My Thoughts On The Desolation Of Smaug

Fun thought experiment for my Martial Artist/Fighter Friends:

    I was watching The Hobbit 2 yesterday (which I enjoyed, yep, I said it), and I got to thinking, if the races of Middle Earth had their own martial arts, which I figure they probably do, what would the be/be based in?  Here's what I came up with (this is just a few of the races represented in the movies, i'm not going to even try to hit up all 25+ including variants):

---

Dwarves: Definitely Sambo.  Those stout dwarven builds I think would give them quite a bit of leverage to work with and they're at just the right height to apply all those great sambo leg techniques.

Hobbits: Silat for sure.  Perfect height to strike upward into those soft, unprotected spots, very compact builds, great for moving around the body, and let's be honest, with feet like that, they can foot and ankle trap all damn day and not GAF.  Also, hobbits just seem perfectly suited to the karambit.

Elves: Kalaripayattu, given their penchant for flowing, continuous motion and longer range work.  Actually, I'd love to see one or more of the elves bust out a flexible sword in the next hobbit movie (or any movie involving elves)

Humans: Some combination of different classical western boxing styles, I'm thinking british and irish, with that Mexican boxer ferocity.

Orcs: Kajukenbo, but not just any Kajukenbo, we're talking Master Brother Abe Pilau Style.  Lots of super heavy upper body work, forearm strikes, and every hit breaks something.

Seth's Birthday Training Extravaganza!

    I know I'm totally late to this party but Arrow? Great show, i mean, GREAT FREAKIN SHOW.  It's exactly what I want a comic book TV show to be (minus Thea, god I hope she dies horribly, what an annoying, unnecessary character).  I do wish that Kelly Hu's character would quit with the karambits.  It's not just a cool looking knife, there's real technique that goes with it.  Ah well, I know, that's a total martial arts nerd/fanboyish thing, sue me.  And honestly, I'm totally ok with Kelly Hu getting tons of screen time, though truth be told, the world needs to see more Rinko Kikuchi, mmmm...Not sure what it is, but in the last couple months I've become really attracted to Asian women.  You know, in the last couple of months, my whole concept of what I find attractive in women has changed...well, changed is not an accurate term, let's say broadened?  Coincidentally, my definition of relationships has broadened quite a bit too, well, let's not say broadened, let's say I'm giving myself permission to be ok with the concepts of relationships I've had for a while and felt guilty about because..well, yeah.  Really, it's just that I'm all about options, but that's a post for another day and blog entirely.  Also...there are a lot of really in shape, hot dudes in Arrow, and the writers find a lot of excuses to show them shirtless.  Tasty.


Really? You WOULDN'T? Not even a little? ...
    Anyway, I've decided my birthday week 2014 is going to be a whirlwind tour of training, friends, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  Well, i mean if you replace drugs with craft beer and whiskey, rock and roll with industrial, and sex with...more training (tho if someone wants to give me a..."special birthday present", I'm open).  I will say if there's one thing I'm definitely ok with it, it's the idea that spending money on training and tools is something I'm not going to feel guilty about at all.  I've held for a long time that spending money on experiences outweighs spending money on things by a factor of...some very large number, but it's still a good idea to get the most bang for your buck.  Go airline miles, hotel points, and couch surfing!  So here we go...

