Well that was fun.

Great class tonight! I really enjoy sparing and tonight I reminded myself of an important lesson I learned early in my training.  Keep my fist tight!

I like keeping my hands loose because it keeps my overall body loose which keeps my tension down.  However when I'm not actually sparing it's easy to think that I'm making proper fists when I'm punching nothing but air.  Well tonight I managed to jamb my left ring finger while blocking a side heel.  Then later on I bent the thumb nail back on the same hand while sparing with Sihing Bjorkquist. Looser hands are all fine as long as when I want to make contact they're proper tight fists.

Important lessons re learned tonight.

Mr. Repay

Green smoothie #9

A little update as it's been a while since my last post.  It's been almost four months since I started this journey.  Durring that time I've only missed a couple of days when I was in Mexico.  It's become part of my daily routine and I couldn't be happier.  

Some things I've noticed have been a nice flattening  of my blood sugar due to the high fiber.  I feel full a lot longer and my mental state has become sharper.  I never thought I'd consume the sheer amount of raw vegetables that I'm doing but drinking them makes it so much easier.  

Green smoothie I drank after last night's class

1 liter of water

3 cups of raw spinach

3 cups of raw kale

2 raw carrots

1 raw zucchini 

1 nub of fresh ginger

1/2 cup of frozen pear

Blend and enjoy

Earth Day & a little bit everything else

I was blown away with the turn out for Earth Day pitch in an clean up this past Saturday.  I've been with the school for a lot years and I've participated in this clean up but I've never seen so many people participate.  I really loved seeing everyone genuinely excited to be there and the interaction was awesome to see.  Outside of the obvious, I find the opportunity to intereact and develop realtionships with classmates a big bonus.  We don't have enough time before and after class to to interact with each other and Earth day gave me the opportunity to just chat while picking up cigarette buts LOL!.

It's been a while since I've blogged and there are a few reasons but there aren't any reasons at the same time.  I've slowly slid back and I could feel myself about to get onto that old well worn path.  However the Earth Day event this past Saturday was exactly what I needed.  I needed to reconnect, re engage and just get back to being with my classmates.  I'm the sort of person that needs in person interation to remain engaged.  The virtual world works for me but only for a limited time.  The past month has seen me ramp up my travel with work and as a result it hasn't allowed me to attend in person during the week.  I've tried to fight to against this but I've always failed so instead of getting discouraged I've just come to realise that it is what it is.  That however doesn't mean I've given up, it means I have to make some changes as best I can to my work schedule.  When I attend at least one in person class per week, it's enough to keep me engaged for the rest of the week to be virtual.

Mr. Repay

Starting again

I was fortunate to spend the last 8 days in Mexico on a business trip with one of my clients.  The event was amazing and I got to spend it with my wife as well. What didn't go well was my physical training, it was non existent.  

However I'm not feeling guilty about it..  I understand and accept that it didn't happen.  It wasn't a total loss of time as I was focused on spending some quality time with my wife who is a integral part of my life's journey.  

I'm now back on the path, push ups and sit ups are in motion this morning, some form reps completed and all of these are recorded.  In the past this week would've derailed me for an extended period of time.  This time around I refelected back on the blog post that I wrote on Feb 25th.  What's helped me this year is the habits that I developed when things were going good.  The mental strength I've honed this year but the biggest thing is no guilt.  The guilt was paralyzing and de motivating so much that I would retreat under that glass rock.  Not this year.

The only final thing that helped me this year is that one comment spoken to me at the start of the year at our first meeting. If you know, you know 😉.

Mr. Repay

New weapons

Spending almost two hours sparing is one of my favorite places to spend that time. What a great group of people we had out today, I learned something from each of them. I was sparing with Sidai Noa Csillag and she had a really strong lead hand. She'd parry my jab really well and it was something I had trouble getting past. After some thought I played with throwing my reverse hand toward her head first and following up with my left hand to her body.  It worked over and over and I don't think many people are expecting that.  Also I think a lot of us (me included) are too comfortable with head strikes instead of strikes to the body.  This was something that took a long time to get used to and be comfortable with.  It won't always work but it's a new weapon in my aresenal that I can add to my sparing style. 

That leads me to my next weapon and that's sparing style.  We all learn the school's style from white belt on through the rest of our journey. However as I've progressed through the years, I've picked up bits and pieces from so many people.  I've taken these pieces to develop my own style.  Sparing with so many different people has given me such a broad perspective to draw from. The biggest influence on my style comes from Sihing Lindstrom.  We've trained together for many years and we've traded more than a few strikes on each other 🤣.  I've always admired his style, It looks disceptively simple but it's far from that.  This afternoon we worked together and I picked up some pieces to add to my style.  Simple foot work, stance adjustments and what I call his "peek a boo" style of how he holds his hands.  

Today's two hours flew past and I swear the time change happened midway through open training LOL!  I now have some new weapons to play with because of these two hours. 

Mr. Repay

Strength & Structure

My quantity of pushups and situps per set have increased by 33%.  I'm very happy to see this progression.   My strength is increasing which is allowing this.  When I started, I struggled to get many in before my strength waned.  I took to heart what many Sifu's/Sihings have mentioned to us and that's to focus on proper form first, quantity second.  By doing this I was improving my form and increasing my strength.   Proper push ups are much harder to do that incorrect ones.  

I focused on this advise and I really started to see that my form (yes pushups have proper form lol) was terrible.  As the reps increased with my mind focusing on form, my strength increased and so did the reps.  

What I've found also is that I needed to start my day with reps or I wouldn't get many in outside of the days that I'm in class at the kwoon. Structure/routine was missing.  I'm the person that needs to actively engage in structure, it doesn't come naturally.  I'm the sort of person that thrives in the moment and can work well under pressure.  This isn't always the recipe for success so I've started to implement some structure to my training in the mornings. I now get in at least one to two sets of push/sit (core exercises) ups, one rep of any form and some side planks for physical activity.  I add in reading Mastery with my one espresso to compliment my non physical requirements.  

The structure that I've impleimented has helped kick off my day in a posative way.  I've accomplished some tasks that put me in a posative mental state to start my day.  

Mr. Repay

Sliding and struggling.

Struggling and sliding.  The past few days have seen me slide a little.  There have been a couple of days where I did very little other than drink my green smoothie and not eat as clean as I'd like.  I'm feeling myself starting to slide backwards but I'm not feeling the guilt like I'd felt in the past.   

I woke up this morning thinking about this slide.  I thought about why I'm on this journey and what I'm looking to get out of it?  The answers were sustainability and good health.  I've struggled with both for a long long time.  I've relied on talent for far too long and when talent wasn't enough I'd retreat and go silent.  

Today was different, I woke up with a sense of purpose and wanting to stop the slide.  So before I went to work I made my smoothie, it's in the fridge ready for my lunch, I dropped down and did some pushups, core exercises and a rep of 18 temple motions. I went back and updated some numbers on my excel sheet and finally I blogged.  It's what I needed to get myself re engaged and start my day with posativity. 

Mr. Repay