Kishi

Honestly, audiobooks are the only way I can find time to freaking read. And now that I know I can both read and do other stuff, there's no going back.

Agreed. I suspect this has got worse since the advent of social media. There's probably always been an element of presentation to us and ourselves and how we relate to each other, but never before have seemed to be a * b R a N d * like we are now. But yeah, no, @shaar, be who you feel you are. You don't owe us anything. Mm. Cherry blossoms. These signify the death of your tasks. You shall complete these.

Thanks! I took a look at those postings and determined that I don't have anything like the qualifications for them. I really appreciate you thinking of me, though. And the knee did come around! Did some GMB stuff for it and the knee was very responsive. You are absolutely right. Fortunately, the rehab stuff I found was adamant about "Don't go to the pain place." I listened. I'm glad I did. Thank you! I still think there's more to do and figure out here, but I'm hopeful, and taking steps where I can is better than just sitting with it. It did! Thanks! * Ah, friends, we come to the end of another challenge. How'd it go? Well, the movement part - that which was the core of the challenge - went just fine. Better than fine, really. I honestly wasn't sure what 10 minutes of strength work and a whole bunch of activity in my chosen pursuits would actually do to me. Would I be strong enough? Would I be conditioned enough? Would I feel good doing this? Would I put a bunch of body fat back on? The answers, in order: I have been strong enough, and I've been getting stronger. The movements and patterns I've been mining for strength may not seem terribly significant, but in truth, I've suspected for a long time that I really wasn't as strong as I thought I was. I thought maybe I could get stronger from the outside in - muscles to ligaments - but I see now that, especially for grappling, I need to get stronger from the inside out. I was really afraid that I wouldn't have the right mix of conditioning attributes for the ruck, but I reckon if I was able to do 19 miles after preparation for a 12, it's safe to say that my conditioning was fine. I did feel good doing this. Joint pain still happens, but it's a lot less common. The movement cadence helps, and also, not having to spend an hour getting strong means that I have all this extra time to work on joint, tendon, and ligament health. Feeling good feels good. Who knew? This was the one that scared me the most, because I have a thyroid condition and I was scared that everything would shut down. I'm pleased to report, however, that I've seen a steady decrease - achingly slow, but steady - which is necessary for me to be healthy. I have additional confirmation via my bloodwork that everything is shaping up incredibly well: thyroid's still healthy, blood lipids have been dropping like a stone, and... yeah. So. I do believe we can conclude that this round of the experiment was a rousing success. There's still some experimentation happening here that I never did take the time to spell out, mostly having to do with how much warm up I really need and what actually constitutes good flexibility and mobility work, but there's good progress here and I think it's all shaping up pretty good. As to writing and meditation, well, there was progress here too. I've given myself a lot of permissions as far as writing goes - show up and write even a single sentence and it's a good day. But it doesn't feel good, you know? I find that there's a certain dosage of work that I accomplish in a given day that does feel good, though, and making that happen on a consistent basis is something that I think I want to do for the next challenge. I also think I've got a slot for meditation to fit into too, although as always, the problem remains actually doing it. It's another situation where I have to prioritize myself over my job, and I'm having to face the fact that when it comes to doing the job, I have a kind of workaholism/hyperfocus that they benefit from that hurts me in the long run. Learning to accept that about myself has been something that's been going on in the background. It never seemed to warrant a rant or anything like that, since I never experienced a strong emotion about it. It's just something to see and understand and address as able. I do believe that will be my next challenge, and I look forward to seeing you all and being present for you more and better than I have been lately. In the meantime, my thanks as always to @Mad Hatter, @Mistr, @Scaly Freak, @Sovalis, @Tanktimus the Encourager, @The Most Loathed, @XBlackWidowX, @Everstorm, @Ranger Hal, and anyone else who stopped by that I missed, because there's always so many more people here who care to say or do something nice for me than I can ever really understand. I thank you all, and I will see you next round.