• Martin Wheeler Systema Seminar at Shugyo Center - First steps on my Systema journey, I've always really been interested in the concepts behind Systema but have just recently experienced good instruction.  The last time I took a Systema workshop was about 10 yrs ago and given perspective, the instruction wasn't great.  On a side note, the seminar is taking place in a city where a dear friend of mine lived and passed a little while ago.  Will be good to exchange energy, me thinks.
• Mateo Kajukenbo - I went to a Kaju seminar in Portland, OR last month and got to train with one of Prof. Mateo's Sigungs.  Gotta say I was really impressed, so I'm hoping to be able to drop in on these guys.  From what I understand, they're changing locations, so hopefully they'll have one nailed down by January.
• Worden Defense System/NSI - Been talking about Datu Worden since the Portland seminar too, can't say enough good things about working with him.  More than anyone I think he's really got the pulse of MPMA.  Can't find a class schedule for him, so might have to make some calls, but since I'm planning on attending Water and Steel 2014 anyway, may not be a big loss if nothing happens.
• Kajukenbo-Ge Shou Dao - Another side effect of the Portland Kaju Seminar was that I got to see different groups from the Pacific Northwest (which was my main impetus for going to the seminar) and I was totally blown away.  Didn't get a chance to work with Prof. Davies, but I've gotten to work and speak with his Grandmaster, GM Jerry Scott, and he's a good man with lots of useful information.
• Whittle Kajukenbo - A little on the fence about this one just because Spokane is like a 4 hour drive, but damn, Grandmaster Whittle was good and his students were awesome.  Good Kaju guys and just good people in general.  They have a Saturday morning class, but given what I'll be doing Friday night, I doubt I'll be getting up at 5AM Saturday morning.  This one's probably worth its own trip anyway, as GM Whittle also teaches Royal Hawaiian Lua, wouldn't mind having the time to take a few classes with him.
• Systema WA - Highly recommended Systema instructor in Washington who's new to the area from what I understand, so why not drop in?  Seattle...you're making it harder and harder for me to stay away.
• Capoeira Malês - Should set things right with Mestre probably so I can really get back to playing proper.  Been away from home too long.
• ...and of course there will be some sort of weight training, I imagine I'll just hit up the 24 Hour Fitness at Northgate like I usually do just because they have tons of gear and heavy kettlebells, which doesn't suck.  At all.

OPEN INVITATION!!!

    Once I get the specifics of which classes I'll be taking when, I'll be posting the full schedule here, so if anyone wants to join for any of this stuff, hit me up and we'll throw down.  Slightly ego-centric, I know, yes, I'm sure people are lining up to come train with me, but whatever, it's out there.  It'll be a good time either way.  Also, when did I get so old??


Evolve . Survive . Live

10,000 Kettlebell Swings In The Air

    Once again I'm approaching that time of the year where my thoughts turn to what sort of crazy sprint I'm going to do for what I call the "Turkey-to-Tree" period.  As you can probably imagine, it's that month between Thanksgiving and Christmas where holiday parties abound, complete with tons of horrible for you food and drink all laid out in the spirit of festive giving and sharing.  Now, I have no problem with festive giving and sharing, but I decided a while back that I didn't really want to follow the pattern of bloating, err, sorry, bulking up over the holiday hibernation period and taking the following quarter to shed the accompanying...well let's just call it what it is, fat, for the beach season.  So I (try) to do what I call a Turkey-to-Tree sprint every year, or T2T (catchy, eh?).

    I started doing Turkey-to-Tree sprints a while ago, but didn't do one last year for a few reasons (bad relationship, busy at work, etc), nor the year before for a few reasons (bad relationship, moving, changing jobs, etc), so I'm pretty committed to doing one this year, and since there are no relationships whatsoever anywhere near me, other than those of my dear friends up in Seattle, who I'm very much looking forward to spending a long and incredibly inebriated birthday weekend with in a few months, what better time to re-visit an old ritual that's always done me some good? I really like the T2T for a few reasons:

• It springboards me into the next year really well.  I want to get back to being big and strong like I was a few years ago when I started seriously powerlifting, and I've made good progress in the past coming off of a good, high-intensity, moderate-to-low calorie resistance program.
• It's the end of the year, why not just go out in a balls-to-the-wall, all-in, sprint to the finish?  I love the holidays and everything we associate with them (well except, Black Friday, that's just some BS), but no need to shut down.  In fact, I say take advantage of the empty gyms and empty offices and go hard and heavy.  Cross the end of the year finish line at a dead sprint and keep going into the new year.



• It's a great way to burn away all the BS that may or may not have happened during the year.  If you had a fabulous year and are riding high, awesome!  Keep it up, crank hard, and finish up knowing you set one more challenge in front of yourself and killed it!  But maybe you didn't have a GREAT year.  Maybe there were some things that you just want to slough off and in the process refocus.  Take a month, go hard, crank those endorphins up the best way possible and get yourself right.

