Osu

[sarakingdom]

The book is very good, as you'd expect from a Gaiman and Pratchett book.

 

I haven't seen the TV version yet, but the best guess I can make about what you're referring to is this:

 

Spoiler

Despite their friendship and temporary arrangement, the arrangement is just temporary. It's just for as long as they can get away with it. And that's not likely very long. They're both junior desk clerks for extremely powerful CEOs. And not just junior desk clerks, but sidelined ones who are not even on the power ladder. And not only that, but they're both fairly weak-willed ones. They're each trying to secretly nudge things the way they want them, but neither one of them is ever going to actually outright defy their bosses. So at the end of the day, they're not on the same sides at all. Aziraphale is a boy scout even in the face of his side wanting the conflict, and Crowley is an opportunist who rolls over at the first sign of, well, anything. They're literally working to different ends, despite a "well, while we can get away with it, there's no reason we can't..." arrangement. IIRC, and it's been a while, they're both pretty open about this with each other. It's just a temporary truce, while they can.

 

They spend the time building the friendship, because the friendship is impossible. It can't work. It's literally two guys on the opposite side of a war, or Romeo and Juliet without their being important to anyone. They simply can't just decide to work together or trust each other, because they'll get steamrolled by their respective armies in a heartbeat. They're the expendable foot soldiers of the apocalypse. Very, very expendable. And neither one of them is a hero or risk taker.

 

[Kishi]

20 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Despite their friendship and temporary arrangement, the arrangement is just temporary. It's just for as long as they can get away with it. And that's not likely very long. They're both junior desk clerks for extremely powerful CEOs. And not just junior desk clerks, but sidelined ones who are not even on the power ladder. And not only that, but they're both fairly weak-willed ones. They're each trying to secretly nudge things the way they want them, but neither one of them is ever going to actually outright defy their bosses. So at the end of the day, they're not on the same sides at all. Aziraphale is a boy scout even in the face of his side wanting the conflict, and Crowley is an opportunist who rolls over at the first sign of, well, anything. They're literally working to different ends, despite a "well, while we can get away with it, there's no reason we can't..." arrangement. IIRC, and it's been a while, they're both pretty open about this with each other. It's just a temporary truce, while they can.

 

They spend the time building the friendship, because the friendship is impossible. It can't work. It's literally two guys on the opposite side of a war, or Romeo and Juliet without their being important to anyone. They simply can't just decide to work together or trust each other, because they'll get steamrolled by their respective armies in a heartbeat. They're the expendable foot soldiers of the apocalypse. Very, very expendable. And neither one of them is a hero or risk taker.

 

 

Spoiler

And see, that makes it make sense, but the TV series really didn't give me that impression as a viewer. Like I get the impossibility of their friendship, and that one's a boy scout and the other's an opportunist, but the TV series really tries to paint their working toward different ends as an obstacle when they both want the same thing - for the world to keep spinning - rather than to serve their respective sides.

 

And like I get that it's a temporary arrangement, but as a viewer I got the impression that it was an arrangement that they both wanted to extend. Azi's decision to back out felt like it came out of nowhere and like unearned, artificial conflict. I guess the book does a better job of showing it? But I haven't read it yet so I can't make the comparison.

 

[sarakingdom]

Spoiler

This might be a cultural thing, though I can't say, not having seen the TV version yet. In a lot of American media, when the protagonists want something, they do it, as easy as that. In British stories, the world doesn't work like that. People want lots of things. But they do what they have to do. You're not wrong, they do want the world to keep spinning. They're not expecting it. They're not the guys who get what they want. They do want to extend their alliance. They're not expecting to. They're expecting to do their jobs.

 

And honestly, that feels like more real character growth to me. The American version is unearned. Real people don't walk away from their responsibilities because they want to, or feel they can change things because they want to. The American hero is an unrealistic and slightly cartoonish protagonist. The British protagonist (and definitely the Pratchett protagonist) more often tends to be cuttingly realistic and flawed.

