[The Most Loathed]

I've looped through about several different possible titles for this. I've spent like an hour and gone nowhere. I'm not very good at the cool narrative challenges. I just have bunch of stuff I want to do and go in that direction. So, let's keep this simple.

 

This week will be the same as my weeks have been of late. Next week, however, is a tournament week so I'll deload and do very little. The week after that (September 18) training goes back to normal but there are two major shifts that will matter:

1. I will have Whoop strap that I will be trying to use to guide more of my calories and activity
2. I will be done trying to lose weight for the year so now I get to try and deliberately maintain my weight between 220 and 225 until next year

 

I have two other changes that I am making to how I have done things:

1. I'm going to start practicing guitar time because not tracking it allows me an excuse to not focus during it
2. I've said for months that I need to focus on mobility, that starts now

 

I have one additional change I'll likely pull in but haven't set up yet:

1. I have this idea for a bedtime journal, just a quick checklist to start tracking things like:
   • what time did I crawl into bed?
   • did I use my phone once in bed?
   • dead tree book or kindle?
   • did I use CBD to help with sleep?

 

• Week 0 - Sept 4
  • Calories - keep the deficit
    • Approx 1900 net calories
    • 150-200 g protein
    • 50-100 g fat
    • 100+ g carbs
  • Training - Normal
    • BJJ x 4 (holiday on Monday prevents one training sessions)
    • Cardio x 3
    • Strength x 0
    • Mobility / Stretch x 5
  • Guitar - new this challenge
    • lesson this week
    • practice 4 hours total
  • Tracking
    • Whoop strap arrives and I play with it
• Week 1 - Sept 11
  • Calories - keep the deficit
    • Salt cut week
    • Approx 1900 net calories
    • 150-200 g protein
    • 50-100 g fat
    • 100+ g carbs
  • Training - Normal
    • BJJ x 2
      • BJJ competition on Saturday
    • Cardio x 4
    • Strength x 0
    • Mobility / Stretch x 6
  • Guitar
    • practice 4 hours total
  • Tracking
    • Confirm Whoop data is in the system
• Week 2 - Sept 18
  • Calories - eat to maintain
    • Approx 2100 net calories
    • 150-200 g protein
    • 50-100 g fat
    • 100+ g carbs
  • Training - Normal
    • BJJ x 5
    • Cardio x 3
    • Strength x 3
    • Mobility / Stretch x 6
  • Guitar
    • lesson this week
    • practice 4 hours total
  • Tracking 
    • Begin trying to use Whoop to override MFP recommendations
• Week 3 - Sept 25
  • Calories - eat for maintenance
    • Approx 2100 net calories
    • 150-200 g protein
    • 50-100 g fat
    • 100+ g carbs
  • Training - Normal
    • BJJ x 5
    • Cardio x 3
    • Strength x 2-3
      • my lose one session due to a Saturday obligation
    • Mobility / Stretch x 5
  • Guitar - new this challenge
    • lesson this week
    • practice 4 hours total
• Week 4 - Oct 2
  • Calories - eat to maintenance
    • Approx 2100 net calories
    • 150-200 g protein
    • 50-100 g fat
    • 100+ g carbs
    • Tracking holiday for a couple days while I go to weekend of gaming
  • Training - Normal
    • BJJ x3
      • Two lost to gaming weekend
    • Cardio x 1
    • Strength x 1-2
      • 1-2 lost to gaming weekend
    • Mobility / Stretch x 5
  • Guitar
    • lesson this week
    • practice 4 hours total
• Week 5 - Oct 9
  • Calories - eat to maintenance
    • Approx 1900 net calories
    • 150-200 g protein
    • 50-100 g fat
    • 100+ g carbs
    • Planning to come back from the weekend heavy but treat this week as if I was on weight to let water sort itself out. I'll address any weight tweaks the following week
  • Training - Normal
    • BJJ x 5
    • Cardio x 3
    • Strength x 3
    • Mobility / Stretch x 5
  • Guitar - new this challenge
    • practice 4 hours total

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Following along. I don't do the narrative threads either.

[Snarkyfishguts]

I'm not a narrative person either. I like your lists and schedule. 

 

Reading dead tree books are shown to raise serotonin levels. I haven't found a study that excludes ebooks from the same benefit, but there is something comforting and grounding in holding a book. Maybe it's the dead tree's soul rooting me to the earth. 

 

 

[The Most Loathed]

13 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

Following along. I don't do the narrative threads either.

