Yes that’s right, TWO workouts in a row!!
Repeat for 5 sets:
Pretty happy with that workout. The getups were torture, especially with the flies and presses in there. Think I might have to have a rest tomorrow, after two hard full-body workouts.
Just finished an impromptu workout. I’d just finished helping Megan with some cooking, had nothing better to do, so I thought ‘Hey, why not do a workout?’.
So here it is, repeated for 4 sets:
Yep, that’s a 15lbs dumbell in the right hand, pressed over head for the duration of a one-legged squat. I have massive respect for anyone that can do 5 or more of those in one go without stopping in between, that s**t is haaard!
Actually counting up, that was 280 reps. Should have done 1 more exercise for a 300 workout! Anyway, the whole thing lasted about 4o minutes and was one of the most mentally challenging workouts to date, mostly because those pistol squats were seriously hard. I guess I kind of punished myself a little bit for slacking off for so long and making excuses. No more of that sissy crap!
No, this workout isn’t part of my Gumdo training routine, although I did borrow the pistol squats from it. That will start next week I think.
Anyway, if anyone wants to destroy themselves I recommend giving this workout a try. Stay fit and work hard!
Yep, I’m back. Didn’t fall under a bus or anything like that!
Honestly, I’ve just been enjoying not doing any workouts. It’s always nice to have a good break from spending hours a week in a cold garage. I’ve also been pretty time-poor lately between work, Gumdo and a personal business venture I’m trying to get off the ground.
I guess that’s a bit of a cop out, I made myself a promise a long time ago that I’d always make time for my fitness, but I have been! I’ve been going out at lunch every day for the last few weeks to practice my Gumdo patterns for 20-30 minutes, so the fitness is still there, I just haven’t been doing any strength training lately.
Speaking of Gumdo, dad and I had our first class 2 weeks ago which went pretty well. I think we tried to do a bit too much in an hour, and the students probably walked a away a bit overwhelmed, but they all came back (all 3 of them) last week, along with another 3 newbies, for more. Last week we worked out a shorter class format which worked a lot better, and I have to admit I got a real buzz from the class. I’m really starting to look forward to starting my own class!
Back on the fitness topic, I think it’s time I got back in to a solid routine. Rather than just doing some weights to bulk up or look better or anything like that, I’m going to put together a training plan that is Gumdo specific. My plan at this point is to have three stages: strength, endurance and finally speed. They will go in that order. To begin with, I’m thinking 2 weeks each would be a good trial period. If the plan works well, then I will look at 4 to 6 weeks for each phase.
I’m still writing out a list of exercises and activities to include though, so I won’t post the specific plan just yet…
Also today I’ll try to get a post up about meditation, as I promised it to Rob a few weeks ago. Sorry Rob, I haven’t forgotten honest!
Hope everyone is doing well!
I have to say, I’m shocked. My last workout was Saturday and I’m still sore, which is a bit alarming considering it’s now Wednesday!! I suspect that maybe my restricted eating as stopping me from recovering as fast as I otherwise would. Today I’m going to eat a fair bit more (cookie jar here I come!) in an effort to get those mucsles rebuilding a bit quicker, and tomorrow it will be back to normal.
In other news, last night I started learning a new pattern in Gumdo which is quite exciting. The pattern itself is MUCH more fun than the one before it, so I’m looking forward to learning more of it!
In yet more news, tonight is the first lesson of Gumdo for dad’s school, which I’ll be helping out with for a while until I’m feeling confident enough to start my own class. Annoyingly we don’t have quite enough Gumdo specific wooden swords – only 4 when we need 6. I was hoping both dad and my proper swords would have arrived in time but sadly not! So dad is going to pick up some bokken’s today which are used by Japanese arts. Only real difference is they’re a bit heavier and thicker, so shouldn’t be too big an issue…
Wow, it’s been a full 4 days since my last workout. Shameful!
On the up side, my muscles are only just fully recovered from my last workout. My back was quite uncomfortable for a while there. Only muscular though – no injuries thankfully!
After my last workout of doing 2-arm exercises, I’ve decided to stick to one arm at a time. I feel my core doesn’t get a very good workout otherwise because having equal weight on both sides balances everything out so your core doesn’t need to work to hold you in the right position. To me, doing single arm exercises like this is a far better workout than crunches/knee raises/what ever other ab workouts you can think of will ever give you.
For this particular workout the first 3 exercises were done as a single superset – ie 5 reps of each arm for the first exercise, 5 reps each arm of the next, then 5 reps each arm of the next, then back to the first exercise. Then I threw in some pullovers because I like them 
Next time I will up the weight quite a bit I think, but I couldn’t be bothered restacking the dumbells so I stuck with 40lbs today.
Also to finish the workout, I did 20 mins of meditation. Doing only 10 mins at this stage, I don’t think I can really get the mental clarity I’m aiming for – it takes too long to silence all those annoying thoughts racing around the mind. 20 minutes was great though. I did manage to get a complete empty-mind feeling going, if only for 2 or 3 seconds before the ‘Woo! You did it!’ thought raced into my head…
Nutrition the last few days has been pretty good. No snacking or over eating (except last night when I had a little bit too much pizza ). I’m kind of looking forward to returning to paleo eating when I can, but on the other hand I’m also really enjoying having some bread and pasta here and there.
