Back To Sprinting

For the first time since my ACL operation in March, I sprinted today. I think it's going to be great for my anaerobic endurance and weight; I can't say I did spectacularly well at sprinting, however.

When I was preparing for my tournament a fews years ago, my old sensei had me do sprints. I went to a track, jogged about half a mile, and then would sprint for 15 seconds, followed by walking for 30.

The difficulty in doing this is measuring time--even with a stopwatch it's tough when you're sprinting.

So I tried a tip from the book The Ultimate Boxer, and decided I would sprint set distances, rather than for a particular time. One set the book recommends is, after a warmup jog, sprinting 8 200-meter intervals (finish within 30 seconds), followed by a 200-meter jog; then something like 10 100-meter sprints, jogging back to the starting line.

Now the standard high-school track is 400 meters, so 200 meters is half the track. The book's recommended interval workout seemed, for me at 51 and recovering from ACL surgery, more like a goal to aspire to than something I can do now. I was right.

After stretching and a 800-meter warm-up jog, my first couple of 200-yard sprints took longer than 30 seconds, with the consequence that they were more of a run than a sprint by the end of them. And I was too bushed to jog in between. I decided to allow myself to sprint for 30 seconds and stop at that point, regardless of whether I had gone 200 meters, and then to walk to where the next 200-meter sprint would start. I got (I think) five of those done, and my knee began to feel a bit sore--not terrible, but not something I wanted to push to the point of being terrible. So I finished with one 100-meter sprint, then a walk around the track.

Besides there being limits to how well I can sprint, there are limits to how often I can do this. Given that I work a nine-hour day Monday through Friday, and I have a three-hour round-trip commute, I can only do interval sprints on the weekend. Ideally I should be running four days a week and doing interval training three days a week. Unless I became a professional athlete--cue laugh track here--I don't have time for that. My hope is that my interval sprinting will complement the anaerobic nature of the core martial arts classes I'm taking, with bursts of punches and kicks.

Interval sprinting really helped me a lot when I was preparing for the tournament--but at that point I was working from home one day a week, and I could go to the track and do my sprints that day, giving me two times a week.

But even once a week, it can't hurt (unless I hurt my knee), and it will probably help. (Actually, what hurts most now isn't my knee, it's the bottom of my foot due to plantar fasciitis.)

Eyes

The photo above is of the goggles I use in martial arts class--gc from nz was asking to see what I use.

The lenses are prescription, allowing me to see what's going on around me--I'm blind as a bat. They also stay on my head, which is an issue even in core class when there's no contact between students.

And importantly, they protect my eyes. My eye doctor is not keen on my doing martial arts--my eyes are so myopic that I'm at high risk for a detached retina. Getting hit in the head is bad enough, and getting hit in the eye would be really bad. So this offers me some protection from a detached retina.

I had another two satisfying classes. On Thursday, I was tired at the end of the day and hot a happy camper from work. When I walked into class, one friend asked me, "Who are YOU mad at?" By the end of class, I was, well, a happy camper. Martial arts has a great anti-depressant effect on me.

My knee hurt a little bit from having torqued it, not in a kick, but in a defensive move--we worked on defending ourselves from a one-armed choke from behind. It wasn't awful pain, just enough to remind me to still be careful.

I attended another class last night because I was going to miss my Saturday class due to a family trip.

I really like my new sensei. He's very focused and a great instructor, and he makes an effort to individualize his instruction, even in a big class. I got a DVD set of his amateur and professional competitions--just basically home-made videos, nothing fancy. He points out in the cover notes that even though he teaches people to master technique, then speed, THEN power, in his early matches his technique is poor! And it improves. For one thing, his punches were kind of like haymakers in the beginning, and then they get more straight.

I know when I was active in kickboxing before my torn ACL, I'd work, work, work on some subtle move in class. Then sparring would begin, and I would drop everything I learned and just try to survive. And it's much more primal in competition than sparring class.

