I am posting this silly thing first, now. It is a silly thing (sillier than the awesome GIFs, which are a total GIFt (yeah!)): Google mixing some videos with jaunty underscoring.
It makes it seem like a trailer for a summercamp or something.
Anyway. Enjoy. Or whatever.
If you want, later today I will post a bunch of these videos and some others with my thoughts/notes as I go through them, in the entry "Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Day Before (Training Videos! - Study).
I weighed 160.6 pounds this morning. Ate food today. Did muay thai (after this). Leg: not what I'm talking about here.
First off: I'm drunk. This is TWO days before: Thursday morning. Second: Well, f&#k.
This is not a big crisis. But it's annoying; I'm annoyed. Last night in training, I got dumped (thrown to the ground) pretty hard, neck wrestling. I felt a shimmer go down my left side and shoulder, and indeed today my shoulder/back hurts and is pretty sore. The kind of sore where under normal circumstances you'd stay off of it, "give it a few days." I have many thoughts about this.
(1) It means I won't do yoga today, certainly.
And I may not tomorrow. This is not that big a deal. Except that I really like doing yoga, and it's calming, and it does feel like calming things are very valuable, at this moment. So I find it sad/frustrating to miss it. Also ffs I bought an unlimited pass for this month.
(2) It better get better tootsweet tonight.
Like, I better have some Wolverine-ass type of sleep and wake-up basically like "oh yeah, that. barely there." Better. I can muscle through it for the fight, it's not that bad, but I want to be healthy strong and hard, and it's my jab hand. I think it will. I don't think I'm just saying that. I think that it will.
(3) I am a mix of angry/annoyed and appreciative that it happened.
Again, all in earnest. Annoyed at myself that I let myself get dumped. Perhaps a tiny bit annoyed at my partner, because perhaps that hard a dump wasn't necessary, two days before a fight. BUT more appreciative of him, REALLY, for this reason: he's a shorter, stronger guy than me. He went low, picked me up, dumped he hard as I tried to knee. I'm now very aware that a shorter, strong guy might do that. GUESS WHAT I REALLY MIGHT BE FIGHTING A SHORT STRONG GUY. So, again, maybe awesomer if this happens 5 days before a fight, 2 weeks before, rather than 2 days. But that reminder is actually very valuable, because in the week before fighting there is (rightly!) a sensitivity about hurting the fighter, and ruining everyone's work. And the real downside to this is if you go in the ring and are suddenly surprised at some dude trying to hit you fucking hard. So: good reminder. That dump hurt. This hurts, right now. If that short strong guy on Saturday tries this, I'll have it in mind and hopefully answer back.
And I really think that's part of why the dude who dumped me did, and operates as he does in training, so when I say that I'm grateful, and that it outweighs the displeasure, I mean it.
I weighed 159.4 lbs this morning. I ate approximately 2,785 calories today, and burned 424 calories doing exercise (muay thai). Leg: BLAHBLAHBLAH. This is the deep grouchy.
Three days before fight. Just: tired, and hungry; through the thick of the training and tapering so not amping every second on that, but also not in the "coast into the fight"/"go crazy" phase, just... training, hungry, tired.
I took a bang (got dumped to the ground in the clinch) tonight, and it still smarts, and I think that's got me mad, too. That stuff makes me... grouchy. And mad.
Y'know, I promised I wouldn't go on if I didn't have much to say. Elsewhere, I'll have things to say. Peace out.
I'm sitting here hungry and I weigh 159.4 pounds so I thought I'd write a quick something that's just about the diet, weight, cutting.
I'm now at the right weight. I don't want to lose or to gain. That's annoying and hard, in itself, because we all lose and gain. I'd rather not have to not drink water, or sweat out a yoga class, day of the fight. So I monitor that.
I'm listening to Kindred, the new Passion Pit album, as I write this. It's good.
Here are some pictures to help tell this story.
What is this? You know what this is. Ignore the cat food on the right, things aren't that crazy around here. It's a bunch of protein bars of various kinds, because these are a really good tool to know exactly how many calories you're getting, get some sugar in, and also get a good dose of protein, which --as I've written previously--is really key for me to not kind of get into a really dire place.
without all that hair!
What is this? An object lesson in how crazy you can kind of get during this. I did not get my hair cut because of the fight, or rather because of weight cutting. I'd been meaning to, and wanted to. did ask them to sweep it up and let me take it home and weigh it because I was curious how much weight I was "buying" myself by getting my haircut. You can't see the decimal but you can intuit it from that front-zero; the answer is 0.11 lbs. In other words like nothing. Really disappointing: I had pretty long hair! Imagine if you could drop like a half-pound just cutting your hair! Oh well.
