Kishi

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Boo about the strain, but it's cool that you've learned enough to spot issues in programming!

Yeah, just not wise enough to do something about it before it's too late.

*

Goal: 7.5/10

Not there yet. It's gonna be a tight squeeze if I don't keep up with this. But I have got back on track the past couple days, and my place is looking better as I go. Or at least a bit more organized.

Yesterday was also the 1st day of the new lifting program! I'm kind of building the plane in the air as I fall, but so far I think it's OK?

So, the idea of this program if summed up in a single sentence is: "Balanced strength at length built from the ground up." Basically, it's about getting strong on as many possible ends of a given movement as one possibly can, with the idea being to build and remodel tendons and muscles literally from the toes and ankles on up. To give you an example, ATG folk would say that we do plenty of walking forward, but we don't do enough walking backward, so backwards mobility is a huge component of warming up and mobilizing tissues. From there, with the feet warmed up, you move on to tibial raises and calf raises, with the idea being to do these both straight and bent if possible.

It carries on from there. And I'm not spreading anything that they haven't talked about publicly on their channels already. For me, this came out looking like:

-Reverse Farmer's Carries

-Kettlebell Tib Raises

-Straight Leg Calf Raise

-Bent Leg Seated Kettlebell Calf Raise

-Touchdown Single Leg Squat

-ATG Split Squat

-Nordic Hamstring Curl

-L-sit Practice

-Single Leg Wall Sits

-Stretch/Cooldown

Takes about an hour to do, but that's about what the ATG programs normally take. The big idea with most of these is to get to 2-3 sets of 25 each. There's no hurry. Greater priority is on getting there without any of my joints hurting and with real emphasis on mastery of whatever weight I'm working with.

Too soon to say if it's any good or not, but it's a good start and no complaints yet.

Was hoping to do some upper body stuff today, but I got up late and the job snared me before I could get to it. Gotta stay late tonight at the office and then it'll be off to sci fi night. Could save the training for tomorrow but I don't really want to. Although, that kind of scheduling flexibility is a gray area now, isn't it? I mean, after all, if I miss in the morning and it's acceptable to skip, then I could go to BJJ and it not be any kind of issue at all. But that could lead to me neglecting my training here and getting banged up more, which is the thing I'm trying to solve.

I dunno how it's gonna work out yet. But this is the week for catching as catch can, it seems.

5 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

 

I'm there. I had one final frustration and started crying. Not a normal day.

I mean, all the Little Problems being part of a gestalt phenomenon known as A Problem is legit.

On 3/24/2024 at 9:15 PM, Mistr said:

1. Clear out my mind. Sit zen every day. Preferably 30 minutes, but at least 10 minutes. It does not matter how late it gets, sit zen before going to bed. If I do stay up too late, taking the time to calm my mind will help me sleep.

Something I've noticed is that sitting for multiple short periods throughout the day helps a lot. IDK if this would actually help you meet your goals or not, but it seems there's a surprising amount of benefit in it. It may be a way for you to flow with whatever situation you find yourself with.

4 hours ago, Mistr said:

Dumbledore decided that he wanted to join in the local festive celebrations on Sunday, even though we are not Christian. Having ham on sale is a good reason to celebrate. I usually get the $0.99/lb ham at the regular grocery, but that takes prep time. We discovered that their cheap ham is so salty that it needs a couple days of debrining by soaking in plain water. This time I got $1.49/lb spiral-sliced ham from Aldi. It was perfectly fine and much less work. I will keep that in mind for next time. I made roast cauliflower and broccoli. Dumbledore made scalloped potatoes. With cheese, because we had some confusion between scalloped and au gratin. Plus grocery dinner rolls and the tuxedo cake and we had a family dinner.

I mean, Easter coincided (coincides?) with Trans Day of Visibility, which is totally worth celebrating, so if you can get some holiday deals on good food, well, why not? It's not like they're gonna regulate what you can buy for. Yet.

3 hours ago, Sovalis said:

We found out last night that a friend of Dave’s bought plane tickets to surprise him for his upcoming birthday and will be showing up on Wednesday. I admit, I wasn’t happy to be told that they were coming rather than being asked if they *could* come.

I sympathize. I just got told that we're going to have an extra body for a writer's retreat I'm headed south for, and it's not my business how many bodies show up or who those bodies are as I'm not the host, but I feel a similar sense of objection.

