The Most Loathed

Ended the day at a rounding error of calories (10) . I ate a big sweet potato and a big serving of cod for supper. Still woke up hungry in the morning Friday Training BJJ Guillotine from side control We had an odd number but I had the pleasure of working with our Stan (black) and Chris(brown). From side control, go to reverse crossface. Pick them up by the shoulder with your south arm, north arm acts as a post, setting up the armbar. Instead, north arm loops under the head at their neck, this places your own hand facing your chest and their head in your armpit. Bring your south arm between your bodies and over wrap your choking hand, place your forehead on the mat and slide over to mount. strangle. Chris was a big help to me on this. I struggle with guillotines. He was teaching me to make sure they are in my armpit. I need to feel the back of their head pressing into both my pec and my lat on that side. If I just feel it in the ribs or pec, they can power out of it. Same set up but instead of your partner just letting you do it they attempt to grab your leg and wrestle up. Change none of the arm stuff but instead of gliding to mount, sit to half guard. Throw your outside leg over their back for control. Strangle Rolls Stan (black) - I think he got two kimuras on me in the round. He was doing an excellent job of holding top and keeping pressure but adding today's guillotine into his attack cycle kept me guessing. He still finished with kimuras but threatened guillotines and armbars in between. I got him with a toe hold. He did his back step thing that I used to catch him in. He no longer leave his arm out for me to latch onto but instead stays on top. He wasn't controlling my knee so I escaped the kneebar and attacked his legs instead. This will come back in a second Bradley (Blue ) - I got Bradley twice, once in a triangle and once in a smother (mother's milk). When I start passing him he lays flat so mount is easy. He leaves his elbows out so I locked up the triangle quickly. I didn't want to revisit the triangle so I go to it twice more but was looking for other submission to challenge myself. He managed to catch my with his feet once and I think the other was just a bridge and roll to guard. On the third time we were short on time so I just smothered his face with my chest and as he bucked and bridged I just kept him buried and he tapped with a few second left. After Class Stan (black) - per usual, everyone cleared the mat and Stan and I were sitting there so we rolled. He still nailed me with two more kimuras. The last one was especially good. I was being extra cautious, having given up 3 kimuras to the same person in one day. I had him in halfguard and he started to clear his knee. I reached out on the far side to push his knee down and he was just waiting for my arm to be exposed. He snapped it on immediately for the tap. The final exhange I got him with the same toe hold we got in rolling. I could tell he was frustrated that I was getting him with this so we replayed the submission. I was operating on instinct so I needed to unpack it to tell him what was happening. Once I unpacked it we played back different choices he had. We figured out that the issue was that he thought he was in a control position when he was not and he needs to dive for the kneebar from that position before I start my escape sequence. If I get started, he feels like he has access to a leg but he's actual 180 degrees off which exposes his back to me and, because he sides wide for balance, puts his foot near my hands. I go for the foot, unbalancing him and he's playing catch up as long as I keep moving, which ends in him tapping. So, I'll probably never see that submission again. Sleep Started off real solid but the dog jumped into the bed at 4 am and crowded me, waking me up enough that that was the end of my sleep for the night. I tried to go back to sleep and dozed a tiny bit but not real sleep. Finding it really hard to stay focused and/or care about work today

This is still a thing and in general I agree but I imagine there is a Goldilocks zone and I was below it. So, let's say I walk around at 75 degrees, I may want to sleep at 65 - 70 but trying to sleep at 60 is cold enough that my body goes on alert that it's too cold. Those exact numbers are made up just to convey the idea.

Wrapped the day at 160 under. I went for my favorite bedtime snack of cottage cheese just because I was feeling hungry He's ok. He sulks when I beat him too often and he misses the forest for the trees. He was worried about the mechanics of how I strangled him and ignoring the fact that I had him in a cycle of submissions. I had set up one strangle, he moved, I went to the strangle that I finished him with but had him set up for either and arm attack or a different strangle. So, while I don't mind digging in the nuance of that strangle, he's ignoring the fact that he had wandered down a dark path for him. I am lucky to have a handful of people who will put up with my BS to get strangled over and over though. I've toyed with a couple different mechanisms. I do use some self evaluation / self reporting just to see what I see but I also have a Withings Sleep Mat that gives me daily info. I've had that for a while now. For the past couple months though I have been wearing a whoop strap which gives me sleep and recovery info In general I find that Whoop is more critical than the Sleep Mat but it costs a lot more and is more invasive. Whoop also does a little machine learning to tell me how certain things may impact my recovery. I will say that having logged all this info for a while, I'm not sure it helps in a meaningful way. I wouldn't tell anyone that they need to go out and pay for these things. I think a sleep journal, where you records a few notes about your day before you go to bed and a few notes on how you feel on waking, would be as effective as hundreds of dollars in sensors. But that's a totally subjective opinion. Thursday Training Strength Since I know @cn3wton follows RP, heads up that my current program is from the RP app. Walking Dumbbell lunge 30lbs: 2 x 10 Reverse Lunge (Dumbbell) 20 L 19, 16, 12, 8 Seated Leg Curl 75: 10 Stair Calves BodyweightL 2 x 16 Dumbbell Press Incline 45: 16, 15, 15 Cable Tricep Pushdown 45: 16, 16, 15 Assisted Pull Up (normal grip) -85: 10, 8, 7 EZ Preacher Curl 25: 12, 11, 11, 8 Barbell Shrug 140: 17, 15, 15, 16, 15 Food Way to early to report for today but scheduled to leave a couple hundred on the table. I suspect Laura will want to open a bottle of wine tonight so I'm leaving room for that. Sleep Man, I slept great last night. I didn't noticeable wake up until 4:30 when our dog jumped off the bed and started her scratching routine. I was even able to get back to sleep for a little bit before my alarm. I suspect it comes down to two things, neither of which I expected to matter. First, I have historically always gotten hot in bed and whenever we'd put the duvet on the bed it would mess up my sleep for a bit. A couple weeks ago Laura asked me if I thought I was getting colder this winter because of my weight loss. I told her I wasn't sure. She asked me Tuesday if I wanted to try swapping in the duvet. Knowing my history I was dubious but also I have been chilly at night for the last couple weeks. The duvet was just what the doctor ordered, not too hot, not too cold. I'm interested to see if that holds. Second, Laura mentioned that she thought the neighbors Christmas lights were keeping her up, because they leave them on all night. We had out windows replaced a few months ago and hadn't put the curtains back up in her office and the light from her office can be seen indirectly from the bedroom. So we lazily put her old curtains up, which don't really fit the new windows but it was a purely practical solution. Maybe that matter, maybe it didn't but we both slept a lot better.

Yeah, I figured we were both listening to Dr. Mike. His diet advice has been the best I've ever had. As someone who struggles with sleep I'll encourage you to lean towards sleep, not away, but I totally understand the idea of wanting to cram more into their day.

fwiw, I'm in a maintenance phase right now, the first time I've ever done it. I'm looking forward to hitting another weightloss cycle once the holidays pass but it's been nice to not see any post diet rebound, because I'm not post diet, I'm just maintaining. It's also given me some time to let my body settle into its look and for me to adjust to it. My maintenance looks similar to your enumerated list. I still track my calories and aim for a goal. I still workout. I still track my macros and try to prioritize Protein. It's also been a good time to experiment a little. If I have a couple glasses of wine or grab a burger after a really hard workout, how does my body react. since I'm not trying to lose, I can see a couple weeks in a row if I have a salt rebalance or my cravings go crazy or what. I'm increasingly looking forward to my next fat loss phase which is kind of exciting. I feel like I've been practicing this whole time and so it'll be time.

