A Recreational Physicist

I wanted to work on some weak spots I have, and I have plenty more right now.  I know I'll get my conditioning back eventually, but it's been tough working back into it.

 Exercises

1. Hindu squats
2. db swings 
3. push ups 

45 seconds on 15 seconds rest 5 times through the set.

I had to add a 1 minute rest between sets 3 and 4 other then that it was straight through.

Fall and winter vegetables are definitely my favorites at the farmer's market.  Check out this great stir fry I cooked up with mushrooms and bok choy from Saturday's market.  I normally just cut up the stalk into strips and add it to the fry after the onions and mushrooms have started to brown, and add the greens to soften up a little close to the end.  This time I started out with a bok choy bigger then my head (for $3 no less!), so I had to improvise a little.  Adding the stalk pieces just about overflowed my wok, so I pulled everything out after the vegges got nice and warm.  I added the greens in on their own and cooked them all the way down like spinach or chard putting a few of the inner stalks on top to soften up while the greens cooked down.  The only seasoning I used was a little soy sauce and a bit of rosted peanut oil, but the bok choy stalks made a delicious broth with the mushrooms, which made the rice taste fantastic. I think I've found a new favorite way to cook bok choy.  I couldn't convince Luke that the greens weren't chard, and all through the meal he kept chanting, I love chard.  How many 2 year olds do that?

I've still got a head of cabbage and some more mushrooms for a cheese and pasta cabbage casserole.

I just wanted to add that we rounded out the weekend with Cindy cooking a fantastic dinner of roasted vegetable lasagna, and some of the best acorn squash I've ever eaten.  I've mostly had it with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.  I've tried it plain a few times and have been pretty disappointed.  She was inspired by a cook's illustrated recipe, and threw in some fresh chives and sage from the garden to the squash.  Man that made a huge difference.  It was the best acorn squash I've ever eaten, and it was one of my favorite foods growing up.

The other night we ran out to the luminaries event at the Lady bird wildflower center with Luke.  It was free with a donation of cans of food at the door.  After checking our pantry and finding a total of 2 cans which expired over a year ago, we realized we had to pick up some food on the way.  Stopping at the super target, I found their can isle and was immediately disgusted.  Nothing but cans of campbell's soup and processed crap.  I eventually found some cans of black beans near shin level taking up all of 8 inches of isle space.

It was a real indication of how my tastes have changed.  Growing up I loved all that salty processed food and now I consider it nearly toxic.  It's a shame how convienence and quantity have really trumped quality and taste in our society. 

I'm off the 50 day plan, and I'll post about it this weekend.  With my black belt test quickly approaching I'm adding more kung fu exercises into my conditioning workouts while keeping close to the 50 day schedule.  Here was last night's workout and it was a killer.

1. 25 pushups, it can't be all legs
2. 10 CK jumps. (ass to grass monkey stance, jump up, spin 180 degrees and land in a horse stance)
3. Alternating side blue bird lunge jumps back and forth across the lawn
4. 400m sprint

Times 4

 I didn't want to add any of the technical jumping kicks because of injury risk, but these jumps are some of the hardest in my katas so far, especially the CK jumps.  10 of those (5 each side) back to back and my legs were burning.

 For a finisher on all that, I carried my waterball around my backyard with my arms wrapped around it like I was grabbing someone from behind, which was about 8 times.  I probably could have gone longer, but my back was getting fatigued more then anything and I was worried about pulling something.

Today was the day for Work Capacity 101.  We couldn't do the pullups and medicine ball slams together because we don't have a pullup bar outside right now, though I got a home depot gift card for my birthday so I can build one.  The modified workout was now:

1. 5 woodchoppers
2. 10 medicine ball slams
3. 15 burpees
4. 20 jumping jacks.
   

If any of you are working on an installer package.  Please give your exe or or installer a meaningful name so I don't end up with a folder with the file setup(27).exe 

Tetris shaped ice cubes - behold! 

I never thought much about brick and or board breaking in martial arts.  I consider it more of a semi neat trick then a useful skill.  I'd rather spend my time conditioning or working on footwork, something that might actually help me out of a fight or at least make me healthier.

After this video though breaking crap with hand and foot strikes is permanently off my list of things to try. 

Brick breaking

 

I finally got off my butt and made a water ball yesterday.  It was surprisingly easy using an attachment from the air mattress air pump.  I had been planning on attaching it to a milk jug to create a funnel and slowly fill the ball up, but sense prevailed and I just duct taped it right to the end of the hose and cranked that sucker up.  10 minutes later I had my water ball. As you can see I started to fill the ball up nice and slow, but then realized how long that would take.

I've just carried it around a little bit as a finisher to my max strength workout last night.  It's extremely effective for grip work, grabbing the folds of plastic in your hands and trying to hold on.  I did a little of that, but I also just wrapped my arms around it and hugged it close.  I'm going to be working that one a lot.  On Monday we were practicing take downs from behind and in the middle of it my arms just gave out.  I had the strength to keep moving, but my arms were just too fatigued to keep my grip around my sparring partner's waist.  The water ball is the only thing I've tried that has come close to being a good simulation of that.  Now, getting an empty keg is next on the list.

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting much about my workouts over the past month or so.  I've been doing the Never Gymless 50 day plan with Cindy.  Well, it's more of a 60 or so day plan.  We've added a few extra rest days here and there so we can work in some of the Kung Fu conditioning classes.  20-30 minutes of jump rope intervals plus an ICT of Hindu pushups and squats is quite a conditioning workout.

