Health and fitness complication - Living with PKU

I was born with Phenylketonuria (PKU - read about it here). This means, for the first 15 years of my life, I was on a strict, very low protein diet. Until my mid-teens, I hadn't eaten any meat, fish, milk, eggs or bread and could only eat limited quantities of potatoes, mushrooms, beans, etc. I took (very horrible-tasting) supplements and visited the dietician at least twice a year.

These days, the recommendation is that people with PKU remain on this diet their whole lives. As I said, I started a normal diet at 15 and have eaten normally since. I often consider returning to my diet in the hopes this improves my life. Side effects of PHe build up in the body are severe, but I have lived with them my whole life - though it does seem as I get older that these are becoming worse. It is not quite that simple, though. While I was on my diet, my physique was, at most, a stocky 5'7". After a year or so of eating a normal diet, my height increased to the comparatively lofty 6'3" that I enjoy today. Clearly, the increase coming off the very restrictive diet did me some good.

That said, I am still very wary of getting caught up in the body building/protein frenzy craze as part of my health and fitness journey - simply because I know that, for me, there is much more at stake.

Regardless, I'm not going to allow that to compromise my current health kick. I'm 48 now. It is time I got this body into proper shape.

Written notes addendum & Tips on motivation

So, I am now keeping semi-regular notes regarding my baguazhang training. Although, over time, these have evolved a little. Now they are less about codifying my knowledge and more about keeping a log of when I've been able to practice, what exercises were harder/easier/effective and other such things. This helps me a little as I struggle with motivation at times.

However, having researched a little on the subject of motivation - especially as it pertains to fitness - I think I have come up with a few tips and/or exercise related motivational hacks.

First of all, I need to do all I can to prevent my subconscious from being able to justify giving up. What I mean by this is, whenever I set myself goals, I always seem to unwittingly include clauses that allow my lazier side to throw in the towel fairly early on.

For example, a common goal I've set myself for more new year's resolutions than I care to mention is:

"Practice bagua at least five times a week"
The problem with this is, it already contains the seeds of its own demise. What happens when, for whatever reason, I'm only able to practice three times in a particular week? Well, that is an opportunity for my lazy subconscious to say, "Well, you've screwed up your goal now, might as well jack it all in!". Putting a time factor in like that is a bad idea. When we see stuff on TV or in health-based media about "Training every day" or "Hitting the gym at least five times a week", it's usually just intended to set you up to fail. When you fail, you start feeling bad about yourself. When you feel bad, you want to buy things to make you feel better about yourself - whether this is a new set of weights, £200 running shoes, a gym membership, or whatever. A happy person doesn't consume as much, so they don't feel as compelled to buy the product that is being offered.

These time-based goals are usually promoted by either fitness coaches or celebrities. What they're not telling you is that those kinds of goals are perfect - for them. They don't have a 9-5 job which takes precedence over their lives every single day. Once they've done a few errands, they pretty much have the rest of the day to themselves. So they have at least a couple of hours in which to comfortably fit some exercise. Most of the rest of us don't have that luxury.

Rather than setting time-based goals, how about removing any time factor from the goals all together?

1). Run a total of 100km 2). Practice martial arts over ten different days 3). Complete a total of 1,000 reps of any one exercise

This way, if my goal is to train over 10 different days, failing to train one or more days doesn't impact my goal - it only means it will take a little longer to achieve. Maybe I am enthusiastic to start and manage three days running? Great! But then, real life does what it often does and throws a spanner in the works. Maybe I get flu? Or family issues take my attention away? I can't train for two days because of this. No problem. When I come back to training, I'm still 30% of the way toward my goal, just as I was before.

Once I achieve the goal, then I set myself another one. Maybe bigger this time. Train over 25 different days or Run a total of 200km. Or, maybe, I just want to keep it simple and keep resetting that goal to the same thin. Train over ten days. Then another ten. Then another.

We're all gonna fail at some time. Real life gets in the way sometimes. That's just the way of things. But there's no need to make it a deal-breaker.

Sacrifices

Just had to ask the question, "If we're supposed to be on a health kick / intending to lose weight, how many times can we have 'one last takeaway'?"

Mother in law rang up offering a communal takeout. Missus agreed then I countermanded with pesky facts.

Now I am in the doghouse

Pah!

1,000 Days of Bagua: The Preamble

Okay, so elsewhere on the information superhighway, you may have come across the concept of "100 Days of Bagua". Not sure who came up with the concept, but essentially, it requires you, the bagua player, to commit to training Baguazhang at least once a day, every day for a continuous, 100 day period. Usually starts with the new year in a resolution type way.