 

[Kishi]

45 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

  Reveal hidden contents

This might be a cultural thing, though I can't say, not having seen the TV version yet. In a lot of American media, when the protagonists want something, they do it, as easy as that. In British stories, the world doesn't work like that. People want lots of things. But they do what they have to do. You're not wrong, they do want the world to keep spinning. They're not expecting it. They're not the guys who get what they want. They do want to extend their alliance. They're not expecting to. They're expecting to do their jobs.

 

And honestly, that feels like more real character growth to me. The American version is unearned. Real people don't walk away from their responsibilities because they want to, or feel they can change things because they want to. The American hero is an unrealistic and slightly cartoonish protagonist. The British protagonist (and definitely the Pratchett protagonist) more often tends to be cuttingly realistic and flawed.

 

 

Spoiler

I see your point, but I still think this was done poorly. Azi and Crowley may be expecting to do their jobs but they've both already made the decision that they were going to do their jobs in the way that would get them what they wanted. The way I took it, they'd abandoned the spirit of the job a long time ago, so Azi's decision to suddenly snap back to it just doesn't track with the way his character has been developed.

 

I mean, maybe I am just too culturally American to get behind a cuttingly realistic and flawed everyman, but I guess I don't see how this is a realistic decision on the character's part.

 

[WhiteGhost]

9 hours ago, Kishi said:

Makes me want to read the book

I have it in my Kindle but haven't started it yet.  I may read it next  

[Kishi]

So open mat and training happened. About in that order, too. The girl who I mentioned is training herself into the ground was unable to train as she had, well, trained herself into the ground. Picked up a knee injury for her troubles. So I wound up rolling with the coach for a bit before passing the beer along and heading back home.

 

Q&D has been helping here, as coach has noted I'm a lot more explosive than I used to be. Also getting some endurance benefit off of this, which is nice.

 

Once back, I did strength train, as I hadn't actually drank my beer yet. I did pulls and squats, both of which did really well. There was time for accessory work - grip and calf, and then some planking work - which didn't take long, but on paper I have to admit, it does mean that one session winds up being rather long and the other being rather short. That's probably a sign that I need to redistribute the load a bit, but fortunately that's a relatively minor adjustment.

 

Saturday was gaming day with the family, which was good. We managed to talk a Hill Giant into joining our cause. Which was a neat thing to do and certainly not something that I saw coming given that it was my character - who's not known for his charm - who took the lead on negotiations. And almost botched the whole thing.

 

It was really interesting, actually, because one of my brother's themes in his games is that a given setting, for all its chaos, has a certain rhyme and reason to it. That good and evil things are happening everywhere, and you as a player don't really necessarily know who is doing what. Which makes player characters the real monsters, in a sense, because they happen on all these creatures and monsters and alien societies, and rather than try to understand them, the players grind them up for XPs.

 

So, like, with this hill giant for instance. He wasn't like what the manual describes as this big, unthinking eating machine. He came on our party in the night, dressed in armor and carrying a carved club as opposed to a tree pulled up by the roots. My character, being a Goliath, speaks giant, and winds up following him back to his place in the woods. And it doesn't look like much until we begin to explore and find that the trees are planted in places where giants fell, and that this was a great fortress once and this is where his family used to be. We found out he's an enemy of the main villain of the campaign, and we basically said, "Look, you're wasting away here waiting for some other adventurers to come along and kill you. Why not come with us so you can face your enemy and die the warrior's death you want?" And he was cool with that idea.

 

Although, I have no idea how we're going to sell this to the Lady who's employing us right now or whether or not we're going to be able to make him stay, but it's certainly a novel outcome compared to having to just fight for XPs. And that's pretty neat.