CAUTION: WHINING AHEAD, SKIP THIS SECTION IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ME COMPLAIN

    Look, I know a relationship, according to conventional wisdom, is the worst reason to stop training.  No!  They say, you should train through it!  Use training to get right!

    That's all well and good but you know, sometimes things just add up.  I'm not saying this as a woe is me sorta thing, i'm just setting some context.  It wasn't just the "relationship", it was alot of the things surrounding it as well.  It had me questioning my self worth, my interaction with other people, even my value to my company, everything.  Basically, it played on every insecurity I have about myself and put me in the lowest spot I've ever been personally, and because of some of the specifics, I wasn't able to really talk to anyone about it, and the other party was pretty much unwilling to try and talk, resolve, come to closure, anything.

    So, I need to do something different (and yes, I know, I need to man up.  I'm working on that as well).  I need to do something that gets me focused, gets me breathing, gets me moving, gets the rest of this fat off, and just gets me reset.  I know it's all in my head, because outside of that one thing, everything else has been pretty solid.  Work's gone...ok, my other training, Kajukenbo, Silat, grappling, even lifting, have all been spot on, even with the knee and shoulder problems.  Sometimes things just get too big and out of control because you didn't stomp em down and walk away when you should've.  So, anyway...(and for those of you who have some idea what I'm talking about, this is the last I'm going to say on it.  Sorry if I've been a dick or treated you less than well.  I can't promise it's going to get better soon, but I'm working on it.  That's what I got for now, hang out and deal with my BS (which I will attempt to minimize for social grace), or check back in 6 months.)

WHINING OVER

Enter Dan John's 10,000 Swing Kettlebell Workout

    It's funny, because you all probably know my take on extreme volume/intensity/etc programs that are poorly thought out or just done for the sake of being difficult.  Well, I've been a Dan John fan for quite a while, and if there's one thing I've learned about his work, he doesn't just do random things.  Everything that makes it to the public from Dan John comes from testing, observation, and of course, Dan's quite considerable amount of experience.  So when I saw this, it seemed like the perfect way to end the year.  5 weeks, 20 workouts, 10,000 Kettlebell Swings.  Me being me, of course, I also saw this as a chance to do that other thing that I love doing so much, which is plan around/design programs.  I've spent a little bit of time planning (obsessing over) a nutrition and supplementation plan to go along with this, and it's funny, i was mucking about in my spreadsheet today, tweaking some final numbers and it almost literally just appeared.  Total serendipitous moment, it was like the clouds just parted and revealed my nutrition supplementation plan...sounds silly, I know, you had to have been there.  Nutrition and supplementation isn't something Dan touched on in the article, but he does make a few statements that bear some thinking on (from me):

• "Every person who has completed this 20 workout plan has increased lean muscle mass while dropping body fat."
• "Everyone got leaner, dropping a waist size or two, in 20 workouts."
• "Every coach or athlete made visual muscular improvements in their physiques, adding lean body mass."
• "Abs were more visible..."

    These statements give me pause, not because I don't believe them, but because after years of training, I have a good understanding of how my metabolism works, and I know that if I want to make significant changes, I can't just hop on a really hard program and look markedly different in five weeks.  I have to consider all facets, and I have to hit a bit of an extreme with those other facets too.  I'm not going to sugarcoat it, at the end of the day, part of my drive is I want to look good enough to hook up when I go back to Seattle for my b-day (not that that's on the agenda, but a little positive female attention would do some good for my self-esteem).  I also set a goal of being back around 12-15% BF by the end of the year, and given where I am now, that's doable, but not without some diligence.  Last, while I respect Dan John quite a bit, I also respect my own experience enough to know that, with some tweaks to nutrition and recovery, I can hit this program pretty hard and still hit the dojo as well.  I have another goal of wearing my green belt when I hit Vegas next year for the KSDI Tournament, so no skipping Kaju unless absolutely necessary.  Kickboxing may or may not be necessary for conditioning, we'll give it a test and see what the effect ends up being.

    So that's the preview, I'll talk more about the specifics of my plan at the end of the 5 weeks, what worked, what didn't, and what all I used specifically. November 25th is D-Day, time to do it up.

Kneehab!