Welcome as always to my most reliable reader. Thanks for being there. 

 

10 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

I'm not a narrative person either. I like your lists and schedule. 

 

Reading dead tree books are shown to raise serotonin levels. I haven't found a study that excludes ebooks from the same benefit, but there is something comforting and grounding in holding a book. Maybe it's the dead tree's soul rooting me to the earth. 

Lists and schedules are definitely my way. Sometimes to a fault.

I have a hypothesis that my Kindle Paperwhite has some of the same effects as looking at my phone but I can't prove it. That said, having a hundred books in a little device like that defintiely has its advantages.

 

 

Monday

Training

Everything was closed so Laura and opted for a long walk. It ended up taking two hours but we made it 15k steps. I haven't bothered to map it but it was a good walk.

 

Food

I suspect this is a little under reported. We did charcuterie for supper. It was delicious. However, it's almost impossible to calculate intake unless I'm going to just sit with a scale at the table as I eat and log things. That kind of kills the vibe. So I made a crude guess and just went with it. Great dinner though. 

 

Mobility

No action taken today. I kept toying with doing a quick something in the afternoon but never got myself over the activation energy.

 

Sleep

This is my prototype of a sleep log. I did it on paper so I can log things as bed time without needing to pull out a phone. I made seven of these with the idea that I'll review them next weekend and probably modify them a little. This morning I added a tab to my bodyweight Google Sheet for tracking this stuff. I don't know how long I'll do it but I'm hoping I can root out why I get poor sleep often and improve it. It's an experiment.

 

 

Guitar

20 minutes, not great. I'd like to find myself doubling that but that's why I'm keeping track for a while. 

Worked on minor pentatonic to a drum track and Back in the USSR at .5 and .75 speed.

[The Most Loathed]

I didn't do a proper week kick off so while it's a little late and out of order for the week, here we go:

 

Week 0

Training

• Monday - Walk
• Tuesday - 60 minutes Cardio, BJJ
• Wednesday - BJJ
• Thursday - 60 minute cardio, 1 hour walk?
• Friday - BJJ
• Saturday - 60 minutes cardio, pick up my new bike
• Sunday - BJJ (Akagi)

 

Food

This week is still in a deficit for calories. Before I log anything I'm right at 1800-1900 calories then I add on for exercise. I'm still tracking daily but it's on my mind that I need to shift to weekly. MFP isn't really set up for that so I will cross that bridge in a a couple weeks

 

Bodyweight

The last two weeks in a row I have emotionally felt my bodyweight was really static and then I go back and review and I actually dropped a lot of weight for the week. I'm not sure why this is occurring but it's entirely an inside me issue. So trying to not let this get into my head. The dream would be to be 220 in a week and it's possible. even if I'm sub 221, I'm good. This puts me on track to hit 215 for the meet, something I did not initially plan on doing but is within my sights at this point. 

Note: Monday was the first day of week 37 so that 222.9 average is based on Monday's measurement only.

 

=== New Stuff This Challenge ===

Guitar

I begin tracking guitar practice with the intention of making that time a little more focused. I have a habit of starting then allowing myself to get distracted and just wander off. In general my teacher always has me working on at least one song, which the goal of reading the tab and playing along with the track. Until my lesson this will be Back in the USSR by the Beatles. Not a song I love just listening-wise but playing along is progressing. the chords are pretty easy although I stumble over a weird G variant they do for a short moment.  A large part of the goal is to get me to hear the rhythm section and try and lock in with them. We are also embarking on pentantonic scales. We've gone through these before before but stopped to focus on rhythm of a year or so and now we're back to it. I'm mostly practicing in A minor just because it's easy but I try to pick a different letter from time to time so I don't get too locked into the 5th fret as my home. I'm trying to integrate the rhythm and drum work so I use an app that just plays a basic drum track and I play through the notes at different paces 60-90 bpm and I use quarter notes to find the rhythm then mess around with eighth notes then try to go back and forth between quarter and eighth.

I do have a specific thing we've been doing from another song that I'm kind of neglecting right now, it's this weird thing in a song called Papa Ain't Salty. On the four you play a D then slide to an E (2th string fret 3 to 5) then his the G (first string fret 3) then on the next 1 you go to a little three finger chord (F, C, E). I have trouble getting the pieces to come together. I really enjoy the song and that bit sounds great but I struggle with it. 