Damn right. And if brother tries to haul off again beforehand, I know now to put him in side control or mount and hold him down while I plot this out. Right. But then again, it's not necessarily impossible to work OT and make mat time. I've done that before, believe it or not, and a lot of what that boils down to is a shift in priorities and treating certain uncontrollables at the job as negligible or unimportant. Which, of course, the job doesn't see it that way, but me being the person they need has necessitated some shifts in approach that they probably wouldn't appreciate if they actually knew or understood. A lot of the reason I've been avoiding mat time in favor of the job, recently, had to do with these uncontrollables, and me punishing myself for them. But in the past 3-4 weeks, that approach failed to get me back on track, and I am forced to conclude that the outcome I want is even further outside of my control than I thought. Hurting myself to be more productive in service of an outcome I can't control doesn't make any sense, so, best to cut myself some slack and go have some fun. The job probably won't like that. But in other news, I don't care. * So the past few days since the ruck have been about recovery. On the trip back on Sunday, my left knee got to hurting; had all the signs of a strain, and it was painful enough to make sleeping difficult. OTOH, once I actually got to sleep, it was the first real night's sleep I'd got, and I woke up Monday morning feeling a lot better. I took Monday off to get things sorted at the apartment and just to rest and recuperate. I had some of the medicine left from when my PCP had me injecting meds for my shoulder, and that's been great for my knees. I also started doing some p/rehab exercises for my knees as well as it's been "knees-o'clock" for a while and I haven't really been watching or honoring that. They feel better since then for all that. I was going to go to the mats on Tuesday, but the job was on fire in a bad way and I had to be at the office, and getting out to the mats involves me sneaking out early, and I had a co-worker who was putting in overtime and I didn't want to chance him ratting me out. (we don't have that kind of culture anyway, thankfully, but I'm paranoid about that kind of thing). So no mat time. Did, however, make mat time Wednesday for striking. Will be doing mat stuff tonight no matter what the job or anyone else has to say to me about it. Unless the academy's closed for the hurricane. Which it shouldn't be. We just got some rain here. And... yeah. That's the way things are ATM. I've been reprioritizing things lately and placing the job lower on the list. It's changed absolutely nothing in terms of job productivity and it's changed an awful lot in terms of how happy I am about it. I shall continue to adjust as necessary.

I'm gonna throw Elf a bone on this one and say that I sympathize, as someone with some fairly antisocial tendencies. I have a history of fairly shallow engagement with lots of people and I haven't always clocked when that wasn't really enough. I could totally see myself doing and being like that. I hope they learn from this and get better.

s h e e s h ~ You've had a lot going on. I'm honestly impressed with how well you seem to be handling things. I don't know that I would be as gracious if I were the one living through all this. Listening to you talk about Elf and Cleo reminds me of a brief stint when me and my folks and my younger brother were all living together again after having lived apart a while. Living together as a bunch of adults was really different, and it took some accommodation from all of us to all of us to make it work. Cleaning the kitchen was, looking back on it, kind of a lynch pin for us because we all used the kitchen at different times to different degrees for wildly different purposes. TBF, I think you're actually kind of easy on them because you're just asking for dishes; my folks made us clean the dishes, and the sink, and the stovetop after every meal. (to be fair, it was a standard they held themselves to too, so it was always ornery but it never felt bad, you know?). I have no answers to what's going on. Just sympathy. Did that for a few minutes during the Ruck this past Saturday. It helped. A lot. Makes me think there might be something to this business of grounding that the youth are talking about these days. But yeah, I feel you on meditation falling off in busy periods. I have no answers here either, but if I find something that works, I'll be sure to rant about it and let you and everyone know.

Hey! I'm sure you're super busy, and I just wanted to drop a line and say I hope things are good.

