No Commercials, No Mercy

I fell off the wagon again. October was mostly a bust, because I thought I was going to be changing jobs and moving to another continent, only for it to fall apart in the eleventh hour. November was a total waste, between a week on vacation, a week trying to catch up on hours (that was interrupted by a massive storm that disrupted work for two days - so much for catching up on hours), another week top-loading hours, and then the week of Thanksgiving. With no immediate plans to leave the country, no upcoming holidays (other than Christmas, which doesn't count because I don't celebrate it), and a reasonable expectation that work-stopping weather is unlikely to strike twice in a season, I'm finally back on the wagon in a big way. I had originally decided that November through February were going to be my months to focus hard on Arabic and physical training. I've been forced to alter that, so now it's December through March. This should give me a good block of time to complete two nine week workout programs, and a lot of Arabic study. Also, I'm not sure about Chops, but I plan to reset my 10,000 Reps goal for 2010. The way I figure, if I'm largely spinning my wheels in my professional life, I may as well focus my personal life so that it pays dividends in both my personal and professional venues, and Arabic and physical training fit that bill. So, today is Wednesday. My plan is:

Monday: Quran Sura (reading and listening)
Tuesday: 25 minute swim, 45 push-ups, 60 sit-ups, stretch PT
Wednesday: 25 minute swim, stretch PT, Ahlan wa Sahlan lesson, flash cards
Thursday: yomp, 45 push-ups, 60 sit-ups, stretch PT, make 25 flash cards
Friday: 25 minute swim, stretch PT, Ahlan wa Sahlan lesson, flash cards
Saturday: 25 minute swim, 45 push-ups, 60 sit-ups, stretch PT, make 25 flash cards
Sunday: stretch PT, diagram/translate Bible verse

Tonight's swim got disrupted, which means that I'll have to push swimming into Sunday. I had hoped to give myself the majority of the weekend off, but between disruptions on Monday and today, I'll have to flex a bit. The eventual goal will be to stretch once or twice over the weekends, and just do a bit of light Arabic on the weekends, so that I don't burn out on either. At this rate, what I'll probably do is a full workout (swimming, push-ups, sit-ups, and stretching) on Saturday, and swimming and stretching on Sunday; then start off next week with push-ups, sit-ups, and stretching on Monday, and swimming Tuesday through Saturday (with a yomp instead of a swim on Thursday), which should leave Sunday open. So, thus far this week, due to disruptions (and the fact that I'm not going to swim late tonight because I already blew an hour on this afternoon's aborted swim and I'm borderline sick), here's what I've accomplished (or will accomplish by the end of tonight):

Monday: Quran Sura (reading and listening)
Tuesday: 25 minute swim, 45 push-ups, 60 sit-ups, stretch PT
Wednesday: stretch PT, Ahlan wa Sahlan lesson, flash cards

I'll try to post the plan for next week at some point this weekend, and give at least a weekly update. I've also acquired a couple of additional tools to use since my earlier posts, so I'll outline those as well. Alright, fifty flash cards, twenty minutes of stretching, and I'm nominally good for today. Here I go...

Settling in

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 4)

Okay, so last week we were both too sleepy to workout on Wednesday and Friday. The whole family is still settling in to a schedule at the new house. Tonight, though, I decided to go for 20 reps, no matter how long it took. Which worked out nice, since my 5 year old is sick, and he decided that he wanted to come out and talk to me around the 8 minute mark. So subtracting the time I spent with my son in the middle of the workout, it took me 25 minutes to do 20 reps. Not too shabby.

Ah, progress

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 3)

Okay, I haven't been blogging it, but I did work out a total of three times last week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm sticking at FlowFit level 3, for 20 minutes at a go. I didn't actually manage to finish all 20 minutes, though, until tonight. I got 15 reps in 20 minutes. The leg didn't bother me at all. On the one hand, it's painful to see how far I've slipped, but it's nice to be moving forward again.

We're all moved into the new house, so I'll be getting back on my knife reps soon. Promise.

What have we here?

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 4)

That's it, just some FlowFit. It's my first day back, so the wife and I decided to do Level 3 for 15 minutes. Ouch man. First of all, I apparently ate too much dinner earlier tonight. My stomach hurt and it was difficult to breathe. Second, my leg is better than I thought, but it's still definitely not 100%. I actually called it quits at 12 minutes, after 9 reps. I did manage to not hurt it, but I noticed it getting weaker, fast. That's how re-injuries happen, so I figured it was a good stopping point.

Anyway, it's good to be back. Let's see if I can rebuild some momentum now.

Update time

So yesterday was the two week mark from when I hurt myself, and my leg still hurts. It's much, much better, though. Most people can barely notice the limp when I walk, which is good. In fact, yesterday I was able to walk down to the cafeteria for lunch, for the first time in a week. Naturally, I tweaked my calf pretty bad on the walk back (and only 15 feet from my desk), which hurt really really bad for about half an hour.

I can't really go back to FlowFit yet. There's too much jumping down to the floor and back up. I have been thinking of trying some Clubbell work with the little mini-Clubbells I got with my IntuFlow package. The hard part now is getting back into working out at night, or waking myself up early enough in the morning. We'll just have to see what happens.

Man Down!

So I went into last week's first MMA class a little tired, but nothing out of the ordinary. We did our initial cardio stuff, then started working combos on the pads and the odd man out shadowboxed in the mirror. Then, in the last round, my left calf popped. I knew exactly what happened, because the exact same thing had happened to me a little over five years ago. I tore a freakin' muscle.

I hobbled across the hallway and got some ice to put on it. Then it took me about an hour to limp back to my desk. I sat there for a good 30 minutes, trying to get an appointment with our on-site doctor, with no luck. My entire body was humming with constant pain at this point, so I fired off a quick email to my team to let them know what was going on, and then I drove myself to the Urgent Care.

I had a long wait, but when the doc finally got to me and took a look at my leg, she said something along the lines of "Good news - it hurts worse than it really is". Turns out, it wasn't a tear so much as a separation of the Soleus and Gastrocnemius. She prescribed an anti-inflammatory and some Vicodin for the pain, and I drove my ass home. I spent the afternoon sitting in bed, working from home, hopped up on the vitamin V.

Yesterday, I finally got to the point where I can stand with both feet flat on the floor. Today, the full range of motion is almost there, if I take it slow and relaxed. I'm still limping horribly, but at least I'm off the crutches. The doc said no kickboxing for two weeks, which right now seems impossibly optimistic. I'm thinking I'll be able to walk somewhat normally at the 2 week mark, which really means that it'll be time to really start the rehab. I'll be taking the rehab more seriously this time instead of just assuming that it will get better eventually.

*sigh* I guess this means I need to get back on the knife draws, since that's about the closest thing to exercise I can do right now.

Square One

I skipped my workout two weeks ago today. Then, I was sick for, like, a week. Then, I was catching up on all of the crap I wasn't able to get done while I was sick. When all was said and done, I'd missed more than two weeks of workouts. Two weeks. Brutal. So, I'm starting over with week one. Again. I'm in the middle of my push-ups and sit-ups as I write this, and my wrists are giving me very unpleasant sensations. Three sets will be more than enough. My plan for the rest of the evening is to do two more sets of twenty sit-ups and fifteen push-ups, followed by Arabic flash cards and then, time permitting, a sura out of the Quran. Having basically lost the two last weeks, I'm eager to catch up on all fronts.

UPDATE: Screw it. I cranked out the fourth set, and they weren't fantastic, but they were pretty good. Who dares wins, right? On to the Arabic.

UPDATE: I did the first half of the next sura that was up, but skipped the flash cards. Today, I'll do flash cards and the other half of the sura.

Wipeout

Cue ominous surf music.

So, my goal for last week was to do the entirety of the Week Two workout program, plus a bunch of Arabic stuff. What did I accomplish? See below.

What actually happened was that I skipped on Monday, woke up with a light cold on Tuesday morning, and am just coughing up the last elements of it now. I'm doing much better, but on Tuesday and Wednesday, it was all I could do to get to work, work eight hours, and get back to the house. I was dead tired. The rest of the week, and yesterday, I've been trying to take it easy so that I can shake it as quickly as possible. I should be at ninety-five percent or better tomorrow (Monday), so I plan to resume in earnest. We'll see if I can do the week two program - the last time I skipped a whole week, it didn't go so well. At most, this will be a setback.

I also got very little Arabic done, and I'll be hitting that hard this week, too.

What's this?

Is this a near-complete lack of soreness? Weird. I kind of forgot what that was like. The only pain I have after a week of classes (okay, that's only two classes) is a little, tiny, barely noticeable bit of soreness in my right calf (you remember, the one that I tore all those years ago, and the reason for me screwing my ankle up). This means that it's time for me to restart my at-home workouts again.

Mrs. Chops and I have been slacking at home, big time. So we'll be getting back into FlowFit again, still at level 3. Tonight we'll start with a High Intensity day, since the Mrs has plans to go out with her friends tomorrow night. Then we'll be back on the 4x7 on Sunday, with a Low Intensity day. At least, this is the plan. We'll see how things actually turn out.

MMA class this week was all about some knees. We quickly covered the three kinds of Muay Thai knees - the straight knee (also called the spear knee or thrust knee), the up knee, and the curve knee (sometimes called the outside knee). These can all be delivered from the clinch, which we very briefly went over. Then we held pads and kneed the bejebus out of each other. Good times. Also some kicking, to review from last week. That's about it.

End of Week One - Again

As I write this, I have one set of pushups and situps left before I will have completed Week One. The only thing I won't have done is the yomp, and that's the least important part. Four solid swims, and three decent pushup/situp sets are pretty good in my book. Tomorrow, I'll transition into Week Two. Beyond the swimming, push-ups, and sit-ups, I hope to get the yomp and the stretching in this week, both of which should help. Here's what's on the coming week's agenda.

four 25 minute swim workouts

one 35 minute yomp with 25 pound rucksack

three days of four sets of twenty pushups and twenty situps

stretching - please, for the love of all things holy, stretching

Arabic wasn't top notch this past week. I'll try to do better in the coming week. I'm hoping to do a sura from the Quran, as well as at least one lesson from my textbook, in addition to flash cards.

