The Most Loathed

For weight loss, it was really effective. I think losing is probably the easiest diet type to run the numbers on though. For me, I set it to "lose 1 lb per week" and just tried to stay under but let myself go right up to the number. I set my activity level to sedentary because I work from home and don't really do much when I'm not in the gym. At my bodyweight and activity level it would start the day at 1900 calories at first and 1880 towards the end of my weight loss phase. I did not try to log every action I took. I logged cardio to match whatever the machine said. I logged a jiujitsu class as 20 minutes of jiujitsu (my class is an hour but we only roll the last 15 minutes). So an inactive day felt pretty lean with less than 2,000, Tuesday (rec time plus marathon) would exceed 2500 calories and Sundays (1 hour of hard rolling) was 2500-3000 calories. I generally lost 2+ lbs per week, which is the to say thatMFP seems to be undercounting calories. I did pay for premium so I could manipulate the macro goals. Someone who wanted to do a spreadsheet could do it without premium but I think it was worthwhile for me. As I'm moving into maintenance phase and I think the math is much harder and I expect to see more issues with the calorie counter. The idea of netting 0 calories per week is going to be tough for me. I've been wearing my Whoop strap for a little over a week now and it gives me a lot fewer baseline calories but a lot more active calories. It gives me 1900ish base calories vs MFPs 2310 but Tuesday of this week, when I barely did any rec work and marathon was a little easy it cleared 3,000 calories. So, yeah, for me, MFPs calorie adding for activities during weightloss was effective. I think the numbers are pretty crude but good enough.

Wednesday Training Toe Holds - a silly name for a good way to mess someone up I wasn't the only person on the team to get caught with leg locks we were prepared for. The Toe Hold or the Toebar is something I had no familiarity with but it's actually pretty straight forward. To set it up you need to be essentially facing someone but upside down compare to them. From that position you place the palm of your opposite hand on top of the foot. You take your near side arm and go under their achilles and grip your own wrist. You then basically push their food backwards over your arm. There are a lot of ligaments in the foot that can snap, barring that, your ankle can break. It's foot-kimura position but works more like an wrist lock in terms of what hurts/breaks. We worked on entry from single leg x but I saw an immediate opening that I used in rolling. Ben (blue) - No toe holds happened but I swept, I don't believe I submitted him but I held position Reed (white) - I hit my own toe hold entry. When I realized that the toehold position is the kneebar position I knew. I wanted to try this. So I got on top, let him have his half guard. I pressed his knee shield down and spun over his leg to the kneebar I've been dabbling with and hit the toe hold instead. We rolled more but that was the only moment I cared about. I forget Food I'm supposed to be eating all of my calories this week but I know we have our big meal box coming on Friday so I've been under eating a little thinking it'll balance out. Sleep This sleep graph was the most interesting yet.Not the Light, Deep, REM one, although I'm learning some things about that data. No, the heart rate graph. This is me sleeping after marathon roll on Tuesday into Wednesday. My heart rate was around 70 when I went to bed. Looking at a couple other recent nights, 60-65 is normal. You can see it decline all night to the low 50s, where I would expect it to be. I suspect this is normal for me on Tuesday nights but it's interesting to see it charted. I've had these graphs forever but never looked at them so it's interesting to learn something. Mobility No Guitar Lesson My lesson went really well but I kind of accidentally derailed it early on but my teacher rolled with it like a champ. I said something that I had said to a coworker who also plays guitar. It's something I've thought many times but I guess I don't say it much. I said to him that I never find myself just reaching for my guitar. If I've got 30 minutes and no plans, the thought never enters my brain that I want to pick up my guitar. This puzzled him. He asked if I just make myself practice and I indicated that I do. I don't generally find joy in my guitar but I practice through willpower. He was surprised by this. He indicated that has never had someone take multiple years of lessons based on practicing because they make themselves do it. So he encouraged me to practice less and play more. Even if I carve out the time like I do, don't make myself do whatever we're studying but just pick up the instrument and do something I like. So I said I'd work on it. I think the most interesting take away and this dovetails with my meets a bit is that when you practice you are working on a skill but when you play you aren't learning, you're just doing. It's a thing that I think I could have academically expressed but I never thought about it. I still need to think about it but there's some nugget of wisdom here I need to mine. Thursday Training I think I have a little bit of cold that I picked up at the meet so I took it really easy today. I took an hour walk at lunch and I walked the dog because Laura was out at rehearsals Food I think I was allowed too much food by MFP but I didn't sweat it. Laura was out so I got creative for supper but it would have been better if I had cut my meal in half and shared it with her or save it for today but ah well. For supper I roasted 1 lb paste tomates, half a head of garlic, an onion. I boiled up the linguine we had left (turned out to be two servings when I weighed it) and used the 200 g of chicken thighs left over from Wednesday night. It was really good but it really was enough food for two but I ate it all. Sleep no specific notes Mobility: no Guitar: No