 

After that and after lunch he and I sat and talked about gaming for a while and how the stream had ended, and how frustrated he'd wound up being by most everyone he'd played with there, which I hadn't been able to tell but could relate to the things he was frustrated by. He's also thinking about starting a Youtube channel to talk about his setting, share notes and thoughts as a DM, and see where that goes and if it generates enough interest for him to make a formal campaign setting off his notes and such.

 

Which would be pretty neat if he did, I think.

 

Saturday also had some Q&D, which was fun.

 

Sunday, I finally got around to some home maintenance stuff I'd been meaning to do. Cleaned up a section of the apartment, gorilla-glued some chair parts into their places, and vacuumed up. It's not as much as needs to be done, but even that little bit makes a big difference in how the place feels.

 

BJJ and headstands happened. Coach is apparently of the opinion that we need to work starting from standing. I approve.

 

Today should be more strength work, I believe. Gonna rejigger some of this to make the workload easier. Should be cool.

[Kishi]

Monday was a day and it happened.

 

Which makes it sound like it was an ordeal; in truth, it was, but not any more than the others.

 

Gaming happened, finally ran into the girl's brother and the first thing he said was, "Sorry it didn't work out." So he was super cool about it and, as usual, the complicating factor was the 4 inches between my ears. Still a good outcome, though.

 

We gamed. Friend of mine who's there who's also part of the side gig basically noped out of it on my watch. Can't say as I blame her as I'm mostly noped out myself. Although, when she withdrew herself from the group chat that we were all a part of, the first person to step up to her was that gent whom I've accused of emotional dishonesty, and he seemed be pretty cool toward her. I dunno. Maybe I've misread him; it could be that he isn't dishonest at all, but he just doesn't know what to make of me in particular, for all that he's been a pain for me in the past. I honestly dunno. But OTOH, I'm proud of my friend for sticking up for herself and noping away from the drama, and I told her as much. That's hard to do.

 

So, all in all, it was a good night on a lot of levels.

 

Went home and strength trained. Basically, I added a little bit of chest-specific ring work and also added planks. The result is a somewhat longer session, but not unnecessarily so; it has parity with the pull-leg session I do now, and I wound up still able to do finishing work. Left shoulder was talking to me in a way I don't like, though; it's fine today but it's gonna have to be watched.

 

Um, let's see. I have my gi and my gear for fighting tonight, so I'm gonna see about sneaking onto the mats to roll. This will either be awesome or I'll be called out for failure to pay and that'll be the end of things for a while. Either way, should be interesting; hopefully the worst thing that happens is I get smashed differently.  Oh, and Q&D to follow.

[Kishi]

Tuesday down. Still wound up leaving work too late to make grappling. Not cool.

 

Did make kickboxing, though. Got tired of playing defense and switched to offense for a bit, which was a nice change of pace. Worked a lot on catching kicks; wasn't able to catch any for all that I ate.

 

Q&D followed. You roll dice for it to determine the parameters, and I rolled a bunch of hard stuff. Which I did, but my lower back decided to talk to me about it, which is weird and unusual. Must have done something wrong. Although, it's feeling better already, so I reckon it's nothing to worry about beyond trying to do things better. Which is just life in general, no?

 

Anyway. Today's a rest day. I've caught a hair to start in on Wim Hof's breathing exercises again, as breathing is hecking important for grappling and useful besides. This will include cold showering as I'm going north in a month and some change and having some adaptation to it would be nice.

 

Also, it seems that my squirrely mat friend - the one who is still under K-sensei - is up to be tested soon. I've offered to help him; I'mma text him before the day is out and see if I can offer some insights from outside to help him out. Don't reckon I'd spar him hard as he's probably got enough right now, but I think I got a thing or two.

[Kishi]

Wednesday done!

 

Wednesdays are always weird to write about because there's generally no training there.

 

My friend decided to make a bunch of food inspired by Youtube videos, and he'd invited his parents to come eat with them. So it wound up being a talky hangout kind of night, and it was a lot of fun.

