Kishi

I notice in the reporting above that you're using instructionals to learn stuff too. I'm stuck there right now since I'm healing from an injury. Is there a particular way you use the instructionals that lets you apply the stuff you're learning, like a way to engage with them that helps you to learn?

Thanks! It's a skill I paid a price for. Better to use it, both for my good and the good of those I love, right? Um, I initiate the pull with my back, but I initiate the rotation with my arms. The program standard is to achieve at least a neutral position, and I don't see how that happens unless I'm rotating with my arms, and my elbow starts talking to me once I do that. * Goal 1: 15/16 Goal 2: 10/16 Goal 3: 16/16 So the reason the writing didn't carry off is that I got up in the PM after going to bed in the AM. I wasn't terribly motivated/didn't prioritize my writing as well as I could and when I got the news that the friend group was meeting on the holiday after all, well, that put the kibosh on my plans. No excuses. Just an explanation. And I can still take my writing back. We went out last night to the Alamo to go see Last Action Hero, a 90s Schwarzeneggar film that functions as a meta comedy about action films from that time. I think it aged pretty well; it's got some problematic bits but it calls out those same problematic bits and they serve the plot overall rather than just being there. It's also got Charles Dance playing up a villain role and a surprise part played by Ian McKellen which was very interesting/cool to see. The film is, though, kind of confused about what it's trying to say, and it's probably too long for its own good. It's worth a watch, and I definitely enjoyed it, but it's not going in the Criterion Collection any time soon. I did manage to meditate, and I did manage to get down early enough to get up early enough for the job. Cool deal. Training today will be TGU/rehab and leg work. Fun times ahead. One challenge that I didn't foresee is that I'm having a hard time spacing out my drills, to the point that I haven't been doing them. That, uh. Needs to be addressed.

Goal 1: 14/15 Goal 2: 10/15 Goal 3: 15/15 Phew. Sunday was a day. After I got done writing my entry I realized what time it was and I wasn't able to get my training/rehab work done. So it didn't happen. Instead, I went out to my folks' place and hung out with them for the evening. I also wound up in contact again with my younger brother's old classmate. Some of y'all might remember me bringing him up; he was that guy who couldn't line up enough witnesses to get married at the courthouse to his fiancee and wound up needing me to be there without ever telling me after I was invited that, in fact, he needed me to be there. Yeah, so, he's developed cancer, and he's behind on everything. I couldn't just let it go, so I tried to donate to him anonymously, but that didn't work and he wound up reaching out, all grateful and stuff and saying he was glad I wasn't mad at him. Using my newfound awareness of my feelings around things, I told him I was never mad at him, I just thought he'd barged into my life with a bunch of expectations on me that I didn't think he'd earned. Which he was remarkably okay with having explained to him. (I also told him I thought he'd mistook me for my younger brother. He says he didn't, which... like, okay. Whatever you say). After thinking about it some more and looking at the link I posted earlier about gua sha therapy, I think I'm going to go ahead and remove rows from my programming for the moment. I've decided instead to invest in some flexbars and to follow the therapy program that the link lays out. Good news is, it won't interfere with martial arts once I'm cleared to go back, and better news is, I have certain back-training moves I can do to keep some kind of practice at work there while I work on the elbow. I'm not going to up-end everything over missing a single exercise, though; that's just too much. Anyway. Today's been a quiet holiday. Off tonight to catch a show with my SFF buddies. Which I thought was going to be on Thursday and which they just let me know about. Cool. Glad for that.

Hey, just here hoping that kyudo eventually gives you the ability to do this:

Hey! Just dropping by to say I hope things and also stuff are well.

Goal 1: 13/14 Goal 2: 9/14 Went out and had a good time! Spent the night around a fire being present with folk and interjecting as I felt necessary. Good times. Also picked up a bit about structure and storytelling and how to get about, and that's good to know. Kind of excites me to return to writing again, which is something I'm going to do today. Today is also when the Meditation DLC drops. It's gonna start off at 14/14 for parity and tracking's sake with my other goals and... that should be that. Last night, I noticed that with the shoulder rehab program that pulling exercises they have me doing don't bother my elbow any. It's got me thinking some about what whether I want to keep working on the Gymnastic Bodies program or if I want to strike out on my own and try to homebrew something based around these kinds of limitations. I don't think I will, ultimately, since the tests indicated that my elbow responds similarly to other movements as it does to the one I'm doing now. But it was something that captured my interest and programming imagination for a bit, and it's notable for that. Anyway, today is gonna be pretty easy. Just TGUs and rehab. I'll be off to visit my folks after and it'll be hard to get up and get after other stuff after dinner and time w/ them.