My suspicion is that your partner wasn't driving in enough. Their force should hit your frames and be carried past you without strength, but that's from a keyboard warrior perspective. FWIW, as someone who plays a ton of halfguard, I try to stay out of lockdown for reasons I won't bother you with and when I have done lockdown I have only succeeded at the elevator a single digit number of times.

Lockdown is how you can use our lower body to push in chest-to-chest halfguard. I try to not use it a ton because you can basically just stall a match out by hanging out in it. That's the default behavior that I have seen, the top guy is being aggressive and trying to pass, bottom guy takes lockdown and just freezes top guy. There are two ways to defuse it but they take practice. When you're the bottom player, assuming you want to have fun, don't go for the usual but use it to swing both your legs and their side to side and off balance them or use it as the Danaher Scorpion Elevator, which is where you go to the lockdown and they drive in (because they always do), put your hands on their hips and push them away as you ball up, it will throw them past. Try it will a compliant partner a few times. Whenever I can bear to watch my recent matches and break them down you will see me clinging to lockdown in my second gi match and not elevating like I should have because it is so much easier said than done.

Tuesday Training Rec A big part of me was telling me to stay home and just recover but also part of me knew I needed some low stakes movement so I hopped on my bike and headed to the rec Elliptical 30 minutes I had some minor owwies but Monday jiujitsu so I used that and time as my excuse for putting off lifting. BJJ Marathon roll I successfully got my Whoop to work during marathon. Now I know that it was approximately 800 calories. It seemed like a lighter marathon than usual so I assume 1K is not off the table on hard marathon. I felt like everyone was at about 80% plus we had a smaller class. Tom (purple) - flow roll to warm up so neither of us was resisting. I also think Tom is like150 pounds so I made a point to not smash him. Although there was one moment where I had to use all my weight to spin to take his back, because I needed both hands and both feet for movement and I could hear it take the air out of him. A nice warm up overall Ibrahim (blue) - this guy is from out of town but has visited a couple a times now. He's fine. He likes to get into my half guard and just kind of survive, which is good practice for me. Having a defensive opponent makes offense hard. I saw a lot of kimura openings but never finished one. I have something I'm going to play with for a very defensive kimura target Alex (blue) - Always a good roll. He scrambles so well. We started with him on top which lead to and easy sweep but then we fought from the there for a while. I think I finished a single Americana Ken (blue) - I honestly don't recall the details of our roll. I know he managed to sweep me at least once but I mostly smashed him because it's Ken Dan (brown) - He got three subs on me, if I recall. The last couple months we've been much closer but not last night, Dan was great at finding what he wanted and just applying all of his strength. Professor Ranch (Black) - I believe he got two subs. He seemed like he was firing on all cylinders and I had to fight just to keep him on the back foot. I kept feeling like deep half guard was right there but could never off balance him. He told me after that the deep half was a legit threat but I think he was just being supportive Joe (blue) - Fun as always. I frustrated him because I just kept coming after him. I passed his guard to a body lock then held side control and started my attacks. He was able to reguard at least half way but I body locked again, climbed and took mount but did not submit him before time was up Adam (white) - I got an easy submission then let him work a little before I took the second. On the third go I just defended from the bottom. I'm really not sure what he's trying to do a lot of the time. I can leave my neck or arm exposed and he pretty clearly just doesn't see it. It's like he intentionally picks the least available thing and attacks it. Food I way undershot calories on the day. I had a good amount to eat and don't think I really want to chase the full 3200. I'm still learning how many calories I need to eat for this new maintenance diet. Sleep I had a pretty good night's sleep going into Tuesday. Only one wake up Mobility Completed post elliptical Guitar No guitar. I hadn't accounted for that fact that Tuesday will be a tough one for guitar when I changed my routine. More thought is needed.