 

Wound up talking to a girl while I was there. She's a friend of my friend; she's having a house built and staying with my friend while she's in between. I'd met her once before and found her very interesting, and I was surprised I got to meet her again. She was still interesting. She seems to have found me interesting too; we wound up staying up to talk after everyone else had gone to bed and it was almost midnight by the time I was out. She invited me back for board games at some point. Dunno when, but why let a little thing like that stop me?

 

Didn't offer to drill my friend yesterday. Instead, accidentally dialed one of my jiujutsu partners, then texted him to say I hadn't meant it but wished him well anyway, which just felt like a nice thing to do. Also, dunno if I mentioned this, but my coach's teacher is holding seminar on 9/28. Coach has paid for us to go, and while I was gonna go in the first place, now I'm really really gonna go. Gonna have to let the folks know so the game can be adjusted.

 

Today... well, today's kind of up in the air, really. I got out to the car to find one of the tires badly deflated. I wound up late to work getting that sorted; I'm not sure if I've got a leak or if it's just a slow drain for that particular tire. Being late means being at work late, so no grappling, and while that's probably no reason to skip out on striking, I have to admit I'm thinking about it anyway. I still want to strength train but kind of feel like the real world's calling my name and I'm not sure where to spend my time.

[Kishi]

So, wound up skipping striking. Work is a deceptively difficult place to get out of if you're in a hurry and doubly so if you're not. Reckon that's a sign I need to get some things done sooner as far as cleaning up my dishes and such, rather than leaving them for later.

 

OTOH, since I'd already said that I felt obligated to myself to do something when I got home, do something is precisely what I did. Specifically some laundry, swept off my porch (it sits under some pine trees and is constantly covered in pine needles and seeds, which I tend to track in), and got some cleaning done. It was a surprisingly soothing thing to do, really.

 

Strength trained afterward. Like I said, I re-did the workload a bit and it feels good. Back was still feeling kind of wonky, though, so I elected to do Sun Salutations for my finisher rather than kettlebell work, and it feels like it was the right call to make. It was a good balance between being kind of strenuous and kind of restorative; my back was a lot quieter as a result, and today I feel even better. This is good news.

 

Tonight should just be open mat. I feel like I got something else going on, but I don't really know what? Phantom rush, I suppose.

[Mistr]

Sounds like you made the right call. It sucks that your tire was flat and so you had to skip practice. Taking control of your evening to get your space cleaned up and do strength training at home puts you in a better place for today.

 

Yay on meeting the interesting woman at your friend's. Staying up late talking is a good sign.  

[Kishi]

23 hours ago, Mistr said:

Sounds like you made the right call. It sucks that your tire was flat and so you had to skip practice. Taking control of your evening to get your space cleaned up and do strength training at home puts you in a better place for today.

 

Yay on meeting the interesting woman at your friend's. Staying up late talking is a good sign.  

 

Yeah, just lots of good everywhere. Don't even have to squint that hard to find it.

 

*

 

So. Nobody showed for open mat. I wound up going home and shadowrolling instead. Coach says that there are 6 moves at the core of BJJ. We've never actually talked about what they are, but I've figured out 4 of them. I think. Maybe 5?

 

But I did my practice and also did some takedown drills and called it a night.

 

Today's gonna be relatively quiet. Should be some Q&D and headstand work on top of writing and working on the side gig. It's work, but it's work I want to do, and that makes the whole thing easier.

[Kishi]

Well, got a little bit of what I set out to get on Saturday. Got Q&D done and worked the side gig, but didn't get to work on the writing or the headstand work. Boooo.

 

Sunday I slept late and got to BJJ. One of our blue belts returned from a forced hiatus due to a torn hamstring. Dude was raring to go and he smashed us. Even caught both I and the other white belt in standing kotegaeshi, which is damned impressive to pull off; I wound up getting an impromptu lesson on breakfalls aikido style. That was fun.

 

Handstand work followed and that was a night.

