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!

My Wife's Cookies

These cookies are amazing. I’m not going to pull any punches when I say if you had found a Russian spy during the cold war and that spy was seriously hard core and didn’t mind getting their fingernails pulled or bamboo shoved in their eyeballs, they’d crumble for these cookies and totally turn into a double-agent from Heck.

Did I mention they’re gluten free, too? And then consider that she didn’t even use a GF recipe. She took a regular recipe and modified it, IN HER HEAD-BITS, to be GF, and made it tasting perfectly like a regular gluteny cookie. If you’ve ever done GF cooking, you’ll understand how pretty-much-impossible that is.

I’d share the recipe but for two things:

1. I don’t know it
2. I’d have to kill you

Yea, they’re that good.

Turmoil

Alright, so maybe I need to keep an eye on the whole microcosm-is-a-reflection-of-the-macrocosm thing. It was talked about in that yoga journal article I mentioned a post or two ago. When working sun salutation this morning, I was very tense. I was also very short with my son, who was actually being pretty cute. He spent some time working to mirror the poses I was working through and doing a pretty good job. When he'd get under me on the mat, though, I was brief and snappy when telling him to move. (The fact that I'd either squash him or try to put my knee/foot through him doesn't matter.)

When I was in Four-Limbed Staff Pose, he decided to hop on my back and I was very growly when I told him to get off my back and that's when I realized I stepped over the line from semi-justified to asshole. He looked very hurt and wouldn't come sit on the mat with me when I sat down and asked him to--instead going over to the couch and face-planting.

I need to make it my goal today to stay focused on the people around me and what kind of interaction they're getting out of me. There's something that needs fixing here; let's see if I can find it.

Comments on Yesterday's Posted Routine

You know, this one.

• Mountain Pose
  • This one is good at stretching the muscles of the front shoulders (surprisingly) and the wrists/forearms. It's weird where you feel stretches as long as you keep your second thumb knuckle on your sternum and your shoulders dropped.
• Upward Salute
  • Really great at stretching the ribcage, the intercostals, abdominals... the whole front of you body. Heck, even good at stretching your deltoids and, if you drop your head back, also stretches those front neck muscles.
• Standing Forward Bend
  • If you don't know, I'm not telling you.
  • Bah, I guess I will. Good at stretching your back and ribcage as well as your hamstrings. It's a gods-sent for my upper back.
• Lunges
  • This is a great one. I initially added it to an ex-routine as a hip opener and found out it's also great at the hip flexors. You just have to focus on your form and make sure your back leg is as straight and high as possible. Get your foot between your hands or in front, almost like you're working for forward splits, and it's more emphasized.
• Plank Pose
  • Good strength isotonic. Also good for the wrists (I wouldn't have believed this except my bad wrist tells me loudly that it's getting focus)
• Four-Limbed Staff Pose
  • Same features as Plank Pose, but your arms are bent and you're close to the ground. You can get some good isometrics if you move from plank to FLSP nice and slow.
• Upward-Facing Dog
  • Front torso, abdominals and hip flexors stretched with this one. Also isometric for shoulders, triceps, and lower pecs. Oh, and those wrists.
• Downward-Facing Dog
  • This is the beast position. You stretch hips, glutes, hamstrings, calves, back, rib cage. Good isometrics on shoulders, upper pecs, triceps and back (I think emphasis on lower back but not certain)

Let's think of the core taekwondo muscle groups and see which ones are stretched and strengthened

Focused Stretching:

• Hamstrings
• Hip flexors
• Rest of hips
• Calves (nice front stance)
• Glutes (oh, those axe kicks...)

Strengthened (top down):

• Deltoids
• Triceps (duh)
• Forearms (stabilizing for punches)
• Abdominals
• Hip flexors
• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Deltoids
• Calves

Has anyone else missed what seems like the only taekwondo-specific area that isn't hit by this lovely routine? Yep, it looks like the groin muscles are completly neglected. I am going to ruminate on this for a day or so and I'm going to figure out how to add either warrior II poses (which wouldn't be that hard) or wide-angle forward bends (which I'm having problems right now conceptualizing where to add without breaking the flow).

Oh, and a final note. If you're thinking that doing a yoga routine might be good for stretching but isn't really good on energy or strength training because the closest you get is isotonics, which even NASA showed isn't as good as isometrics, and it's not really fast-paced; I'll say this. Per this article on YogaJournal, it's traditional to do this routine 108 times! WOW! Which means that unless you want to be doing this for a couple hours (my routine takes at least 2.5 minutes per repetition), you'll need to be moving between the poses fast and not staying in the poses for long and, at my current routine, I'm breaking a light sweat after 12 minutes... think what it'd be sped up and done for not 5 repetitions, but 108?!?!?!

Sun Salutation Routine

YMMV and all that, but here's how it goes:

delay: 0

Get Ready,00:10

Mountain Pose,00:10
Upward Salute,00:10
Standing Forward Bend,00:15
Right Lunge,00:10
Plank Pose,00:10
Four-Limbed Staff Pose,00:10
Upward-Facing Dog,00:10
Downward-Facing Dog,00:30
Left Lunge,00:10
Standing Forward Bend,00:15
Upward Salute,00:10

Then you just copy/paste the actual pose section as many times as you want to do the routine. (I'm thinking about putting on my to-do list the ability to code loops into the routine files. Like: repeat: 5...end: repeat sort of thing.)