Still, I'm confident my situation will be smooth. I hope the same for yours.

3 hours ago, Sovalis said:

Did well with the no wheat until yesterday when Nicole and Bryon had us over for the day and served waffles for breakfast. I cannot resist waffles and don’t get them often because Dave doesn’t like them so we don’t make them at home.

Felt this in my soul. I haven't had a good waffle in a long, long time. Good for you getting to have some. Sounds like they were worth it!

Goal: 5.5/8

Oh, boo, Kishi, boooo. Weren't you just writing a bit ago about how you were hoping to get over 80%?

Well, in my defense, I spent last night on a bit of a high. I'm not the most sports-oriented person, but my alma mater - NC State - is doing really well in the March Madness tournament. We normally make it to the dance and we sometimes make it to the Sweet 16, but the team doesn't normally go further than that. This time, NC State's made it to the Final Four, which hasn't happened since 1983.

As a rule, I haven't been terribly invested in sports and how they go. While I find individual games to be entertaining, I think the whole business around sports serves as a distraction from more meaningful and important business - it's the circus part of the bread and circuses keeping us complacent. And also, I'm resisting the urge to see the performance in the underdog terms that the broadcasts try to push. NC State normally does pretty well, actually; it's been a regular to semi-regular team in the March tournament. They beat a lot of teams to get there pretty consistently; it's just that the other two schools - UNC and Duke - consistently do better. I also consciously have to resist the tendency to say that "We" are doing well; the branding of the team is strong, and I was a student there once upon a time. It's too easy to identify with it and feel somehow as if the team's accomplishments are mine somehow. I know better.

OTOH, holy smokes. My school's team made the Final 4. That hasn't happened since before I was born. And they're putting on good games to make it happen. Watching them play Duke and slow walk away with it was something to see, and I rode that high all night. Also, so did my town. I live a few blocks away from the university and I could hear the car horns and cheering from where I live.

It's unusual, and it's kind of fun to have this type of energy in my town for once.

But I did allow myself to be distracted and I rode the high instead of doing my cleaning. Mm. Not good.

Training and nutrition have been kind of weird. I switched over to a more equipment-oriented knee program after determining that I really wasn't strong enough in my knees for the shred program I wanted to do originally. It's been pretty intense, and unlike the last program it's... sloppy. There's a lot of emphasis on the hamstrings in this new program and it's enough to make me think that the program itself is kind of faulty. Like it calls for Nordic Hamstring Eccentrics (a really intense hamstring exercise) and Romanian Deadlifts (a hamstring-oriented deadlift variant) both on the same day 3 days a week. Y'all, that's an awful lot of volume and it's way more than one might expect given the prior emphasis on efficiency and doing what has to be done. It's enough to make me think that this particular program's fallen between the cracks a bit: the ATG folk are constantly trying to improve and optimize their programs, which is commendable, but they don't really do it across the board and I just think this is an example of that. Especially since I picked up some pain in my right hamstring and lower back that feels like a strain rather than DOMS.

Freaking booooooo, man.

It is not enough to persuade me to stop paying for access to their programs, because they have an exercise library and the programs are likely going to get better in time. It is enough, however, to convince me that I should take a crack at creating my own program using their principles. Especially since my knees have got markedly better in the past couple weeks - some lingering knee pain that I used to pick up on my walks as all but disappeared, which is amazing. Some of that may be down to them, but it's also down to some choices I've made in incorporating exercises to address my knee pain.

Fun times, I tells ya.

The nutrition part's been weird in that my numbers were going the right way for a while and then they reversed. And I was freaking out about it until just this morning, when I realized that my scale is sensitive enough to detect shifts in my weight, and I was shifting myself to see past some stuff that's in the way of my readout such that it made me heavier. I moved the scale, stepped on, centered my weight, and found that I'm down to 89.5 kgs - .7 off from the 88.8 goal I set a couple weeks ago that I was supposed to hit 2 weeks from now. Meaning I'm way ahead of schedule, and I didn't even know it because of how I was interacting with my instruments. Fortunately, I had enough other data points in terms of body fat percentage to know that something had to be off somewhere. It's good to have everything back on track.

So, yeah.

I suppose I should also mention I'm back on caffeine again as per the tea protocol and my brain is on fire, wheeeeeeee

I will not be making the mats this week. I have limited clearance for overtime and a significant part of that is to be used helping one of my co-workers who's out on medical leave. If I wasn't traveling partway through the week and didn't have social obligations on Tuesday, it'd be a different story, but them's the breaks this week. It's OK, though. It'll give me time to actually, you know, write up the program that I've just realized I'll have to make and stick to for the next 12 weeks.

