u/Apero_

Hello folks!

I'm 39F doing my first Hyrox in December.

I've done a lot of strength training over the years but in bits and pieces and have often neglected my cardio. After training for a half marathon (and unfortunately having to stop after 16km) I decided that I could realistically imagine completing a Hyrox now that my cardio is a bit better.

Naturally time is not my main concern: I just want to finish.

I see my major blocker as being the lunges (which I just need to practice because right now I don't get low enough), and the burpee broad jumps. Everything else I feel comfortable and familiar enough with it to be able to just work on it over the coming months and get there.

Aside from exhausting me breath-wise, I tried 2-3 burpee broad jumps out in my living room and was only able to jump about 80cm and I stumbled when I landed.

For the burpee broad jumps, I have a few questions:

1. Since I have 3.5 months til the event, am I better off starting with general training (e.g. training push ups, step ups, jumps) or by doing the full movement ASAP?
2. 80cm is not very much - how can I train this to be further? I don't love the idea of doing 100 of these after running 1km.
3. What happens rules-wise if I land with both feet but stumble on landing? Can I go back to where I landed or do I have to repeat the whole rep?
4. I have read that I can step out and step back in: is that true and if so, is there a strategy that is popular on how to do this?
5. The pessimistic question: What happens if I literally can't finish these? How long can I be stuck on a station before they just ask me to leave? 😅

Hi all, I just wanted to share my experience of taking the C1 German exam in Berlin.

I've lived in Germany for 8 years and have been working in German most of that time. When I arrived I was at about a high A2 level thanks to doing a few courses in Australia for about 1.5 years.

When I arrived I did a B1.1 intensive course for the first two weeks. Honestly I found this quite frustrating: I am "Sprachbegabt" (a natural with languages) and the courses always move too slowly for me, and I feel like a smartass if I sit there answering all the questions all the time, so I mostly just get bored or skip days to avoid needless repetition.

My first year I was on a working holiday visa so mostly found jobs where German wasn't super important, I worked at a cafe and a beer garden, and also taught English online with platforms like italki. That was a tough year.

Anyway I eventually found more steady work in my field for the next 3 years, which did require daily German conversation, and this is naturally when most of my improvement happened. I had a bit of a setback language-wise with the birth of my child, but once I was back in the workforce again it was fine.

Then we reach the present day: specifically, 2.5 years ago we joined the waitlist for a citizenship application here in Leipzig (which, if you want to feel frustration, take a look at the waitlist processing times on the official site) - yes, you need to join a waitlist to even apply, and then they give you an appointment, and then you submit the documents, and then you wait 6 months. They require B1, but for the last 2 years or so I've been walking around telling everyone I'm C1 level without any proof, so I decided to test myself. If I'm lucky, I might get seen in a year, so I wanted plenty of time to retake modules if I failed them.

I booked a test date about 1 month out. The test itself is in four modules (listening, writing, reading, speaking). The schedule I ended up with was:

08:15 - 09:00 Listening
09:15 - 10:35 Writing
10:50 - 12:00 Reading
14:40 - 15:20 Speaking

The process: You arrive in the morning (I would recommend 8am at the latest) and you put your personal belongings, smartwatches, phones, etc. into lockers. You also aren't allowed water in the room because of the laptops, but you are allowed to put them on a desk directly outside the room and pop out to sip at them. The examination attendant (I think he was also a Goethe teacher) checks your passport or ID card and compares it against his list, and then you can go inside a choose a desk. The room is nicely air-conditioned so no worries if it's a hot day!

For listening, once you start the exam it basically runs straight through - you can't control the timing. There are dedicated times (60sec) to read the questions before each piece plays. The first one was the hardest for me as you only get to hear it once, and all of the examples they used were very similar, but you had to pick which one matched which statement. The rest was a bit easier as it often played twice or in sections. This was my worst performance and most other people I spoke to also thought they failed this. I understood every word I heard, but the act of reading the questions and listening and answering all at the same time was very difficult. I ended up getting a 65 here, so I just scraped through. Personally, I think they should redesign this section, as there was a girl in my class who was literally born and raised in Germany who struggled with this.

Because of some delays with getting everyone in the room and set up, we only had about 2-5mins between the listening and writing modules to drink some water, go to the toilet, etc.

For writing, we received two pieces. The first was an opinion piece for a forum about what individuals can do to help with climate change. The second was an email to our boss requesting time off. These were relatively straightforward. The teacher/attendant told me that the main problem they have there is that some people don't have experience with German keyboard layouts, so struggle to find ä, ü, ö and ß. This might be worth practicing if that's you. I finished this quite quickly so had some time to go outside and get a coffee. I ended up getting a 74 for this section, so maybe I should have proof-read a bit more, but I was blanking on quite a few words and phrases I'd wanted to use, so in the end I'm happy with that.