 

Sleep

Starting some form of sleep tracking. I do have a little mat that goes under my side of the bed that detects my sleep but I've never been able to make much use of the data it collects. So I made my little card that I showed in my last post. I think that will get me more of what I want. 

 

Mobility

I've been saying for months that I need to do this. Time to put my effort where my mouth is.

• Monday - Nothing
• Tuesday - 30 minute stretch post cardio
• Wednesday - 15-20 minute yoga session at home (this will hard to make myself do)
• Thursday -30 minutes stretch post cardio
• Friday - 15-20 minute yoga at home
• Saturday - 30 minute gym stretch
• Sunday - nothing planned

 

Other

Originally I was supposed to get my Whoop strap this week so I was looking forward to integrating this and just seeing the data for a week. UPS now says it'll be next week. Ah well. 

 

Saturday I pick up a bicycle that I bought on Sunday. I'm excited to get it. I'm not a cyclist but I make so many 5-10 minute car trips and I'd like to replace those, at least during nice weather with 20-30 minutes on the bike. More on that when we get to it but I'm excited. 

 

 

The primary focuses of this week are:

1. keep healing the back
2. Lose 2-3 pounds
3. work on the new topics

[Snarkyfishguts]

I had to google what a whoop strap is, and it was a tense few seconds while I waited for it to load. LOL.  It seems pretty cool though, and I'm looking forward to hearing how you like it!

[The Most Loathed]

9 minutes ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

I had to google what a whoop strap is, and it was a tense few seconds while I waited for it to load. LOL.  It seems pretty cool though, and I'm looking forward to hearing how you like it!

Always use safe search

[TimovieMan]

Following! 👍

[Kishi]

I hear you on the sleep hygiene. It's something I'm trying to work out for myself too. I'll be watching to see how it goes with you!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

8 hours ago, The Most Loathed said:

I suspect this is a little under reported. We did charcuterie for supper. It was delicious. However, it's almost impossible to calculate intake unless I'm going to just sit with a scale at the table as I eat and log things. That kind of kills the vibe. So I made a crude guess and just went with it. Great dinner though. 

 

I am not to be trusted around cured meats and fancy cheeses. If you like Charcuterie and ever travel to Spain, you will love breakfast in their hotels. Jamon Serrano is something to be experienced.

[Sepherina]

Following again. I appreciate the lists and the analytical/data approach you take. It is something to strive for as it really allows one to focus in on what is and isn’t working. 

[The Most Loathed]

21 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

Following! 👍

 

17 hours ago, Kishi said:

I hear you on the sleep hygiene. It's something I'm trying to work out for myself too. I'll be watching to see how it goes with you!

 

10 hours ago, Sepherina said:

Following again. I appreciate the lists and the analytical/data approach you take. It is something to strive for as it really allows one to focus in on what is and isn’t working. 

 

Welcome, welcome all. I feel spoiled having so many people stop by.

14 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I am not to be trusted around cured meats and fancy cheeses. If you like Charcuterie and ever travel to Spain, you will love breakfast in their hotels. Jamon Serrano is something to be experienced.

Laura and I have been know to order the cheese board as a dessert at restaurants before. Good cheese are so worth it. I do find that it's hard for me to go totally crazy on them. I mean, they are high calorie and the salt of the meats will bounce the body weight the next day but they are so satiating that I kind of have to push to get too much.  One of our recent favorites has been feta cubes in oil. We found a local bakery that makes a nice, crusty sourdough and we can't get enough of this feta on that bread.

 

Tuesday

Training

Rec

Elliptical 350 calories

Treadmill 350 calroies

 

Stretch (see the mobility section below)

 

BJJ

Marathon Roll, professor wanted longer rounds so he'd have us pick a partner and go out of a postion like side control if the bottom person sweeps or the top person mounts or submits, switch, keep going for 5 minutes. Then we finished with a single 10 minute round. It was the most active Marathon Roll I can think of and had my whole body exhausted like it hasn't been in a while. I have been thinking about asking people to do a round with me where I have two partners and one swaps out at 5 minutes to bring in a fresh one for another 5 minutes but this got me there. Among the blue belts, I dominated. However, I got rounds with the brown belts and I'm proud to say that we traded. Each of the three brown belts and I traded submissions evenly. If you were scoring points, it's hard to say, I'll assume they would have edged me out but I took a submission, they took a submission. 