Here I go...

Week One Redux

Here's this week's rundown so far.

Monday: Skipped entirely. I was feeling lousy when I left work.

Tuesday: 25 minute swim, 45 push-ups, 60 sit-ups

Wednesday: 25 minute swim (Finished my laps thirty seconds before they kicked us out for lightning - didn't get a cool down, but that was okay.)

Thursday: 25 minute swim, 45 push-ups, 60 sit-ups

The game plan for today is another swim, and hopefully some stretching. The intent is to stretch on the days that I'm not doing push-ups and sit-ups, but I haven't been doing it as regularly as I should - to include not at all this week. Tomorrow, I'll do the final of the three sets of push-ups and sit-ups, and I'm considering going for a yomp in a local park. Either way, assuming that I get one more swim, and the push-ups and sit-ups, I'll go into Week Two on Monday - the yomps are important, but of all the pieces of this workout, they're the part that I'm willing to slack on if need be.

I'll update either this weekend, or early next week with my final report for Week One. I think I'm starting to make progress, mainly from the swimming since the rest has been a bit inconsistent. Oh, and welcome back, Chops! I'm thrilled with what I'm doing, but Chops is making me look like a slacker.

What? That's impossible!

That's right, two posts this week. Crazy, eh?

So this workout was pretty much a repeat of Tuesday's workout. The main difference being that when it was your turn to rotate to the shadow boxing station, first you got to hit a big ass tire with a sledgehammer 20 times each side, then you were allowed to shadow box. It should be noted, I like sledgehammers.

Also, today during "warm ups" (really? 30 minutes of grueling calisthenics is a warm up?), the instructor said "There are two of you here that will be ready to fight in six months. I can get you some smokers matches if you're interested." Then, during the bicycle crunches, he stood next to me and said "When I said there were two, you're one of them. SO GET YOUR LEGS UP IN THE AIR!" So it looks like I might be fighting later this year, or early next year, if I stick with it. For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept of "smokers", it's like intramurals for fighters. Think friendly match between students, for the sake of learning and experience. Anyway, I guess all those years of Muay Thai didn't disappear on me, which makes me feel pretty good.

Week...uh...5?

I have totally lost count of what week I'm on for the MMA class. If I cared enough, I could probably dig through my email and find the start date, but it's not really that important to me. I do know that this week we started kicks. Yay! I love kicking, which probably goes back to starting soccer at age 4. We also changed our fitness routine. Now, we start with the jump ropes immediately at 8am. We do that for, say, five minutes? Not sure, wasn't looking at the clock. Then we did two sets of 8 count bodybuilders (the "minimum" is 15, which I didn't hit in either set), then some footwork/legwork kind of drills which I don't really know how to describe. This was followed by some core work consisting of bicycle crunches and two other sadistic sorts of crunches. All of that was one round. We did a total of two rounds (not too bad, it came out to about 35 minutes worth of calisthenics), then on to the kicking.

We worked round kicks to the thighs for power, both sides, then round kicks to the head for speed, both sides. Then we worked on foot jab with the left, foot jab with the right, then a 1-2, bob and weave under a hook, high right kick combination. There were five of us, so we had to keep rotating out to shadow box in the mirror. It was a good fun class, and my ankle held up well, even with all the kicking, which can put a lot of stress on the support ankle.

I even got there early enough to get most of the way through an Intuflow session before starting the jump rope.

Tuesday Night

I've slacked a bit on my Arabic over the last few days. I was supposed to do a sura tonight, but both of the ones that I have on deck were half an hour, and I didn't have half an hour to give. I did flash cards this morning, and I'll do them again tomorrow morning. I'm going to assume that I'll have half an hour tomorrow night to do a sura, and that I'll do flash cards in the morning (and hopefully tomorrow evening). We'll see what happens.

With respect to my workout, last week was a little bit of a mess, but I got in four swims (which is the core of the entire plan, so that was the most important part), but only one push-up/sit-up workout. I had hoped to do week two starting tonight, but when I was ready to do my push-ups, I defaulted to week one. So, this will be a repeat of week one, with the hope that I'll finish it again and be able to launch into week two next week. I was feeling lousy yesterday, and skipped the pool workout, but today I did a solid twenty-five minutes, plus the push-ups and sit-ups. That means a pool workout and stretching tomorrow night, plus two more push-up/sit-up workouts, two more swims, a yomp, and a couple more days of stretching. Being able to discipline myself tonight, when I really wanted to put the push-ups and sit-ups off for another night, is good progress from late May, when my YMCA pass hadn't been scanned since early January.

As far as results, I've been swimming either constantly or somewhat regularly now since either late May or early June, with a few interrupted weeks in there. My weight isn't fluctuating, at all, which is a disappointment; but when I look in the mirror, the stretch marks around my navel (ugh, depressing) are less pronounced, as if they may be starting to heal up; and I feel like my belly itself, which is where I carry a lot of my excess weight, is starting to recede a bit. I don't really notice much difference in clothing fit yet - just a hair with some shirts, maybe - so that will probably continue to be the indicator I look at, in lieu of actually measuring the diameter of my belly on a weekly basis.

It's progress on both fronts, Arabic and getting in shape.

The absence, it has become habitual

Okay, so The Fly has goaded me into an update. Things have been a bit, uh, complicated, in Chopsland. Where to start?

I started taking the MMA class offered at work. I stopped all my other working out for a week or two until my body got used to the workload of the class. Then, I managed to mess up my right ankle pretty good. So I took week 3 off of class, which was fine, since the instructor said I could make up the classes when I was feeling better. I did a lot of ankle mobility stuff (thanks, Intuflow!) and tons of balance drills (4CBD, thanks again to Intuflow) to rehab the ankle. As soon as it felt stable enough to get back to class, I ended up driving to the great Pacific Northwest to visit family. It was very, very short notice. As in, less than 4 days. So I ended up taking a total of 2 weeks off of class. Finally, this week I got back into class on Tuesday morning, only to find out that Thursday's class had been cancelled. Which is fine, since on Friday morning, I'm still sore from Tuesday. Ouch. Anyway, I'm back on the wagon, but I've got 2.5 weeks worth of classes to make up.

Class itself is fun. It's mostly focused on fitness, with maybe the last 20 minutes working on technique. Since we have some absolute beginners, we're going very slow, which is good. Week one was the jab, next week was the cross, then the hooks, then uppercuts, and this week we worked elbows. I have an annoying (to my wife) habit of shadowboxing at random intervals, especially in the kitchen when I'm cooking, or in the backyard when I'm watching the boys. Despite that, my first hook on the pads was awful. Like, embarrassingly so. The elbows, oddly enough, felt awesome. I managed to throw a few dozen without scraping all the skin off of my elbows, too, which is good. Maybe those calluses are still there after all.

I've been giving some thought to what I'm going to do when this class is done. It's only a total of 10 weeks long. After that, there's going to be another 10 week module dedicated to clinch work, then after that, another one focused on groundwork (mainly escapes to standing, he says). But instead of that, I've been giving a lot of thought to going to train at the BJJ place close to work on my lunch breaks. I've avoided BJJ for a long time, and I'm starting to feel that I should give it some attention for awhile. For now though, I need to get back on track with my weight loss (which has been stalled out for about 2 weeks). I should also get back on with the knife reps and get that stuff over with. *sigh*

If It's Not Scottish...

My workout regimen the last couple of weeks has definitely not been Scottish, it's been crap. Last week, a combination of electrical storms and work chaos prevented me from getting in more than one swim - I'll take some credit for not trying hard enough to get stuff scheduled in, but seriously, a lot of it wasn't within my control.

This week, it's been mostly electrical storms, with a big dose of traffic last night, and a touch of last week thrown in throughout for bad measure. I did all of my situps on Monday night, and I technically did all of my pushups, but I think my form was lousy on some of them (if I'm doing it for my own sake, I may as well push myself to do good form, as opposed to the half-assed job of it that we all used to do in the Navy just so we'd pass the PRT). During the last two sets (out of four sets of twenty pushups), I faltered near the end, and had to make them up. I finished out strong, and I think I technically did three or four more than I needed to, but like I said, the form wasn't stellar on all of them. I think a big part of the problem is that since I didn't do any last week, I don't benefit from continuous improvement - pushup capability tends to atrophy if you don't keep up with the gradual pyramid.

My hope is that the weather will clear a bit tomorrow, and since I'll be getting off work about half an hour earlier than expected to begin with (earlier if I can get there early), I'm hoping that I'll beat the afternoon and/or evening storm that we've had the last few nights. I'm still annoyed that the YMCA closes the indoor pool at the first flash of lightning - everyone I've mentioned this to has said that's stupid, and since they include a Navy P-3 Orion pilot and a diesel engine mechanic, I'm guessing that their backgrounds indicate that my initial reaction of "WTF? Closing an indoor pool for lightning?" was right on the money. What can I say, it's Virginia, even if it's not the deep south, there's still that pesky Mason-Dixon line.

Against my wishes, but following my better judgment, I think my best bet is to spend next week repeating the Week 1 plan, and go into week two the week after. All of the aforementioned chaos at work should be largely done after this week, and if I can get back on a regular post-work swim schedule that beats the average time of the electrical storms, I should be in pretty good shape. If I'd gotten a good go this week, I think I would have been okay, but with two cancelled swim workouts and a horrible showing on the pushups, I think a repeat of Week 1 is probably my best long-term bet, no matter how much I hate it.

As far as Arabic goes, I've been slacking on the flash cards over the last couple of days because I haven't had time to re-stack them after memorizing those words I'd been having trouble with. On the plus side, I've done listening/reading exercises from the Quran this week: سورة الواقعة (Surat al Waqiah, "the Inevitable", "the Event") on Tuesday, and سورة الحديد (Surat al Hadid, "The Iron") tonight. By the end of the weekend, I'm going to set my textbook and CD wallet up on my kitchen table with the hope that next week, I can spend an hour on Tuesday night and an hour on Thursday night doing a sura each night, followed by a lesson out of the textbook, plus flash cards in the morning and at night. Part of my recent success/pseudo-success in doing pool workouts has been preparing at night for the next morning in order to get to work early and leave early. My hope is that by doing a little bit of preparation and staging, I can facilitate more aggressive Arabic study by having the resources staged before me.

