Training from the Confines

Well here I am once again training in the confines of a hotel room. The Smoke is back as a result of the wind changing direction. As frustating as it is, there's nothing you can do about it so you might as well adapt your training and get something done. I am dissapointed though, I really wanted to run again tonight. I have been tracking my time and distances with the intent to get faster each time and deplete the need for walking breaks. Typically I run until I am out of breath or my legs are about to give out. Once I catch it or my legs feel like they have stabalized, I run again and repeat the process. Maybe not the best strategy considering I am running on rocks, but it's working for me. My phone came with a really cool app that tracks my distance, inclines/declines, speed, and a map of my run. It tells me where I was fast and where I was slow and gives me top and average speeds. Pretty cool and highly useful. I guess you could say the dinasour is evolving. Who would of thought.

On another note, I found a set of ankle weights and some resistance chords up here so that was a great find because I forgot mine at home. I struggle with my kicks in several areas. I'm finding that the weight of my leg is not enough to increase the strength in different muscles so I am using the extra weights with the hope that this will help. Also I'm not very flexible which really sucks when you are trying to get height and a full extension on your kicks and not knock yourself off center. This happens to me all the time and makes my spinning back kick a complete disaster. So I can do what I have done in the past and throw a fit and not do it, or I can fix my damn kicks. I reduce the amount of weight and carefully throw the same kicks that Sifu Olsivik taught us to do before we do the Qi Gong Five animal form. Stiff swinging, inside/outside cyclone, straight out to the side, and another I'm not sure what you call it but your back foot points to the outside and your kicking foot goes straight ahead. Your feet kind of start out like a "T". You guys all know how we use the resistance chords at the kwoon. Even though it's only been a day or two, I can already see how these tools are going to help. I guess we'll all see in a week or so because I am going to work on my kicks next week. I haven't really set a numbered goal, but I have a visual goal. This weekend I am going to film myself doing two forms, Loa Gar as far as I know, and Da Mu Hsing for my fellow students and Black Belts to check out. I am looking for help and advice to any area that needs it. The following weekend I will send two more forms and some kicks with the same intention.

As highly beneficial as Qi Gong has been to me for some reason it always ends up on the back burner. I have decided that this is another tool that I have been given and just letting it rust. I am going to make time no matter whats happening to use it. The benefits are endless and I feel very good when I stick to it. So that's what's happening now. I will send another video out probably on the weekend. There are a few things I would like to touch on. Talk to you then.

Getting Closer

To some of you this may be nothing spectacular, but to me I just won the geek lottery. Coming close to dispatching my reptilian brain thought process and literally smashing my tablet and phone was a very close reality. However stuborness and patience prevailed. I still have a long ways to go but at least now I'm getting somewhere. It's been eating me up quite a bit of not being able to accomplish this earlier. I don't want my team mates thinking I don't follow through on my words and I'm just plain full of s#$t.
 What you see here is the beginning of the storm that came in last week. It went from daylight to black in a very short period of time followed by lightning and rain. It was pretty gross actually, the smell of freshly put out campfire was strong and the puddles the next day were black.

Here's what it's like on a smokey day.....

 And when it's not. It's actually been worse, to the point where you can't see the trees down by the water.

This area here is where I go to train. It's pretty isolated and you don't really see too many people down here. If you do, they are running by, walking, biking, etc. They don't really pay too much attention to me. This is where I think I can start swinging my axe around without too many problems. If it does I'll find somewhere else.

So this is the start of my recorded journey up here. Hopefully a few posts down the line I'll have some footage to show you guy's with a request for advice.

Got Smoke?

I've been having alot of trouble lately trying to get some blogs out there to you guy's but it looks like I have managed to get everything working some how. I have a few blogs in my draft folder that I will be posting all at once. I said I would share my journey so your probably wondering what the heck. So here it goes.

Pretty much most of my training has been indoors due to the high abundance of smoke from the fires. It labours your breathing quite a bit with very little effort on your behalf so I have been trying to stay out of it since I spend most of the day in it. Although at times it has been so bad we had to shut down. Air quality warnings are coming out in the high 10's and beyond so no sense hanging out in that. It gets so bad there is actually smoke bellowing in the streets and buildings a few hundred feet away can no longer be seen. Yellowknife is basically sourounded by fire.
I did find a cool spot to train outside though, it's fairly isolated so I don't have to worry too much about confrontation and hopefully I can get my axe out. I do have some photos I want to share with you guy's but for some reason I can't get them to upload. I am a full blown technological idiot and  I just want to smash these things. Oh well I'll figure it out. Maybe it would be easier from my phone I don't know.

So as I said alot of training has been done from my room which doesn't leave me much space. I move all of the furniture into the kitchen and train in the living room. It's getting something done but it sucks because once I'm finished, I put it all back and off to work or off to bed. My nieghbors below me really don't dig squat thrusts either. This isn't really working out the way I planned. With endless sunshine and nothing else to do I thought this would be like the ultimate training regime. Locating the local rec center wasn't so hot either, but I did find another gym to go to. I checked it out and it has alot more equipment and better atmoshere. Not that I'm a high maintenance person, I just have a really good intuition of people or situations and where things could go. Then again real life practice might work. Probably not, so I'll stick with the other plan.
Once I can get another clear day I want to get out and run 7.5 km around the lake that is just a short distance away. I want to run this as fast as I can and then do some kicks, forms, or combinations under fatigue. We'll see and hopefully you will too once I teach myself how to upload videos and pics. Until then I'll keep posting my numbers on the website.