Pre-Training, Week 3 Recap: up the mountain

    I have to admit, I'd gotten to the point where I was honestly just too wiped at the end of the day to blog something.  Isn't that crazy?  It's a really weird feeling to not actually be able to muster up the creative energy to write a few words, or even to just post a training recap.  Some days I didn't really even feel like logging my workout on fitocracy, but what can I say, I love games.  Even the little incentive of fito-points is enough to get me motivated.  I am truly a product of current society.  Ah well, arent' we all?

    Haven't been tracking my weight recently, I need to lose so much that I can pretty much go off of visible results and things like clothes.  When I started Kaju about 16 months ago, I was wearing size 5 gi pants.  Somewhere over the course of the year, I think it was about when I was prepping for what would have been test 2 around august-sept, I found myself in a pair of 6s.  A little tragic because I'd been doing really well.  It's a shitty excuse, but you know, life.  On the upside, it's all handled and I've got some real goals that I actually care about (which is important, you know).

Life, it's not an excuse, it's reality. Deal With It.

    Anyway, whining aside, I did the whole Kaju seminar in a new pair of size 5 gi pants, and they were actually COMFORTABLE, which means somethings happening.  It' s good incentive, just have to remember that the gut fat is going to be the last to go and I have ALOT of it.  Let's see where we are in 3 more weeks.  I feel like this is the stride now, I'm sleeping ok, I'm training regularly, and I've got my intake schedule dialed.

    I've started thinking about carb-loading totally differently too now, just noticing that I feel way better on protein of varying levels and medium to high carbs than I ever did on protein and some degree of fat with low carbs.  I mean it makes sense, I know all the exercise and nutrition science behind it and all that, I've just never really given it a serious try.  The fact that I've been able to keep up some degree of fairly high energy dependent training while "eating" homemade fruit juice and vegetables is an interesting testament.  All said, I'm only taking in about 200g of carbs too (well, not counting the vegetables), so it's been a cool experiment.  Now I must think about how to use this power for good when I transition off.  I have some ideas, I do like experimenting with training and nutrition, the whole "hacking" your training and diet.

    So on to stage 2, in which I add in some clean protein (gonna try Sun Warrior finally) and moderate the carbs a little bit.  I'd like to keep lifting for a few different reasons, metabolic effect and "pre-loading" my muscles being the two main ones.  And with that...off to the gym.

Pre-Training Day 9: cheat day

Training for 2013.04.21

Squat: (185x3)x3/225x6/245x6/235x6/225x6/(155x10)x2

Bent Raise: (25x8)x4

Lat Raise: (30x8)x4

EZ Curl: (70x12)x4

Rope Extension: (65x10)x4

Hammer Curl: (40x8)x4

One-arm Reverse Extension: (25x10)x4

Cable Curl: (35x15)x4

V-bar Pushdown: (57.5x15)x4

Food Log (cheat day!)

Edamame

Kaiso Salad (Seaweed)

Cucumber Sunomono

Vegetable Puree (Spinach, Kale, Cucumber, Broccoli, Cherry Tomato, Beef Bouillon, Greek Yogurt)

Fruit Shake

    Man, i had some really long string of cool thoughts about training and excelling and my constant weird dream of saving enough money to quit working and train all the time, be it powerlifting or fighting or whatever but then it sorta all went away...

    Good checkpoint today, took a bit of time to get through the lifts today, even on the lighter stuff had to bump up my rest periods to as much as 90 seconds.  Seems about right for this far into it.  Things are evening out just in time for the test this weekend, I think I'll do alright.  Might have to adjust the diet protocol a tiny bit, but let's see what happens.  I'm thinking this is going to be a smaller test, so I may live...