Good Class

I enjoyed my Tuesday night class--a great change from a week ago. We were working on slipping after punching and then moving or throwing combinations. This is very interesting stuff to me.

I've begun kicking, another step in recovering from ACL surgery. My leg feels fine. One thing I'm not doing yet--torquing my left leg (i.e., no roundhouse kicks with the right leg).

This weekend, according to my schedule, I should try interval sprints. We'll see, it's a very busy weekend.

My New Sensei asked me to hold hand pads for him to demonstrate punches during class. As minor as that sounds, it communicated to me that he's getting to know me and has confidence in me, which felt great.

As it's Wednesday, I'm taking today as my rest day from working out.

Card-io

I tried New Sensei's push-up regimen today. I went through 18 cards of a deck, and did about 157 push-ups until I finally couldn't finish the 19th card (the joker). (Only 36 cards to go.) When I moved onto the elliptical machine right afterwards, I was primed--my heart rate was already raised, it was in cardio range in no time.

I did hands-wide push-ups (the easiest for me), shoulder-width push-ups, and a few diamond push-ups. Man, are my arms tired. This is a lot for a middle-aged guy.

I'm going to be surprised if my arms recover enough to give a decent showing in martial-arts class Tuesday night, which will be embarrassing.

Aging Martial Artist: A Perspective

There's an interesting essay by Bob Orlando (whom I've never met), who runs a martial arts school in Denver, on a natural progression in types of martial arts to pursue with age. His template is the progression in Taoist Chinese martial arts from xing-yi, a very linear, meet-force-with-force art that sounds like karate, to ba-gua, which introduces more circular-type motions (sounds like aikido, though I don't know for sure) and finally to taijiquan (tai chi chan), see photo.

Orlando says there's no loss of effective self-defense in that progression, and that there are ways to make that progression outside the Taoist Chinese martial arts.

It makes a lot of sense to me. It makes me wonder about taking up, say aikido at some point (though I do worry about the falls aikido requires).

However, the vigor of the hard martial art I'm pursuing is great for my physical condition. And I'm eager to return to sparring. And I do want to get that black belt. So my thought is to continue down this path as long as I'm able, knowing though that if my body won't let me any farther, due to age or injuries, there are alternatives to dropping training entirely.

I'm off the training wagon for the past four days due to illness, a martial-arts-school holiday, and demands on my time today from family and others. Monday's a new day.

I took a spinning back kick to the gut from a virus Thursday--fever, aches, and stomach distress that I won't divulge in detail. I missed work and evening martial arts class, and I worked from home today.

No class on Saturday either. Maybe that's a good day (if I'm close to fully recovered) for starting this deck-of-cards training routine for push-ups.

Toughest

Tonight was, psychologically, my toughest night since returning to karate classes three weeks ago after ACL surgery. I'm nowhere near the level I want to be at, and it will be so much work to get there. I'm not up to the abilities, physical and in terms of form, of some other people in class, because of my layoff and, frankly, my age. To top it off, work's been tough and that carries over. I was so tired sleeping on the train home I was dreaming.

I made it through the class.


I talked to my new sensei about it afterwards, and he said it was understandable that I would feel badly in comparing myself to other other students, but that I'm not even back a month, I have limitations because of my knee, and that by applying myself 100% to the class it would make an impression on people as well. And for the push-ups, he wants me to take a deck of cards, and on my off days--that is, not my karate class days, when I may do 100 push-ups--to do as many push-ups as cards I turn up in the deck, to the limit that I can do, until I can finally do an entire deck of cards. (Face cards count 11, Aces 12, Jokers 15.)

I don't quite know WHEN I'm going to do that--for instance, tonight I've got a meeting that lasts from when I get home to when I have to go to bed--and I worry about hurting my arms. My new sensei said I do need to be careful about not getting hurt while doing so many push-ups, but I don't know if he realizes how much lower a threshold I may have for injury than he has. (He does two-and-a-half decks of cards.)

I don't know whether a 51-year-old slender guy can do all this. I'm going to try.