2024 Training Log Part 3

What I’m listening to as I’m writing this: Miles Davis- Kind of Blue.

Don’t read anything into that choice. I’m feeling pretty fine this Easter Monday. Coffee steaming on the table beside the laptop, I’m full of chocolate. Had some wine and Port Salut last night. Gym done this morning. Nothing to complain about.

Monday-

5 k walk with the dog followed by an upper body strength session. Backing off this week so a fun week of beach muscles and bullshit. Back off weeks seem less needed when my loading is so light, but I was glad of it last week.

Tuesday-

A stressful personal day meant my time was limited. I hit the gym for some work, but mainly to decompress. Banged on some tunes and put in some dog work for my brain, then hit the sauna. This happened afterwards-

What is it about old men that their sense of shame diminishes over time? Is it some Phineas Gage style reaction to a reduction in brain tissue? Or were they just raised differently to me?

There’s a good few old guys in the gym I’m going to, mainly I think because it’s more like a Health Club than a gym. Hey, one old boy of about 80 is a cracking boxer. Hits the bag in there like an old pro. But then there’s the other side. On Tuesday, I came back to the changing rooms after my sauna and went to the sinks to shave. There’s a guy there having a wash, nude, which, y’know, is grand we’re all men. So he’s towelling off and we nod at each other in the mirror. I’m setting up to shave. Next thing, he walks over to the hand dryer, reverses up, and spreads em like he’s getting a prison search so the hand dryer can give him a good airing down there.

I had to put that down somewhere. I don’t care what age you are man that’s not on.

Wednesday-

No training.

Thursday–

Went to Royal Grappling for their morning class. Mostly whites and blues for drilling but I drill so little I didn’t care. Got 3×10 minute rounds at the end. Toughest since the Fellipe Andrew camp way back in early February. Beaten up and gassed. I expected to be a little out of shape as I know I’m heavier in this phase of my plan but even so, technically sucked too. Very good to get out of my gym and comfort zone. I enjoyed it a lot.

Generally speaking, I coach all of my own training sessions, so even a class every now and then lets me just train Jiu Jitsu as if I wasn’t a coach. I like that. I often tell people I regret coaching, and I sort of mean it. I would have liked to have been just a student. I get that chance every now and then and I love it. But time won’t allow me to do it as regularly as I’d like.

Friday–

Recovery day in the gym. Nothing to report really. No men drying the cracks of their arse on the hand drier though, so that was something.

Saturday–

Now, Saturday was interesting. I dug out the Heart Rate Monitor. My mate Fergal gave me some advice a few years back about training with lower ranked guys, and one of his tidbits was to wear a HRM and see how hard you went. The idea being you might cruise if you’re not kept honest. Now I had a couple of really good rolls with Eoin my body-double brown belt so not all was low tech, but broadly I was training with people with whom I could coast if I wanted.

I think I did 11 rounds. Here’s the result-

The big drops are where the HRM fell off or got disconnected, and the big peaks are either impacts causing electrical interference (that’s what tech support said), just weird anomalies, the combo of my partner’s heart rate and mine (unlikely I think) or, I was having a coronary episode in the middle of training. Well now, let’s hope it’s not the latter.

The cues I gave myself before training were- Stay Moving, Focus on Transitions, Don’t Get Stuck. Broadly speaking, the idea was to treat the session as intensely as possible. Push Push Push. Always looking for the next position. If a finish presents itself, take it, but if it will take too long to set, move to the next position, even if it means giving something up. Go, go, go, just like in a tournament.

Now why do this? Because I do not like to do cardio, and the less time I spend on some bike that goes nowhere, the better. I’ll do my cardio on people.

Thoughts on Training-

Approach with a goal- an intention. If you have an intention, you’ll have something to consider afterwards. Was I successful? If not, why not?

It’s okay to just go and train though, just switch off the brain and roll. That’s nice too.

“Kill your darlings”, I always thought Ted Hughes said that, then I was told it was William Faulkner. Anyway, doesn’t matter who said it, what matters is that we all have our favourite things to do in training, but they hold you back from developing. You fall back on them. They become predictable.

Other random bits this week-

I got into a stupid debate on Twitter/X about the new hate laws in Ireland. I’m not going to talk about my opinion on that, but these, well these, people, got involved. And I quickly realised these were (gasp) Twitter People. You know, they spend a lot of time arguing on there. They’ve got the lingo, the arsenal of memes, they do things like repeat what you said, but rephrased to make you sound like a prick.

The objective in online culture isn’t to debate your idea, the objective is to shout your idea repeatedly, and call the other person a Nazi/Communist, or lately, Centrist, until they just shrug and leave. How do people live that way?

Anyway, never again. Stupid move.

This week I’ll begin putting more time into conditioning and trimming down a bit. Not half as much fun as lifting but that’s life.

First though, I’ve an Easter Egg to finish.