Welcome back. Looking forward to your respawn story.

Positive vibes appreciated. Of course, eveeryone at the gym wanted to know how it went. I got some genuine jaw drops when people heard I got submitted three times. On guy just kept asking more and more detailed questions and to his credit Ken piped in with "If you keep asking him about the meet, you're gonna have to be his partner on all the live rolls today". Later that guy did take a roll (he's a good sport about getting smashed) and aasked "how's your rage?" I said " I have not rage." Then I submitted him three times. Proper kick off on hold for a sec. I just need some time to write it but I want to get details down from yesterday before they escape me Monday Training BJJ I screwed up when I put my whoop in the sleeve and put it in backwards so I have no data, which is a little annoying but I learned a thing Instruction From single leg X, Drop to Modified X, have the near lapel and boombox the leg, basically destabilize forward and if they have their hands tied up your grip, they fall down, if they put their hand down you can destabilize backwards and they fall to their butt. Additionally, if you keep your grips, you can hip escape away to free your hips and shot for mounted triangle or traditional if they drive in. I don't see myself doing the second half of this but I like the first half a lot. Rolls JD (brown) - So glad to see JD back and since I had not partner at first, when he walked in, I got to work with him. Thus got the first live roll of his return from having his pec reattached. I admit that I took it a little easy on him. I tend to attach the arms and shoulders a lot and I couldn't recall which one had surgery so I would try to move on from my usual arm attacks. I want to keep JD around, he's a fun partner and huge challenge for me. That meant I was limited to strangles and I got close on a couple, I do a cheap short choke where the person is seated in and I just grab their lapel and pull it over their neck then put my chin on the other shoulder. This gives my elbow lots of clearance and my chin locks them in. There are two solutions, escape lower than I'm ready for or get my elbow higher than your head. He did the former but I had him on the run. I got no submissions but it was a fun roll and I didn't abuse his reattached pectoral. Reed (white) - Reed is a game guy and will to suffer the slings and arrows of rolling with me. I think he has a couple pounds on me but we're pretty close in weight. He's been a white belt forever and has his eyes on a blue belt. I got that same short choke on him twice, the one I used on JD. He kept sitting tall so I'd set that up then roll him backwards, trying to be mindful of his ankle position, and submit him. Easy, fun, relaxed roll. Xavier (blue) - Xavier was in try hard mode, which is fun. He's really small compared to me so I try to make it a rule that if I would have to lock down on something to avoid it, he gets it. It keeps the roll quicker. No submissions either way. After Class I was appalled as everyone booked it for the door. I just kind of stood there. Two pairs lined up for a single roll and 20 people ran out the door. So, nothing, which sucks. Food Still finding my legs on this maintenance thing. Today was my first official day of not trying to eat to lose. Nut, I'm trying to stick to the same style of eating. So eating mostly stuff I make at home, not drinking a lot of calories, etc. I found myself with a lot of calories to spare so I opened a sorbet container I bought like two months ago. I set out to eat one serving but ran out of enthusiasm less than halfway to one server. So I put the lid on, did my best to guess how much I had eaten and put it back in the freezer. I do think I overate a little due to a clerical error. Since I had not caloric burn info from today I copied my calories from last Wednesday but later I realized that was the day that I had helped Kevin so I had been in the gym for 2.5 hours. I wasn't going full speed the whole time but I probably gave myself too much. that said, it'll balance out over the week, so no big deal. Sleep Sleep was fine leading into Monday. I think I drank too much water in the evening so I had to use the restroom a few times. I resolved to not drink as much water after supper Monday night. I also did not use CBD. I think it is part of why I wake up at 3 am. Sure enough, I didn't wake at 3 am. I'm going to do a couple weeks without then a couple weeks with and just feel it out. Mobility No. I kept thinking about it late in my work day but just couldn't figure out what not to do to get it done. That's going to be the trick, I need to not do something to make this time. Guitar Yes. Pentatonic scales with the drum track and worked on the opening melody of Brown Eyed Girl Other I'm getting out of my funk. Life is a lot more than meets. I took this meet only because I felt I had to, since I was the one who had advocated so hard for us to do a team meet. The plan has been and remains to not do another meet until the Minneapolis Submission Challenge which should be April or May. I plan to be about 200 lbs by then. I will be going into that meet not on a weightloss diet, which I was on the the last two. I'm going to study leg attacks, for attack and defense in the interim. I'm also toying with the idea of not doing no gi meets anymore. I like no gi but it's different enough that I think I may just do gi for competition. Nothing in stone but it's a thought. I have not yet been willing to watch my matches back but the itch is building. I'm starting to want to know what happened. I'll probably do it Thursday night if I don't do it before.

