Sprinting

Today and yesterday, I've been centering my lunch-time exercise around sprinting. I'll run all out for a minute then hobble my way back. Then run all out for a minute. Then walk back. Rinse, repeat.

The thought behind this switch is to try to mimic the intensity of a sparring match. I figure if I can keep running full pace for a minute, I can spar full speed for a minute and not die and I mean full tilt. Right now, my sparring is full of pauses and breaks which isn't bad, but when I spar those that require my best, I die way too fast.

I'd like to see myself be able to run full tilt for three minutes, but that'll take me a while to achieve.

Observation tells me that sprinting is going to be an effective addition to my exercise regime. Judging by the muscle soreness that I haven't experienced in quite a while, I am obviously targeting my muscles both strongly enough and in a different enough method that they're being pushed. I think this hard sprinting will be a good compliment to Tae Kwon Do training.

Wordpress

I'm going to be mirroring my Wordpress account over here for a while so I can see which platform I like better. Thoughts?

Taking Time

A number of things have been taking up, it seems, all of my time and/or focus for the last little bit.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Yeeeeaaaaa, I knowwwwww. But I'm getting so much enjoyment out of it this time around! Last time I played, it was pretty close after I played the HECK out of Elder Scrolls III and was kinda burned out, so Oblivion felt like a flop. It's really feeling like a challenge this time around and is giving me a good sense of accomplishment.

School. Really not as much time as it should be taking up, but my Geography class started and it's actually requiring, like, reading and stuff. I about stressed a year off of my life because I had to write a paper about a current event. If you don't know me, you wouldn't understand how out-of-touch-with-stuff I am. "Current Event" is almost a foul word for me. Me thinks I should change that.

Oh yea, I did! I signed up for newsletters from Mother Earth News.

Programming. I haven't done as much as I'd like (the story for the entire internship so far) but I've been able to put in some really good time here at good'ole work. I've taken it past what feels like a milestone to me, where it's capable to easily build complex exercise routines.

Tangent: A REALLY COOL accomplishment today. I refactored a huge bit of code and shaved almost 20% off my code size in the process.

Exercise. I have finally figured out how to do things right and be able to have the state of mind to exercise over lunch at work. Last work week, I believe I exercised three out of the four days (Might have just been two. By the time Sunday came around, my memory was already so fragmented that I couldn't keep the days of the week straight.)

Today, for example, my loose timing tells me I was able to keep very high intensity in my workout for about 40 minutes straight--easily the intensity level of a Monday-night class and maybe closer to a noon class. I wasn't able to exercise at all (more forgetfulness than anything) over my weekend, but if I can keep this up every work night, I might be able to accept being slovenly over the weekend.

Skipping Class

No, this is not a result of my thoughts leading up to my previous post, though those thoughts did have an impact on this decision. I’m doing some juggling with my schedule so I can fit in about 5 hours of intern working time today (most of it after others go to sleep) and the extra schedule disturbance of a class didn’t fit.

If I were actually planning on getting to this testing cycle, I’d be stressing more about this. But I’m not, so I’m not. I am, however, going to try to kick my unmotivational butt into gear and run through an exercise routine tonight. Yea, that’s right, I’m building this great tool to help me get through them but I have yet to be able to work myself up to doing a full-fledged routine with or without the tool. Me = Looser.

Aches and Pains

I feel like I am healing very slowly from a lot of the aches and pains I am developing from sparring; so many in fact that I’m starting to get concerned both with their quantity and their persistence. Let me describe them in a kinda-sorta chronological fashion.

My right foot’s little bones (that’d be those metatarsals) have started locking up. It happened the first time way back when I was first learning my camo belt combinations. The jump kicks on combination #3 made my foot twinge really hard whenever I’d put weight on it and could only be relieved by a forced and uncomfortable pop by twisting my foot… just so. That pain came back after last sparring and no popping has been possible (and the attempts to discover the relieving pop have been painful on top of unsuccessful).

My left wrist got sprained a while back–I’d date it about the first sparring experience after getting my green belt so that’d be about a month and a half ago. I had an embarassing fall while attempting to do a hook-kick-to-the head and caught my fall on my right wrist. It has healed enough that I’m good with straight pressure: meaning I can do knuckle (not palm-of-hand) push-ups and punches, but not lateral things like blocking with my wrist/hand. The occasional times I do end up blocking with my hand/wrist make the pain flare up again. Yoga seems to be helping this one, but that’s a long time of lingering pain/disability. I started sparring with my right foot leading because of this pain.

My left hand is the most recent casualty. One of the joints in those small bones (that’d be the metacarpals this time around) has gone all wonky. Unlike the metatarsal issue, this feels more like a bruising problem and not something that a popping could even temporarily relieve. This pain flairs up much more frequently, because there are many things that impact the outside of that hand. Last sparring, this hand was more of a concern that I actually started switching back to leading with my left foot.

I won’t include the effects of being round kicked in the neck twice in a single match because it didn’t cause any internal damage (and being embarassingly funny).

My attempt at shielding the paining parts of my body while sparring and doing other activities has lead with limited success and only lead to enough other parts of my body getting injured that I’m now having to decide which parts require shielding the most and that has me concerned.

Something that’s getting my gall, though, is that sparring is so important in taekwondo that I’m faced with two decisions:

1. Keep the same classes but stop sparring. The problem is that one of the classes is straight-sparring so there’d be no reason to be there if I wasn’t sparring (I don’t think doing drills would be any better than sparring, at this point). The other problem is that if I choose not to participate in sparring, I will not get credit for the class I attended but did not spar in. I’m sure Master K. would make an exception for me because of this, but it makes me prefer to just not go to the classes on principle.
2. Modify my class schedule to include only classes where sparring seems to be traditionally absent. This seems unacceptable, again on principle, and makes me want to just skip classes on principle.

It frustrates me that my only option seems to be to skip classes, because that would mean I would be skipping ALL of my classes and I can see these various aches easily taking another month to heal to a comfortable-with-sparring level. I’ve paid for these classes and it makes me very frustrated that I haven’t even got my stripe for sparring since, out of all the things I’ve been doing, sparring has been the most emphasized. I feel like I should be able to step back from sparring and not get those embarrassing pink circles that make my time card look like I’m an irresponsible chit that needs the visual jab-in-the-ribs every time he takes the card off the wall.

(Hell, I got my combination stripe and the only day I actually worked combinations into my out-of-class practice was that very day, and in the 30 minutes right before the class I got my stripe in. What?!) I think I’ve more than displayed my skill in sparring to a stripable level (I even think I’ve displayed my form skillfully enough, but there’s only so much I can act indignant enough since I know I haven’t taken the classes enough to justify even loosely the obtaining of two stripes.) The implied saying behind “no pain no gain” does not seem to be applying here. I think I’ve endured more than enough pain to have gained my sparring stripe and that’s not even including the struggle and pain I’ve endured because I’ve tried to keep sparring so consistently in face of a family that very much disaproves of the violent aspects of my chosen hobby.

I hate how I stop being coherent if I let my fingers stay too long connected to the keyboard. I’M OFF!