The Most Loathed

I come to every challenge with huge aspirations but then I start to try and flesh it out and it takes on a life of its own. Soon I've written pages of text and spent hours trying to frame the perfect challenge. In an effort to prevent perfect being the enemy of good, I'm going with something pretty basic.

Body Weight
Last week I averaged 211.9, this week it’s 214.7. By the end of the challenge it will be less. Somewhere around 200 ish. This will be accomplished by dropping my calories to about 2,200 per day while maintaining my workload.

Training
BJJ - Submissions
For the duration of the challenge I’m putting away the arm triangle from mount. I’ll be using the leg triangle from mount, which has been something I’ve wanted to work on for about 6 months but those darn arm triangles are just so enticing. But they’re not allowed. I can still use my side control and back attacks of choice, only arm triangle is banned. 

Lifting
I’m due my first ever deload week in this challenge and I plan to take it. Then I’ll start a new meso following a very similar pattern to my current one.

Work
I’m going to start taking an hour out of my work week to let myself sleep in a couple mornings of the week. 

Other projects:
Google Forms - I’ve created some forms that I’m using to track some data. This is just something I plan to tinker with for the coming months. I can choose to stop or change them anytime
Guitar - same ol’. I struggle to come up with a better approach to this
Cooking - I’ve gotten a bit out of the habit. I’d like to cook two new recipes this challenge but they have not been preselected
 

I'll put my stake in the ground as a BJJ guy. I'm 2.5 years in so buy no means an expert but enough time that if someone is considering the sport and has questions about what it's like to get started, I'm available to answer questions. As far as I know @Kishi is the only other active player so let this also be a call to anyone I may be unaware of so I can start following you too.  Should anyone want talk technique, I'm always game. 

Wednesday 

Training

Food

Ended the day right about even on calories. Body weight is still super high, 215.9. Not super worried about it, next week I can roll again and I expect all the sweat and effort to drop me back down 3 pounds or so right away. 

Thursday

Sleep

I finally got a decent night's sleep this week. Super happy for that. Recovery was still yellow per Whoop and I subjectively agree with it but improving.

Training

Strength

• EZ Bar Preacher Curl 30 lbs: 11, 9, 8
• Cable Rope Twist Curl 30: 13, 10, 11
• Barbell Skullcrusher 40: 11, 10, 9 
  • These really felt good. great pump, great effort, my triceps are sore the following day
• Assisted Dip -20: 13, 10, 9
  • About time to move to unassisted dips. At 20 lbs, the fricton on the assistance pad is slower coming up that I am so I do the eccentric with no assistance then get a trivial amount of assistance at the bottom of the movement.
• Seated Cable Row 55: 13, 13, 10
• Dumbbell Fly 30: 11, 9, 6
• Dumbbell Lateral Raise 15: 15, 13, 8
• Smith Machine Squat 110: 13, 11, 8
• Sumo Deadlift 190: 14, 12, 8

Food

I show myself as coming in 500 calories shy on the day but I felt pretty well fed so I didn't push it. Could have been a mis-log or I could have just gotten what I needed. My  protein ended up quite high because I ate my normal daytime meals and then we had cod and potatoes for supper and cod always delivers more protein than I expect. 

Friday

Sleep

Another good night of sleep and I'm finally back in green recovery.

Bodyweight graph update just because I'm finding it interesting to follow

Your gym membership sounds across purposes with your goals but it sounds like you've already paid for the year and that is keeping you there. It's painful but it might be worth paying to break the contract (if it's cheaper than the year) or just acknowledging that it's not a good fit. Everything you mentioned in your goals was about strength but your gym sounds like it does tabata/ HIIT only which will not coincide with your best strength gains. 

These is one sentence tucked in the middle about how food prep / diet is tough for you. That could make for a nice long term, low stakes project while you keep doing the work your doing.

Kudos for all the time and effort you are already putting in. 

Welcome back. Glad that it sounds like some things have settled down and you now have some time to focus on yourself. 

You absolutely can still use a battle log but I most of the action is in the challenges these days. So that may be something you can tick off your list, if you'd like. 

That's a heck of a story. Welcome to the forums. We've got a few people who are trying to make some improvements to allow them to be considered for medical interventions. Unfortunately, I can't name someone specific for you but if you check out the new challenge forum that will go up later today you will see people's threads starting up and may find a kindred spirit or two. Regardless, welcome. You're welcome to lurk or start your own challenge thread and lean on the community for support or  accountability as needed. 

Welcome!

