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Thread: Geezer's Long March Toward the Elite Sneaking Up On the Finish Line

  1. #341
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    May 2010
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    5 minute warmup on the bike. (Medium day)

    Bench Press: 205 x 5 x 5.

    Chin Up: bodyweight (holding steady at 210) 5 x 4.

    Claw Grip: 170 x 2 x 5.

    Foam roller and stretching.

    So today I get into my office and discover that the incredibly whiny and annoying computer security puke I am compelled to share an office with turned 60. The whole office was decorated with black crepe paper streamers. The little weasel dick looks like an escapee from an attempt at badly done mummification. There are over half a dozen people who do computer security at the site I work at and for the most part they are a great cadre to work with. Except for Droopy Dog at my elbow. He's one of the main reasons I spend time out of the office like here where there is a workstation to the outside world to work on and talk shit here at. The office we share has now been designated Geezer Island. Thank God for a permanent addiction to the iron! The alternative would be looking and probably acting like Little Mark. Yup, his name is Mark also. When they moved him in with me the other security staff asked how they could keep us straight when they would sing out for one of us. My original suggestion was since he just arrived he could be Mark 2 and I would be Mark 1 since I had squatter's rights. He didn't like being Mark 2 so I said fine, you like Little Mark better? He didn't, but everyone else did, so it stuck. One of my great joys at work is telling people how to differentiate us. Like I just have here. Life is good.

  2. #342
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    I woke up late this morning so I hustled into the gym and knocked a GXP on the cross-country elliptical. Finished off with the foam roller and stretched and hustled home and to what will be a busy day at work.

  3. #343
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    That busy day at work yesterday turned out to be one of the most unique days at work I can recall in a long time, if ever. There are three people who are fortunate to have not suffered some form of blunt force trauma from a result of their stupidity, arrogance, and absentmindedness. I was so angry by midafternoon I'm sure my blood pressure meds were doing no good at all from the pulse pounding drumming I could feel in my head and neck. I got home and found Dearly Beloved, who has been under the weather the last few days, down for the count croaking a "hello" at me from the sofa as I came in the front door. So no jujitsu last night, as I stayed home to care for her and get a leg up on some stuff around the house she's been too sick to do. That and the bubbling anger made it better for me to limit my contacts with other people. Someone might have gotten hurt. The kids class didn't need me raging away, taking my pissoffedness out on them, and I could easily have done worse than that in the adult class. The ironic thing is I can channel this kind of anger into the iron much better at the gym. The iron is inanimate and hardly subject to injury from me no matter what my state of mind is. I have never had to refrain from a session at the dojo as a result of this level of anger before but then again I've never gotten quite this mad before when it was time for a session. Of course the overriding factor was caring for a loved one, but still . . .

  4. #344
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    Mar 2008
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    So I went back to judo last night for the first time in a little over a year. There is a white belt that is almost my size (a few pounds off) but not as strong. TOok 1.5 years of BJJ and is almost a blue belt. Beat having to fit with 120lb 17 year olds (THis one kid looks like he lives in a concentration camp).

    However, doing judo after goodmornings, GHR and hypers is not a good idea.

  5. #345
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    Hey, great Jamie! Feels good to be back on the tatami, huh? So the back felt a little taxed by the total experience? Did you have to do a lot of breakfalls? The backfalls are what sap me the worst.

  6. #346
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    It's not the break falls, it trying not to be strong all the time. I'm pretty relaxed during practice then we do randori. Have I mentioned I get very competitive?

    Also, the bowing always screws me up. 2 years in a BJJ school will do that to you.

  7. #347
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jamie J. Skibicki View Post
    It's not the break falls, it trying not to be strong all the time. I'm pretty relaxed during practice then we do randori. Have I mentioned I get very competitive?

    Also, the bowing always screws me up. 2 years in a BJJ school will do that to you.
    You have described perfectly the problem it took me nearly 4 years to get over in mushin ryu. Master Bellman and the other black belts were constantly telling me "relax!" '"Loosen up, your arms are locked out like you think you're Frankenstein." Competing does that, it's a powerful drug and the withdrawal symptoms are a bastard to get past. As for the bowing, do you mean the formal za zen bows in and out at the start and end of the session, or the standing bows between partners and senior ranks during the session? Like I said to tertius in the grappling thread and you are getting reminded of, the Nipponese are punctilious in their expectations and enforcement of formality. Just remember, they expect you to be a humble rice farmer with proper respect for the samurai.

  8. #348
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    Just caught up on the last few entries. Good stuff as always, Mark. Good luck getting to three plate squats.

  9. #349
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    " or the standing bows between partners and senior ranks during the session?"

    That. In BJJ and GJJ (there is a difference), it was just a hand slap. Just so your opponent or partner had to do something to acknowledge you were both ready and you had to have your hand free. I asked a black belt about a problem I was having with a pulling step to set up inside major reap. I went from my partner to him and he made me bow to my partner and then to him and then again to him when I was done and then again to my partner when I started again. I thought "Fuck me dude, I just want to get some practice in, all this bowing took 1-2 fits worth of time".

    John, my buddy that runs the class is less hung up on the tradition; he also taught hand to hand in the military. I do like the instructor that enforced the bowing and emphasized it's importance, it just all strikes me as "I'm more judo than you" kind of thing to do (the bowing, not the pointing the lack of bowing).

    There are two older instructors I really like. One was a power lifter and the other is this old guy with forearms like steel cables. Both are really friendly, great at technique, understand anthropomorphy enough to show you how to adjust techniques and generally pretty cool.

    There is one instructor I can't fucking stand. He's fat, a black belt and I can beat him 2 out of three times. He doesn't do competition, only Kata. He talked about how hard he trained with the powerlifter mentioned above and power lifter said he came one time and quit halfway through. He's one a member of the mystical ninja school of thought. And he's fat.

    The guy I took BJJ from in West Virginia had no bowing (we did the hand slap) and he was idolized by his students in much the same way Mark is around here.

  10. #350
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    Thanks for the encouragment Rob, I'm confident I'll get there in the next few months since I seem to have figured out the whols form and set up groove that protects and actually seems to be strengthening my lower back. I haven't had that numbing fatigue for a few weeks, and it is wonderful to not experience that feeling. I'm wondering if the squatting and deadlifting in good form might have actually improved things.

    Jamie, I see what you mean about the bowing. As old school Home Island as I am about the formalities myself I have never encountered a dojo or black belt that hidebound on bowing before. The only time I've ever seen it was during kata demonstrations. Yeah, that's a little too much. At the dojo I go to now, we just bow when we are called up as the crash dummy to demonstrate the technique on for the class and then when the black belt is done with us. Also if we ask one over for a question when we aren't sure we got something right. Then just the formal kneeling bow at the start and end of class.

    Thanks to the both of you; Jamie and RobCor for this exchange. I'm almost fit for human company amongst my co-workers just now as a result of the calming influence you two provided thinking about something other than choking some other someones out as painfully as I could.

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