Almost forgot

Went to class yesterday (actually, two classes) and didn't have time to write about them. Beefy and I went to BJJ and signed up. We're officially students there now. There was a bigger class this time, three blue belts and three white belts, besides the two of us. The warm up still feels like it's going to kill me, but I'm pleasantly not sore today. After the warm up, the instructor (I need to come up with a codename for him, I guess) told us that in the evenings, he'd been having some of the purples and senior blue belts teach their bread and butter moves to the class, to help them learn how to teach. He then shared with us a variation on a guard pass used by one of the smaller guys at the school. I'm going to try to describe this, but it will probably be gibberish to most people, and maybe even me.

You start in your opponent's closed guard. You move your left knee out to the left, to make space for your right knee, which you move to your opponent's tailbone. Now you can adjust a little further to the left, pulling your opponent a little on to his right side. Push down on his right knee/thigh with cupped hands, pushing it to the mat. This should open his guard. Put your right hand back on the inside of his left knee to monitor it, and bring your right knee up the middle. Move your right arm to underhook his left arm, and put your head and shoulders on his torso, while sliding your right knee over the top of his upper right thigh. Now, you can post out with your left hand. Push outward under his right calf with your left knee to make some space, then step over his right leg entirely with your left leg. Now, pivot on your right knee 90 degree clockwise. You should end up on top in side control. This video is sort of similar, but not quite what we did.

After doing that for an hour, the other guys rolled while Beefy and I finished our enrollment paperwork. They were out of gis in my size, so I've ordered a Lightweight from Padilla & Sons. I hope it gets here soon.

After an afternoon full of meetings and not getting any actual work done, I took off for Karate class. Tak split the class up, and I worked with the purple belts. We spent the whole class doing kata. We did Seisan, then Ananku, then Wanshu. Me and one of the purple belts didn't really know Wanshu, so we did that for the rest of the class. My Seisan felt better than it did last Thursday, but I think it still needs lots of work. My thighs were really tired by the end of class from holding low stances through Wanshu, but that's something that I really need to improve. I've decided to not post details from the Karate class. There's not a whole lot of information about our Karate online, and I'm probably not qualified to be the one that puts it out there. So you'll just have to be satisfied with the names of stuff we do.

And Another One

Last night after work was karate. Something I probably neglected to mention is that one of my best friends teaches Shorinji-Ryu Karate at the local YMCA. Starting around November-ish, we signed up for a YMCA membership and started taking my five year old to karate classes. A couple weeks later, I started joining him. Then in January-ish, Mrs Chops started attending classes too. We've tried bringing the three year old, but he's not quite into the whole "paying attention" thing yet. Since I'm blogging my BJJ classes, I should probably also blog my karate classes.

My friend was in "Old Skool" mode last night, so there were lots of push ups and crunches being handed out. Thankfully, we did them in sets of 10, so they all seemed manageable at the time. I'm sure feeling it this morning, though. That's kind of sad for a guy who could do 100 push ups a year ago.

Quick rundown of what we covered - Kihon (sprinkled with calisthenics), then the white belt line and colored belt line alternated doing Kenshuho (and calisthenics for the colored belts). Next was Ananku and Seisan kata. I think my Ananku is more or less fine (meaning I pretty much remember it all, but I think it could look cleaner), but I lost track of what I was doing in Seisan, *again*, towards the end. Ugh. Seriously, this frustrates me. I can learn two Sayoc transition drills and a template or two in a single day, but several weeks in and I can't remember all of the second kata. Ugh. Maybe I need to add a reps goal for Seisan this year. I doubt I'd get 10,000 reps of a kata in this year, but a couple hundred should be doable.

At the end of class, he went over test results (Tuesday was our test). Mrs Chops, Chops 2.0, and I all passed. This means that for the first time in my life, I have a ranking in a traditional martial art. It feels weird.