Tuesday Training Strength - see two posts ago BJJ - No marathon because Laura was getting home from a week away so I skipped so we could hang out Food 450 over. Not sweating it but not planning on it being an everyday thing Rest Ok. I had 8 hours in bed. HRV was 39 and RHR 59. Good enough for Whoop to give me a green but feels middling to me. Wednesday Training BJJ New Month, New Topic - Armbars, today from side control. People already hate my side control armbar attacks From side control top, bonus head control, their arm is south* of your head (big tip from the professor for the day, if their arm is framing your neck, go for the Americana and ever submit them there or they will move it south of your head), give up head control for the reverse crossface, ninja grip the armpit and pick them up by their shoulder, step over their head so you are straddling their head. I like to lock up a kimura here but it's not required.Swing your hips over their head. Keep your south leg upright and active. Place your shin in their lat (we found taller guys may need to place their leg nearer the hips). You can choose to lean north to let your south leg naturally slip over their hips but it's not always necessary. There are a ton of little details to finish that we kind of touched on but didn't put details into today. If you have the kimura grip like I do, pin it to your chest and just sit on them for a bit. This causes a compression lock on their arm that I have had people tap to. If they don't tap and you can't free their hands you can lace your legs through their arms to break their grip. If that still doesn't work, release your kimura and insert your north arm in the armbar (always keeping it tight) use your south arm to grab their knee and pull their knee and elbow together. In the 1% of cases where that doesn't work, quickly switch your north arm to the armbar, further up the arm and lean towards their head. I don't think I've seen anyone survive all of those attempts but it's possible. There are more little tricks but that's enough for here. * I'm using south to indicate towards their feet, north to mean in the opposite direction , towards the top of the head and beyond. No really significant rolls, I got a bunch of taps but on people I tap. After class I rolled with Josh twice. In both I took seated to his standing. In both cases I tried to go for X guard but he was able to power down through it so I ended up getting smashed. In the first case time expired and I hadn't gotten free, he was setting up an arm triangle and I told him to keep going. A few seconds later I escaped the arm triangle and we broke. Second round, I was a little more aggressive unbalancing and I think he was a little fatigued from being super try hard the first round so I escaped and strangle him with his own lapel. Then we messed around with variations on the one lapel choke for a while, seeing if we could figured out what makes it work or not. Food Currently planned to be a couple hundred under but I'll update tomorrow Sleep Good sleep last night if a little less than I needed. I still got 7.5 hours. The first hour or so was very light.

I spread them out, two per meal. I cut down to 1 per meal after a week then just two capsules with separate meals after that.

Recording my first RP Hypertrophy actual workout. This took about 2 hours and I would say it was so-so. The instructions are to do the prescribed volume and if there is no fixed number, go to 2 RIR (Reps in Reserve). Meaning, stop when you feel like you have 2 more reps in you. I'll post a screenshot below so you can see some of what I see. In the chest exercise they fed me the weight and then the reps where you see the bullseye are them telling me how many, the third set on chest and third and fourth on triceps where up to me to determine based on trying to meet that 2 RIR. Other features I will point out since I am showing the screen is that arrow on the right of the exercise, at the top takes me to their technique video. You can see it says Joint Pain: None. For each exercise, when I log the first set it will ask me how much soreness I had since last time I worked this bodypart. His goal is that you get sore and recover from it just in time. After the last set of each exercise it will pop up a screen asking if the lift caused any joint pain, how much pump you got and how hard it was. He's going for minimum joint pain, maximum pump. dumbbell press 55 lbs: 12, 11, 12 Assisted Dip - 50: 14, 13, 10, 11 Single-Arm Dumbbell Row 65 lbs: 13, 10, 12, 12 Dumbbell Preacher Curl 20: 10, 8, 8, 7, 6 Dumbbell Shoulder Press 30: 12, 11, 11, 11 Hack Squat 120: 13, 13, 13 Machine Glute Kickback 95: 11, 11, 16, 15 Barbell Good Morning 115: 16, 15, 14 Leg Press Calves 200: 15 That's a lot of exercises. One more reason I don't think I'll do total body next cycle. I liked my 6 exercise program, this is 9. It is more diversity in lifts and it's actually a couple sets fewer but warming up for each lift costs time that doesn't show up here and I don't feel a good coming out with lots of really low volume exercises versus fewer exercises but more volume. That said, this is my first real workout on this program, I've still got a month to go so too early to commit to anything.

This is the multivitamin I'm currently taking. This is not an endorsement. I have mixed feelings on it so far. I started out taking the full 8 capsules a day they prescribe. I found that I was suddenly going to the bathroom at lot more and it is very brightly colored. I backed down to 4 and the excess urination mostly went away (suggesting my kidneys aren't filtering some much out of my blood that I'm needing to evacuate it). Even at 4 my urine was brightly colored. I've gone down to 2, one at breakfast and one at lunch. I think I may add back a vitamin D supplement because it's winter in Minnesota and I don't really go outside except to go to the gym or store. This is very likely. As I've settled into my current eating pattern I've added more and more veggies. I probably eat 1-2 cups of frozen veggies in my breakfast and lunches as well as just piling a bowl as full as I can with cauliflower, carrots, tomatoes and anything the store has that looks good as an afternoon snack. So there are probably some vitamins and minerals I'm maxing out with food and there are probably some big gaps in there. I've never sat down to do a think on it but maybe these labs coming back will help me to do that.

Monday Training BJJ Marathon Monday Not much to speak of. I did hit a couple leg logs. I frustrated a couple brown belts but felt like I was losing to them. They could never really began a submission but I was playing defense the whole time. It's one where we both came away feeling frustrate. I did catch Stan in a toe hold in an after class roll which I know frustrated him. One of the coaches waved me over before class to tell me he's starting a Sunday open mat and would like me to show up while he gets it started. My first thought was that Akogi already has this and I won't get as good of a workout here. I told him I'll come but that I'll be alternating with Akogi He didn't look happy but I need some tough days and some easy days. Food On point. 18 calories off which isn't even a rounding error. I toyed with the idea of pushing my calories up or down these last couple weeks of the year but I'm just going to leave it. I'm losing slowly and there's some value in allowing myself to gain a pound or two before starting my next weightloss but, honestly, the idea of eating an extra 500 calories a day, of clean food, is daunting right now. I feel like I would resort to convenience foods and I think it would start a bad pattern. Even on days when I'm hungry, the idea of another bowl of veggies, meat, and rice is just a lot. My instinct is to go get a burger and I do that on high calorie burn days but I'm trying to not fall back to that Sleep Sleep and recovery were mediocre. I had a bit of ahrd time falling asleep and that shorted me a bit on sleep because I had to get up for work. I'm currently working on trying to get all the muscles in my face and head to relax as I go to sleep. It's a thing I've had success with before and have stopped doing. So I just lay there and feel the tension in my forehead or temples and try to think about how it feels when those muscles release and eventually they do and it feels good.