First off, a tiny bit of butt-cover. I am not now, never have, and never will claim to be anything close to a person who can give anyone any useful advice about rehab, PT, any of that stuff.  The most I'll tell anyone for the record is "Buy a foam roller (or PVC, if you're like me and effeduproyal) and a lacrosse ball, and here's a bunch of youtube vids that'll show you what to do with 'em".  If you happen to sprain, strain, or tear something, the best advice is get it checked out ASAP.  This is something I did NOT do, not because I'm "hardcore", not because I was broke, not for any good reason, I just didn't know better.  I definitely should've at least gotten an evaluation from some reputable medical professional so if nothing else, I would've had a baseline for how injured I was.

    I AM going to go on record and say that when it does happen (and it WILL happen), you need to take advice on recovery from someone who understands where you're coming from, which for the practicing Devlifter means: Not your regular GP guy.  Find a good sports therapist, competition trainer, someone who has experience dealing with people who train outside the realm of the general populace, because otherwise you just run the risk of getting some yahoo who's going to tell you to go get surgery and you'll never have full use of whatever you injured again.  In some cases, that may be true, but me, I'd rather hear it from someone who can really look at everything in proper context.  I dunno, on some level, I feel really bad writing this because it just reeks of me giving people misinformation, so let's also butt-cover this by saying, this is just MY experience and it's kinda worked for ME.  You really need to figure out what's going to work for you and don't be quite as negligent as i was.  However, if you insist on being ridiculous, like me (don't do that, seriously, don't ever be like me), here are some things that MIGHT POSSIBLY point you somewhere in the vicinity of where you want to go.

Until we can heal like this, it helps to have a plan

    Long story short, about 3 weeks ago in kickboxing class, I landed a flying knee wrong and jacked up my support leg.  See, it's even a lame story, I wish I could be all, "Yeah man, i threw that flying knee and he blocked with his elbow and tore my sh** up," but no...it was pretty much all my fault.  The best (worst) part was I didn't even do it during a drill, I was just practicing the technique BEFORE we started drilling...which meant I didn't really even get a chance to drill the movement.  That's embarrasing man, that's like walking out on the floor to do your forms or something, tripping in front of the judges, and hurting yourself bad enough that you can't compete.  Anyway, whining aside, it was bad enough that I figured I probably shouldn't stay for the second class, but not bad enough that I couldn't finish the class I was in, and definitely not bad enough that I couldn't put some weight on it.  For those reasons I figured it was minor enough that I could take care of it myself and be ok as long as I didn't do anything stupid.  A few weeks of ice, stretching, and foam rolling, and I'd be alright.

    Problem: I hate icing. Actually, I hate anything that makes me feel slow or movement impeded, which is why I don't get drunk very often anymore and one of the main reasons I stopped doing...erm, other things that may be legal now.  I've done the whole RICE thing in the past, and I wasn't really looking forward to doing it again, but you know, as I've gotten older and gained something like the ability to look a bit further down the road and realize what's actually important, I'm ok doing what has to be done to get where I want to go.  BUT I STILL HATE ICING.  Thankfully, I've somehow managed to find myself in the company of many people who are much more intelligent about many things than I am.  Take for instance, my good friend Brad Clark of Rigging Dojo fame, who happened to drop the following knowledge bombs on me just as I was about to embark down that treacherous path:

    Wait so, I could NOT do the thing I hate (even though it's burned into the gospel of recovery) and still recover?  Well, alllllright.  It's funny, because Erica, she of Stuff I Make My Husband fame, had mentioned Mobility|WOD to me a while back and the do have some crazy knowledge bombs.  I definitely recommend checking out the following videos, and while they are a bit preachy and marketing-y (I think one of the guys is trying to sell people some machine or implement), there's a decent bit of underlying knowledge here that may change your view on things.  Again, I don't have any sort of certification for therapy, so no one get all butt hurt because you've been recommending RICE to everyone and now they have an alternate viewpoint (heaven forbid).  Just write it off by saying what I just said, i.e. I have no credentials, just personal experience.