Right. Let's do this.

On 3/27/2024 at 11:15 PM, Sovalis said:

 

Following!

On 3/28/2024 at 1:14 AM, Scaly Freak said:

Oh that's not even a little fair

On 3/28/2024 at 5:41 PM, Mistr said:

Badass, but I'm a lot more like

On 3/29/2024 at 5:04 AM, Mad Hatter said:

NVM, I'm much more like this

*

Goal: 5.5/7

78.6%. Damn.

Not my strongest start. It's actually easy enough that I don't feel like I have an excuse. Just missed on account of negligence.  But, if I keep up, I should be ready for next week.

This week was remarkable for some return to the mats. Also, the first round of EDTA, which was... nothing to write home about? Which is good, in a way: if there was something wrong with me like lead poisoning or something, we'd expect this to make me feel bad in the 24 hours after. But, nothing. That was good, I guess.

Job's... not great, but that's nothing new. Got some overtime, but that's going to be complicated somewhat at least this week because I'm down to Charleston again. This will be another writer's retreat, although this time we'll have an extra body down there. So that'll be good.

I won't be counting my travel time against myself, which means that by the time I'm back, I'll probably be looking for tools to carry forward with.

And, uh, yeah. We carry on.

See? It's topical.

Sorry I'm late. As I like to say, I think of challenges as things that we do first and foremost, and I started the challenge but I never posted it.

So here are the big goals for the year:

• I want to get my freaking apartment cleaned up finally.
• I want to lose a significant amount of weight, because I have a significant amount to lose.
• I want to graduate to pain free movement.
• I want to complete a draft of the novel and get it before some beta readers.
• I want to go to therapy.
• I want to start dating again.

A lot of these goals are... in progress already. After asking @The Most Loathed and thinking about it some, I decided to download the Renaissance Periodization diet app. Not because I need someone to tell me what to do but because I think it's useful to have something to help me track general trends in weight and tell me, "Hey, this is looking good," or "Hey, this is looking not so good and maybe you should change some things." I started up a weight loss phase for myself officially on the 17th and so far I'm looking good. You wouldn't think having a line chart trending the proper direction would make a big difference, and maybe it doesn't make a big difference for most people, but it sure does help me. My training, in the meantime, is helping my knee feel better, and work got off my back enough for me to start making mat time again, which is heckin' dope.

So, looking back at my goals, I'm kind of vibing with the cleaning goal the most. It feels appropriate to the season, and a bunch of stuff kind of started to happen to convince me that it's just time:

• found some apartment repair opportunities that I don't want to haggle with my landlord about and I'd rather do myself
• I'm meditating more lately and it's cleaning out my headspace something nice
• I got another calcium score for my heart and it looks like there's more calcium in there despite our best efforts. This is an early warning of potential coronary artery disease, and given my family history of heart attacks, it's only a matter of time. After talking it over with my primary care provider, we're looking at starting up EDTA IV treatment, which is something that's normally used for things like lead poisoning and the detoxification of other heavy metals. It's not guaranteed to do anything about my heart, but it's not contraindicated either and there's a chance it could do me some good. I'll be paying out of pocket for it, I think, but that's what my HSA is for and I'm always under budget on that thing anyway, so it's not like I can't afford it. I think. I guess we'll see.

So, just a lot going on to make me feel like it's time, and with the onset of spring, I figure, what the hell?

The goal is a riff on my standard thing. Normally it's been clear up one piece of trash or properly store one thing. The riff is, I'm going to double that - two pieces of trash or 2 things properly stored, or a combination thereof. Each of these is going to be from the 2 spaces in my apartment: one from my job space, and one from my personal space.

I'm also going to spice this up with some rewards, too: I picked up a book on home repair and it includes some tool lists for some of the jobs I want to get done. Every week that I do 80% or better, I will reward myself with a trip to the hardware store to pick up a tool. By the end of these 5 weeks, I should have the tools I need to start on the repairs I want to do. Whether that starts or not at the end of those weeks is gonna depend on where and how I find myself, but that'll be a problem for future Kishi to solve when he's collected enough data and changed his circumstances enough to make an intelligent decision.

