Its a Hard Day's Night

With seven weeks left before the deadline for some of my personal requirements, its time to look at my numbers and build a plan into my home training that will allow me to reach my goals. I guess it a final push for the following items.

Pushups: The curriculum requirement is 26000 March 1 to September 1; I'm at 20,503, which is ahead of schedule, so no worries. However, my personal black belt requirement is to do 41,000 from December 1, 2008 to September 1, 2009. I'm at 27,530. I figured out that I would have to do 260 pushups per day instead of 150. After doing the 1000 push up challenge several times, and finding that 300 or more pushups a day is not all that much of a hardship, I'm thinking that 7 weeks of 260 pushups per day is attainable. So I'm going to go for it starting tommorrow.

Situps: My personal black belt requirement is to do 27,400 situps by September 1. I'm at 15,111. This means that I need to do 126 situps per day, to reach my goal. This is not a problem as recently I read somewhere that a lady (either a famous fitness trainer, or olympic cyclist, or something like that) does between 200 and 300 situps per day, so I decided to give that a try, and found it quite easy. So I think I will exceed this goal.

Kicks: This started out as round house kicks only, then I experienced some joint pain and found out I had the osteoarthritis and that I was actually injuring myself when I had pain so I had to lay off the kicks for a while. As I got back into the kicks, I limited myself to the ones that don't hurt, like cross-step kicks, hidden leg, thrust from horse, crescent, etc. Round house was a problem, and even more so the flying kicks. So I decided to change this goal to Kicks in general. I never ran this by Sifu Brinker, so I hope this is ok. I need to do 27400 kicks by September 1. In order to do that, I need to do 288 kicks per day. Thanx to the Kichko Kick Challenge, which causes me to do 300 kicks per day, this is also an attainable goal. I need to be cautious though, with the wear and tear on my joints, but more about that later.

Forms: This also started out as Lao Gar only. And I've done alot of Lao Gar. But I also changed this one up, after realizing that I needed time and energy for other forms, like cane, kempo, etc. And I was getting darn sick of Lao Gar for a while there. So, again, I never ran this one by Sifu Brinker, but I'm sure its fine with him???? So I need to do 1000 form repetitions by September 1. I've done 476 of mostly Lao Gar, followed by Cane, and then a bit of 18 temple one week due to follow up on a sihing class. In order to reach my goal, I need to do 13 forms per day. This will be a challenge, but I'm going to go for it.

Overall, this month, and particularly the week since boot camp has been defining for me. The pressure that the increasing levels of training, commitments and focus is putting on my day to day activities have caused me to really question whether I want to continue preparing for a black belt test over the next 2 to 3 months. Truth be told, I am not at all sure whether I have come to a decision on this. I feel as if there might be a straw that will break the camel's back; it could be anything over the next few weeks - not being able to get over the joint pain after each training day, the house might sell, the economy and accompanying job insecurity, fatigue from the long days and organizing the lives of 3 other family members, or a bolt of lightning might come and strike me down. For the moment, I have decided to continue on, and tackle what issues I can. I found a book in Chapters, very recently published, that points to some diet changes I could make (my sweet tooth and the resulting sugar, carbohydrates intake might actually be triggering a heightened inflamation response to joint pain, and certain fatty acids and fish, and yellow fruits and vegetables are found to actually help stop, or reverse the degeneration of the joints). I've purchased the book, to read this week. Additionally, Bert has decided to take his holidays this month for the entire month. I've loaded the driving the kids responsibilities squarely onto his shoulders. This is such a relief and will shorten my day, so less fatigue. But the possibility of that bolt of lightning still enters my mind from time to time.