flying guillotine leg catch counter

Got to try an interesting move today, sparring the biggest guy in the gym. We were doing MMA rules and he caught one of my kicks. I put my weight into that leg, and before he could sweep me, I was climbing all the way up into guillotining him. I hesitated to commit to it, and he panicked and threw me to the mat. He apologized for being rough. It's a good thing I'm good at falling. Breakfalls, we call it in Judo, even from six feet in the air. He seemed pretty shocked that I almost choked him out.

I also sparred with the smallest woman in the gym. That was fun, too. She punched me in the face more than the big guy did. To be fair, he did catch me with a few elbows that might have killed me had he been throwing them for real.

I find myself loosening up. When people hit me hard, I hit them back hard. I don't need to be so controlled, and when I relax, I'm even faster. My ribs have been bothering me from BJJ, and after getting hit in that increasingly sore spot for the third or fourth time, I decided I should stop. Before I end up needing to take a month off. I'm afraid I may have already pushed it.

Started playing this game that caught my eye. I want to be clear, that it's a dumb little game, to signal that it's beneath me. That's my impulse, and on the one hand it's a silly impulse on all sorts of levels. On the other, I have been reminded of why I'm inclined to abstain from everything like this. I don't want to enjoy just sitting here at my computer, because it helps get me out and living, that I don't do the escapism anymore. 

There's this ideal of moderation and self-regulation, but that fails to take into account that we can still be thinking about how much we'd rather be doing something, no matter how well we commit to not doing it. I don't want some game stuck in my head, when I'm trying to get myself to the gym. Training is so beneficial to me, but so fragile.

Life is weird. Seems almost idyllic that I get to do this, without needing to work, but I've only been able to do this because I do little else. I have hot sauce to make, plants to repot, laundry to do. That stretches me past my limits as it is.

summer's end

Walking home from a conditioning class last night, I was cold for the first time in months. It was almost 70, but breezy. The sun was going down, my clothes still drenched in sweat, well after my heart rate had dropped back to normal. During the night the temperature dipped into the fifties. My outdoor plants will stop giving me peppers soon.

It's been a great summer. I got to the park for sparring twice. A real summer activity type of thing, doing something I like to do, in the sun with other people and everything? That alone was a huge departure from the rest of my life. I didn't know if I'd even be able to get myself there at all. I've been hitting the open gym every week and making it to lots of classes. I survived cancer, and made it through the pandemic. 

I'm still struggling with low grade depression every day - which means being tired, listless, apathetic and cynical. Not to be confused with being sad about something, anything, or nothing in particular. Just far more tired, unfocused, and unmotivated than I should be, but I managed to have a great summer in spite of that. Almost entirely due to dragging myself to the gym again and again. 

I feel like I should have more to list, that made the last few months worth living, but no, training has been pretty much everything to me. This is why it wrecked me to have it taken away. This is why I'm devoting myself to it more than ever now.

I'm even thinking about doing some competing. Martial arts schools always encourage that, but before the pandemic, I wasn't interested. I'm too old, it was just a side hobby, but mostly, I'm just not a competitive person. Now that I'm training harder and finding that I'd actually be competitive within my weight class, it might be a good way to more fully immerse myself in the experience. It might help me feel more engaged.

BJJ tournaments are the safest. Not necessarily in terms of injury, but they're tournaments. Participants are one of many, in these day long events. They sign up, and join in, and the sport itself isn't about hurting your opponent, per se. Accidents happen, but most matches are relatively painless.

Striking competition on the other hand, I'm a lot less sure about. They aren't tournaments. They aren't open to anyone within given requirements who wants to sign up. Fights are set up for specific people, and it's just you, your opponent, and spectators. Amateur competition comes in all different forms and levels. Lots of it involves sparring style protective gear. Shin pads make kickboxing a lot less scary. Almost too much so.

Headgear is of more dubious benefit, but often used. It protects from cuts, bruises, and broken noses, while it does nothing to prevent CTE, arguably making the risk worse. A note on that though, as I've been sparring more. Getting punched in the face far more than I was in Hwa Rang Do, where strikes to the face were against the rules. Strikes to the head were allowed but had to be light contact. Where I train now, light contact is encouraged, but some people hit harder than others, some more intentionally than others. It's all pretty friendly, and people tend to adapt to their partners somewhat. 

