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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