So, that's my status so far for this week: satisfactory on the Arabic, unsatisfactory on the workouts, but with the potential to improve by the time I rack out on Sunday evening.

Chops! I'm lapping you, buddy! You've done a great job of keeping me accountable, now it's my turn - time to get back to it! If you're already doing it (which I know you are from our brief conversations), it's time to post a few lines so that we know what's going on in Chopsland.

Trying Again

About a week and a half ago, I reported that I'd successfully completed the first week of my fitness schedule. Last week was a total bust. Due to forces beyond my control, and a few within my control, I lost any trace of momentum early in the week, and by Thursday and Friday, I just didn't care. I'm going to try to do week two this week, as opposed to restarting with week one. Week two calls for:

four 25 minute swims

one 35 minute yomp with 25 pound rucksack

three days of four sets of twenty situps and twenty pushups

The last part will be the tough one. Hopefully a week wasn't enough to atrophy my muscles to the point of being useless for this.

Arabic's going fine, though nothing done beyond flash cards last week. That is all. Thank you.

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Breathe

It's been far too long since I posted to this blog. The good news is that I haven't been posting because I've been doing. I may have picked an activity - now two activities - that don't lend themselves well to counting repetitions, but I have previously, will now, and will continue to compliment Chops on giving me a project that actually motivates me to accomplish things.

First, the Arabic. I've been slacking a little lately, but not much - I've been pretty consistent with the flash cards, with occasional reading/listening exercises from the Quran in English and Arabic, and the ambition to go through my Arabic textbook and my other materials. At the moment, I'm psuedo-Leitnering with a number of flash cards that I had trouble with - not quite fifty a day, but I've basically recommitted them to memory, and can move back into doing a different fifty each day within the next few days. Also, I'm not sure that I've posted since I found it, but I Googled something along the lines of "Arabic vocabulary" and came up with this a few weeks ago - I about soiled myself with joy. So, I once again have a disgustingly massive surplus of learning material, a good amount of motivation, and it's generating enough accomplishment to keep me thirsting for more at the moment.

The big thing that I've been trying to focus a lot of effort and discipline on lately has been physical training. Since before I began my brief stint as a Navy midshipman in 2000, I've been wanting to start and finish the BUD/S Warning Order Workout. I've come close a couple of times. Beyond the obvious issue of the sheer discipline required to stick with the program for the full nine weeks, most of what's stopped me in prior attempts has been time management. For example, when you work ten hours a day out in the middle of nowhere and commute an hour each way to get there and back, it doesn't leave much time to hit the gym. I haven't had the same issues in my current job and digs, but it's still tough to find the time when the gym is one place, you work in another, place, and you live in another place altogether. Another factor is the running: I hate running, I'm not a good runner, and as a result, I don't do it.

Based upon discussions with various officers and a great deal of reading, I've come to the conclusion that the way that all four branches of the military conduct physical training is seriously flawed. The following are the physical fitness testing procedures of the four DoD uniformed services.

Air Force: push-ups and sit-ups (1 minute apiece), 1.5 mile run

Army: push-ups and sit-ups (2 minutes apiece), 2 mile run

Marines Corps: sit-ups (2 minutes), pull-ups (untimed), 3 mile run

Navy: push-ups and sit-ups (2 minutes apiece), 1.5 mile run *or* 500 yard swim *or* 450 meter swim

Now, I can understand the need to have objective standards and metrics with which to score personnel in physical fitness. That having been said, it seems reasonable that these standards should reflect the actual work that one expects to do. For example, running is great exercise, but as American forces fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, how often do they find themselves doing life or death push-ups and sit-ups? Are three mile runs in running shoes, athletic shorts, and a T-shirt a frequent requirement when fighting against the Taliban? I can understand Marine Corps pull-ups a bit more, given their history of boarding and evacuating their landing craft by climbing up cargo nets and ropes in full kit. Now, let's compare all of this to the Navy SEAL Physical Fitness Test.

500 yard swim

2 minutes push-ups

2 minutes sit-ups

untimed pull-ups

1.5 mile run in boots and trousers

The Navy SEAL workout places more emphasis on the actual level and type of fitness that one would desire in a combat situation. I'm still not as impressed with the emphasis on push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups, but I can see more combat utility to running in boots and trousers and swimming than I can in the combat power of New Balance trainers and running shorts.

So, I want to train for a possible return to the military (or a related field), and get in generally excellent shape regardless, but given that I'm not actually in the military at the moment, I have more leeway to build my body the way I want it built. So, the first week of the BUD/S Warning Order Workout looks like this:

4 x 15 push-ups (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

4 x 20 sit-ups (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

3 x 3 pull-ups (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

15 minute swim (4-5 days)

2 mile run, 8:30 pace (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in lousy shape to run, and I don't enjoy it, and, oh yeah, I'm not convinced of the combat utility of running in shoes and shorts. I am, on the other hand, a fantastic swimmer, and fifteen minutes is a bit light. Since I'm starting off in fairly lousy shape, and since I have my own idea of what constitutes good combat physical training, my modified first week looks like this:

3 x 15 push-ups (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

3 x 20 sit-ups (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

25 minute swim (4 days)

35 minute yomp in boots and utility trousers, with a 25 pound rucksack

So, I actually accomplished all of that last week. My week went like this:

Monday: 25 minute swim, 3 x 15 push-ups, 3 x 20 sit-ups

Tuesday: 25 minute swim, stretch PT

Wednesday: 35 minute yomp with 25 pound rucksack, 3 x 15 push-ups, 3 x 20 sit-ups

Thursday: 25 minute swim, stretch PT

Friday: 25 minute swim, 3 x 15 push-ups, 3 x 20 sit-ups

My program lasts for nine weeks, and like the BUD/S Warning Order from which it's derived, it's a progressive workout that gets more ambitious and time-consuming with each passing week. My hope is to do the actual BUD/S Warning Order Workout once I've finished my "pre-phase", but I may just reformulate once again. So, during the coming week (starting tomorrow), the schedule is as follows:

4 x 20 push-ups (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

4 x 20 sit-ups (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

25 minute swim (4 days)

35 minute yomp in boots and utility trousers, with a 25 pound rucksack

We'll see how I do. So, from now on, I'll be blogging (hopefully not as sporadically) on both my Arabic studies, and on my physical training regimen. My sincere hope is that Chops will be goading me just as hard about working out as he has about the Arabic. So, tomorrow I'm back in the pool, and back to the push-ups and sit-ups in my flat. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...

Bollocks

I've been negligent about posting. I've been reasonably good about doing my Arabic (at least, I've been good about the flash cards), but I've been negligent about posting. My plan is to put together a post, probably for Friday. Totally.

Some kind of magic

I didn't blog about it, but last night I did a Low Intensity workout (Prasara Yoga, RPT 7, RPE 3, RPD 3). My back feels a lot better, but it's still a little stiff and sore in some movements.

This morning was our first MMA class at work. On the one hand, I'm very proud of myself for how far I've come, fitness-wise, in the last six months. On the other hand, I'm still way, way out of shape. The morning class was a good reality check. The other 3 guys in the class are in good shape, hang out at the gym a lot, etc. Me, not so much. On the other, other hand, MMA requires a different kind of fitness than getting on the treadmill and running for an hour. My partner was having trouble finishing up the last 20 jabs on the focus mitts.

The dilemma now becomes, what do I do with my normal workout? For now I think I'll continue on with my regular night time workout, but we'll see how that effects me. I might have to cut back in order to have enough gas in the tank for class. Only time will tell.

Calling in

My lower back hurts. I don't know what I did to it, but it's been angry all day. I'm going to take today as a sick day or something from working out.

Some kind of milestone

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 1)

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 7, RPD2)

Pullups (2, then some negatives)

Okay, so I didn't actually manage two full pullups. I did one, then about 90% of another one - I got up to where the bar was at eye level, but that's as far as I could go. Seeing as how I couldn't actually do one last time I tried, I'm pretty stoked about this. After that, I did a set of assisted pullups/negatives where I would use my legs to help on the way up, then do a negative. I did two sets of five of these.

For FlowFit, we did 11 reps in 12 minutes. The actual time came to something like 12:10. My RPE might have bumped up to 8 for that last set, but overall I felt more like a 7. My form keeps getting better, but at the same time, I keep finding more things to improve, so the RPT is basically treading water at 7.

Slight Improvement

Knife Draw x 200, Grand Total: 5600

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 2)

Swedish in the car

It's still hot today, but much better than yesterday. So, I managed 13 rounds of FlowFit in 17:30 today. I did make one break for 20 seconds or so, but other than that it was "continuous". The quotes are because I had to do things like pause for a breath or two at the bottom of various movements, especially the mountain climbers. The week and a half off is very apparent. I felt like I was going to die by round 10 (incidentally, that's the round after which I stopped for my mini-breather). And there was still 30 seconds on the clock after round 13. I should have done another round, since I've decided to go more for time than reps, but damn I was exhausted.

In other news, one of the awesome Personal Trainers that works in the gym at my workplace has decided to offer a 10 week MMA (that's mixed martial arts for those not in the know) class. Or rather a series of them. I signed up for the Tuesday/Thursday morning 8am class, and I should know tomorrow whether or not I got the schedule I wanted or if I got waitlisted. This class won't work well with my 4x7 schedule, but oh well, it seems like an awesome opportunity.

So freakin' hot

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 8, RPD 1)

10 rounds of FlowFit. As expected after a week off, it was not continuous. *sigh* maybe next cycle.

It's over 90 degrees in my living room as I write this. It's nearly 10pm, and it's still over 90 degrees. I'm going to take a cold shower and go to sleep.

