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Killing Time
Oct. 17th, 2017 10:24 amI'm currently standing in the data center cage (the old, large cage), waiting for the signal to do some disk swaps. Until that happens, I'm just going to write here...
The past week has been a minor but welcome disruption to our boring lives. I returned from a very fun trip to Toronto last Tuesday, the kids moved home on Friday, and we had a house guest visit from Cleveland Friday. But as of yesterday, our guest flew home and we are now just a household of three rather than a mob of 6-7. I miss the fun, but it's nice to have some quiet time too.
My gym workout yesterday morning was unhelpfully disrupted by my inability to get a bench press station. The bench press is the core of my chest workout and needs to be done early in my visit, or I simply won't have the energy to do it effectively & safely. There are four stations but three were in active use with people lined up to swap in & out. The fourth station was occupied by someone who was using it as a bench while coaching another person who was doing calisthenics adjacent: yup, neither actually using the bench press for what it was meant to do. And despite requests to use a different area of the gym by different people, they both steadfastly refused. Damn ignorant of them, the bastards.
Anyway, I skipped the bench press and did extra sets of the rest of my workout to make up for it. it was an odd feeling though to head to the showers without benching anything, like I left something major undone.
The evening karate was as brutal as ever. The warm-up stretches hurt in a good way, and while I'm getting more flexible, I'm a long way from matching what most others in the group can do. And the cardio left me heaving & sweating in a how-am-I-not-dead-yet kind of way, as expected. Per usual, we spent a lot of time on kicks, but this was the first time in a while we had reviewed axe kicks. And I suck at them.
Or rather, I think I suck at them. It's kinda hard to tell.
The idea is that one would raise a straight leg alongside the target as high as comfortable (for me, about chin height), then strike downwards on the target with the heel of your foot with great force. I'm getting the energy distribution all wrong: it takes some energy for me to kick up to chin level, and I'm clearly hesitant to drop my heel down quickly as there is no physical target to hit during practice and do not want to plow my foot into the floor. I also think that my balance isn't right yet to be able to put the full energy required into the down stroke.
I plan to practice more, perhaps using a heavily padded chair as a target until I get more comfortable with the stance, balance, flow & energy, all hopefully without hurting myself.
The past week has been a minor but welcome disruption to our boring lives. I returned from a very fun trip to Toronto last Tuesday, the kids moved home on Friday, and we had a house guest visit from Cleveland Friday. But as of yesterday, our guest flew home and we are now just a household of three rather than a mob of 6-7. I miss the fun, but it's nice to have some quiet time too.
My gym workout yesterday morning was unhelpfully disrupted by my inability to get a bench press station. The bench press is the core of my chest workout and needs to be done early in my visit, or I simply won't have the energy to do it effectively & safely. There are four stations but three were in active use with people lined up to swap in & out. The fourth station was occupied by someone who was using it as a bench while coaching another person who was doing calisthenics adjacent: yup, neither actually using the bench press for what it was meant to do. And despite requests to use a different area of the gym by different people, they both steadfastly refused. Damn ignorant of them, the bastards.
Anyway, I skipped the bench press and did extra sets of the rest of my workout to make up for it. it was an odd feeling though to head to the showers without benching anything, like I left something major undone.
The evening karate was as brutal as ever. The warm-up stretches hurt in a good way, and while I'm getting more flexible, I'm a long way from matching what most others in the group can do. And the cardio left me heaving & sweating in a how-am-I-not-dead-yet kind of way, as expected. Per usual, we spent a lot of time on kicks, but this was the first time in a while we had reviewed axe kicks. And I suck at them.
Or rather, I think I suck at them. It's kinda hard to tell.
The idea is that one would raise a straight leg alongside the target as high as comfortable (for me, about chin height), then strike downwards on the target with the heel of your foot with great force. I'm getting the energy distribution all wrong: it takes some energy for me to kick up to chin level, and I'm clearly hesitant to drop my heel down quickly as there is no physical target to hit during practice and do not want to plow my foot into the floor. I also think that my balance isn't right yet to be able to put the full energy required into the down stroke.
I plan to practice more, perhaps using a heavily padded chair as a target until I get more comfortable with the stance, balance, flow & energy, all hopefully without hurting myself.
