Be careful what you wish for....

Pre-pandemic, if you'd asked me what I needed in order to be able to get my #baguazhang training on track, without hesitation my response would have been an emphatic "more time at home". Now that I actually work from home and have regained the lost commuting hours back into my day, though, I find it harder than ever to work up the enthusiasm to practice. Spending all day indoors, with our lovely comfy sofa within arms reach and all the food, drink and spectator-fodder (internet, films, etc) that I can handle has sounded the death-knell for my productivity.

It's really hard to volunteer to do difficult things when so many pleasant easy things are within reach. At least when I went to work, I was out of the house for maybe 10+ hours a day. Going for a walk, hitting the gym or practicing (outside) just meant maybe 30 extra minutes of my day away from home. No biggie.

There are methods for overcoming laziness, of course...

Now, working myself up to any level of activity is a gargantuan task in and of itself. What I'm hoping, though, is that by sharing methods of shaking off the laziness on here might help me to overcome my self-imposed lethargy.

Watch this space!

Back to normality?

So, finally classes appear to be returning more or less to normal. Still smallish in size and with limited physical contact, but at least we get to meet with our teacher, socialise a bit, chat and learn more about our cherished art.

Myself, I am carrying quite a lot of lockdown weight now. Last time I weighed myself (a couple of weeks ago) I was heavier than I've ever been. I am presenting quite an impressive gut. To help combat this, as a family we have joined our local David Lloyd. The idea is I can hit the cardio machines between classes. Hopefully, this will improve my general fitness and tone my physique - both very important as I creep up on 50 years on this sphere of woe.

Anyhow, now that more interesting martial arts related things are happening, I hope to revitalise this blog again and cobble together some posts.

The new normal

My "new normal" for training is in my living room, dodging my cat and referring to videos from my teacher in a class Whatsapp group.

What's your new normal?

Running out of excuses

Stuck at home, working from home every day, it's becoming a lot harder to make excuses why I'm not training more.

I manage a little here and there, but really with 2.5 - 3 hours less commuting each day, surely at least an hour of that could be spent training?

On the positive side, I am slowly losing weight, mostly I assume because I'm not stuck at work with only a snack machine for company. But this time really should be capitalised upon to help improve my bagua.

With things being so uncertain, though, it is easy to lose interest in things that, while loved, don't seem quite as important as finding supplies and looking after my family.

Anyhow, hopefully this blog will be somewhere I can record my victories in the training department (however minor) and that might then serve as the motivation I currently find myself lacking.