I've never heard that quote before. I like it! * Goal 1: 12/13 Goal 2: 9/13 Friday was a mess. Didn't get up on time and didn't write either. There's an anniversary party at the Academy today. I was originally going to go do that, but then one of my friend groups - the Particularly Dramatic One - informed me that it was, in fact, one of their Birthdays today and it was just assumed I was going to find a way to be there. I thought about asserting a boundary on it, but then I thought about it and realized that in both cases I was going to be at a social gathering in which I retreated into myself and failed to connect with people in a way I would consider meaningful. But in one of these cases, I wouldn't have to cook. So, off to the Particularly Dramatic folk instead. Feelings are weird, man. I've been navigating emotions around my solitude and there's tension there, where on the one hand I really like being on my own, and on the other, I'm really lonely. And now I have this opportunity to be with people I like and who like me, who really have worked to give me my space, and instead of looking forward to it, I'm resentful. I think it's just a situational thing; if I'd been hitting the mats regularly and had regular engagement with that crowd, I'd probably be a lot cooler with going off to see other folk. Because I know I tend to get really single-minded about my interests and I have a sense of responsibility to go off and engage with other folk. But in this case, I've been missing out for a while - for a medically necessary reason - and I guess I feel like I'm missing out and I need to connect with these people and 'prove' that I've been gone for a good reason and to justify the fact that I'm not going to be promoted along with everyone else next week. So I don't have to be ashamed of myself. The latter part of that paragraph I didn't really pick up until I wrote it out just now. Man. Writing's good for me. I should do that more. Anyway, I totally understand that shame is not an appropriate response. My injury isn't my fault (yes it is, you were too weak, and you chose to enter that tournament, you should've known better) because I only controlled my choices leading up to it, and choosing to heal under medical supervision is the best long term choice. But I feel it anyway. Because I don't control my feelings. And I resent my non-martial friends for robbing me of the opportunity to expiate my shame. Sigh. Well, knowing that now, I know I can go forward to see my friends without any barbs in me to hurt them for wanting to be my friends. After working OT on a bunch of aged, complicated cases. Gotta make the big bucks somehow.

Thanks! It's generally okay; I'm actually super lazy, and so you could argue that my big problem is people wanting me to do my job. I mean, I did go to school to do this one time. I know, once my certification lapsed, all the knowledge was supposed to dribble out, but it didn't~! Anyway, all I'm talking about with that stuff is the direction my palm is facing on ring rows. So if you hold out your hand and your palm faces down, your palm is in a pronated position. Rotate 90 degrees so that it's facing inward toward your body and that's neutral position. Turn 180 degrees so that the palm is facing toward the ceiling and your palm is in a supinated position. With the rows, my elbows tend to naturally rotate to 45 degrees from pronation toward neutral without actually achieving neutral. If I actively rotate, that's when I start to feel things. I'm much more mindful of mechanics thanks to the shoulder rehab, which has a banded standing row (loop the band over a secure object and pull towards you) that doesn't aggravate my elbow. Meaning that pain-free pulling is A Thing. Meaning I don't have to settle. It's nice to know that. Meh. It's not worse than usual. I'm the problem this time. Need to remember what's in my control and work more on caring only about that. I appreciate the offer, but I think I'm fine. Anger like this is pretty temporary and isolated. In general, it's either pushing on my fear that I'm going to return to a really bad caseload, or else it's pushing on my toxic desire to be an unquestioned authority. The former is a baseless fear, and the latter needs to be acknowledged without being validated. The Old Stuff it pushed on is only Old Stuff because of that toxic trait. In a calmer, more detached light, the Old Stuff doesn't really matter. I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time. I hope by the time you read this, it will be that you were having a hard time. (it's supposed to be saying that your hard times were past tense and are done now, and not that in fact things were bad) I didn't get the chance to meditate. It's been a pretty busy couple days. But like I said, it was temporary. It did not last. * Goal 1: 11.5/12 Goal 2: 9/12 Uh, well. It's been a couple days. Sorry I haven't been around as much. This had less to do with my mental health than it did with just logistics and being busy. Thursday, I had to go to the office. We had a belated Holiday Get-Together and did a White Elephant gift party. I got a candle. It's dope. We also got the news that one of the goals that we were told we had to follow to be productive was, in fact, the opposite of what the language of the goal had specified. Somehow. For Reasons. We wound up having a long meeting/kvetching session about it, by which I mean everyone else kvetched and I just shook my head in wry amusement, which is a good cue for me that my mental health is back to par. Dry resigned amusement is a genuinely good response to the absurdity of this place. That meeting took long enough for me to have to do a bunch of OT last night to make up for it, but hey. If the job wants to make an expensive mistake by getting in my way enough that I have to charge them extra for work, that's really not the worst possible thing. "Never interrupt your opponent when they're making a mistake" and all that. Anyway. Today's today. There's work to do. Time to be about it. Thank you all for worrying about me. ❤️

