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accident proneCheck out my latest TKD bruise :-)
I got that one blocking a kick from Gav. D'oh!
a-ok
happyWhat a cool morning I had today!!!
As you may remember, my TKD classmates had rashly volunteered to be my guinea pigs for teaching Body Combat. I really wanted to have a go at teaching, as I didn't have a clue how I would feel doing it. I knew I loved combat, but was worried I might hate actually *teaching* it, especially as I'm the sort of person who hates things like speaking in public!
So this morning I woke up and I was soooooooooo nervous. I wished I'd never agreed to doing the class. I could barely manage to eat breakfast and I had really bad butterflies. I started to think this would be a disaster. Back in my serious piano-playing days (yes there was such a time!) nerves used to totally ruin my performance. I wanted (in theory) to be a concert pianist, but every time I played in public I got so nervous my hands would shake. Which is not exactly conducive to good piano playing :-) Of course, now I'm really glad I'm not a concert pianist as (a) I'd be travelling, working nights and never see Dave, and (b) I'd be far too worried about injuring my hands to do anything like TKD. However, I digress. This morning I felt just like I used to before a recital and started thinking, well, if I'm going to be this nervous what is the point of teaching, as I'll hate every minute.
When we got to the gym I had 5 participants, including Dave and Andy (TKD teacher), and we did 4 tracks from BC20. And.............
...............it went REALLY well!!! I remembered all the moves. I managed not to get left and right muddled (that may sound no big deal, but when you're doing everything facing the class it's kind of confusing, as you're telling them right when you're going left. Makes my brain hurt). Everyone seemed to follow what I was doing (including 3 who had never done combat before). Best of all, all my nerves disappeared the moment we got started, and I really enjoyed myself!!!! :-)))))))
I was totally exhausted at the end, which was a bit worrying seeing as how I'd only done half a class, but our gym has no mikes so I was shouting the whole way through. Now I fully appreciate how fit our regular BC instructor is. I'm pretty confident I can get my fitness up enough to be able to teach a whole class.
Also, to crown my fab morning, in TKD afterwards I found out I had passed my green tag grading! And Dave passed his yellow belt. Yay!
So tonight I am a very happie bunnie :-))
a-okDave and I have been watching *way* too much UFC recently. We're really quite addicted. I'm just dying for someone to start another Ultimate Fighter reality show which is (a) for girls and (b) set in the UK. Hey, it could happen! Seriously though, why is there no UFC for women?
Chuck Liddell is definitely our hero at the moment. He is soooooooo cool. I ordered his training DVDs off Ebay this week. That should be some killer workout. I can just see Dave and I practising takedowns and submissions all round the house.
"You put the shopping away!"
"No, you!"
*gets spouse into choke hold*
*tap out indicates willingness to put shopping away*
LOL. Could be fun :-)
I realised this week that my great-grandmother's maiden name was Liddell. Chuck might be a distant, distant cousin. I even went onto Genes Reunited and started a family tree in the hopes of discovering that some branch of the Liddell family went off to California many years ago. My mother is delighted that I am taking such an interest in the family history. I haven't had the heart to tell her it's just because I want to be related to a kick-ass UFC fighter with a mohican and tattoos on his head. But just think, how cool! I could get in touch, get him over here to meet the UK branch of the family, he could take a few of our Thursday night training sessions......
*comes back down to earth*
Anyway, the other problem with watching lots of UFC (apart from developing weird and stalker-like obsessions with Chuck) is that I keep forgetting those rules don't apply when you're doing TKD sparring. Last week, after our grading, we practiced some sparring techniques. Dave and I paired up: he was supposed to come at me with a turning kick while I moved out of the way and got him with a side kick. But it seemed so much more sensible to just move around and knee him in the face. Really must remember not to do that unless I want to get disqualified and fail all my gradings :-)
energeticSo I was reading Skwigg's blog. That woman is a genius. She had this great write up a while back about setting goals that had nothing to do with weight or size. Then yesterday she said this:
"Find a sport, any sport. Dieting is not a sport, and for all practical purposes bodybuilding/fitness is not a sport. (I know I'm going to get a plexiglas hooker heel in the eye for that one.) You have to get the focus on what you can DO instead of how you look. The upside of that is that if you do something physically demanding that you love, you're going to look great as a result. Dancers, rock climbers, yoga instructors, fighters, and triathletes all have great bodies that are a result of their active lifestyle, not a lifestyle that's crushed and limited by whatever diet/workout plan they read last."