Pre-Training Days 7 and 8: alignment

Training for 2013.04.19
    Kajukenbo: Self defense curriculum test review

Food Log
    Beef broth
    Veg broth
    White bean soup broth
    Fruit and veggie shake

Training for 2013.04.20
    MMA Training: Punch and kick footwork
    MMA Training: Basic boxing footwork

Food Log     Peach Smoothie
    Green Tea
    Water
    Spinach, Kale, Cucumber, Broccoli Soup
    Fruit shake

    I don't mean alignment in some weird self-realizing sense, nor do I mean in some stodgy business-y sense, I literally mean physical alignment, that is, two or more things clicking into place.  I was thinking about the fact that I feel like whatever part of me governs sleep has finally caught up to the rest of me and now that everything's clicked into place, I'll be able to get back to sleeping like a regular person.  I was actually visualizing UIs like that one scene in the fifth element right at the beginning when the glowing circles line up to indicate that the shadow planet has arrived or whatever it's supposed to mean, or all those sequences in the various star wars when some ship gets locked into someone's crosshairs and lasered to death mere seconds later.

Almooost therrre...no that's not true, i'm still a ways out

    Yeah, It's getting to that point in the head, so I imagine my writings might get a little more disjointed and lovecraftian (I just mean in the batshit insane sense, not so much speaking of sleeping elder gods and all that) as time goes by.  I need the sleep bad, just because it's amazing what a difference effect the cutting has when you're actually training.  I was beginning to think it was manageable yesterday, then I go to MMA Training this morning and I'm not sure if it was the coffee, but yeah, jump roping is hard and awesome.  Days I (feel like too big of a wuss to/otherwise don't) train I need to start the time honored tradition of steady state cardio, or as I like to call it, going out for a lunchtime stroll.

    Almost two weeks in and starting to notice less gut when I do certain movements, but not fast enough.  Need to figure out how to get the nutrition for lifting sessions in, and I think I'm going to have to just bite the bullet and switch proteins.  I know i'm being a baby, but man, I seriously can't stomach that Strawberries/Cream Isopure.  The peptobismol pink is the first turnoff, but the taste is totally just pukeworthy.  Gotta figure out how to get the powders down too, haven't been able to find anything that makes them usable, but I think that's less to do with their chemical-flavored goodness and more that it's amplified by the nauseating flavor of the orange C4.

Great results, but man, this stuff tastes like human debris

    My right leg needs the calories and materials to recover though, I'm not sure my massive fat stores alone are up to the task...Doing the footwork drills today really highlighted how much I need to get that stuff down, so no gimp legs.  Making time for foam rolling and mobility, no more questions, no more f'ing around.  Def a testament to the intensity of things like strongman and fighting, all that time i was just lifting in the gym I got by without too much foam rolling, though I did do a ridiculous amount of mobility work...This isn't some excuse i'm trying to make to eat more food, I'm on my schedule and what's happening is happening.

    Gotta say the Amazon Prime is paying off for sure since netflix keeps removing all the food porn shows, but you know, i feel like I'm doing cuts wrong.  Every time I've done a monster cut like this, having access to food porn keeps me sane, altho everything i read says don't think about food.  Of course, knowing how weird i run, I imagine I'm spiking my insulin just by looking at food too, so I'm sure I'm just wrong on all kinds of counts.  It's weird, i'm actually looking at all the stuff I take in during the day and starting to remix things, case in point, spinach, kale, and broccoli soup tonight instead of putting those in my shake.  When you start thinking about it that way, it's probably a sign of some sort of neurosis, or as i call them, food issues.  Thankfully, I'm not too tired or far gone to start TMIing about all that, but let's all be glad I'm not video-blogging (yet).  I'm also trying my damndest not to draw parallels to the Cabbage Soup diet, but really, all I have to do is tell myself that I'm making up excuses to start eating again and it's cool.  I take to self-deprecation way better than I should (for a non-Catholic)...