In that vein, I took two rounds with Leon. Leon is the one guy that people are scared of at the gym. He's a great guy but he's big and he's strong and he hits submissions you don't see coming and he locks them in. One of those rounds was that final 10 minute roll and we were both exhausted. We each pulled a submission off of the other and they and I think the last 6 minutes was one long struggle where I got on top and looked for submissions that he defended, eventually I over committed or he found  a gap and swept me and he hunted submissions until I found a gap and returned the favor, multiple times. This was probably the hardest round I have ever had. There was one sweep he had towards the end where I saw it coming and just completely failed to mount any defense to it and fell over. There was another moment where despite me being on top he set up a baseball bat choke but I read it and grabbed a sloppy paper cutter on him and we were both trying to strangle as hard as we could but each of our strangles was our defense against the other strangle. It had a cinematic vibe  of the two strongest dudes locked locked in a struggle where they couldn't go forward and they couldn't go backward. Eventually he had to explode to get away from my paper cutter. Later he told me that the world was starting to go dark for him. 

Afterwards we had a mutual appreciation session, just sitting on the wall, complimenting each other and replaying parts of the match. I count this as an achievement.

I also revealed to people afterwards that I'm going 215 for the next meet. That blew peoples' minds more than rolling did. Someone mentioned they looked at the registrations and I didn't have an opponent yet. I said "I have a surprise for them". That got peoples' attention. I said "There's a guy at 215 and I'm going to go 215". That lead to a whole discussion about the dieting I've been doing and the final salt cut I will do. I felt like the center of attention for a bit and it felt good. 

 

Food

Given how hard Marathon was last night, I'm betting I actually earned even a few more calories than that.

 

Mobility

I did my post rec stretch and it was nice. I did a little traction hanging from the pull up bar with straps on so I could stay up there for a while. Not actually sure they added anything given that the bar is super smooth. I worked through my little routine, which I need to add to. I found the muscle that is still recovering if I crossed one leg over the other then pushed down on the hip on the side that was crossed over. I didn't go hard on that last stretch because I think I could do damage while the muscle is healing but I need to make sure I work on it in the future.

 

Sleep

I found the portal for my sleep mat's data. Below is a screen shot of it. I haven't had time to go down the rabbit hole yet. What I will say is that wake up from REM, that was tough. I don't feel tired this morning but I really felt that struggle to come out of sleep. 

Last night, being post Marathon, especially a hard Marathon, sleep comes a little more difficult to me. My brain keeps cutting back to rolls and then I can feel my body tense up, breathing and heart get faster and I can't sleep. This is when I often rely on my headphones to get to sleep but I suspect the are one of the culprits of poor sleep so I left them out. It took me 30 minutes (per the data) to get to sleep and the fight was: start thinking of jiujitsu, my body starts to activate, catch myself, start counting my breathes or let my hearing fixate on some ambient noise, body relaxes and mind relaxes, brain drifts back to jiujitsu, repeat. I eventually got where I was going. I woke up at 2:30 for a bathroom break, which considering I drink like a liter and half of water after Tuesday night rolls, pretty normal for me. 

 

Spoiler

 

Guitar

Only 20 minutes. I recall this from when I've tracked this before. I screw around to much and only actually practice about half the time I "dedicate" to guitar. I'm going to try and push this over 30 and then, ideal 40, but 30 will be my goal going forward.

[Kishi]

3 hours ago, The Most Loathed said:

It took me 30 minutes (per the data) to get to sleep and the fight was: start thinking of jiujitsu, my body starts to activate, catch myself, start counting my breathes or let my hearing fixate on some ambient noise, body relaxes and mind relaxes, brain drifts back to jiujitsu, repeat.

 

I can relate to this. I know for me, a lot of my struggle boils down to a similar cycle, only I tend to fixate on the fact that I'm still awake and I get performance anxiety around sleep. Which is weird. Kind of feels like it's the one way to fail at relaxing into something that has to happen.

[The Most Loathed]

19 hours ago, Kishi said:

I can relate to this. I know for me, a lot of my struggle boils down to a similar cycle, only I tend to fixate on the fact that I'm still awake and I get performance anxiety around sleep. Which is weird. Kind of feels like it's the one way to fail at relaxing into something that has to happen.

Yeah, that is a vicious cycle I think we all occassionally fall prey to "I'm not sleeping. Why am I not sleeping? I need to sleep. Great, now I can't sleep". It sucks when it becomes a regular thing. 