At the end, I have 3 lines like this:

End of Routine,00:01

That's because I don't have a cool way of specifying a different sound yet. Maybe I'll put on my to-do list the ability to specify something like beep: 3 to kinda hard-code a number of beeps without having to be tied to an actual routine.

I actually like that last idea...

Gratuitous Praise Post

I have, throughout my childhood, practiced multiple martial arts, though never for any extended period of time. My life up to 2000 had me dabbling in two different forms of taekwondo, kung-fu and uechi-ryu karate. Other than personal problems that made it hard for me to maintain... external commitments, the leading cause in me discontinuing practice always tended to be the quality of instruction. (Kung-Fu is an exception... I stopped attending because I had to move.)

Back in 2000, I practiced ATA taekwondo. The school I attended actually rented space from a church and it wasn't until I had attended for a while (probably a handful of months) that they moved to their own location. I was progressing at a consistent and easy-to-understand rate. After I obtained my Yellow belt, the striping method took hold and, for reasons I never understood, my progression plateaued. I was doing the form perfectly for weeks and still no stripe. I watched others in my group getting stripes when I was doing the form better but... no stripe.At the time, I was very bad at talking to people outside the family so I never found out why I didn't get my stripe and just drifted away from practice. (This was also before ATA started using the membership method where you had to commit to at least a year, so it was easy to stop paying and be done at the end of the month.)

Why do I talk about my martial arts history? Contrast maybe?

A lot of things have changed since then. I'm close to a decade older. As surprising as it might seem, I'm down right extroverted compared to what I was then. I'll admit that though I'd say I'm more capable of effective communication, I might be just as likely to be a mute as I was then. Long story short, I'm much more mature than I was then. Credit where credit's due: I praise Heather for all of my growing up. She's a goddess.

Late last year, I decided to give martial arts and ATA another shot. My research phase existed of finding the ATA schools within feasible commuting distance and trawling through their websites. It included making snap judgments based off of pictures of the school, descriptions and pictures of the instructors and student bodies, etc. etc. I don't think I liked the look of the schools in lower tampa bay, plus the Kowkabany do-jhang was closest to our house.

Master K intimidated me. The combination of his short hair and beard made him look like a Harley biker.. It made him look like a biker. No, not a biker, like the Russian bad guy from Street Fighter. I can't describe what my first impression was when I went in to talk with Master K about schedules, fees, etc. I was so hyped on the I'm-going-to-talk-to-someone-damnit adrenaline and that really trashes my memory and, if you know me, it's not really good to begin with.

My continuing exposure to both the instructors and the students that they draw to them still has the wonderful ability to surprise me almost every class. It's the little things that matter. Master K is embarrassingly current on my blog, even during the stints when I didn't post an update for a huge amount of time. My programming project actually interested him. Mr. Bartlett is a wonderful sparring partner after you ask him to take his punches from freight train to mid-sized sedan.

Is this the kind of quality I should be able to expect from an ATA school? No; I have a feeling this school is something special.

Sunshine Delay

Sorry I haven't posted lately. Lots of stuff going on and then I got pulled into Sunshine. Funny enough, it actually took Heather some time working me into reading this book but, within ... 10 pages or so ... it became so compelling that I couldn't get anything done until I finished reading it.

Yes, that book put me back a whole 2 days of my life. And it was so worth it.

Training Updates and Grumbles

Wednesday's class.

I got to class with some time to spare, which is good because I really wanted to pass my form by one of the instructors. I was able to get Senior Master to go through the form with me a couple times so I could get the rough spots ironed out. I was happy that, for the most part, I had the form down. The closed-stance blocky bit was confusing me but she helped me tie it in very well. Yay :)

I'm glad I went over it before class, because we didn't touch the forms at all during class! Instead, we worked on sparring combinations. I have to say, they're really fun! And complicated. I fell for the first time and ended up [I'm guessing] spraining my left wrist. Most of the pain is gone by now but I still have limited range of motion.

There's a combo with a reverse hook kick in it. It's such a lovely combo. I love that kick so. It works my bu... glutes and groin muscles in such a new way that I ended up hobbling around until yesterday. I finally recovered from *that* pain by today.

Friday's sparring class

Sparring was good. It feels like I only sparred with something like three different partners. The only one I actually remember is Mr. Cavina.... I don't know how to spell his last name. The senior. He's a very good sparring partner and helps point out things I need to work on. Most of his intensity seemed to be withdrawn, though, and explained he was holding it for a later match.

I tried a reverse (I think) hook kick to the head when I sparred Matt. I'm pretty sure he said I connected, though he wrapped his arm around my foot in a belated attempt to block and I lost my foot pad. Those hook kicks? Fun, but tricky. Get them expecting side kicks and they'll try to block something that's just not in the right place for your sidekick-that's-off-to-the-side-that hooks-around kinda goodness.

