Mister Fallen

In order to get Sarah's Christmas present finished, I need to find a material store and someone who can sew something for me. It shouldn't be massively complicated, but given my experience of sewing is limited to buttons and the occasional seam, I'm not confident I can do it myself. I'll email anyone who's awesome enough to offer to help exact details of what I'm planning, as it seems a bit pointless to make a filter just for the one post...

So...the BCCMA national Sanshou championship is the weekend after April Whitby. Typical. I'm still planning to go to April Whitby: It's just a matter of ensuring I manage a workout every day whilst I'm up there, as well as hopefully finding someone who knows how to use a set of Thai pads... :)

Of course, then there's the matter of accommodation. Definitely going to try and find somewhere in town this time. But the question is, cottage or hotel? And do I want to stay with company, stay "with company", or simply get a place where I have a double all to myself? Pondering booking somewhere fairly soon, so I suppose I should firm up my decisions...does anyone fancy sharing a cottage with me this time around? I'm definitely going for individual rooms this time - two guys sharing a twin was a bit less space than I think either of us really could have done with...especially given we were both there as free agents...

So first off, don't say you're sorry, because I'm not. I didn't get on the British Sanshou squad, but it wasn't really due to lack of anything on my part. I went up there, showed what I'd got and, to be honest, outshone pretty much everyone there but Nick by a fair distance.

But in the end, politics got in the way and a couple of the guys on the council itself managed to push their guys into the squad instead of me. I'm not bitter about this, since none of them were in my weight category, and when I sparred the one guy who was, I managed to get a KO from accidentally dropping my shoulder into his floating rib when I threw him. I also paired up with the heaviest guy there (apparently 97kg to my 80) to do paired exercises (like lifting your partner up, running to the other end of the hall with him, and then coming back with them lifted another way), which had to be another point in my favour.

So the plan now is to keep improving, keep training hard, and prove beyond a doubt at the nationals in May that they made a poor decision in not picking me. And in the meantime, I'm going to see if I can get a few MMA/K-1/any-other-fucking-style-they'll-let-me-do fights to keep myself occupied and in shape.

Not updated LJ in a while, due to being insanely busy with training at the moment. I've got tryouts to be in the British Sanshou squad next Saturday. To be honest, I'm not all that likely to get in, but I'm kind of hopeful. To help me get into as good a shape as I can for that, I'm training like a maniac at the moment - kickboxing and sanshou on Monday, kickboxing on Tuesday, double kung fu on Wednesday, boxing and sanshou on Thursday, MMA on Friday, and sanshou sparring on Saturday mornings. I'm thinking of maybe dropping the Tuesday kickboxing in favour of some jiu jitsu, since it would be a longer class, and is in Streatham rather than Shoreditch.

So yeah, martial arts has taken over my life. But hopefully it's all going to be worthwhile. After Christmas, when my fitness is better, I'm going to see about getting arranged fights, in whatever style, really. I'd love to do some MMA stuff at some point - it's a bit more widely known than sanshou, and I do feel like a bit of a bore when I'm continually explaining what it is. It's also got a fairly small talent pool, which means that you can sometimes get medals without necessarily being as tight and skilled as you might need to be for other combat sports, so something with a larger number of fighters will test me more and keep me raising my skills.

My little sister had an engagement party on Halloween. This is how he dressed.

This may or may not become pertinent later, but it'll probably be good to get this out anyhow. For the record, I'd define myself as a fighter, although in my case I kind of fit the regular definition as well.

My definition of a fighter is someone who defines their life by struggle: Not that they make their lives difficult or view them as such, but that they fight their way towards their objectives, whatever they might be.

Fighters are prepared to drive themselves onward for as hard and as long as it takes to achieve their goals, even if that might be months or even years, perhaps faltering occasionally, but never becoming truly disheartened - taking each setback as a spur to try harder next time.

Fighters will always have a large part of themselves focussed on their objectives, putting them ahead of everything else in their lives and, once those goals are achieved, they find another thing to reach for, another star to chase, always looking for something more challenging.

As some of you already know, I'm off up to Yorkshire at a painfully early hour on Wednesday. So consider this the obligatory "yay! Whitby!" post. I've been looking forward to it for ages, and the last few days have made me want a holiday even more.

Hopefully see a few of you up there...anyone else arriving on the Wednesday afternoon?

Hmmm...so, last week, I bought these analytical scales, which supposedly measure your body's fat and water content.

According to them, I'm carrying about 25% fat. However, they have a special "athlete" setting, for people who do 12 hours or more of hard exercise per week and who have a resting heart rate of 60bpm or less, which I'm on the cusp of.  Using the "athlete" setting, the scales reckon my body fat is about 9-10%.

So, I'm either in really good shape, or in urgent need of a diet. Or possibly of new scales. Still, I'm curious to see what percentage of body fat people would put me as having. Given "healthy" for my age is something like 8-20%.

Anyone care to guess? :-)

A few of you might remember that I wasn't exactly complementary about the last kickboxing school I tried out back in April. This might explain the long gap between then and now. Things couldn't be more different.

