The Most Loathed

Hormones and eventually a razor has solved this problem for me .

Monday BJJ Training went well. We continued with back attacks. Straight jacket to the overhook, hip in to roll your opponent to their belly, dismount to the strangle/overhook side. Walk your body over their should then turn your belly up to strangle. I had a great roll with Stan, it was well over ten minutes and we were both gassed at the end. We started from standing and both times we were standing he tried to pul guard and I caught it and just stepped around. We had a variety of sweeps and passes but we both attempted to work our bottom kimura game which mean we both got to practice defending that as well. It made me got much deeper into it, having an opponent who was actively working the same mechanics. At one point I abandon the kimura and went for a baseball bat choke and it got close. I could feel that panicked fight come on. However he moved the correct way and it loosened up. The biggest thing he kept trying to work was his three attempts at back stepping my halfguard for the leg lock. The first time I shoulder clamped him and took top. The second time I scooted under and he turned to face me so we ended up neutral. The third time I just could not make my body react fast enough and he got to the leg lock and that was the end of the round. Monday night was Arkham Horror with a friend. It was a single worst game I think we've ever played. We had mediocre builds, bad tactics and a dose of bad luck and by about 4 turns in it was obvious that we weren't going to win. Two more turns later and Jeff was out so we called it. Ah well. We'll try again in a couple weeks Tuesday This morning was my practice run on the new schedule. I got up at the usual time. i didn't really need a pregym shower but given that I'll need one for BJJ next week, I took one. Headed over to the rec. It was busier than I expected Leg Extension 60: 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, Leg Curl 60: 19,18, 17, 16, 15 Sumo Squat 210: 10, 10, 9 Cable Curl 35: 17, 13, 11 Cable Tricep Extension 40: 22, 17, 13 I came home and had my oatmeal that I prepped in advance and have just been enjoyiung some downtime. Time to get to work those, eight straight hours.

Weekend went well. I've had a good run of sleep lately. I wake up but I've not gotten up early since last weekend. That's a win. As I was prepping my breakfast this morning my mind was very much on next week, and the schedule change. So that's on my mind a lot but it's not a huge deal. Last week I went out for dinner with a friend. I took him to my current favorite restaurant. It wasn't a good fit which is a bit of a bummer. The food was a a little over seasoned for him. He likes a pos place where the waiters are super attentive and you can nitpick the bartender on how to make a cocktail. There you do tend to have to flag your waiter down and the cocktails are prebatched. I can still enjoy it, I just have to remember he won't care. After dinner he wanted to go get another drink so we went to his favorite bar/sushi place and had basically and entire second dinner out. I'm not going to complain, I love sushi. Then I had to drive him home after his four or five drinks. So I got to drive a BMW Generally, the weekend was good recovery. We were light on obligations and long on chill time. We got to lounge on our comfy, new couch and watch Miller's Crossing as a part of our slow discory of the Cohen Brothers' back catalog. Akagi was great but the best part was as I was waling in a guy I often train with stopped me to say that all the stuff I've been teaching him about escaping the kimura from top half guard, he used it in a tournament match this weekend and managed to win because of it. I still haven't set up Notion but I started a paper to-do list last week. I did one thing off it now I've lost it. I guess I need to write a new one. This week is looking "normal" but I'm toying with the idea of lifting at 6:30 instead of 10 to start adjust to my new schedule Monday Training - BJJ Evening - Arkham Horror LCG Tuesday Training - Lift and BJJ Wednesday Training - BJJ Evening - No activities Thursday Training - Lift Evening - Laura has a meeting, probably just chores but maybe some more learning stuff Friday Training - BJJ Evening - Relax Saturday Training - Lift Laura's Birthday Event - Laura is having some friends over to cook. I've been told to entertain myself and any male partners that attend. I need to send a text on this Sunday Training - BJJ Two future events I've very much considering an iPad. I had one years and years ago and I didn't love it but I've got a decade old Macbook Air that could stand to be replaced. Not a done deal but on the radar I need to sign up for the May tourney.

booo, human bodies. Can't they tell god intent.

I'm curious if you have any insights on the difference. It's not something I've put any time into thinking or learning about. I know BJJ was an outgrowth of, I guess, JJJ but I assume some things were emphasized and de-emphasized in translation.