 

Wednesday

Training

BJJ

Instruction 

Instruction was a bit of a mess. It was clear that Stan wasn't confident in what he was assigned to teach and after class he admitted to me that he thought he conflated a couple of techniques. The goal was to go from Single X to back take for the first then traditional X to back take from the second. However, there were so many sweeps available along the way I'm not sure I would ever bother going to the back take. Then again, back isn't a huge part of my game at this time. I might feel differently if I was any good on the back

 

Single leg x, let your inside leg go to their far leg to break them down to their knee. If they turn away you transition their near leg onto your chest, even passing it to what was the inside hand. Control this leg so they can't flee. Transition yourself to combat base. Use your free hand to grab their belt or the back of their jacket and take the back.

 

Rolls

Ken (Blue) -  a good solid 5 minutes. I got to mount early but was unable to set up the arm triangle and he eventually bumped me off and swept into my half guard so it was a pretty easy climb back to mount and I started messing with an armbar but he swept again but into my halfguard again. I made my way to side control and set up a near side armbar that I really had to work to finish and just in time.

Ben (Blue) - It was hard to find a partner for the next round. Ken took Master Lee (brown) who is always good roll (he's Master Lee because he is a high black belt in Tae Kwan Do and runs some competitive teams for that). The lone black belt doesn't like to roll with big guys. He's older and is big into injury avoidance and avoiding strong guys is a part of that strategy. Everyone was pairing off and I saw Ben sitting there with no partner. I could tell he didn't want to roll but called him out anyway. As I do when someone doesn't want to roll with me, I layed down on my back and said "take any position you want". The standard response is usually "any position?" and I'll say "yep, mount, side control, you can have my back if you want". Then people either take mount or shrug and say "we can just do normal" which means both of us on our knees. Ben took mount. I pretty much immediately fed him into my halfguard system and swept to mount. Then proceeded to work on my arm triangle, which just wasn't coming together for me on this day. So I moved on to armbar but he was savvy. I had to work around him and back to mount. I went to work on some other strangles but nothing was working. I went to dismount and he was hanging on to me for dear life. Eventually I dismounted, got back to side control and I think it was a classic Americana for the finish. Ben's answer was "can't you just take several months off so I can catch up to you". I declined the offer. 

 

After Class

Stan asked me to help him build his stripe demo and be his partner for the next graduation so we spent about 10 minutes building that out. People straight up fled the mat after class so no rolls. 

 

Food

Because of my guitar lesson I didn't get to my afternoon meal. I decided to waste the leftover calories on a couple of Rum & Coke Zeros which I think screwed up my sleep so not super happy with my decision makin ghere. 

 

Body Weight 221.7

 

Mobility

I was a dummy when I planned to do mobility today. Wednesdays with guitar lessons are already overbooked. It was never going to happen and it didn't happen.

 

Sleep

Sleep sucked. I mentioned it in food but I had extra calories on the day and an adult beverage sounded nice so I had a couple rum & Coke Zeros. Not a ton of calories but I'm pretty sure the combination of alcohol and caffeine screwed me up sleepwise. I got to bed and was very sleepy. I played on my phone while Laura took a bath. When she was done I read for about 30 minutes while she did the same. I fell asleep quickly but woke up briefly around 2 and could tell I had had some alcohol and my brain didn't love it. I went back to sleep quickly. Then, 3 am, I was just awake. I did my usual and got up to use the rest room, this also lets my body cool off since sometimes I get hot and it wakes me up. I laid back down and was just awake. I put in an earphone, a lot of times listening to something unimportant like a podcast or book puts me back to sleep but an hour later I was still just as awake. I moved out to the couch  because sometimes a change of venue helps. I laid there for an hour before I got up and started my day around 5. I'm not exhausted now but I'll feel it later today and tomorrow. 

 

Spoiler

 

Guitar

I only practiced for 15 minutes yesterday. My excuse is that I usually go easy on lesson days. I had a 45 minute lesson in the afternoon, so 1 hour total.

In the lesson we worked on rhythm and the minor pentatonic scale, just me trying to noodle through the scale and stay on beat to a drum track through various patterns of quarter and eight notes. I really struggle with rhythm so this exercise primary works on that while reminding me of the pentatonic shapes since we haven't meaningfully touched those in several months. We also parked Back in the USSR and moved on to Brown Eyed Girl, sticking to quarter notes in time at first but playing a bit with melody as I have time. 

[Shello]

Following along!  

[The Most Loathed]

17 hours ago, Shello said:

Following along!  

wilkommen! I think you're maybe the only remaining nerd that I have actually met IRL. 