This time I tried out Paragon Gym out in Shoreditch, which is about 20 minutes' walk from work, so is good for me to go train in my own time too. I got there a bit before the class I was booked to try was due to start, which was mostly because I assumed there'd be a brief discussion of my objectives and what the place was like generally. Anyhow, there wasn't really much of that, since I'd had a good long chat with the owner when I'd wandered up last week to make enquiries. On the upside, this gave me a chance to watch some of the personal training going on before the class. 99% of it was good technique, good posture, and just what I'd expect from a "proper" kickboxing club. The only exception was someone being taught to jump and spin on the spot to do a spinning back fist.

The class itself was tiring, and some of the exercises and stretches were either totally new or a bit different to how I'm used to doing them. That being said, I could see the benefit in them, and they were all pretty good. The pad/glove drills we did were pretty good and fairly complex, and it's the first time I've done non-contact shadow boxing with a partner (but I definitely approve of it - as long as you know to throw out strikes at the openings on your partner's guard), and the light-contact body boxing was pretty good too. Stand out moment would be when the (female) instructor quite literally went "hubba hubba" after asking me if I could do an axe (outer crescent) kick and I proved that yes, I could do one of the best in the class (it was a "beginner"-ish one, so I don't think smooth, controlled and head-height is the norm for those kicks).

If anyone's looking for a central London gym to join, I'd recommend this one. It's about 10 minutes' walk from Old Street and Liverpool Street stations, the instructors are friendly, and it's about £10 for a class. Definitely worth it, and I'm planning to keep going on Tuesdays. Interestingly, there were only about 3 other guys in the class, and maybe 2 or 3 times that many women of various ages.

For those of you that are interested, there should be video of my first fight from the 20th around soon. Sadly, there isn't any of my gold medal fight, since the start of that coincided with one of the Sanshou UK guys getting his shoulder dislocated on the other mat.

I have no idea if anyone else filmed it, or indeed if they'd put the footage online for me - for some reason, martial arts clubs have an aversion to showing people beating their members.

If people are interested in seeing other fights, type "BCCMA" into YouTube and sort by newest. The ones where they're wearing odd-looking jacket things is the shuai jiao, which I got a silver in (and apparently we do have footage of that, but it's mostly just five minutes of me getting my backside handed to me by a freestyle wrestler).

So, I'm mostly recovered from the competition now and have started looking at ways to increase the amount of training I do.

To that end, I've found a kickboxing gym near to work, whom I'm hoping will be amenable to letting me train and do bag work outside of lesson time, and maybe enter the odd WAKO (and other organizations') tournament alongside doing regular classes with them. One of the really useful things about that gym is that they also have a nutritionist and a physio, which I think will come in handy.

Secondly, I've discovered that Streatham leisure centre and pool isn't too far away, so I reckon a bit of swimming at the weekend might be in order.

Lastly, I mentioned a while ago that I had been given a certain leeway to show people basic kung fu. Now I have a garden available to me (once I check the housemates are okay with it), I was thinking of starting off showing people simple stance work and the like on Sunday afternoons for an hour or so from say 2 or 3pm. Is anyone still up for it? I'm going to keep it as light and inclusive as possible, so you don't necessarily need a good level of health and fitness.

So....I thought I should probably explain the "philosophy" tagged posts (the ones with movie titles) before I wrote any more of them.

It's partly massively egotistical, because it's essentially me explaining my point of view on the world. Still, judging by the world around me, not a vast number of people share that point of view, so hopefully those who do will read this and feel less isolated. Maybe a few others will feel inspired to change their thinking too, although I don't really think that's all that likely. I think it's also just nice to get these thoughts and concepts out of my head and into some kind of coherent concrete format.

So, why movies? I know that human memory is associative, so if I relate a concept to a film (especially if it's a good film), the film will remind you of the concept,and vice versa. So it's a useful way of remembering things. It also means I get to inflict my movie taste on you guys.

Personally, I just hope I can keep findin films to explain what I want to say...

Further to my last post, I got silver medals in the wrestling and pushing hands and, after a tiring three round fight, I got gold in the kickboxing to become national champion.

Really wish I'd eaten something more substantial than an apple and some Malteasers during the day though. :-/ Might have done a bit better in the other categories. Still, I got my weight cut bang on, and weighed in at 84kg... :-)

Oh, and did I mention, NATIONAL FUCKING CHAMPION! Damn right I'm proud.

Pretty sure none of you guys are likely to be close enough to come watch (and I'm not that keen on having friends who aren't in Nam Yang watching me fight anyhow), but I'm off up to Derby tonight for the BCCMA National Sparring Championships tomorrow.

I'm going to be competing in the Qingda (light-contact kickboxing), Shuai Jiao (Chinese wrestling), and Tui Shou (Pushing Hands sparring). It should be a lot of fun, although I'm a little sad that I'm the only member of Nam Yang going. Still, now that I've found a cheap-ish hotel to stay in, I reckon we could probably make an excurstion of it next time, and have a whole horde of yellow vests there to compete.

So there's a couple of times in this film where the lead character says "if I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there." It actually works to illustrate two opposite points.