I've been ok with everyone I've sparred with so far, but I have been getting punched in the face regularly these days. It's a big part of what's made this summer so good, but I have been conscientious of the risks. It's nowhere near the level of head trauma professional boxers train with, let alone what they experience in the ring. For various reasons, the punches I'm talking haven't been big enough or frequent enough to be worth worrying about, in my estimation.

Meanwhile, I accidentally hit myself in the face with a medicine ball yesterday. It was way too bouncy to be that heavy. That might have cost me a few brain cells, but fortunately I didn't lose any teeth.

I don't even know what these sorts of amateur fights involve. I know my gym has students participate in them now and then, but I don't know anything about how it works. The first step would probably to work myself up to mentioning my curiosity to the head coach. There are also MMA matches, which would be interesting, but they seem to be less common than kickboxing or BJJ.

So, I don't know. It's just something I'm thinking about right now. BJJ would be safer, but I'd probably lose. Could well even lose the very first match, although in most cases, I'd be up against other white belts in my own weight class. So maybe not. Kickboxing or MMA , more daunting on every level - except that we'd be talking about someone in my weight class, who would have to fight me😈 I don't care what belts they have. I'm almost worried for that person already.

I don't like to admit this, I'm not proud of it, but I would love to see how that would actually go🥊💥💀

the outsider's chaos

It occurred to me as I walked to the gym the other day that I've been going five days a week. That's overshooting my goal by a day or two, but I don't want to miss any of those particular days, for one reason or another. 

It occurred to me as I walked home afterwards, that I haven't been in this much pain afterwards in quite a long time. I'm afraid there may be some correlation between these occurrences. I've taken today off. It seemed like there were twelve different reasons I shouldn't go today, but none of them were very good reasons.

I find myself missing being around people. Not people in the abstract, but specific people. People I've enjoyed training with. I'm afraid it's probably best that I don't know them better, but lots of them have been good training partners. I've been thinking about one of the changes I went through a few years back, when everything changed. I stopped thinking of myself as special, or different from others in any substantial way.

"Substantial" has to do a lot of work here. Everyone is different. Some of us different in ways more different than others. I have problems others have trouble relating to, but so do lots of other people. What feels substantial almost seems ideological. A way of spinning my situation, a defense against feeling like I was just fucked. I was different.

Not to pick on the framing itself, but it is a framing. One that I sought to abandon, for the more ambitious angle, that I'm just another person, with these problems I need to overcome. This in turn seems to have consequences for how I think about other people. The defenses were there for all sorts of reasons. Neurotypicals can be all sorts of problematic. As opposed to that neurospecial alien species I prefer to imagine myself a part of.

The problem of the outsider is that he sees too deeply and too much, but what he sees is essentially chaos. Everything is arbitrary, circumstance, and ultimately meaningless - including thinking about things that way. Maybe the reality of it is that people's minds tend to synchronize under the right conditions, resulting in feelings of life generally making sense. In alienation and isolation, the brain lacks the chemistry to do this, making it prone to eventual aimlessness and chaos.

Doing stuff with others matters, insofar as we define what matters as that which produces such a feeling that things matter.

knock on wood

I'm feeling like I've finally turned a corner, of sorts. I haven't had to force myself out the door much lately. Going to the gym in particular. I find myself looking forward to it, and dreading the days when there aren't classes. I dread sitting home alone with nothing to do all day. On some level, I may have orchestrated this, gradually excising my interest in everything I do to distract myself around the house. 

I used to pride myself on how well I could keep myself entertained. I'd be fine on the deserted island, I thought. I was so unhappy though. Turns out, annoying clichés about self-isolating are actually founded in a loose understanding of how the human brain works. This isn't about shoulds or oughts or passing any kind of judgment. We simply have all this biochemistry for interacting with other people, and things seem to go wrong when it goes unused.