Well this battle log certainly hasn't been daily. I'll have to work on that I've been a little busy with life. I had a visit from my parents last weekend with just blows up my whole week as I then spend my week trying to catch back up to my usual prep work from the weekend. I have failed so far to get Notion running how I would like. That's primarily because I've had 0 spare bandwidth for it. For the moment I settled for an index card. It's currently got 6 items on it with one of them crossed off. It doesn't do most of what I want from my fantasy version of a to-do list but it's good enough to make sure a handful of things don't fall off my radar. So I'll limp along on that for a while. I'll update when I have more. A couple loose updates: I finally got a date for the gym schedule change. April 29th we're starting the 6:30 class. The plan was (foreshadowing) that I would back up the instructor for that class. If he was sick or life happened, I'd unlock the gym and sub for him. He backed out the day before the new schedule was announced. Knowing him, it almost feels inevitable. This put the gym owner in a tizzy as he had already had a bunch of students commit to the class time so he didn't want to cancel. He's not a mornings guy and does not want to be at the gym that early so he's not going to do it. So The Professor approached me. I told him I don't specifically want to teach at this time but I'm willing to teach. So, I'm being added to the instructor pool. He promises he's going to rotate other instructors through and I'll only have to cover here and there. He and I are both hopeful that some other instructor will fall in love with that time slot but I think we both feel like, it may fall to me long term, eventually. Regardless, whole new schedule starts in a week and a half-ish. It will look something like this: 5:30 Wake up (same time as current) 5:30 - 6:30 Shower, dress, get to the gym (BJJ on Tuesday and Thursday, rec on MWF) 6:30 - 7:30 Train 7:30 - 8:00 Bonus Training (I'm planning to keep the gym open and stay on the mats for a half an hour after class ends) 8:00 - 9:00 get home, shower, make a quick breakfast (I may also take a Skratch supplement to the gym so I can delay my first prepared meal) 9:00 - 10:00 work: meetings (current schedule) 10:00 - 12:00 work 12:00 - 1:00 make lunch, try to get a walk in or some bonus movement 1:00 - 3:30 work 3:30 - 4:00 snack 4:00 - 5:00 work 5:00 - 6:00 guitar & french (same as current schedule) 6:00 - 8:00 dinner prep, dinner, hang out with Laura (times are really fuzzy at this point but just kind of laying out a template 8:00 - 9:00 light house chores 9:00 - 10:00 Bed, read, unwind 10:00 if I made it this far without falling asleep, lights out So, I'm basically taking my training block at the end of the day and pushing it to first thing. They also moved Marathon Roll later and to Mondays, which I'm not a fan of, at all. I will try to do a few but I'm open to the idea that I may have to drop this from my schedule. I will plan on still attending Friday's midday class. This will shorted my Friday work day a bit but people can get over it. It's my chance to get in some no-gi and get in a weekly battle with Stan. Jumping topics I was concerned this week when my body weight seemed to be holding slightly higher than I want, I was weighing in at 196. I decided to remove some calories and push it back down. It almost immediately dropped below 195, to 193 this morning. So I think it was just water weight from my parents visiting. I'm going out for dinner with a friend tonight so I'm going to leave them alone but if I slide into Monday without a weigh in about 195, I'll go back up. to 2300. Obviously other stuff has gone on since my last update but nothing I'm going to worry about at the moment. I'll work on my consistency with logging but this is all for now.