But I
I include this not as humor or as oh ho-ho, look how extreme. My experience with the MyFitnessPal app is that it is very useful as a database and therefore for tracking calories, but that its models for how many calories you should be eating are way too low and should be viewed with caution or ignored totally. So if it is telling you this... man. I am not at all worried about hurting my long-term health at the level and the amount I do this; I don't cut that much weight, for that long, and pete's sake I've done this a handful of times over the last couple years in an amateur way, just for fun. But it does make me feel, in the pit of my stomach, a sympathy for men and women who really fight competitively at professional or near-professional levels. Honestly, the weight and eating stuff must totally screw up some people's lives, and I hope it doesn't impact their health too negatively.
On a happier note, some food recs:
-- I have mentioned these burritos. I mention them again, because the sponsorship is taking a minute to come through or something. You, reader: you should eat these. I mean just in general. They are good.
-- I now mention this bread. It it also so good, and yeah yeah, lower calorie than most breads which is nice but I SWEAR it is also just good. I am going to continue eating it after this whole thing is done.
Here's another thing you really learn when you're counting calories and working out pretty hard: chew your food. I forget to do this all the time, in general; not like literally, but I find I've eaten half of my whatever in bolted bites, big boluses (plural? sp?) going down my throat without any savoring or enjoyment. When you're aching for every calorie, you really chew, really savor. Actually, possibly to a weird degree. Probably, it's pretty weird to watch me eat right now.
I've learned two things: have a schedule and an idea of it, but also eat when you're hungry. This is in a sense contradictory, of course, and definitely goes into that category of thought when people are like "don't push yourself" but what they really mean is "don't push yourself, so long as basically all the time you are really pushing yourself." But it's pretty commonplace to hear diet-advice-givers dismiss the idea of skipping meals as harmful, and this goes with that. If I let myself get really hungry, I'm (a) miserable for that length of time, which sucks, and (b) more likely to just not gauge right when I do eat. Versus eating when I'm hungry, and by "eating" I mean a reasonably solid meal (300 - 500 calories), not a little snack. I also basically just eat mostly before training, as I've told you guys, because a "benefit" of training until you're very tired is that you're not very hungry after that, usually. Whereas before my body is pretty acutely aware of its calorie thresholds, and it's very happy for the food I give it.
And, last thing! I'll also observe--and just observe and be done here, because why belabor this kind of thing, but hey--what you want to know during this whole process is what you weigh. You and whatver the parts of your food your body has turned into you; i.e., you're not interested in water weight or stuff that's just passing (really: because why overestimate? that's eating that you could be doing!). So, within reason--and I mean that, like I've done it once in this whole process I've been through with you guys: laxatives.
And with that: out.
I weighed 162 (wtf?? I know wtf. I ate a lot of veggies yesterday and did not poop) pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,575 calories today, and burned approximately 861 calories doing exercise (muay thai: big day). Leg: yes. Still knotted, and won't be perfect, and I'm not hitting with my right knee still. But: yes. Fun.
So, here we are on one of these weird euphoric highs from a day of intense training, training that does not happen at night (this makes a big difference for me, in all respects), and a beautiful California day in which everything is right.
I felt flickers today, boxing--still just boxing, boxing boxing boxing; I think Coach has done a smart thing with the leg situation, which is this boxing routine that I'll describe more in the post with those videos--of fun. Flickers where I wasn't thinking tactics or aggression or defense, but just I was having fun, moving around. I think that's partially a function of it being a somehow less brutal day than others, maybe. And certainly a function of yesterday having been an off day, just yoga. But also it's working the sport, and getting in my own dumb way better at it. I like this thing that Coach is hammering me about--move move move, action action action--and I hope I get better at it, hope I execute, hope hope hope push push push go.
Fun. It is great when it is, and kind of wonderful that it can be, in the midst of pretty intense training. But it is. It is is is.
I weighed 160.8 pounds this morning. I ate approximately 2,203 calories today, and burned approximately 240 calories doing exercise (yoga).
Leg: I did child's pose today in yoga class, almost, for the first time in 3 weeks. It's healing. Touch wood. Keep healing, leg. Don't get hit again. Well, look at this chipper guy.
The deal with him right nowis he just took a terrific yoga class, which means he's feeling post-yoga groovy; rested after a no-muay-thai day; and hunger-suppressed from exercise.
What will happen to him later is that his plans to work this evening will collapse in a mish-mash of
"I don't have coffee but I'm too tired to get coffee,"
"should I eat probably I shouldn't eat,"
and then the interruption-but-in-fact-really-nice rescuing by his nice neighbors, who will catch him as he skulks out for what would have doubtless been a pointless work session at Starbucks around 830pm.
So he'll sit with them (not drinking their port, but happily chilling) for 45 minutes. Then he'll buy some groceries (a useful activity) and then he'll write this (also useful: different way).
I don't actually get why I'm so hungry today, as I ate reasonably well, but people sometimes say that it's on rest days that it hits and it's hit me today. I'm tired. I'm goin' to bed.
Talk to y'all tomorrow. Home stretch, coming up. "Home stretch." huh. Brace yourself, slimbuttons.