 

Thursday

Rec

Elliptical 350 calories

Treadmill 350 calories

 

I'm looking forward to restarting lifting after the meet. I'm going to scale back cardio starting next week. I'm ready to scale it back.

 

Food

I went hog wild on veggies yesterday. Post workout I saw the mixed veggies I had in the fridge and mowed two small bowls of them.

I grilled up a bunch more 2 buffalo: 1 beef patties for next week

 

Mobility

I ddi my stretching routine after cardio, felt really good

 

Sleep 

Laura had a late rehearsal last night. I crawled into bed around 9:15 and read for about half an hour then fell asleep with my phone playing a podcast. I woke up around 10:15 - 10:30 because Laura was home and the dog was excited to see her. I put in a headphone and went right back to sleep and only woke up one more time. I woke up feeling way more rested than Thursday morning.

 

Guitar

28 minutes of actual practice. It felt good to be a little more focused. Happy to be tracking this again.

 

Friday notes

Laura has expressed an interest in getting Indian tonight. She's been clear that if it'll "ruin" my diet she doesn't want to, which I do appreciate, but also I want to be a good partner and make it happen, plus it does sound good. I thanked her for giving me a heads up so I can plan for it. So, I'm planning to eat light today so I can enjoy some Indian. I've never logged this so I'm leaving 1,000 calories of space in my food. It means I'll weigh heavy the next couple of days because I always do after Indian, presumably due to sodium. That's totally fine, I don't need to be light for a week. 

[The Most Loathed]

Friday

Training

BJJ

We were working on side control fundamentals

 

Food

Body weight 221.2

 

Mobility: Nope

Sleep

Guitar

31:15

 

Saturday

Training

BJJ

Laura had a singing thing to go do on Saturday morning so I went to the Saturday AM BJJ class that I rarely go to. We had one of the blue belts teaching. He opted for covering principals so we were working on moving the arm across the body when we have them in guard. I ended up teaching my partner some new techniques which the instructor then saw and wanted me to teach everyone which I was fine with. I think it irritated another blue belt who kept trying to jump in on instruction and show his knowledge. He wanted to teach that so when he started to interject it Tim, the instructor, said "I'm actually going to have Mike come up and show that right now". 🤷‍♂️

 

It's been a couple days so I've forgotten my rolls.

 

Food

Body weight: 220.2

Mobility: definitely no

Sleep

Guitar

none

 

Sunday

Training

BJJ - Akagi

 

Food

Body weight: 220.1

 

Mobility No

Sleep

Guitar

0

 

[The Most Loathed]

Week 0 Wrap Up

I fell off the wagon on doing updates at the end of the week. I let myself feel busy and that is pretty clear cue to missing updates and some knowledge gets lost.

 

Training

A solid training week, I got all my stuff in. No real notes to myself on that. 

 

Food

Also, no real notes here. I'm coming to the end of my weightloss phase. Below is my net calories graph, which is weird but 1880 was my daily calorie allotment, that's the red line. They subtract my exercise calories from my calories, which is why the blue bars are well below my actual calories, so 9/10, when I had 600 calories to spare because of Akagi, I only show 1200 burned. It's a weight graph but gap between the top of the blue bar and the red line represents weight loss. 

Body weight 

 

Sleep

I had a mixed week on sleep. I had about two nights I would call good and two that were pretty bad. In the graph below, Thursday shows. I woke up at 4. I actually woke up at three but laid in bed until 4 and it tend to count me as "light sleep" when I'm lying in bed and trying to sleep. I also woke up at 5 am on Saturday, which sucked.

 

Mobility

Total Fail in this. 

 

Guitar

I only got about 90 minutes of real practice in plus a 45 minute lesson so that is something to work on, a little less than half of my goal. 

 

Other

I also picked up my brand new ebike this week. I picked it up on Friday and got to use it for grocery run on Saturday.  I'm not someone who enjoys cycling, however, when I go to my local grocery store or the rec, it's like a 5 minute drive. I feel like, during any decent weather I could hop on my bike now and get there in 10 or so minutes. I also hae to admit that it is a lot of fun to ride.

Week 1 Kick Off

Training

This will is a back off week for me in prep for the meet. Well intentioned people keep trying to get me to come in for more training and I keep turning them down. I'm 44, I need to rest in prep for a meet. 