I can pretty much only speak to the forums as I haven't done the app or other things but you will see a new directory go up on the forum home that says "Current Challenge: 12/31/2024 through ...". Click into that and click to "Create a new Thread" like you did for this. There you can create a thread that you will use to log your days and weeks, assuming you want to do that. It's not mandatory to do challenges but it's where most of the action on this website happens. Feel free to browse previous challenges and/or wait a few days to create your thread, jsut to get a feel for what people do. Each person's challenge is very personal to them. Some people use it as a training log, some use it as a diary, some use it as a place to just vent their spleen. 

Gifs and gags are strongly encouraged. 

As I said, that's not at all mandatory but if you're looking for a community of people who are all working on self improvement, a lot of it based around getting healthier, that is a great place to find that. 

See you around cowboy

9 minutes ago, Stronkey Kong said:

On 11/28/2023 at 10:13 AM, Stronkey Kong said:

dip my toe into BJJ when I need to get humbled.

If you decide to try this and want to talk to someone about anything you're seeing, give me a shout. I'll be around here. 

Oh. Meant mention, I finally saw a holiday bounce in my weight and find it kind of hilarious. My average weight last week was 212.5 with a difference between the min and max of 3.5. Over Tuesday and Wednesday (today) I added over 3 lbs, obviously primarily water. It'll just let me shuck those first few pounds even easier.

Look at you being all productive for 2024 already.

Monday - Christmas Day

I'm still recovering from whatever virus this is. It seems to just be lingering as they always seem to do. 

No training today due to Christmas Day

Sleep was rough, I had a bit of a cough before bed so I headed to the couch to let Laura sleep. I actually got a pretty good night's sleep at that time which happens sometimes. 

We spent a quiet Christmas Morning together. I napped in the late afternoon then made out dinner, Chicken with leeks and mushroom gravy. Then we headed over to some friends' house for a big Christmas Day cookie thing that they do every year. I started to insist we come home around 9. We were sent home with a box of homemade cookies and candies.

Tuesday

Training - Strength

• Dumbbell Press (flat) 60 lbs: 13, 13, 11
• Dumbbell Press (Incline) 50: 11, 9, 8
• EZ Bar Row (Underhand) 90: 10, 9, 6
• Cable Tricep Pushdown 55: 13, 10, 8
• Cable Curl 35: 14, 12, 11
• Lying Leg Curl 65: 14, 9, 8
• Leg Extension 85: 11, 10, 10
• Stair Calves : 40, 25

The gym was packed with pre-teen and teen bros. It was hilarious watching pre and early pubescent boys attempt to flex in the mirror before they are physiologically capable of having bulging muscles. I've been one of those, best wishes to them but it is funny.

Speaking of which, I saw that my gym posted an Instagram reel that I'm kind of obsessed with. It's just our high five at the end of class but it's the first time I've seen myself on video in like a year so I'm 30+ lbs lighter than last time. I still walk like I carry those pounds, kind of stiff legged, stompy footed with my elbows 2 feet from my sides. I have the old-man-wrestler walk I've seen in other dudes that grew up lifting but then aged into middle aged, it looks similar to how a lot of cops walk out of uniform because they are used to holding their arms out to clear their tool belt.

Food

Food was pretty good. I overate a few hundred calories because I had four cookies from the ones sent home from the Christmas Shindig. I told Laura that the rest are hers. 

Sleep

Rough sleep . I fell asleep well enough but woke up to a cough and was awake more than asleep after 3.

Wednesday

Sleep

I slept really well until about 4 am when the dog jumped in bed then snuggled up against me and proceded to lick her paws. I was awake at that point. 

Training - Preview

My jiujitsu gym is closed this week. Last year I put a fair amount of effort into finding other places to train. This year I'm giving myself permission to take the week off from jiujitsu. I don't think I've missed three days in a row all year except maybe if I was really sick. So I'm going to head to the rec and do really light cardio today and Thursday. Elliptical for 45 minutes and walking for 45 minutes. I'm going to watch jiujitsu videos. 

On 12/24/2023 at 8:40 AM, DrFeelgood said:

Next week will be interesting: it starts with Christmas and ends the day after my birthday.  I fully intend to not go overboard with those and I still have to work the midweek, so I'll be pushing for and expecting a decrease; but I'll probably be checking it each morning so I can take the lowest for my official number to cap off what's been a pretty good Fitness Fall™. 

Enjoy the diet break and enjoy the week.

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 - 216.2

November 6 - 216.3

November 13 - 215.5

November 20 - 215.7

November 27  - 213.8

December 4 - 213.3

December 11 - 213.1

December 18 - 213.5

December 25 - 212.5

This morning (Tuesday the 26th) I managed to ding my highest weight since the end of November (214.6), It's in entirely and artifact of the gym being closed and having a late meal with lots of snacks yesterday.

I'm looking forward to starting weightloss next week and trying to be patient this week and just maintain. 