Lots of hormones have multiple purposes. Growth hormone is involved in everything from muscles to skin to heart, lungs, and metabolism. Oxytocin is involved in childbirth but it's also the trust hormone. Cortisol regulates diurnal cycles and anxiety levels, boosts energy levels, and it's used in creating memories. Too much cortisol causes osteoporosis.  How we live can impact us in indirect ways, due to these sorts of biological connections. Solitary people are more prone to everything from heart disease to cancer.

A few months ago, I was doing laundry in the bath tub, wondering how I'd ever deal with going to the laundromat regularly ever again. I felt so broken, it just seemed like too much. Leaving the house and everything. Carrying stuff. Dealing with people. Sometimes they'd even try to talk to me😩

Class was pretty horrible tonight. A conditioning class, and for reasons I did not get through it so easily. This was my first conditioning class after my medical break. Over 90 and humid again, no AC, just one big fan way on the other side of the room.  The nature of the exercises are such that we have a lot of control over how hard we work. Shadow boxing or hitting the heavy bag, for example. Some people hit harder and faster and move around a lot more dynamically. Some people throw kicks, which are much more tiring than punches. Maybe I'm pacing myself badly, trying too hard.

The partner drill we did just wrecked me, but my partner seemed ok, so I felt compelled to try to match his pace. Turns out someone actually did notice I was gone. As I struggled to get through it, he commented that taking a month off was probably bad for my cardio. I was too exhausted to explain that I had cancer.

I'm looking forward to open gym again on Sunday. Looking forward to being back there soon. As positively as I've spoken about it, I've been forcing myself to keep going this whole time. Part of me hates it, but that part seems to be fading, for a change. Finally, at least for now. 

It helps that I've been feeling better about my health. My doctor tells me the laundry list of issues I got from the CT scan is actually normal. That most people have more than twice as many minor issues that the scan picks up, but the number of "unremarkables" next to various organs on my scan report was actually remarkable for my age. 

The low white blood cell count should be resolved by taking more iron. More zinc seems to be helping too. Plus the cancer is still gone. Which should also mean that I'll be able to catch it plenty early enough again, if it comes back.

mass gathering

 Covid numbers are way up, higher than I'd expected, even here in Vermont. Like most of the country, we're surging to at around the worst case numbers have ever been. Peaking, or still going up? I don't know, but of course, BJJ class tonight was sweatier and more crowded than ever. I've honestly never seen so many people attend BJJ. The boxing class is often this crowded, but unlike that class, we proceeded to then roll around on the floor with each other.

And as if that's not bad enough, we round robin rotate partners a few times to free roll at the end of class. 'Free rolling' is essentially submission sparring. A 'submission' is when you twist someone's arm or choke them, until they concede defeat. I never know who's reading this, but I suspect roughly none of them use the handy wikipedia field on my blog, let alone google anything. People just misunderstand what a person means entirely, and move on. Me, I Google about twenty things a day.

I've been trying to ignore covid numbers though, because it doesn't change anything for me. Whatever happens, no matter how bad, this is what we can expect to be the status quo for a while. We already have vaccines. Now we're going to wait for better vaccines? Fuck that. I'll take getting covid over going back into hiding, thanks. The likelihood that I'll be fine makes it an easy calculation.

For those that won't be fine? You've got to protect yourselves, but you've also got to let people live their lives and make their own decisions. I'll wear a mask when appropriate - when it will help or where it's required, but we can't wear masks while free rolling. Even if they stayed on, it's comical to think a mask would provide any protection to people rolling around on the floor trying to strangle each other.

I am a bit concerned as to where this is going. They seem to realize we can't go back to state mandating  masks and social distancing, but I don't think they understand why. Some places are requiring masks, and that's fine, but I don't know what the state will do. For once, I'm happy to have a Republican governor. 

We no longer have anything to look forward to. Waiting for the vaccine was bad enough, but now what is there to even wait for? Better vaccines, more variants, rinse and repeat, ad nauseam. So, stay updated on your flu and covid boosters. Beyond that, we've got to let people live their lives.

hey teacher

Head instructor is out this week, so he had a student teach his class tonight. In turn, she asked me to roll with the brand new guy, to teach him some basics. I was nervous, and fumbled a bit looking for approval, and joking about not being a teacher.. but I actually did pretty well. I taught some simple important moves that beginners should know. I went through positions and transitions competently enough to provide examples.