As I said, I've been at this now for a bit and the stats are as follows:

Goal: 2.5/4

That is not 80%! So, I'm going to have to pick up (harrrr) my pace a bit if I want to get what I need to get my work done.

The week's been decent so far. I've been missed at the academy, which warmed my heart some to realize, and so this week I've been pushing myself to get my "Strength At Length" work done in the morning. It's worked the past couple days, but it didn't happen today, so tonight is strength/rehab and rest. I've been recommitting to home drilling too to keep myself honest and sharpen up a little bit. Today's been kind of shit show, enough to derail my training but not more or worse than I've complained about before here. And hey, it's a short week on account of Good Friday, so a 3-day weekend will be nice. Only bad part is, they're gonna hold me to a full week's worth of productivity without a full week to do the work. That's never fun. But that's par for the course, and I did manage to solve some significant problems today. So that's good news.

This is fine.

Yup. Nothing to see here, folks. Just keep on moving.

Fire cleanses, after all.

6 hours ago, Sovalis said:

I am glad you like the Tarot theming. I am a little self conscious about it because there are a lot of people with Christian Bible verses in their signature lines and I don’t want to offend anyone, but I think I am bringing it forward in a respectful way? I may be over thinking that. I am prone to overthinking. 

Speaking as one of the people with a Christian Bible verse in his signature line, I would say you are not offensive at all.

On 3/16/2024 at 7:54 PM, Everstorm said:

Sorry work has been so crazy, but it does seem that imposed rest and early rising may have been for the best in the long run.

I agree! It took some study to figure out why stuff that was supposed to make me feel better made me feel worse instead, and it's been a bitter pill to swallow that I can't just run myself into the ground with my training, but OTOH? Like, why do I want to? Martial arts, in my context, is a pastime. It's a game. It's play. And play is supposed to be fun. Running myself into the ground for Reasons is not fun, and while I'm not expecting rainbows and butterflies and good times all the time, the frame of mind with which I approach this is really going to affect my enjoyment of the game.

So, I think you're right! Another hidden benefit, I suppose. An insight I can carry with me into my training going forward.

*

And with that, the challenge comes to a close, although I suspect that my previous post probably works best as closing notes for this round. I don't really have anything else to add.

...

Actually, come to think of it, that's not quite right. If I'm going to be serious about what I want out of this year, I should keep what I want in front of me. I said I wanted the following:

• I want to get my freaking apartment cleaned up finally.
• I want to lose a significant amount of weight, because I have a significant amount to lose.
• I want to graduate to pain free movement.
• I want to complete a draft of the novel and get it before some beta readers.
• I want to go to therapy.
• I want to start dating again.

I think it's reasonable to say that this challenge brought me closer to a few of those things. Even if I didn't "succeed" by the metrics, I took a lot of steps forward and I've come to understand these goals better. I find myself wiser and without regrets. I'd say that's a fine outcome.

As always, I wish to express my gratitude to everyone who made a point of stopping by to wish me well or drop a like or anything like that on my challenge. This community's been through a lot recently, and folk still showing up and saying nice things to me is something I don't take for granted. Even if it seems like I do. My thanks to @Everstorm, @Sovalis, @Mistr, @Red1263, @TimovieMan, @sarakingdom, @Scaly Freak, @The Most Loathed, and anyone else I missed along the way.

Got a few days to sit and think on the next move from here. Got a vague idea, I think. See you next round!

7 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

Last coffee was brewed on Friday morning, and I have discovered that I'm not as prepared for the tea switch as I thought I was. I should have taken inventory of the tea sooner, or at least realized that going through the collection and getting rid of everything ancient in it, means having to back fill the gaps that created. Or to rephrase, I am very low on tea. I'm working on fixing this, so I won't have to go entirely without caffeine, or for that matter without tea.

Dunno if you thought of this already, but have you considered doing loose-leaf caffeinated stuff? You can basically control your dosage cup by cup, if you want to. Only problem is, no variety, so, not sure how important that is, but if you don't mind drinking the same thing over and over again, it's a workable strategy. It's working for me.

There has got to be a better way to show care in reacts beyond pressing the "like" button. But, yeah, wow, you've been through the ringer over here.

I wish I could say I was surprised about Elf, but I'm not. It's something I see a lot in my line of work: people who want to work but can't hold a job because their bosses either see them as a liability or else just aren't willing to accommodate them when they think they have other options available from the Reserve Army of Labor. And that's on top of the other reasons that people lose jobs, normal shit that Elf would experience just by dint of the normal frictions that emerge in working a job.

