Jacquie Tran

I feel like I’m losing a bit of drive with my strength training sessions, now that karate is back for the new year. I’m really enjoying my karate classes, and I feel like I am training very well right now. But getting myself to the gym has proven to be quite the mental battle.

Aside from today’s session being a sweat-fest, it was also a test of my capacity to keep going. Not because it was a hugely physical session, but because my mind kept trying to give me excuses to quit early. It was excuse upon excuse today: “Two sets is enough”, “It’s so hot and you’ve worked hard enough today”, etc. Knowing I skipped my planned strength session on Wednesday, and with the reward of beach time ahead, I managed to stare those excuses down and just keep going.

On the positive side, I am beginning to notice some real strength changes now. The SL leg press was always going to progress slowly for me, because I have massive imbalances in my quads/hamstring strength ratio. Though I am at my starting load of 55 kg, I can push out six reps without needing the other leg to assist towards the end of the set. I will keep it at 55 kg until I feel that I can perform the exercise comfortably. Will probably aim for 3 x 10-12 reps, performed comfortably, as my yardstick before increasing the load again.

Also, an interesting thought came to me during my prasara flow. The days I have the most trouble transitioning from the ground to standing in tree pose are the days where my mind is all over the place. If my mind is clear and focused, I can transition smoothly. But when I have a lot on my mind, I find it difficult to focus through all the different thoughts, and then doubts creep in about the quality of my movement. I have started telling myself to “trust it”; I know I have the strength and proprioceptive skills to maintain my balance and control my movements through the standing phase. As soon as any doubts spring into my mind, about my reconstructed knee, or my dodgy ankles, I find it substantially harder to get from the ground to tree pose in one smooth movement. Given this little revelation, my training focus over the coming weeks and months is to TRUST IT - trust the movement, trust what I know, trust myself.

WARM UP
5 min spin bike (2.5 min moderate, 2.5 min stand and climb)
5 min spin bike (easy spin)
Traps release
Pecs release

MAIN SETS
Lat pulldown, supine grip (3 x 10 @ 35 kg)
Arabesque lunge (3 x 10 e/s @ BW)
SL leg press (3 x 6 e/s @ 55 kg)
SA high row in lunge (3 x 10 e/s @ 14.25 kg)
Walking lunges (3 x 10 e/s @ 8 kg KB)
Seated row (3 x 10 e/s @ 27 kg)

COOL DOWN
Hamstring stretch
Seated adductor stretch
Kneeling hip flexor stretch
Quad release
Prasara yoga: forest flow
CST handcuff stretch
Bird of paradise pose

Making good strides with Pinan Yondan. I’ve got the sequence down, so my next goal is to nail down the footwork and start finding my own rhythm in the kata. We also did some blocks and self defence movements, which reinforced for me that I have a long way to go with my sparring skills!

My improved fitness is really showing through the summer training sessions. It was pretty hot and humid in the training venue last night, with the day time temps getting up around the mid-30s. Though it was uncomfortable because I sweat like it’s going out of style, I didn’t feel very fatigued. We spent a lot of time working on the finer points of a few kata. In particular, I worked on refining my movement in a new kata that I am learning. I worked steadily for about 20-25 mins on the kata, taking short breaks only to towel down and get a swig of water. It felt good to get to the end of the session knowing that I’d worked hard but wasn’t running myself into the ground to do so.

cupofchi replied to your video: Feist - “How Come You Never Go There”
I love her too, although both times I’ve seen her live, I was underwhelmed.

Interesting, I’ve never seen her live but I just figured she would be great to see in person. Why were her shows underwhelming?

randomrantings replied to your video: Feist - “How Come You Never Go There”
I love her! I wish she was played on the radio here…all we get is reggaeton, country, and Rihanna here in FL. Sigh. Thank god for iPods!

You should listen to Triple J via the interwebs! I think you would love the music they play. Lots of variety, plenty of indie rock. Big supporters of new and independent music from Australia and around the world. We’re so lucky to have a nationally-syndicated radio station that is really about getting quality music out to the people :)

Second karate class for the year, first for the Friday group (I train with the Monday and Friday groups). Keeping up my training away from karate is definitely paying off. We did hopping sidekicks today and I was surprised at how well my knees held up (had an ACL reconstruction in my left knee back in 2005). Although it was muggy again in the training venue, I felt reasonably fresh and still had plenty left in the tank by the end of class. The legs are feeling a touch heavy now, but I’m sure I’ll feel well recovered tomorrow. It’s nice to train hard but recover quickly as well :)

EDIT: Oh, I also forgot to mention that I just created a webform using Google Docs, so I can easily log my training. As I enter data in, it gets stored in a spreadsheet that I can access at any time, or save to disk for future analyses :) I used to have a similar set up with Zoho Apps, but didn’t like how it looked so I abandoned it. I am very fussy about interfaces…Google Docs’ form themes aren’t much better, but at least I have options!