Lastly, it was mentioned to me that unless you have somebody to crank on, reading the notes from my BJJ class doesn't really make sense. A) Those notes are actually just meant for me. I find that the act of organizing my thoughts and writing them down helps me remember the details. B) Next time I'll try to find a YouTube video that represents what I'm talking about. Also, I might do more in-depth notes on the karate, too. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Look Who's Back

Well, it's been an interesting year so far, and I mean that in the most negative sense possible. Just before the holidays, work suddenly got crazy busy, and it didn't let up at all until well into February. During that time I got a cold, which turned into a sinus infection, which, despite antibiotics, turned into bronchitis. The bronchitis turned into pneumonia, then back into just bronchitis, and now, finally, I can breathe.

So, where were we? Oh yes, I did not hit my 10k reps goal last year. I'm torn between soldiering on now that I'm well, or just scuppering that one and starting a new goal. I'm actually leaning towards finishing my 10k reps on principle, but I still need to motivate myself to actually do the reps.

Early last December, a co-worker approached me and said he was interested in learning martial arts, but had no idea where to start. I looked into the options around our office, and explained to him what the different styles available were. He decided that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu sounded like something he wanted to try, so we went and watched a class. We tried to attend a free trial lesson, but showed up on Open Mat day. We planned to come back the following Monday, but that happened to be the day that the world exploded at work, metaphorically speaking. Today, at long last, order (and my health) had been restored enough for us to go. This is my long winded way of saying: I'm going to study Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and this will become my training blog. In conjunction with this, I'm probably not going to be so circumspect about my identity, in case you don't already know who I am.

Moving on, first class. Beefy and I showed up at 11, only to be told that class actually starts at 11:30. We hung out in the car for 30 minutes, then walked in and signed the waivers. We got changed and headed out on the mat. There were only two white belts and the black belt instructor in class today. Warm ups consisted of jogging around the mats, side to sides, cross stepping, jumping jacks, push ups, two kinds of crunches, mountain climbers, and another set of push ups. Really, it wasn't too bad, except I'm a lazy fat ass, so I was beet red and out of breath.

We moved on to technique, which was kimura from north/south position. Going against the bottom guy's left arm, you place the thumb side of your left forearm under his elbow, while cupping his left wrist with your right hand. Lift up on the elbow while pushing his wrist towards the floor and away from his center. Slide your left hand, palm down, under his elbow and grip your own right wrist, while monkey-gripping his left wrist with your right hand. Pull his elbow up to your navel, turning him to his right, while you slide your left foot behind his back. Your right knee should still be down on the mat next to his head, so he can't slide out. Put your left forearm on your left knee, his elbow should be bent at 90 degrees, with his upper arm pointing straight up, and his forearm parallel to the floor. Posture up so you're looking straight ahead. Now, slowly look towards your left, turning your whole upper body. You should be able to feel his shoulder tighten. We did this on left and right sides.

Next technique was the Americana. For example's sake. we'll be attacking the left arm again. Cup both of your hands, and place your left hand on the opponent's left wrist, your right on his left elbow. Put all of your weight on this arm and drive it into the mat. Place your left elbow on the mat next to the opponent's left ear while monkey-gripping his left wrist with your left hand. His elbow should be at a 90 degree angle, and your left forearm should be parallel to his left upper arm. Now, slide your right hand, palm down, under his elbow and monkey-grip your own left wrist. Slide his left wrist straight down towards his feet, as if you're painting the mat with it, then lift up under his left elbow with your right forearm.

Last thing we covered was escape from under mount. The instructor covered some general points about being under mount, such as not letting your opponent get high on your chest, keeping your elbows in tight, etc. He talked about the difference between covering from punches and defending chokes. Which led nicely into the mount escape. For the example, the opponent reaches his right hand into your left lapel to set up a choke. You cup your right hand and monkey grip on top of his right wrist, pinning it to your chest. You then take your left hand, palm towards you, and grab his right forearm at his elbow. Now, hook his right foot with your left foot and bridge straight up. As he posts his left arm out to keep his balance, turn and roll to your left, keeping the foot hooked and elbow/wrist control on his right arm. You should end up in his guard.

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.