Friday

Sleep

I actually needed both of my data sets to reconstruct this night. I was ready for a long night's sleep and to sleep in. However I woke up at 3 and again at 4. At 4 I was hungry and had a headache. I got up, took some ibuprofen and fell asleep on the sofa in my wife's office for another hour. When she got up to take the dog out I wend back to the bed and fell asleep for another hour. I got a lot of sleep volume in but very low quality. My recovery indicators also ended up being low for the day. 

Training

BJJ

Before Class

One guy was going on and on about the human brain and anxiety and how he thinks his wife has anxiety and that makes her hard to deal with...yada yada. I told the person he was talking to that I was about to improve his life. I snapped the talked down, took his back and started to set up a strangle and suddenly he started fighting back. Seated behind him, as I went to work on submissions I said "You're so busy trying to solve everyone else's problems for them, you're missing the problem right in front of you". He stopped whining about his wife for the rest of class. 

Today's instruction was introduced as the "How to beat Mike" class. One of our brown belts who has reliably been a good partner but very tough for me to beat has been working not getting passed by me so he wanted to use this class to teach everyone what he has learned over the past six months. 

Starting from an over-under pass, top player back steps for the pass and puts all the pressure in the world into the bottom player's stomach. Top player wants to use the head side hand to cup the trapezius and use that anchor to pass. Bottom player wants to use the arm on the head side for the top player to scrape the top player across the body so head and body are on the same side. This relieves the pressure and makes it very difficult to pass safely.

That's it in a nut shell. We did lots of reps and tweaks but it really comes down to the fight of head across the body and grab the top vs head and body on the same side and keep the anchor grip away. 

Food

We ended up getting a final chef's box. As we have done before, we ended up eating the appetizers and first course on Friday. The Entree and dessert were for Saturday. I didn't really bother to keep track of my calories Friday night but I think they were low on the day. I'm sure my protein was low.

For the apps we each had enough stuff that I kind of cobbled mine together into a couple baguette slices of a shrimp bruschetta kind of thing. The course was a kind of fish cake with a lobster bisque sauce. The sauce was really good but strongly flavored enough that I couldn't taste the fish cake.

Saturday

Sleep 

Another rough night. As we were watching some stuff on TV on Friday night I started to think "I think I'm coming down with something". I had the body aches and a some hot and cold see sawing all while sitting still watching tv. I took some ibuprofen before bed to forstall headaches. I was in bed and trying to sleep from 10 pm to 8 am but woke up to a new experience. I had 1% recovery according to my Whoop. My resting heartrate was 68 was shown as 68, my HRV was 24 (I'm usually 30s and 40s, 50s on a good day), and my skin temp was 3 degrees warmer than usual. 

Training

None. I did no training. The plan had been to lift but I was clearly dealing with something so I let it go. I spent a lot of time laying down, some of it napping, throughout the day. I didn't actually feel terrible. I didn't have headaches, congestion, or a meaningful cough. I just had what I call "The Icks". It's the muscle fatigue and ache, the general skin crawling feeling, and the hot and cold swings. I probably could have gone and lifted but I didn't feel like my performance would be what it could be and I honestly felt rest as the only thing for me for the day.

Food

We went to our favorite coffee shop and grabbed to go ham and gruyere croissants and coffee.  Not the healthiest meal but tasty. I had a bowl of casein porridge for a snack to get some protein. Lunch was a big chicken breast sandwich and supper was beef wellington from our chef box. It was descent but we both wanted just the pastry and the reduced mushrooms as a hand pie instead. I took a swing at the calories for the day and show 500 under but I'm guessing I just under reported. 

Sunday

Sleep

Repeating the theme of the last couple days, I was in bed for about 10 low quality hours. I woke up with Whoop giving be a 31% (as opposed to 1% yesterday). I feel like that's roughly correct. That number correlates to what Whoop gives me when I over train for three days or don't sleep well for a week and over train for one day. This was roughly corollary. 

Training

I skipped Akagi today. I won't get to do jiujitsu for a week so it's a hard choice but it felt like the right one. I feel like i'm on the mend and pushing right now feels like the wrong call. 

