Be Excellent To Each Other

Which, by the by, a £40 entry fee didn't consider the the £960+ logistics.

That was a lesson learnt in privateer racing.

I was right on the time, and got a top 27% finish

Excellent!

awesome

I had my 6 monthly checkup a few weeks ago. Blood pressure's OK, heart OK, cholesterol OK, but I'm still overweight and my blood sugar is too high, so I'm 'pre-diabetic.' The problem with having this review in February is that I've consumed a lot of naughty foods over Christmas, and we had a lot of chocolate left over from the festivities, so I know I've been eating too much of that, along with more biscuits and snacks than I know is good for me.

They said the same thing about my blood sugar after my mid-year review last year, but a check-up later one was OK. But as it's happened again, they asked if I wanted to go on a low level medication, or try to work on my diet and exercise. I opted for the diet and exercise. They recommended an app so that I can see what I should be eating, and what I shouldn't and one of the things that I noticed immediately is that a lot of the things I was told to avoid after my heart attack and open heart surgery, are on the list of things I should be eating to keep my blood sugar level down.

I've started taking it a bit more seriously and have completely given up chocolate, biscuits, crisps and other snacks and no cakes or puddings/sweets after our evening meal. I'm also not eating anything after our evening meal until around 10am the following day, which means I'm fasting for around 14 to 15 hours each day. I've never had a big alcohol intake and I've pretty much stopped that completely. I've also started doing yoga, as recommended by my 78 year old brother-in-law who says he feels much more energetic and generally healthy since he started it last year. I started with a recommended 15 basic yoga poses and have started to add a few more as I get used to the routine. And now the weather's getting better I'll be walking the dogs more regularly.

I'm not finding this as difficult as I thought it might be, and I've lost about half a kilo in a little over a month.

Good luck to you, Warhead.

That’s all good stuff! Hope it does the trick.

Good work Warhead! Am also trying to eat a bit more healthy, if sometimes ambushed by 'wot that ain't healthy?!?' moments. Am surprised how much I've taken to yoghurt-no-sugar-muesli-blueberries combo and, God help us, wholemeal bread. Have lost over half a stone, which is nice, though I did get it down to a one-stone weight-loss before a holiday oop Liverpool and birthday week feasting reversed it.

Warhead, I can definitely recommend doing the 16:8 thing. Fast for sixteen hours, eat in an eight hour window. If you get hungry during the 16 just drink water. You'll soon get used to it. I've mentioned it to a few people who've gone on to have good results with it.

One good thing at the moment is the weather. When it's sunny I find it a lot easier to get in my car and go to the gym so I'm pretty good form right now. Just doing weights with a bit of cardio but I feel like it's very beneficial. Definitely one of the benefits of mostly working from home as I go in my lunch period.

Last Sunday, I spent a few hours metaphorically shitting myself, and at the end of it all I had some lovely bruises and this:



(my instructor on the right)

Didn't realise you'd taken him home with you...

lololol

DangerGaz!

Well done, that’s a huge achievement! Darwin takes his blue stripe this weekend.

Congrats, man. I've not got the flexibility for TKD. My hamstrings are like steel cables. I could barely do headkicks in Muay Thai when I was 40 but I'm 50 now and washed.

Trust me, man, I'm probably just as inflexible as you. Jem can attest.

Give it a go if it's something you want to try! I'd definitely suggest ITF over WT though.

Thank you! And wow, he's moved up those ranks pretty quickly! Assuming it's the same ranking system as we use -- white, yellow-stripe, yellow, green-stripe, green, blue-stripe, blue, red-stripe, red, black-stripe, black?

Yes, that’s the same ranking structure. And yeah, he’s accelerated through the rankings really quickly. He’s been put forward for grading by the instructor at every grading period and he’s received some great personal praise from the head of the federation, so he’s really taken well to it.

Well done, GazChap!

Well done Gaz

Big thanks to GazChap for coming with me to run under a river.

Hahahah, "with me" is a bit of a stretch given that you finished in almost half my time

Good stuff on the black belt, GazChap!

Your Tae Kwando fighting pyjamas look like they're much lighter weight than our BJJ pyjamas. I bet they're pretty nice in a hot sweaty gym.

Bloody hell, by the way.

I did leg press today. Three sets of ten. 100kg, 120kg, 130kg. And that felt like pushing Dawn French up the stairs on a hypernova.



What belt are you, Squirt?

I always wanted to do BJJ but when I finally went to a class, I got really put off by it. I went for quite a few weeks (did 16 classes in total with the gi and a few sessions no gi). The problem was the teacher. The class was one hour which was broken down to 20 mins of just doing sweeps (not drilled, just rolling but with no subs). Then he'd show us one technique for five mins but something always really low percentage like some sort of collar choke or whatever. Drill that for five minutes. And then 30 mins of rolling.