Really good idea, and a task I have undertaken a couple of times. Both times failing a few weeks down the line. So, perhaps hoping to redeem myself, or maybe by way of punishment, I have corrupted the idea into 1,000 Days of Bagua.

Essentially, on April 6th (in a few days - this Wednesday, to be precise), there will be 270 days left of the year. 270 + 365 + 365 = 1000 (days).

So, if I begin on Wednesday, April 6th 2016 and train Baguazhang each and every day until 1st January 2019, then I will have completed 1,000 continuous days of Baguazhang training.

Why am I deciding to do this? Well, weirdly, for me it sounds like the kind of thing I would find easier to keep going. And, anything that encourages me to train more can only be a good thing, right?

So, to add a little detail, to avoid making my training a chore, anything more than 10 mins counts. However, it has to be focused, good quality training. And, after a few weeks, I will work out my average training time per week and make adjustments to improve upon that on a monthly basis - where possible.

As often as possible, I will try to log or at least recount in retrospect what training I have managed that day/week.

Watch this space.

Training

Not strictly training today per se, but suffice it to say that my upper body has well and truly been worked. Upper arms and shoulders caining as I go to bed after having oiled the decking in our garden.

Sounds like a deleted scene from the Karate Kid!

More obstacles to training

I could list for you the many things that have prevented my training as regularly as I'd want. There are plenty to choose from. Finally having moved house and having a new home to mould to our taste. Having a crazy, three year old daughter (soon to be 4 - on June 23rd!), the current disruption to the trains (a whole line being closed, causing the once hour long trip to class to be closer to two). However, really, it comes down to my attitude letting me down again. I need to refocus and make myself attend, no matter how awkward getting to class might actually be. Now I have a car, too, gives me even less excuse not to attend. Add to that the fact that we now have a crosstrainer and a heavy bag in our otherwise-unused garage, and I have very little reason not to train at home every evening either. The very thing I've been telling myself will be the key to improvement in my Baguazhang. So, after tonight (cos I am falling asleep while typing this) I am back to training every night and attending every class - no excuses. It is all too easy to let the excuses take over and keep you from your goals. I am taking control of myself again and redirecting my path away from laziness and a flabby gut.

Long awaited update

All the usual apologies for the delay in bringing this update to you. This was mostly due to losing my password, making me unable to log in from work or my mobile which, between them, account for 99% of the updates on this here blog. So, what is there to tell you, dear reader? Well, my attendance is back to normal at Manchester Bagua class. Speaking of which, it is that I am blaming for the achey nature of my shoulders and serratus muscles today, some three days later. Stuck here at work at the moment, but planning some more training for tonight. Went for a walk at lunch which involved a light to medium workout for my calves. As it was threatening rain at the time, though, that only lasted about 15 minutes or so.

IMA training vs Families - Motivation

I've been training Baguazhang for some time now and, probably akin to many other IMAists of my generation, I have also become a father within a similar timeframe.

Naturally, this causes a number of conflicts of interest.  Being a normal, well-balanced human, I place my family at the top of my list of priorities.  Yes, even above my baguazhang training.  Imagine that!?

Equally, though, I am a realist and won't kid myself that I can improve meaningfully relying only on what I glean from one two-hour lesson per week.  I accept that to keep in line with my ambition, I need to enshrine some daily practice into my routine.

However, having a family, my daily routine is pretty full already.  After a day at work and the associated commute, I want to spend whatever quality time I can with my fiancee and daughter.  Add to that the need to relax and de-stress from the hectic day and whatever domestic chores are required and very little time remains.

What I decided of late, though, is that my baguazhang training is important to me.  I want to improve and find myself a more capable martial artist within the next few years.  With that in mind, I have decided that my second priority will be my training.

If I have so little time, though, how will that help?  Family taking all my time (and justifiably so) will mean that my baguazhang will end up like the Mad Hatter's jam.  (Always tomorrow, never today).

Even with a busy lifestyle and pressing commitments, I still find there are many times in a given week when I am, essentially, 'wasting time'.  Playing around on the laptop, surfing on Facebook or playing pointless little games.  Slobbing on the sofa watching a tv programme I don't really care for.  All those times, rather than killing time with something that doesn't matter to me, I could have been practising my bagua.  Wasted time.