For reading, there were many different exercises but I actually found this quite easy for the most part, especially the section where you have to insert the sentences into a news article. The hardest part here was the first section, which had a lot of similar words (think "stehen", "aufstehen"). The only way to practice for this is I suppose to really drill vocabulary and the prefixes. Here I got a 79 which I was happy with.

Then there was a huge lunch break. I ended up going back to my hotel, having a long lunch, and just trying to relax. Then I went back for speaking.

They were running a bit behind on time so me and my partner (you do this in randomly assigned pairs) had to sit in a hallway like naughty kids visiting the principal's office. It was quite tense and awkward, and honestly that waiting and anticipation was the worst part of the day, even though speaking is where I'm most confident.

We were then given 20 minutes to sit in a room in silence with a sheet where we could pick one of two topics to give a 5min presentation about. We were allowed to use the sheets as notes but we weren't supposed to read directly off them the whole time, so I basically sketched out a skeleton structure with dot points, and added a few connecting phrases ("Es darf jedoch nicht unerwähnt bleiben, dass..") in order to remind myself in the moment to stay formal, since my German is mostly casual conversation.

The last section is a short conversation with your partner about a set topic (this is also given to you in the earlier 20min section). Here we decided to duzen and then the conversation flowed pretty well, but I could tell that we were a bit scattered and all over the place from nerves. I ended up getting an 88 here, but I credit that mostly to my good accent and the general good flow of my spoken German, since I am brutally aware of some mistakes ("Die Idee ist.. ich meine, DAS Idee..." 🤦‍♀️) that I made.

After that it is radio silence (No "thank you for attending" or "You have completed your exam, now here's what happens" style emails). For us it took about a week to get our results back.

So yes, I passed 🥳 But I was unsure about a lot of the above procedure, how long to wait, etc. earlier. Hopefully all of this info helps you. I'm happy to answer any questions if anyone is prepping and wants a first-hand account.

For context, I am 38F and happily partnered - we are pretty relaxed about monogamy, we've both messed around with other people back in our 20s and are quite comfortable with it happening again if it's not with coworkers or mutual friends. We don't really have a label on it but I'd say we're "open", or maybe just "chill".

Anyway, I began microdosing originally with liraglutide in late March as a way of finally breaking through my post-partum plateau. I've been at 81kg (178lbs) really since the birth of my first kid. I'm now down to 75.4kg (166lbs) and getting very close to normal BMI range for the first time in about 8/9 years.

Yesterday I arrived in a new city for a conference which is male-dominated - that's fine and a normal part of my work, but I'm noticing men noticing me again and it's... weird.

I really thought after I turned 30 and had my kids that the "attention tap" had been turned off - if anything because of age, not weight. Occasionally I'd get the feeling someone was flirting with me but it wasn't upon first interaction, usually after they got to know me.

Now I am "almost normal" again it was actually noticeable that about 3-4 dudes at this event were eyeing me up. On the one hand it's very flattering, but on the other hand I just wasn't prepared for it to be this way ever again.

Has anyone else noticed this happening? I don't know whether to feel flattered or kinda sad about how invisible I was with only a few extra kilos.

It's a very strange emotional rollercoaster in the ol noggin right now.

Started 2 months ago at 32.7% BF and as of yesterday came in at 29.9%. It’s not super accurate just a scale at my gym, but I always use the same one so the trend is what matters.

Also was cool to see that I’ve lost very little muscle, only .4kg (about 1lb) out of 4kg (about 10lbs) lost.

I’ve been inconsistent with my strength training (mostly due to nausea tbh) but have always kept protein high and try to do push-ups or dips on random stuff like tables, benches etc whenever I pass them.

I was cooking yesterday and it hit me why I feel like this is helping me so much. I know 'food noise' is one thing, but for me it's also about food urgency.

I've never been much of a snacker, I've just eaten servings that are way too big or I get obsessed with a specific fast food that I'll then feel almost incapable of controlling myself around, and the serving sizes get bigger and bigger and I order it more and more.

Because of the lack of snacking, I realised that by the time I go to eat a main meal, I feel 'urgent', like my body needs a high-calorie hit as quickly as possible. I'm guessing due to lowering blood sugar or something like that.

For me, the GP1s (in my case liraglutide) have helped the most in forcing me to have the smaller meals, but also even when I don't have snacks, if I end up at a main meal I feel like I have time and headspace to think "What's something I could make now?" and I feel capable of waiting 15-20 minutes to chop veggies, cook stuff fresh, or make something lower-calorie without that 'urgency' hanging over my head.

So yeah, the removal of food noise is great for the cravings, but the removal of food urgency - giving me that time and headspace to actually think about what would be best for my body - is what I appreciate the most!