Monday I had plans for gaming with a friend Friday night so there was a time crunch. I did my french but not my guitar time. Gaming got cancelled in the end but I decided to start our taxes with that time instead. We just do the standard deduction and I got it done in about an hour. I always feel like I'm missing some stuff but I checked my investment websites and whatnot and according to them there were no additional dollars to declare. BJJ Takedown We're repeating this takedown that I kind of like. The gist is to sidle up to the person (ok we actually use and arm drag or trap the arm at the shoulder) near arm reaches to their far lat, your outside arm controls their inside arm, you step one leg behind them and rotate both of your bodies so they trip over you inside leg. There's a risk that they go for a knee bar here but this is why you try to grip the far lat. For ground work we're doing back control submissions from the underhook side. We're working on the hand fight, get the straight jacker and feed the top arm (strangle side) to your leg for control. Professor has also been having me work on trapping the bottom arm with my bottom leg, since I'm stocky and not super flexible. It's darned effective. Tuesday Lift Last day of week 1 Seated Leg Curl 60: 15, 15, 12 Seated Leg Extension 60: 15, 11, 11 Sumo Squat 205: 10, 8, 8 I suspect with these, there are more in the tank but not having a spotter / training partner make me wary Superset Cable Curl 35: 12, 10, 8 Cable Tricep Extension 40: 20, 15, 10 While lifting I noticed a sign that said something about women's weightroom times, it was an hour on each of about three or four days. I saw a gym attendant doing the usual checks of how many people were in the weight room, did anyone look like they would kill themself. I asked her if I could ask her about it and you could see her immediate withdrawal . She had been yelled at about this already. I asked if it was something where I couldn't use the weightroom or if they were just trying to get more women in. She hedged and hemmed and hawed and said I couldn't use it. It was not big deal to me, not my usual times. I wasn't there to yell, just getting info. She immediately started to back peddle and I gave her a few encouraging words. I didn't want he thinking I was there to yell at her too. She settled down a bit and explained that they did want to get more women lifting and they were just trying something and she wasn't even sure they would actually do it. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. BJJ Marathon Roll. I came in feeling kind of run down and my rolls were so-so. I gave up a couple taps just due to the fact that everyone seemed to want to go at a 10 to my 8 and I just didn't care enough to elevate my energy. I did take the last three rounds to pick on some white belts. They did a pretty good job. It's always interesting when they don't react to a threat, you grab a collar or leg and they act like nothing has happened. We have a bigger kid, who I think wrestles at school, who has been getting better. I have to go to a plan B or C to submit him. He gets frustrated but I point out to him that I have to go a little deeper into my plans each time. He's making good progress. Wednesday BJJ Ben approached me sheepishly before class to tell me his demo partner for his purple belt demo wouldn't be there. He hadn't asked for anything but immediately started to excuse mmake about how he didn't want to interrupt my rolls after class since he knows I like to get after it. I asked him did he need a demo partner. He said he did, so I said lets run through it. He had a full page typed out which made me worry a bit for him. We rant through his demo and it was pretty good. I gave my standard advice to slow down, let all the movement be broadcast so people could see it and that I'm a friendly partner, I want him to look good and will try to be where he needs me to be, noone knows what his demo is supposed to be so if he gets lost, just keep moving.. We ran through it two more times before class, smoother each time. I worked with Josh in class. We did the same takedown as Monday which I'm kind of glad for. Josh and I played around with a little resistance. Today's addition is that if the person circles away you can just drop down and gather their legs to a double leg. Back to back attacks from the underhook side. Josh was struggling because he's missed a few classes.This time we were doing the two lapel choke which has to be my favorite slow burn submission, well, second favorite, arm triangle could qualify. Favorite from the back though. I tapped one of our professors with it last weekend and he's still threatening (playfully) to come and take it back from me. It has a weird mechanic though that took me a long time to get right, so I was teaching it it Josh. In the two lapel choke your strangle arm grabs their far side lapel, lower than you'd initially think, at least for this entry. Your control arm grabs the other lapel (do not grab the same lapel or this doesn't work. It takes time to learn the feel of this) It doesn't really matter where you grab it as long as your elbow has a good bend. Cantilever your top leg to pop you up on your elbow. This hides your strangle arm behind their head and now you can just lay on their body, protecting that arm. This is the hard part, row you strangle arm to your chest using your lat. Tricep extend your control arm. when done right you'll hear the fabric of the gi squeak like ropes on a ship (you've heard this in movies). You're using the neck of the gi as a noose and tightening it. The new things we added is, I will regrip on the control arm and rachet this further but professor didn't want that. Instead we are trapping the far shoulder with our legs and turning it into a bow and arrow I rolled with Josh after. We had one round left so I grabbed Ben and ran through his demo twice. After class Ben gave his demo. From the inside of the demo it felt ok. I missed one cue, he dropped a couple of movements, but we kept moving and people loved it. He got a bunch of "great demo" comments from people. One of our brown belts said "I haven't seen Mike tap that many times in a month". People loved it. He got his purple belt. Well done Ben. Then I rolled with Stan. He's still trying to introduce some of the side control, half guard bottom stuff so he's thinking more than he should. He tried octopus on me three times, two of them he failed to clear my arm and I smashed him. One of them he got the guard but not the sweep and i smashed him. In the end we traded submissions, one each, and rolled for about 12 minutes. We were both in total oxygen debt by about 8 minutes in, the short shallow breaths where you're just barely keeping up. I took his back on a leg attack attempt which I transitions into a crucifix with a lapel strangle for my submission. For his he was in a kind of X guard position and I was focused on him just going from a submission from the splits but he adjusted my right leg and turned it into a kneebar. In hindsight, I should have driven hard to escape, I may have gotten away but I was so amused by the submission that I focused on that and he got it. One of our black belts came over after watching us and commented on my use of butterfly hooks. It's not something I think about a lot but I have started to harry standing opponents by hooking their legs with my feet and push and pull them. I mostly reserve it for white belts. I'm still learning it as a tool and I recall being a white belt and having no idea what so ever with butterfly hooks. They're like magic in your first months to year. At one point Stan had stood up and I had transitioned to hooks and trying to trip him over them. Tony (the black belt) pointed out that I could have pulled and balled up and would ahve likely gotten a sweep. It was great advice and I'll play with it. I'm over time for this post. Off to work.