• Mobility|WOD: People, We’ve Got to Stop Icing. We Were Wrong, Sooo Wrong.
• Mobility|WOD: Community Video – Peoples, We’ve Got to Stop Icing. A Year Later…

    I think the universe sorta wanted me to go down this path anyway, as T Nation posted another great article that basically amounts to Compression Wrapping 101, along with some more awesome videos that you should absolutely add to your recovery arsenal.  This came out about a week and a half after I started down the recovery path so I didn't make as much use of it as I'd like to, but I'm definitely starting to think about ways to use it as a supplement to foam rolling for general well being.

• TNATION: Two Minute Injury Fix

    To make matters even better (but wait, theeerrrre's more!!), I found this other article on EliteFTS that kinda sums up this whole blog post much more succinctly and informatively than...this blog post.

• EliteFTS: How To Be Superman With Your Knees

    Coach Scott Abel talks alot about biofeedback and being able to read your own body, and that's probably been the most useful tool in this whole process for me.  If I go back to the day I injured myself and think about how I was feeling, yeah, my legs were SUPER tight, I mean it really was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, or in this case, the load that sprained the knee, I mean my legs were uncomfortably tight, and not just because of my Kaju pants.  Knowing that, I pieced together a recovery program that addresses everything based on what I remember feeling:

• First, I started just WALKING again, and this was a super eye-opening thing for me because the first couple days I did it, it felt awkward.  Imagine that, walking feeling weird!  That right there should tell you that there's a basic mobility issue.
• I've gotten back to taking mobility and flexibility seriously.  I'm performing hour long mobility/flexibility sessions every morning, upper body some days, lower body other days, but both with the goal of just being able to move around again.  I want the kind of mobility I had when I was doing Capoeira, and you know, we used to stretch and do basic movement exercises for about an hour before we started drilling techniques.  This has actually been huge, not just for the gains I'm already feeling, but just because doing it in the morning makes me feel GREAT for the day.
• Had to make some little tweaks to my lifting program, but I don't feel like it's been anything crazy detrimental.  The most "extreme" change I've made is moving squatting to the end of the week so I've got a full weeks worth of mobility work stacked up before I go in.  I've dropped my numbers back too, for example, this week my working max was 235, which at a normal tear I probably would've hit for 10-12, but I kept it at 5, just to be safe.  It's a marathon, not a sprint, and even though I do want to do some meets next year, keeping the legs right for Kajukenbo is priority.
• Lastly, NO MORE SKIPPING PVC ROLLING EVER.  Sure, I'm doing it every morning, but I'm also doing it before every lifting session now, even if it's just 10 or 20 passes over the IT band and adds.  When I take a step back and think about it, I'm putting some serious demands on my legs!  Kickboxing, Silat, squatting, deadlifting, that's alot to ask without giving some TLC back.  So, I'm sorry legs, thanks for reminding me I was being a jerk, it won't happen again (if only I could fix my relationships that easily...another story)

    To wrap it up, look, I'm not going to say don't ever ice again, that's up to you and whoever you're working with.  What I am saying is that this time, I didn't ice and I've recovered faster than I did from smaller injuries that I have iced.  I'm not going to run out and hurt myself again just to see if I can quantify things a bit better, but yeah, I think i'm pretty sold on mobility, flexibility, and compression.  I'll post up the specifics of my mobility splits here in a bit, I'm still fine tuning.  I hope these resources end up being helpful, if for no other reason than they make you think about stuff.  Train Hard So Real Life Is Easy.

Seriously, this is how icing my joints makes me feel...

Now back to our all new programming...

Alright, so I've been working on a slew of new content for Hard Coded and I'll talk more about all that once I get post zero done, but it's weird, I feel like I have to practice blogging again. How crazy is that? There are a few reasons for that, most of them deeply personal having to do with...well, stuff, so here's a small thought to get me warmed up:

    Like many folks who are doin whatever the f**k they wanna do, I've been on and off some for of Intermittent Fasting/reduced meal frequency thing for...wow, a bit. I started something LeanGains like around the summer of 2011 when I moved to SoCal, then hit it back up pretty hard January of 2012 when I moved back to the bay. Been on and off for the last year and a half, experimenting with different things and I've come to a really interesting realization. I can't guarantee that it's going to work for you, but you see, I've been wanting to do the DiPasquale-style Anabolic Diet for a while but I've never really been able to just pound down protein and fat the way I understand AD/MD wants you to. I mean sure, I'll be good for the first meal or so, but by the end of the day I'm like...maaaaan, i don't ever want to look at meat and fat again.