You're right. And what I've had to find out and learn the hard way is that what we control really doesn't amount to much. Learning peace with that is harder, but it's worth it. You get a lot of critical gifs just typing in "capitalism." But yeah, I did try to prioritize myself. It didn't take. I'm well! I'm in Denver and my legs are busted from a longer-than-planned Ruck. * OK, wow, so it's been a minute, hasn't it? I told myself that I would take time for myself and away from the job if needed. And somehow instead of working 60 hours, I managed to only work 58 hours instead. Yes indeed, everything is going according to plan. Why is this happening? Well, there's not much to say about it. I'm trying to make as much money as I can because I'm not paid very well and there's not really any plans to change that any time soon, between the state legislature giving us cost of living adjustments that don't keep up with inflation and a promotion structure that doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. And I need the money to rebuild my savings after helping my brother get out to Denver, and I gotta get a credit card paid down, and ope would you look at that, the student loans are coming back on, so I gotta get that handled and under control too. It just seems like the responsible thing to do. And before one of you tells me to get another job, I'll tell you now: for the kind of work I do, it's really the best job I can get. There are private companies that pay more, but you give up a bunch of benefits in trade, and you wind up breaking even having to take care of all of it yourself. Also, I'd lose out on the union we have at my job now (which isn't much of a loss since they don't do anything but lobby our officials - and get outspent - and do publicity for the state, but still. It's something). So I work as much overtime as I can find work to do. It's consistently a lot. I should be grateful for that. But in truth, it's hard sometimes. I worked a bunch of OT and found enough to justify doing that instead of going to the mats. I made time to write as I could. Meditation's suffered a lot, although I'm finding quiet moments where I can sit and be aware of my thoughts. It's not quite what I wanted. But I'll still give myself credit for that. This past week, I was able to get out to Denver to visit my brother. After working 3 13-hour days in a row. Only 55 hours work this week once the vacation time is factored in. See? Progress. I flew out Thursday and landed in the evening. Friday, he had to go to work. I slept in and then got up and walked around a bit. I really wanted to see more of Denver this time since last time was mostly spent accompanying my brother and getting him settled. Alas, it was not to be. The weather took a turn for the nasty and I wound up holed up in the apartment all day. Did do some mobility work and some work on my writing too. So that was nice. Got up at 4:15 this morning to get out for the Ruck. This one turned out to be a relatively complicated event - not tough like the one in Boston I went to where we just spent all night getting hazed. This was a navigation challenge, so we had a bunch of waypoints we were supposed to hit. We were told this was a 12-miler, but what we were not told was that we had to construct the route. My brother was pretty gung ho to get going, and as for me, well, I did my usual thing where I just don't sleep the night before a big event and I was caught up in the moment. Rather than plot out the route, we just went from one waypoint to the next. This was a huge mistake. Because the waypoints weren't listed in the optimal way. Remember, we have to build the route first, and we really failed to do that. So while we made good time going where we wanted to go, we wound up traveling a lot farther than we were supposed to. Instead of the 12+ mile or so that we had anticipated and trained for, we wound up rucking a bit over 19 miles. It was hard. I was hard on myself since I said I'd be the navigator and I felt I was responsible for every extra mile we went. And I really wasn't ready - I got the equipment I needed too late, and I didn't really figure out like my brother had that the only way to really get your times down is that you have to find opportunities in the route to run. I wasn't fit enough for this, and I really dragged us down. It was especially humbling when I consider that my brother, who's lighter than me, was also carrying about 2x the weight I was, by choice. OTOH, I'm really proud of myself. Brother called like 2 dozen people to come do this thing and of all those, I was the only one who came to support him. And I did that despite not being acclimated to the air up here - weather was nice, but man, I was dying pretty fast. Also, we actually finished our course. There were teams out there with us that didn't even complete their 12-or-so miles, and we earned a lot of respect from the folks who were running this thing. So, it's a net positive, but there's a lot to learn, and I really want to do it again. But after racing 19 miles with a bunch of extra weight on my back, my legs are kind of jelly at this point, so I'm just going to Anyway. It's late o'clock. Bro's out for the night doing shenanigans, and I figured I should give him some space after being with him all day. I will probably be on my own as far as getting a ride out in the morning. So be it. Guess that OT's useful for something after all.

I get being dissatisfied and coming away from the tourney with things to work on, but FWIW I think it was damn decent of you to try to take care of your wounded opponent. You may not have won this in the way you wanted or even got the wins you wanted, but I personally think that showing good character and taking care of other people is more important anyway. We need each other to make this journey work.

