MY HOME GYM

Improvisation consists of three things: situation, tools and location. –Marc MacYoung


Friday:
hiking with CK and JB. We spent a good 4 hours. There was only one section that was downhill enough to pain my knees. The fronts of my thighs were pretty sore from all the double-leg takedowns I did on Thursday. I expected this to work itself out during 4 hours of hiking, but they were still sore at the end and continue to be sore today (Saturday). I don't mind much, though. It's that "you worked out hard" good sort of sore. Happily, my ankle held up and is not unduly sore.

Saturday:
Tai chi- and more hiking- planned, but CK came down with a migraine and we only got as far as Eagle Falls. Lovely, but heartbreaking due to the disrespect evidenced by litter and graffiti. I want to take a couple of trash bags down there and pick up, but I don't have any resources for getting rid of it... I only have trash pickup once a month and I struggle to keep my own output down to that single can. Perhaps I will put out a call for a work party on the local group lists.

Thursday:

30 min on the stationary bike.

I now have an aerial silk rig in my home gym. Excuse me, I just have to say that again because it is so awesome... MY HOME GYM. I will rig one outdoors probably next summer (My budget requires that I space these projects out). The one I have now is of course only long enough to do very simple things a foot off the floor, but I was able to work out how to do a single-foot tie even though it's been over 2 years (I think) since I've set foot in the circus school. I hope the muscle in my upper body comes back. Just hanging for a few seconds is exhausting. But aerial silk is so good for working the ENTIRE body, and is very core-intensive.

Lunchtime BJJ in Bellevue. All spars. Very hot in the gym. Some people had to take breaks, but I did not.

Noticing that even now, the teachers tend to avoid pairing me up with any white belts. I guess that's the safest call, but I can't help wondering (again) if beating up some white belts might help me feel less inept. I wonder if I should go out of my way to try to play with white belts more often. Of course this plan will backfire if the white belts all end up cleaning my clock. It is also playing with fire as far as injury risk goes. Hmmm.

After that, I met CK and we tried to knock each other over. We didn't do any actual striking- it was all balance/weight shift stuff- but it felt very weird to be doing standup when it's been so long. At first I felt like my body was trying to do contact improv instead of sparring. Then it occurred to me that thinking of it in that way might help me to do less force-on-force (which is not productive for my body against 99% of normal people) and more moving around.