 

Today I'm super-busy with things and I'mma have to game tonight. I've been looking things over as far as what I want to do for my training and I think I'mma do a riff on the "Start Bodyweight" program, which is itself a riff on Convict Conditioning, only a bit more intelligently planned and progressed. My own riff on it is that I mean to circuit lower body and upper body work, so like a set of squats followed by a set of pull ups while the legs rest. The reason for this being that I'm paranoid that the program as it stands is gonna take a while, and given how I have to fit this in, I'm just not convinced I can make time, you know?

 

Anyway. The beat goes on.

[WhiteGhost]

17 hours ago, Kishi said:

My own riff on it is that I mean to circuit lower body and upper body work, so like a set of squats followed by a set of pull ups while the legs rest.

I used to organize my workouts like this.  I would group everything in sets of four, rotating between pull, leg, push, and core.  I need to reorganize my workouts again and I am considering going back to that again.

[Kishi]

59 minutes ago, WhiteGhost said:

I used to organize my workouts like this.  I would group everything in sets of four, rotating between pull, leg, push, and core.  I need to reorganize my workouts again and I am considering going back to that again.

 

It's not a bad way to do things by any means. I first picked that trick up from Ross Enamait in his book Never Gymless. He used to like to do a lot of different stuff but he hated having to wait on straight sets, so he would just make up mini-circuits between various exercises and do 'em that way. It seemed like a fair thing to do here too.

 

*

 

So! Gaming went well. Broke out the 5e again on account of one of our DMs having got an actual boat with a grid on it for combat. He wanted to see what it was like. I wound up grappling a Sahuagin in the water and did most of the work of killing him before our wizard stole the kill. Anyway, almost wound up getting eaten by a shark for my trouble. So that was cool.

 

Training happened afterward. I kind of had to guesstimate where I was in regard to some of this stuff, but my guesses felt about right. Wound up about as follows:

 

Bulgarian Split Squats: 3x8

2-Leg Assisted Pull Ups: 3x8

 

Elevated Pike Press: 3x4

Flat Knee Raises: 3x4

 

Bent Knee Bench Dips: 3x4

Bent Leg Inverted Rows: 3x4

 

Planks: 3x30s

 

So, yeah, this was a fun little jaunt. Played around with cadence some - 3 seconds down, 1 second up. It does make shadowboxing a little trickier to work in, but I feel like I got a lot more quality out of what I did, like I really had to dig in and focus.

 

I did the Atos complex as a finisher, but I think I might have been better served with yoga instead. Not hurting or aching or anything, but my left shoulder didn't want to do more work. Should have thought of that in context with them pikes. But it seems to be in a forgiving mood; I will have to work to respect it and keep it that way.

 

Anyway, today's already interesting. One of my coworkers decided to get out of work by starting to pass a kidney stone, which really feels like going the extra mile. I figure it's better to fake your medical emergency rather than have it in the office where everyone can see, but I guess some people are just overachievers like that.

 

(I laugh and joke because she's basically going to be okay as far as we can tell. The nature of the work means we have a lot of medical staff around, so she was seen by a doctor almost immediately and we had EMS relatively quick. Not as quick as she or we would have liked, but I'm assuming that kidney stones are relatively low-grade as far as medical emergencies go).

 

So. I'm telling myself I'll roll out on time for BJJ, but I keep getting stopped by things, so I guess we'll see how it shakes out tonight. I've got gi for if I can and shorts for if I can't, so we'll play it by ear and see what happens.

[Urgan]

3 hours ago, Kishi said:

Anyway, today's already interesting. One of my coworkers decided to get out of work by starting to pass a kidney stone, which really feels like going the extra mile. I figure it's better to fake your medical emergency rather than have it in the office where everyone can see, but I guess some people are just overachievers like that.

 

(I laugh and joke because she's basically going to be okay as far as we can tell. The nature of the work means we have a lot of medical staff around, so she was seen by a doctor almost immediately and we had EMS relatively quick. Not as quick as she or we would have liked, but I'm assuming that kidney stones are relatively low-grade as far as medical emergencies go).

