Day 4

My title's are exciting aren't they?

Christmas kinda put a damper on my physical activities this week. I didn't go to class on Tuesday because I went out of town to visit my grandmother, which also means I was unable to do my normal workout routine at the gym. I did go for a short jog in the mornings. I also let myself eat whatever I wanted on Christmas day, which reminds me that I should at least give a brief explanation of my eating habits, as this is very much linked to my physical ability. I'm pretty much on a low carb diet. I've been doing the low carb thing for over three years now. I love it and have no problem sticking with the diet. I recently gave up most meat (everthing but seafood) for ethical reasons, but I began rapidly gaining weight (I was eating beans to replace protein, which have more carbs than my body was used to). So, I reluctantly went back to eating meat. When I eat bread or pasta or sweets or things heavy with carbohydrates my body responds pretty fast. My heart begins to beat strongly and I start to feel really sleepy. It's not a pleasant feeling at all and is one large reason I don't let myself over do it too often. Needless to say, I'm sure eating whatever I wanted on Christmas day is going to affect my workout routine this week. I also drank a bit on christmas and the day after (sent my blood sugar really low and made me shaky). But my diet is back on track.

Class went pretty smoothly today. I learned a new part of the kee cho hyung il boo and worked on perfecting the two hand escapes I know. I had to practice with a really big dude. I think his name is Brian. He just came back after 6 months off due to a car accident. I had difficulties at first because I was fighting to get away with my arm, rather than my hips. Twisting away with my hand by my hip made escaping much easier. Warmup excercises went, for the most part, as usual. Later we had to walk across the room doing a combination of kicks and punches. I need to work on coordination. I have a little problem when he assigns a certain combination. I get tangled up and forget what comes next. It'll come with time. I can remember when my guitar teacher would make me learn random scales during the lesson and play along with him, I was also tangled up, but with time I would pick up the patterns quickly. So, I suppose this is very similar. My training as a guitarist has helped me get through many things in life. This is just another one of those things. We also had to break these plastic board things that simulate a piece of wood. I had to do a front kick (ap chagi?) to break the board. I got it on my first try, but missed center. So, I tried again and execuated it just right. Never thought I'd be able to do it. Everyone was happy for me. I wasn't nervous either. I just went up there and did what I was taught to do.

Everyone seems to think that I'm progessing really well. Master Miller keeps telling me he's glad I'm still there because there have been many new comers who leave after a few classes because it's too difficult for them. He also tells me that I'm doing very well keeping up with the class. For some reason I'm surprised and not surprised at my progress. On the one hand I have no experience with Karate and have never been very good at physical activities (or at least that's how I see it. Maybe I was good). On the other hand, I'm pretty confident in my abilities, especially lately. I transfered to St. Mary's college a little more than a year ago, which made me feel a bit insecure and lowered my confidenece a bit, but I've recently overcome that and gained alot of confidence in myself. This has taught me how to handle new situations, which I believe has transfered over to Karate. In my last post I was writing about how I feel that with each class my confidence was going down slightly, but I should note that this decrease in confidence is very minute. I'm still very confident in my ability. I don't expect anything in particular of myself, I just do it and then see what happens.

My mom still isn't very supportive of my physical endeavors. For instance, at my grandmothers I was telling my mother that I was going out for a jog and she said that I didn't need to because I'd be walking alot later on. But jogging and walking are obviously different. Maybe she hasn't done it in so long that she's forgotten what the difference is, or maybe she's just jealous that I have the discipline to go jogging when I'm on vacation. Not sure. I do think she has some sort of issue with me doing all these physical activities.

I've been trying to remember to do pushups everyday, but with christmas I kinda got off track. I did them at the gym on arm day, which was Friday. I did some on Christmas day when I started to feel like crap from the food, only one set though, and I did them two days in a row at my grandma's. I think one of the days I only got through one set. So, not very consistant. I'll get back on track once all this holiday hoopla goes away. I'm not even doing Yoga this eveing, as dinner took entirely too long to cook and I've consumed my eveing hours writing this blog and updating my Tang Soo Do workbook. Next week will be better!

Which reminds me, if I haven't said this before, I just started a notebook of things I've worked on in class. It helps me keep track of what I've learned and what I need to improve on, as well as makes a list of the things I need to practice each week.

Well, I won't write much more. I need to get to bed. Don't entirely sure why I'm so tired, but my week has been a little screwy and my body is probably telling me.

Tang Soo Do!