Pestilence strikes again

Knife draw x 500, Grand Total: 5400

My cold is getting bad. It's supposed to be a Low Intensity day, but I'm taking the day off to rest. I was going to just do 100 reps, but I was watching TV and ended up going for 500. Now my elbow is sore and hand is cramping up.

Damn

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 3)

Pullups (negatives and assisted)

Only 16 rounds of FlowFit today. Seeing as how I did 15 last High Intensity day, that's not great. On the other hand, it was 16 continuous rounds, so that's cool (and that took me about 18:15). I feel like I pushed it too hard yesterday, so I didn't have enough energy for a really good workout. I ended up pausing for breath in most of the individual exercises on the last few rounds. Still, that's closer to the goal than taking 90 second breathers every 3 or 4 rounds, which is what I had to do last FlowFit cycle.

On the pullup front, I very nearly managed a pullup tonight. I was going to wait until next Medium day to try, but I couldn't stop myself. I got about 90% there. I just couldn't bring my chest to the bar. I immediately made a second attempt, which got me about 2/3 of the way up. Then I jumped right into negatives, of which I did 5 total. I finished up with some assisted pullups (6, I think). I don't know that I'll hit my goal of 20 pullups, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do 2 or 3 by the end of this cycle.

Checking In

I haven't posted much lately, not because I'm not doing flash cards, but because flash cards are pretty boring when it comes to posting. Save for a couple of missed evenings, I've been pretty good about the flash cards this week and last, and I'm slowly gaining confidence with the forty-some-odd words that I've been concentrating on for the last week of so. Once I've got those down, maybe some time next week, I'll start the whole bunch in rotation using the Leitner System. Last week, while yomping, I listened to سورة ق(Surat al Qaf (an Arabic letter)) and سورة الذاريات‎ (Surat ad Dhariyat, "The Winnowing Winds"). Next up is سورة الطور (Surat at Tur, "The Mount"), which I'll be doing as a reading/listening exercise, maybe tonight if I can squeeze it in.

I mentioned last week that I've started working out, and I'm going to add that to my "reps" posts starting next week. Last week, I think I swam three times and yomped once. I'm going for at least the same thing this week, although if I don't swim today then it's likely that it will be three and one again. Next week, my hope is to start adding pushups and situps. I'll blog about it as it happens. Until then, take care, keep up on your own reps if you're doing something, and all hail Chops!

Non-stop action

Knife draw x 200, Grand Total: 4900

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 7, RPD 3)

Pullup Stuff

Well, I hit 11 rounds of FlowFit level 3 today. Mrs Chops stopped at 10, since there was only 30 seconds left on the clock, but my goal was actually 12 minutes of continuous FlowFit, so I kept going and finished the round after the timer went off. It ended up being something like 12:40. The most "rest" I had was pausing for an extra breath or two between rounds. Given that, I'm pretty impressed that I was able to keep the RPT up pretty well.

I debated on whether or not to even attempt a pullup this week or just stick with the negatives. In the end, I gave it a shot. I got about 3/4 of the way up to the bar, which is actually pretty awesome for me. After that, I did a negative for 12 seconds, then after some rest, another for 7 seconds. Finally, finished up with 5 assisted pullups. I'm now very optimistic about my chances of doing one unassisted dead hang pullup on the next microcycle. This actually makes my night. I'm still smiling.

The Rollercoaster

Knife draw x 200, Grand Total: 4700

BER Prasara Yoga (RPT 8, RPE 4, RPD 2)

Intuflow (RPT 6, RPE 2, RPD 1)

Just felt kind of off with the Intuflow today, not at my best. I wonder if it's anything to do with this cold I'm coming down with.

I can't believe how awesome I felt after the Prasara, though. Holy crap, more people should try it. It's good. My soreness from the pullups is gone, for now anyway. I'm sure it'll be back in the morning.

Back to 200 reps with the knife today. I was actually going to shoot for 300, but my hand was getting tired, so I called it quits at 200.

Restful Day

Knife draw x 100, Grand Total: 4500

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)

No intensity day yesterday, so I just did some Intuflow, paying attention to what hurts (lats and biceps from the pullups). I also did my knife work. I had planned on doing more, but it was actually difficult to get the 100 reps in as it was.

Negative Progress?

Knife draw x 100, Grand Total: 4400

Intuflow (RPT 9, RPE 2, RPD 1)

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 2)

Pullups (Negatives, Assisted)

Did my knife reps while barbecuing dinner. Nothing special, still working on minimizing extraneous movement during the drawstroke.

We did 15 rounds of FlowFit level 3 in 18 minutes, which, upon further contemplation, is awesome. Two Months ago, we got up to 18 rounds of level 2 in 18 minutes, and now we're already up to 15 in 18. If I hit 18 in the next microcycle or two, I'm going to have to stretch the time out to 20 minutes. Which is cool because that was the original goal for this quarter, 20 reps in 20 minutes, but I think I was talking about level 2. I'm going to have to go back and check on that.

I managed to hold my first negative of the evening for 9 seconds. Tonight I rested in between for 5 minutes between rounds. The second round I did 2 negatives, the first one for nearly 8 seconds, the second was closer to 4. Another five minute rest and I had a 6 second negative followed by 5 assisted pullups (feet on a chair behind me). At this rate, I might actually be able to do 2 consecutive pullups at the end of this 4x7.

Enough push, how about some pull?

Knife draw x 200, Grand Total: 4300

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 1, RPD 1)

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 7, RPD 2)

Some Pullups, sort of.

8 rounds of FlowFit today. After round 8, there was 40 seconds left on the clock, so I didn't go for round 9. I think RPE-wise, I could have stacked another round on there and been fine. I'll try to do with a little less rest next Medium day.

After I was mostly cooled down, I took out the pullup bar and did a couple assisted (by my legs on a chair) pullups. Then a brief rest followed by a couple of negatives. A couple of sources say that if you can make a negative last for 8-10 seconds, you can probably do a pullup. My longest negative was almost 5 seconds. Still quite a ways to go there.

Re-evaluation

Knife draw x 200, Grand Total: 4100

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 1)

BER Prasara Yoga flow (RPT 7, RPE 3, RPD 2)

I did 100 knife draws yesterday, even though I didn't blog it. I did 200 today in the back yard while the kids were playing. This week I came to realize that my draw was too big, using as much shoulder movement as elbow movement. This is bad, for various reasons I don't feel like going into right now. After I had that (admittedly minor) epiphany, I've been working on making the draw smaller, more economical instead of drawing on the move, which was originally going to be my focus for the week.

Yoga day today. Pigeon pose especially felt great today. I really think I managed to release most of the tension on my hip flexors. The supine bridge (I actually don't know the yoga name for this pose, it's basically a back bridge on your shoulders instead of your head like I used to do back in my wrestling days) also helped there. Overall, I feel like my form on these poses is getting much better, and that means better compensation for my workouts and more tension released.

Super Fly Update

Okay, so, I haven't been as diligent this week as I have in some recent weeks. I've missed a couple of flash card sessions due to late nights or just forgetting to do the cards right after my صلاة (salat, "prayer") time في الصباح (fi as subuh, "in the morning"). Even so, I've only missed one or two times this week. During the last couple of weeks, I'd been doing the same fifty cards over and over again to learn those new words I put down. Now, I'm doing the next forty-five-ish cards to learn those words. Once I've done that, and fixed the cards that have issues (five or six at the moment), I think I'm going to finally take Chops' advice and start using the Leitner System of spaced repetition.

I've also started something that I'm hoping to turn into a secondary "repetitions" and/or accountability project for posting on this blog: physical training/exercise/working out. Since last Wednesday, I've been in the pool four times. I'm hoping to get to work at a reasonable hour today and go for a yomp this afternoon. The physical training plan I hope to (eventually) implement can be seen on the bottom of the sidebar at my blog, and includes swimming, yomping, pushups, and situps, with a possibility of eventually doing pullups. I may try to start the formal program next week, given that I've got momentum at the moment and want to keep going on it. The yomping seems to be the tough thing to motivate myself to do, but if I can get in the habit of doing one per week, I'll be golden.

Since Tuesdays and Thursdays are my designated Arabic days, and Tuesday evening was beyond chaotic, my plan is to do a Quran reading and maybe another chapter from my textbook this evening when I get back from work. If I do, I'll note it. In the mean time, have a fantastic day, kids.

Long way to go

Knife draw x 60, Grand Total: 3780

FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 2)

Only had time for 60 reps with the knife today. Busy busy. I did get 12 rounds of FlowFit level 3 done in 18 minutes, though. And even if I'd had another 5 minutes, I was done at 12. I had to slow down and concentrate very hard on keeping my RPT up for the last 2 rounds.

I talked to Mrs Chops today about me getting back into regular martial arts practice. Since I'm getting back on the Crazy Monkey wagon, we decided that if I could find a local training partner, I could have one night a week to work out. Also, I can go see one of the Coaches up in the North Bay once every month or two for a private lesson. Yay. Now I just need to find somebody in the area who wants to box in my back yard.

Explosions

Knife draw x 100, Grand Total: 3720

Intuflow Intermediate (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 2)

FlowFit x 7 (RPT 6, RPE 6, RPD 2) Level 3

2 x 2 minute rounds of shadow boxing

some pullup type activity on a tree in the back yard

Before dinner tonight, the kids were playing in the back yard. I was out there supervising, so I took the opportunity to knock out a couple of rounds of shadow boxing. I pounded on the heavy bag a little, but not enough to really document. I also did some pullups on a tree with leg assist (I was standing on the kids' slide).

The Mrs and I decided to kick the FlowFit up a notch and try the level 3 movements. I was worried that it would hurt my pace and get me less of a workout in the same amount of time, since some of the movements take more time. I worried for nothing. Sure, it's going to be difficult to hit the same numbers of reps, but it's still kicking my ass. The movements are a lot more explosive. For instance, the quad squat become a quad hop, where you bounce entirely off the ground, and the rotating table becomes the springing tripod, where you're bouncing your whole upper body off the ground with one arm. It's a pretty intense workout.