All of a sudden a light bulb went on in my head. I've been chugging along for months, trying to get down to 9 stone, losing a pound here and there, gaining it again, sticking to 1400 cals for a few days then blowing it. But what I have been doing, consistently, because I absolutely love it, is lots of body combat, TKD and lifting weights. And I have definitely lost inches. My oh-so-tactful husband was watching me do combat this morning and informed me that my bum was less wobbly than it used to be. Bless him. So hey, why don't I focus on doing my training and let my weight & shape follow? Maybe I'll get down to 9 stone, maybe I won't, but I'll be strong and toned and enjoying myself.
So, here are my happy, healthy, non-weight-related goals.
Long-term:
Get my TKD black belt
Teach Body Combat
Get strong in my upper body. OK, that one's a bit vague so I'll pin it down to being able to do proper push ups, and pull ups.
Short-term:
Get my TKD green belt (that's assuming I passed green tag - should find out on Sunday - eek!)
Decide what to do about the BC training (more below)
Lift heavy weights 2-3 times a week.
Do push ups 2-3 times a week on the stairs.
On the body combat front, I rashly mentioned to my TKD class that I was thinking of training and they all volunteered to be my guinea pigs. So on Sunday we are all turning up half an hour early and I am going to teach a mini combat session. Help!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm a little nervous. What if I (a) forget the moves, (b) don't manage to lead the class properly, (c) fall on my arse, or (d) all of the above? But I'm excited too. It should be a good test of whether I actually enjoy the teaching side of it. If I do, then I shall have to convince Dave that it's a good idea to part with our hard-earned cash for the training.
So the TKD grading was this morning. I think it went ok but we're not getting told our results until next week. Aaaaaaargh. I hate waiting. I can't think of any particular things I really messed up so no reason to think I've failed, but still.... Dave said my sparring looked ok. They paired me up with (blue belt) Glen which first of all I thought was a bad thing, but of course he totally knows what he's doing so turned out to be an excellent partner. Bless him, he was giving me pointers as we went along.
On Friday Dave and I skivved off for the afternoon. We went for a picnic with the doggies, then left them back at home and went over to Riverside Park with the cameras. Loads of swans there which made a nice change from boring old ducks to photograph. Unfortunately, I don't know what I did to my camera settings, but out of the *299* shots I took, only about 12 turned out to be even halfway decent! Grrrrrr! Nearly all the swan shots came out either too dark or horribly overexposed so you couldn't see any of the detail on the white feathers. I stuck a few up on my Flickr page, the best of which is probably this close up:
Yesterday we were lucky enough to wangle tickets for the football; two of our friends got offered posh hospitality seats with work, so they gave Dave & I their season tickets. Very nice of them - we weren't planning on going again for a while as it's a bit pricey - £54 for the two of us, which adds up if you're going two or three times a month. So we followed our Saturday-with-football routine: walk dogs, body combat, lunch, cycle to footie, cycle home, eat curry and collapse in small heap. What better way to spend a Saturday? Well, of course it could have been better if the game hadn't been total pants. We drew 1-1 and Saints were back to their headless chicken routine. I knew it was too good to last :-)
Further excitement later on in the evening when the dogs started barking like mad things at the back door, and when we let them out they went into a barking and snuffling frenzy over by the shed and bins. With dogs safely shut back inside we grabbed a torch to investigate and found this little fella:
I think we interrupted his dinner of gourmet slug :-)
Eddie and Neo haven't quite grasped the guard dog concept too well. They'll bark at someone at the front door but as soon as we open the door and they see it's a person they're all waggy tails and friendliness. Hedgehogs, though, drive them into a barking, panicked frenzy. Still, it's good to know we'll be well protected in the event of an attack from an army of crazed hedgehogs.
brightGaaaah! Nearly a week since I last blogged. Dunno where the time went.