That's why they pay him the big bucks, man. Right. For me, there's some ambiguity just because collagen is supposed to be for joints and connective tissue, but it's not clear if tendons/ligaments fall under that or not. Of course they're connective tissues, but I'm wondering if they're too big? Or if that even matters? I just don't know. 🤷‍♂️ * Goal 1: 9.5/10 Goal 2: 9/10 Yesterday was a relatively unremarkable day. I trotted out a slight variation on protocol where I did collagen and vitamin C before my shoulder rehab and then again before my leg training. The added protein was nice to have, and everything feels good today. I skipped a few steps in the Gymnastic Bodies leg protocol. You're supposed to go from full squatting to deck squatting - squatting with a narrow base and rolling onto your back before rolling back up - and I chose instead to move on to Cossack squatting because I think it's a better way to work on the ankle mobility I'm going to need to make everything work. Also, deck squatting isn't really necessary to the pistol squat, but the pistol squat does in fact give you the ability to deck squat. If they were doing this GMB style where the deck squat was going to lead directly to pistol squatting, that'd be one thing, but the deck squat doesn't really show up again anywhere in the curriculum except for, like, tumbling and conditioning work. There is an issue in terms of the integrated mobility, in that the integrated mobility is a strength move for me too, so I've scaled that a bit to be easier. I'll be at this level for a while, but I think it's more productive than sticking to the deck squat, so, that is what I will do. I did a couple reps of the high incline rows and checked my elbow. With rings, if I allow my elbows to track like they want to, the elbow is fine. But the way the move is programmed, they want you to go from pronation to neutral grip, and at even that short rotational distance I feel something in my elbow. It may be that I was more damaged than I thought. At this point, the plan is to remain on rest until I'm cleared to resume strength work and then do incline rows with the range I've got. It's programmed to be done once per week with steady progressions, 9 progressions total. If all goes smoothly, that'll be a little over 2 months of rehab on the joint before I go back to the beginning and start over with rotation to neutral. If that doesn't work... well. That'll be interesting. Cross bridge when I get there, though, and I mean, really, 2-3+ months of rest is an awful lot for this kind of thing I would think. Anyway. Burn that bridge when I get to it. My mental health is kind of poor today. Some stuff at the job that I don't control has gone badly, and my temper's been flaring up in response in a disproportionate way. It's triggering some stuff in terms of negative self-perception and it feels bad. It'll pass, but I do feel a need to acknowledge it somewhere and here's as good as anywhere. Maybe a meditation DLC is good for this challenge. That's something I haven't done in a while.

Um, I don't know! As far as our discussions have gone, he's talked about kata as the mark of a legitimate lineage of kung fu - true teachers have the full form and are supposed to be able to not only transmit the full form but also pull out the parts of it that apply to a given student so that they can apply those parts to themselves. I've been present for some of his testing when his sifu brought up that they need to be taking applicable fighty bits out of the forms because MMA is a thing now and there's apparently an evolutionary pressure at play, but I can't say for sure. OTOH, FWIW it sounds like you're most of the way there already. Once you've isolated and pressure-tested something from kata, it seems to me that the last step is to take that isolated, pressure-tested thing and try to apply it in a sparring situation. I would submit that it's possible to do that with even just one move; jab-sparring is a thing, after all, and defense/countering can be seen as an organic development rather than needing to be kata-based. At least at first.

Dude, I don't know how I missed Simple & Sinister in here but it's awesome to see you doing it! It's weird how much work it is and how little it feels like. I remember starting off with it and then just adding and adding and adding...

Sounds like the weekend was a good lesson. Good stories are really hard to turn off/away from. I just had the same thing happen to me this past Sunday. An expensive lesson in terms of time. ;

Walnut butter? That sounds like sorcery. Anyway, brb, gonna see if a grocer around here carries it.