 

Ugh, kidney stones. It's awful to have a medical event with no outward signs and to have to ask to go home early, much less getting a hospital involved.  

[Kishi]

18 hours ago, Urgan said:

 

Ugh, kidney stones. It's awful to have a medical event with no outward signs and to have to ask to go home early, much less getting a hospital involved.  

 

Yeah. I felt really bad for her; I was actually afraid she was going to try to stay and work through the day, and I was like, "No, woman, go home. This job is not worth it."

 

*

 

So, after the drama, Tuesday was actually pretty quiet. Place found a way to keep me again, but no surprise there. At least I was ready for it.

 

Last night we worked on bait-hooks, which it turns out I need a lot of work on. And really just close work in general. I didn't go out to spar as I've got a fight night on Friday with the Kyokushin folk and I've no appetite for hard work between here and there. I did however go to do partner drills with a girl who's got good eyes and good hands. She identified one thing I was doing that I needed to not be and all of a sudden I was able to throw a lot better. I'll have to shadowbox this out a bit to ingrain it in the nerves, but this looks like a bad habit I picked up that I need to let go of.

 

Let's see. It's been six weeks since I started on Q&D, so I decided to rerun the tests. I've progressed! I can do one arm swings with the 32, which is amazing to me given how little specific practice I've done for that. Push ups require less assistance as well; I'm almost clear of having to use bands at all. So that was a fun way to end the night.

 

Gonna need to start looking into picking up a 40 sometime in the future, I think. Should be fun.

 

Anyway, it's a rest night tonight. We'll see what it brings.

[Machete]

21 hours ago, Kishi said:

Let's see. It's been six weeks since I started on Q&D, so I decided to rerun the tests. I've progressed! I can do one arm swings with the 32, which is amazing to me given how little specific practice I've done for that. Push ups require less assistance as well; I'm almost clear of having to use bands at all. So that was a fun way to end the night.

 

 

You've been at this a while. Maybe you should be submitting some of your success stories at the StrongFirst blog.

[Kishi]

1 hour ago, Machete said:

 

 

You've been at this a while. Maybe you should be submitting some of your success stories at the StrongFirst blog.

 

That would be cool. But I doubt they'd take me. I'd have to be a soldier or a cop or else have a black belt in some obscure form of traditional karate before they even look at me, or else I'd have to be accredited with them. As it is, I'm just a movement nerd with a wide background. We're a dime-a-dozen on the Internet.

 

*

 

So, Wednesday wasn't anything to write home about. Rest days rarely are.

 

Today should be more strength work and fight stuff tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to try to hit both the Fight Night and the Open Mat; it shouldn't be impossible per se but it'll take effort. Fun times.

[Machete]

8 hours ago, Kishi said:

That would be cool. But I doubt they'd take me. I'd have to be a soldier or a cop or else have a black belt in some obscure form of traditional karate before they even look at me, or else I'd have to be accredited with them. As it is, I'm just a movement nerd with a wide background. We're a dime-a-dozen on the Internet.

 

Not necessarily. You write quite well, and strive to do it with the attitude of a professional, which already puts you in the 90th percentile of us booger-eaters on the 'net. You follow the philosophy and are patient with the training. You treat it as it is supposed to be treated; practice rather than entertainment. Some folks who make it to the blog are just big fans who have their own success stories with the StrongFirst principles. I believe that's what we stand for in the first place--bringing elite training methods to the general population to help prepare them for other aspects of life (i.e. WTH Effect). And Hardstyle principles are based on the principles of Goju Ryu, which isn't really that obscure of an art. Besides, we have a separate Instructors Only section on the site. 

