the spirit of a fighter
Posts tagged motivation
Saturday
0Last night, I went to bed early so I could get up at 7 to go to kickboxing (early being 11:30). That was a great theory, but at 1:30 I was still awake, and I didn’t fall asleep for a while after that. I never really felt like I was getting sleep at all, actually. BUT. I got up, I got out the door, and I got to class on time. Then I remembered why I don’t work out in the mornings.
First thing after getting up, I realized I was out of bread. This was bad, because I usually eat PB&J in the morning, and because bread is about all my stomach will handle when I’ve gotten up early. I have a very acidic stomach and I knew I was going to be in trouble. But I didn’t have many options, so I had a tiny bit of milk and some straight peanut butter, popped an antacid and hoped for the best.
I drove to class only to find out that my friend, who had said he would be there, hadn’t shown. I hadn’t told him I was coming, so he didn’t ditch me, but class is more fun with company.
Bad sign number three: only one other guy there. Small classes never have much energy, and usually seem slower than big ones.
Bad sign number four: A different instructor than I’ve had before, who doesn’t usually teach kickboxing.
Actually, if you take all of that into account, it wasn’t a bad class. It wasn’t fun, though. It didn’t take long for me to get nauseous, which confirmed that I almost always do when I work out early. The instructor wasn’t bad, she just switched things up and threw me off a bit, and she added a couple drills that I chose not to attempt due to my shoulder. Let’s just say it was a long hour. If I hadn’t felt like I was going to puke most of the time it would have been better (sorry, but it’s true). And then I’ve been crazy sleepy all day to round it all out.
So, I think I’ll be skipping morning classes from now on, or at least finding a better breakfast solution before I try another. Being tired is bad enough without feeling sick to boot.
Food:
Breakfast: You already know about breakfast – PB & milk
Lunch: BisonWitches!! 1/2 Club, chips & queso. Mmmmmmmmmm.
Other: Chocolate Milk….did I really forget to eat anything else? I guess I was full from Bison.
I honestly didn’t realize until just now that I haven’t eaten anything since about 1. I had a lot of water, but no food…hmm. I can’t decide if this is a good trend or not. I’m a little hungry, but not starving by any means, so it’s not like I’m trying to torture myself. Actually all told I feel amazing. I feel like I have muscles again, injured or not.
Current Weight: 160 (booyeah! 5lbs, 1 week – What a difference a little kickboxing makes.)
Musings
0I have a lot on my mind tonight but I don’t know what to say about it, so I think this will be short.
An uneventful day. I’m giving my legs a break for the moment, although I’m seriously considering going to another workout tomorrow morning…we’ll see if I maintain that motivation when the alarm goes off. So today it was work, read, clean. Which reminds me – dear world, my counters (and the rest of my apartment) have been clean, all week! Small miracles, baby.
Food:
Breakfast: PB&J (exciting, ain’t it?)
Lunch: Pizza
Other: Random snatches of soda, chocolate milk, and half a hamburger.
I actually am hungry now, but I feel like I’m making progress and that I’d rather be hungry than eat a thousand pounds of carbs, which is probably where I’d end up if I ate any more. I’m much better at abstinence than moderation.
Current Weight: 161
The merits of a workout
0I think if I went to kickboxing tomorrow, that I wouldn’t be able to walk. Holy soreness Batman! After being in kickboxing for a few weeks now I’ve decided it is by FAR the best ‘fitness’ class I’ve ever been in. It’s mixed up well, so it doesn’t get repetitive. The music is a good playlist that’s long enough to shuffle and not feel stale. And the workout – sheesh, the workout. I think it either equals or comes close to the level of intensity that the boot camp I was in did, but without feeling so painful, stale, and boring.
Although I gained a great level of conditioning from boot camp in a short span of time, it was torture. I was counting down the days until I was done after the first day. It would have been better if it hadn’t been in the morning, but it still wasn’t fun – just work. It honestly felt like being in a sports practice, without any of the fun sport parts. The only thing that kept me in it was my desire to get in shape for MMA.
Kickboxing is work too, to be sure, but it’s also constantly changing and challenging in different ways, so it doesn’t feel miserable. It feels purposeful, stays moving fast enough that I’m not counting the minutes, and incorporates enough martial arts to keep me happy. So far, it’s been great – I have fun, I’m tired and sweaty and sore when I get done, and I love it.
