Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 7

I weighed 161.4 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,204 calories today, and burned approximately 768 calories doing exercise (open-water swim, muay thai).
Leg: thigh gnarly; better.

---

So I have this grouchiness born of happiness.

In that video you definitely see the grouchiness. It's pretty straightforward. I'm grouchy because we did an exercise tonight that made me grouchy: if you've been watching the training videos (no problemo if not) you'll have noticed that a lot of what we're working is movement and evasion; stick 'n move stick 'n move. And we worked that some tonight, with me going a few rounds against Nick, and there's just such a clear "skill discrepancy" (Coach's term) there that it can get frustrating. In descending amount of frustration generated:

- it's frustrating to make the same mistake over and over again (flap your hands as a second hit lands; rear back your chin instead of hunker and roll) especially when each time you realize a LITTLE bit sooner that you've made the mistake, but not soon enough

- it's frustrating to be on the losing end of a sparring game, over and over;

- the fact that each "frustrating" thing equates with getting hit, in a way that does sometimes hurt, adds to the frustration for sure.

So I punched a wall at one point (gloved hand; not that hard; I'm not some aggro moron); I yelled; I got mad. It was a frustrating night.

BUT, and maybe you also see this in the video I don't know, I don't really mean the smile, the smile is just me seeing myself and how silly/grim I look... anyway buuut there's also a happiness in this, that I'm feeling now. Because I'm so spent, and trained very hard (I was tired going into tonight; [insert complaints about calorie deficit for hundredth time here]), and didn't get more hurt--there's a knot in my thigh but 'yknow. 

It's a good feeling, to be deep in a thing that you chose to be in, that has a definite end, and that's exciting. Even when part of that good feeling is being SO MAD and SO FRUSTRATED.

That's it I think. Eyes tired. Bed.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 6 (Training Video!)

Okay, I like this video - it's a bit different. Coach is using an altered pad technique, and it's all about throwing a quick punch/low-kick combo and then getting out of the way. Strike-strike-move; strike-strike-move. For the last basically whole minute you can see Coach driving this point home by swinging for me after each kick, and you can see that some of the time I'm moving back quickly enough and some of the time... not as much.

Some other things that I see:

- I've noted in previous videos some of the balletic-ness of my stance, and my tendency not to be based enough. You can see that here, for sure. My foot movement is sometimes okay, but I often (particularly circling to my left) cross my feet. The reason this is bad is that a fast opponent who notices it could use it cross me up: could come at me fast in some way that'd stumble me and leave me open to attack, or just knock me down. I shouldn't do it, although I know why I do, which is that I'm trying to be fast and that's still how my body does those movements. Something to work on. Maybe won't solve it by Saturday.

- My arms are up a bit more, a bit better. So that's good.

- Nonetheless, you can see around 1m8s and a couple other spots where Coach just has a wide open lane down the middle, and pads me in the face down that lane. Yikes. That is a bad thing for me to let happen. That is an invitation to get punched hard.

I like this drill; particularly in a stretch of lots of days of doing 4 and 5 rounds of straight Muay Thai pad-work, it was a nice change.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 6

I weighed 162 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,299 calories today, and burned approximately 530 calories doing exercise (Muay Thai).

Leg: Right directions. Still a lump. Still sore, and a strange kind of tension and soreness throughout the quad. But certainly healing. Certainly. Just has to stay healthy. Stay healthy stay healthy.

---

Humby Dum Dum.

Don't worry, if I don't have a prevailing/overarching idea I won't witter away more than I just did, there. Here are a few things on my mind today regarding this:

I am hungry. It is no fun to be hungry like this. It is particularly weird because you eat these good meals -- these good little meals, but they're good -- so sometimes your stomach is kind of full but still you are hungry, because you are in this calorie deficit, because: losing weight. Duh. Blah blah complain complain I have to cut a little weight.

I think "apices" is the plural of "apex", so let's go with that: apices. What I'm talking about here is heights, and fear. The 'height' is this: you're not hurt. You're body is healthy (mostly. leg.) and getting stronger; you can feel yourself getting stronger and better, however not great and flawed you are, you are improving. That's an amazing feeling.

It comes with a fear: that something will happen to snap it: that health, vitality, and growth. I'm not usually prone to this kind of feeling, but when I'm training for a fight I am, because--this is a huge part of the whole thing, for me--at a certain point other people have invested time and energy, and you want to reward that by at a minimum being strong and ready on the day and fighting hard.

So stay healthy, knock wood: nothinggowrong nothinggowrong nothinggowrong.

Here's the next one: coherence. So a deep-if-you-are-a-teenager thought I've been having, because I've been having all these semi-delirious thoughts, is my dawning real comprehension of the word coherence. Coherence: making sense. Cohere: clinging together. You get it? The way that having a fight puts a purpose behind many practices in my life ties them all together; makes them cohere; gives those parts of my life great "coherence." And coherence is, basically, satisfying and good.

This is grade-school stuff, but it's a useful personal revelation for me. Because it underscores something I sort of knew, but am glad to know-know: it really adds so much for me to have a drive, reason, for my physical life -- I love living it, and doing things, but I'm not motivated by appearance or social pressures or any of that stuff; I'm slightly motivated by long-term health, but that doesn't cover all the kinds of stuff that I enjoy doing. So having a reason, a thing that is like "this is why I'm doing this" just... it's a satisfying thing to have in your life.

Which is funny, cuz it's just a recreational fight, right? It's funny.