To be clear, I'm laughing at this part here: Also the gif is just funny for someone with my background. Anyway, I do hope it all works itself out. I have no idea how to fix that, but I'm sure it's gotta be possible to fix this or else incorporate the error. Maybe the map is an extension of narrative, and the cartographer misspelt it?

You remind me of my younger brother with this. He studies traditional Chinese martial arts and they're huge on the use of kata to contain the essence of a given style, and pulling out pieces to work on sounds like the kind of thing he'd do. So. I think that's cool.

Thank you! You are scary good. That was a real nailbiter for me. Good game! * Goal 1: 8.5/9 Goal 2: 8/9 Well, what will I say about yesterday? I played chess, did shoulder rehab, wrote, played Hades, went to socialize with friends. It was a good day. Something else I've been doing for my shoulder is taking collagen and eating a kiwi before training. The combination of collagen and vitamin C is allegedly good for connective tissue health. I dunno if that's true or not, but in my n=1 experiment it's going pretty well. Shoulder feels really good, and I suspect I'm going to keep doing this kind of thing as able going forward. I'd prefer if Lab Door would hurry up and run an analysis on collagen supplements already, but I'm willing to keep working this protocol for all it's worth in the meantime. Today will be relatively quiet. No mat time yet, so just train and work and write and play. Since we're finally off the holidays, overtime work has opened up again, so I'm probably going to take a stab at getting that done tonight and getting some extra hours. Suspect I'll work myself out of a job again, but there are worse things.

I know I've seen nondairy white chocolate bars at the grocery store, so clearly a process exists.

As a white belt, I just want to offer my appreciation for blue belts like you. ❤️

Thank you! Shoulder's doing a lot better already. Pain only shows up in the far reaches of adduction and abduction now and also when I do too much work all at once. Staying on the mats probably would have been too much work at once but if I keep responding this well, I might just try to get seen sooner so I can get cleared ahead of time. Why take questions? You're right about this. Well as far as I've been able to deduce, it seems that going from very high incline rows immediately to very low ground rows was an overload on my elbow. The creator of the program has said for people that this happens to that the jump from one move to the next was just too much, which is disappointing because he wrote the program for people to make that jump. I suspect the answer is to gradually transition from incline rows to ground rows, but the frustrating part is that it's not part of the program and there's no prescription for integrated mobility to go with it. * Goal 1: 7.5/8 Goal 2: 7/8 Good weekend was good. Lots of rest and play with only a little bit of training. A little too much play on Saturday cost me some writing, but that's my fault, and I reserve the right to write more and make up for the lost page. An MMA podcast I listen to actually made a manga recommendation for All Rounder Meguru, which is a seinen series about a young up and comer in the Japanese shooto scene. They said it was good enough to actually be used as teaching material, which caught my interest... and, yeah, it's that good. It's got some rough language around LGBT folk and it leaves a lot of character emotion and motivation to be implied rather than stated outright (moreso than is usual for manga), but I take it as a learning resource, and it exceeds in that. It actually gave me some useful drills to do to address some things I've worried about, and it's also been instructive in pointing out that strength and technique are 2 sides of the same coin: you need better technique to win over your opponent, but you can be too weak to make the technique work. Freaking knew it, man, I freaking knew it (this was the best gif for this sentiment, but I solemnly swear I'm okay with this) Wanted to get to bed earlier than I did last night but stayed up to finish off a webcomic I was reading called Traveler. This one shows up via the WebToon app, and it's criminally underrated and underread. It's basically a queerer, more hopeful Kickass with actual superpowers. Loved it. It was worth staying up for, which I haven't done in a while. Anyway. Train today, sci fi tonight. Write some sometime.

An observation about handstands: when you balance on your hands, it's not a perfect thing. That perfect bodyline isn't some perfect stacking of bones and joints. It's dynamic. It sways back and forth, especially at first, and the balance in fact is a result of a million micro-adjustments, from one position to the next. Balance, in other words, isn't static. It's dynamic. So you don't necessarily have to hit everything at once - go as far as you need to get done what needs to get done in one way, then swing back the other. What that looks like will be up to you, but don't lose hope. I really think you're on the right track with this. Yeah girl. It's a 2-way street. Grace and forgiveness for others, for sure, but you're under no obligations to forget. ;

Well. That's unfortunate.