 

[Elastigirl]

1 hour ago, Machete said:

 

Not necessarily. You write quite well, and strive to do it with the attitude of a professional, which already puts you in the 90th percentile of us booger-eaters on the 'net. You follow the philosophy and are patient with the training. You treat it as it is supposed to be treated; practice rather than entertainment. Some folks who make it to the blog are just big fans who have their own success stories with the StrongFirst principles. I believe that's what we stand for in the first place--bringing elite training methods to the general population to help prepare them for other aspects of life (i.e. WTH Effect). And Hardstyle principles are based on the principles of Goju Ryu, which isn't really that obscure of an art. Besides, we have a separate Instructors Only section on the site. 

 

Agree^ And besides what's the harm in submitting it?

[Kishi]

15 hours ago, Machete said:

 

Not necessarily. You write quite well, and strive to do it with the attitude of a professional, which already puts you in the 90th percentile of us booger-eaters on the 'net. You follow the philosophy and are patient with the training. You treat it as it is supposed to be treated; practice rather than entertainment. Some folks who make it to the blog are just big fans who have their own success stories with the StrongFirst principles. I believe that's what we stand for in the first place--bringing elite training methods to the general population to help prepare them for other aspects of life (i.e. WTH Effect). And Hardstyle principles are based on the principles of Goju Ryu, which isn't really that obscure of an art. Besides, we have a separate Instructors Only section on the site. 

 

 

14 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Agree^ And besides what's the harm in submitting it?

 

Huh.

 

I mean, well.

 

You put it that way...

 

*

 

Thursday down.

 

Thursday was interesting. The main teacher was at his job, so it fell to a gent who's got a karate background to do the teaching instead. His karate is traditional, but even so it still felt very familiar. We spent the night playing with side kicks and back kicks from way in close, which is a use I hadn't really had the chance to explore in a, ah, purposeful way before.  But it was good, you know?

 

Strength work afterward was good too. Got after it and got it done in a relatively short amount of time.

 

Beginner Shrimp Squats: 3x4/side

One-Leg Assisted Pull Ups: 3x5,4,4

 

Incline Pike Press: 3x5,4,4

Flat Knee Raises: 3x5,4,4

 

Box Push Ups: 3x4

Bent Leg Inverted Rows: 3x5,4,4

 

Planks: 3x35s,30s,30s

 

Box push ups, FYI, are a regression of kneeling push ups. You basically set yourself up so that you're at 90 angles with the ground - the shape of your body makes a "box." After that, it's just up and down like you'd expect. It feels weird if you've never done it before because you're basically leaving your behind... uh, behind, but it's a surprisingly useful regression that I wouldn't have thought of on my own. Neat stuff.

 

No finisher last night. The program itself calls for static stretching to cool down afterward, and I could see doing some kind of yoga as a way to cooldown afterward, but I was distracted, as I reached out to the woman I met last week about possibly getting together to hang out and she was getting back to me. Looks like I'm off to hang with her in Durham on Sunday.

 

Anyway. Today is today. Climate Strikes are starting up, and no lie, I feel like I should be out there. But ultimately, I've been priced out. I made the decision earlier in the month to arrange my travel up to Maine and it turned out to be pricey in the context of other decisions I had to make this month. So I can't really take part today. Still, things are going on for the next week, and I reckon I'll take next Friday for solidarity, even if I can't really get out there and show it.

 

In the meantime, lots of fighting today. Fight night tonight and possible open mat to follow; need to figure out if anyone's even gonna show over at the BJJ place tonight, though. I've been going to keep the place open in the event that someone shows up, but I don't know if I want to do that if nobody's gonna be there. 

[Kishi]

So, just gonna write this down because I've been thinking about it:

 

So, I said a few weeks ago that I was looking into putting on some more muscle. I spent a lot of time researching about for a routine I'd like before settling on the one I did; the biggest hurdle to leap then being how to mod this thing for hypertrophy.

 

Well, fortunately, dude thought this through. He advocates 8-12 reps per movement in the routine amongst the other info he provides; the catch is that I'm not strong enough to 8 reps on all of the most basic variations he does. (my specific sticking points are the leg raise and dip progressions, and while I can make an adjustment to the leg raise variation, I can't really do the same for dips).