I had a weight cut last week so my weight is a pretty unreliable metric right now but I'm in the ballpark. Today I begin maintenance on my bodyweight. I've never tracked and tried to maintain a weight over months in the way I plan to so this should be interestting. Goal: 220 - 222 average each week 9/11: 219.9 09/18: 220.7

Friday Training I headed to the rec to check my weight on the balance scale and do some cardio to sweat. Row 30 minutes Treadmill 30 minutes Elliptical 15 minutes I started to hit a fatigue wall on the elliptical and in an effort to not exhaust myself I called it and went to stretch Food I didn't realize I ate that far under calories. I knew I was a little under but I thought it was closer when I went to bed. The basic plan was to have as little salt as possible, not eat a huge supper (because it would be in my intestines and thus be part of my morning body weight), and drink two cans of water during the day. I did that and went to sleep at 215.8, I think it was Sleep This is Thursday into Friday sleep, it's actually pretty good for me. I don't recall the details but Laura was at rehersal, hence the early bedtime. I woke up at some point in the middle of the night to use the restroom but I recall thinking it was a good night's sleep just because I was not long pushing the water so I could rest more. Mobility Completed at the REC Guitar Yes, although I don't recall what exactly Other It was the day before a meet, my weight was running a little high, I was feeling tired from the cardio and nervous about the meet. Not my favorite day Saturday Training No Training but obviously the meet. I'll probably try to write more later, just to process it but, in short, the meet itself went terribly for me. I was submitted in three of four matches and lost the last one to points. I still haven't brought myself to watch the matches back. I need to so I can learn from them but it still a little touchy for me. The first two matches, the guy was a leg locker, which won't mean much to most of you but it's a whole second half of jiujitsu that I've been pretty lazy about and hasn't been super relevant to me until I found myself in the position. These losses I can at least take as an easy "you need to go and learn leg locks". I bought a couple instructionals and will get started. The third match, I'm taking my loss personally. My brain failed me, my will failed me. The guy got on top, it was really no big deal, I deal with this all the time. He set a submission that never really works on me but I panicked and tapped. We went again, he got on top and just surfed for five minutes. I have feels but less so than about the third match. I'm still cranky about it. I'm mad at myself about it. I'm a little depressed about it. It'll pass but I need some time before I pick it apart. Food I didn't track food for the first time in a couple months. This was a deliberate choice and the plan for the day. I did make weight. I learned that my home scale matched their scale perfectly so that's nice. I came in at 213.8, So, 6ish pounds from the water and salt cut. Regardless of the lackluster performance, we went out for dinner. I wasn't really feeling fried chicken so we bandied about some options and Laura pitched a place I had never heard of Gai Noi. It is a new place, near our old apartment that serves Laotian food. They don't take reservations but it was like 4 in the afternoon so we gave it a shot. It was awesome. That place was my only win for the day. Laura ordered their basil chicken wings (think hot wings with a light tempura batter) and they were delicious. They had tempura fried jalapenos served with them which may be my favorite random food item in a long time. She ordered their green curry and I had their Gai Basil which was season ground chicken over rice. We each had a cocktail. We will be eating there again. It was fantastic Sleep Sleep was pretty low quality. Yo can see hear rate elevation around three in the morning, when I woke up any my grain started to run away with me. I eventually moved to the couch because I was tossing an turning. I got a little more dozing in before 7, when I woke up. Mobility Not really Guitar No Other I do have to say, I enjoy the social side of a meet. A lot of our guys were there. A lot of people I know from previous meets and rolling in town where there. I love going in and saying hi to a bunch of people and wishing them well. It kind of has me looking forward to the December meet, where I won't compete but will show up and support Sunday Training No. I took the day off from training. We took a walk with the dog, that was the extent of my physical activity Food I made the mistake of not planning my meals and just logged what I ate naturally and I overshot but barely so I'm not concerned. I will need to work on targeting my exact calories for the day to maintain but that will be its own learning process. Sleep I don't recall having a bad night's sleep but my tracker makes it look like I woke up early again. Looking at my whoop, it doesn't seem to corroborate the data. I'm guessing I just moved in a way that the sensor under my mattress no longer detected me. I think this is a collection error, not a sleep issue Mobility No Guitar No Other That's my weak recap of the weekend. Friday sucked in prep for the tournament. Saturday, the tournament, sucked. Saturday supper was amazing. Sunday was really nice. Today is the first day of maintenance for the rest of the year, a new page in my ming. I have. a lot of stuff I want to write down but I'm already a bit over my allotted time for this so I'm going to wrap for now and try and post a proper kick off later today.