Bless you and Dumbledore for being there for them.

Also, that freaking cat. Dunno what the deal is there but I hope for your peace as the situation progresses and, eventually, resolves.

But, yeah. You're doing good and doing great doing from out here.

And oh yeah that pie sounds dope.

On 3/15/2024 at 5:27 PM, Mistr said:

How are things going for you?

Thank you for asking. ❤️

*

Haa, my God, I thought the challenge was over!

I wasn't trying to stealth out or anything like that, though, and I'm sorry I haven't been about.

Basically, what happened was that I wound up getting spread pretty thin over my responsibilities back here for the past couple weeks.

I volunteered to mentor a trainee at the job, This is a very involved set of responsibilities, because our training department doesn't do a good job of teaching trainees how to actually do the job. The trainers haven't worked a caseload in years and so they're really out of touch with best practices in terms of case management, aka the job itself. Instead, they tend to overload the trainees with a lot of useless knowledge and use that as an excuse to throw away people that could otherwise have done the job (firing them before they even get the chance to get into a unit). In my more conspiracy theoretical moments, I think that's what they're actually here to do. They aren't actually teaching trainees how to do the job so much as they're hammering them into a state of desperate gratitude, so that when the trainees get to the unit, they're just grateful for the job and won't do anything to rock the boat and try to force change.

They take a bunch of perfectly fine, capable people, and fuck 'em up. It's my job as a mentor to unfuck the trainee I get. Fortunately, I'm pretty good at this, and it's a lot of fun.  But it costs me in terms of my own productivity, because it's a couple hours every day in which I'm dithering about on a case - not always even my own case - and having to detail what I'm doing and why. Then, when they're gone, I have to scramble to catch back up on what I'm responsible for, and that takes all day. I've been using up that time, and so I haven't been training during the day, meaning I don't go at night because as I said at the start, I'm prioritizing my rehab/recovery over going out to the mats. The good news is that I've been getting up earlier in order to get to my mentee on time. Bad news is, well, that early wake up has been mentoring time, so it hasn't allowed me to do my own training on my own time.

It's just been what it's been.

Speaking of that, I got dragged by a medical consultant last week for failing to do the job in the way that she wanted me to. And when I say I got dragged, I mean that I got a long, lecturesome email in which my boss, my co-boss, and my boss' boss got copied on all the ways in which I was failing to live up to standards and serve the claimant in this case. That... was pretty emotionally difficult to deal with. I took my licks in the Stoic way and instead of pointing out how pointlessly shitty she was to me, I looked at the case and her critiques and told her that if she felt that strongly about it, we could develop the case in a different direction based on evidence in file and allow the claimant, as opposed to taking another month to gather additional evidence and delay a decision. She ultimately chose to delay development, which is further pointless shittiness IMO, but I performed as I did in front of God and everyone and the bosses all seem to agree that I came out looking a lot better than she did. Hurt my feelings a lot, and my unit boss had to talk me down and help me cool off a bit. The relevance of this to how I've been is that I've had to slow down significantly in terms of developing cases, mostly for the sake of bookmarking and documenting evidence to a degree that I wasn't before, which means that hitting the productivity targets I know I have to hit takes more time. Which feeds back into the problem I referenced earlier.

Also, this week, my Dad wanted me to take a few days off to go home and help him mulch the gardens at my parent's place. I had already told him I was willing to do it and had asked for the time off, but I'd done so on the understanding that I wouldn't be started on my mentorship and that I'd be going as fast as I wanted to. So I lost a couple days on the job that I had to make up for, and my rehab/recovery work happened late enough in the day that it interfered with mat time again. And when I got back to the job, in order to meet my responsibilities, I had to throw myself into the grind and work really, really hard to fail to meet my targets and get screwed by other people in my chain of productivity not being where I needed them to be.

So, like I said, I've been spread pretty thin, and I've been so preoccupied with the job and the troubles with it that even when I've had time to be here, I really haven't had the gumption to show up.

Just another thing to hate about the way things are.  But performing hate - and really, the energy that it takes - isn't useful, and I'm not inclined to waste myself on that sort of thing.

I've missed you all terribly. I'm sorry I wasn't here, but I hope you've all been well.