Of course. Nothing for getting better at the game like playing it, right? At the same time, I'd rather be strong enough to have the choice of what I do with my closed guard rather than have the choice forced on me. Technique and strength, I think these days, are on something of a spectrum with one another, if they're even opposed to each other at all. Nah, you're right. I can think of at least 2 coaches I could approach about this at some point to talk and figure out where I need to go from where I am. I was letting my bitterness do my thinking for me there. Thank you. To give him credit, he's not regularly after me for help. And if I couldn't help him, I wouldn't, but since I could when he asked, it seemed like the thing to do. * So! Turns out, meditation and writing haven't been relatively easy. The job's been getting the better of me and I've been just working OT like it's my job. Because it kind of is. At this point, I'm doing it for the pay because once again the productivity just hasn't happened, due to circumstances beyond my control. At this point, I'm kind of operating on a 3-strikes rule. If the job doesn't cooperate again next week, I'll be taking my breaks and going off to the mats. Because I know I'm doing my part. I've run the numbers and it's all checking out, and at this point I don't know what I could change that would make a difference. And with as much overtime as I've been working, I've basically multiplied my output by about 1.5, so I'm working about 150% more than I should need to to get enough cases closed, and it's just not happening. So if it happens again next week, then I think it's reasonable to just write the job off some and to get back to living. Home training's been happening, at least. Yesterday was a day for Hinge training, and it was a special one because I've taken a cue from Mark Sisson and been doing some kind of power training once every 7-10 days. So, for me, a Power Hinge is kettlebell swings. Every minute on the minute, 20 swings with as heavy a weight as I can manage. Right now, that's 12 kg, although I dropped it to 8 kg on the last few sets as my body was starting to complain. Felt good. Cooldown was my three static holds and then just taking a long walk to get my steps. It was actually pleasant outside yesterday. Today is today, and it's the same shit as far as being too much for me to make the mats but not enough to advance my case closures, as I've ranted about already. Lots of OT, though, which is good. So I'll work that and do my training today. It'll all work out.

Yeah, it was nice over here too. Not sure what to make of it. Doesn't seem to have lasted to today around here.

Myocardium's a muscle. It needs to be strong too. So, yeah, it counts.

Thanks. Believe it or not, crazy as the past few days have been, I'm actually feeling a lot better. You're probably right that I'm being taken advantage of. Thing is, I've got enough financial trauma that I never feel good about money. That man presents a no-win situation for me on an emotional level: either I give him money that I'm not liable to spend any time soon and feel shitty for being made to spend it, or I don't and feel bad about failing to live up to my principles. I really don't think he's being a shitty person. But even if he is, I don't want to live with being a shitty person back. Heh. It's like I keep telling people whenever they say I'm a good man: "Yeah. It's gonna get me killed one of these days." Anyway, it doesn't really matter. I've been watching my finances like a hawk, and I did really well on my last paycheck, by which I mean I almost doubled my monthly pay. I can afford to be a little generous. * Trained today. Couldn't make it to the mats, but could ruck, so that's what I did. Rucked 4 miles at a 17:30 pace, which for a beginner is respectable. It's an adequate pace for the Denver event, which I'm trying to practice for by rucking with my mouth shut and only breathing through my nose. Turns out, I actually talk to myself a bunch, which interferes with this goal. But yeah, if I can keep this up, 12 miles in 5 hours will be a cinch. I warmed up for the ruck with a single set of a few different exercises. Did some shrugs, some squats, some incline pushups, and some lateral shoulder raises. The incline pushups were a pleasant surprise as I've been focusing on eccentric flat pushups; I had no idea what my reps would be but I cranked out 15 easy and probably could have done more if I'd gone faster and wanted to grind them out. Not bad for a heavy guy with a recovering shoulder and no dedicated practice. So I did that, came back, and since I was warm decided to knock out ten minutes. Today was an Invert day, so I did pike handstands. Feet are still on the ground at this point, which was a choice I made as I really wanted to let my shoulders acclimate to load and I didn't want anymore to just force handstands. My programming is borrowing a lot from Overcoming Gravity, which was a popular book in the calisthenics crowd here in the Rebellion once upon a time; my goal is to get to 3 sets of 30 seconds before starting to walk my feet up the wall. Presently, I'm at 5 sets of 13 seconds for 65 seconds total volume. I would have superset some core work alongside, but the neat thing about rucking is it's good core training on top of everything else, so I thought that would be kind of superfluous. After that, my cooldown was the Convict Conditioning Trifecta - bridge progression, L-sit progression, and Seated Twist progression for 20 seconds each. Follow that up with sets of kettlebell halos and baithaks, or Hindu squats. These exercises are here to bulletproof problematic joints - shoulders and knees respectively. The whole cooldown at this point is 10 minutes' worth. And, uh, that was today. Couldn't get clear of my caseload in time to go to noon classes because I slept in, and found enough OT work tonight to skip out of mat time tonight (also couldn't work enough cases). It's too late tonight to get through drills properly, but I spent my morning writing journaling the past few days' worth of study, so I think I'm probably good. Still need to meditate and write, though, which will be relatively easy.

I hope you get what you need.