I noticed something else about RPE after this exercise. For those that don't know, RPE stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion. If sitting on your ass watching TV is a 1, then a 10 is the hardest you've ever worked in your life. Before I started working out, I pretty much had two speeds, 1 and 10. Either I was surfing the internet or I was drenched in sweat, barely able to breath. As I continue my working out, the various levels in between are getting more pronounced. Since I'm a sweat hog and will break a sweat just wandering around the kitchen, I have to think about things like heart rate, breathing rate, and speed of recovery to gauge my RPE. At the end of today's session, I would have said it was an 8. I was sweating and breathing hard. But then I noticed that I recovered my breathing to a normal-ish state very quickly, and my heart wasn't thumping scary hard in my chest. After taking that into consideration, I revised my RPE down to a 6. Overall, I think that's a good indicator that my level of fitness is improving.

Yarr

BER Yoga Compensation (RPT 7, RPE 4, RPD 2)

Yesterday I did 100 knife draws, but didn't blog it, and today I'm blogging my workout, but I didn't do any knife draws.

Today's yoga was pretty good, even if the kids were literally running around, over, and under the wife and I as we were doing it. I felt like I got deeper than usual into most of the poses. I should totally be doing Intuflow, but I'm not in the mood. I've been cranky all day.

Another milestone

Knife Draw x 100, Grand Total: 3520

BER Fatloss Circuit C (RPT 8, RPE 9, RPD 2)

Swedish in the car

Okay, so I only listened to Swedish during the morning commute today, so I'll dock half a point there. Still, I've listened to lesson 7 three times now (okay, only two since I got back on the wagon this week), and I'm starting to get it. Sad, because these are supposed to be one lesson per day. Oh well.

No Intuflow today. The kids got to bed late, so I'm in a hurry to get worked out and go to bed. Again. It's kind of a theme for this week.

Last workout of the Fat Loss 4x7. In case you're keeping score, I can now hit the spinal rock to deck squat at will. I think I fumbled one of those, during the last round. I didn't lose a lot of weight during this cycle, but true to the name, I burned off quite a bit of fat and replaced it with muscle. Mrs. Chops didn't like the exercises in this workout though, so I'm thinking we'll do another FlowFit based 4x7 next. I'll show her videos of the various options, such as the other BER workouts (General Athleticism, Functional Hypertrophy, and Longevity) and maybe Forward Pressure, and see what she feels like doing. No matter what, I'm going to work pullups into the next cycle. I've made zero progress towards that goal. And I actually don't even remember what my other specific goals were. Since the family isn't going to leave me for the summer, I probably won't get to go play parkour anyway. Maybe I should just start running.

Ugh

Knife Draw x 100, Grand Total: 3420

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)

BER Fatloss Circuit C (RPT 7, RPE 7, RPE 2)

Swedish in the car

Today was supposed to be Medium Intensity, but the amount of rest between rounds has been decreased to 15 seconds. I really had to slow down my reps to keep my RPE under 8. As far as Intuflow, I'm probably 75% on the Intermediate program now. Good workout, all around.

So sleepy, going to bed now.

Back on the Wagon

Knife Draw x 100, Grand Total: 3320

BER Prasara Yoga flow x 3 (RPT 7, RPE 4, RPD 2)

Swedish in the car

Ooooh, the daily status list is getting to look a little like old times. As you can see from the last two posts, I'm back on the knife work. I upped the reps to make up for lost time. I didn't do anything fancy, but since I had planned to work on drawing on the move this quarter, I did all my drawing while walking around my living room and kitchen. It's not exactly as I had planned, but I think it's going to work for a while.

Yoga went well. I felt pretty good about my form in some poses, but some were kind of mediocre. In general, I got better towards the end of the set. I have chronically tight hip flexors, so pigeon pose is my absolute favorite. Rather than try to explain it, here's a video:

Oh yeah...

Knife draw x 100, Grand Total: 3220

Stabby McStabbin is back.

Ichiban Mumtaz

When I was originally taking Arabic, I was in the class with two active duty Marines who were getting their commissions. I think that both of them had been stationed in Japan, so when we learned the word for "excellent" or "fantastic" (ممتاز, "mumtaz"), they paired it with Japanese for "number one" ("ichiban" - I'm not going to try to get a translation because Chops will berate me if I botch it) to get "number one excellent" - "ichiban mumtaz". Today, I've been ichiban mumtaz.

So, I did my fifty-ish flash cards, both this morning after my Bible and BCP readings, and upon returning from work. (There are a few of them that have been yanked for one reason or another, mainly ones that need to be fixed, so it's not quite fifty.) I think I mentioned previously that I've been using the same fifty cards for going on two weeks now, because they're new and I want to get to know those words. Once I've got those ones down pat, I'll switch to the next fifty, the combined total of which are those flash cards that I finally did a few weeks ago after taking forever to just sit down and do them. So, anyway, forty-five-ish flash cards, twice today, which is a habit that I was pretty good about last week and have been good about so far this week.

After I'd finished with the flash cards, I did another study-reading from the Quran, this time being سورة الحجرات (al Hujurat, "The Apartment"/"The Chambers"). (Apparently God inspired Muhammed to write an entire chapter on how people shouldn't disturb him when was in his digs. Who knew?) Once that was done, I finally, at long last, broke out the Ahlan wa Sahlan textbook and did the CD-accompanied exercises for the first chapter. At some point, I'm going to have to start going through the lessons beforehand, it's going to take additional time, and then I'm going to have to do the audio bit; for now, though, it's all review, and pretty easy review at that, so it only took the eleven or so minutes for the first track of the CD. It's all stuff that I knew, but I want to go through the book from start to finish, just to make sure that I don't miss anything.

So, the results so far this week are fantastic. Also, I'm about to go hit the pool, which is a great thing, and could result in me emulating Chops by transitioning into a second bloggable activity. That, ladies and gentlemen, is great success at its finest.

Yay

BER Fatloss Circuit C (RPT 8, RPE 9, RPD 3)

Some lingering soreness in my knee from tweaking it yesterday. I took it easy on the one-legged squats by keeping my free leg toe on the ground to stabilize the descent. Also, I can still hit the spinal rock to deck squat, at at least 50% reliability.

It's late. I'd love to say I'm going to do Intuflow now, but I'm probably going to go to sleep as soon as I stop sweating.

Minor Mishap

BER Fatloss Circuit C (RPT 8, RPE 6, RPD 3)

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 2)

As we were sitting around last night, thinking about going to sleep, Mrs Chops looks over at me and says "Weren't we supposed to work out tonight?". Shit. So we skipped a Low Intensity day. I thought about picking up today as a Low, then tomorrow as Medium, etc, but instead we just skipped it and went right into Medium today.

Workout was fine. I wanted to get the workout done, so I skipped Intuflow. I'm about to do it, right after I post this. I did kind of tweak my knee a little on one of the one-legged squat sets, though. Some Intuflow ought to sort it out.

I also started on some Kanji flashcards today. Just a couple, kind of greasing the way back into it.

(edited to add Intuflow numbers)

Fiddy Cards, and the Conquest

Okay, so the last few days I've been focusing on the same set of fifty flash cards, because they're new and I'm not very familiar with them yet. I'm making progress, though, and with every run-through (these being separated by between eight and twelve hours) I'm getting more familiar with the new vocabulary, three or four words at a shot. I also read through as I was listening to سورة الفتح (al Fath, "Victory"/"Conquest") yesterday, and tried to pick words out as I went; however, I wasn't looking at the Arabic text at the same time, so I didn't get that benefit out of it. Either this weekend or next week, I want to practice that method (listening to and reading both the Arabic and the English texts) for the next sura, سورة الحجرات (al Hujurat, "The Chambers"). Assuming that next week isn't the colossal crap fest that this week was with the holiday, I'm hoping to spend half an hour of one evening doing one of the readings out of the Quran, and half an hour on another evening doing one of the lessons out of the book. The plan is to keep up with the cards, too.

I'd just like to reiterate that I absolutely loathe holiday weeks. They're worthless, you never really get caught up until it's all over. Ugh. At least I'm making progress.

Great Workout

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)

BER Fatloss Circuit C (RPT 8, RPE 9, RPD 2)

I started off with Intuflow while the boys were watching TV and hitting each other with foam swords. I felt a bit more stiff than I remember, which is probably due to not working out at all for a week, and not being too regular with the IF in the weeks before I stopped. I took my time and went as deep as I could into the movements. Although I mainly kept it at beginner level, I did add some additional Intermediate level moves in at the end for areas that felt like they still needed attention (Thoracic Spine and shoulder circles being two of them). It's worth noting that I think my 4CBD today was the best I've ever done it.

After putting the kids to bed early, we hit the High Intensity workout. At cycle 5 of the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution Fat Loss 4x7, you use the same circuit on Medium and High Intensity days. It's up to you to regulate your RPE to stay in the target range of 5-7 on the Medium day. Today I really tried to pay attention to my RPT, since I figured it had gone to hell with a week off. Instead, I was able to maintain strict form for longer than before. I guess I really did need that recuperation time. I was gassing badly on the fifth round through the circuit, so I just focused on cranking out the current exercise with the best form I could, all through the round. It's not possible for me to overstate how awesome I feel about this workout. I'm very happy with my performance today.

More random chops-world news, both workout related. One, I managed to hit the "spinal rock to deck squat" move today for the first time. Not only did I do it, but I managed it about 40% of the time (I hit it every time during the third round, but then fatigue set in and made it difficult). Two, last night while getting ready for bed, I caught a look at myself in the mirror with no shirt on. I'm still a disgusting fatass, but my belly is noticeably smaller, and my pecs and shoulders are just a tad wider. This is great, since I'm not really losing much weight. My pants were getting loose for while, then the thighs started getting tighter due to all the squats. I'm going to have to buy some old Hammer Pants if this keeps up.

Ugh

I know that Chops is dragging ass, and rightfully so with all of the crap he's had to deal with lately. I had a great and productive week with my flash cards last week, and as it is with all worthless three day weekends, this week has been a total joke. It's Thursday, and I'm finally back on track, and did fifty cards this morning. I think I'm going to keep doing these same fifty for three or four days to try to imprint the new words in my memory. More on that when there's more to report.