Sunday I went up to London to meet my girlfriends for lunch. The four of us have been friends since uni. It was so nice. I really miss them when I don't see them for a while - it's hard for us to see as much of each other as we'd like to, what with us all living in different places and them all having babies :-) So we met up in Covent Garden and had a nice lunch together.
We have our next grading in TKD this coming Sunday. I'm ridiculously nervous. There are 6 of us all taking the grading together and I'm paranoid everyone will pass except me. This is what we have to do for the grading:
1) Demonstrate various blocks, kicks & punches;
2) Do the pattern for this grade and the one from last time;
3) Demonstrate the use of blocks etc in self defence;
4) Spar (light contact only) for 4 x 1 minute.
It's the sparring I'm most nervous about. The trouble is I have no imagination. If someone tells me to do two kicks and a punch I can do it, no problem. But put me in front of someone else and tell me to spar and I become clueless. I can't think of a thing to do. I blame my classical music upbringing. I'm only used to following other people's tunes, not making up my own. Sigh.
Dave is also doing the his first grading on Sunday, the one I did last time. We have plans to go out and celebrate in the evening with the rest of the class if we all pass. If I fail I shall stay at home and cry instead :-)
Today I had a minor breakthrough with the sore shoulder. It suddenly occurred to me that having the PC monitor on the right hand corner of my desk, so that my head is permanently turned to the right, might JUST POSSIBLY have something to do with my tense left shoulder. Well, duh, I hear you all say. Yeah I'm a dumbass. Anyway I moved the monitor to the centre of the desk and all of a sudden typing seems much more fun.
In other news this week, I have been researching the whole body combat thing. On the one hand, people I know at the gym tell me that if I qualify and I'm reliable, there is plenty of work out there. On the other hand, a girl at our gym has qualified recently and said she couldn't get a class anywhere. Hmmmm. Tonight I'm going to try and have a word with our regular instructor and see what she says.
Dave and I tried a spin class this week. My god, it was knackering. It was "begin to spin" so just a half hour class, and a good 10 minutes was spent showing us how to set up the bikes, so there was only about 20 minutes of actual exercise. I still came out bright red and dripping though, with extremely sore legs. Youch. Still, anything that gets my heart rate up that much has to be worth doing, so I will try and persevere with it. I need to really get my cardio fitness up if I'm even going to contemplate the combat training. Apparently the course is basically 3 solid days of doing combat. One hour is hard enough.
Right, gotta go now, it's time for Thursday night TKD. I'm looking forward to it having missed last week with my sore shoulder.
d'ohSo, the sore shoulder is getting better. After the acupuncture I got Michael, my TKD instructor, to have a look at it and he reckoned a deep tissue massage would help. So I went for one of those. Michael said it would hurt, but I just thought he meant in the way that all massages hurt - you know, a bit sore but in a good way. Ha!!! For the record, deep tissue massage is in no way fun, enjoyable or relaxing. It involves someone sticking their fingers right into your sore knots of tension and wiggling them around a lot. Afterwards I ached like I had bruises all across my shoulders. I still do. However, it does seem to have loosened of the worst of it. I'm back next week for another go. The plan is to get rid of all the knots, then keep going for a massage once a month or so to stop it getting this bad again.
With it feeling better, I've booked in for combat tomorrow. Yay! I've realised this week how much I actually enjoy exercising. I've been getting all twitchy and grumpy where I haven't been to the gym. Thursday night Dave went off to TKD without me (sob!). I was forced to console myself with wine, southern fried chicken and a marathon session of Buffy and Angel dvds. This is what I used to do just about every Thursday night when Dave went to pottery, before I started doing TKD. Now, while I'm always happy with wine and Buffy, I actually wished I was at class. How sad is that?