I was but I no longer have the kettlebells. These days jiujitsu is my sport so I am using normal barbell and dumbbell training as a supplement. I hurt my back a few times last year so I'm still babying my back. Several months ago I decided to switch from my lifeline attempt to just gain strength to a genuine attempt at hypertrophy. So, right now I'm doing straight up bodybuilder style lifting. The labs thing I've been working on improving my recovery for a while now. After I started BJJ I initially just felt beat up, but that's normal, it's a combat sport, people are moving your body against your will. Each time it would clear up I'd add more training volume. I finally got to an amount of training volume I like but I'm also 44, I don't bounce back like I once did. So I've been doing a lot of little things to work on my recovery. I've cleaned up my diet a lot, I'm eating 4-5 times a day. I manage my macros. I started with a multi vitamin. I began using electrolytes post hard rolls. A bunch of things. My recovery has improved but, weirdly, my sleep seems to have gotten a little worse. I've also struggled with sleep for years but it's partially self inflicted. I worked nights for a while when I was younger. Once that was over I would still keep my sleep super short 4-6 hours because I was just trying to cram so much in my day. I think this is why, now, I sleep about four hours, wake up and have trouble getting back to sleep. When I do get back to sleep, if time allows, I'll get three more hours and then be wide awake, not matter how tired I was when I went to sleep. My body seems to really like naps. If. I could sleep four hours then get up for 6 hours then sleep 2-3 more, get up for 6 more hours, then sleep 2-3 more, I think I'd be crazy rested but also I'd be really obnoxious to my wife and work and workout scheduling would be nuts. In my effort to keep trying to improve my recovery and, frankly, make the most of gainz in the next decade or so before gains = not losing I saw a guy I follow on Jiujitsu stuff post about how he worked with this company Marek Health and they were providing him a bunch of diet and recovery advising. It was also science based and they pulled this big panel of labs and would point to the labs to talk about the purpose of each intervention. I screwed up because I just jumped, I didn't take a minute to dig into who Marek is or what their business model is. It was a bit of marketing that worked really well on me. I used his promo code and set up a consultation. I met with my consultant Cameron. It was a weird call as I could see he had a lot of paperwork to fill out but also seemed like he just didn't care. The discussion was primarily around getting my labs set up and next steps. I get it, we all work jobs, some days your not feeling it. He said a couple things that I'll circle back to in a moment. As they were said I didn't think much about them. The two things I did think about were, the next step and the appointment he had pop up. The next step was the labs and there was this moment on the call where I'm being asked to commit to either the very few labs or the big labs panel that costs a lot and I need to say which I want out loud on the call. There was a voice in my mind that said "this feels like a high pressure way to do this, I'd kind of like to think about it a bit". I ignored that and took the expensive panel. The second was that his next meeting was for an earnings call. That's pretty normal in a small start up company but it got my brain to think "wait, what's their business model"? After the call, after signing up for the big, expensive lab panel I didn't feel good. Not in a physical way but in a way that a subconscious part of me was trying to tell my conscious thoughts that something was wrong. I started doing some Googling and realized that while Marek is making a big push to market itself to hobbyist athletes, they've been around for a bit as a testosterone pusher. That's when I recalled Cameron mentioning testosterone on the call a couple times, that depending on my labs maybe testosterone could help my sleep or shed a few pounds of body fat. Nothing major but they went past me in a blur during the call and now they were sending me belated pings. I even thought, for a bit, "well, if the labs say I need testosterone, then I need it" but I also realize that it is their business model to sell test so I would need a lifetime subscription to their product and to sell pharmacy compounded vitamin blends at top dollar. Well crap. I still dabbled with the idea a bit but wasn't finding it convincing. I did some googling into low T symptoms as I've had people push the idea of testosterone within the past year and going back for years. Just based on loose symptoms, I don't see any evidence. If anything, the way I get pumped lifting and feel in that process makes me feel like my testosterone is great for a dude in his mid-40s. Finally, I gave the idea one more play leaning towards the side of over supplementing with testosterone. I went and listened to some people who are past "supplementing" and into the the using/abusing space. None of them liked it. They wanted to get ridiculously big but they felt like crap as a trade off. They had a monetary incentive to get big. I don't. This is just a vanity project for me. No, I don't want to abuse and if I did, I have some leads on where to go to get whatever I want. All of that was just in my head in the days after the initial call. It took me several weeks to be able to get in to have my labs done, because I had already paid for them so I figured I'd get the results but then go do my own thing. The most recent interesting thing was that when I went to CVS to get a telehealth physical the doctor almost didn't do it. Marek Health throws a flag for them. They've had a bunch of people come in and get these physicals and they're concerned because they're signing off that the person is healthy but then someone else is using that as an excuse to dump testosterone and possibly other things into their system without ever doing their own exam or follow up exams. So at a corporate level they have been told not to do these. She and I talked and she got an abridged version of the above and she made a call to her boss. They did the physical but wrote on it and had me initial that this physical could not be used to prescribe anything. I'm fine with this, this locks me into my desired course of action which is, get the labs read back and break off with the company. I found it super interesting though that they had raise the ire of a national chain. Having worked at a national chain, that takes some doing. So, I'm waiting for my lab reading appointment and then I'm done with them. If they find any food type items that are way off, I'll look into supplementing. If they find a hormone that is way off or something that would need a prescription I'll book an appointment with my GP and bring my labs. I'm sure they'll pull their own which is great, no problem there. If there is something, we'll address it together in a more supervised manner. This is a case where I jumped without doing even a cursory amount of looking and didn't push back when my sensors were going off. So I'm taking it as a little life lesson.

I started taking. a multivitamin recently. I found pretty quickly that the prescribed amount seemed excessive. I'm waiting to get my lab values back on all my other stuff. I should know a lot more in a week or so. I've taken a fiber supplement daily for a couple years. I eat a lot of veg so it's probably unnecessary but I find when I travel (and my food is much lower quality) when I take fiber I seem to not have as much GI distress.

September 11 - 219.9 September 18 - 220.7 September 25 - 218.0 October 2 - 216.0 October 9 - 215.4 October 16 - 213.8 October 23 - 215.5 October 30 - 212.6 November 6 - 216.3 November 13 - 215.5 November 20 - 215.7 November 27 - 213.8 December 4 - 213.3 I've slowly lost 2.3 lbs over the past two weeks, based on summing my averages. I've only got three weeks left in the year. I'm torn between going hyper caloric for three weeks by adding 500 calories per day or just committing to my next weight loss early. In other news, my new jeans mostly fit. They're Madewell Athletic Slim and despite being advertised as having "extra room for muscle" they're tight in the thighs. They feel like a skinny jean on me but I do have big legs. I still have some relaxed fit coming which I think will be the better fit.