I Really Needed That

BER Fatloss Circuit C (RPT 7, RPE 7, RPD 2)

So last week my body pretty much broke down. I haven't had more than 6 hours sleep in months, and actually getting 6 was pretty rare. Average was closer to 5, and it was broken up into 2 or 3 chunks. Consequently, I hit a wall. Mrs Chops wasn't feeling much better. So, we decided to take a week off and recharge. I went to bed at 9:30 for a few nights, took naps on the weekend, etc. I'm still tired as hell, but I am feeling much, much better than I was last week.

Today was Medium Intensity, and I only did 4 rounds of Circuit C instead of 5, but that's just because I didn't realize it was supposed to be 5 rounds. We worked out while the kids were up, which is always fun. Pro: they sometimes try to mimic the exercises we're doing, which is cute. Con: They like to try crawling under or behind us, which is dangerous if we don't notice. We managed to get through the night with no injuries, though, so that's a success in my book.

In random chops-world news, I finished reading "Emergency" by Neil Strauss. Good book. Some kind soul also gave me a copy of Southnarc's Reverse Edge Methods Vol 1 as a gift, which I watched this last weekend. It's good, really good. On one hand, it's almost all stuff that I've already learned from my previous Filipino Martial Arts experience. On the other hand, it's put together in a very logical and easy to understand manner, and all the superfluous stuff is stripped out. And I still have the Ray Floro DVD (I really should give it back, but I like it...) which I watch in bits and pieces. Also, I read a few blog articles on language acquisition which got me all fired up to get back on my Kanji and Svenska practice.

So, with the batteries recharged, look forward to regular updates again, and they should even include my non-workout activities plus knife work.

Gimme More

It's Thursday evening. My report for today is that I've kept up with fifty flash cards, twice per day, for the entirety of this week. Also, I went on a yomp this morning, and listened to a sura of the Quran (sura 47, "Muhammed"). I don't think that I retained that much, so I'll probably listen to it again, but doing is doing, right? I'm about to shut down for the evening, but after I do some reading, I'll redo those fifty flash cards from this morning, and do fifty more tomorrow.

As I was going through this morning, I once again found duplicates that popped up when I made all of those flash cards two weeks ago, so this evening I'll yank the duplicates. I'm starting to be a bit more hit-and-miss as I get into the newer cards. I think I'll try to go through the whole deck a couple of times over the course of the next, and once I've run through a couple of times, I'll finally start doing the Leitner Method as recommended by Chops. It looks like a good method, but I feel confident in waiting/having waited until I could gain some familiarity with the new words. So, when I start that, I'll be sure to post about it.

Consistency

So, I wasn't terribly consistent last week, but I tried to at least listen to Arabic throughout the week. This week, I've done fifty flash cards per day, twice a day (the same fifty), right when I wake up and right before I go to bed. I've been trying to develop routines for the morning and evening.

Morning

Bible reading

Book of Common Prayer reading

fifty Arabic flash cards

And...

Evening

repeat fifty Arabic flash cards

repeat Bible reading

Book of Common Prayer reading

The intention was to do this last week, but let's just say that last week was horrible, and I'm impressed that I had the mental will to even make it to bed by the end of the week. So... Anyway, yeah, as I'm writing this, two hundred fifty reps with the flash cards already, hopefully another five hundred by the end of the week. I'm also going to try to do another reading from the Quran in English and Arabic, because I'm not sure how much good that first one did me, but I think that if I do more of those, they'll help. If I can keep it up this week, then I'll try to do at least one lesson out of the book next week.

الله أكبر - Allahu akbar, "God is [great/greatest]", also called the Takbir

C'mon, Seriously?

Fatloss Circuit C (RPT 6, RPE 8, RPD 2)

I almost called it a night again. It's been hot as hell here the last few days, and my house has no AC and inadequate ventilation, which means that nobody has got a decent amount of sleep in a long, long time. I skipped Intuflow again, as well. For the last month, we've had visitors, which has been slowly screwing with my evening schedule. Add the lack of sleep to that, and you can see why I'm loathe to add even the 15 minutes Intuflow takes. So now I'm hot and sweaty, it's 10pm, and I'm unlikely to cool off before 11. Fuck it, I think I'm going to take a cold shower.

Holeeee crap

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 1)

Fatloss Circuit B (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 2)

Intuflow was almost completely Intermediate level movements, except for the parts I couldn't remember, which were few. Felt pretty good, but I still need to get used to the different moves.

The workout itself was tough. 15 seconds between rounds. That hurt, a lot. I noticed my individual reps slowing down quite a bit towards the end as I strove to maintain good form. Seriously, this one was hard. Next week sees the end of separate circuits on Medium and High intensity days. There's only one, more complicated circuit, and the days vary only by how hard you push it. Can't wait for that...

Well...

The Good News is that my back only hurts a little bit today, and that only started about an hour ago. It was fine through the day. The Bad News is that Mrs Chops and I are both dead-on-our-feet tired, for different reasons. I was going to push through with the High Intensity workout, but she made a strong case for postponing until tomorrow.

Seriously, I'm fucking exhausted. Going to sleep now.

Craptastic

Fatloss Circuit A (RPT 8, RPE 7, RPD 5)

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 4)

Lately, because we want to get the workout over with so we can go to sleep, we often neglect Intuflow before the workout. Afterwards, I might do some half-assed Intuflow movements, and Mrs Chops will go watch TV. Today started off no different. However, in my last set of one-legged squats, I lost my balance. My whole body jerked in the opposite direction to keep from falling over, but I also managed to somehow tweak the muscles in my lower back on the right side. Once I was done with the set, I went right into Intuflow to try and contain the damage. I started at the top and worked my way down, trying to release whatever tension chain had pulled my back out of shape. I finished with some spinal rocks and skipped the quad squats and 4CBD. I even managed to work the intermediate spinal movements in there.

I'm just sitting here on my chair, propped up with pillows, but it still hurts. I'm hoping this is a "gone by morning" type of hurt.

Rough, Just the Way Your Mother Likes It

Last night was rough, but I still managed to spend an inordinate amount of time studying Arabic... And I had some whiskey. Irony, thy name is Fly.


For the record, that's an Arabic Bible, and while I do have an English/Arabic Quran, the Bible looks cooler. Anyway, I actually did a reading of سورة الأحقاف‎, Surat al Ahqaf, "The Dunes", while listening to an Arabic and English recitation of the Pickthall Translation. My hard copy is the Maulana Muhammad Ali translation, but it's sort of like reading and hearing two different translations of the Bible, sometimes it helps you to get the concept better than hearing just one word. Plus, the Arabic's the same in both the audio and printed versions. As I have time, I hope to keep using this method. I had a tough time staying caught up with the reading last night, but I was recognizing a lot of words as they were recited, and hopefully practice will make me better able to listen and read along.

Also, I think I may have some redundant flash cards, even though I already went through and tried to yank the redundant ones - that was before I made a bunch more. So yesterday, while I was sitting at the dealership waiting for them to change my oil, but before they showed me that I needed to have a grand worth of work done on my truck, I went through one hundred fifty flash cards - that's thrice what I'd normally try to do and then redo in a day. I didn't find any redundancies, but those would have been in the newer cards anyway, so I'll keep checking at some point this week; however, given that I basically spent about an hour and a half yesterday studying Arabic, I'm going to pass for today.

!شكرا جزيلا - Shukran jazillan! - Thank you very much!
!مع السلامة - Ma al salama! - Goodbye!

The Not-So-Triumphant Return

Fat Loss Circuit B

Intuflow (RPT 9, RPE 3, RPD 1)

Lots of watching the kids

It's been a rough week or so. With Sparks in town, I usually find myself chatting with him or playing Mario Kart after my workouts, so I forget to blog until I'm halfway asleep.

A week ago, Mrs Chops and I went to Black Angus for dinner, and I ended up too stuffed to get my workout in, so I had to give myself an extra "No Intensity Day" between the low and medium days. This week, we had friends over for a barbecue on our High Intensity day, so we had to miss that and make it up today. I also feel like noting that the High Intensity days are nearly killing me, in a good way. The first microcyle had 3-5 minutes of rest between sets, then 1-3 minutes, and now today had 30 seconds of rest between sets. Next week is 15 seconds. I might just want to walk the 3 blocks to the fire station and do my workout there, so I can save the Mrs the trouble of calling 911.

I was in a hurry to get the pain over with, so we did an abbreviated Intuflow today, and we hurried it the hell up. Completely skipped the last part, from 4CBD to the end. But I have tried working some of the Intermediate movements during the day lately.

Flash Card Mania

My wrist hurts, because I just spent the last two hours (or more?) making seventy some-odd flash cards, mainly from this list. Also, since my last post (I think?), I downloaded the entire library of Language Survival Kits from the DLI website I'd mentioned:

Arabic - Egyptian

Arabic - Gulf/Emirati

Arabic - Iraqi

Arabic - Moroccan

Arabic - Sudanese

Arabic - Syrian

Arabic - Tunisian

Azeri/Azerbaijani

Dari

French

Hebrew

Kurdish - Kurmanje

Kurdish - Sorani

Pashto - Afghan

Persian - Iranian

Pushtu - Peshawari

Urdu

I decided to forego Uzbek since it's not written in Arabic/Persian letters in the guide. So, the flash cards I've been meaning to make for months? They're done. And that huge cache of regional Arabic language survival guides? I have them archived. Unfortunately, it's going to take some trickery (and maybe some help from Chops?) to get Windows Media Player to recognize them for synchronization onto my mp3 player, but that ought to be a minor issue. Besides, the real value is in the printed material, which can be used to make some more flash cards.

Now that all of those flash cards are made, the next step is to get back into regular flash card usage in the mornings and evenings - tomorrow, maybe? - to reinforce new vocabulary. The other element to introduce is the actual textbook exercises, which I may start on Thursday. I'm going to try to do one or two lessons per week. There are thirty lessons in the book, which I think is the equivalent of two years worth of instruction.