5 x 5 is a perfectly valid general strength program. Depending on how your knee is doing it may be hard to adapt it in a way that doesn't cause you issues but that's something you have to determine. Working with a strength coach, if it's within your means, may be a good idea given that you are recovering from injury. Knowing that I know absolutely nothing about you, I'd take what I'm about to say with the smallest grain of salt. If I were answering this question for myself, assuming I did Kyudo and was recovering from a knee injury, I would have two guiding principles that I would build everything around: Kyudo recovery - I've never personally done Kyudo but from what I can tell, it primary involves using a long bow to shoot an arrow. As such, you're doing a lot of asymmetric pulling with your upper body and bracing with your lower body. So I would likely want to account for the tons of asymmetrical work of training with lots of symmetrical work where I monitor for one side compensating for the other. The goal being to bring up the strength on the inactive side of my body and realizing that the active side may not feel anything. Finding my ranges of motion - Coming back from injuries sucks. My goal would be to spend the first month of training approaching things like squats very gently. I'd want to leave the gym for that first month feeling like I had more in the tank but was 100% safe. As such, PRs and gains would be a low priority for that month, building the habit, learning if any lifts are off the table, and staying safe would be goal one. Thinking about those two things, I'd personally start out at higher reps, doing light barbell movements or machines where both sides move together. It's probably skew towards a low frequency body building program. I don't know how often you want to get the gym but doing 6 exercises for 3-5 sets, 10-15 reps, 3 x /week would be a totally fine first two weeks then adjust to suit what feels good. If you have time to do more days of the week, go to four then five, or whatever is available to you. I'd probably try to be a low achiever for a month or two then start turning the knobs to make it harder if things felt great and/or I had a strong desire to go a specific direction (back towards crossfit style, super strong, get big, whatever floats your boat). If I got to month two and still felt unsure or too many movements hurt, I'd think again about a coach or seeing if I can get some more PT from my insurance to let me pick their brains.

I use the audiobook/podcast solution pretty often. I used to have trouble falling asleep. These days it's far more staying asleep. I still use audio to help me go back to sleep, so even a few nights ago, when I woke up at 4, I put on something about an hour long, layed down and until it ran out and that's when I decided ti was time to call it. I'm definitely still working on this whole thing. Last night I pulled down Warded Man to listen to again. I always have such mixed feelings about that series. Thursday Training I deliberately kept it super light, I set the treadmill up for 1 hour, rolling hills and I even dropped my speed from my usual 3.5 to 3.3 Food I ate as little salt as I could yesterday including no electrolyte drinks. I also tried to keep my carbs low sicne they can retain water as well. I did have a couple protein bars which I suspect will hold water in my body. Mobility Yes, post gym. Almost twigged my back during a good stretch but pulled up short. ten - fifteen minutes Sleep My Whoop wanted me to go to bed early to account for previous nights' sleep. I don't think that's really how sleep works but Laura was out so I went to bed early anyway. I woke up twice, very briefly around midnight and then 3ish. Per the conversation above, I did my usual thing of sticking in an earphone and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn't happening at first so I switched from a D&D podcast I was listening to over to Warded Man. That got me back to sleep. Guitar Only about 15 minutes. I was very low carb and hungry at this point so I had 0 focus. Friday I'm running 1.4 lbs heavy right now. I probably will oast this through the salt and water load but just to be certain I'm going to sweat a bit today. Saturday The plan right. now for Saturday 7 am wake up - if I can sleep that long 7:30 weigh in - doors open at 7:30 but I can do it whenever after but I want to do it right away 11 leave the house - this is likely to shift forward as far as 10 depending on how quickly the kids matches go 12 gi bracket 12:30 - 2:30 - depending on how quickly my matches end and how much no gi gets moved forward due to match timing I will likely just be at the meet but if I can I'll go home for a bit 2:30 no gi bracket 3 go home, clean up, maybe take a nap 5:30 go out for some Tennessee Hot Chicken for supper.