Then I rolled with this other new guy. He's been going a few months, but still pretty new. He outweighed me by quite a bit and went pretty hard, struggling, grunting, gasping for breath. I got him with an armbar, then opted to be less aggressive, as we continued for the rest of the round. I was pretty relaxed. I couldn't beat him easily or anything like that, but I wasn't struggling just to survive, either.

This was at the end of the second hour class, following a tough kickboxing workout. Most students do one or the other. Only a few do both. For me, the hardest part is getting out the door. Once I'm there, might as well push myself until I can barely limp home. I've been holding up for the time being.

Working out all pandemic really paid off. It's taken some time to shake off the rust, and then deal with the medical stuff, but I feel like I'm doing much better than I was two years ago. I'm not struggling to keep up with these young kids. My training partners are sometimes struggling to keep up with me.

That said, I might not be able to walk tomorrow.

you're so fast

Finally made it to open gym today. I've been going to this place for years, but that's how long it's taken me to get around to going when there is no formal class. Just the mats, the heavy bags and equipment, and lots of people. The lack of structure makes me extra nervous. I know I've blogged about this before, but it seems I did not get over it and go, until now.

It's been growing in popularity and the park spar inspired me, so I finally made it. It went well. Sparred someone new - that is, new to me, but he wasn't new to sparring. He was pretty good, caught me with a few good shots. He was tall and lean, and trying like hell to stay out of range. I barely landed any punches, but afterwards he let me know how impressed he was with my kicking.

Your kicks are so fast, he said. I actually have mixed feelings about that, as I'm trying not to be as kick specialized as I used to be. It was good to hear though. He was complimenting me on exactly what I've been striving to get good at - closing distance and landing solid shots despite everything working against me. I had to resort to my longest range weapons, but even caught him with a great advancing roundhouse to spinning back kick 

Then got some grappling in. I hesitated, because it was extra humid today. Another student remarked that the entire mat was pretty much covered in sweat. Open mat is generally no-gi, so it makes for some very slippery matches. We get used to it, such that our main complaint ends up being how difficult it makes locking in all sorts of submissions.

Delta variant? Meh. I'm vaccinated now. I'm done worrying about it, beyond anything I'm legally compelled to do. I can still catch it, especially indulging in such high risk activity, but I'm vaccinated, so the symptoms won't be as bad. I'm fine with the risk now. This is how viruses are, once it's well established across the entire world. It really is like the flu now, and just like the flu, if you're immunocompromised or just really old, it can kill you. If you're young and healthy, the flu can also kill you, but that's incredibly rare. We live with these risks all the time.

New cases are surging because we've relaxed all precautions and half the country isn't vaccinated. This will mean more mutations, and surging risks all around, but it's also just the way it is. Honestly, covid is not serious enough to motivate vaccinating the entire world. Some governments may try, but viruses don't care about your borders. We're never going to get anywhere near 100% worldwide, and the delta variant came from India, not Florida.

So, it's time to accept the reality of it. Deal with the risk, as appropriate to your situation, but do so knowing this is basically the state of things. They'll probably come out with better vaccines and other breakthroughs eventually, but I'm not going to sit around waiting for that.

also pizza

I've been doubling down on the intermittent fasting, along with eating more fresh fruits and vegetables. So, of course, the internet does this to me.

I'm still sitting here at my computer way too much, but I've also been spending more time in the kitchen. I don't know what to do with myself, but my culinary successes have been helping. This pizza turned out so well. It had a Mediterranean flavor to it that should work excellently with spinach, mushrooms, and olives, next time. My hot sauce experiments have been going well too. I'll be looking to give some away soon.