I did hit the rec to lift. Laura had warned me that it closed at noon so I was there by 10 to make sure I got my time in. It was crowded as every remotely serious lifter there was doing their thing. I have noticed during the winter break that there a disproportionate number for young female athletes there. I think most of them are college students who are on training programs for a sport. It's good to see them active in the weight room. I mean this in as non-creepy of a way as I can. I don't think women were hitting the gym much, even for the their sports when I was that age. I also know it was common for young athletes to fall off the wagon over breaks. So, I'm glad to see them working. I'm guessing there are a disproportionate number of women because the "serious" men want to go to "tougher" gyms. But they are doing what they need to to and kudos to them

• Assisted Pull up -75 lbs: 10, 9
• Pull down 50: 12, 10
• Barbell Shrug 175: 15, 13, 14
• EZ Bar Curl (narrow) 40: 9, 8, 7
• Cable tricep Rope 45: 11, 9
• Smith Machine Bench 185: 6,6
• Leg Press Calves 230: 10, 9
• Stiff Legged Deadlift 185: 10, 8

Last workout of week 1, meaning I'm still setting the weights for the program. I was aiming to hit rep ranges of 8-12 and get to the amount of effort when the concentric starts to show some effort, so for the bench, pop the bar up, lower it slowly, pause, pop it up. The first time it doesn't pop up but grinds, that's the beginning of my final rep for that set.  For the rest of the program, any time my reps get about 15 I'll push the weight up. Anytime my sets get to 4 I'll start to indicate to the app that I don't want more, If they hit five I'll dump sets unless I'm really convinced I need them. This is only a four week program so I will only do each workout 3 more times. 

Food

As of right now, with dinner planned int, I show 600 short and 60 g protein short. I'll probably down a protein bar or shake before the end of the night but leave a bunch of the those calories on the table. I haven't been terribly hungry. Sleeping in helps with this but so does not moving. I think my body is autoregulating to my lack of activity nicely. That said, I don't necessarily want to reduce my intake. It's my last week before diet season and I'm still losing slowly. I feel good but I want my body to feel nice an comfortable about it's calorie situation before I take them away, as I will December 31.

this challenge is technically over now but I'll keep posting in this thread through the week. I think the new threads can start being created midweek so I'll set that up then. 

5 hours ago, cn3wton said:

So I need to fix that post haste. If anyone has some suggestions for workout music I'd love to here it. Zombified by Falling in Reverse is currently the main inspirational song for this playlist.

I'm put some songs in a playlist then let Spotify add to it. Here are my seed songs

I have a slightly more tailored list for pre competition

@TimovieMan tends to have good song recommendations.

Oh, it's far from done but I spent a little time over the course of the week pointing Tableau at my bodyweight spreadsheet. I'm working on going back and adding in some of the MFP related info but the line chart shows the story so far, the darker line is my measured weight, the lighter line is the arbitrary goals I set for myself. 

Wednesday

Food

I ended up with a enough calories left that I finished my current pint of ice cream. It had about 70g left in it and I enjoyed them. I don't know that I will get a new pint at this time, diet season is coming and I'm not sure I want to have that hanging out. That said, Laura spotted a Take 5 Ice Cream the other day and it sounds really good. 

I had so many calories left because we split and Amy's pizza for supper. We had a couple hot sauces that we realized were out of date so I made sure to taste them before ditching them. For the most part they were bottles I had kind of been working around like The Last Dab and other stupidly hot ones. I tried them in quick succession and they were hot but I honestly wasn't sad to see them go, except one, So I reordered the one with a plan to move it straight into the fridge and tossed a half dozen others. 

Thursday

Sleep

Sleep was pretty good except I woke up at 5 and realized there was no way I would get anymore meaningful sleep before my alarm went off so I got up. Pretty sure it was the dog hopping into bed that woke me. 

Training

Meso 2, week 1, day 2 - still getting weights 

• EZ bar preacher curl 30lbs (bar not included): 10, 8, 8
• Cable Rope Curl 30: 12, 12, 12
• EZ bar skull crusher 40: 10, 9
• Assisted Dip - 25: 13, 10
• Seated Cable Row 55 12, 12
• Dumbbell Fly 30 10, 8
• Dumbbell Lateral Raise 15: 14, 12, 7
• Smith Machine High Bar Squat 110 (apparatus not included): 10, 12
• Sumo Deadlift 185: 14, 12

At this early stage the whole meso feels like lots of potential. The EZ bar curls and extensions are doing great things. I like the smith squat. I'm looking forward to adding reps. I was aiming for 8-12 reps for my chosen weights but obviously got a few exercises with more. I may bump the weight up on those next week, we'll see. 

Food

We're going out for dinner tonight. We attempted to cancel out chef box for tomorrow so we booked tonight for use to enjoy, however, I got a form email that suggests we'll have chef's box tomorrow too. If there is one week I would want this, it's this week, so I'm just going with it. No fretting, no stress, just enjoy the food. 