But yo seriously, right now, this looks about DELICIOUS...
    SO...I decided to break a cardinal rule of everything and combine some diets. Now I know, everyone's all, hey man, the guy who trains himself is an idiot (or whatever, i know there's some way more eloquent/poetic way to say it floating around the internets, I just don't want to go look for it right now), but look, I've been training seriously for a while now and I've been under coaches, trainers, nutritionists, etc (true story, I used to play Capoeira with Robb Wolf and he'd just drop nutritional biochem info bombs all the time, miss that dude), so I feel like I'm in a good place to experiment on myself and figure out what's good for me. I've been doing Anabolic Diet on an IF-ish meal timing and yeah man, it's just...good.

    It's funny because everything started the way it usually does when I've tried to follow AD/MD, for instance, yesterday I ate breakfast from Whole Foods, something like 4 or 5 egg white omelets, a container of bacon and sausage, etc, then for dinner I had some egg salad, a cheese tray (small one, snack size), a ton of carnitas, some olive oil, and yeah, sure enough, afterwards it was...maaaan, I don't ever want to look at meat and fat again. But Dude! It's only not even noon the next day and I'm thinkin...hmm...I could make myself some kind of wannabe locomoco like thing tonight, some hamburger patties, a few fried eggs, maybe make, well not proper gravy but like some sort of butter and beef stock reduction, hmm, with bacon instead of rice, maybe some grilled halloumi, you get the point. So yeah, so far, AD+IF...I'm diggin.

Swordfighting!

I've been up to so much that I haven't posted.  Ballet, salsa, hot yoga, areal silks, and swordfighting!  Well, I went to Ren Faire this weekend with Sterling and Hannah, and ran into my sword school.

At the end I got a little too into finishing the technique.  >_>  I guess sloppy form and good take downs is what happens when you pause swordfighting to work on your Kaju more.  The pulling the sheath out of the ground part was kind of hilarious.

Second Degree Purple Belt Test (for Seth)

It's been SO long since I've posted, and I intend to remedy that.

 This last year has been a major shift away from the classic pole dancing training I used to do. Over the past 1.5-2 years I've been in San Jose, I've been training at Tribull, which I'm sure you've read about from Seth. It's a kajukenbo school, which focuses on a lot of MMA fight team training, and Gracie/10th Planet style brazilian Ju Jitsu.

I've been supplimenting on and off with lots of Hot Yoga with the Buchheit / Kennison family, mideavil swordfighting with Sterling, (mainly rapier and side sword), Ballet with Shannon, Poi (firedancing) and contact juggling with Matt, and running on my own (sometimes with Eddy).  Occassionally if I'm on vacation I'll go to a gym and just do traditional weights.

Each one of those things has helped to grow and inform the other.  I've been through so many different shifts in the fighting spectrum.  At first you enter a new hobby, and you get a lot of verbal confirmation that you're doing well.  After awhile that just fades off and you become quietly watched and accepted.  This is the first time I've ever stuck to a hobby long enough to get to that third stage, where you end up being a big sister/ teacher to younger people.  It's been pretty touching and amazing.

Last night was a belt testing.. I've been traveling so much I didn't feel comfortable in taking part... it just felt disrespectful.  I did hit the bags a bit at the beginning, however.  Been working on my hooks lately... 400 a day.

Punching the Bag

In the intermediate ranks of kajukenbo, we have a thing called bull ring.  It's simultaneously a way of practicing handling multiple attackers, and I suspect a way for the sifu's to judge our skill in a timely manner.  Here's Seth doing his weapons bull ring.

Weapon Bull-Ring

And I really like this video too- mainly because Seth reminds me of Kung Fu Panda everytime he does his flippy spinny things :)

Kung Fu Panda

As wonderful as it was to be able to watch and film my friends, it was really uncomfortable being an observer, instead of a participant.  I think my heart broke a little as I watched them all yell "tribull" without me being part of it.  I hope to never have a repeat, which means no more ditching class!