Last bit of bloodwork I had to get done came back with more abnormal results. Some fundamentals I wanted to check, before I even know about this other stuff. Turns out I was right about the zinc deficiency, and right to be taking iron, because I'm also deficient there. Additionally, my white blood cell count is low. I'm lacking neutrophils and lymphocytes, whatever that means. It's a good thing I asked for these tests.

Every concern I've had has turned out to be all too valid. My next appointment is the day after tomorrow.

granola and hot sauce

First, I was invited to do some sparring with one of the only other people around my age. He might be a little older, or a little younger. I'm not sure, but I thought it would be a good first match. I had a hell of a time getting myself going that morning and was still feeling pretty sluggish when I showed up. That said, he proved to be one of my tougher opponents of the day, instead. Getting punched in the face got my adrenaline to finally kick in.

I got punched in the face a lot on Saturday. Numerous people apologized for landing poorly controlled punches - we don't spar hard. Most prefer to go lighter than I'd want them to. I feel good about how unfazed I am by it. I know it's because they're throwing their strikes more desperately. One sparring partner commented that I land more head kicks than anyone there.

I sparred with a lot of people.  Maybe twice as many as last time. I grappled a number of people, too. My stamina has improved so much. I chatted through my mouthguard a lot. Maybe too much at times, but it's my chance to practice being social. That seems to be improving, too.

After about two hours, things seemed to be winding down, and I knew that I was more exhausted than my body was yet letting on. I hopped on my little bicycle and pedaled home. Then barely moved until Monday. I'm amazed that everything has turned out ok, so far. I even recovered in time to participate in this park sparring event. It's been another tough month.

The heart issue did turn out to be minor. I just have to be conscientious about it. I suspect that either the vaccine caused it, or aggravated it, or maybe I had covid and didn't know it, and that's what caused it. Maybe it was all that coconut oil I used to eat, but I switched to peanut oil many months ago. It may get better on its own. 

So far, so good, in terms of the cancer. I'm still struggling with the contradiction that I had cancer but it was just a speed bump. I'm afraid it will come back in one form or another, but in the meantime, I got to class again tonight. Judo was great. We had this terrifying drill, where we each had to throw everyone else in the class, using one of three throws we just learned, while they try not to be thrown. While the rest of the class watches as they wait their turn. 

The throws worked against different types of people. Ouchi gari works against larger opponents, while kosoto gari works better against those who are lighter on their feet. It was interesting to see kouchi work against some, while ouchi other worked against the rest. It was nice do quite well at it, there in front of everyone. I'm feeling back on track again. It's not a track that goes anywhere, but it's a huge benefit to both my mental and physical health. Maybe it will help keep the cancer from coming back.

On the one hand, that seems almost indisputably reasonable to me. We have all sorts of evidence that both physical and mental health play a gigantic role. On the other hand, people often treat it as bad luck and something we really only fight with medical intervention. After a person gets it. especially. We don't want to blame anyone for their own grave misfortune, but those same factors play a role in how aggressively it advances, and how likely it is to come back, should the medical intervention work.

Maybe sometimes it is entirely bad luck, but even then, there are things we can do to improve or sabotage our chances against it. Not just in terms of physical health, but in terms of meeting emotional needs, living in ways that don't make us too stressed out and miserable. Sometimes that's less a matter of having a right attitude, and more of how we spend our time every day. The mind tends to overestimate it's own role in the situation.

Plus the broccoli. I don't know why I keep trying to make tofu - stir-frying broccoli is so much easier to do reasonably well. I also planted a variety of leafy greens. They barely last a day after buying. so if I can grow a good amount, that should work. My plants outside are pumping out lots of peppers. I've finally started making sauce. It's so easy and good. Like making my own granola, I feel silly for taking so long to try it. I thought it would be more complicated.

I'm talking about basic vinegar hot sauce. No fermenting things, no infusing oil with leaves and twigs. Just pureed vinegar, peppers, and salt. That alone is good, but I roast the peppers in olive oil first, and I'm experimenting with adding other things, like mango, and trying different types of vinegar. As for my granola, I've realized that if I add water to the oats and cacao first, letting that clump before baking it all together with the nuts, seeds, and coconut, I end up with those clusters everyone seems to think so important for granola to have.