Welcome welcome. I'll talk more about testing in a bit Welcome back. I think I saw in respawns that you had a big weightloss. Nice work. wilkommen. I enjoy data and tracking but I do look at the data that is gathered and wonder at the utility. but it's part of the hobby for me≥ I've been terrible about logging. Tank almost had to do a "iiitt's been one week" to me. It was a busy week and I just haven't had a ton of mental bandwidth and that is the true cost of NerdFitness for me. It's way down my list of: train, eat right, try to sleep better, be a good partner, do your work, log on nerd fitness. When my bandwidth erodes it tends to erode from the bottom to the top. Yes, that does mean sometimes I'm a crap partner but still go to the gym. I've gotten better about that over the years but it is still a problem sometimes. This week I don't think it eroded that far. This will probably start rapid fire for things further back in time then slow down Tuesday Training Strength - much to explain here, I'll put a strength training note after all the days, jump there for the meta. I won't bother with the lifts here because they were just "get to know you" lifts. Next week I will record my lifts BJJ - I skipped Marathon Roll because Laura was leaving town on Wednesday so I was trying to spend the evening with her Food AM weight was 214.3 Because of skipping Marathon and having a light lifting week I had a low calorie threshold. I went over my 150 again, so now we're talking 300 on the week. Sleep Sleep shows a lot of interruptions but conversely my recover was great. My HRV was 59 which is the highest I recall seeing it. My resting heart rate was 52, which for day time is low for me Other The focus of the day was just being around for Laura since she was taking off for a week. Wednesday Training BJJ Manny wanted to work today and as is my standard gripe, he wanted to talk more than train. After rolls he wanted to give me a hard time for not just hitting leglock after leg lock. Maybe he's right but I don't think he is. I'm trying to learn leg lock so hitting one in successive rounds is a win right now. I'll add more as time passes. Food Weight 213.7 I show 570 over. I was super hungry all afternoon and made the mistake of going to the store while hungry. I picked up a take and bake pizza that I baked and ate three slices of with my actual dinner. Close to 900 calories over on the week at this point but on review, I'm also well below my goal weight daily so I should chill out on this. Sleep Sleep shows less than needed. It looks like I had a hard time falling asleep and was awake until 11. Regardless, my recovery is still good. Not as good as Tuesday but good. Other Thursday Training Lifting - see larger meta note at the bottom. Not worrying about details this week. I'll log individual lifts next wek. Food Weight was 212.7 I had a coworker tell me a while ago that she had never had ramen and wanted to try it. So I invited a few of us out to a ramen place I had never been. It was ok. I wish I had taken them to the sure bet in town. Moto-i for ramen. Regardless we hung out and, of course, they wanted to go out for drinks after. I had a single drink that was pricey and not great. I enjoy hanging out with my coworkers a little but they always want to extend it beyond the right amount. We met at 5, being home by 7 or 7:30 would have been great. 9 pm, no, too late. I tracked my calories as best I could without being ridiculous and I skipped my 3 pm meal and clocked in at 386 over. 1200-1300 calories on the week but still well under goal on weight. Sleep I got lots of sleep. I fell asleep just after 10 and missed my alarm (super rare for me) and woke up organically at 7:30. Regardless my recovery numbers suck. I can't say I've found a huge correlation in my sleep and recovery numbers. Regardless, I'd still like to sleep through the night better but if things work like people tell me they do, I shouldn't wake up with my worst recovery so far in the week after a great night's sleep. Friday Training BJJ I assume this is the end of our legs block. I think this was when Ben was my partner. He's missed a lot or training and the difference in our practice with the legs was immediately obvious. I still suck at legs but it's an interesting yardstick to see me, hit every or almost every leg training session over two months against someone of the same belt level, who started before me but got fewer than a dozen sessions. Food Weight was 214.3, matching my heaviest so far this week. Given that I ate a big bowl of ramen, this is honestly better than I'd expect. Not sure why I'm not heavier. I clocked in just over calories, 7 according to MFP, which isn't even a rounding error but patting myself on the back for hitting my numbers. Sleep Sleep was good and recovery was middling, which is decent given that I had gone out the night before and had drinks. So, not mad at that. Other I was so glad to get to a day where it was just a normal day. I just took it super easy. I actually bailed on work about an hour early just because my brain quit. Saturday Training BJJ I went to the Saturday class. It's usually pretty easy. We worked on a couple unrelated skills. The Blue belt they have teaching on Saturdays is inexperienced and it shows in his haphazard lessons but so it goes. The single biggest thing from today is I got choked out for the first time ever. It was 100% my fault. I was rolling with Army Dan (blue) and he was in try hard mode where I was in flow mode, first error, not meeting him where he was. He kept trying this strangle that was annoying but largely nonthreatening, he would overhook my arm and grab my opposite lapel, using this to control me and making my jacket tight. he would then try to dig his other forearm into my neck and choke me. It was uncomfortable but not a big deal. However, the third time he did it I tried to lazily pass over it and somewhere in the pass I was suddenly confused because I was at home, talking to Laura but I didn't recall how I got there or what we were talking about then I was confused because the gym swam into view with Dan talking to me and I couldn't recall how I got there from home. Then I heard his words "are you ok". The first time I tried to talk I don't think my mouth worked. After I second I told him he had won, he put me out. He didn't believe me. He said my eyes had remained open and I had fought to the pass. I don't remember that at all. Letting yourself go unconscious is bad etiquette in jiujitsu so I apologized, told him it was my fault. He seemed freaked out. I was definitely still getting my bearings. I've thought about it a lot since then and will try to make sure that whatever happened in my ego that caused me to go too far that I try to watch that and tap. Lifting - see meta not below. Food Weight was 213.6 which is very near my average on the week (213.3) and a couple pounds below goal so see my previous notes to myself that I should chill a little. 200 calories under for the day, thanks to my activity level Sleep I got a good long sleep, 9 hours in bed but per my previous night this week when I got a lot of sleep, only mediocre recovery. HRV was really low for me 36, RHR was 56 which is totally fine for me. Other With it being the weekend I did grocery shopping nice and early then cleaned out the fridge which is long overdue. I threw out two bags (they weren't full by volume but heavy) of accumulated crap. In fairness I haven't done my normal, routine cleanout for a couple weeks plus I did the thing where you go to the back corners of the drawers and check the out dates on everything. Really happy to have gotten this done. Sunday Training BJJ I hit up Akogi today. I didn't have a lot of expectations. I have been a little off my game this week, I got choked out yesterday, My thought going in was to try and go for the feet as much as possible but be ok with the fact that I wouldn't finish there. That and, tap early. Things went really well. I had a bunch of back to to back rolls. I got pulled aside by a black belt to ask about my wrestling and he was dubious when I told him I only wrestled in high school. I got to catch up with the professor at Akogi. I really enjoy talking to the guy each time we talk. I'm not planning to change gyms but I can't say I never think about switching to Akogi. That's a whole different conversation. I did get two leg submissions and I did get at least two failed attacks. I looked for them more often than that. I gave a couple black and brown belts good rolls where they were winning but I made them work and they never actually got to a submission and I'm not sure they were necessarily progressing there. The bad thing of the day : In my last roll, I was working with a guy visiting. He was in try hard mode. I let him into my halfguard, then I attempted to take his back. I didn't get there but it set me up in the dog fight. We both did the normal play to get each other over but we were both to savvy. I wrestler sweeped him and he spazzed out, throwing his long legs out. His heel hit another guy right in the forehead, splitting it open. By the time I got there the guy was getting blood in his eyes, on the mat, it was everywhere because face wounds just bleed. I know where the first aid kit is so I got over there and got it out as Topper came over. We got out the gauze and tape and sent people back with it. We got the guy off the mat to clean up in the bathroom and I took some disinfectant over to clean the mats. The guy got all bandaged up and headed out, people were saying he would need stitches. I felt a little bad because my sweep made that happen. That said, had my partner not thrown his body out on the sweep he should have anticipated, that other dude would have never been kicked in the face. He and I rolled again and like a script we progressed to that same position. I said " this is where the drama happened" he conceded the position and it quickly became apparent that once I had the sweep, I wasn't getting a submission but I wasn't losing position. All that blood for a mediocre roll. Strength Training I made two Black Friday splurges. The one you all get to hear about is buying a training program. I've been following Mike Israteal on YouTube for a while. His diet advice is what I have been using and am generally happy with right now. His company has an app that will do your programming. I bought a year of it on Black Friday. The current week that I'm writing about was my intro week, where they just put me through a light program to get a sense of my working weights. So all week you'll see low volume, so-so weights and a lot of exercises I haven't been doing. That's why. I did make one mistake in my setup that I'm just going to roll with. I was messing around, looking at different programs and meant to do an upper/lower split but ended up doing totally body every day. I'm just going to let it run like that for now but I'll probably change that up in subsequent mesocycles. I owe a separate post RE: the whole labs, testosterone thing but not right this second.

