Broke 100!

My training suffered a bit this week, owing to a battle with the seasonal flu and a couple days’ business travel north to Edmonton. Physically, I still don’t feel a hundred percent again, but it’s getting closer. I used the natural herbal medicines I’d gathered over the summer to combat my flu symptoms. They worked very well, and I never did become overly feverish and miserable. But the flu did slow me down quite a bit, all the same

Even with this challenge, there were some personal highlights to announce for this period. First of all, I was able to break 100 reps on my power twister. That happened just last night, almost a week exactly from my baseline reading of half that many. I did notice that the power twister gets broken-in with repeated use, so it’s much tighter right out of the box than it is now. Still, it was not at all easy to do 102 reps, and I want to keep climbing. Shi zu sent me a link to purchase the exact model everyone else is using in Chicago, so I’m going to do that, and aim eventually to push toward at least attempting to boost the Kwoon record. We’ll see

Another big deal for me was acquiring a weight bench and adequately heavy plates, so that I can participate more in the strength training regime Shi zu is recommending for all Todai. I’m definitely stronger in my bicep curls than in the standard bench press, probably because I’ve always owned a curl bar and enjoyed this exercise (although I haven’t worked seriously on developing it for well over a decade). I weigh about 175 or thereabouts, so I tested my baseline on the bench with 180 and could only do 4 reps without a spotter. In contrast, when I tried bicep curls with half my weight, or 90 lbs, I was easily able to do 10 fairly clean reps. So these will be my baseline readings to build from

I'm also coming closer to being able to perform the full 1-minute Jump Robe Double Under exercise...

On the ZMA side, I’m still making adjustments and corrections to the basic CLF-inspired form. I think (hope) it’s getting close to adequate enough that I might begin learning the TKD-inspired form. Watching myself though, I can see that even in my best performances there’s still a bit of disharmony between upper and lower body movement, and that I routinely muck-up the strike to the rear during one of the combinations later in the form…

 So I’ve still got fine-tuning to do. But all the same, I’m going to begin working on kick development. It’s one of the areas where I know well I have a variety of weaknesses, including issues with flexibility and core balance. It’s easy to dismiss these shortcomings, because they’re not very noticeable in general practice. But the dynamic expectations of the TKD-inspired form will reveal them all too clearly, to where they can’t be ignored, and that’s a good thing