Whoa

Kanji

I think I just time-traveled. I don't remember much between my last post and this one, yet it's almost February. Shit.

Immediately after my mom went back home, my laptop died. I'm sure the events are completely unrelated, but it still made it really difficult to post. Sure, I could have done it with my phone, but that's still no fun for writing anything of substantial length.

With no ability to post, and thus, no public shaming for missing my goals, it was too easy to slack off. I mostly managed to keep up with kanji and Portuguese, but even those slipped a little. My exercise routine suffered most. As in, I never got back to it after that first 4 day cycle. *Sigh*. Okay, I'm back, I promise this time. Laptop is in fine working condition, and my wife is losing weight like crazy. It's time to get to work.

The ray of sunshine has been my martial arts training. It looks like I might be hosting an official Atienza Training Group session sometime in the spring. I'm pretty excited, but now I have to get people to attend. I've already got two definite yes's at work, and I'm going to force Kyushu-Taka to attend, whether he can pay or not. I've put some money away so I can make this happen with or without enough attendees, but more attendees means a better chance of a second one of these happening later this year.

I've also expanded my training schedule. We now do a knife session on Sundays at work with a couple of the guys I work with. Thursdays we train in the parking garage behind the building Kyushu-Taka works in, while my youngest son is in preschool. Yep, that makes a whopping four days a week of training now. They're not full hour sessions, and since they're almost all at work, we can't go hard enough to get all sweaty and tired, but I haven't trained with this frequency since before I had kids. It feels good to be able to train this much again.

Day Two...

Feeling pretty good about today. Did thirty min on some machine at the Y this morning that can only be described as the bastard child born of a four way between an elliptical machine, a cross trainer, a StairMaster, and the great Satan herself...but it had a TV built in to it so it wasn't too bad.

Tonight was the Cardio and Ab Ripper sections of Power90. The cardio seemed easier than the sculpting. The Ab portion left my Abs feeling less "ripped" and more "pummeled with a hammer" but it's obviously doing it's job.

Today was easy due in part to the fact that I had the day off. Now that I'm heading back to a normal work schedule tomorrow I'm a little worried I might fall off track.

Gonna pick the Brazilian Portuguese back up tomorrow morning too.

Late to the Game

The end of 2010 and the start of 2011 have been a study in busy. Lots of good changes have unfortunately also been used as "good" excuses. Time for all that to come to a close. Tonight my wife and I started the Power 90 program. Originally we had been talking about doing P90x, but thanks to some quality advice from Chops we went with the intro program. This turned out to be a very good thing. Truth be told, I want to think that I never stopped being in the shape I was in six or seven years ago. Hell, even if I'm not quite where I was then I can snap right back in to it, right?

Wrong.

I know better. I think we all do, but somewhere in our minds we are all still super heroes just waiting for that metaphorical spider bite to come along and make us ripped and ready to climb walls. It's just not going to happen that way. Don't get me wrong, I think we've all got the power to do it. It's just going to take a lot of hard work and support.

My journey starts here. When it's all over we will be the super heroes we've always wanted to be. I call Wolverine...and I will fight you for it.

Looooong Weekend

Portuguese

As mentioned, my mom was in town visiting this weekend. I didn't workout. I didn't do kanji. I ate too much. I didn't listen to Portuguese. I also got up a 5am to drive her back to the airport, so no workout today either. I'm super sleepy. But I did manage to listen to portuguese during my commute today, so that's something.

Back to regular programming tomorrow.

Yay

High Intensity

TFW Warm Up: RPE 3, RPT 6, RPD 1

TFW Lite: RPE 8, RPT 7, RPD 2

TFW Cool Down: RPE 4, RPT 7, RPD 2

Until I hit the fifth exercise, I was going to score my RPE today in the 6-7 range. I was trying to push the pace, but I was actually limited in some of the exercises by my muscles. I simply couldn't do enough reps to run my RPE up any higher. Then exercise 5 came, and I was able to push nearly into RPE 9 territory. This all caused me to have the epiphany that RPE isn't just a measure of cardio distress. If I'm working as hard as I can and my muscles are refusing to cooperate, that's also a measure of Exertion.

I did have a bit of discomfort in my shoulders during the last exercise, and this persisted to through the warm up. Also, I did the workout at about 9am, and I'm already sore. I'm going to have a hard time walking tomorrow, I think.

I didn't have a chance to do any Portuguese, nor any Kanji. I've got family in town still.

While it's fresh in my mind...

TFW Medium Intensity Day:

TFW Warm Up: RPE 4, RPT 7, RPD 1

TFW Lite: RPE 6, RPT 6, RPD 1

TFW Cool Down: RPE 3, RPT 7, RPD 2

My RPE on the workout spiked up to 7 a couple of times, but since I was specifically watching for that, I took measures to bring it down when it happened. I kept to a slow pace throughout the whole thing, which tends to be difficult for me, so I'm proud of that. I mainly wanted to work on my form for the various exercises. This is the entry level program, so the movements are not that technically challenging, which is good. I'm still having problem with the Camel Sidebend in the Cool Down, and another exercise that's similar to the Warrior pose from yoga. Other than that, my form is improving nicely.