Alright well today I finally admitted it to myself. Everything I’ve done in the last 6 months has now been undone with 4 weeks or so of bad eating. I’m afraid my mindset of late has probably slipped back to my fat self. Rather than the 10ish BF% I’m probably sitting around 19 or 20%. Not horrible but I’m still extremely disappointed in myself.
But enough feeling sorry for myself. My plan is just to eat healthy and try to get my mind in control of my stomach, instead of the other way around. Paleo? No. I’m afraid paleo eating requires a level of discipline that I’m not really confident I have at the moment. Will I return to it? I definitely intend to, but for the next month or more I really want to prove to myself that I do still have some self discipline. On top of that, it’s actually very expensive to eat paleo, so once Megan and I have a decent budget worked out, and once I’m happy with where my mind is at, then I will look at returning to a paleo diet.
Training wise, I’ll be sticking with resistance work. It’s hard work, I can pick up some weights any time and I just really enjoy it. My gumdo training is certainly more than enough to give me a good cardio hit at the moment.
I won’t be taking any progress pictures or anything of that kind because I really just need to do this for myself. I’m not doing it to prove any particular diet works, or to track muscle gain, or anything like that so sorry if you’re interested in seeing pictures but I won’t be doing them.
Anyway, on to today’s workout:
Felt pretty good afterwards. 110lbs isn’t really enough to push myself for a deadlift, but that’s all I have so there’s not much option there. Don’t think I enjoy the high pull with dumbells, it’s not quite the same as with a barbell, but it still worked everything pretty well so it doesn’t matter too much.
I have to admit with the distinct lack of resistence work I’ve been doing lately I thought my fitness would have dropped quite a lot. Deciding to kick it back in to gear, I hit the kettlebell swings for 12 minutes of pain. Ahhh it took me back. All the way back to January.
Anyway, it seems I was wrong:
Proud to say, I beat my personal record of 242 swings. Smashed it infact. Total count was 364 swings in 12 minutes. By the end of the 12 minutes I just plain couldn’t hold on to the bell any more, so I’m happy with that number for now.
It was tempting to do some presses instead of the meditation, but I really need to practice so I stuck to my guns instead. Felt great afterwards I have to admit!
Now that it’s all over and I’m back at work, I have a moment or two (no more than that though 
) to post about my weekend!
As I posted on Sat. night, I did indeed pass my blackbelt grading, as did everyone else in the group. It was seriously hard though, we definitely earned it! Aside from the basic techniques, there were also components to test mental strength.
After doing a whole bunch of short stances in a row, and then holding it for 30 seconds on each leg, we had to get up in to a horse stance (feet about shoulder width apart, turned inwards, and sitting down in to the stance in a sort of squat) with both arms held out in front and stand there for 5 minutes. If anyone moved from that stance (stood up, dropped their hands etc) then another 5 minutes was added. And again, if anyone moved, another 5 minutes. All up we did 12 or 13 minutes I think. Sad to say, I fell over. I was mentally determined to stay up and not penalise anyone, but my legs just gave up on me and I hit the deck. I did get straight back up in to the stance though, until my instructor (not the guy running the course) came over and raised me a little bit. I was pretty much in a sitting position, far lower than a few others in the group, so it was a huge relief when he did that…
Anyway, after that we did a few more techniques and some patterns which was really tough with legs made of jelly. The first time I did our pattern I think I skipped a fair chunk of it, but we got up and did it again and we all nailed it that time. Then we all went outside while the Grand Master grading us pondered over our results. While we were waiting, our master showed us the protocol for receiving the result – including a formal “big bow” which looks cool yet strange. I have to admit, at this point I was seriously reconsidering whether I wanted to even bother trying out for the technical director role, the grading was just that unpleasant.
So we went inside and received our certificates, belts and new uniforms and all was merry and well.
Then the training continued on Sunday with everyone sporting their new blackbelt uniform, and eventually we had the technical exam. It was basically two of our patterns joined together, and we were tested on quality of techniques, knowledge of the pattern, focus and speed. By that point I’d decided I was being silly, and got up and tried out for it, so now my official title is “NSW Assistant Technical Director”!
There are actually 3 of us, the technical director, myself and a fellow assistant, and I’m extremely pleased to be working with them, as they’re both very worthy exponents.
In other news, my dad who I also completed the course with was offered the position of Executive Secretary, which means our club will be staffed entirely by Executive members of Haedong Gumdo NSW.
Anyway, much fun had by all. The course was an awesome experience but certainly something I have no interest at all in repeating in the immediate future It was a great group of people though, and my thanks go to all of them for helping create a fantastic experience.
Just a real quick update – I’m about to head out to dinner so I don’t have long to post.
We ended up doing our black belt grading today instead of tomorrow. Everyone agreed we’d probably be too exhausted to do well tomorrow, and after the grading I must agree!
The grading was seriously intense – probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, both physically and mentally. I’ll probably explain why tomorrow or some other time.
Anyway, I and everyone else passed which is awesome, so we’re now all certified black belts!
Off to celebrate I go.
Well here are the promised Gumdo videos.
Watch them quick, because I’ll be removing them shortly. I only recorded these so my dad had something as a reference, and I really shouldn’t have… None the less, here’s the two patterns I would have done for my last grading, had I done it.
The speed is way down, and the technique a little floppy. Also the patterns aren’t very impressive in shorts compared to the proper uniform But it gives you an idea of what I’ve been working on the last few weeks!