Anyway. Out. G'night.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 5 (Training Videos!)

So, some training videos. These are not scintillating videos of combat derring-do; even by (my) amateur standards, they're about working specific things when you are tired -- that last bit being a big implicit part of the whole point of Muay Thai training in general and fight training for sure, namely functioning at a high level when tired. 

No one but me--or maybe Tracy, my generous and cheerful sparring partner-- will want or need to watch all of these. But I'll break them down a little, as a useful exercise for myself and for anyone interested.

First: boxing with Tracy.

The instructions from Coach here are for Tracy to be putting constant pressure on me, and me to be focusing on movement and distance, throwing "straight punches" (jabs and crosses, no or few hooks, no upper-cuts, no body shots) and moving in and out of distance. This is because of Coach's (correct) diagnosis that I am basically a bad boxer, but that I'm reasonably tall and have good stamina, so a good strategy for me is to move, use my length for long punches and kicks, and not get caught up getting swiped by hooks and overhand punches close range.

In the video, both Tracy and I do medium-okay-not-so-great. He does better than me; he just keeps coming forward, he gets me in corners. I
- always go in one direction; I need to change directions and juke more
- expose my chin often, particularly when I pivot out on my left foot (you can see him catch me a couple times when I do this)
- don't do a terrible job, by my standards, of keeping a tight guard, but
- still don't do a good enough job. I just can't think about it enough: keep a tight guard. Keep a tight guard. Flick strike hard move; tight guard.

Next: neck wrestling. This is a weird foible of Muay Thai; there's no grappling like throwing each other to the ground, and no arm-bars/leg-locks all that, but there is the "clinch" which is this stand-up wrestling thing you see me and Tracy doing here. This is not at all how this would go down in a fight; in a fight you come together and someone does something (for example, as in my fight in October, "someone" might throw a knee or two and break your ribs) and then the ref will break it up or one of you will break out of it. So this is a drill to work those moments, where you do it for a sustained period,

We have no gloves or wraps on, which I find frustrating because these techniques are very different with gloves on, but if you work this for rounds-and-rounds with gear on people's faces, ears, and eyes get scratched-up, etc., which can range from annoying to really screwing things up. So.

What I notice in this video is
- if there were elbows allowed in my fight (there are not), I'd be unconscious in a clinch toot sweet, cuz I'm wide open to that;
- I need to base more. You can see it in my feet. It's all the ballet training stuff, still, in my body: my feet are just too much on one line. On a positive side, you can see that it is effective when I do base; even though Tracy is much larger and stronger than I am, I'm sometimes then able to pull him off his balance, which is good because in a really successful case you can trip, but more likely you can throw a knee or something.

Last video. Called: "Tracy is Tired."

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Training GIFs

I don't know to say the word of this exciting new image technology--I'm aware of the options, but get confused about how the creator does/does not say what everyone else does-- but ANYWAY: I do know that one of my favorite things Google does is make GIFs of your pics when its robot-brain thinks it should. These ones worked out particularly well. Thanks to TSL for taking the shots.

The techniques are knees (you'll have guessed that) and push-kicks, the latter often in Muay Thai getting called "teeps".

Knees are a savage, close-range thing; it was knees that messed me up hard my last fight.

Teeps are for distance, for keeping and making it; they can be punishing in themselves if you time them right (as your opponent comes in), but they are mostly about positioning, spacing, setup.

At the end of training, when you're training hard although honestly often when you're training kind of normally, too, you'll often do something like what I'm doing here: 100 knees, 200 teeps.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Fight Flyer

These are exciting and scary and make it real; it's wild that I get to be part of this thing. What a gift.

Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 5

I weighed 160.2 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,583  calories today, and burned approximately 694 calories doing exercise (yoga, muay thai).

Leg: .

---

Making weight making weight. Close.

Hope you enjoyed the something-different in the videos. Super big thanks to CCK for her awesome help. You can check out her and her ruggedness here.

I have several scattered thoughts to share with all the beautiful people today. Here they are.

The first is a story about my gym. It's pretty simple. I told one of the guys at the gym about the campaign to raise money for Nepal, and he listened and kind of crossed his arm and hmm hmmed as I did. And then he paused, and I could tell he didn't like it. He then pronounced it, in rapid succession, several things:
"okay"
Then, some waffling, then:
"suburban"
Followed quickly post more-waffling by:
"thoughtful"
Until finally, and with acknowledgement that this was the word he was looking for all along, the word that encompassed all the others:
"white"
I thought this whole thing was amazing, and feel privileged to have been a passive participant in the whole conversation.

Here's my really obvious next thought: it gets really easy not to waste calories when you're counting them. Like, it's not hard not to drink a f***ing beer or glass of wine; it's not hard not to eat that brownie. Do you realize how much you will not get to eat if you eat that brownie? That brownie is, like, the enemy. F**k that brownie, in the reals.

A subtler version of this is eating after training. My appetite is generally pretty suppressed for awhile after training hard, but later I get hungry. But... I'm not doing anything else that day. I'm not training. I'm not working (this is a complication: making sure my brain is fed while cutting). I'm going home and doing probably some dumb stuff maybe and going to sleep. So that's a good time to be hungry. Eating then: "wasted" calories.

This is a weird game, and I suppose it's good that I'm horsing around with it, but it'll be good when I don't have to play it anymore. I'm getting a haircut soon, and literally I'm calculating how much that'll take off my weight (my guess is about 0.3 lbs).