beyond driven.

Happy new year.

I'm almost back to speed from a nasty muscle pull(s) from piss poor deadlifting form that forced me onto the shelf for a month or so.

Sticking with crossfit 3x a week for now, not actively planning to push for 4x a week yet. I think that's ambitious, since the past two weeks have ended with me having to rack up extra sleep hours to keep from full-on catching a cold.

Only getting one regular day to train bjj, but with the new year, it seems everyone is similarly re-dedicated. Extra mornings are going to appear for me the train, and that is a welcome thing for sure.

Days where I do neither bjj or crossfit, I've pledged to get in ten rounds of intervals on my airdyne. That is also a great time to throw on a bjj instructional and study.

Working on re-wiring my half guard. Used to be my go-to, favorite, safe place. I am slow to abandon the old style, figure 4 style of half guard, which seems to be quickly devolving into a stall position at best. A place where I can test how much my quads can deal with lactic acid and that's about it. Trying hard to adapt the open half guard. I see it, understand it, even see tons of potential.

Dismantling the muscle memory is another affair altogether.

I must also say that even at 65-80% compliance, I am feeling drastically better for retooling myself towards paleo/primal diet. I have serious carnivore tendencies, and unabashedly consuming animal products makes me happy. Trying to switch more towards vegetable rather than fruit, but it's tricky finding the right things and amounts to buy without donating more to the dumpster mammals than to my own cause.

Still pushing for a schedule change at work to allow more openings for training, but it's such slow going. Frustrating.

making some progress... slowly

lasted almost twice as long last night, flexibility was a crapton improved. Stopped in precaution after a fella stretched me out a little too forcefully from back mount. Heard my back crack three or four times and asked him to please get off of me.

it's hilarious. you can tell someone you're injured, even wrap an appendage in tape, and instead it seems to draw some magnetic urge to attack. it's almost as though I should've said "hey I broke my nose last week" to safeguard my back.

but overall I am encouraged. if I continue to improve along these lines, my bjj will be back on course in a few weeks. I'm feeling a lot of fatigue today, but it's nothing major, nor outside the norm considering the inactivity. I'm just proceeding with extreme caution.

I do, however, anticipate my return to crossfit to be tougher. I imagine I'll have the same initial breaking in period to re-do. But who knows, maybe it won't be so bad. I will be very conservative with my lifting there for quite some time. Maybe perpetually.

Been reading a lot of Rippetoe's books during my off time, trying to better understand the lifts. I'm not sure whether to just avoid deadlifts altogether, or just become a form nazi using only the bar until I have the form just so ingrained that you could wake me out of a drunken blackout and I could fire off 100 perfect deadlifts on command.

knowing me, it'll be the latter.

guess I'll have to become a weekend warrior.

Drove by the gym after work saturday, but apparently missed everyone. I knew I was taking a chance as was: kids class ended at 4:00, and the snow was still coming down. Fortunately, Sunday brought in a few folks, and hopefully next saturday will be a different story.

it isn't instruction, but it is mat time. That will have to suffice for now. I'll have to make it work, and make it a part of my usual routine. And friends and family will have to accept this as just the way things are now.

Hoping some folks show for morning class today, but won't be terribly surprised if they do not. I may pack up some stand up gear just in case-- may as well at least get a few rounds in on a heavy bag, make the trip worthwhile.

more importantly, yesterday was just fun. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in our curriculum and what I need to work on and progress that I suck all of the fun out of it. My back is not yet fantastic, and I crapped out before a full hour of rolling, but it'll come back around.

And I've about come to accept that absolutely no one under purple belt has any power to alter the level of intensity with which they roll. It isn't a jerk issue, it's a can't help it issue. Maybe it's my call to ramp up my own intensity.

that's what I'm talking about

First day back went well, my back held up relatively well. It was mostly okay during training, but stiffened up a bit afterwards. Today is quite possibly my last chiro visit, so I'm presuming it's going to be time to start re-entering the fold of BJJ and crossfit.

I'm at serious odds at work: we're making slight changes to our work schedule and I'm not sure whether to take the same day off or not. To date, doing BJJ twice a day on Wednesdays has been less than ideal. The choice i'm dealing with is: stay the course and adapt, or change to Thursdays off and resume judo for a while. I'm hoping to add saturday to my list of days I train -- go in after work and see if anyone is around. If that doesn't work, I'll have to try going in Sundays for open mat.

What sucks is this is a decision I have to make today. I'm leaning towards leaving things the same and learning to suck it up and hit bjj twice a day that one day. Meanwhile, let crossfit do what it was already doing: forging a better physical foundation for my bjj.

sorry -- just woke up, so this will read scattered as I get my wits about me.