Loser's lunch, Wannabe Fighter Style

Pre-Training Day 6: enter sandman

    It was sleep.  I mean, i figured it was, but yeah, took off from work a tiny bit early and had a bit of a nap.  I often wonder how productive I'd be if I split my day into a couple 3 or 4 hour blocks instead of one 6-10 hour block.  I wonder if ever a company will be forward thinking enough to give this sort of thing a shot...well, an American company anyway.  Are there government subsidies or tax incentives to keep employees working >40 hrs a week with only a few weeks of vacation?  Or is it just companies doing the minimum they feel like they have to given most people's expectations of job perks?  Even more incentive for me to get my own studio/design group/whatever off the ground.  I really think it'd go over pretty well.  Naps are good.  I may actually try my own experiment-ish wherein I go to work super early, like say 6, bail out at like 11, take a nap till...2, then work again till I go to class.  Might work at least on days I'm not morning training...you know, when I get back to morning training.  For now, I think i'm just going to admit I bottomed out and stick to 4.5 days training with time off in between weekdays.  Now is the time for a level-headed approach.  There will be time and need for extremes soon.

No on tells bears they can't have a siesta every now and then...

  You know, this sorta thing makes me think back a great blog post called Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed, which you've probably already at least seen mentioned.  Going through another cut makes me think that beyond the great points outlined in the blog post, it's even more sinister.  The 80 (err, 40, sorry) hour workweek is just another construct to keep the population docile and otherwise non-threatening.  Subsidize fake, nutritionally void food and work a schedule that only enables enough physical activity to barely offset that fake, nutritionally void food you had for lunch (and breakfast and last night's dinner).  Oddly enough, I find myself thinking about all this more right now because I'm drafting up milestone schedules for my project, and I really hope I'm not setting our team up for this sort of schedule.  I'm trying not to, I don't think I am, and I'll redirect if I need to.  But now, going to try and sleep again.  Really looking forward to getting this all right.  This is also the last time I'm ever doing a major fat loss cut...Seriously.

Pre-Training Day 5: Trenched

    Ok, time to be honest with myself, I am not fight training anymore.  I'm struggling through class and hitting like...something that hits really weak, like i dunno, some weird creature with spaghetti noodles for arms.  Skipped class yesterday, skipped two classes today, yeah, doin' great.  Well, on the upside, at least I burned my two off days so now I HAVE to train from here till Sunday.  See, the problem here is rather than looking at a refeed as a trade for training, I should just look at it as a regular part of the cutting process.  Yeah...i have some food issues.  Had to break the juice fast today too, but at least it was somewhat Renegade Diet-ish.  Light broth, vegetables, and thai seafood combo.  It's not the calories that are killing me, it's the lack of sleep.  Maybe that's what I'll do this weekend, just hang out till I fall asleep and doze for 10-20 hours.

Yeah, today didn't go according to plan at all...

Fight Training Day 4: Excuses, excuses...

    I feel kinda stupid logging today since I didn't actually, well, train.  They say recovery is part of training, but that's a shitty excuse for missing a day of class.  I dunno, i have tons of excuses right now, none of them good, you know, i have a Kaju test and seminar back-to-back in a week and a half, I need to allow myself to acclimate to the lower calories, blah blah blah, it's all bullshit, I'm just lazy.  Eh alright tho, I told myself when I started blogging my fight training i wasn't going to write posts like this where I beat myself up over stuff.  Decision made, stand on it and make a better decision next time.

...gotta go through it next time. i get one day off, and today was it.

    Whining and feeling sorry for myself aside, I am actually really excited for the Kaju Seminar and I don't want to compromise my performance.  I suppose I could just, um, EAT FOOD the night before, but I think I want to see if I can stay on schedule and hold off till Sunday.  There's this mongolian bbq place...with awesome fried chicken.  That sounds like a good refeed.  Alright, 12 days, and I need to hit...15 of 20 potential...no, wait, 10 percent, so...18 of 20 potential training sessions between now and then.  Deal.

Fight Training Day 3: Reality Check

    No, no, this isn't the post where i bare my soul and say that I'll never be a decent fighter and I'm no good, yadda yadda yadda (don't worry, that post is coming).  It's actually just a comment on the fights I went to this past weekend, which were awesome.  If this was anything to set the bar by, San Jose has a great amateur fight scene, though i suppose it helps when you have folks like Cung Le to promote fights.  Lots of really evenly matched fighters and a good card overall.  Great to see what I might be up against in a few years if I make to amateur fights.  That's good because I noticed alot of the fighters didn't seem to have great conditioning, so if I start focusing on that now, man, in 2 years I'll bet I could have some wicked conditioning.  Might have to pick up a strongman conditioning program...

