Pilcrow

Speaking of Soulcalibur—which, if you don't know, is a fighting game that has the possibly unique focus of sword-based (or other melee weapon) combat, rather than the usual hand-to-hand martial arts—lately I've been feeling a lot like swinging a sword around again. Weapons training was something I particularly enjoyed when I was studying the martial arts, and it would be a very satisfying way of working out feelings of frustration or moodiness. The trouble is, I don't really have adequate space in my home to do that—at best I may be able to practice some basic cuts, provided my cat doesn't get in the way—and I don't really remember any of the forms. I also still don't have any funds to spare on taking lessons somewhere again, which is too bad, as there's a place up in north Seattle, the Chinese Shaolin Center of Seattle, that offers a combination of tai chi, kung fu, and weapons very similar to what I was last studying back East. Much closer to my home, there's a tai chi studio run by Karin Collins, who apparently first studied at Embrace the Moon, which I tried a few years ago. I liked Embrace the Moon, but felt their tai chi wasn't energetic enough for what I was seeking, so that's an argument against going to the Karin Collins school; however, Collins apparently does or will be offering classes in sword and spear as well, so it may well be more like what I'm looking for.


Hah, and I forgot that I already wrote about this back in April. Well, obviously I didn't pick up with the sword exercising I was thinking about doing. Heck for that matter, although I now have a bicycle, I haven't even been using that as much as I should be or want to. I need to make some changes here. Hmm, wait… sword-cycling? Hell, if shooting at stuff while cross-country skiiing can be an Olympic sport, I don't see why we can't have bicycling and swordplay. Anyhow, I'm not sure about the wisdom of exercising first thing in the morning before breakfast, when my energy reserves would be low, but I probably ought to be doing a bicycle ride first thing a couple times a week, as that'd ensure it was done for the day. As my breakfast is just a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice, maybe I could even eat that first and then do the bike ride. Doing that and alternating with some basic sword exercises a couple times a week would be a good thing. Of course, here I'm falling afoul of the problem I wrote about at the beginning of the month—making plans or goals public tends to result in them never happening. But I'm basically thinking out loud here, and I'm not going to now delete this whole entry just for that reason. Anyhow, I need to head for home, and make some dinner when I get there, so I won't have time to write another post before midnight.

I've felt for several years that I have very little upper-body strength. When I was working in the supermarket deli, I was lifting heavy boxes regularly, and then I spent several years in martial-arts training, which included some weapons work. But once I moved to Seattle, I was no longer doing any regular exercise, except for a couple short stints of martial arts training / wrestling with friends. 

So just before I started my 40 topics/days/years old series leading up to my 40th birthday, I decided that I should also do pushups each day as well, building up to 40 pushups on my birthday. Although I was reasonably sure I could do at least 10 pushups without strain, I decided for the amusement factor that I would start with one and add one a day. As I went along, I found that it didn't start to feel difficult until I passed 25, and even when I got into the upper 30s it was an effort but not too hard.

As my birthday approached, it occurred to me that really, I should keep doing 40 pushups a day for the next 40 days after my birthday, just to set it into my muscles. If I just stopped on my 40th birthday, then I wouldn't really get any benefit aside from knowing I could do it, once. So I continued on, and as I approached day 40, I found that the pushups didn't feel like they were getting any easier, which I just presumed they would after a while of daily repetitions. Then I thought that really, I'd better extend it out to 100 days… and then I thought about how my martial arts instructor used to talk about doing something 10,000 times in order to be good at it, or commit it to muscle memory, that sort of thing. And that's when I realized I was going to have to do 250 days of 40 pushups a day.

I completed 117 days straight of doing pushups before falling ill—not in any way connected to doing the pushups—and skipping the next 8 days. Then, in June, I skipped two more days because of time constraints from Go Play NW and working at KEXP. So, although today is the 210th day of the year, it is day 200 in my pushup series, and today I have done 8,000 pushups since my 40th birthday. (I'm not counting the 40 I did on my birthday as part of the series.) That leaves me another 50 days and 2,000 pushups to do.

The pushups really haven't become any easier to do; the last five or ten are often quite an effort. I find that subtle variations in where I place my hands can make the pushups feel easier or a lot harder. I've been doing arm circles and some other stretches before and after the pushups all along, but my shoulder muscles have felt sore a lot lately. I read in a discussion about exercising that it's better to have a day of rest in between the exercising, but I've been reluctant to change the schedule until I meet the initial goal. 

I've also thought about what I should do once I meet that 10,000 pushup goal. I shouldn't just discontinue pushups completely, but I definitely want to change my exercise practice, and maybe change my focus to something else like stomach crunches (which I've always hated). Just now, thinking about the 10,000-repetitions concept my martial arts instructor talked about, I realized that I never did do 10,000 cuts with a sword, and suddenly had a vision of myself doing sword strokes or staff twirls in my living room. The idea made me laugh, since it seems silly, but really, I did do all that martial-arts training and I could take more advantage of it. I'd have to get a staff somewhere (not just a broomstick, not heavy enough) if I wanted to do that, and that would be good for flexibility as well as strength; but I do still have a collection of swords, so I could do that any time. Well, I've got another 50 days to make some decisions.