Wednesday 

Training - BJJ

Instruction

• Snap Down to Clock/Razor Choke - Inside and collar ties, push in, snap down. Top player starts to go around but bottom player tries to grab the lead leg. Top player steps forward with their more foot side leg so their back is briefly facing the bottom player's head then quickly steps back over the bottom players back. On arm goes in over the shoulder to strangle, the other arm goes back to the opposite knee, blocking it in place. Both legs go out to the side the choking arm is coming in. Walk your feet forward and draw the lapel up and strangle. 
• Leg Drag to Far Side Armbar (hip side) - From standing, bottom player has their feet on the top player's hips. Top player grabs both knees, hip bumps the feet off of the hips, use the hands to pull both feet to one side. Drive that side knee between bottom players knees, pin the femurs back against the top player's hips. Top player lays over those legs to smash them to the ground. Pass to the back. Bottom player turns in and shoots the top side underhook. Top player pins the underhook to the bottom player's ribs, pull the elbow close and switches to a knee on belly type stance. Swing that leg over and attempt to keep the shotgun armbar. If the bottom player rotates their arm to prevent the armbar, feed is across the body, step over the head to a traditional arm bar. 
• Leg Drag to Far Side Armbar (head side) - From the same starting position grab only one side leg and feed it across the body and step into the same leg drag position. Perform the same pass, allowing the bottom player to turn in. Same underhook. Top player moves towards the head and sets up a kimura. Step to kimur position and attempt to finish. Move to the armbar as necessary.

Rolls

• Ben (blue) - We started from the snap down and step over. I didn't both going for the razor choke since Ben would be looking for it. He attempted to sit tall and I was waiting to snap in a lazy short choke that I used to take his back. He did a good job of getting over my legs but he made the standard mistake of escaping over my strangle arm which means I'm teed up to take mount and I did. I don't recall what I submitted him with but I did and we reset where he got the snapdown and step over the start. I  quickly turned in and swept him but didn't get a second submission before time was up. 
• I feel like there was a second round but I can't think of it
• Winner Stays In - I got called out to start out on this. We started from open guard with me down. I don't recall everyone I had to go against but I won my first three rounds against a blend of blue and white belts. The brown and purple belts didn't come to me. I found myself way more winded that I expected on the fourth round and I think it contributed to losing to a white belt. As often happens in these, despite being seated I can win some rounds just by being more aggressive. I got one, maybe two that way, but most people were unafraid to come at me and made some good attempts at passing. It's not a pass by simply stepping by, you have to secure the position which generally means "hold it for 3 seconds". There were multiple cases where someone stepped by but I quickly turned in and shot a foot through to prevent them securing side control. Even the white belt who got me, I moved in, he stepped around, I scooted under and started a sweep but he moved out of it, stepped around to full side control but I drew him back to half guard, started a sweep but he stepped out and fell into a solid side control so I tapped and said he had the pass and rested. I did beat him next round to retake my seat in the middle. I didn't lose again but I was good and winded. 

After Class

Stan and I were looking for a round after class but some people wanted our attention. I worked with Josh a bit. I worked on my leg entries. He wanted to work on how to escape from bottom side. We did this until he needed to go. I was kind of hanging out, waiting for Stan to stop beating on Rob when professor came out on the Matt and grabbed an white belt and brought him over to me to work on something. this turned into Professor asking each person for one thing they are having trouble with and addressing it. 

• 3/4 Mount Passing - the white belt, Alex has struggling with getting stuck passing half guard. I think I was used as the example because I'm the one who sticks him. the basic advice is to step back a bit and move the bottom guy's hips the other direction then use your shoulder to repoint them. 
• Closed Guard Arm Bar - Another white belt is working on his armbar from closed guard. The basic gist is to go for the lapel grab then feed their arm across their body as you break their posture, climb your legs up to diamond. Get your hips off the ground and pop your lower leg over their face and set the arm bar
• Single Leg X - This was my question. In single leg X people are pressuring down and collapsing my X. I need to get my outside foot on thier rib cage, I need to use the laces of my inside foot to lift their hips. Drive my elbows down to create a tripod, rather than just being on my back. The cue was to try and lift their foot off the mat rather than thinking as much about the hips

Other BJJ news, The May submission only tourney just dropped and I signed up for the 185-195 weight class. I also texted it to a couple guys from the gym and sent it to the professor. 

3 hours ago, Shello said:

Well that certainly didn't go down as expected.   I've been in a few accidents and those aches and pains always show up a little later.  Hopefully that's all it is and you get back to normal.  Get some extra stretching in!  

 

It's too bad the date was on a different page.  I wouldn't overthink your response to her.  She obviously didn't do anything 'wrong'.  It's like she's trying to be the person you would want her to be and she's somehow done it wrong.  She needs to be who she is and she just may not have realized that yet or may be struggling with that particular aspect.   The honest answer is probably something along the lines that you've said here - you like her as a person and enjoy her company but just haven't felt a spark.  No harm no foul.  

unsurprisingly @Shello said what I was thinking better than I could have.