    It's also a comment on the realization that I'm not actually training for fights right now.  I'm training to get in shape to start training for fights, so technically I guess I can't say fight training.  Dunno man, I train at such a great gym with great coaches and great fighters, so it makes you just want to be part of it all, you know?  And i miss competing.  It's been a long time since I've been to a martial arts event, be it tournament, batizado, or whatever, but yeah...I need to get back to it.  You can do whatever you want in the gym, but your numbers, technique, whatever, don't matter until you step in the cage, on the platform, on the mats, where it counts.  I gotta do this thing.

Aritra's on our fight team. Yeah, if i'm going to fight, i have to be serious.

    Not making excuses, but given my low calorie state, I can't really do much extended sparring, in fact, it's tricky just to get through technique now, which is also making me realize that I'm not actually fight training right now.  Can't be training for a fight if you're not practicing fighting, yeah?  Guh, oh well, walk before you can run and all that jazz.  If i DON'T cut down, I won't ever be fighting anyway, so...I am where I am because of my own decisions.  Shouldn't have let myself get all fat again.

Training for 2013.04.15

• Kajukenbo: Test prep - punches, punch combos, and kicking sets
• Kickboxing: "Aritra knockout combos" - ones and twos
• MMA: Jiu-jitsu - working from half guard, taking the back, and into triangle

Food Log for 2013.04.15

• 2 scoops Isopure
• 2 scoops Isopure
• Superfood Remix - slightly modified cuz i had to get rid of some juices
• 10g Creatine
• 10g BCAA
• 10g Leucine
• Total Calories: ~1100

    Really should've taken my C4 before class, I was crashing out and cramping up bad...no bueno.

Fight Training Day 2: Baby Steps

    Spent some time on the plane figuring out what my whole schedule is going to be, sorta fitting since this was hopefully my last major trip for a while so now I can sit back and focus on training.  Isnt' that sad?  I don't think 'yeah, now i'll be able to hunker down and focus on work,' instead I'm thinking 'Yeah! Training!'  Ah well, everyone has priorities, right?  I have to admit, i've been quite a bit more stressed than usual just because I've had so many presentations to put together, I could seriously just feel myself relaxing on the plane.  It's good, it's good.

Focus, Jack...

    I'll admit I'm committing a bit of a cardinal sin when it comes to training programming and that's that I'm making tweaks to a program before even trying it once, but I gotta say, I think i've been training in general long enough to have a good idea of how to manage nutrition.  I'm adding some Isopure shakes to my juice regimen so I can try and spend a few days in the gym, just enough to prime the muscles for some real growth when I hit the rebound.  Really excited about that, should be fun.  I have this idea that maybe I can cut down to below 185 and then build back up, but I think I'm going to leave my goal at 200-205 for now and see what happens.  Harkening back to the very first time I did a V-Diet and I lost like 35 pounds in 5 weeks...good memories.  So here we go...

    Age.  It's a funny thing, you know?  It's still weird for me to say '35', because I feel like I'm doing it wrong.  Age.  It really is just a number.  I'll admit sometimes I sit around and lament 'lost years', but usually just when I'm feeling really sorry for myself (which thankfully doesn't happen that often or in public).  Overall, I don't feel like whatever 35 should feel like, but then, I don't really know and I haven't taken a poll, so...whatever.  Back to doing what I do.

Training for 2013.04.14

• Squat: (135x4)x2/(185x3)x3/225x5/(245x5)x2/255x5/165x12
• A1. Bent Raise: 25 4x8
• A2. Lateral Raise: 30x8/30x4/(30x5)x2
• B1. Hammer Curl: 35 4x8
• B2. Overhead Extension: (50x10)x2/50x6/42.5x11
• C1. Cable Curl: 35x12/(35x15)x3
• C2. V-Bar Pushdown: 50 4x15
• D1. EZ Curl: 70 4x10
• D2. Rope Extension: 50 4x10
• E1. Uni DB Shoulder Press: 45x6
• E2. DB Row: 80x8

Food Log for 2013.04.14

• C4 Pre-workout mix
• Juices

Fight Training Day 1: The Juice Cut Begins...