But what about Taekwondo, you say? Didn’t you love that more? Well, yes, but. Taekwondo was amazing, and I did love it. But it was never a ‘fitness’ class of this intensity. Taekwondo is great for a baseline, and great for coordination and strength, but it will only get you so far. Unless you’re sparring a lot – which we usually weren’t – it’s not that cardio intensive, so I rarely felt very exhausted or sore after class.
It was good, in a way, because I started off so out of shape that it built me up at a rate I could handle. But when it came to getting past decent shape into peak condition, there just wasn’t enough physical work involved in class to get there. Taekwondo can be a very technical sport – get your foot there, pointing that direction, and your arms here, and your head looking there, and your other foot up here, and do it all while looking halfway coordinated, and then transition into the next move that’s just as technical. Your stances need to be perfect – after 81 moves, you should end up on exactly the same speck on the floor that you started from. If you jump, it’s not enough to just land on your feet, you have to land in a perfect stance.
All of that is work. It will build muscle. It will build cardio, if you do it enough. But it’s easy to let the cardio slip, and let the stances get higher and higher until they don’t work your legs. Especially once I started teaching more than training, and adult classes became an afterthought in the wake of changing priorities at my old school, I wasn’t getting much of a workout. I pushed myself to do the moves as perfectly as I could to be an example for the kids I was teaching, and I think that’s what kept me from losing ground, but I wasn’t getting anywhere.
Taking this kickboxing class is part of a change I’ve been wanting to make for a while, of getting in the kind of condition I should have been in all along. I want to be able to perform martial arts to the peak of my ability, and although I know what my moves were lacking, I rarely had the strength or stamina to fix them consistently.
If I ever take the chance to do Taekwondo again, I hope I will feel like I can represent it as well as it deserves. It is a beautiful, powerful, technical sport, and I want to be an instructor who can teach by more than just a decent example and words – I want to show what there is to achieve.
Food:
Breakfast: PB&J, Milk
Lunch: Pizza
Supper: 1/2 slice pizza, Chocolate Milk
The sad fact of food when you’re single is that you get used to eating the same thing a lot. It’s simpler and more cost effective if I cook things in big batches, and fortunately I don’t mind the repetition. Breakfast….well, I have a rocky relationship with morning food. I don’t like to eat right after I get up, and my stomach has aggressive opinions about what it will accept. I go though stages where I eat the same thing for weeks because nothing else sounds good, and then after a few weeks or months there will come a day where I can’t stand the sight of it anymore, and I won’t eat it again for ages. This has happened with PB&J (currently making a comeback), oatmeal, granola bars of various brands, and so on. I’ve never been much of a cereal eater, although lately it’s been sounding better to me than it usually does. Basically I go with what sounds good, and don’t argue with my stomach.
Current Weight: 162
It’s a miracle!
0Or at least, my apartment is clean. These days, in my world, that IS almost a miracle. Keeping things tidy was a casualty of freelancing – not because I don’t have time to do it, but because I lost all my reference points. I used to come home from work and 15 minutes of cleaning was the first thing I did. It was a habit that took me a while to build, but it served me well…and then I started working from home, and at random hours, so I wasn’t coming in the door at 5:15 every day anymore, and there went the cleaning.
Habits are a funny thing, so hard to build and so dependent on fragile things. Hooking a habit to a trigger is immensely helpful, but when the trigger is gone, so is the habit. So I look for a new reference point in the midst of a life full of chaos, and so far I have failed. But today things are clean, so maybe I can keep them that way. Hah.
Food:
I declare Sunday a cheat day. So there! See you Monday.
7.1.10 – One Week In
0Happy Canada Day! The only reason I even know that’s today is from working at a summer camp long ago with a bunch of wonderful Canadians, but that’s another story. The fourth of July is looming, as I am reminded by the periodic explosions booming outside my window. I love the fourth, but as I age I’m feeling a little of the get-off-my-lawn attitude about people blowing stuff up at all hours of the night for a week in either direction of the holiday. But at least they’re getting into the holiday spirit, right?
As of tonight I have been to five kickboxing classes since last Thursday – every muscle in my body is sore, but in a good way. I no longer feel like I’m going to vomit halfway through class, although whether that’s from my conditioning getting better, going back on acid reducers (I have a bad history with nausea), or a combination both I don’t know. Most likely both. Whatever the reason, I feel much better.