Monday BJJ Moar leg locks Outside Ashi, feed the leg across to inside sankkakei (triangle), grab the other leg, break stuff I worked with Ken (purple). It was good to see him after several weeks. I had texted him over the weekend to make sure things were ok. He is struggling with workout recovery and needed a break. Rolls Ken (purple) - Ken has about 50 lbs on me these days and has always been strong so he was able to get some hilarious sweeps where he literally flipped me over his body twice however I managed to scramble out to top both times and finished with a tap just as time was expiring. Stan (black) - Stan started out messing about too much, got on top then I went for a toe hold and he lost hiss train of thought. That let me get back to top but he forced me to his guard. I broke his guard by standing up and then did a clumsy leg entry to an ankle lock. I could see his face and it hurt but he wasn't tapping so I leaned into it and earned a tap from a black belt. I'll take it. He didn't have enough time to get a return tap from me. Reid (blue) - tap, tap, tap. I don't recall exactly but it was an pretty easy ride for me. Reid hates my arm triangles but it gives me an excuse to start them, he panics then I try other, less successful stuff. Then I occasionally follow through on the arm triangle to keep his running. After Class Rob (blue) - I had Rob work a bit as my uke as I tried to find platform armbars. I need to keep working on this. It feels like the key is that I need to be crunched up to make space to break the arm. I have a lot more work to do. Rob is working on open guard passing so I let him work that for a while. He's improving but he also doesn't seem to get that the pass is just the beginning. Other I went over to the local Labcorp for a blood draw. I decided to try one of these performance docs where they pull every lab you've never heard of and try to contrive methods to help with performance and recovery. I'm going in really skeptical but we'll see. I suspect they will prescribe testosterone not because I need it but because it's easy, in which case, I will pass. If they really do find any clinical issues I'm going back to my primary care for confirmation before I take any hormones or actual drugs. Honestly, I really just hope they see somethings to help with my sleep which has been crappy again since we switch daylight savings time. Food Because I was fasted after they drew like a dozen vials of blood, I made poor food choices and stopper for a McDonald's breakfast combo. I get one about once a year and it's pretty much always the same. I get this idea in my head of trashy but incredibly rich and flavorful food in my head. I stop and get a Sausage, Egg McMuffin with a hashbrown and a coffee. I eat the hashbrown first and it's salty and crispy and I'm pretty ok with that. Then I get the McMuffin out and bite into it. The textures are weird, the bread is airy but has no flavor at all, the sausage has a vague hint of meat but it mostly just salty, and the egg is wet, soft, and flavorless. I eat it but always wonder why this is the thing I get when I think of the trashy flavor bomb and wonder where that idea came from. Regardless, I logged it and shaped my food the rest of the day around the calories I had left. I ended up 150 over but I was like 600 under Sunday due to Akogi so I didn't sweat it.

Strap in, it's going to get boring. If you know me, you know what I do. If you don't, Welcome! Challenge Planning Obviously the holidays will disrupt things a bit but I'll be sticking to the existing plan, in general: BJJ 5x, Lifting 3x, maintain an average bodyweight below 216, practice guitar, read some books, play some games, eat some food. Calendar Nov 27 - Laura heads out of town for a week, dinner out with colleagues, last guitar lesson for 2023 December 5 - Laura still out for the first half of the week, watch a jiujitsu tournament December 11 - Date night in December 18 - I literally have no exceptions to the template on the calendar. I don't know when that last happened December 25 - Christmas week, not sure what disruptions may happen this week January 1, 2024 - next challenge, weight loss begins Weekly Template Monday - BJJ 11 am, Guitar 5pm Tuesday - Strength 11 am, BJJ 6:30 pm Wednesday - BJJ 11 am, Guitar 5 pm Thursday - Strength 11 am, Guitar 5 pm Friday - BJJ 11 am, Guitar 5 pm Saturday - Strength ~11 am Sunday - BJJ 10 am Projects BJJ - leg locks, entries to leg locks, especially that feed from half guard Strength - I've been doing a hypertrophy program and liking it. I think I'm going to remix it a bit and keep going Guitar - Let it Rock by Savoy Brown, Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams, Pentatonic scales and riffs Books - I am taking a short break from Rivers of London. I started A Hero Born by Jin Yong and it really drew me in. I'm waiting for the second book from the library Games - I'm messing around with WOW a little bit but not finding it super satisfying. I'll probably use it for my limited game time for a month or two then close my subscription. Food - I have noticed my cooking skills are a little rusty. I've gotten into a lot of food prep type habits but haven't really been working on new recipes or anything so I want to ding a couple of new recipes this month Body weight - maintain

September 11 - 219.9 September 18 - 220.7 September 25 - 218.0 October 2 - 216.0 October 9 - 215.4 October 16 - 213.8 October 23 - 215.5 October 30 - 212.6 November 6 - 216.3 November 13 - 215.5 November 20 - 215.7 November 27 - 213.8 I had a bit of an unintentional dip this week. I'm indifferent as to whether it stays dipped or goes up a pound. I'm starting to look at a month from now, when I reenter weightloss with some excitement. I also ordered some new jeans with a 35 waist. Reading other folks updates, it seems like everyone is having a good holiday season, better than usual anyway. I'm really glad to see that.

Tuesday Training Strength Good Morning 95 5 x 12 I had down to do 115 but my hamstrings were still a little tight from a full week ago so I backed off on these Leg Press 430 5 x 15 Glute Machine 90 5 x 12 Hack Squat 120 5 x 12 Leg Curl 75 5 x 12 Leg Extension 75 5 x 12 Back Extension 0 5 x 12 BJJ Marathon Roll - I don't have any really specific rolls to recall but upon reflecting on my rolls I have a slightly mixed opinion. On one hand, I did all the things pretty well as measured by submissions. On the other hand, I think I need to start shutting down certain avenues for myself to make myself grow. I got plenty of arm triangles and set up a few kimuras but I think I may need to force myself to put those on the shelf just to get into more leg work. Fully setting those submissions aside feels like too much, but I'm trying to figure out how to make myself go down new pathways more often.

