Shaolin Kempo week 2

A couple weeks ago I mentioned I’d started a form of Karate taught at a local dojo. I’ve wrapped up 2 weeks of it and am in the middle of week 3 now and am enjoying it. Week 3 is usually when your body is telling you ‘dude, this stucks, stop, let me go back to being sedentary’ and week 4 is always my breakout week for doing anything physical (cardio, lifting, etc).

The increased activity has been great for me. My left shoulder still hurts, but the punching, occasional pushups, and holding poses, has increased the range of mobility and built muscle slowly enough that it feels stronger than it did three weeks ago. I can do 10-20 pushups on it, if I do them deliberately and with good form, I still can’t do pop-and-clap pushups, I can feel it twinge. So I’m taking it very careful.

Furthermore, on January 29th I was 228 pounds, 23.5% bodyfat according to the caliper pinching, and my waist was about 43.5 inches wide. Tubby Toby. Today I weighed in at 224, with the caliper pinch guessing 21-22% bodyfat. My waist was just above 42 inches wide. So the lower impact testing and cardio is having an effect. And the fact that the shoulder is getting better, not worse, is a huge boost to everything.

My energy levels though, are getting killed. Last week I was so tired from being way out of shape that my productivity was dead in the water. I got basic freelance work done, very little writing, some research. I have to remember to up the calories and snacks at 3 hour intervals to compensate. Today at 3 I actually fell asleep while typing something up in my chair, and woke up an hour later, startled and confused. An orange at 3pm with a protein shake would have stopped that. My body is confused about whether to fall asleep at midnight or keep going until 4pm, so my natural writing time is up in the air as I tend to veg during those hours and nap now, instead of writing. Hopefully in 2 more weeks that will stop as my body gets in full shape!

As for my karate ability, tonight the second instructor, who hasn’t seen me since my second or third day on week one, gave me some encouragement since I’d mastered quite a bit in two weeks (kempo #1 and #2, defensive moves #6 and #7, the 8 point blocking system, and 8 point blocking system with counterpunches, and white belt kata #1. I was taught kempo #3 tonight). The other instructor mentioned the possibility of my attempting the next belt (yellow?) sometime later in the month. You’re not supposed to ask about testing, but since she mentioned it in passing I think it’ll happen. Would be cool, I’ve certainly been working really hard, but I wasn’t expecting that so soon…

Anyway, being reduced to a beginner has been very good for me. My mind is enjoying learning a whole new track. My balance is getting better, the first day I tried to kick I was almost on my ass, now I can actually kick with one foot, hurrah.

Filed under the topic Journal on February 12th 2008 at 10:30 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.