It will take quite some discipline, but I intend to stop myself from doing these wasteful tasks and practice my bagua instead.  This includes, horror of horrors, actually getting up an hour earlier than normal to do an extra hour of bagua in the mornings.  Again, that will take quite some discipline, but it is acheivable.

Eventually, I hope to get myself up to around 90 - 120 mins of bagua practice per day (probably with weekends off as we often end up going places where it isn't always convenient (or strictly polite) to engage in practice.

Long live meatspace!

Most mornings, when I am enduring the tram ride to work, I notice that the vast majority of my fellow commuters* are somehow 'tuned out' of what is going on around them.  Either they are tickling their smartphones, their ears are plugged into some music device or they are lost in an e-reader.

Somehow, as a people, we seem to have lost the desire or ability to connect to the environment immediately around us.  Preferring instead to talk to someone miles away who isn't even a good enough friend to be with them in person.  Personally, I would prefer to witness and react appropriately to what is going on around me.  The driver's announcement being a convenient case in point this morning.  The line was down for a while.  Not that most of my fellow passengers would realise, as it was back up again fairly soon.

This doesn't just happen in the mornings, either.  At any time of day, the number of people around me either literally or figuratively 'plugged in' to some electronic device, draining their attention, is considerable.

I read something on a lifting site that said, "If you've got time to Facebook, then you've got time to train...".  This paraphrasing my earlier sentiments that I would now rather train than watch something I don't particularly like on tv.

What do each of us actually get from spending more time online?  The illusion of a social life?  How social are you if you hardly ever actually see your friends?  If I train, it might not be very rock and roll, repeating the same action again and again ad nauseam.  But I do get something at the end of it all - eventually.

That's why I'm shifting more and more of my endeavours into 'meatspace' (and why I'm posting on here less and less - sorry!)

Daily devotions or going through the motions?

I am currently managing, despite a family to look after and a lazy streak a mile wide, to train at home every night. Okay, so I'm not exactly running through all eight big palm changes or completing all the houtien lines in sequence, but I am managing to do a little.

I am concerned that my less than impressive physique is letting me down in class, so I've mostly been working on strengthening.  Once I am happy with that, though, I assume the nightly training will have become a habit and then I will simply substitute the strength training for something with a little more emphasis on technique.

Considering I know how adept I am at avoiding committing to anything, disliking exertion as I do, I am quite proud of myself.

Building muscle

[See link to right of the screen, under "Build your Physique!"]

Here's a (kindle) book on the Sandow method of body building which is not only a good guide to building muscle and developing mind-muscle connections/awareness but also an interesting read about how older training methods in body-building and boxing have been unfairly dismissed and discredited.

It is a very good read, informative and could help you develop your physique with just 20-30 minutes training per day.  Already, it has amassed a few, very positive reviews.  For the cost of a kindle book and the time in which you'd normally watch 'How I Met Your Mother', you could have the statuesque body you've always wanted.

In it to win it

Though I am carrying a lot of 'holiday weight', to put it in the most abstractly polite way possible, I still can see the rewards of my bagua practice.  I am carrying considerably more muscle mass than at perhaps any other time of my life.  Add to that my improved balance, cardiovascular stamina and general attitude, I can see that even the relatively small amount of work I've put in thus far has been worthwhile.

I do wish I could arrange more free time, so that I could train formally, rather than having to fit in the odd exercise in amongst my working day and home life.  Still, that will have to wait until I win the lottery.

...Which, in turn, will have to wait until I start playing the lottery.

One fine day I'm gonna be the one...

My thigh muscles still ache quite a bit.  Probably down as much to squatting in a swimming pool on Saturday with my daughter, rather than through any tian gan strengthening exercises.

Currently watching District 13 on Film 4.  A good French movie that we saw a while ago.  Lots of free running and some pretty decent martial arts.  To be frank, it is the free running that impresses most in this movie, but the plot is suprisingly bearable, too.  How cool it would be to be fit, athletic and agile enough to perform some of the feats seen in the film.  Then again, my fitness is gradually improving and I am gradually finding that more and more things I thought were beyond me are actually doable.

On the subject of film, I have a pretty healthy world cinema section in amongst my DVDs, so I have seen more than my share of foreign movies - many not even from Hong Kong! ;)  Hollywood rarely does anything for me, these days, so I tend to keep my eye out for foreign movies with potential...

I need to think of what present I want for my birthday- something bagua-related would be cool.  Hmmm...

Friday, I'm in love

Class tonight.  First lesson back after the xmas break.  Gonna be a hard one.