Monday I had the day off from work. I needed to use up some PTO and I needed a day to run errands after the trip to see my parents. Training BJJ Leg locks with Reid (blue). We were primarily working on foot locks from the cross ashi set up. The two take aways I had were that setting up the kimura grip on the foot, I need to have my supporting arm really high on the ankle, just inside the heel. Being at the end the of the lever of the person's foot makes it much easier to break. I also what working through where to position my body. I have shorter arms so I really have to be centered over the foot or I can't connect my hands. If I do though, the lock is on. Rolls Reid (blue) - I started on bottom but he squashed my x guard quickly, which is something I could stand to work on. I switched to single leg x and swept him which led to a bit of a scramble. We ended up by the wall so I reset us with him on bottom, me in his x guard. I don't think we started with a sweep but at some point we ended up back in 50:50, both going for leg attacks, neither of us landing them. Eventually I got a different submission, I forget what it was, not an arm triangle, it may have been a kimura. Leon (brown) - he started in my X guard, as I recall. I went to traditional X and he continued to work for a pass, I went to half guard but then got him turned away and used the single x entry from that position I've been working on. My sweep attempt was unsuccessful and Leon ended up on top but I was able to keep him under control and keep feeding him into my half guard. There was some moment when he got my arm away from me and I thought I'd be in trouble but I immediately went for the escape and managed to free myself and keep him working. No submissions but Leon held the top a lot more than I did. After Class Josh (purple) - we started standing. I worked for a take down but Josh countered well. We got into an even match where we were both on the ground, each trying to take the top position and countering the other person's attempts. I'm pretty confident in my ability to work from bottom so I conceded and immediately after I did I realized I had screwed up. The last few times I conceded top to Josh I paid for it. Fortunately, I fed him to half guard. He made a weird choice to try and Americana my inside arm. I realized this gave me easy access to his back. He realized this too after I almost took his back twice. When he over committed t defending his back I was able to sweep him and took mount. As I went to work on getting his arms up I let my leg drift through his and he bridged hard. His legs interlocked mine and he was able to lever me over so we end up back with him on top, me on bottom. I feed him back to half then closed guard. As he fought back into my half guard I did take his back. Time expired with me working on setting up a rear naked choke but not in time. Stand (black) - pretty standard roll for us. I was successful in my first pass but he was pretty permissive to this. I stepped into halfguard and realize as I did that he had reoriented his body so I had the wrong underhook. He used that to sweep. I had to fight back out from bottom. He made his standard mistake with me and tried to backstep in Ashi and I shoulder crunched him. Literally as I'm doing he he started saying "oh no1 I know better! Oh no!". I was able to use this to get back to top and pass into half. He said something and when I asked he said "why aren't you making my face hurt" referring to the fact I hadn't moved into a cross face. I pointed out that he was trying his underhook trick again so I had pinned his arm to his ribs and wasn't letting him have that again. Time expired. Food I left 140 calories on the table, largely, I think, because I took an afternoon nap and slept through my afternoon meal time. I supplemented with a protein bar and some cottage cheese but I ate the amount I wanted. I'm experimenting with a tweak to my food schedule. In the past I'd wake up at 5:30 but not eat until 7:30 then my next meal would be 1 PM with all my training in that 5.5 hour period. I have been adding in protein shakes and/or sugared cereal in that window to try and have some nutrients in my blood before, during, and after training but it felt kind of random. I've also seen a product advertised called Overnight Oats which seem like a nice convenience food for that first meal of the day. So I am experimenting with making my own. I take a small mason jar, put in 50 grams of rolled oats, one scoop of vanilla casein powder, and a little bit of five spice powder. I fill it about 2/3 full of water (the oats and protein powder make it about 1/3 full, so it's to the top and then the same amount again). I throw that whole thing in the fridge at least one night ahead up time. Then I pull it out while I make my coffee and eat it around 6 am, pushing my next meal back to 8:30 (my second meal is the same omelette I have been eating at 7:30 previously). So far I like it and will probably play with the flavors a big. It seems perfect for people who like berries. I'm not a big berry fan but could cube some apples into it and enjoy those. The way it behaves is a little odd in that Casein appears to be able to gel with way more water than I expected. Even though I mix the oats and powder together the oats end up on the bottom half, in a thick casein pudding and then the casein pudding goes another 50% up from there. There ends up being no water that isn't in the casein pudding. That's a little weird but it tastes good and goes down just fine by me.

