State of My Arts

Well, hrm.

I’ve not been doing well with motivation to eat healthily.  I had done two six-day diets (here and here), and had good short-term results.  But, of course, once I resumed my normal eating routine, the weight came back.  The last week and a half have involved birthday cake, ice cream, pizza, Indian buffet, plus my normal unhealthy lunches.

Today I weighed in at 199 with 17.5% body fat, which is around what it was prior to the second round of that six-day diet.  That’s as high as I’ve seen the fat percentage in the last few weeks, so hopefully that’s a bit of an outlying data point.  Still, this isn’t what I’m looking for.

This morning, I tried out the P90x chest and back workout for the first time.  I muddled my way through it, using some of their suggested “cheats” for some of the pull-ups.  It was definitely a good routine.  My arms are fatigued, and as a bonus my shoulder is still feeling okay.  I also did the 16-minute ab routine, or at least as much of it as I could.  That one is pretty brutal.

I haven’t decided how much my slightly-squishy body is bothering me relative to my inherent laziness.  My current primary fitness goal is definitely improving my upper body strength.  After 20 months of shoulder problems, I really want to strengthen that area.  So this means that weight management falls behind strength training.  Perhaps I should save my mental energy for doing a near-daily P90x routine so that I make sure I am working towards my primary goal.  I know that I need to make substantive permanent changes to my diet in order to see much progress, and I don’t think I’m quite ready to commit to that in addition to the nine hours per week of martial arts classes (plus the time spent getting there, getting home, showering, etc) and the maybe 2 hours per week I’ve been spending on fitness outside of the dojang.

It’d be nice if fighting my weight wasn’t a lifelong struggle.

Fitness

Periodically our dojang will change the training schedule up a bit.  Usually this is due to changing demographics within the school.  For instance, a couple of years ago there were a number of juniors and seniors in high school — but now those students are off to college.  When I first got my black belt, there was a black belt-only class on Friday night.  A black belt couple from out of town would come to the dojang for that class and stay nearby for the following morning’s class as well.  All told, there were usually a dozen or so in class.  It was the high point of my training week — I was a new black belt training alongside a dozen other black belts and working on advanced techniques.  Maybe nine months after I got my black belt, attendance had dropped to the point where the class was no longer sustainable.  The out-of-town couple had stopped coming, some others had other regular responsibilities, and the remainder no longer made it as high a priority.

Similarly, there was a poom (junior black belt) class that regularly drew 10-12 advanced children, though maybe a year later it was down to three or four.  Ditto Friday night Hapkido, which had been down to maybe 3 regulars for a number of months.

Most recently, the Monday night Hapkido class fell by the wayside.  Monday was the “advanced” Hapkido class, though the Hapkido program was small enough that it was the same people as in the other, all-level, Hapkido classes.  The schedule change in the fall added a black belt TKD class immediately prior to the Monday Hapkido class, which made for a pretty tough double workout, and most opted to just participate in the TKD class.  In addition, the regular Monday night Hapkido instructor had been having shoulder and medical insurance issues, and he could no longer come to class.  We have several well-qualified Hapkido instructors to fill that void, so it was most likely due more to the schedule change than anything else.

But as one falls, another rises to take its place.  Recently, we’ve seen a strong growth in the Wednesday and Friday Hapkido classes.  Both of those classes are taught by an instructor who lived and trained out in Portland, Oregon (where a number of us periodically go for seminars) until he met one of the black belts from our school, fell in love, married her, and moved out here.  Anyhow, he is a fantastic instructor, a 7th dan with over 30 years of experience.  He runs a very traditional class, and gives us a bit of a different take on Hapkdio than we’ve been used to.  Those Wednesday and Friday classes are up from maybe 4-5 students to 10-12.

It is interesting how different classes wax and wane.  This week, I switched teaching duties with another instructor for the beginner classes (I taught Thursday instead of Tuesday).  The Thursday beginner class was very small (six people) — I’m not sure if the Thursday class is normally that small, or if I caught it on a light day (the Tuesday class is normally at least 10).  The following class, a green belt and up class, was very well attended.

Overall, adult participation has been very light over the last month, though it did pick up noticeably this week.  Here’s hoping for a great summer of training.

Hapkido, TKD, Training