In the whole time I didn't get shown any sweeps (apart from by one guy who was a Muay Thai instructor there), any basic subs at all. I was just fighting for my life against people who LITERALLY FOUGHT ON CAGE WARRIORS SHOWS including one guy who became the Cage Warriors champ. So it was super disheartening. And sometimes you'd get a guy like Tomas who was an Eastern European monster man who would just straight up destroy me for the whole five minute roll. All I could do was reset as quickly as possible after each sub so as not to slow things down. But in the end the reason I stopped was some guy put a scar on my hand with his untrimmed nail (an accident but preventable with clippers) and I thought it's just not worth it. If that had been my face I'd have been gutted!

Amusingly, every time any time those guys lost in their MMA careers it seemed to be by submission. So I'm pretty sure the teacher, as respected as he is, was rubbish.

Pyjamas

I haven't worn uniforms for any other martial arts, but our doboks are relatively lightweight. Doesn't mean you don't sweat like a fucking pig when it's hot outside and there's not much airflow in the training hall though.

This just sounds like you went to a shitty school and/or a shitty instructor. You should be being paired up with people that are around your skill level so that there's no great disparity -- or, if that's not possible, the people you're paired with should be skilled enough to exercise control so as not to endanger or overwhelm the newbs.

At the course that took place immediately before my test, I was paired up with a IV Degree black belt, who also happens to be one of the instructors at our school. I've been paired up with him a few times in the past, and despite him being significantly more skilled than me, he's always been very good at bringing himself down to my level. I still end up with a few bruises of course (even now, a week after my test, I've got lovely bruises on my wrists ) but he doesn't just pummel me into submission. It's supposed to be a learning exercise, and above all else it's supposed to be fun!

Find yourself a new teacher and/or school, and give it another go!

I'm still a lowly white belt - I've only been going for 18 months with a decent injury-caused hiatus in the middle of that.

Yeah, actually sparring against someone significantly better than you is an utter waste of time if they're actually trying to win, as they'll just beat you easily and no one will learn anything. Our 90 min classes are normally 60 mins of instruction - starting off with a very basic "here's how to do x" and gradually increasing resistance and variations, and then 30 mins of rolling. We've got a pretty wide range of experience so the higher belts get to roll hard with each other and then just let the newer people essentially just practice on them

Most of the guys there were actually pretty cool and easy enough to work with. But yeah there were a couple of killers and some guys that weren't particularly friendly.

The main thing though was that I was 40ish at the time. I'm now 50 which in BJJ years is 350. So starting from scratch now isn't a great idea. Also, I'm now only training things that don't damage me. So I'm just doing weights and spin at the moment. I'd love to have started BJJ earlier and elsewhere. In fact, I was close to training at Andy Aspinall BJJ. Which would be a mad thought as his son, Tom, is the interim UFC heavyweight champion. Rolling with that guy would be insane!

Ha, yeah my first lesson was just before my 44th birthday. I 100% take myself slow, compared to the 23-year-olds who are all trying to rip each other's arms off.

Nah, you're never too old to start. Our TKD school has plenty of newbie veterans (40+) and they're all more than capable of reaching black belt and beyond -- us old farts even get some special dispensations at our gradings so that we're not pushing ourselves too hard

Well done Gaz.

I did Shotokan karate for a while in my late 20s. I only started it because my son had started it and was dithering about carrying on when he was ready to go for his first belt. I said I'd start going as well if he passed it, which he did.

The teachers were great, a father and son. The father was a white haired Irish guy and must have been in his 50s and he always had smile on his face. He was a grandfather himself and really good at motivating the kids and gave a lot of good self defence advice for keeping safe on the streets (Rule 1. If threatened, run away if possible) which was popular with the mums who brought their youngsters along. When I joined, the classes were quite small, maybe only a dozen students, but by the time I stopped they had to split into 3 or 4 groups because so many had joined. I passed three or four belts before I gave it up after getting too many injuries when sparring with low level students. I learned fairly quickly to try to pair up with higher level guys for sparring, as they know how NOT beat the crap out of me.

Off to the gym for 8am to try to make up for the daft amount of food I'm going to be eating later.

A nice steady 70 miles

Nice one dude. You got something in the calendar you're training for at the sec?

Nothing this year. Julie wants to do 100 miles on the bike. Which seems a fun challenge

My bum hurts just thinking about it.

Oh yes.. yesterday was a challenge..

Today's sets were 120, 140 and finally 160kg. I managed it but it was very tough and I was dizzy afterwards basically from the strain of it. I'd love to max out the machine (200kg) eventually but god damn it's tough.

337 is like 50 stone or something. That's just total madness!

367 last week road to 400 now that 350 is done.

100kg trap squats, 105kg deadlifts - bench press is still stuck at not being able to do a full 8 at 65 so very much the barrier to get through.

You've got to start somewhere, getting to 187 was hard work when I began, from under 100 on day 1, and I was chuffed to bits when I did.

If you want some tips/suggestions on getting past this, let me know

That's a hell of a go cart you're hoofing there

Annoyingly, my gym is getting refurbished for three weeks from Wednesday. I mean, it'll be good I guess. But what's not good is that all my gains are slow and very hard-earned but easily lost. So if I don't get to lift, I'll need to deload massively and it'll take me twice as long to get to where I am today. Bah!

Also, I've got a big project happening over the next two weeks at work which definitely means I'll be eating a lot of comfort food so as to cope with the stress of it all.