Watching Dad Grow Frail

I've spent much of the past two weeks in Virginia, helping my family after my 89-year-old father fell and broke his arm. I took four days off work the first week, then returned, with my wife and daughter, for a few days around Thanksgiving.

One of the defining experiences for many of us in middle age is seeing our parents grow old, frail and ill. It rattles me to the core because my Dad was such a strong provider and protector of the family while I was growing up.

Both my parents are suffering from early dementia or Alzheimer's, which is evident in the disappearance of their short-term memory, and their inability to really follow through on any task out of the ordinary. But they still love seeing their children and grandchildren, know who we are, and reminisce about the past.

Dad's fall, and the cascading problems that have ensued from that, have finally allowed us to force on my parents 24-hour home health aides, who are being accepted by my folks. It's a great relief for my brother and me; my brother lives near my parents and has devoted a huge amount of time to helping out, which has me concerned for his own health and well being. Unless my Dad shows lots of improvement, which often doesn't happen at his age, we will need to find a facility that can care for them both--the 24-hour help at their house is great but in the long run unaffordable.

On the way back home, we swung by one of the art colleges my daughter is considering attending, Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore. My son spent Thanksgiving on the west coast, visiting with his biological family (both my kids were adopted). I'm glad my son is in touch with his biological family, I think it is good for him; we also can see how some of the volatility that bedevils our son is also very inherent in his birth siblings as well. (My daughter, born in Korea, doesn't know who her birth family is.)

Needless to say, I haven't had much time to train or work out. Seeing my Dad's growing frailty really reinforced for me the importance of staying in shape, to keep the quality of life as high as possible for as long as possible.

My three month stint at my new school is about over. I'm now seriously considering going back to my original martial arts school, where I still have a lot of classes paid for. I've learned a lot at the new school, particularly in the weekly private lessons. And the sparring is very much in control, which as a resident of the late middle ages I appreciate. It's a lot less expensive than my old school as well.

However, it's mostly me and a bunch of teenagers in class; they're nice, but not my friends--I have many friends at my old school. The workout isn't as intense as I used to get at my old school. And I can't wear the black belt I earned at the old school at the new one.

I'm planning (and we know not all plans work out) to continue getting up early and hitting the inexpensive and convenient gym at my office before the day starts, four days a week, for cardio and weight lifting. Then I'll attend martial arts classes two or three times a week. If I feel comfortable sparring at my old school, I'll do that; if not, I may continue to spar at the new school, and go to the old school for the exercise and camaraderie (and maybe for grappling).

Operation B-Flop

Well, Operation B-Hop has been a disaster.

The hopping (more formally, plyometric) exercises I enthusiastically embraced have caused a painful flare-up of my plantar fasciitis. I am hobbling around in pain. And, from a printout one of the trainers in my corporate gym gave me, some exercises that I previously thought were harmless, like the elliptical machine or stationary bike, can actually worsen it.

So on Wednesday morning, I did a bag workout at the gym. On Tuesday and today, Thursday, I lifted weights.

But no martial arts classes this week; no hopping, no elliptical machine since Monday, when the pain really flared up.

My wife says she's angry that I started hopping again, despite past evidence that it brings on plantar fasciitis.

For now, I'm just trying to find ways to keep myself in shape while letting my feet (particularly my right foot) heal.

Operation B-Hop

At my weekly private lesson Thursday, Mike, my instructor, was showing me some hopping exercises that he said would be key for me to improve my sparring. He said I tend not to move much, which allows me to to defend well using my reach when attacked, but poses a problem when I need to get to my target.

So, at the age of 53, I'm considering a radical change to my exercise regimen to try and raise the bar one more time in my sparring.

I'm going to (with the help of the clock change this week) start getting up about 40 minutes earlier, get to work early, go straight to the gym there.

Three mornings a week, I will start by working on these plyometric, hopping exercises. I hope my feet and knees can stand them. I'll start easy. Then I'll climb onto a feet/joint-friendly bike or elliptical machine for, I hope, about 40 minutes of cardio.

The two other mornings I"ll do some weight lifting, which the people running the gym say is good at my age due to the tendency to start losing muscle mass. I've been trying to get to the gym twice a week at lunchtime but failing because of the press of work. My job increasingly is becoming 24/7.

If this new push can help me improve my sparring, without putting too much strain on feet and knees, I think I will move to the next level.

If not, I'll try something else... that lets me sleep later.

I'm calling it operation B-Hop for two reasons: 1) Bob is hopping, and 2) B-Hop is a nickname for boxer Bernard Hopkins, who, at the antique age of 44, is still one of the greatest boxers around.

Wish me luck getting through the adjustment and the new regime!

Relax

Today, after a group class, I asked one of the instructors I've sparred with several times what I need to work on the most.

"Relax," he said. I'm getting better, he told me, but I'm still too nervous/anxious in sparring.