And hey, it's not all bad news. My knees are doing better and I'm getting up earlier. My mentorship will mostly end this week, so once it's done, I'll be in a much stronger position to pursue the things that I need to pursue for myself in order to live the life I want to live. I have survived to a point where the circumstances appear ready to break and remove some pressure, and I can use that I think. The past couple weeks have been good for observational purposes, and I can be grateful for that.

As far as the goals are concerned, it's a wash. I really, really underestimated the difficulty of the goal, and while I have made changes that will allow me to hit that goal going forward, I didn't do it in time to save this challenge. I don't regret it, though. Like I said, the one time I got out on the mats this whole challenge, I moved so much better, and I'm pleased to report that my knees feel so much better than they did. Admittedly, the KOT App isn't perfect and it's shown some of its cracks in the time I've been using it, but it's been a net positive for me and I've been able to personalize the programs somewhat based on the insights of a couple doctors who use these and similar movements to fix their patients. More than that, I've developed what I feel like are some real insights in terms of "mining" different positions and progressions for strength and healing, and I'm really excited to start the next 12-week block of training tomorrow. I think what makes me the happiest about this is that I didn't do my normal thing where I try to mix and match a bunch of different programs to try to cover a bunch of different bases and attributes. Instead, I dug into just one method and when I researched for tweaks and changes, it was all with the idea of enhancing the thing I was doing already instead of adding other stuff on.

So, I wound up in a good place. I failed, but I don't regret it at all. I think, longer term, I might have "won by losing." Time will tell, but I think it's gonna tell me something good.

Anyway, off to see what y'all been up to.

Goal: 13/17

Day didn't go great. Spent most of my day banging my head against the wall trying to get anything done. These new case types I'm working need a lot more investment in terms of the work I have to do to open them up and get them spinning. It's really frustrating, because the time I'm spending opening these cases is time spent not getting them ready for medical review or else closing them, and those two steps are the vital ones in terms of keeping my caseload managed. It doesn't help any that we've lost some of the consultants we had in this branch with no plans to replace, and also we've lost a lot of the drs that we were sending claimants to, so everything takes longer to get anywhere. None of it's my fault, but I'm still held responsible, I guess because I should be some kind of Disability Whisperer and I should just be able to know and plan around whatever new nonsense they present me with.

For the record, it's not like any of the procedures we have actually account for this stuff.

I was able to get my training done at the last second, but I missed out on some elbow rehab I've been doing. It's not that big a deal; honestly, I could probably scale back my strength work some and resolve my issues, but it always makes me a little surly whenever real life butts up against training. Luckily, it didn't last. I prayed for peace on the way out to see my friends, and my prayer was answered.

Good thing, too, because my friends noticed that I'm getting older on Sunday, so they wanted to celebrate with me. Looks like we'll be going off to see Dune Part 2, which I'm really excited to see. I think Villeneuve's version is probably the best cinematic version so far (followed by the Sci Fi channel miniseries, if anyone's asking). I was looking for an excuse to see it, and now I'll get to see it with my friends, and that's dope.

I had hoped today to get my training done before going to the office, but that didn't happen. No loss per the goals; I can just get after it tonight sometime, although when exactly that'll be is unclear. Not sure if I'm playing chess with my friend tonight or not. Guess we'll see.

On 2/25/2024 at 6:32 PM, Scaly Freak said:

 

I would say this depends on two factors. The quality of the substitute work, and how often you expect to use it.

Exactly. And I can't really vouch for either of these. I'm prone to "junk volume" as it is, so I don't trust myself to add more work and necessarily know that it's beneficial.

*

Goal: 12/16

Woot! Finally made mat time happen.

It was a closer thing than I'd like to admit, but I did get it done. Managed to finish off my strength work with 4+ hours to spare for rest, repair, and recovery. It was too close to make the striking class, but I was able to get out for BJJ, and I'm pleased to report that it was the first warm-up I'd had in a while where I wasn't just hurting my way through it. Every movement was smooth and easy, and I was really surprised to see that.

Also, I switched from going to the concurrent fundamentals class to the regular class and I was able to keep up with everything that we were doing. Which, that shouldn't surprise me. I could to that before. But it was still gratifying.

Got a few rounds of sparring in and started getting some pointers on what proper escapes look like. Which is good, as that's what I'm going to be working on for the next however many years it takes to get to purple. 6? 7 years? Whatever. The time will be spent either way, so might as well do it doing something I like to do. I'm pleased to report that I only got tapped once, which was a validating experience.