I would've liked to have made it to both classes yesterday, but felt it was asking a bit much out of a back and body that hadn't done much of anything for 3-4 weeks. I'd like to start back to crossfit as well this week, but everything is sort of in a state of "wait and see". I think I know when I'm ready for more punishment, and when I am not. I am trying to not be gun-shy on deadlifts, or anything, but also not be foolish.

anyway, it was a fun class in that it was just sort of "let's try these moves, analyze why it works, when it fails" and in my case "how to modify so that it works for short folks"

I try to not hate that process, having to modify like every damn move, but it makes sense. The folks I am working with are on average, at least a foot taller than me. the physics will be different. At least I'm starting to figure out what mods to make. I think it helps too that I definitely have to have my technique down for these things to work.

yeah, time for coffee. I'm a rambling mess.

hopefully exiting injured phase

I don't have a real specific story aside from this: I was trying to deadlift 235 a second time and something snapped in my back. That was like 3 weeks ago. Haven't done shit since then, except hunt last week. After the 1st week, I started going to the chiro again.

It still hurts a little, mostly when I've sat still too long. I'm hoping it fades soon, because I'm getting cagey to train again.

Sort of.

I still feel lost on the mats, and have felt this way for a few months now. It's immensely frustrating, especially when there's no apparent end in sight. No remedy pending. I'm hoping it's just another phase that I have to soldier through until it goes away, but I'm more of a planning type girl. Want to know where I"m going. How I'm getting there. How long it's gonna take.

And it's frustrating to love something this much and have it go through a suck phase. But there are times that I consider the entirety of my training to be a suck phase, so... I need rewiring.

Too much of my training has involved a slow concession of defeat. I enter each match with the mindset of "how long until I get caught?" instead of "how can I catch my opponent?" And that is a deep seated habit now, expecting to lose. While I'd love a quick fix to it, I know better.

Just like everything else, I'll have to bite, crawl, and scratch my way out of it.

resuming saddle position

returned to the mats last week. Reminded me of how people say the hardest part of going to a gym is sometimes just getting to the gym. Once my feet touched the blue mats, I really didn't think anymore about all of the various annoyances and frustrations that made the thought of putting on a gi just seem almost like an insult. A waste.

I've been the same rank now for 2 years. After returning to my original school, to its methodologies, I really expected to have made some sort of measurable progress. And I'm sure I have, but my belt knows no better. This paranoia always seems to kick up whenever my school does rank testing, as I see others progressing, earning stripes or belts and I think to myself, "They're getting better, I'm stuck where I'm at." Or worse, I start wondering when they'll surpass me.

This defeatist attitude is something that has long been present in my training. I don't know if it's a function of me sucking or a function of always training with bigger guys, or with guys who would sooner chop off their own balls than let some girl get a submission. But it's as much a habit of my training as defaulting to half guard.

The frustration is that I know I'm not stupid. I know that I can't not be improving. I just don't understand what is taking so damn long to stick. To work. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And overanalyzing it just makes it all worse.

So effective today, I'm putting on blinders. I don't know if it's ADD or what but I get moves mixed up in my head when I look at too many at once. I'm picking something and sticking with it. Up first is guard passing. And I'm not moving on until it improves. Until something else looks like the biggest hole in my game.

Meanwhile, crossfit is going well. I actually got three double unders in a row, which is a huge gain for me. Running isn't as traumatic, although I doubt I'm getting any faster. At least I'm trying. It is pointing out other holes in my game. I can move heavy things all day. I don't quit. But speed, that's another issue. If slow and steady wins the race, then I'm fine, but these are timed workouts, so instead I get a real clear view of what limits me.

And it's to be expected. I'm very heavy. Dense. I'm not built for speed at this point. But all in due time.

More shake ups coming at work. Trying to remain calm and wait to see what this shift in the tide brings. I may have to work weekends, may get a better shift, may get a worse shift. At this point, I'm just hoping it's a change that means I can go back to evening classes. Because while I adore the folks in morning class, there are so few of them. And the instruction isn't as good, or frequent. Open mat has its place in training, but when it's more prevalent than actual instruction, I get annoyed.

We shall see.

break.

taking at least today off from bjj. might be all week. might be longer. might be shorter. It's not seeming fun right now. I'm annoyed with how things have been going, and I just need to pout about it a while and come up with another plan.

I actually already have another plan, but today I just want to veg. And drink coffee slowly. And probably play metroid. And I need to get more stuff cleared out of here to goodwill/trash for a pending move.

more later. I needs that coffee nowish.