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.

In dire need of sleep

Knife draw x 60, Grand Total: 3060
Kanji Review
Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 3, RPD 1)

No Intensity day today. I weighed myself before dinner, and with all my clothes on and stuff in my pockets, it looks like I've lost about 1.5 kg since last time I stepped on the scale, which is about a week ago. Mrs. Chops is amazed, since she works out every night, and is slowly gaining weight. Thus, I have a new disciple. She has agreed to give me one month. During that time, she will follow my workout routine and listen to my advice. I just have to make sure she actually loses the weight now. You can be sure that I'm not going to let her miss any Intuflow sessions.

Tonight's Intuflow went pretty well. I'm uncovering some areas for improvement, such as elbow stability during my wrist circles, and a few other minor things. It's quite possible that I'll be ready to move on to Intermediate level Intuflow by the end of the month, but I doubt I'll move on if Mrs. Chops is still on Beginner level.

Knife draws on the hourglass tonight. I alternated triangles and directions. That is all.

Baby Steps

I'm trying not to burn out again, so I'm approaching my return to the Ten Thousand Reps challenge (or whatever we've bastardized it to for my special situation) as a sort of "baby steps" engagement to ease me back into the routine. It's helped by some productivity on Saturday - not relating to this, but I was really productive with some errands I'd needed to run for a while, so I'm trying to maintain the productivity in other areas, such as my Arabic studies. Special thanks go out to the man, Chops, for continually belittling me in order to get me moving again.

So, anyway, the last couple of days I've been pretty successful about listening to the Quran. I personally think that the Quran is remarkably difficult to follow because it tends to jump from topic to topic without any sort of transition or connection, but I'm fortunate to have found a source in which the Quran is recited by a qari in Arabic, and then by another qari in English. Even if the Quran is difficult, Chops has encouraged me to listen as frequently as possible to any Arabic audio that I can find, and I figure it can only help. I'm pretty good at picking up words I know as I listen, though I'm not sure how good I am at picking up words that I'm not yet familiar with. Once or twice a week, I listen to podcasts of BBC Xtra, the BBC's Arabic programming, against my better judgment. (As I just showed Chops, one of their current offerings is on "Arafat's poisoning" - it's good to know that the BBC is now endorsing asinine Palestinian conspiracy theories.) I also listen to Radio Sawa and the BBC Arabic service on occasion, but it's tough to listen to for a long time because I eventually just start to zone it out - and in the case of Radio Sawa (an Arabic language radio station that's broadcast throughout the Middle East and funded by the US federal government), about half of their programming is intolerable American R&B music.

Just to show that I have been learning something over the past few months, "qari/قارئ" is Arabic for "reciter", and is used to denote one who has memorized and recites the Quran/القرآن‎. Note the similarity of the words. That's because "Quran" actually means "recitation", and thus the word changes from "The Recitation" (al Quran) to "one who recites" (qari). Part of what makes Arabic so challenging (and simultaneously rewarding) are these similarities, which are of course similar to other languages that modify one word to change its meaning. The interesting thing about Arabic is that most words are based on a three letter root, with different accents or letters interspersed and combined with prefixes or suffixes to change the meaning. I was actually the first person to figure that whole thing out in my Arabic class in college, but figuring that out doesn't do much to help you when the bottom line is memorizing miniscule differences between one word and another that's nearly identical.

So, anyway, I think I posted about my flash cards yesterday morning. I wanted to do fifty yesterday morning, and instead I did thirty. I came back from work yesterday afternoon and did another seventy, for a total of one hundred yesterday. This evening I reviewed the remaining flash cards, about one hundred twenty of them, searching for repeated words, flash cards that I accidentally left incomplete in one way or another, and any other cards that just needed fixing or replacing. I found something on the order of a dozen, two or three of which were quick fixes (a dot or two here or there). I ripped three or four of them so that I can completely replace them, one of which had a repeat of the Shahada (الشهادة); there are another two or three that just need to have the translation or pronunciation added or fixed on the back.