Oh, and I did a jump #2 round kick with Mr. Kavinagh (sp) and he said it was a really good kick, though I'm pretty sure he blocked it. Fun fun :)

Later in the class, I noticed that all of my combat marks were appearing on the right side of my body. Me being anal about being balanced, I asked both Mr. Reed and Master K if they had any ideas on how I could bring my left side into the battle more and stop being so lopsided.

To summarize, their collective advice was to focus on my strong side and, creatively speaking, allow my left side to wither and drop off as a useless bit of detritus. Taking an analogy from each of them, if my calvary is better than my infantry, I should charge with my calvary. (Which makes me wonder why the infantry's there? Shouldn't there be some sort of military training oportunity to bring them up to snuff?) When I sign my name, do I do it with both hands? (No, but I use a broom left handed and that requires more physical finesse than attaching my scrawling signature to the page.)

The thing that really surprised me? The source. I'm used to getting ... less than helpful responses from lots of people and, as a result, usually tend to keep my questions to myself. This particular concern has been on my mind for a month, easy, and the question finally came to the front of my mind right when I was by two people I trusted would would help me figure out a solution instead of telling me that my concern was unfounded.

How about when I spar someone who's left handed? Do I accept the disadvantage because I'm subpar fighting left-handed? What if I injure my right side, like I did last a while back when fighting Matt and I thought it OK to block with my fist? I was at a significant disadvantage because I couldn't offense with that hand.

Benefit of the doubt in play, I think I understand their mindset. It was in the middle of a class and each of them had a lot on their mind. Mr. Reed was in combat mindset where he has to focus on his style and what he's got going on and Master K's half-way through leading a class and that involves a lot of mindness especially when it's a sparring class and you need to have a much more focused yet dispersed perception.

But still!

I might only be a green belt in taekwondo, but I'm a second degree black belt in grumbling. ;)

Project Progress

The last couple of hours have seen some assorted progress.

First, I worked on my requirements documentation. This is always a good place to start.

I then worked on DFDs (Data Flow Diagrams). I learned about these in my Systems Analysis and Design class and hated them now just as much as I hated them then. By the time I was done burning an hour and a half, I have a document that almost looks attractive but I'm afraid doesn't convey any useful information.

Next, I put together a flowchart. I wanted a document that gave a better idea on what the heck is actually going on because, honestly, the DFDs were stupid.

Finally, I put together the story board! This is where most of me wanted to start the whole process but I'm really glad I held off. Building the other documents (mainly the requirements document) really gave me some better ideas on what the interface should look like.

I meant to take my timesheet to Master K. after sparring this evening but I forgot. Since I didn't have my storyboard together at that point, and almost none of my other documents were things I think would have helped in the showing to Master K, I'm glad I didn't.

Stretching Failures

I haven't stretched for the last two days. Wow am I letting myself down. Both days, I planned to do near the end and, for some reason, I crashed a lot sooner than expected. Shesh!

First Hour on Project

Last night, I got my first hour on my project worked. I'm going to try and go through as much as the SDLC as I can to make this a nice, rounded experience. I'm working on my requirements document right now.

However good having the first hour done is, I planned on getting more like 3 hours in. I need to figure out how to keep myself awake better! :(

BBC - 2/6/09

I'm going to put more time information on my posts. Bullets in order and I'll put a timestamp on the sections.

8:00 am

• Stretching: Easily 10 minutes.
  
• Sit-Ups: 30
  
• Push-ups: 30 elbow-width palms. Heather tells me my back was bowing, though.

5:15 pm

• Forms/sparring, aerobics and spar drills all covered in today's class.
• Drank way in excess of 32 oz today. I did better than yesterday at tanking up on water before class and didn't do too bad after class.

12:48 am

Time to go get my meditation time in!

Second Stripe and Blackbelt Challenge

There were only two people in class today and, shock of shocks, I was the senior student. Oddities not withstanding, I got my second stripe!

I got the form for the blackbelt challenge. It officially starts on the 9th, but I'm going to try for it starting tonight.

• 100/50/25 pushups
• 100/50/25 situps or crunches
• Form & Sparring combo x2
• Meditation/Prayer (5-10 minutes)
• Stretch (5-10 minutes)
• Good deed
• Drink at least 32 oz water
• 15 min. aerobics
• Spar drills

The ones I didn't list (and why):

• 15 minutes aerobics or walk/run. The physically demanding tasks above should take at least 15 minutes to perform.
• 10 minutes reading or writing. Other than my reading hobby, I'm in college so I end up reading a lot more than that every day whether I want to or not! :P
• 1 "fun" hour with a loved one. Once a week. I showed that to my wife and she had a good laugh. If I'm not doing at least one hour of family time a day, life gets very difficult for me (my son is very vocal when he doesn't get as much attention as he deserves)
• Hug / "I love you". I'm sure there are people out there that need a goal to do this once a day but I really hope I'm not one of them.
  
• Maybe I'll add in the fun hour description, as well as the hug / I love you, as a way to boast about my wonderful family. Don't say I didn't warn ya!