    When Sifu said cut to 205 so I can fight at 185, i sorta freaked out mentally for a bit.  The only way I figured that was going to happen is if i went on another protein fast, which meant no MMA training.  I love protein fasts for the effect, i hate them for how they feel while you're doing them.  Given my day-to-day, there's no way I could sit around in that mental haze for a week or so until my body kicked over and even then, i still figured i would have to be off the mats for at least 4 weeks.  So, cut to make fighting weight, but don't fight train for a month while i'm doing it...yeah that makes sense.  So he suggested I try a juice cut using something like Odwalla Superfood, you know, something with an abundance of carbs and not too much else.  Now, i haven't learned much in the last year, mainly because I'm fat, weak, and overall a shitty student, but I have learned that when Sifu suggests something, you probably should try it, because he's usually not wrong.  One day in and it's actually not that bad, of course, I'm comparing that PSMFs, which are freaking brutal the first day or so (and about the next 10 days after).  I think i'm also cheating a bit since I'm travelling for the next 4 days and won't actually be training.  Also, I wonder what passes for Superfood in the UK...guess I'll find out soon enough.


Yeah! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions...and me for the next couple of weeks

    I was thinking about a conversation I had a while back with a co-worker about this idea of warrior culture, warrior mentality, etc.  He made some interesting points about how a warrior is someone who plies the trade of war, and that a modern-day warrior is basically a soldier.  If you want to be a warrior, he said, go enlist, pick up a gun, and deploy to Iraq.  I don't disagree with this, and I do agree that there are alot of folks who train different martial arts and talk about "being a warrior" falsely.  In fact, I remember one of the reasons I started training Capoeira back in the day was because on the surface it seemed a bit more holistic than traditional martial arts that were just about fighting.  Of course, I learned over the years this wasn't entirely true and that at it's core, Capoeira really is a martial art...which makes me smile everytime i see that stupid NOS commercial.  Any Capoeirista worth his salt knows you don't go ito a real fight and do all the flashy shit we do at demos (well, not "we", it's been years since I stepped into a roda), but that's the essence of Capoeira.

    Anyway, now I'm starting to ramble a bit, but my point is that while maybe claims of being a "warrior" are a bit overblown, the concept of a martial spirit is something that I think everyone who trains touches on at some point, but I don't think it's just the training.  I think back to times when a bunch of us were sitting in someone's living room stripping tires for berimbaus, stringing berimbaus, cutting dead skin off of each others' feet or otherwise patching each other up, to today, sitting on the bench wrapping up before training...These are the experiences that tie us all together regardless of what style we train.

    Blah, I'm just waxing all nostalgic and dangerously close to poetic.  Better quit before I do something evolved or enlightened...

Training for 2013.04.09
Combat Jiujitsu: Working from butterfly guard
Kickboxing: Fight Conditioning - Hands and feet w/double unders

Fight Training Day 0

    Yep, it's official, going to finally step in the cage and get wailed on for a few rounds.  Kind of a shitty time to start fight training as i'm leaving the country for a week tomorrow and not going to be able to train.  This got me thinking about how not conducive to training modern society is.  Let's be honest, most hotel gyms are just SHIT.  Oh well, i suppose it is a great time to start juice cutting, since I won't be exercising, which means i won't get totally wrecked from going low calorie.  So yeah, i'll be logging progress here now that i actually have something to talk about again, should be exciting...

Training for 2013.04.08, Current Weight: 235
Kajukenbo: Fight Conditioning - Punch combos with opposite leg kicks
Kickboxing: Fight Conditioning - Punch combos with opposite leg kicks
MMA: Circuit Challenge

• Pushup x100
• Situp x100
• Leg lift x100
• BW Squat x100
• Shoot x100
• Sprawl x100