35 minutes ago, cn3wton said:

By no unilateral exercises do you mean alternating curls and such? Or am I just still a bit out of it this am and not understanding completely haha.

exactly. Alternating of even just one-arm preacher curls. The last workout I did in that meso, the one I ended early had:

• lateral raise, four set
• dumbbell Curl (Alternating), seven sets totally 150 reps but since they were alternating, 300 reps
• pulldown 5 sets
• Dumbbell Overhead Extension (single arm), 4 sets
• Dumbbell Fly Flat, 4 sets
• Stiff Legged Deadlift, 5 sets
• Dumbbell Split Squat, 6 sets but that's per leg. I hit 2 hours durring this exercise so I cut it off
• Leg Extension, 4 sets I didn't do
• Seated Calf Machine, 3 sets I didn't do.

In fairness to the app, I have some control over this but it was easier to start from scratch than try to back this into a useable state. I can add and drop sets but the best way to manage it is with the questions after each set. The last one (I don't have a screenshot handy unfortunately) asks "How was the workload?" and the answers are something like "Too Easy", "About Right", "I Pushed Myself", and "Too Much". To me, this is asking "how hard did you have to try?" but if you click the help it is that but also "How did you feel about how long it took"? I was often clicking "About Right" because it felt like I was doing the right amount of effort but as the time grew and grew, I needed to have clicked "I Pushed Myself" and "Too Much" to get it to stop adding volume. 

I also screwed up by picking the longest possible mesocycle which seems like it will result in the longest workouts because it seems to add reps and sets but not weight within the meso. So by rebooting and pushing my weight up, I reduced the volume. I picked a 4 week meso this time so that even if it starts to get away from me, it can only grow so long. 

Tuesday

Training - Marathon Roll

I got in rolls with all the usual characters. Dan (black) powered through a strangle from bottom, a white belt held the head while I was on top so I strangled him with his own move (Von Flue Choke), Joe survived an arm triangle attempt by grabbing his own leg, which I totally didn't catch and let him out but put him back down to try again before time was out. The most interesting roll was probably Aramus (blue). He's new to our gym but came in with a blue belt. He's a big guy who doesn't have great technique but is used to smashing people to get his way. I let him have top, he pretty quickly found my far arm popped free and got the tap with an Americana. It's a bad habit I have, letting that out, this is why I'm putting him up there. I put him on top again and he went for a vicious neck crank and I tapped just to avoid hurting today. Not a complaint but it made me realize he had a big weight advantage. I found out he is 285 by his own reporting. So, when I let him take top to work on my escapes, I'm giving up 70-75 lbs. All the more reason to keep putting him on top though. With that big of a difference little mistakes will get me and I will make them.I can't recall if I've mentioned this here but I'm trying to make it a project to keep working with the biggest guys, especially the inexperienced ones. I want to be able to give up 100 lbs to someone inexperienced and sweep them, and hold them on bottom at will. So Aramus is just a part of that. 

Food

Calories ended nicely yesterday, with a little room for some snacks inside my calories. 

I also got some new protein powder yesterday, fruity cereal flavored. It passes pretty well for the milk at the bottom of a bowl of fruit loops. It's a nice little treat.

This morning I'm struck by my weight trend since going on maintenance. Week 38 was my first maintenance week. My average has consistently dropped each week. Looking at my min, there are a couple weeks where the min is upward but minimums, I suspect, are largely from when I'm most dehydrated. My maxes drop reliably. In theory, I should have probably added a couple hundred calories at some point but I've been ok with the slow decline. I can't prove this but I think I have actually felt the most hunger on the weeks where my weight is the most stable. 

Wednesday

Sleep

Sleep was pretty good. I woke up at 1 and 3:30 again, this seems to be my pattern this week. I was able to get back to sleep each time. The 3:30 wake up took longer because my brain started to boot up and wanted to think about work. I put on a Royal Institute video on AI and went back to sleep listening. I listened to the conclusions of it after waking up and found I don't agree with his conclusions but, it was there to help me sleep so whatever. 

16 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

I'm glad you were able to work remotely and someone helped you with that. You've really worked through a lot of obstacles in 2023! I'm looking forward to hearing about your 2024 themes. 

I've a got a rough idea in my mind but need a couple hours to sit down and write it out. I'll do a lot of the thinking while I write. It'll help me flesh it out for myself. I'm thinking this weekend but no later than next week. 

4 hours ago, cn3wton said:

I just realized that I never asked what got you interested in BJJ? 

In a lot of ways it started when the apartment building I was living in lost/threw out my collection of Pro Kettlebells. When they finally admitted that they no longer had them, I billed them for them. Fortunately tenants in Minnesota actually have some power when it comes to landlords destroying or disposing of their property. They paid me for them but I didn't really want to buy a whole new set both because I was still living in the building with nowhere to keep them and I had kind of burnt out on kettlebell sport. I hired a powerlifting coach and got back into that. 