• Monday - BJJ
• Tuesday - Rec, Cardio
• Wednesday - BJJ
• Thursday - Rec, Cardio
• Friday - Rec, Cardio
• Saturday - Meet
• Sunday - Rest

Food

Sticking to the same diet I have been doing. If I wasn't several pounds overweight I would even slip in a surplus but I'm heavy enough that I'm just going to keep doing what I have been doing.

 

Body weight

My real weight should be about 218 by the end of the week but I have to weigh 216 Saturday morning. I will be doing a salt and water load this week to make weight on Saturday. So I should run a little heavy the next couple days then bottom out for the meet because of the water manipulation.

 

Sleep

Just continuing the record keeping and seeing what I can learn

 

Mobility

I did bad last week. This week, with going to the Rec, it'll be better but I'm still far away from where I want to be.

 

Guitar

More on this in the other section, but I'm trying to make some changes to help here but I'm not off to a great start. I probably won't get to it today but plan to Tuesday through Friday and also Sunday (probably not on Saturday)

 

Other

Meet

My guy bailed. I had a guy who was 40+, Blue Belt, under 215, he isn't registered anymore. Looking at current registrants, I'm guessing I'll be rolled in the with the 30 something guys. I'm fine with that. I don't feel like fighting a 20 year old and 30 something does still make a difference but I'll take. Nearly everyone I train with is younger than me and, honestly, most of the 40 somethings are easy.  Anyway, I'm doing the salt and water load cut again. I'll need to ditch 2-3 lbs to make weight and that should be easy but it makes me a little nervous to not be under weight. 

Saturday will be devoted to the meet. I'll get up and weigh in before breakfast then come back for my matches. Hopefully I have a couple hours between brackets so I can come home and catch a quick nap between matches. Afterwards I think we'll go out for Nashville hot chicken which will destroy my calories for the day but I'm ok with that. Sunday 

 

Whoop

My Whoop Strap arrived today. I charged it up and put it on. We'll see what I think in a week or so. As of this second, it's just jewelry but I'll be interested to see what it's like as it builds up data. 

 

Schedule

I'm experimenting with flipping my schedule. I am moving my guitar time to after work, 5-6 pm and moving the hour of work to first thing in the morning, 6-7 am.

 

I'm tired and hungry so I'm calling it here and heading up to make supper, leftover chicken fajita fixings from this weekend. 

[Snarkyfishguts]

WHOOP WHOOP!!!

 

That was cool about your BJJ class and getting to teach some moves!!

 

Bananas and green tea are good for peeing out extra water. And I read that green tea is good for your tooth enamel. I read it like 7 years ago, don't ask for receipts. LOL. 

[sarakingdom]

40 minutes ago, The Most Loathed said:

I also picked up my brand new ebike this week. I picked it up on Friday and got to use it for grocery run on Saturday.  I'm not someone who enjoys cycling, however, when I go to my local grocery store or the rec, it's like a 5 minute drive. I feel like, during any decent weather I could hop on my bike now and get there in 10 or so minutes. I also hae to admit that it is a lot of fun to ride.

 

I'm in favour of ebikes. And that one looks awesome.

[The Most Loathed]

12 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

WHOOP WHOOP!!!

 

That was cool about your BJJ class and getting to teach some moves!!

 

Bananas and green tea are good for peeing out extra water. And I read that green tea is good for your tooth enamel. I read it like 7 years ago, don't ask for receipts. LOL. 

 

I haven't heard that about bananas. The green tea is presumably using the diuretic affects of caffeine. I'm using salt and water to screw with the body's homeostasis. by overloading for a couple days my body will start driving water out both to waste off the salts and to rebalance tissue water. The hormones take a couple days to react so that's why I have to load up for a couple days but then pull back for a couple days. I did this a few months ago and it's weird on Friday when I've had like 12 ounces of water all day but I keep having to go to the bathroom. In the end, I cut like 7 pounds with out the jogging in a rubber suit of old. 

 

12 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

I'm in favour of ebikes. And that one looks awesome.

I had not tried an eBike before this one but I have to admit, I enjoy the act of riding it. I'm going to try and treat it as a short ranged vehicle and we'll see how that goes.

 

Monday

Training

Marathon Roll Monday

Since four of us are going to the meet this weekend, Stan put us in the middle and had us do 5 minutes of stand up with fresh opponents for every takedown. Then we did 10 minutes fresh opponenents for every submission. It was exhasuting. I dominated the take down game even against fresh people. I struggled a bit more on the ground but I'll chalk that up to fatigue from the previous 5 minutes. I was almost glad to see Hawkins (brown) tee up on me because I've been able to fight him to a stand still the last several times we rolled and I thought "good, I can wear him down for the rest of the time and don't have to see another fresh opponent".  That's exactly what happened, although I'll credit myself with threatening several submissions on him.