More training videos; more talking it through, on the reasoning that that's both a useful tool for me to drill in my observations, and presumably of some passing interest if you're reading this (I imagine you, reader, as kind of skipping around these entries, a bite here a snatch there -- and that's perfect).
Above, is pad work with Coach Drew. Coach Drew is different from "Coach" (Vik), as you'll notice, as they are different human beings. They are different human beings; they carry a very different energy within them, and it's a really cool thing to have both of them around.
In this round, Coach Drew is trying to get me, mainly, to hit with power. This is a great idea for a round: focus on power, make every hit count. Unfortunately, at the end of a training week, I am tired, and as you can probably see my power is not-so-much power. A few hits are okay, but there's a crispness and force lacking, here. I'm not trying to be mean; I'm trying to be diagnostic, and also just straightforward -- I won't be exhausted, at the end of a session, at the end of a particularly grueling week, when the bell goes off for Round 1 of my fight.
Some specific observations:
- several times, you'll see him do something where I check (block) a left kick, then answer by throwing my own left kick. This is a useful thing. I do it poorly. I do it poorly here because there is too much of a disconnect between the check and the kick; the idea is that they come one on the other, pumPUM. When I'm less tired I'm actually a bit better at this, but it's good to see myself do it tired.
- sometimes, when I'm throwing my right cross, you can see that I stuff myself; I get in too close, can't extend my arm, and it's a weak and strange-looking punch. I actually hurt my wrist a bit, doing this, this session, so it's something to watch out for both because it's not a good punch and because it throws off your alignment, and you can hurt yourself (I'm actually always amazed [TOUCH WOOD HOLY COW] that my wrists don't give me more trouble in this sport. I have thin, small wrists).
- my right knees are not in fact as non-existent as they look here. I'm marking them, because that's the bad leg, and knees in particular flare up the inner thigh contusion.
- here's a big one. All these roundhouse kicks we do: that's the main kick. You can see a BIG DIFFERENCE when I turn the hip and pivot and when I do not; if you fail to do these things, you are flicking your leg, and it doesn't matter how strong you are it will actually be hard to deliver a really, really devastating kick unless you just hit someone wide open or luckily. Conversely, if you pivot on the basing foot and turn the hip and use your core, you can deliver kicks that are punishing even when blocked/through pads; believe me, I've received such kicks. They jangle all of you.
- sub-point: you don't see this here, but this last week Coach has been having us do a thing at the end of the night where we do 100 kicks with each leg. It is grueling (duh). But it's good because you revert to technique; your leg gets too tired, your quads get too tired, and you have to use your abdomen, pivot. I think that is one of the reasons Coach has us do those. The other is that he is obviously a sick person who thrives on our pain.
- back to the video: look at how I switch to having my right leg front, either for some punches or (most of all) to left kick. Look at how dancy it is. That's no good. It's actually okay in a way, not in itself but diagnostically, because to me I see that and I also see that I feel comfortable and on-balance with that movement. But that dancy, up-down big ol' switch: no good. No good.
Okay, this video. Boxing with Nick. "Boxing with Nick" is, for me in my muay thai life, a way to say "reminding myself how bad at boxing I am." Nick just is much better than I am. Which is good! That's why I always video our rounds, when I can.
At the beginning, you'll see Nick throw a kick at me. That is because he has shown up drunk, and forgotten that we are only boxing. Silly Nick.
Then you'll see him cudgel me for about 3 minutes. Some notes:
- look at my blocking when it's tight: when my gloves stay by my cheekbones, my chin stays down. Looks pretty good.
- look at when it gets wild, much too often; my hands flail, my face is exposed, all of it. This not only looks dumb. It leaves me open for shots, which is bad. If I can remember two things Saturday, they are: stay tight. throw action. Stay Tight. Move. Throw Action. (added a third)
- "throw action" means "fucking do something": I do have a tendency to wait for a "good" shot, or an "opening". This all sounds like a good idea, but it's kind of not. Throw action. Hit the guy. Move. Or else he'll hit you. Guaranteed.
- My left hand, in default mode, too often drifts out, away from my face. Not protecting. Must think about that, tonight.
- Coach at one point yells at me about "don't be the aggressor." This is a hard balance to strike, and one I'm still working on. Here's the idea: I'm not a great boxer, so I shouldn't just plow in after the guy and scrap (I also kind of like scrapping, another reason this happens). I should keep distance, counter, use push-kicks and kicks and all that. BUUUUUT you saw "throw action" above: you can'tbe a dancing, passive punching bag. Or rather, than you are a dancing, passive punching bag and that is NO FUN (this was a little bit what my fight in October was like. Those were 6 very challenging minutes, and in a way I'm proud I got through them. But I'm also not pleased that I left a fight go so wrong. So. Etc.)
Coach, in the back there, with Tracy, with the green Styrofoam noodles. That's a drill that Coach does, where he bops you with green noodles to make you cover up.