The pandemic hit and my coach let me train in his garage since the gym had shut down temporarily. It was great, I was growing stronger but I also felt less and less athletic. I was having success but it didn't feel good. I was realizing that powerlifting wouldn't be long term for me.

My wife and I wanted to get out of downtown Minneapolis and became part of the pandemic housing boom when we bought in the suburbs. During the house walkthrough I notice a Jiu Jitsu gi hanging in the closet. For years people had suggested I try it but I thought it was the same as MMA and still don't feel like getting punched and kicked. Knowing powerlifting wasn't working out for me I asked some people I know who are into jiujitsu and they pointed me to the same gym that gi was from, the gym I go to. 

I took my first class April 7, 2021 and I was immediately smitten. I wrestled in high school and it was everrything I liked about that and none of the stuff I didn't like. 

Tuesday

Training - Strength

I'm still using the RP app but I had some lessons's learned about how to interact with it so I terminated that Mesocycle and started a new one today. One of my rules for this meso is "no unilateral exercises". My second rule which will apply more in a couple weeks is, no exercises over 6 sets. Additionally, if a workout goes over 2 hours, I'll terminate the meso again and reboot. 

Today was about setting my weights for the meso so I can progress.

• Dumbbell Press 60 lbs: 10, 10
• Dumbbell Incline Press 50: 10, 8
• EZ Bar Underhand Row 90: 10, 11
• Cable Curl 35: 12, 13, 12
• Dumbbell Shoulder Press 35: 13, 9, 7
• Leg Extension 80: 12, 9
• Lying Leg curl 65: 10

For any exercise I had done in my previous couple of mesos, I just added 5 lbs. I was kind of aiming for 8-10 reps. I proabably could have added 5 more to literally every movement but it's something to progress on later. 

Sleep

I got pretty good sleep last night. I woke up around the same times as Sunday into Monday (1 am and 3 am) but was able to fall right back to sleep. My whoop is complaining because I slept 7.5 hours last night so it adds the sleep debt together. I'm not doing terrible but Friday is a day off and I'm looking forward to a four day weekend to sleep in. 

At the end of every year, in most jobs I've had, there's an annual review process. Managers act like it's super tedious and say things like "I know no one enjoys it be we have to do annual review so don't put too much time in but try to think of something you want to highlight.". I feel like this is totally backwards. I think it's super important to not only reflect on the year but take some real time and go through old documentation, remind yourself of things you forgot about, put yourself in the mind of past you and compare it to current you. I don't worry so much about how many boxes I checked but I look for changes in trends. What surprised me? What wasn't I thinking about that became a priority? What was my biggest priority that is no longer on my radar?

In that spirit, here's my 2023 annual review

A quick retrospective on 2023

Threads

• Training for consistency, longevity, and badassery
• [The Most Loathed] goes On The Record
• [The Most Loathed] does boring things
• [The Most Loathed] documentarian
• [The Most Loathed] Back to Books
• [The Most Loathed] Wins & Loses
• [The Most Loathed] changes gears
• [The Most Loathed] settles in for a long winter nap
• [The Most Loathed] maintains through the end of the year

Themes

A New Year

Coming into the year, I was coming off of a good competition outcome, beating a younger person who was the same level as me in a tournament. I had two explicit goals at this time. I wanted to get back to the habit of logging things and I planned to use NF to do that. I also wanted to start getting submissions in BJJ. I had gotten to a place where I could control people from top but not make anything of it. Just on it's face, I'm going give myself a big green checkmark on these two. 

I get lots of submissions now. I get enough submissions that I'm less known as the half guard guy and more known as the arm triangle guy. I pass on submissions to try less common ones. I'm working specifically on leg locks now which are just a class of submission. 

Similar, my record keeping and documentation has gone way up. There is still lots of room for improvements but I went from almost 0 to a very high volume in a year.

Return to Office

This was a big deal then it wasn't. After a working remote since prior to COVID my company tried to make me got back to the office. I tried. I hated it. I prepared myself to to leave the company. Then they came through with allowing me to remain remote. All appearances are that a guy from my jiujitsu gym pulling some strings for me from the executive suite. I thanked him once and we don't speak of it anymore. 

Time Tracking

I have tried various versions of time tracking throughout the year. 

Illness and Injury

Coming out of 2022 I was struggling with a series of colds or something I had been getting. They show up in the first couple months of 2023. I also threw my back out several times in a row and this continued until summer of 2023. August of 2023 I had some other minor injury. It was also in the back but different in nature. It was some kind of a muscle pull that I did while warming up for a barbell row. I was in light weights and lifting my head up while holding the bar. A muscle inside my back with ping and I was hurt. This cleared in September or so of 2023. Fortunately I had no real injuries in the fall heading into winter. However, these nagging issues were a constant drag on what I wanted to be doing. Scanning back through workouts I see a lot of missed sessions which I think were the right call at the time but I'm grateful to have not missed a session for these reasons for a while now. 