Technically, he also said I sometimes over commit--my shoulder may be actually farther out than my foot on a punch. Then it takes a moment for me to recover--and in that time, my opponent can move away, counter strike, etc.

But mostly, he said, relax. "We're not going to break you in half," he said.

Learning New Things

I had a very good private lesson Thursday. The style of this school encourages a very wide stance, and a very tight hook punch; I worked on both in the class. I will need to practice both.

My trainer, Mike, is very focused on teaching, which is great.

Yesterday, I went very late to lift weights at work, then rushed home without taking a shower so I could catch a train. It is often very hard in the heat of the action during the workday to get to the gym. I'm going to keep trying; if I can't, I might come in early, but even in my commute, I'm very busy via Blackberry. If it weren't for exercise, the stress would just be completely overwhelming.

Also, because I was rushing out, I didn't get the protein immediately after lifting that is recommended. I don't know how critical it is to eat/drink protein right after lifting, it's not a world I'm accustomed to.

I've got a group class today. I want to keep more control over my sparring, and hence my partners'. My left leg still hurts a bit from a roundhouse kick to the thigh; one issue, I think, is that my partner didn't have on shin pads, so I got hit with a very hard shin. It doesn't have to be a very hard kick to hurt with a shin, I now see.

The Continuous Life

My stomach has been bothering me all day, and I'm skipping class tonight.

So, for something completely different, here is a wonderful poem about being a parent and a human being; I suppose it is also about middle age, since that's generally when you're raising children. It has absolutely nothing to do with martial arts.

I discovered this poem inscribed on a children's fountain in Manhattan a number of years back when I was having a terrible day and went for a walk.

The author is Mark Strand; the book it appears in has the same title as the poem, "The Continuous Life."

Here's a link to the Amazon page with the book: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Life-Poems-Mark-Strand/dp/0679738444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253147907&sr=1-1

And here's the poem, from Answers.com:

The Continuous Life

What of the neighborhood homes awash
In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
Have run their course? Oh parents, confess
To your little ones the night is a long way off
And your taste for the mundane grows, tell them
Your worship of household chores has barely begun;
Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
Explain that you live between two great darks, the first
With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
Of hours and days, months and years, and believe
It has meaning, despite the occasional fear
You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
That your search goes on for something you lost — a name,
A family album that fell from its own small matter
Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
You don't really know. Say that each of you tries
To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
The careless breathing of earth and feel its available
Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending
Small tremors of love through your brief,
Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

"The Continuous Life (Poem Text)." Notes on Poetry. Answers Corporation, 2006. Answers.com 17 Sep. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/the-continuous-life-poem-1

The Discouraging Pursuit Of Perfection

I finished the first week of my new martial arts/health regime with a 20-minute jog at a school track, followed by eight wind sprints of roughly 50 meters.

My weekly plan is to attend two group martial arts classes, one private lesson, two weight lifting sessions and one run/sprint. I missed one weight lifting session at the gym at work because I left my packed gym bag at home. Otherwise, I did all the training I planned.

After seeing an instructor named Mike at my new school for two private lessons and one group class, I attended a group class on Saturday with two other instructors. One, named Derrick, is a professional kickboxer.

As before, the group class was very different from my old classes, but an intense workout. At the end, I sparred with Derrick and Justin, the other trainer. They said they understood I did leg kicks and light head contact; I said yes, because that's what I'm used to.

I finished the class feeling a bit discouraged, and a little banged up.

I was hearing from the two instructors many of the same things I had heard before at my other school; my combinations pretty soon become predictable, and therefore easy to anticipate and counter; I back straight up instead of moving to the side; etc.

Why this should be depressing to me, I'm not sure. I certainly couldn't expect that those problems would disappear just from trying out a new school. I'm there to learn and improve. Still, I did feel discouraged.

Once I got hit pretty hard to the head; I was told it was after I had hit my sparring partner pretty hard to the head myself. It's hard for me to know when I'm hitting hard sometimes; I will feel better myself if I don't hit too hard, inviting an escalation from the other side.

I also got a dead leg from a perfectly placed roundhouse kick to my thigh. It still is sore a day later. Perhaps I should try, like most of the other students, only contact below the neck and above the belt (no head contact or kicks to the legs). But that would feel like I'm moving backwards.

One thought an instructor had was that the goggles I wear--to protect my eyes and to see better--interfere with peripheral vision; and it is true that I often don't see what's happening when people get angles on me. In any case, once I put on my headgear, I can't see out of the goggles because they fog up. Maybe I will try sparring without them, the headgear should provide my eyes with some protection.

Derrick did tell me I used my jab very well, making it difficult for him to get inside, and I threw a couple of good round kicks to his leg; I did slip a jab from the other instructor to begin an attack once, which he complimented.

It sounds simple, but I need to keep reminding myself: I'm here to learn, so don't expect to be perfect. It's a difficult lesson for me.