I have two goals at this point, which I intend to do in sequence, rather than trying to start them simultaneously. My first goal is to complete my flash cards. So far, I have all of Wikipedia's List of Christian terms in Arabic on flash cards, and some of Wikipedia's Glossary of Islamic terms in Arabic on flash cards. I want to finish the Islamic terms (which is several more pages of stuff), and a few other words that I've picked up here or there. Then, I want to go through the first chapter of my textbook, Ahlen wa Sahlan, and put the relevant vocabulary from the first couple of chapters on flash cards. I'll omit things like the letters of the alphabet, or the little non-words that they use to help you put letters together, but there are a handful of words in those first few chapters that should be on my flash cards.

Once I'm caught up on making flash cards - which will be no small feat - I want to get myself into a regimen of about fifty flash cards per day, twice a day, and two or three lessons per week out of the book. There's a set of CDs that I bought with the book, and each CD (there are ten) has three or four lessons on it that follow along with the lessons in the book. I think that the book has a total of about twenty lessons, of which I did ten when I was in the class, but have only reviewed the first couple of lessons once or twice in the (almost) four intervening years. If I can spend the rest of 2009 doing a lesson or two per week, studying flash cards on a daily or near-daily basis, and adding new words and phrases as I go, I think I'll be in pretty good shape come 2010. Not fluent by any means, but in very good shape nonetheless.

But, as I said at the beginning of the post: baby steps. That's why all I did today was scan and scour through one hundred twenty flash cards as the second step in the process of fixing and updating them. This is actually a personal growth experience for me, too, because I usually prefer to work on a project all at once. Now that I'm an adult with real responsibilities and a highly structured schedule, I'm learning that I can't do most projects all at once, and have to work on them one step at a time. This is one of those projects, so it's a learning experience for me to have to do this bit by bit. So, that's my lengthy update, and I promise that the next one will be a little bit shorter.

Wound up and ready to go

Knife draw x 30, Grand Total: 3000
Swedish in the Car
Kanji Review
Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 6, RPE 9, RPD 2)
Be Breathed (RPT 7, RPE 5, RPD 2)
Some pullups (well, negatives)

Mrs Chops and I did the first half of Intuflow while the kids were up and running around. I did the last half after my workout. She had gone into non-exercise mode by then, so she didn't finish with me. Felt good, though. However, I think I'm going to start revising my RPT numbers down. The more I do it, the more (minor) problems I see with my form. Nothing horribly wrong, just lots of room for improvement.

I set the timer for 18 minutes today, and I managed 16 reps. It actually took me 17:20, but I felt like dying so I didn't try to squeeze in another rep. Also, it looks like my old timing source was messed up, so disregard all time/rep pairings prior to this. 16 reps in 18 minutes is the new official benchmark. Medium intensity days will continue to be 15 minutes.

I did 10 butterflies after FlowFit to get my breathing under control. As expected, this worked like magic. Someday I'd like to explore the RESET methods, but for now, Be Breathed is working just fine. I felt a little soreness in my lower back on the 10th rep, but other than that, it went really well.

Finished up with some pullups. I did four or five (wasn't counting) with my legs on a chair. Then I did two negatives. I figured that was plenty of work for tonight.

What's the Arabic word for "hangover"?

I haven't been drinking - this, ladies and gentlemen (probably mostly gentlemen) is an "I fell off the Arabic study wagon again" hangover. As I was going through the cards the last few times (the last few times being some time in February, I think) and decided that I not only needed to make a ton of new cards (which I've literally been meaning to do for months now), but I needed to fix the old ones, too. I had a few repeat words, a few that were incomplete, and they just needed to be either fixed or destroyed in favor of new ones that weren't erroneous. (I'm a bit anal retentive, in case none of you had figured that out yet.