 

Then we moved on to rolls

Ken (Blue) - I started him on top, side control. I sucked at this, which is why I put him there. He's got 40-50 lbs on me and is great about grabbing my arm if I let it drift loose, which I did, a couple of times. He definitely won the round but that was kind of by design, not that I want to lose but I gave myself all the disadvantages

I think there was one more here but I'm blanking on who

Alex (Blue) - from standing, Took him down, worked to the Americana for a tap. I don't tap Alex very often so that felt good. We went again. I got him down and was working on the pass as time expired

Alexander (I think) )(white) - Young wrestler guy who does all the bad wrestler habits. I kept catching him sitting up too tall and letting his elbows free so I kimuraed him a couple times, armbared him. He went for the kimura on me as I passed a couple times and I, for the first time ever, succeeded at reversing the kimura. It's a bit much to explain here but some other time. I was really happy to actually see that submission in person for the first time. 

 

After Class

More bottom side control drills with Ken. Then Stan and I worked on his belt grad plan.

 

Food

Oh man, I got so hungry yesterday. I think I probably burned a lot more calories than accounted for in my estimates. Hopefully the Whoop will help dial that in. 

 

Mobility

No but hopefully this is the last miss for the week. I need to also start putting time on my calendar for this. My plan had been to do it at the end of the day, with my newly shifted schedule but I was so hungry and tired (low blood sugar I assume) at that point that it just didn't happen. 

 

Guitar

Also no, same excuse as mobility. This is why I have traditionally done it before work, it's easier to make excuses after work. I'm going to keep the experiment running but this is a strike against it. 

 

Sleep

My sleep was terrible last night. I went to bed about 8:30 and read the same dead tree book I've been working on, so no screens.  About 9 pm I wasn't getting tired but I was getting bored with the book so I tried to turn in. Laura was out for rehearsals so I had to leave some lights on for here when she got home. I spent about a hour doing what felt like dozing but you can see in the chart that I registered a little deep sleep. About 10 pm a pretty noisy thunderstorm rolled through which put our dog in a panic so she was scratching at the bed to come sleep with me, which I invited her to do but when she gets scared she's just a mess so I was awake. I realized I had some windows open so then I went around and closed those. Then Laura came home so the dog was up and down again and she was moving around and trying to wind down from rehearsal. 

I think the second set of grey bars are when she crawled into bed, it says 11:30 which is probably right. Then I appear to have gotten more sleep than I thought I did, until 4:30. Why do I frequently wake up at 4:30? I have no idea but I do. 

Anyway, one bad night's sleep. Not a crisis but annoying.

 

 

Other

Today is my first full day wearing the Whoop strap. My first half day was fine. It's comfortable and unobtrusive. It wants to do lots of coaching but needs a week or so of data to begin that process. I'm not sure I want a lot of coaching but we'll see. I mostly just want an unobtrusive device that gives me a good read on my actual calories and does some heart rate monitoring for what my resting HR and my HRV are. So far, it seems like it can do that. 

So far it seems my seated resting heart rate is in the upper fifties and it goes up to mid sixties if I'm not seated all the time (at work) but still mostly inactive. 

[Snarkyfishguts]

1 hour ago, The Most Loathed said:

haven't heard that about bananas.

It’s the potassium. You could take a small potassium supplement and get the same results as the banana but bananas are delicious. 
 

I’m not dissuading or persuading. I’m literally just shouting “I KNOW THINGS” lol 
 

poor doggo and the thunderstorm. I feel you on waking up too early.  have you tried pretending to sleep? Fake it till you make it?

[TimovieMan]

1 hour ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

I’m not dissuading or persuading. I’m literally just shouting “I KNOW THINGS” lol

Do you also drink? 😅

 

[Snarkyfishguts]

1 hour ago, TimovieMan said:

Do you also drink? 😅

 

HA! yes! Never watched the show or read the books, but I still get the reference

[Kishi]

5 hours ago, The Most Loathed said:

Anyway, one bad night's sleep. Not a crisis but annoying.

 

Deeply so. But it can be made up for, and generally a bad night's sleep lends itself to short-term correction pretty well, so. Hope it goes that way!