As well as my expensive treatments, I've decided that the root of my tense shoulder is sitting at this bloody PC all day, so I'm looking into improving my desk posture. First of all I looked at getting an ergonomic chair, but the price of those was enough to send my shoulders into immediate spasms of horror. The cheaper option is a seat wedge which apparently forces you to sit with your spine correctly aligned, not slouch against the back of your chair. Also I think I need a foot rest, as my feet don't touch the ground the way I'm sitting at the moment. That can't be good. So my credit card is taking a bit of a hammering at the moment.
That being the case, of course, I decided that tonight would be good time to have a career crisis and announce to Dave that I didn't want to be an accountant for the next 20 years. He looked terrified. I think he has visions of coming home one day to find me saying "hey, honey, guess what? I sold the accountancy practice and bought a camper van!" LOL. I dunno, it's not that I hate my job. I know I'm very, very lucky to be self employed and have as much free time as I do, while still earning a reasonable wedge. It's just that we have all these conversations about what we'd do if we won the lottery....and none of them involve continuing the accountancy :-) Recently I've decided my lottery-winning plans involve:
1) buying an enormous house with enormous grounds
2) filling said house and grounds with a large assortment of dogs
3) ditching accountancy and becoming a body combat instructor.
Now I fully accept that (1) and (2) are most definitely not going to happen without the lottery win. But (3) I could actually do now. The only reason I'm not already doing it is that it would bring in a whole load less money than the accountancy. But tonight I started thinking, well what if I started off just doing it a few hours a week? I mean, taking a combat class would be exercise as well as work, so I probably wouldn't actually spend much more time at the gym than I do now. Plus there must be loads of work going for combat instructors in Southampton, cos our gym can never get cover when our regular teacher is away. Only problem is, I'd have to take a fitness qualification before I could do the combat training. I looked into it before and the cheapest option for training was about £750, which I don't have. And time, obviously, which I also lack. But still. I still, really, really like the idea :-)))
hug meSo, no blog for a few days and I have absolutely nothing exciting to report. So here are some random wafflings.
1) My friend Cath's 30th birthday do on Saturday had the nicest buffet I have ever eaten IN MY LIFE. There were yummy bits of rare steak on top of little crispy garlic bread slices. There were giant battered prawns with sweet chilli dip. And there were spring rolls with duck in them and hoisin sauce for dipping. If I put on weight this week it will be entirely due to the duck rolls, which I could happily eat every meal for the rest of my life and not get bored of. I think I consumed about 10 of them.
2) Dave is plotting evil schemes. Ever since we got our MX5s - I got mine before he got his - he has coveted my wheels. See, I have the most fantastically cool shiny wheels. Here is a picture. See, aren't they cool?
He has tried to get some the same for his car but apparently they're quite hard to find. Anyway, this week he starts saying he's feeling bad about us having 3 cars. It's a bit extravagant, admittedly; we have our MX5s plus a sensible estate car for fitting dogs in and going on holidays. Perhaps, he suggests, we should get rid of one of the MX5s and just have a car each like normal people do. Just as I'm mulling over this prudent suggestion, he drops in...."of course, mine is the better car so we should keep that one...." I knew it!!! He wants to sell mine and nab the wheels for his!! It is all a cunning plan to steal my wheels, but I am onto him. The wheels will be mine!
3) My sore neck and shoulder came back with a vengeance. Grrrrr. I did combat on Saturday, TKD on Sunday, felt fine, then woke up Monday in pain. I have now done no weights for over a week. I'm paranoid all my muscles will waste away overnight. I keep inspecting myself in the mirror to see if my arm dents have disappeared. Anyway, yesterday I went for acupuncture which helped a lot but hasn't completely cured it yet. I'm going back on Friday. She said it was muscle spasm and I have big knots of tension in my left shoulder. So I've decided, once it's fixed and I get back to the weights, I really must add something like Tai Chi into my weekly exercise schedule. If I'm going to work my muscles hard then I should probably make sure I stretch them out properly too.
In the meantime I'm getting fatter by the minute, due to (a) not being able to exercise and (b) eating junk to cheer myself up cos I'm in pain and can't exercise. Not a winning combination.
mischievious