So, due to lots of peer pressure from Chops, I elected to go through fifty note cards first thing this morning. I got through thirty, which is better than none. I'm going to try to spend some time fixing the ones that are wrong, and making a few more, tonight when I get back from work. That's in among about ten other things that I need to do, and ten other things that I want to do, but if I invest the time once or twice, I won't have to for a long time after that... Sort of. Anyway, thanks for peer pressure, Chops. Keep it up.

Bottom line: thirty flash cards this morning, and hopefully a bunch more tonight.

What a wonderful weekend

Intuflow (RPT 8, RPE 2, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 6, RPE 8, RPD 3)
Be Breathed (RPT 7, RPE 4, RPD 3)
Screwing Arm Pressups 1x5 (RPT 8, RPE 3, RPD 0)

I got Mrs Chops to do Intuflow with me today, the whole routine. I'm not sure she *liked* it, but she didn't seem to mind it. I'll try to get her to do it again tomorrow. For me, I felt my form was really on today, even the 4CBD. My hips seemed a little looser today, but not miraculously so.

FlowFit was hard. I did 10 reps in 15 minutes. I took a few breaks to get my breath back, and to try and bring RPE down to 7 or less, which didn't quite work. Still, it felt a small bit easier than last Medium day. I also tried to pay strict attention to my form today, and was rewarded with much improved trinity squats and the pre-"springing tripod" (I don't know what the early stage of that is called, but I suck at it). I tried to roll right into the deck squat from the spinal rock a couple times, but it didn't work. For extra fun, I tried keeping both hands on the ground during the (pre) leg swoop. My main problem there is that I'm too close to the wall on my right side, thus I can't straighten my left leg out.

I managed 10 full butterflies today, after 10 basic crunches. My back hurt a little afterward, but not as much as last time, which is encouraging. Doing Be Breathed after a hard FlowFit session is awesome - after 10 reps my breathing is almost normal again. Screwing arm pressups also went well. I did a little extra mobility work afterwards, mostly because I wanted to try a couple of things that I read about in the forums.

Overall, good workout, although a little higher intensity than it should have been, but that's just because my cardio is piss poor.

On a Saturday?

Intuflow (RPT8, RPE 2, RPD 2)
Be Breathed (RPT 5, RPE 5, RPD 4)
Screwing Arm Pressups 1x5 (RPT 8, RPE 3, RPD 0)

Yep, on a Saturday. It's Low Intensity day, so I started with my Be Breathed (I really need to start with Intuflow, I know). I did ten of the basic crunch exercise, then 10 Butterflies. I managed real Butterflies today, for the first time. They weren't pretty, but I did them. Form really broke down around rep 7. That's the point that I noticed some minor pain in my lower back. This has been happening a bit lately, and I've got a few theories as to why, but the main point is that I think I need to visit the doctor at work and get it looked at.

Intflow went really well. That's all I've got to say about that. Next came some screwing pressups. I could probably have done another set or two, but it's a low intensity day, and I also want to build these up slowly, since they put a little stress on my joints than regular pushups. Finally, I did maybe 10 trinity squats, since that's a very important part of FlowFit. Head Coach Hurst posted tips for practicing this on his website. I just wanted to some practice with the movement. I'm still not able to stay flatfooted all the way down, but I'm getting close.

TGIF

Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 3)

Yep, that's it. Today is a No Intensity day, so that explains the lack of workout, but I also didn't do anything else. My finger still hurts, so I'm going to let it rest over the weekend. I didn't do any Kanji studying, and I just had the radio on in the car. Sleepy time.

P.S. Welcome back, Hephaestus.

Yeah so...

I've been bad about this, and I don't mean like "Oh nurse I've been bad, give me another enema" but like I've been a slack ass r tard that needs a whole different brand of punishment.  I've settled (once again) on two skills to keep me occupied for the rest of the year.  Read on if you really want to know, hell, read on if you don't because let's face it...that copy of Twilight that you secretly bought at Blockbuster last night can wait Rikalonius.  