For now, though, I'm going to bed. I may have a secondary project like Chops' starting up tomorrow morning, if I can drag my ass out of bed early enough.

Off

No Intensity Day
Intuflow (RPT 9, RPE 2, RPD 1)

That's it. No Intensity. None.

Been Busy

Wednesday Night:
BER Fatloss Circuit A
Prasara Compensation

Last Night:
Intuflow (RPT 9, RPE 2, RPD 1)
BER Fatloss Circuit B

Sorry, with the "little" brother in town, my evening schedule has changed a bit. I'm finding it hard to blog before I go to bed.

Wednesday night, we just jumped right into the Fat Loss program from the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution (BER) ebook. Medium intensity day for the first 4 microcycles is focused on strength. There are only three exercises, and you do each one for 45 seconds before resting for 60 seconds and moving on to the next. One round is 45 seconds exercise 1, 60 seconds rest, 45 seconds exercise 2, 60 seconds rest, 45 seconds of exercise 3, 60 seconds rest. We did 4 rounds of that. I don't want to spoil the secrets, but the exercise 3 is one legged squat, so it's actually 45 seconds on each leg, with no rest between. And I've never been able to to a good one legged squat. Luckily, at the very beginner level, you can use a low table or something for support. I'm a sick, sick man, I guess, because I can't wait to get good at these. After I was done, Mrs Chops watched TV while Sparky and I did the Prasara flow. He really seems to like it, even the parts neither one of us can actually do yet.

Last night, I warmed up with some Intuflow while the kids were playing Mario Kart. My form felt awesome, actually. I want to move on to the Intermediate level, but I don't think Mrs Chops is ready for it, so I'm staying at Beginner with her. After the youngest went to bed (he got up at 4am, so we put him to bed a little earlier than usual), the Mrs and I did the BER fat loss circuit B. On High Intensity days, the BER fat loss program has you doing a "Metabolic Resistance" circuit. I was okay on most of the exercises except for the lateral leg swoop (the exact same exercise in the beginner level of FlowFit that I was doing for the last 4x7). In FlowFit, you end up doing the lateral leg swoop once on each side per rep. This one had me doing 10 per side per rep. And there were 5 reps. So the most I've ever done in one session is 19, and last night I did 50. Today is Ouch. Very Ouch. Also, it's hard to do jump squats when the kids are sleeping. Luckily the oldest was still up, and working out with us, while the youngest was soundly passed out.

No Prasara last night. I was exhausted. I did managed to fit some extra ankle mobility and Cossack squats in there, since I have a minor goal of strengthening my ankles. In fact, here's a clip from Coach Murdock's new Ankle Strength video:

The End (or is it?)

Prasara Compensation Flow x 1
Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 3, RPD 1)

Even though today is technically the last day of the current cycle, we decided to try the custom compensatory Prasara yoga flow from the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution book I bought. We did it twice, once as it was being taught, then again as it was demonstrated. I got Sparky, my little brother, to join in. He said it was fun, so we'll see if he sticks with it. I enjoyed it, even the poses I couldn't get into.

After that, I did some Intuflow while explaining RMAX to Sparky. I finished up with some Cossack squats to work on my ankles.

Wahooooo

Yesterday:
Screwing Pressup 2x5 (RPT 8, RPE 4, RPD 3)
Be Breathed (RPT 7, RPE 5, RPD 4)

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 7, RPD 3)

Today:
Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 1, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 4)

I was too tired to blog last night. Friday night, my little brother was here, and the kids were so excited that they didn't get to bed until after 10:30. So the Mrs and I had no time to work out. I did my Low Intensity day in the morning (pressups and be breathed), then my Medium Intensity day in the evening (FlowFit x 9).

Today was the last High Intensity day of this 28 day cycle, and I did 19 reps of FlowFit in 18 minutes. I was working almost continuously the whole time. Completely awesome. I also bought the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution ebook today, and spent a little time reading bits of it. I'm going to be starting the Fat Loss program on Wednesday. It looks pretty good.

One more High Intensity day to go

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 9, RPD 3)
Kanji Review
Swedish in the Car

Intuflow felt pretty good overall today, and downright excellent in parts. FlowFit was much improved too. I did the first 10 or so at about a one per minute pace, and my form was really, really good. Then I started to get tired. Form started to slide, but oddly enough, my pace actually got faster, to where it was taking about 45 seconds for one rep. At one point, I did stop and breath for 40 seconds, but that was my longest break. And I managed to get 18 reps in 17:40. Afterwards, I did some sort of butterflies just to get my breathing on track.

Two more to go

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 6, RPD 3)
Be Breathed (RPT 8, RPE 4, RPD 1)
Screwing Arm Pressups 1x5 (RPT 8, RPE 4, RPD 3)

Yesterday the whole family took an hour long walk, so I counted that as a Light workout. Especially since it was still 90 degrees out at 7pm when we set out. I just didn't have any more workout in me. I'm weak against the heat.

Today, we took a shorter walk, only about 30 minutes, so I felt I should actually work out. I did 8 reps of FlowFit in 15 minutes (12:40, actually), and I paid extra special attention to my form, which felt good. I even kept both hands on the floor for all the leg swoops. I could have done another couple of reps, but since today is also in the 90s, I figured I'd call it good at 8. Mrs. Chops did about three hundred reps, from what I could see. She's a cardio machine these days.

After a brief pause to yell at my kids, I did 10 butterflies (form broke down a little on number 10, other than that it was pretty awesome). I think I'm going to have to add the next Be Breathed exercise to the chain on my next Low Intensity day. Finished up with one set of five Screwing Arm Pressups. I did these slower than usual, and was more strict on form than usual. If it weren't for the heat, I might have gone for another set.

More Arabic Today

Original title, right? Really creative? So, this should really be an addendum to this morning's post, but what the hell, it's not like I'm going to come anywhere close to surpassing Chops' posts, so I may as well make a whole new one.

So, after I posted this morning, I had a chance to listen to a couple of things. These included a BBC Xtra podcast about "piracy" (which talked a lot more about telephones) and the forty-fourth سورة (sura) of القرآن (the Quran) - titled الدخان‎ (ad Dukhan, "The Smoke").

So, yesterday I mentioned the Basic Iraqi Survival Guide. This was a booklet and CD that were produced by the Defense Language Institute a few years ago. I have two copies of the booklet and one copy of the CD. Just out of curiosity, I Googled "basic Iraqi survival guide" and had a pleasant "holy shit!" moment: booyeah! It has the following Arabic dialects available:

Egyptian

Gulf

Iraqi

Moroccan

Sudanese

Syrian

Tunisian

For each of these categories, the site features a booklet and CD download for:

a basic language survival guide/kit

a medical language survival kit

a civil affairs language survival kit

an air crew language survival kit

a navy language survival kit

And, in addition to the various Arabic dialects, they have materials for Azeri, Dari, French, Hebrew, Kashmiri, Afghan Pashto, Farsi, Peshawari Pashto, Sindhi, Urdu, and Uzbek, among others. My plan? Download all of them that I could possibly foresee myself needing, study the Arabic ones, and archive the rest.

So, that having been said, I'll count today as a win as far as studying Arabic goes, too.

Five Zero

First thing this morning, fifty flash cards, a total of one hundred words. I only missed one word, but these were the first fifty flash cards in the bunch, so I get more exposure to them and many of them are words that I've been working on for a year or two now. I'll go through them again this evening. Joy.

Revision Complete

Okay, so I've been talking for a while about revising my flash cards. This weekend, I did it. I had a date (I think?) on Saturday, and because I'm anal retentive about everything, which includes both time management and appearances, I did some work on revising some of my problem cards yesterday morning at the coffee house before she arrived - not only did I get work done, but I appeared to be productive when she showed up, and we got to briefly discuss the whole thing. I finished up this afternoon. Here's what I did:

I yanked all of the cards that represented redundant words, contained any mistake, or that had phrases instead of words or terms.

I corrected the cards that had mistakes - some of which involved making new cards, and some of which involved fixing existing cards.

I turned all of the phrase/sentence cards into free-standing individual cards - some of these were already like that, while some shared a card with other individual words. I usually put two entries on each flash card, but I only did one entry per phrase card unless the phrases were short and related to one another.

I gave the phrase cards their own numbering system: P1, P2, P3, vice 001, 002, and 003 for the regular word cards.

I combined the extraneous words that were pulled off of the phrase cards to make new flash cards.

I used words from the DLI Iraqi Basic Survival Guide, the Arabic textbook, and titles of several of the early suras of the Quran to fill in the missing numbered cards that were swapped out.

I still need to make more flash cards - I always need to make more flash cards - but the big revision is, I think, done. I'm a bit worried that I added words that I already had on cards, which will require another revision if true. However, I can now work primarily on words, and read particular phrases once I get a little bit more familiar with the grammar and syntax. So, this revision having been completed, I can hopefully pick up the habit of doing fifty to one hundred flash card repetitions per day starting tomorrow morning. As far as the weekend goes, I'll count this one as complete with respect to studying Arabic. With any luck, that will mean that Chops won't verbally assault me for a few more days.

Party at the Domicile of the Rodent

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 3, RPD 2)
FlowFit (RPT 6, RPE 9, RPD 3)
Kanji Review

17 Reps in 18 minutes. Yay! I guess moderating my medium intensity day output really did help. I managed to get the first 8 reps with nearly no rest between them, then I did the rest in mini-sets of two reps, with 30 seconds or so rest in between. Mrs. Chops actually did 18 reps, and was finished a little before the 17 minute mark. I finished number 17 in 17:40. I kept a strict eye on my form, and it seemed much improved. As always, it deteriorated quite a bit towards the end, but I kept the RPT higher, longer this time. As usual, though, the more I do this, the more I find little things I should be doing better, form-wise, so the RPT doesn't really change.

Yay, Friday

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 7, RPE 7, RPD 2)
Be Breathed
Screwing Arm Pressups 1x5 (RPT 8, RPE 4, RPD 3)

8 Reps of FlowFit. The RPE was still a little higher than I would have liked, but my 4 year old interrupted me at 1/3 of the way in, and after helping him out, I had to do four reps in five minutes.