Hey @AwayLifter, good to meet you. I've got a Fender Telecaster Deluxe, the Chris Shiflett model. When I decided I was going to try to learn I put aside a little money so I could buy something not on the bottom tier. This was in the mid range of what the store had. I know quite a few people who play and they tend to tell me I should buy more guitars but I just can't bring myself to spend the money. I've thought about it just for the purpose of letting one sit around in drop d for play metal/rock songs but I don't feel like I put in enough time as it is. I've looked at Epiphones. They look really nice. What's your take on yours? If you're living in a french speaking town, you've got a really different situation and I'm a little jealous but also thankful. The immersion has to be great for your learning but it's got to be tough some times too. I'm just doing an app. We were going to go to France this year but decided we wanted new couches more. So we kept working on our french with the idea that maybe in a couple years we'll go and know a little bit of the langugae. We'd also like to hit up Quebec in the mean time . I know Quebec French and France French are pretty different but I'd feel better at least being able to read a little bit.

Monday: Sleep My sleep has been better the last few days. I'm trying to push a few more calories towards the end of the day and I think it helps. Nutrition Running a little over on calories but letting it be. I'm trying to get used to pushing a few hundred more on the weekend through Tuesday then throttling back the second half of the week Training Friday was no-gi back stuff with Ken as my partner Saturday was strength training, I'm only allowing 4 exercises per session and I feel like I'm leaving a lot on the table but it will ramp up Sunday was Akagi and very rewarding. It was my first time wearing my purple belt there and several of the people I roll with often and respect noticed and that felt good. It's not supposed to be about the belt but it felt really good to have people who's jijitsu I respect notice and congratulate me. Monday Normal BJJ The current theme is back attack from the underhook side. Today we covered my preferred approach which is the turn it into an armbar. I got a few tweaks and improvements but nothing game changing. French Got my chapter done today just grinding along Guitar Didn't get it done today due to time crunch Productivity I've been bringing back some of my Pomodoro stuff, doing blocks of work then blocks of break and am seeing an improvement To-Do I was going to start on this but realized I hadn't posted since Friday so I came here instead. I'm going to try using Notion, if it's not too onerous to set up.

Training Strength I created a new meso cycle. I titled it Time Crunch and gave myself only 4 exercises per workout, which feels like none but the idea is that I can add more sets and reps and still keep my time commitment sane. RIR = 3 Assisted Pull Ups - 50 lbs: 11, 8, 7 Rear Delt Flyes 10L 15, 14, 13, 12 Dumbbell Upright Row 20: 16, 16, 15 Stiff-Legged DL 185: 10, 9, 8 RIR of 3 is far enough out that it gets a little harder to estimate, in my opinion. Bodyweight 194.5 Holding steady. I waffled on starting up creatine again. I think I'll go without this month and see if I feel like it helps with recovery which is what I want it to be doing Nutrition Hit my goals for the day but my calories are extremely front loaded. I could stand to space them out a bit more. That said, I wasn't exactly hungry at the end the day, more snackish. I'm hesitant to put to much thought into it because my schedule should be changing very soon and that will change everything. Sleep Woke up at 3:30 and could not get back to sleep. My brain was just ready to get on with the day. at 5 I gave up and got up. Guitar Fiddled about for about 20 minutes on Day Trippin. Didn't do much else. French Completed one node. I actually repeated an exercise because I bombed it pretty bad. It was a pretty good exercise, all old review, which I need much more of but the app rarely does. I need to figure out a way to do more rview. To-Do List Still need to find a home for this.

These three things kept me from dieting for at least a couple years when I knew I should. When I finally did diet I removed the fear of failure by not having a pass/fail condition. You've kind of done this with your 4 week escape hatch. I think 4 weeks is a good place to put that btw. But regardless of how long you go, you're a success because you continue to do the work.

Training BJJ Back attack, this time from the underhook side, which is not the way we usually teach it but it's my preferred side. It's less effective for strangles but better control and transitions to an armbar very smoothly. The primary point of today's lesson was the hand fight, feeding the straight jacket then trapping the top arm with your leg so you now have one more free hand than your opponent and that hand is used to strangle. Stan asked if he could record all the attacks I'm using from half guard right now so I did a 2 minute video for him. This basically sums up the vast majority of my game but it's working very well for me right now. Bodyweight 193.4 - first day post family trip so expect fluctuations Nutrition Spot on Sleep Slept form 10 p - 5 a with no memory of interruptions. Best sleep in a while Guitar Lesson. I haven't played in a week so not much progress from last time but we went through Day Tripper and made a few notes. I'm looking forward to working on this. We started working on a new piece that I don't recall the name of so I'll add it in a future post. French I did two units because I was really lazy while we were on the road and missed couple of days. Starting to work on clothing and I'm really happy to see that they are introducing days of the week and times of day. I need too figure out a way to do some review. To-Do List Nothing. Dishes got done. I need to find somewhere for my to-do list to live.