Today, I'm working from home on account of dr's appt earlier. Got out to follow up on my labs and basically everything got better. My blood sugars are down, my A1C is walking back from the pre-diabetic range, even my lipids are doing better, and this on 1-3 whole eggs a day and fish every other day. I actually upped my fat intake a touch just to accommodate the fish and I was worried about that. Knowing that I can increase that in my macros now and actually get good results - HDL up, LDL down, overall numbers dropped - is really striking to me. I don't know if I necessarily want to go overboard with that, but it does make me kind of curious to see how far I could go in terms of adding more fats to the diet. Having that flexibility would just make nutrition a little easier, but then again, if things are going so well now, do I really want to mess with it?

I dunno.

But, it's been a good couple days, and getting more than one of those at a time is always nice. So I will take it.

Goal: 11/15

Not much to report about today. Mats were open for strike tutoring and so I made it out. It was good, despite how long I've been off/felt off. My movement quality is preserved; I'm just a little rusty on distance management, which tracks if I'm being honest. Shadowboxing can only do but so much.

Maybe that's a reason to go back to  a gym, since the one that's walkable actually has a bunch of heavy bags, and I could use that for practicing distance.

It's a thought. A compelling thought, even though I can't manage my time well enough now to do all the things that I want to do just as it is. Because the issue has been that I'm doing my strength work too late in the day, and the gym is open later, so that could mediate things somewhat.

But the counterpoint is that this could just as easily work out to one of those things where I'm "training for the training I want to do." I certainly don't want that to happen, and assuming that I'm going to get stuff sorted and make mat time happen, I don't know how to constructively throw additional gym time on top. I'm trying to go from "one a day" to "two a day" and added gym time would make "three a day," which... is just a bit much, I think.

Which means that the gym is just a substitute for the mats, but how much do I want to pay for substitute work? I don't know.

In the meantime, I made it work today. Time to let tomorrow be sufficient for its own troubles.

12 hours ago, Red1263 said:

Ok! I didn't want to lose track of you guys, but we've been moving this whole time. We officially got all of our stuff into the house and now it's the fun game of "Where does everything go, and where did i pack X?" 😅

That's always been my selling point for minimalism.

That, and the fact that there's always so much to move when people bring me over to help.

Goal: 10/14

Howdy, y'all!

Sorry I been away. Didn't mean to be. Just kind of found myself needing to grapple with the job and with my sleep schedule. Wound up losing to both this week, so I managed my strength/rehab work and not much else.

I had thought to maybe turn that around today, but my younger brother made it back to NC after being out on exercises with his unit, which was a surprise. I felt like I really ought to go spend time with him and the rest of my family this morning rather than do BJJ, so I did.

That's kind of been the story of things the last couple weeks. I have this deep desire to return to the mats, but that wanting is balanced by a sense of responsibility for things that I feel I have to take. So it always seems like the right thing to do in the moment, but it's working out such that I'm not getting what I want either.

This is... tough. But more in the way of growing pains than anything else. "If I do what I've always done, I will get what I've always got." And that hasn't been enough for me. So I'm trying to do something different. Some parts of it are working and some parts need to be tweaked further. Fundamentally, I think I'm on the right track with doing what I'm doing. I just haven't got far enough in the changes for it to be reflected in my goal numbers.

I do regret that the outcome has been a drop in my mat time. I don't regret how it happened, though.

I had to move my wake-up time today to 9 AM for the folks. Want to see if I can get that process to take root and become my new wake-up time going forward.

Meantime, I'll get a walk before it's supposed to rain this afternoon. Probably need to get that done sooner rather than later. Cool.

Salad kits are my go-to for social gatherings because they're quick, easy, and filling. 2 kits is enough for 5 people most nights, and you're right: they do save money. So, kudos!

9 hours ago, The Most Loathed said:

I want his springy chair. That looks great

Hey, you find it somewhere, you let me know. Might have to look into that my own self.

*

Goal: 7.5/10

Welp, the job did what it does and got in the way. No excuse. I've had a week of exposure to this to know what was coming. I should have planned it better.

Tuesday wound up being strange in a good way. I woke up at about 7 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. Thanks to that, I was able to get up and get some training done before having to go to the office for an all-day stay. From there, it was off to Sci Fi night where we finished off season 2 of Star Trek: DS9, which I've been enjoying so far. Got back home late at night and elected to do more training, which I shouldn't have because it wired me up and I wound up staying up into the early morning this morning. I got to bed, got up late, and couldn't make training happen so I'm off the mats tonight to make rehab stuff happen.