Chops talked me in to learning a foreign language and by way of helping me out with it has picked it up as a secondary skill.  I've been doing okay with the Svenska, the last few weeks have been jam packed with drama so I've fallen a little behind.  I know how to hold a basic conversation and how to ask "Where the Hos at?".  I've been working with the Pimsler audio method and have mastered the second lesson.  My nine year old daughter has been picking it up as well, minus the "Hos" thing...but they can't make you proud all the time.

Why Swedish?  Because Vikings kick ass and if you don't agree I will burn your women and rape your village...see, I still have a lot to learn.  Oh, also, my family is descended from there.  While looking over some swedish podcasts I ran across a guy that looks exactly like me, which is very motivating.  If I am going to kill him and steal his identity to bone the hot girl beside him then I should probably speak the language.

I'm also working on professional development and am currently learning Python.  There is an larger goal there which I will reveal at the end of the year.  At present the only people that know are myself, Chops, and an Indian shaman from the Jersey Shore named Ned.

That's about it for now.  I have booze to drink and a phone to root.

Why can't today be Friday?

Knife draw x 30, Grand Total: 2940
Swedish Podcasts
Intuflow (RPT 7, RPE 2, RPD 1)
FlowFit (RPT 5, RPE 9, RPD 3)

Started out with Intuflow today. Felt pretty good, but I stopped after the 4CBD, since I would be doing spinal rocks and quad hops as a part of FlowFit. I did do the breathing squats and such after FlowFit, to try and get my breath back. I also re-did shoulders, elbows, and wrists after FlowFit, as compensation.

Since today was a High Intensity day, I did 18 minutes of FlowFit, which came out to 14 reps (I had just finished the first movement of rep 15, the quad hop, when time ran out). I felt relatively good about my technique, for the second time doing the exercises, except for two movements. One's kind of hard to describe, so I won't try. The other is a spinal rock to deck squat, which means you squat down until your butt is as low as it will go, then you roll backwards along your spine until you're up on your shoulders. Roll back forward, and when your feet hit the ground, continue the roll by standing straight up. Today I actually felt like I was closer to pulling it off than I was yesterday, but I have a feeling that it will still be a while before I can do it.

After FlowFit, I did one set of five screwing pressups, which is the basic RMAX sophistication of the regular pushup. This didn't feel bad at all, and since I'm not really taxing my chest or arms much with the current FlowFit exercises, I'll probably work on these, aiming for five sets of five reps.

Finally, after screwing pressups, I did some pullups. Sort of. I did one set of three negatives, with my feet on a chair to assist in the initial pull up to the bar. Then I did another set of two. Somewhere in all that, I also did a little Be Breathed. In fact, I managed a full Butterfly twice, but my lower back feels a little tender after FlowFit, so I decided not to overdo the Be Breathed today.

Only 30 knife draws again. I'm hoping that if I take it easy, the damn finger will heal. Also, no kanji today. My brain can't take it. Swedish was limited to listening to various podcasts as background noise at work.

New Beginning?

Knife draw x 30, Grand Total: 2910
Kanji Review
Swedish Podcasts in the Car
FlowFit (RPT 5, RPE 8, RPD 4)
Be Breathed
Intuflow (RPT 6, RPE 2, RPD 3)

Well, it was supposed to be a Moderate Intensity day, but I seem to have hit High Intensity levels of effort. Which is sad, considering that I did somewhere between 10-12 rounds of FlowFit in 15 minutes. I lost count after 5, and they didn't start going any faster. I tried doing a little Be Breathed work afterwards, just to groove the movements. After that, I started Intuflow. I got about halfway through, then decided that I really should sit down and catch my breath. I finished up after a 15 minute rest. Note to self: next time, do Intuflow *before* the workout.

I only did 30 knife reps today. My latest eczema outbreak has really done a number on the inside of my middle finger. Every time I gripped the knife, post draw, it felt like I was stabbing myself in the finger. On every spot that was in contact with the knife handle. So I only toughed it out to 30.