Wednesday Training Kevin's Lesson I went in to help one of our white belts during his private lesson. He is competing this weekend and is trying to figure out his game plan. So that was an hour of light work before class, which I liked. Between Class and Lesson Reed wanted to work on his escapes from bottom side control. The first round I took a traditional position and he was able to get me pushed towards his hips then sit up. It was well done. After that I made a point to use my hips to clear his arm over his head. He's got a really good frame with his near side arm, I couldn't beat it the way I wanted to. I could, however, back my butt into his arm, go over his head and set up on the other side. It was a good training to remind me of my options from side control but I think he found it frustrating. Class We were still doing weird inverted stuff that, to be honest, I don't see how it fits into anything that anyone I know does. Even after it was taught, everyone was having trouble with it. I don't feel like I got it well enough to to repeat it here. Rolls Ken (Blue) - I very nearly got the submission twice but never finished it. I had him in a nice armbar that he sat up during and we went to inverted but I couldn't get the arm back so Ken ended up on top, I swept him back to bottom and got to a kimura as time expired Reed (White) - Reed wanted to work bottom side some more so I took top and had a nice time kimuraing him. Second round, to mix things up I went for a kneebar that I couldn't quite finish but eventually got on top again and armbarred him Rob (White) - I don't recall all the submission, three, I think. The most memorable one was at the end when I had gotten Rob into turtle and had my arm looped over his shoulder, holding his gi lapel and started pulling him up with it (the gi was across his throat so he's being strangled by his own body weight) and professor was calling for me to spin around and take back, instead I pushed down on his shoulder to add my force to his bodyweight to get the tap just before time expired. I also wore my Whoop in a sleeve, under my gi so I have data. That high handful of clustered peaks towards the end are my live rolls. The peaks in the middle are Reed wanting to work on his side control bottom game. I'm not totally sure what the early one is. Food Day two of water and salt loading. Once again, I drank so much as to feel slightly uncomfortable. We had a delicious supper. Laura went to the store and got some deli made meat balls. We have tons of tomatoes from her work in the garden. She threw two pounds of tomatoes into the over to roast and then pulled them out to saute them down into relatively small portions of homemade sauce. The roasting worked incredibly well and I really enjoyed spaghetti and meatballs. Mobility No Sleep I went to sleep well enough. I got into bet around 8:30, finished a non-fiction book around 9. I went ahead and tried to go to sleep while Laura finished reading. I was asleep before 10. However, I woke up around four and my night of sleep was over. I feel pretty ok for it. I would have liked some more sleep at the time but now that I'm awake I'm fine. Staying asleep seems to be the bigger challenge for me. Needing to go to the bathroom 4 times a night during this water load doesn't help though. Guitar I put in a pleasant 40 minutes. For some reason I can play along well to Brown Eyed Girl at 75% but not 100%. The issue isn't moving my fingers it's being able to hear and process the rhythm. There is a tamborine on the 2 and 4 that I just don't hear at full speed.

I will argue that this is the superior Diver

You and me both. I tried growing out that feather mullet thing he had. No-go. #NotMyMacGyver

I have never had to train a puppy but it seems very challenging. I'm not sure I'd do great at it. Glad there are people with the patience. No D&D update? must have been a TPK kind of day 😈