Tag: training

No Excuses, But I’m Back

It’s been another six months since I’ve published anything here and I’m not going to make excuses. I’d love to blame COVID-19, but besides the fact that a lot more people are running around the house on the day-to-day, I don’t even have that to blame.

No, I was just a lazy sack of shit.

OK, that’s not exactly fair. I’ve been busy, sure. Not too busy to write here, but I’ve been busy in other ways. I still haven’t trained worth a damn, though HEMA classes are back on the menu thankfully.

Yet over the last few weeks, I’ve felt that gnawing inside of me, that thing that tells me I need to train again. Not just with a longsword or some other weapon–and I’ve done some other weapons from Fiore’s treatises–but something far more physical.

So, it’s time to start easing back in.

Now, let’s lay everything out like it should be.

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Dave Goes Barbarian – Rocking the Connective Tissues

Hail, Barbarians, and well met! I see Jorge has brought a trophy along for Show & Tell tonight. I hope the Saxon dog met his end gloriously, though I’d ask that in the future, you give your trophies time for the flesh to rot from the bones. A good soak in 40v hydrogen peroxide will de-yuck and brighten the skulls of your enemies right up! If one of you lovely savages will raid the nearest cosmetology supply depot, we can have arts and crafts next week.

Tonight’s self-care subject was set to be the proper care of your flowing, warrior locks, but Bjorn Bjornson went a bit berserkrgang during the recent battle and was last seen attacking the forest with his teeth. Hopefully, he’ll be back in his right mind soon, and we can benefit from his experience, then. Always remember to chain your berserkrs to avoid this in the future. In the meantime, I’d like to talk to you about the white bits of tissue holding your joints together, and your muscles to them. Olaf the Flayed has graciously consented to act as my visual aid for tonight’s presentation. Don’t mind the whimpering: he just does that. Continue reading “Dave Goes Barbarian – Rocking the Connective Tissues”

Pink Kettlebells And Training The Next Generation

(Photo by Tom Knighton)

By most measures, I’m a successful father at this point in my kids’ lives. They’re fairly well adjusted, smart, independent, and so on. They have little trouble making friends and, at least with my almost 18-year-old son, doing so without betraying who they truly are.

But I still feel a bit like a failure.

You see, while most parents probably feel that way to some degree, for me, it’s about my kids and their health. My son is badly obese, though he’s lost about 25 pounds in the last few months.

My daughter, however, at 7-years-old, isn’t. And I aim to keep it that way, which is why I got her a kettlebell of her own. My hope, to help her never get to where I was or where her brother is.

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Should You Train, But Not Work Out?

 

(Photo from Unsplash)Pavel Tsatsouline is a big fan of never using the term “work out” when you train. It seems that in the Russian language, the term doesn’t even exist. You train. Alternatively, you practice.

Tsatouline seemed to think the term “working out” evoked the wrong ideas, the wrong imagery.

Personally, I thought the idea was kind of dumb. I never had a problem with the imagery of working out. I couldn’t imagine it would make a difference to anyone who would actually give a damn.

After spending a lot of time doing kettlebell snatches, though? Now, I’m not so sure.

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Embrace The Pain

We’ve all heard the phrase, “No pain, no gain.”

It’s currently out of vogue in part because some believe it urges people to train beyond what their body can take, to train injured, things like that, but I still kind of like it. Maybe it’s an artifact of my age, but I do.

Let’s be honest, training is painful in a lot of ways.

The thing is, I find it the lessons I’ve learned through training, through that pain, have applications to the rest of my life. It’s all about how to remove those weaknesses. The pain can almost be purifying, in a way.

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Motivation Isn’t A Requirement, It’s An Excuse

I was checking out the posts in a Facebook group I’m a member of, and I saw this image:

Yeah, it’s a screenshot from a cell phone, but it’s what was posted. I have no rights to this, but it falls under fair use since it’s about to be the topic of commentary.

The meme addresses those who use a lack of motivation as an excuse to not get to the gym. I, myself, have mentioned motivation a time or two, particularly my lack of it.

But what sets me apart from “Robin” in that pic?

Easy. I don’t view motivation as a requirement to get me to the gym, while “Robin” there uses it as an excuse.

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With Renewed Focus

Today, I was back at the training. It was my first real day of lifting since this time last week, and I was eager to get after it today. Especially since I now have a whole new respect for the need to embrace strength and conditioning.

After all, I needed every ounce of it I had yesterday.

There are no real wrong answers to the question, “Why do you train?” However, there are some I consider a bit nobler than others. One example of that is being able to handle anything life throws at you, including a hurricane, being now right up near the top.

The fact that I, a middle-aged fat guy was able to outwork my 17-year-old son despite the relatively limited nature of my conditioning training is particularly telling.

So today, I hit the weights with a renewed focus and a strong desire to make myself even more than I did before.

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Finally Home

I apologize for the lack of a Tactical Tuesday post, but I didn’t have time to figure out a topic. I’ll be back on track next week.

We’re finally home. Safe and sound. We had a bit of a day, but we finally returned home.

I then got to work clearing up the yard debris that I didn’t clean up on Thursday after the hurricane. Yeah, I was a slacker, but I just wasn’t worried about it right then.

It turned out to be a bit bigger job than I thought, and I type this right now feeling kind of exhausted, but you know what? It’s worth it.

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Another Day, Another Training Win

A few days ago, I was reading something where a trainer was talking about how training should be approached a little like a job.

He wasn’t saying that you need to train eight hours per day or anything of the sort. Instead, he was trying to say that sometimes, you just have to do the training, even if it’s not particularly fun.

Of course, this hit me like a ton of bricks considering what I’d written last week and what I was then spending my weekend trying to do. After all, I wasn’t having fun. Was I wrong?

Then I did some thinking and remembered one very important thing. I remembered that if you hate your job, you find a new one, and that’s all I did.

After only one day of training with this new system, I have to say that so far, so good.

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Onward

As noted yesterday, I figured a couple of things out about my training and I needed to start figuring out a few more things.

What follows is my attempt to prioritize my goals and adjust my training accordingly. Warning: This post may include some rambling as this is literally me trying to figure some stuff out, but what the hell, right?

The thing is, by the end, I should have a plan for tomorrow and for moving forward.

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