2024 Training Log Part 23

On the stereo today: The Rolling Stones- Some Girls

So last week was a busy one. To get you inside the mind of Barry for a few minutes- I never stop thinking of new things to do. My issue is in keeping focused on the thing I’m supposed to be doing right now. The upside of this is that I have about a dozen new projects and things going on at any one time. The downside is that none of them are ever finished.

Occasionally, that backs up and I’m left with this mountain of incomplete projects that I look at and think, why did I start any of these? I used to just get frustrated, but now I delegate better. I pay somebody and say “Go away, and come back to me when it’s done”. It turns out that this method saves time and money. The only issue is that you need to have a little bit of money to begin with.

But last week, I completed a few and got them on the rails. I’m pretty happy with myself, but training suffered.

Monday

Exhausted from the UK Masters the day before, I took a day off. Actually, I wasn’t exhausted from the competition itself, more the travelling and weight cutting. Oh and the post-event beers. So I did the cardinal sin- I skipped Monday.

Tuesday

Gym session. Highlight of this was that I went at all. Still pretty bushed.

Wednesday

“I think I’m coming down with something”, I said to my wife in the morning. To which the sympathetic response of the long suffering spouse is “Well, stay away from me so.”

I rang in sick to coaching, went to bed at 8pm and went to sleep immediately. I slept for 11hrs straight. Woke up Thursday a bit better. What the hell is wrong with me, I thought. My wife texted me to remind me that I hadn’t taken a day off in 3 weeks. In fact, I’d worked or travelled for 25 days straight.

So I took Thursday off too and went to bed at 9.

Friday

Into the gym feeling much more fresh and ready to get my teeth into something. Did a full body hypertrophy session and then hit the sauna for 20 minutes. Felt something close to human again.

Saturday

Only Jiu Jitsu session of the week. I did 11 rounds. I was blowing a little in the early stages but got into the groove and really enjoyed the session. I was the biggest and ugliest on the mat so decided I was going to submit everyone I rolled with as many times as possible with traps rather than pressure. I went into the sub library a bit and caught most people. Loads of fun.

Training Thoughts of the Week

I hate to Rest. I actually call it Rust. But you only have so much adaptive energy. You have to stop and recover, eat well and sleep well. In a perfect world, I can train to a pretty high level at a good schedule, especially for my age category. But once work and other stresses kick in, something has to give.

The analogy is a bucket. Your bucket holds your stress. Training is stress on the body. So the bucket begins to fill. Now add your boss’s demands of the day, in goes a little more. Your kid is sick. Slightly more stress. Your car gets a flat. Now the bucket is full. You only need a drop or two more to make it spill over, and it might be the smallest thing that does it.

But we confuse the small drop that finally fills the bucket with the other major stressors that did the bulk of the filling. So it went this week. “I must be exhausted from travelling!” I said, but actually, I’d just worked without a break for weeks.

Non-Training Thoughts of the Day

Today, the Kyuzo Podcast comes out. It’s on Jiu Jitsu culture this first week. It’s fair to say that it’s pretty rough and ready for now, but we’ll have more professional items being added as we go. New mics are arriving this week for example.

I’ll tell you a secret. This one was recorded 3 times. I did it, and on the night before it was due to go out, I pulled it. It wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t happy. I was like Neil Young! He once pulled a whole album the night before release!

This was much to the tech-guy’s chagrin, I might add. He’d spent a long time on the edit and other elements. The second time, I fucked up with the mics and we only realised in the edit. The third one is the one you’re going to see and hear.

When something is about to be released into the world, it’s a breathless feeling. I’ve written courses, articles, and short stories and sent them on their way, and I can’t accurately describe the breathless moment before you click send, or post. It’s like you’re about to jump into freezing water. The difference is that there’s no corresponding feeling afterwards. No icy cold immersion. You just click and then, nothing. You wait. And Wait. And sometimes you look at the watch-count, or you keep clicking refresh. But it’s always anti-climactic.

As a person who has done a fair few things like this over the years (“He puts himself out there”- My Mam to one of my teachers once), I have a piece of advice for you. You cannot, under any circumstances, worry about what dickheads will say. The world is still full of eye-rollers. The sort of bloke or girl who would mock efforts in your secondary school is still out there in fully-grown-adult form. They’re just more embittered now. Fuck em! Do your thing.

Alright, see you on the mat,

Barry