It’s a really well-balanced class – as I said before, almost every muscle in my body feels sore, and my entire body is getting worked pretty evenly. The class is fast paced, with lots of changes in activity, and a new set of drills every week, so there’s repetition without it becoming monotonous. Which is good, because some of us have short attention spans…
There’s also a good mix of people, so I don’t feel like the most out-of-shape, and I feel like I have people to push me. I already feel better, and all in all I like it. I signed my life away a 6-month contract on Tuesday, so I better like it. I can’t really afford it but I decided I can’t afford NOT to work out either. I am a much better functioning human being when I work out.
Still undecided on whether I’m going to try their Taekwondo (I can’t afford it right now anyway, so it’s kind of a moot point), but this at least gets me into shape. I haven’t gone through my form again since the last video I posted, but I’m hoping to work that practice into my new schedule and that my better conditioning will make it easier to improve technique.
A Few Notes, Updates, and Thoughts
01) How did it get to be 9:18? When did that happen?
2) Working out is awesome. When it comes to ‘pure’ workouts like kickboxing, I despise them while they happen but love them when I’m done.
3) I started a kickboxing class! A good friend of mine who I used to teach Taekwondo with started it, and recommended it. It took a couple of weeks of his Facebook (yes, spell check, facebook is a word, and I refuse to change it) statuses about it for me to get jealous enough to overcome my prejudice of the school and go try a class. Result? Torture, but in a good way.
4) As I may have said before, I applied to teach Taekwondo at the YMCA, but never heard back…sigh.
5) The place I’m taking kickboxing has Taekwondo…they are one of those schools I feel pretty iffy about, but I haven’t ruled it out. And, they actually do crazy things like pay their instructors. So we’ll see where things go there, the people I’ve met so far have been quite nice and the experience much better than my initial, unpleasant, experience there a few months ago. Hopefully that was just a case of one unfortunate individual and not an overall theme.
6) Holy crap kickboxing is expensive. The whole school is expensive. More than I can really afford, but I think the sanity gained will offset the money spent.
7) I am tired. And sweaty. And out of shape. So very out of shape.
8) No matter how hard I try to work out on my own, it never comes close to what a class can do. I can even push myself harder teaching a class than I can by myself.
9) I finally feel, after a few really hard months, like my life might be headed back in a good direction.
Second verse, same as the first
0**note: I’m tired, stressed, behind on work and it’s almost 1am. Snarkiness may ensue.**
Day 2 of CPR/AED/First Aid class…literally 80% identical material as the first class, and the 20% was just slight modification for children. And I thought the first four hour class was bad. The review doesn’t hurt, but that’s just me trying to find the bright side of sitting through four hours of the same damn presentation again, right down to the jokes.
Who made up this system? They cram just enough information into your head that you can pass an incredibly simple bubble test, although even that can get throw a curve with four hours worth of random lecture that may or may not have covered the material in the question. The actual CPR routine I’ll probably remember, but everything else was pretty much gone from my mind five minutes out the door. There’s some decent information there, but there’s too much to absorb. There’s got to be a better way to do it, that would be less painful for everyone. But I guess I won’t argue with the Red Cross…at least not right now. Right now I’ll find away to survive one more night and try to remember something other than the maroon socks of yesterday when I’m done. A person can only have so many crusades in life.
What Taekwondo can learn from Software
2Just food for thought: I watched this talk by Kathy Sierra today and had a lot of ideas run through my head about how the same principles – helping people overcome the ‘suck’ factor of trying new things, and helping people be awesome – could be applied to Taekwondo and Martial Arts. As I’ve said before, just because everybody does things one way doesn’t mean there isn’t a better solution.
Taekwondo as sport, or Taekwondo as self-defense, either way these principles apply. Make the first 30 minutes fun, and teach them how to do something awesome. Give newbies a way to feel included. Make the experience about what the students will learn that helps them, not about teaching them how to master the system. Reframe our expectations in terms of how students become awesome through the art, not how students become awesome at the art.
It’s an awesome presentation for anyone – the principles apply to selling products and services, but also to interacting with people on a daily basis…If you do nothing else today, you should watch this.
(link via Business of Software Blog and my brother)
Thoughts?