I'm sorry things are so hard right now. I'm really glad to hear you're taking time and care for yourself. I hope these things pass soon. If they don't, and we can help, don't be afraid to reach out. (and alternately, if they do pass and you still need something, it's cool to reach out anyway)

Wow, man. Sounds like you had a really amazing weekend! I've always heard marvelous things about LARPing and the adjacent stuff like SCA and other recreational medievalism. Must have been a lot of fun. Except for the bees; I can't really tell if they were real or if that was a LARP thing.

Yeah, it's supposed to be a way to make the adductors strong, which is supposed to be good for playing in closed guard. Too soon to tell yet if that's true or not. Hi! * Boy, what a week it's been. So, last week wasn't good. The job was mean to me in terms of how many cases I was able to close; I had enough situations pop up where I had made decisions that were sound insofar as the program is concerned but that my bosses didn't like, and so they were held back. I closed enough to keep up with my new assignments, but not enough to exceed them, which is my goal. It's not something I strictly control, and I know better than to care or get emotional invested in that kind of thing, but it got to me this time. Belt promotions were on Sunday and I didn't make the cut. It turns out that who is promoted is a decision for the coaches of the school to make as a group, and assuming I read the situation rightly, then the person who intimated to me that I should show up was in the minority. The coaches say that they invite people to talk to them about why they weren't promoted, but I don't see how that works since, as a white belt, I'm not allowed to ask to spar with them, which is the only realistic way to ask them where I need to work on my game. There's one or two coaches I have fairly regular exposure to that maybe, maybe I could talk to; I guess I'll just have to keep myself open to the possibility and speak up. It's frustrating, though. I thought I was doing a lot better, but then again, multiple things can be true at the same time, right? I can be doing a lot better and not be where they want me; both of those things can be simultaneously true. I wasn't angry initially, believe it or not, but it kind of grew in me. It wasn't just failing to get promoted. It was that and the job and the fact that one of my Monday friends was able to take an international trip and just, ugh, it's disgusting. "Well, we put too much money into building our deck and putting a jacuzzi out there, so we were only able to afford a trip to Canada," as if that's a consolation prize somehow, and I had to put up with their photos of them going off to all these bougie activities like horseback riding and artisanal meaderies and art museums and as if that wasn't enough, they took my ex with them. So I got to go ahead and watch all these people being happy and to manage/navigate all these complicated emotions and... I guess I thought that if I could get that belt, maybe it would be worth it? Like, cool, so I'm a poor, bitter misanthrope and unsuitable for romance and lifelong companionship, but at least I'm putting my efforts toward something that matters to me and I have some proof that it matters? And then... nothing. So, yeah. By the time I went to see my folks, I was really upset. I was snappish and angry with them, and it wasn't fair. I tried to explain it to them, although I didn't fully understand it at the time, and it worked out, but I'm still ashamed of myself. Carried my bad mood into Monday, where the work just kept on coming and then on top of that, a person I don't care for bugged me for money because he's got a cancer diagnosis and can't cover the cost of his meds. I chose to help him, because as must as I don't want him in my life, I can't stand the thought of letting someone starve when I can do something about it, which at this point I can. But it was a chunk of change I didn't want to be out, which is never fun. Made it to a lunch BJJ class and another person was promoted to blue who didn't even show up Sunday, which. That wasn't fun, but by that time the mood was passing and I cared less. Worked the job, made more mat time, got home and did some exercise, and then had the power go out because of the storms passing through. Managed to get out to go visit my Monday friends and went to see the new TMNT movie, which it turns out is really, really good. A lot funnier than I thought it would be. Came back home and power was still out. It was late enough that I couldn't go to shelter somewhere else, so I tried to sleep, but it was too hot, so I just closed my eyes and laid awake all night. By Tuesday morning, I knew I was in pretty bad shape mentally, so I took a mental health day and just vegged out. Come today, I'm... better. Taking a day to breathe helped a lot, and going to bed early and sleeping in late did a lot to help. Um, goals. Loose track. Writing's happened a lot, and also training and movement in general. Meditation didn't, but I had enough going on that I feel justified about it. Now that my head's cleared up some, I can go to meditate again. Also, it occurs to me that I don't really have the time to present my present training as I said I would, which maybe matters and maybe doesn't, but I said I would. I'll do it for today's, since I'm going to have some time to get that done. I'll be about to as many of you as I can later.