The good part about last night, though, is that I experimented some with the new equipment I have for home-rigging things. I think I'll be able to push off the need for a gym until I'm comfortably getting up early in the morning. Which is underselling it. The program I'm going to switch to is another home program, and I intend to give it a proper 12 weeks, which means I won't need gym access for at least another 3 months. That's plenty of time to work on my sleep schedule and it'll also let me get after a bunch of home stuff too while I'm at it.

Or so it seems for now. Plenty could go sideways between here and there. Such is the way.

I will need a couple new pieces of equipment. ATG offers these, but they're pricier than I'm willing to pay, especially when I can find third party equipment on the cheap. No need to spend more than I have to.

But, uh, yeah. Tonight, rehab and drills and even some writing. Try to get down on time so I can get up ahead of things tomorrow. I've got a glimpse of what's possible. Need to expand that further.

16 hours ago, The Most Loathed said:

I tried googling this but there are so many "untapped" strength programs out there I don't think I found it. I'd be curious to have a look.

 

I have tried two BJJ specific programs, but not this one, and I've come away convinced that they are more marketing than effect. 

For sure! I've had that experience with a lot of different programs. Might be this one's no different. I haven't got there yet, so I couldn't say. Inyang doesn't talk about all the specifics of his program, but he gives some pieces here and here, to give you an idea. The program itself exists within the "ATG App," a sort of training ecosystem for a bunch of different coaches who have tried to apply these principles of "Strength At Length" in a variety of sport-specific ways.

So, basically, it's paywalled at this point. But, you know, people talk, and I mean, you know. If you wanted to ask questions, well, I mean, gosh, what could I do? It's not like I'd want to lie and tell you wrong. Lying is bad.

16 hours ago, Everstorm said:

This week's flower was cornflower

Huh! I didn't know cornflowers came in that color. Shame. They're my favorite flower. ❤️

Also, I'm pretty late to the fruit discussion; even so, I'd like to point out that frozen fruit beats the fresh stuff by a country mile 99 times in a hundred. It's picked fresh and frozen on the spot, so it's a much more consistent product and generally higher quality to boot by dint of being preserved rather than sitting out for however long. I haven't run a price comparison yet to see for certain if they're cheaper per unit, but OTOH they're generally available in greater bulk quantities than their fresh counterparts and I find myself willing to eat an additional cost for that kind of quantity.

That's just me, tho, and ymmv based on your preferences and what's available.

2 minutes ago, Everstorm said:

And while I am dealing with that, my father (who is elderly and has Parkinson's disease) fell down the stairs yesterday and broke a few ribs and a finger, which requires a surgery scheduled for today.  They kept him in the hospital overnight to manage his pain, but apparently didn't properly take note of his Parkinson's medications, since they were asking about them this morning when he should already have had two doses.  We are concerned that he didn't get them, which would only add to his misery, but I am hearing all of this thirdhand,  so the information may be incorrect.   It's a mess in any case.

That's rough. Sorry to hear.  My dad may have cracked a rib doing some home repairs last week. What is it with our elderfolk and their ribs? Must be something going around.

Goal: 6/8

Not much to say about yesterday. Free point on account of strike tutoring being cancelled for an in-house tournament. The loss of training was not my fault, so I take no blame.

So instead, I slept long and late, did some writing, and visited my folks. Slept long enough to have a short Sunday before having to go back to sleep for the job and working today, but I made up for a lack of quantity with a higher quality, I think. My folks are babysitting a little shih tzu dog for some Church friends, and he is kind of the best. Super cute, and good for my folks, I think.

Anyway, gotta get on to today. Managed to turn on "Focus Mode" for my phone before going to bed last night, so no real distractions when I got up this morning. Things are moving better. Can't wait to see how the job throws that off.

You and me must be sharing a wavelength because I went on a research tear today too, for stuff related to my strength work and then some stuff related to the setting of the novel. And it was great to actually have the time to go out and walk during the day for once instead of being out at night time.

Glad to hear we both got the opportunity to do stuff we wanted to do.

Hey, just wanted you to know that I'm rooting for you too. I hope you get lots of good sleep and the peace and clarity necessary to do what you have to do.