Firstly, it shows Blank's attempt to avoid taking responsibility for his actions, since he's trying to say that he's merely an instrument rather than an active participant in someone's fate.

Secondly, it works as a very good explanation of the opposite and far more important point: That wherever you find yourself, whatever happens to you, you had a hand in putting yourself into that position. Even if it was simply that you were in a certain place at a certain time, your actions, knowing or unknowing, brought you there.

Rather than being a suggestion that whatever happens to you is your own damn fault, which is usually someone demonstrating the first point, this is a suggestion that since you were responsible for your current fate, the power resides within you to change it, one way or another.

Taking responsibility isn't an admission of guilt but a way of taking control and of becoming an active participant in your own fate.

Perhaps the statement should be "if you show up at my door, chances are I did something to bring you there."

I have a comp coming up this Sunday. In Derby. In order to get there to weigh in on time (9am-10am), it seems likely that I'll have to get the train up the night before, leaving me with a minimum of 6 hours to kill. Is anyone at all out that way that wouldn't mind having me turn up late at night and leave fairly early in the morning? Or does anyone know of anyone that would be up for keeping me entertained until 7 or 8 in the morning?

Anyone? Beuller?

Noticed that my diet and self-discipline have gone out the window a wee bit lately. Not useful. I think it's mostly been because of the house move and stuff: The minute I start feeling unsettled, I slip into old habits, like eating poorly/buying lunch instead of making it, biting my nails, staying up way too late and the like.

Now that I'm getting back to being settled (and about to be paid), I'm determined to get myself back to the good habits, and hopefully even improving on them. I'm planning to start having sensible high-fibre breakfasts again, with maybe some fruit on it when I want a treat. Going to start making salads for lunch, and fill my drawers at work with fruit/nibble-able veg, and avoid buying crisps and chocolate. I'm also going to try and avoid faffing about on the net in the evenings, since I seem to wind up getting nothing done. I'm also aiming for being teetotal again for a bit, to see if that helps me drop the remaining weight for the comps I plan to enter. Think I'm going to have to give up having fizzy drinks, which my teeth will probably be thankful for.

On top of that, I think I'm going to have to try and do a bit of training in my free time at weekends. I haven't really done much lately but bum around doing sod all, so actually getting myself into gear and taking a jog around the common or something would be a start at least. I don't suppose any of you South London lot fancy joining me?

Actually, speaking of training, I'm now apparently able to instruct people if I so wish, and might actually be set to do a little more than that after Christmas, but I'm not going to elaborate on that until I know it's happening for certain. In the meantime, if anyone wants to get shown what a basic kung fu lesson consists of, let me know... :)

I think I deserve a special award for managing to sign up to the Great River Race twice in the same year. I was all set to do it, but then got told that the MA Games was on the same weekend. Of course, the second I dropped out of doing the River Race, I got told the Games had been postponed until April 2010. :-/

Anyhow, yesterday I got told by one of the guys I work with (and who was also signed up to do the race) that someone had dropped out and they were a person short. So I've duly stepped up to fill the gap. Apparently, I have all the fun of a capsize drill on Tuesday evening (what could be more fun after doing all the month end stuff than heading out to East London to intentionally pitch oneself into the Thames?), and the main event next Saturday (the 5th). Like last year, all the boats will have GPS units, so you can follow the progress of the L&G masseev as we make our way from Mudchute to Richmond.

It'd be awesome if a few people were there at the start or finish (or en route) to cheer (or jeer) us on. I'd also be really really grateful if someone could grab my phone, keys, wallet, clean clothes, etc off me at the start, and be ready with it at the finish. Any lovely volunteers? I can reward people with beer, pizza, or other methods of re-imbursement as desired.

Also, it's my friend Kitty's birthday celebrations in the evening of the 5th, so anyone wishing to join myself and her down Inferno would be most awesome.

Hmmmm...looks like I've found one or two cottages still available in or near Whitby from the 28th to the 2nd or so, including a fairly epic 5-bedroom place (with room for something like 8) which I need to check availability on before going for. I'd prefer it, since the others are a little way outside of town and would mean cabs or a hire car to get to and from the events...

If they're all aboard, then mattp xmakina miss_amaranth and myself make 4. Assuming it's available, does anyone else fancy joining us for the festival? I should be there Wednesday to Tuesday, I think.

I'm hoping to book on Friday or over the weekend, so could do with knowing by then. Feel tree to point sensible friends at this (the kind who know the difference between having some people over after events and "your deposit is insufficient to cover the'damage" parties), as I'm fairly relaxed about whom I share with provided they're not insane or amazingly prudish...although friends of the other three will take priority for reasons of social easiness.

Alternatively, if anyone is looking for four demented reprobates to fill a cottage with them, then let us know!

Right, because I'm a slack little so and so, I've yet to organise Whitby beyond booking Wednesday-Wednesday off. From the sounds of it, a few of the BiCon masseeev are in the same boat. So does anyone who's also been lazy fancy sorting out sharing somewhere, choosing the same hotel, sharing travel (hiring a car or something, or making use of my Gold Card discount), and otherwise pooling resources to the end of getting up/down to Yorkshire and having a filthy good time?

Anyone? Bueller?