Back from the family visit. Friday I did BJJ on Friday then came home, showered, ate left over curry for lunch, and got on the road. I arrived at my parents just as my dad was about to head out to get pizzas for that night's supper. I rode along. We got there to find that they hadn't checked their online orders and the pizza wasn't started. We sat while they worked on it, which was actually nice to get some quiet time with just my dad. It doesn't happen much and it's nice to feel like we could chat and sit in companionable silence and be all good. Eventually our order was ready and we headed back home. My niece was there when we got home (she had been there when I arrived but I hadn't gotten far enough in to see her). The four of us settled in to share two huge pizzas followed by s'mores. I had told my mom ahead of the trip that I have been in the habit of keeping a relish tray around to much on. She mentioned she had done this so I went and found the tupperware half full of celery and half full of carrots and loaded up my plate. I still had three slices of pizza and a s'more but having the veggied made me feel nice and full and I suspect they contributed to me feeling physically better all weekend than I usually do. Saturday Per the conversation we had in this thread, I had mentioned to my mom that I wanted to go catch some jiujitsu and we worked out that she was going to take my niece to Build-A-Bear workshop late in the morning so I could go hit the gym. So, Saturday, after breakfast I headed over to Des Moines Jiu-Jitsu Academy. I've never been there before but Google was great at getting me where I needed to go. I picked this gym because they had class times when I was available as well as had a good online portal where I could see what classes were offered when, sign up, pay, and sign waivers before arriving. BJJ I arrived as they were wrapping up their advanced no gi class. I got changed and came to the mat for their intro no gi class. Ed, the instructor for the day, introduced himself, which is one thing about BJJ culture that I really dig. If you walk into a new gym generally the instructor or one of the highest ranking people will greet you and introduce themself. This is a welcome thing but it's also them feeling you out. If you're going to be a hazard, they try to suss this out in that interaction. Because I have some pretty obvious cauliflower ear I usually get a bit of a free pass on whether I'm too much of a noob but do get some questions about what all I've done (they're asking if I was a wrestler, have done mma, or what). Class started and we were working straight ankle locks, which I was happy about. Straight ankle locks get glossed over by a lot of people, in my opinion. They're the one leg lock all belts are allowed to do in competition. They're much safer than heel hooks (your brain gives you danger signs with more margin of error and you can power out of them sometimes) but they are much harder to land than heel hooks. I've been trying to work on them as we've done this leg lock stuff but it means that if I'm in a race with someone because we have each others legs, I will almost certainly lose. People pared up and there was a young looking, fit guy who wasn't getting a partner right away so I grabbed him. Ed came over to help with our first few reps (that vetting thing, he's watching to see how good of a partner I am and am I going to break this kids ankle in practice). As we get started I realize that the kid (I say kid because I'm middles aged, he's in his 20s) is freaked out. I have him do the first ankle locks and he's so scared he's going to injure me he won't even set the lock. So Ed and I are both reassuring him that I will tap well before something snaps. So we coach him through is nerves a couple times then I do my reps and I'm saying out loud what I'm doing and what he should be feeling to reassure him and let him know what is dangerous versus what doesn't feel good. It's something I had to figure out myself for the most part but I've been trying to do it with our white belts. So, a sample ankle lock with me goes with me getting into seated single leg X, so there's no falling or anything to freak my partner out. I point out how my legs are keeping my partner at a distance. I grab his leg and place it under my arm and point out how my knees are squeezing his knee just to keep everything in line. I wrap my hand under his foot and point out that he should feel my forearm in his calf or achilles, this may even be uncomfortable and it it's too uncomfortable to tap and I'll back off but here, and place my free hand on the top of his ankle, is where the break will happen so if he feels pressure in that joint, even before pain, just tap. Then I talk through using my legs to push him away a little and talk about how I've trapped his toes in my arm pit and he may be feeling some pressure starting in his foot. I draw my elbow in and ask how he's feeling, where does he feel pressure. A lot of times my ankle lock starts out as a slicer, so does it hurt in his achilles or his ankle. Then I move to the break position and point out how I've isolated his ankle as the only joint that can move and I'm going to add pressure now untilhe taps. At that point, my partner taps. So we do that a dozen of so times, with less explaining each time. He gets his reps in between mine and is slowly growing more confident as he feels the lock and sees that I'm not injured by the lock . I've 100% been here. Leg locks are dangerous but I also think that they get a mythical status in BJJ and you have to spend time on them or you'll just be scared of them, and they will be more dangerous because you don't know where the danger lies. Ed mixed in some escapes, including one I hadn't seen before, it basically involves going the opposite direction than usual. He also showed what we call a 1-2-1 at my school which is basically, set up a move, try it, they escape but into a second move you know there was all along and the only out is back into the first situation. I also call these a Danaher Dilemma, John Danaher being a popular and well regarded coach who teach his athletes to put people in situations where they have two outs but both of them lead to submissions. At the end of class there were no sparring rounds, we were just done. Fortunately there was an open mat on the calendar right after that I had signed up for. Unfortunately, almost everyone left. A tall guy who seemed like he was not a white belt hung around and offered to roll. Knowing literally nothing about one another we started out really gentle, just getting a feel for "is this guy a spaz?". "how much does he know?". We quickly got a vibe and traded submissions back and forth. As we went one I think we arrived at a place of agreement that he was better than me but not by leaps and bounds. In a perfectly even fight, he would likely win but if you allow me a good half guard or top position, I'm a valid threat of submission. I would guess he's a middling to higher purple belt but in no gi, it's hard to say. We traded some pretty friendly submissions and our rolls got more strenuous but never out of control and then we agreed we were done for a bit. He pointed out some other guys I should grab rolls with but no one seemed to be rolling. The white belt I trained with came back on the mat so we rolled but it wasn't really a challenge. I think he could be a threat if he wanted but he just seemed scared. He had questions about stand up so we just did stand up for a while and I was going light, trying to get him to finish a take down of any type. I kept trying to get him to drive through me but he genuinely was concerned about hurting me. I don't know what's happened with this guy. Maybe he has hurt a training partner. Very likely he just has spent enough time in the world, being told not to hurt anyone that he's carrying that aroud. I've struggled with that. I hope he keeps training and finds that comfort. He's young and athletic and could do well. Finally, the same tall guy and I sparred again for a couple rounds. Credit to him, I need to do this, we had a free roll and coming out of it he pointed out a couple positions we got into where either he thought he could do better than he did or he knew he cracked the door open on something I could do but backed away. After that free round he'd say "Your mount is really tough, do you mind if we start there, I think I can escape better" then we'd do it and play it back afterward. I definitely need to borrow from this. Afterwards I returned to my parents house to shower and see if my dad needed to go anywhere since my mom had the car and was out with my niece. We ended up eating leftover pizza from the night before. I had brought some protein bars to I ate one of those and some cottage cheese along with more veggies.. Eventually I took a nap, during which my mom returned with my sister and her partner in tow. That evening my mom made "goulash" and I loaded my plate with more veggies. Again we did s'mores after dinner. Unfortunately this is where my niece started to burn out on the weekend, which happens whenever I go down and my family tries to make it non-stop together time. I keep telling them not to do this and they keep doing it. After a whole day of my niece staying at my parents and everyone constantly paying attention to her, she gets fried. I get it, I do too. As she get fried, because she's a child she starts disengaging which is treated like misbehavior which then causes all the adults to escalate everything, which causes her to get frustrated and pull away more. She no longer wants to eat or see anyone. So then everything becomes about forcing her to interact and eat whats on her plate an so on. Things go to 11. I went to bed and put my headphones in as they shout at her about her because she doesn't want to sleep in the same room as the people shouting at her. I feel like we'd all feel the same. Sunday Breakfast what light. My parents kept asking if we wanted them to go get donuts. No. I ate eggs, a slice of toast and some breakfast veggies. We sat around as out Thanksgiving meal prep started. My mom and niece took a walk and eventually I did too. This is the part of holidays I hate the most, just sitting and waiting, people frustrated or burnt out. I went and filled up my car with gas. Dinner was served right around noon. It was fine. I kept my plate pretty light but tried a bit of everything because that's how I was raised. Melt downs began again as everyone started trying to negotiate how much my niece had to eat of lunch and was there enough protein in it. Could she eat it in another room or did she have to sit at the table. Some loose agreement was reached then the adults started to negotiate again. I left the table and went to the living room since I had been done for a bit and wasn't in the negotiation and it was pretty clear that my niece wanted everyone to go away. I felt her on this. My dad joined me and started watching football. Eventually my mom joined us as my sister and her partner kept the negotiations going. I honestly don't know how that ended other than they were mad at each other and I don't know if or what was eaten. It was agreed we'd wait for dessert, because that's what my family does on holidays. They load their plates up, eat it all then marvel at how full they are and they couldn't possibly eat dessert for a couple hours. I was literally just waiting on dessert so I could tick the holiday visit box and leave. A couple hours later people start feeling like they could eat so dessert goes into the oven, gets served and I say my good byes and leave. My sister didn't bother to get up and I was fine with that but I learned later that she was upset that she never got to say goodbye. I don't know what to do with that. Literally everyone else saw me off. She was just lost in her phone and didn't notice that everyone had left the room. I'll sort that later. I'm holding off for a couple days because I'm trying to figure out how to address it without either apologizing or blaming. I'm not bothered about it but want to at least acknowledge her, I just don't have the words. That was it, i drove straight home, not stopping for gas, food, or restroom for four hours just because I wanted to be home. Lesson, maybe Writing out the holiday frustrations was an interesting exercise, one I've never done before. There are no novel thoughts in there but seeing it all compiled makes it seem pretty clear to me that my usual suggestion of "let's not make my niece stay out at my parents the whole time" is valid but may be less effective than, "what if we treat it like an exception/holiday for her too". Maybe this is one time that she eats what she wants and if she doesn't want to eat a whole meal, we let that happen. She won't lose weight or die from a weekend of light eating. In general, let's just bring the stakes down on everything. Anyway, that was my holiday with my family. This Week This week will be nice and quiet. Laura and I are working every day except Thursday (Thanksgiving). We have historically gone to friends' house for the holiday but they aren't hosting this year. We're totally good with this. We'll see them on Saturday. One of the guys at the gym talked the Professor into letting him run an open mat on Friday, which I am grateful for. So, normal training except not lifting on Sunday.

September 11 - 219.9 September 18 - 220.7 September 25 - 218.0 October 2 - 216.0 October 9 - 215.4 October 16 - 213.8 October 23 - 215.5 October 30 - 212.6 November 6 - 216.3 November 13 - 215.5 November 20 - 215.7 I'm really happy that this bodyweight is within tolerances. I spent last weekend visiting my family for an early Thanksgiving which means more stress, more food, less exercise, fewer veggies, more white flour. I full expected today to sbe closer to 217 with hopes of shedding some as water weight later.

Happy belated birthday

Careful what you say on the internet.

Wednesday Training BJJ Moar Legs! Near side toe holds I worked with Reid (White until the end of the class when he got promoted to Blue so congrats to Reid). Entry from the back step to a toe hold. We were doing it on the near side and trying to get the details right. When you backstep you end up like the guy on top here: What I assume he is indicating in the picture is that the bottom guy wants to cross one foot over the other. Generally you want to have access to the one between your legs (where his finger is pointing) although you can do things to the other leg too. We've been working on forcibly uncrossing their legs. For this day we're attacking the near leg like the image below, what he's showing is actually the second attack we learned. The first attack involved keeping their knee bent. With it bent the toe holder has a lot more breaking power and can sap more of the defenders power by rolling under the leg and driving the foot back towards the defenders hips. It feels terrible and you need to tap when the ankle starts to feel pressure The second attack is when they straighten their leg, pretty much exactly like the second image. We were taught to drive the sole of the foot to the mat and get your hips over their leg then draw the leg back in towards the hip to add power to it. Rolls Reid (White) - We started in X guard but pretty quickly fell out out that since neither of us are leg lockers. The first submission was an arm triangle, because it's me. The second, as I recall was an armbar from a kimura grip. He grumbled something about "gift wrap" which is a specific thing in BJJ but he was asking about my arm triangle. I'm sure I've shown him but on Friday I'll reteach him some of my special tweaks to the set up that make it harder to get ouf than usual, although, I've had some people getting away of late and I need to figure out how to solve that. Ben (Blue) - Ben has been our for a couple months. I feel like he haas that happen about once a year. It was good to see him back. He expressed concerns going into this roll, after his layoff and I did eventually submit him but only once. He still has a lot of flexibility and will just hang on for dear life, making it harder to progress against him. He's not winning but he's slowing down losing. Unfortunately I had a 12:30 meeting so I had to boogey out of there so no after class stuff. It was the lowest calorie burn class I think I've ever had, 216. Food Because it's Wednesday and I'm over booked I left 300 calories on the table. I'll just put those next to the 500 or so from Tuesday in prep for the weekend. Sleep Tuesday into Wednesday is always poor for me. I'd say this was a totally typical Tuesday into Wednesday. Guitar Guitar lesson. It was clear he didn't expect me to work on The Jayhawks song, which is on me. I didn't write down my assignments after the previous lesson. We worked on Chitlins Con Carne. I played with the melody at about half speed. He did rhythm and I played along. Then we switched and I did rythm and he did the melody over it. He's very good at matching my pace even when I'm not super consistent. That's that live band experience. We worked through the couple of riffs we've covered. He gave me a new song with rhythm and melody tabbed out to work on. That was about it. As we're getting ready for a several week break he mentioned that I should dig out Sumer of '69 and work on it as time permits since I've said I'd like to put more time in there. I also mentioned that I have a couple song books that I've never really gotten into and we can dig through those sometime if he wants for more material. I think I may try to make myself mess around with that during the break. Other At the end of our Sunday call last weekend I had mentioned to my mom that I was trying to get a rough time table from my sister so I could go do some jiujitsu while I was down there. It's hard to get my sister to commit to anything and then it's tentative. This is what led up to the conversation we were having yesterday where @Jarric recommended I just state my desired time table. Well, kudos to my mom, she texted me last night with a loose time table including saying that there was time in the middle of the day Saturday if I still wanted to do jiujitsu. I thanked her for doing that and told her I'd get back to her with times today. But I wanted to acknowledge that she heard me and did what she could to set me up to do what I want.