My teacher is going to be starting up a second class on a Tuesday.  Before the holidays, the plan was for the Tuesday class to be more self defence/sparring and hotien oriented and the Fridays to be more circle walking, tian gan and palm changes.

Sounds good, and if it can be combined with getting some more students into class, that would be cool.

Update tomorrow as to how the class went.

http://www.manchester-bagua.org/

Nappies before Neigong

I appear to be stretching the bounds of this '100 days of bagua' already as the only training possible last night was some chicken-step while I attempted to sing my daughter to sleep.

This just reiterates what I have said in previous posts about training that I can do in concert with my daily chores being better for me as things stand.

Hopefully, some Tian Gan wil be in effect tonight.  Added to my usual leg strengthening (I started bagua just over a year ago with really weedy legs for a guy of 6'3"!)

Living on a razor's edge...

No bagua so far today.  A restless six-month old will do wonders to raise the priorty of a lie in at six in the morning, trust me.

The chinese have a phrase 'heavenly stem' (tian gan), which sounds really wonderful and pleasant.  However, if you train in bagua, then the phrase calls to mind only pain.  It refers to a series of strengthening exercises that put the body through its paces.

These were what I was intending to train today.  Perhaps they are better to complete this evening.  That way, if I am knackered then I can go straight to bed.  Or the sofa.  Whichever is closer.

Back to normal(-ish)

Got up at 06:30 this morning to do some bagua.  Not actually that much of a feat when you have a six month old.

Jiben shou fa were the focus again.  The basic hand movements are most convenient for a flat with limited space like ours.  At the weekends and/or when the weather improves, trips to the park will be possible to enable me to practice the more space-intensive stuff like the palm changes and houtien lines.

Then, of course, I also have my friend and bagua classmate, Jim, living down the road.  We may manage some two-man drills and throwing practice - if the whim takes us.

100 Days of Bagua - The early days

My 100 days of Bagua kicked off yesterday while I was still at my parents' place in Lincolnshire, celebrating the new year.  My training was pretty minimal, but I did some jiben shou fa.  Piercing palm, chopping palm and crashing palm were performed in front of a large mirror - which I found to be a great help.  This may be worth noting for the future - if I can do some of my practice in front of a similar large mirror, maybe this can help me with my forms?

Tonight, I will probably do some more jiben shou fa and maybe some leg-strengthening exercises.  Don't want to do too much as I have overdone the festitivities a little of late, we only got back to the flat a few hours ago and I am back at work tomorrow morning.

On the first day of Yuletide, my true love gave to me...

PRODUCT REVIEW

A 250Hz (Blue) Power Ball exercise device

You’ve probably seen these before or heard about them somewhere.  The gyroscopic balls that you hold in your hand/keep rotating and they strengthen your grip/hand/forearm et cetera.

Well, I got my hands on one (if you’ll pardon the expression) and have had a few days to see what’s what with the thing.

There is something of a knack in getting the gyroscope going and keeping it up to speed.  Once the rhythm is found, though, it provides good, low impact exercise for the lower arms.  I got the sensation that the device was working my whole forearm, not just targeted muscle groups, so this should compliment my Baguazhang training very well indeed.

The device comes with instructions on a CD-ROM, no hard copy was included in the box, though that was not too much of a problem.  Once I had the hang of it I managed to keep it going without even referring to the reference material.  The box claims the device is useful for a wide range of sports and activites and that it is also valuable to aid recuperation from carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis and other ailments.

Different grades of powerball are available, this review is for the 250Hz version, but stronger devices are available.  I would recommend starting with this level at first, though, as I imagine this is probably best to aid in learning the knack required to get the most from the device.

Fifteen pounds (£15.00) is an acceptable pricetag when compared to prices for other sports training equipment, especially considering the comprehensive workout your forearms will go through if this is incorporated into your regular training regimen.

Buy this item now from Amazon.co.uk!

It's a rollercoaster ride, once it starts, it never gets going...

Still having a bit of a random training regimen for my bagua.  The odd bit of formal practice here and there, but mostly I am finding ways to strengthen my legs, for example, as part of my daily chores.

I hope to instill a more formal and useful training habit when I complete the '100 days of Bagua' challenge this year.  Essentially, the challenge is to train bagua (for me, at least one hour) every day for 100 days, starting on New Year's day.

I've essentially stolen the idea from something I saw online, but the long term effect will be, I hope, a routine of daily bagua practice that I can continue once the challenge has been concluded.

I will also blog about the training here - so stay tuned.