I'll do Kanji flashcards later, but as I mentioned, probably no Portuguese today.

Chugging Along

Kanji Flashcards

Portuguese in the car

I didn't skip today's workout, I'm pushing it back 12 hours so I can shift my schedule to morning workouts. I'm going to do Medium Intensity on Thursday morning, and High Intensity on Friday morning. I was thinking about doing some Intuflow tonight, but now that I've decided to be lazy, I'm not feeling like getting up out of my chair. I did get some stickfighting in with the guys at work again today, so that's something.

Did my Kanji flashcards again today. I'm still in the stuff I remember from last time I tried to keep up with Heisig, but it's getting a little more difficult. I'm going to have to dig up my copy of Remembering the Kanji, which I'm sure is still in a box somewhere from last time we moved. I wonder if Google Books or Amazon has it in ebook format. That would make this easier.

Listened to Portuguese in the car on both sides of the commute again, too. It's definitely easier to pay attention in the morning. After a long day at work (we're on 10 hour shifts currently), it's pretty difficult to concentrate on listening and responding. I find my mind wandering a lot on the drive home. I'm off work for 3 days now, too, so my Portuguese practice will probably lapse during that time. Meh, whatever.

Already?

Today:

Low Intensity Day

TFW Warm Up: RPE 4, RPT 6, RPD 1

TFW Cool Down: RPE 4, RPT 5, RPD 1

Kanji Flashcards

Portuguese in the car

Yesterday:

Kanji Flashcards

I haven't been sleeping much. I think I'm averaging 3 hours a night lately. It finally caught up to me yesterday. I actually fell asleep in the middle of playing with my 4 year old, at noon. Sooooo, I went to bed early last night instead of exercising. I was asleep by 9:35 PM. Part of me wants to feel bad about not exercising, but mostly, I'm glad I got some sleep. I'm still really tired, but I feel much better than I did yesterday.

I did manage to get in a round of Kanji flashcards yesterday while in a waiting room. I did another round today at work, so I'm still going strong there. I didn't even listen to anything in Portuguese yesterday, but I did follow along with the lessons in the car on the way to and from work today, so I'm good there. I even managed to watch a couple of videos on BBC's learning portuguese pages.

I abbreviated tonight's workout. I was supposed to do the Warm Up, Cool Down, and the Stress Conversion program. Instead, I just did the Warm Up and Cool Down for a total of 13 minutes. I know I used to workout at night all the time, but I think that's part of what kept me up on Sunday. I'm going to *try* waking up early enough to get the Medium Intensity workout done before getting the kids ready for school, but we'll see. What I really need to do, I think, is find a secluded place at work for this and take a half hour workout break.

Anyway, I'm kind of bummed that I already fell off the wagon as far as my workout program goes, but at least I'm back on it already.

Day 1 (all over again)

No Intensity
Tacfit Warrior (hereafter abbreviated TFW) Warm up: RPE 4, RPT 5, RPD 1
TFW Strain Prevention: RPE 4, RPT 6, RPD 1
Kanji flashcards
Portuguese

Well, off to a great start this time. I started off the morning at work searching the internet for Brazilian Portuguese videos and audio to stream in the background while at work. I found a site that lists a couple dozen Brazilian TV stations that offer streams, so I left one of them on all day so I could let my ears get used to the sound of the language. Later, I listened to part of lesson 1 on the drive home. I think I remember how to say "Excuse me". That's about it.

I also spent my break time in the afternoon getting my kanji flashcard situation squared away. I got Anki installed on my desktop and the alpha version of AnkiDroid installed on my phone. I then found some awesome flashcards that follow the Heisig method, more or less, and made sure they synced properly between my various Anki installs. I went ahead and reviewed the first 20 on the stack, which was mostly stuff I remember anyway.

Finally, after the kids went to bed, I did the first day of the first Tacfit Warrior cycle. It starts with a No Intensity day, so I the warmup and the Strain Prevention routine. The SP routine is a TFW specific version of Intuflow, basically. I think I might end up throwing regular Intuflow sessions into the mix, just to make sure I'm getting all the mobility I need. Anyway, since I haven't worked out in forever, the RPE was much higher than it should have been for a No Intensity day, but that'll come back down pretty quickly. I didn't break a sweat or anything, but it was close. Also, a lot of the specific movements are brand new to me, especially for the warmup, which explains the poor RPT. The only discomfort was in my neck, which was stiff in some planes of movement. I caught myself trying to push through it and stretch it out, which of course is the wrong thing. Once I noticed it, I stopped doing it.

Anyway, Day 1 is in the books, and I managed to make some progress on almost all of my goals. Not a bad start at all.