I'm going to try out a daily battle log for a while. One of my gripes with NerdFitness's format is the constant need to create new challenges on the website's schedule. I'm going to attempt to take the power back for myself and do my own thing. Everything's and experiment and nothing is forever. I'll come back and fill edit this first post from time to time to fill things in, either questions that come up a lot or links to topics in the thread as it grows. But for today, on to the good stuff. Note for myself:

Wow. A whole week. Last week was fairly normal except Laura and I decided to treat the weekend as our Anniversary weekend since she has performances this weekend and because we kind of have a couple anniversaries. So, we both took Friday off and just had a generally relaxing day at home. She had to go that night and do an audition for Minnesota Opera. Unfortunately, she did not feel good about her audition when she came home. To unwind a bit we went out for an unplanned meal out. We split an appetizer of cheese curd, and entree of fish and chips, and a dessert of a chocolate brownie (realistically that thing was 4 servings). We also each had a cocktail. Predictably, my weight bounced up north of 196. Which, I confess, was uncomfortable for me, psychologically. I have fretted over its slow descent but held strong to the belief that it will come back down. Saturday was our planned anniversary celebration which largely consisted of going and getting the stuff to do homemade sushi, easily one of our favorite meals but one that I don't think we've done for a year. We had a great time, the food was good. We split a bottle of our favorite sparkling wine to go with it. So the weight held on a little longer than normal, but all worth the trade off. I've been sticking to my higher carb diet and trying to focus those carbs around my workouts. I have been eating a big bowl of oatmeal with a couple scoops of protein a couple hours before I workout. I've also been adding carbs either in the form of a granola bar after a workout or even a few jelly beans right before. Still keeping things pretty monitored but tinkering. I definitely feel the decreased satiety from eating sugars or at least not eating protein and fat but I think I'm seeing the benefit that I have more energy to burn during training. Friday of this week I'm getting promoted to purple belt. Not much to say about that other than it's happening. In some ways, it's too soon, but in more ways, it's not. From a straight mat skills stand point, I have a pretty well defined style/game for a blue belt and I continue to expand it by working with people on my kimura / octopus aspect. I got word yesterday that a rumor I had heard is true, we are adding 6:30 am classes, Tuesday and Thursday. I've been asked to be the back up coach behind Purple Belt Mike (yeah, they're be two of us now. I'm usually called "Big Mike" by other people when differentiating us). So that will change my world significantly. I have built my life around training daily from 11 - 1 ish. There was a time I looked at leaving my job because I was going to lose that. Well, i'm going to move my whole training schedule to 6:00 - 8:00, roughly. Meaning, I will work form 9 - 5:30 daily. Almost like a normal person. It's, honestly, going to a be a tough adjustment back. I really liked my midday split. I will still probably go to 11 am class on Friday's so I don't lose a class out of my week and as an opportunity to stay connected with my noon friends. I'm torn between keeping my weekly volume the same and taking Saturday totally off and adding one more lifting session. TBD. That's the time I gave myself to update. Next post will probably be a new thread.

Monday January 1, 2024: 211.9 January 8, 2024: 207.6 January 15, 2024: 203.7 January 22, 2024: 203.5 January 29, 2024: 200.9 February 5, 2024: 200.8 February 12, 2024: 199.4 February 19, 2024: 196.0 February 26, 2024: 195.9 March 4, 2024: 196.4 March 11, 2024: 194.9 March 18, 2024: 195.2 Weekly average 12/15 - 12/31: 214.3 01/01 - 01/07: 209.7 01/08 - 01/14: 206.2 01/15 - 01/21: 203.5 01/22 - 01/28: 201.9 01/29 - 02/04: 200.8 02/05 - 02/11: 199.4 02/12 - 02/18: 197.9 02/19 - 02/25: 196.7 02/26 - 03/03: 195.4 03/04 - 03/10: 194.9 03/11 - 03/17: 195.0 Had a big meal out on Friday and then ate a little more generously on Saturday. Predictably my weight bounced but this is all part of the plan so it's made its way back down to 195. On to more social eating in March