I haven't wanted to post the workouts from the plan since they are part of the book and it didn't feel right putting those out in public.  If any of you are interested, then I highly recommend Never Gymless*.  It contains much more then just a workout routine.  It has detailed background and details on hundreds of bodyweight exercises including variations on each ranging from basic to advanced.  In addition there is a wealth of information on how to setup a full program to meet your goals including both nutrition and workout plans.  I've read it several times, and I still pick up something new just about every time I take a glance through the pages.  There is an incredible amount of information packed into this book.

 I'm at the end of the 4th 5 day cycle in the 10 cycle plan.  I've followed a similar one week plan using similar workouts and also done some of the workouts in the text with good results.  I wasn't expecting the effects of doing the 5 day cycles of interval training, max strength, enhanced interval and explosive strength training with the workouts from the book.  The combination of the two is really powerful, and the only way that I think I can sum it up is it really leaves you 2 options, get stronger or die. I'm leaning towards getting stronger, but sometimes I'm not sure I'll make it.

I'm already noticing changes in my body composition, strength and endurance**, and I haven't been able to complete a full set on many of the conditioning routines.  It's a great challenge and it's only 15-20 minutes at a time in my backyard or bedroom.  Cindy and I are doing it together and it's great that we don't have to go somewhere leaving someone behind to watch Luke, we can workout together like we used to do kung fu together in the old days.

*I'm the guy doing the exercises in the first part of the interview linked to on that page, a few months after I got the book and started working some of the exercises into my routine.  Please don't take the exercises in the packages as an indication of what's in the book, I was just starting and Jason focused on just the principle of DIY workouts.  If you want some examples check out the videos on Ross' site.

**I've noticed it with Cindy too.  She's looking really good .  Though she told me that she bounced up after one of her Kung Fu conditioning classes and danced over one of her friends prone recovering body chanting Ross' 50 day plan, Ross' 50 day plan. 

I've been learning shaolin-do kung fu for the past 3 years, and I'm getting ready for my black belt test in a few months.  In that time I've made what I consider huge improvements in my strength and overall fitness.  I've gone from being able to barely do a few push ups to knocking out 100 in a set.  When I was 30 I had given up on being able to touch my toes ever again, and still walked with a noticeable bounce from my overly tight hamstrings.  In spite of that, I've never felt like I've been able to do a great job on any of my katas. 

When I'm practicing I'll see the owner of the school looking at me with a confused look on his face like he can't figure out exactly what I'm doing.  A few times he's even mentioned that he's sure I'm doing something wrong, he just can't figure out what it is.  On my last test, which I thought was my strongest yet, the comment was that bird forms probably don't work well for someone with my build.  I even passed up my last black belt test because I felt that while I knew the material, I just couldn't do it the justice it deserved.  When I test for black belt I want to perform at what I consider a black belt level.

I had been getting increasingly frustrated with the forms and the system I was learning.  More and more practice of the same forms wasn't really improving things, and my practice started to drop off.  It's hard to find time for it with Luke right now too.  Now that he's running he wants to play with me when I do the katas which doesn't make for the best practice.  Anyway even when I did practice, I was stalled out with more of the same.  Something clicked when I stumbled across the Neanderthal no More series of articles on T-Nation. 

I'd always thought of posture as a passive reflection of how much you practiced it, and something that was only important for appearances, and all you really had to do for it was stand up straight anyway.  The view of the article is that posture is essentially a reflection of the dynamic balances between the different support muscle groups in your body.  It immediately sunk in that I've been off balance and compensating for it my whole life.  My tight hamstrings and glutes, the lower back pain, some of my breathing problems and my poor kata forms all fit into a pattern.

I've added some time to work on balancing my muscle groups, and it's really starting to pay off.  I can flow through the katas much better, I'm not having to correct my balance all the time, I can drop down into lower stances without leaning way over.  Last night when I went through my forms, they needed so much less effort especially the jumps and landings.  I even managed to pull back into a respectable low monkey stance once or twice.  I probably would have gotten most of the benefit from my new workout routine (more on that in a later post), but I think things are working faster since I'm really focusing on the balance aspect of things. 

I'm using some of the exercises from the article and others from other sources, plus I'm doing low stance static holds with as much weight as I can handle, while holding my torso as vertical as I can.  The funny thing is that the natural posture from the article is the basic tai chi stance.  Full lunges with the back leg behind the body are basically one of the kung fu stances, and many of the static hold exercises that form the core of the earliest shaolin system are very similar to the exercises in the article.  While I'm learning from a few parts of the system, I wonder how much of this I would have gotten if I had been doing something similar to the full monks training rather then just the martial aspects of the system.

1. Tabata sprints
2. Tabata DB snatches - 30lbs
3. Tabata medicine ball slams 15lbs.

A1 negative pullups
A2 hamstring yang pulls

B1 asymetric pushups
B2 overhead squat

finisher - overhead medicine ball stance switches

I did this one with Cindy. It was good to do a strength workout with her. The hamstring pulls were fun. Start on your belly with your leg fully pulled up to your butt and then have your partner pull on your leg until it is fully extended. She really had to press hard to get my leg extended, a few times I managed to gain ground on her. I think it was a good extra workout for her. I've done them for situps in Kung Fu a few times and it's a great feeling to need 3 people to pull you flat.

I did one of the NG enhanced intervals last night.  10 burpees sprint 50m 10 plyo pushups run 50m backwards.  Another killer in a good way.  I managed 6 sets in 15 minutes with better pacing, but still slow.  Most sets were clap pushups, but I managed one set of fully off the ground clap pushups.  Those are fun.