Totally Forgot

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 3, RPD 1)
Be Breathed (RPT 7, RPE 4, RPD 1)
Screwing Arm Pressups 2x5 (RPT 8, RPE 4, RPD 1)
Swedish in the car

Forgot to post this last night. Since it was a light day, I just did some Be Breathed (10 reps of the situp and the butterfly) followed by the Pressups, and finished off with Intuflow. The butterflies went well. I only faltered once, on rep 8 or 9.

Too much

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 3, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 6, RPE 9, RPD 4)
Be Breathed
Swedish in the car
Kanji Review

Intuflow was good. I felt particularly good about my 4CBD today. It's come a long way. FlowFit sucked. Mrs. Chops and I apparently overshot the medium day by quite a bit, thus neither of us felt able to give a good show today. She dropped out around the twelve minute mark. I stuck it out through the whole 18 minutes, and managed 15 reps, but I for a while there I thought I was going to die. I hit a second wind at one point, but it lasted for almost one whole rep. After that, back to being exhausted. RPT actually was pretty good for the first half, but seriously went to shit in the second half. I think I'm going to set a hard limit at 8 reps for next medium day, but if I feel like I hit my RPE target before that, I'm going to stop there. To get my breathing back in order tonight, I did a few Be Breathed movements.

I found out last week that work has a corporate account for Rosetta Stone online. For personal (instead of business) use, I only need to pay $1/month. I got all signed up and managed to log in today. Sadly, I didn't have time to take any of the lessons, but I did poke around the site a little. Looks like fun.

Monday Night

Intuflow (RPT 6, RPE 3, RPD 2)
FlowFit (RPT 5, RPE 8, RPD 3)
Be Breathed
Kanji Review
Swedish in the Car

I felt kind of off today during Intuflow. I'm not sure why. I also pushed a little too hard during the 4CBD, and instead of opening up my hips, they started to feel tighter. For FlowFit, we did 11 reps, which is one more than last week's Medium day, but I definitely felt the increase in RPE. Things that were good: my springing tripod felt better than it has, tripod squats were nice and deep. Things that weren't so good: my breathing felt really off. I was trying to breath with the movement, but I ended up resorting to force breath on quite a few of the exercises. Also, on some of the squats, I had a hard time keeping my spinal alignment, and sometimes I went up on my toes at the beginning.

Did some random Be Breathed work, trying to grove the moves.

No, not the outlets!

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 3, RPD 1)
Be Breathed (RPT 6, RPE 5, RPD 2)
Screwing Arm Pressups 1x5 (RPT 7, RPE 4, RPD 1)
Trinity Squats 1x5 (RPT 6, RPE 4, RPD 2)
Kanji Review

Mrs Chops and I did Intuflow together, then she did Core Rhythms while I did my calisthenics. She's still having a hard time coming to grips with the No-Low-Med-High intensity wave, which is probably because I'm horrible at explaining it. I might need to invest in the Bodyweight Exercise Revolution ebook sooner than later, just so she'll have a concrete program to stick with.

Ouch. Just ouch.

FlowFit (RPT 6, RPE 9, RPD 4)
IntuFlow (RPT 6, RPE 2, RPD 1)
Swedish in the car
Kanji Review

My stomach hurts. I probably ate something I shouldn't have at dinner, or maybe I just ate too much (it didn't seem like too much at the time, but it might have been more than I usually have for dinner). Whatever caused it, I feel like crap. I nearly decided to take a miss tonight, but then I said "screw it", and worked out anyway.

I managed 16 reps of FlowFit, in 18 minutes. That's the same as my last High Intensity day, which kind of sucks. I was hoping for more reps today. On the other hand, I nearly threw up after the first four, and every rep or two thereafter, so I feel like I should be happy that I got 16 reps at all. Mrs Chops did more. She didn't keep count, she just did a bunch.

Normally, I would do some pullups and some pressups and what have you, but since I feel yucky, I'm going to call it quits. I did an Intuflow cool down, half-assedly. I'm going to play some Mario Kart and go to sleep now.

Getting the throttle unstuck

Knife Draw x 60, Grand Total: 3120
FlowFit (RPT 6, RPE 7, RPD 2)
Be Breathed
Screwing Arm Press 1x5 (RPT 8, RPE 3, RPD 1)
Trinity Squat 1x5 (RPT 6, RPE 4, RPD 2)
Swedish in the car

Mrs Chops did FlowFit with me. Her recent non-stop aerobics work showed, too. I was taking long breathers between rounds to keep my RPE at 7 or below, while she probably could have gone nearly non-stop. We did 10 repetitions of the flow. Afterwards, I isolated some troublesome movements from Be Breathed and just worked on those, followed by some Trinity Squats and Screwing Arm Pressups. I'm actually pretty happy with my RPE. I consciously toned it down from the last two Medium days, so that it would actually be Medium Intensity, instead of High Intensity Jr.

Swedish in the car this morning, and I'm watching a Swedish documentary on MMA as I type this.

Shit, I just realized that I didn't do Intuflow today. Bedtime for the kids makes me forget all sorts of stuff. I'm going to do my IF right after I post this.

Two Microcycles Down (Five to go)

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 3, RPD 2)
Be Breathed (RPT 7/5, RPE 5, RPD 3)
Trinity Squats 1x5 (RPT 6, RPE 3, RPD 1)
Screwing Arm Pressups 1x5 (RPT 8, RPE 3, RPD 0)

Low Intensity day. As has been the trend, I'm pretty happy with my Intuflow. I pushed the effort up a little on the 4CBD, for no real reason. I do feel a bit more solid with it. Mrs. Chops declined to participate in Intuflow today, but she did do some Core Rhythms for a light workout.

For Be Breathed, I decided to skip the basic crunch, and move straight on to the plain situp. I did 10 of these, very, very sloooowly. After this, I did 5 Trinity Squats, where I was able to keep my feet flat on the floor all the way to the bottom of the squat. Then I did 10 Butterflies, although my form started noticeable deteriorating towards the end (the RPT 7 is for the situps, the 5 is for the Butterflies). Finally, I finished off with five Screwing Arm Pressups.

And I found this demo of the 4CBD on YouTube. John Sifferman is a stud, for sure. In the video you'll note that he shows three difficulty levels for each position. I'm only doing the the first level.

"Losamat" and Other Developments

I think I've earned my Arabic points for today.

So, earlier today, I was working on those flash card revisions that I mentioned last night. There's this Arabic word that's been repeating itself in my head every few days for the last few weeks: losamat. For the life of me, I couldn't remember where I'd heard it, what it meant, or if it was even Arabic. I tried looking it up online, with no success. Solution: call Hussein and ask.

Problem: Hussein didn't answer his phone. This resulted in calls to Dhiya and Nadia, neither of whom answered their phones, either. I finally got a hold of Majd - the only remaining Arabic speaker I know - and he didn't recognize the word. This was all happening on my lunch break, so I had no choice but to go back into work without having my curiosity satisfied. When I got out of work, I had a message waiting from Hussein that said to call him back and tell him what the word was; but he didn't recognize it, and couldn't talk. Then I called Dhiya again and, much to my surprise, he asked me the specific word - which meant that he was right next to Hussein. Dhiya didn't recognize it either, but he told me he'd think about it and get back to me.

A while later, I finally got a hold of Nadia. After pronouncing it to her over the phone, about eight or ten times, she finally figured out what word I meant, and told me that it meant "excuse me" - not surprising, giving the level of Arabic instruction that I've undergone thus far. I thanked her, and then she abruptly got off the phone, and I'm actually still waiting for her to call back, which may or may not happen today. So, as I was looking it up online (it's amazing how much more you can get when you have a second piece to the puzzle), who would call back but Dhiya, with a couple of guesses as to what the word meant. I explained to him that someone had told me what it meant, and told him that it meant "excuse me", but that didn't register with him. After discussing his ideas, and then giving him a few of the pieces of information I'd found, it hit him, and he was able to explain the word in its entirety, and give me a spelling, which I was then able to plug into Google Translate in order to get a reasonable translation.

Word: لو سمحت
Transliteration: law samaht, lau semaht, lo samaht
Translation: "if allowed", "if you please"

So, it's on a card, and entered into the vocabulary vending system that is my wire mesh card file. Even so, I doubt I'll be forgetting that word any time soon after all of this effort.

As I was flipping through my cards yesterday, trying to find the ones with errors, I decided that another thing that I need to do is make two separate classifications for the cards that I have: words and short phrases, and long phrases/sentences. A few of the long phrases are good, like نحن جند لله جند الوطن ("We are the army of God and of our land" - the national motto of Sudan); but overall, I think that sentences and phrases are of more use to me if I'm translating them and pulling them apart to figure out grammar, and I'm not quite to the point of being ready to do that on a regular basis yet. I've never been that good at memorizing full sentences, which is part of the reason that I only know a few short verses of scripture - most of which are now on those very flash cards that need their own category. So as I'm going through the cards over the next day or two, I'll pull the ones that have sentences or long phrases, and reclassify their numbers as "P1" and so on to denote that it's a "Phrase Card", and leave the cards with one or two words, or three- or four- word phrases, just as they are.

Some of the interesting words on the cards that I fixed today included:

جبل طارق - Jabal Tariq, "Mountain of Tariq", also known as Gibraltar

على اللقاع - ila alliqa, "to the bed", essentially "goodnight" or "see you later" - I think I've been misusing this one for several years.

أشهد أن لا إله إلاَّ الله و أشهد أن محمد رسول الله - Ashahadu al la ilaha illa Allah, wa ashahadu ana Mohammed rasul Allah, "I testify that there is no god but the God, and I testify that Mohammed is the prophet of the God", otherwise known as the Shahada - this is one of ones that will move to the "phrases" category.

So, I may do a bit more of that before I rack out tonight, but with all of this "lo samaht" business, I think I've done my bit for the day. I can't wait to have these damned note card revisions finished, because I think that once I can get started on doing the actual lessons, it'll take a lot less effort and it will feel a lot less like I have a huge project hanging over my head.