Rhubarb!? How did I miss this? Gah, I think I was just out of college the last time I got to have Rhubarb pie. It's been many years since then. Anyway, I hope the ice cream protocol proves effective! And worst case, it's a learning experience, right?

Those food pics, tho

Am I late, or are y'all early? Or did I start this precisely when I meant to? It's totally me, I'm late, you guys, I don't know how it happened I'll let you ponder that. I skipped out last challenge because I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't really know what I meant by saying I wanted to "Maintain." And truthfully, some of that is still at play now. My old workout routine has completely flown the coop. I don't really have a routine anymore so much as a series of touchstones that I try to touch every week. Instead of thinking about particular movements, I think these days in terms of patterns - press, pull, squat, hinge, lunge, invert - and do a little core work on the side as it relates to or enhances my martial arts. (At this point, that means hanging leg raise progressions, loaded carries, and side planks with the goal to develop a Copenhagen Plank for adductor strength). I walk more these days too. A lot more. I managed to get a pedometer app on my phone and it's been mindblowing to see how little I was moving beforehand. It's not perfectly accurate, but it's consistent, and I can work with that. I'll document that some in the logs this week to give you an idea of what this comes out looking like. I feel really good these days as a result. My busted shoulder is nice and quiet. I'm better-rested, and I feel like I'm moving better as a result. I've been going easier in the rolls out on the mats for BJJ these days and I've had to get technical since I'm not using strength so much. I think I'm better, and even when I'm tapped, I find that I don't care about the tap so much as getting tapped safely (ie don't be stubborn, tap early, tap often). I got a couple things coming up this challenge. One of these is a belt promotion this Sunday, 8/6, which I'll go to. I don't have any expectations; the job has consumed me and I'm not making the time that I want to for this, so, I'll go, but I'm not so certain that I'm going to be promoted. It's fine if not. I've been meaning to go to these things for a while anyway, and it'd be good to be a part of the community. The other thing is a GoRuck challenge out in Denver at the end of the month. This will be with my brother, who is apparently arranging the whole thing. I've bought the tickets and the weight, so now I just need to get a couple other pieces of safety gear and I should be good to go. Just need to get some training volume. This particular event is slated to just be a 12 mile hike in 5 hours with a 20 lb weight. I think that's too easy given how it went the last time I did one of these, but I think I'll be better-prepared this time. More prep time would have been better, but I couldn't accomplish that with the equipment I had, so, I'll just have to make the most of what I can do now. I have three goals for this challenge. Surprisingly, only one physical, but that one physical goal will cover, like, everything, so for the most part I'll just be logging that stuff here. The other two goals are to keep working at my writing and to meditate. I'm up to 5 minutes at this point, so I'd like to hit 6 minutes for the remainder of the challenge. And, uh, yeah. That's that. I'll be about. Good to see you all again.

Frankly, I think you're making the right call. As someone who trains most every day, I've noticed that I've really had to be mindful about what kind of volume I'm putting up and when. I have most recently experimented with 10 minutes of strength and conditioning a day, with shockingly good results, and while I've expanded that some in terms of my time commitment, the only extra stuff I'm doing is mobility and play. So, really, all I'm doing is making room for myself to have a good time on top of my strength and conditioning work. Which isn't to try to drive you one way or the other on anything. It's just to point out that volume isn't just in any one session but is in fact something that happens to people over the course of time. Everything exists in context with everything else. So! I hope these changes get you to feeling better.

Yeah, that's what I did, but I think got them. I do believe their art name is Ibuki Satsuki. I need to make a point of gathering the internet art I like in one place. Hunting it down is inconvenient.

Hey, so down here in NC, the heat is bullshit and it's humid and my landlord likes to keep us hot because he doesn't want to shell out for A/C, and unfortunately I have to get my steps, so I go outside and get humidified and come back to little or no relief. The answer, so far, has been cold showers. Which sounds miserable, but! But! Here's the thing! Because it's so friggin' hot, we don't actually have cold water, so once the initial burst is past, the temperature actually mellows out some and it becomes kind of pleasant. It helps a lot more than I would have thought before trying it. I respect that there's a major mental hump to get over to take cold showers, and if it's not for you, it's not for you, but it helped me. Maybe it'd help you too? Hey, yeah, so, who's the artist? Where you finding these? I think they're really cool and I want to follow those people too.

Well, howdy! Welcome back! I feel you on that flexibility goal - being able to kick high is just fun, and you don't get that without some active work there. Hope it works out!