I was avoiding trying to make them plan around me because I could go to any class in town, so I have a lot of time options and my sister is bringing her daughter and partner out to try and have a little Thanksgiving since I'm visiting. However, given that no one has replied to my ask for any kind of an idea of when we're doing what, I probably do just need to pick a class at a reasonable time and say I'm going. My notion that Laura was interfering with my perfect scheduling was a problem in the past. I've learned before that it's not true at all but it is good for me to have real reminder every once in a while. Unfortunately, pulling back from my tendency to over book ever hour of every day is much more challenging than a weekend alone can fix. I've never made really solid, sustainable progress on this. I'm not even totally sure how I would do that. I don't imagine myself living a life were I just leave an hour or two of slack in every day. As it stands,I leave 6 - 9 as just a generic evening window. It gets taken up with making dinner if I'm making it that night, eating dinner which includes catching up on our respective days, and cleaning up dinner. Those three hours are the most loosey goosey I get. If I was passionate about creating more time in my life I'd either need to work less or work out less. The former sounds great but given that I'm not in a place where I can go to part time employment I don't even entertain it. Many people would work out less but my mindset is that I've only got so many years of training in me. I don't see myself competing in jiujitsu in 5 years and I imagine I'll need to pull back to 4 and then 3 days a week as my body ages. So I see it as a ticking clock already. Who knows. If someone wants to give me a million dollars I'd be happy to work half time and spend some extra time tutoring kids and stuff like that. Speaking of overbooking, We're way overbooked this week. Laura got back from her work trip on Saturday. I moved my weekend around a bit so we could hang out on Sunday. Monday she had meetings in the evening (for her hobbies), Tuesday was jiujitsu, Wednesday (tonight) is guitar for me and I had signed us up for a wine tasting which she then double booked herself for ice skating lessons over, tomorrow is our one night together because Friday I drive down to Iowa. I'm not super bothered by all of this but just pointing at all of it as an example. I don't know if I'm going to go to the wine tasting tonight. Part of me says "it's. suck cost and you don't care, skip it" and part of me says "it's a really fancy wine tasting and when else will you get to do something like it?" I'll make a game time decision but right now I'm leaning away from it. Tuesday Training Strength Good Morning 105 5 x 10 Go to 115 5 x 12 next time Leg Press 430 5 x 15 keep the same Glute Machine 80 5 x 12 go to 90 lbs next time Hack Squat 120 5 x 10 go to 12 reps next time Leg Curl 70 5 x 15 add 5 lbs Leg Extension 75 5 x 15 only completed 5 x 12 reps keep 5 x 15 on the program for next time It's the day after as I write this and my legs are SSSOOORRRREEE. Interesting to see where this goes Marathon Roll It ended up being kind of a light class and despite having a pretty big contingent of upper belts after the last belt grad we had a blue belt army once again. Dan was the sole blackbelt and he and I rolled right away. It was our first round so neither of us went in ultra try hard mode. I could feel him taking it pretty easy so I pulled back even slightly more than I wanted to. He's been trying to work on maintaining his half guard and I'm one of the few people who passes it so we immediately started doing that. I passed and he put me back in half guard, I passed and chased a kimura that was never there and he put me back in half guard. He tried a baseball choke from bottom on me that I saw from miles away and just followed him so it never got tight. It was a good warm up. Next I went on the Wrestler Alex (blue) and we had a fun roll, as we always do. We were starting from a sweep he didn't know so I taught him that then we rolled for a bit until we went of the the mat. We reset and he started with the sweep. This time I got on top and chased a strangle for the rest of the round but never finished. Immediately after I went with Gavin (blue) who has been out a lot lately and it shows that he's fallen behind. I don't recall details, just the vague sense that it was an easy roll. At the end of the roll I looked around the room and more than half was sitting against the wall (meaning they are taking rounds of rest) and I also realized that all of my hard rounds were over. I don't recall the exact order after that but I took another round with Dan (black), I got to roll with Quinn and his buddy Tai (both white). Tai slipped out of a couple pretty good arm triangle set ups. I eventually tapped him with a punch choke and I could tell he did not like it and had never seen it before so I taught it to him. I rolled with a couple other white belts and tried to cue them on whatever thing it was I caught them on. My final roll was with Mislael (blue) and I got a guillotine set up but couldn't finish. I got to top and he kept slipping my arm triangle so I went for the punch choke again but heard the timer counting down from ten so I pulled back the pressure because I knew he could hear it and would never tap knowing how close he was and punch chokes always feel mean anyway. Food Since it was Tuesday I came up 500 calories short on the day. I'm visiting family this weekend so I'll just leave that in the surplus column because we do nothing but eat when I visit. Sleep Monday into Tuesday, sleep was decent. I apoparentely drank a little too much water the second half of Monday and had to get up a couple time in the first couple hours but once midnight or one was past, I slept well. Games I didn't mention it previously but I got about two hours of video games in over the weekend, none since. I've been building a little path in Minecraft the t cave my sister is exploring. I also got out a game I enjoyed a lot several years ago, Immortals Fenyx Rising. The base game is all around the idea that you need to restore power to four greek gods. The game play is fun and the banter between the characters is good. It's kind of a Zelda light. Guitar I changed my strings this week. I don't know how long I had the same ones on there but it was a while. They were a slightly different string than I normally use and I never really liked them. I put my usual ones on. I have historically not clipped the strings, meaning, it takes forever to wind them on there and I end up with this big ball of guitar string wrapped around the knobs. This time, for the first time, I clipped them down so they only go around the knobs once or twice. So far, I think I like it. I have been really happy with the Jayhawks song I was assigned a couple lessons ago. I'm just playing the chords but it's got fairly quick changes and I'm able to do the whole song at normal speed and keep up. The majority of the song lives in four chords (F, G, C, D) but durning the chorus you have to do to a few more (Am, Bm and there's an Em once) so it doesn't feel to baby. It feels like I'm playing a real song, at speed.