Health and Wellness

In response to my illness and injury issues I took more of an interest in trying to look for more objective measures of my recovery. I also did some assisted stretches. I can't say any of these items had a big, objective impact but I tried.

Weight Loss

I've kind of buried this lead but I got the bug in July to lose some weight. I found a system that works for me and lost 30 lbs. I won't pretend it was always easy but honestly, it was way easier than I would have guessed. 

Gadgetry

I had totally forgotten that early in the year I unearthed an old Apple Watch I had laying around. That was the beginning of my effort to get some data around my sleep and recovery. I hated wearing it and it just didn't work for a lot of situations but that started my search for something more effective for me, which ended with my leasing a Whoop for a year. I've worn that around the clock now for a couple months and I feel I've learned a few things about myself. It was also useful in getting a clearer estimate on my caloric burn for BJJ.

BJJ

BJJ Study

I spent a portion of the year doing a good job of spending time studying my mounted attack game. I became notorious for my arm triangle because of it. However, I kind of dropped off the Earth on this. 

Competition

I started the year planning to do two submission only tournments. I did both of those, one required travelling back to Iowa. I also did a normal Grappling Industries meet. I didn't have as strong of an outcome and I would like to have had. 

Wrap Up

I'm unsurprised to see that my biggest priorities a year ago were supplanted and what I'm most attentive to now weren't really on my radar, that's SOP as far as I'm concerned. I continue to experiment with different forms of documentation, tracking, and self accountability. I'm really proud of the success I had with weightloss this year, not just the weight I lost but the overall approach I was able to take and keep it sane. I'm surprised how my BJJ  mindset has chilled out a bunch. I don't have a subjective opinion on that, just surprised by it.  I don't talk about it anymore but my review reminded me how happy I am that I was able to keep my work from home, flexible hours arrangement. 

In a not to distant post I'll set up some themes for next year

5 hours ago, cn3wton said:

Dude I forgot how crazy lateral raises were until I grabbed the 15s at the gym haha.

Definitely not going to be your heaviest lift of the day. Most people I see doing them are grabbing the heaviest weight they can and kind of bounce shrugging them to pec level then letting them fall. Doing them for volume and with control makes the weight necessarily super light. 

Monday

Training

Instruction

Snap down to side control - They grab your lapel, you grab and inside tie and collar tie, push in, snap down. Block the tricep to go around. The roll through to place you back in guard, pin the second leg and baseball or billy pass to side control. 

Far Side Armbar - Do the above but as you enter side control turn your butt towards their head and get both of your armsin their far side battle zone. Walk backwards, pinging their arms up. Take your head side arm and crossface them. Step over their body with your hip side legs, slip your leg over the head and break the arm

Far Side Armbar to Paper Cutter - same entry but as you pin their arms up, their top arm is poking out past your hip, use your elbow on that side to pin that arm to your side. Use your hip side arm to grab the back of the gi lapel.Go around the head to set up the shotgun armbar. You can also take your free hand inside your head leg then drop the leg under their head. Keep your toes pointed up and  bend your knee for the paper cutter. 

Rolls

Reid (blue) - we started from the end of the snap down. I was able to sweep to the top then set up my traditional arm triangle

Joe (blue) 

Eric (purple) - no surprise that I ended up giving up a tap to Firefighter Eric. 

After Class

Big White Belt - we had a new big guy join the gym so I've been taking spare rounds with him after class. He's still spazzy and people don't want to roll with big spazzes but I have this personal wishlist item to have all the moves for any 300 lb newbie who walks in . It' s a little different rolling against someone untrained vs trained. So I'm using him to work on that goal but in exchange I try to teach him what I get him with. Seems like a fair trade. 

Tim (Blue) - I had a nice 10 minute roll with Tim. He got closer to a submission than I did, he started a leg entanglement that I was going to lose. I got out by letting him have my back then dealing with that. At one point he declared it a no time limit, submission only match so when we quit after ten minutes I was a little disappointed. 

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 - 216.2

November 6 - 216.3

November 13 - 215.5

November 20 - 215.7

November 27  - 213.8

December 4 - 213.3

December 11 - 213.1

December 18 - 213.5

Slight uptick is fine, arguably desired, for this week and next.

I think in 2024 I'm going to use weekly average rather than point in time. It's a minor difference but I think more reflective of what I care about. I make some of the volatility go away.

kudos for redirecting the thought pattern to something that feels like it'll be more constructive.