Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Feeling a Bit Sabotaged by Health Issues

First it was bronchitis, then strep, then strep again and now my throat hurts again, I'm fatigued and I am full of goo.  This makes 3 months of my life in a row that I have basically felt awful.  Tried to make another appointment with my primary care doctor and she told me there was nothing more she could do for me and that I need to go see a specialist ENT.  Making that appointment today.  Thinking there must be something wrong with my immune system.

Despite being sick, I have been training and fighting a bit.  Villius and I have been doing helm/shield/sword drills about three times a week and I have been hitting the pell about 5 times a week.  With a practice here and there.  Full armored practice takes more out of me and has been sparser for that reason since I really have no endurance with the sick.  Went down to Sacramento for Cynagua coronet over the weekend.  Good fights in with Helga, Hansa, Gemini, Malyn and a few others.  Gemini helped me work on my double thrust return and my grip on the snap.  When I make those two things natural, it is going to be wicked.

Spent a bit of time on the phone with Sean on Sunday diagnosing what's wrong with my snap -- he gave me three main themese: (1) my stance is too anrrow,  I need to widen it out at least to my shoulders; (2) I'm standing toot all, so when I'm going for power generation on the snap I'm dipping, I need to start out where my dip takes me, fight from the chi; and (3) my hand placement in stance needs to be palm forward instead of pointing at my head and my blade needs to be facing right -- right now my blade is facing forward and that is making me have to do an extra move with my wrist in the release and tear drop.  Just changing the palm position was huge because it puts me back in the serving soup position for the whole movement, making the motion pretty much effortless.  The lower and wider stance helps facilitate this as well.  November will be focused on incorporating the feedback from Gemini and sean so that it is second nature.

Goals for November:
1. go to ENT and get this sick shit sorted
2. kettlebells twice a week
3. cardio four times a week
4. pell work at lease 5 times a week
5.  slow work with Vilius 3 times a week
6. Fight 2 to 3 times a week depending on health
7. Set goals for 2013 tourney season
8.  Mental workout 5 times a week
9. Lose 10 lbs.
10.  Fix fighting pants

Monday, October 22, 2012

And so it goes

Last week was a pretty good week training wise considering I am still getting over the strep -- drill work with Vilius monday, Drill work with Villius and constantine tuesday, Wednesday went to practice and watched and lent out my armor, also did some stick work, thursday pell work. friday pell work, saturday pell work, sunday fight practice.  Villius has been super motivated and really good about coming up with a syllabus for drill work and identifying different areas he wants me to work on, which has been really nice.  For the enxt month or so, it will likely be alla bout getting my wrap in shape, getting the snap to feel effortless and working on throwing the thrust as a second or third blow instead of always the initiating blow.  We have also been working defense a ton with turn and face the blow drills.  Fighting full speed yesterday, I could really tell I had been drilling this stuff because my shield caught stuff i was not sure I had and I had some real success with the blows i have been focusing on.  I am super excited to be working on all this stuff with Vilius.