 

I thought about maybe going on cut again, but then figured that there's multiple ways to get strong and put on muscle, and one of those is to eat at maintenance and focus on getting stronger. Which is, I think, the better course of action. It'll give me the chance to keep helping my metabolism and to further distance myself from some of the head games I play with myself about aesthetics and such. And it's not like I'll be getting weaker. I reckon I'll probably keep myself at maintenance levels throughout fall and winter, and start in on a cut in the spring. (you know, for vanity).

 

So. No strange and exotic protocols in the pipe anymore. Just work and rest and time.

[Kishi]

Whoo! Friday night, y'all.

 

So like I said, Friday night was a fight night double feature, with striking at the kyokushin place and the open mat to follow.

 

I roll up to the kyokushin place and get greeted like an old friend. And then we just went to work. Went about 12 2-minute rounds and did pretty well. Some of the old problems are still in place - it doesn't matter how hard I hit these people, they just eat the shots and keep on coming - but I found places to land where I wouldn't have before and did manage stoppage on a couple of them in a couple instances. Also managed osoto gari on one of their brownbelts, which was just neat to be able to pull off. Scrambled down to the ground, scrambled back up, and I was getting ready to take a single leg when the timer went off. The thing that made the difference for me this time is that the coach I study with for BJJ says that osoto should be done when you're in what's called an ai yotsu position in judo, or opposite sides forward. It's the typical position where two orthodox fighters come together, left hands forward, right hands back, and there's a space between them. It's easier to execute on the leg that's forward in that case. As opposed to how I used to do it where I'd have to wait for kenka yotsu - my left forward versus their right - or else try to take the back leg. Fascinating how one small simple thing can be so powerful if you're looking for it.

 

I digress, though. It was a lot of fun to go with 'em like that.

 

Afterward was the open mat. My poor coach has continuous travel obligations; he got just enough time to land with us here before flying out to Germany the next day. So we rolled for a while and got the chance to go over some technical stuff. I got a cue for what my next step has to be in terms of progressing in this art - need to get more dynamic with gripping. Cool.

 

Today, there is not much. I've already done Q&D for the day, so now off to the office for a few hours and then home again. I reckon I'll clean and begin compiling my stuff together on the book, and also do other things for the side gig. Oh, and strength train too.

 

Cool beans. Let's get it.

[Kishi]

All right, let's get this caught up.

 

So, Saturday happened. Work and strength training both and then the writing and side gig stuff as well. Really productive, actually, for all that I really wanted to start tackling the next section of cleaning I need to do on the apartment. I'm working to solve a problem right now for the side gig as far as getting the one profile we have with the giveaway sites to carry for multiple authors and then send the information to them as opposed to us; hopefully it'll work out.

 

Sunday, I went to Durham to hang with the woman. She brought board games, but we wound up not needing them. We just sat together and talked; we wound up shutting down the place and wound up going to another place to just hang and talk some more. We wound up walking around downtown Durham after that and found ourselves on a rooftop looking out over the skyline, which was cool to be able to do.

 

I honestly wasn't sure whether it was a date or not but the waitress at the first place we went to told me she was getting serious first date vibes off of us. Which is awesome. Also, I really, really wish I'd dressed the part. But we were trying to figure out how to get together again for contra dancing before the night was out, so I guess I must not have done that badly.

 

So. I guess we'll see how this plays out.

 

Today's docket should be just strength work. There'll be gaming tonight of some stripe or other, but given how little time this tends to take I think it'll be okay. I decided to throw a little dynamic bridging into it as well, just to balance things out proper. It fits in with the planks really well, actually; it's like if planks hit the anterior chain, then bridge work hits the posterior chain. It's good stuff. I suppose I could freak out a bit about the lateral chain, but I'mma hold off on that just for now. See what it's looking like when I get to the one arm stuff.