characters that originated elsewhere,” or something like that. And now I feel like…fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters because then we can really get the impact of the storyteller’s message but I feel like it could also be not using other people’s characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuff–the novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finished–are probably really fanfiction, even though they’re original, because they’re hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that I’m calling it a genre it really isn’t. 

And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love “fic” really means you love this character-driven genre. 

So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused. 

It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff that’s going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I can’t just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me. 

Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that they’re doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and there’s sci-fi and meanwhile I’m just like, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.” That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but I’m the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a character’s state of mind. That’s why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. That’s what we’re thinking about. 

And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. That’s it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. That’s the entire plot. And that’s the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of “friends to lovers” or “enemies to lovers” or “fake relationship,” and you’re like, “Yes. I love those. Give me those,” and you know it’s going to be the same plot, but that’s okay, you’re not reading for the plot. It’s like that Tumblr post that goes around that’s like, “Me starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think they’ll fall in love for real????” But you’re not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. “Come in. Spend a little time in this character’s head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTER’S HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when you’re not hanging out with them.” 

When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that you’re freed from plot. It’s like how many people don’t really have a “plot” to hanging out with their friends. There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that. 

Idk, this was a lot of random rambling but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. 

Spread the Love - Your Favourites

Thank you to everyone who sent in their favourites, I know how difficult it is to choose just one story. (I ended up picking just over 60 fics myself, excluding the fics that I love that have been chosen below)

Some people may have submitted more than one of your stories so keep an eye out for those.

Some that have submitted have left a little comment, which I think is lovely. It would also be appreciated if one of you could tag those who I couldn’t so they get the recognition they deserve.

There have been some amazing stories that have been brought my way, so without further ado, below are only a few of the amazing fics that are out there.

Keep reading

Wow this is an amazing list and I don’t know how anyone can pick a favourite (she says, having just picked one, sorta). 

My endless thanks to @feelmyroarrrr for being so wonderfully lovely, and so thoughtful in picking the Choose Your Own Supernatural Adventure series too.  They’re the best choice because I’m sure everyone who’s been involved in these is as proud of them as I am. They’re by these amazingly generous writers, who’ve made these collaborations far better than I ever hoped.

So, because I was slack in contributing, and to pay it forward, I’m going to nominate @rainygalaxynerd’s Brave New World series.  It’s an amazing OFC story, with a hella background and holy cow, just tight, elegant writing.

Thank you @jayankles for your time and generosity in running this list!

Sending Ali heart eyes  - it would be bad form to simply nominate you back, right? Because I totally would! Though I wouldn’t know how to choose between midwife Sam, voyeur Dean, familiar Dean/witch reader, and that fifteen-year marriage that never happened and turned into a slash fic about Sam and an OC firefighter <3

For the rest of you, look at this list. Look at it! SO MUCH GOOD STUFF! Did you look at it? Okay. Go look at @littlegreenplasticsoldier ‘s masterlist, then. No need to get bored :)

I’m in love with @the-pri-experience ‘s Under The Hood series but when I went looking for the masterlist, I found a post from her, explaining that she had taken it down to rework it to an original story. GO PRI! I’ll miss it for as long as it’s gone and I’ll keep a lookout for the new edition. I know you’ll rock it!

Ali... Shit, Ali... 

I’ve just managed to put into words what praise like this does to me. Apart from the warmth, the blushing, the happiness, I get this other weird feeling. Like a deer in head lights. Paralyzed. Oh shit, someone’s seen my writing. Oh shit, oh shit, they actually liked it. Should I play dead or run in a zigzag pattern???

Still, thank you so much. I don’t think I could have finished the story without your faithful encouragement and your help.