Week 33 - Lengthening The Line

A different kind of week this one.  I watched my weight and what I ate, but, not with the intense scrutiny that I have applied in recent memory, or indeed since February.  To be honest, I am somewhat rudderless as I seek out a new direction with regards to what weight I want to maintain and how I maintain it.  I also figure that two relaxed weeks are probably ok.  The fact that we are moving house, which has left our lives in a special kind of chaos has let me just no sweat the small stuff for this week at least.  I will have the capacity to refocus on things very soon and am looking forward to it.

So, I am going to be brave again and post links to the footage of my fight.  It was taken by my coach's wife and she's done a fantastic job with her phone, capturing great images of the highlights that I remember and plenty that I don't.  By way of brief commentary.  The first round is where I think my opponent won the fight on the judges scorecard.  He held dominant positions on the ground and had more scoring strikes with very good counter punching.  Just for everyone's info, he hit like a truck.  He was significantly more muscular and stronger than me as will be evident where he ragdolls me part way through that first round.  The highlight for me being in the dying seconds of the round where I reverse the position on the ground and end up in a beautiful side control.......Just as the end of the round sounds.  Yay me!

The second round was more interesting from my perspective in so much as I landed a few strikes of my own, as well as wore some big ones I will add.  I'd argue that I got the best punch in the fight around the 50 second mark right before it went to the ground again.  I finished the round off in a position to submit, but again, through time running out and an incomplete technique the round ends before the submission is finished!  My comment on both rounds would be, I really needed 5 minute rounds.  My cardio was better and I think I might have come away with the cash so to speak if they had been.  Having said that, they weren't and I knew that going in.  In my mind, the better performer won the fight and I am thrilled with having had the opportunity to compete against him, having taken to the full distance a man who was bigger, stronger and half my age, as well as with a number of things about my own performance.

I'm not sure how long I will leave the videos up.  Maybe for a couple of weeks because a few people have asked to see them.  So here they are...

NSWAMMA - 08-09-2013 - Round 1

NSWAMMA - 08-09-2013 - Round 2

Reflecting on the footage, but, more importantly the thought processes during and since the event, I found my mind turning back to the book I recently read and referred to in an earlier post - Zen in the Martial Arts.  In it there is a chapter called "Lengthen Your Line", that discusses the author's frustration at being soundly beaten in a competitive sparring session by a more skilled opponent.  I remember back to a similar session where I was completely outdone by one of my training partners in a similar fashion.  I am pleased to report that the concepts in this chapter reflect a principle that I already apply to my training.

In the book the author's coach\master at the time counselled him after the session, enquiring initially as to why he was so frustrated.  Upon learning the reason was that he had been outmatched by his opponent, the teacher drew a chalk line on the floor representing the skill level of the opponent.  He then asked the author what he could do about shortening the line in order to be more competitive.  They went back and forth for a bit with suggestions until the teacher drew a second line on the floor, this one longer than the first.  He went on to give a very wise and gentle lesson to the author extolling the virtue of lengthening one's own line, rather than attempting to shorten that of others.  He used the following words:

"It is always better to improve and strengthen your own line or knowledge than to try and cut your opponent's line"

I couldn't agree more.  Just as I went back and increased my resolve and effort towards improving the areas of my competitive martial arts that were exposed in training previously, I intend to go back to the mats and focus even more on those things in my fight that either allowed my opponent to gain an advantage because of my lack of skill, or indeed could have won me the match had I been more proficient.  It so happens that half of that equation is still the area that I have been working on since the last time I tried to lengthen my line.  However, I am pleased to say that, whilst I still have a long way to go, I feel like I have added a couple of centimetres to it over the past few months.  I look forward to continuing to work hard in that fashion.

Week 32 - Goals and Milestones

Where to begin?  A few days ago, I competed in my first Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) event.  It was the culmination of 31 weeks worth of thought, preparation and hard work.  The fight experience itself was everything I expected and more.  Above even that, reaching the supremely challenging goals that I had set myself has proven to be tremendously rewarding.

At the start of February this year, I weighed in at 121.1kg.  To compete at light heavyweight I needed to be 93kg.  I weighed in last Sunday morning at 91.95kg.  Surpassing even my own expectations.  That was after eating a good breakfast, fuelling me for the day's action to come.  Whilst my weight was artificially lower than the day before by 2kg, I didn't have to dramatically lose weight for the weigh in.  A process known as 'cutting weight'.  I walked around happy and healthy on the day, full of energy having adopted a simple, but, nutritionally sound and sustaining pre match day diet.  One happy aside from the day was that as much as I have dispersed with any thoughts of the Body Mass Index (BMI) being relevant, I was in the healthy range even on that scale as out of proportion as it is.  On that front, I permanently thumb my nose at the BMI and any hold it ever had over me.  I am no longer a statistic on the news in the obesity epidemic articles, whatever the measure they choose to use.

Another somewhat secret goal of mine was also reached.  From the days where I was at my heaviest, I am now 50kg lighter.  30kg of that I have lost since February.  The remainder in previous 'failed' weight loss attempts.  It was a goal linked with the BMI as it also coincided with the afore mentioned drop into the healthy range.  Both boxes now well and truly ticked!

I set a goal to challenge myself in a competitive MMA bout.  On Sunday just gone, I met this challenge also.  This perhaps above all else was a journey of the body, mind and spirit.  I have taken so much from the people and process involved in stepping onto that competition mat, ready to face whoever was in front of me, that I'm not sure whether I put it at least on the same level as my weight and health goals, or even a little above.  There is an expression that I have heard, and no doubt mentioned here previously.  Combat sports are the antithesis of chess.  In chess there are many players with very few experts.  In the world of combat sports, there are many experts, but, very few people willing to step up and play.  I can understand why.  The intense emotions that you go through and even just the internal dialogue that goes through you mind in order to answer the starting bell was something that I will certainly never forget.  I may have lost my match on the judges scorecard after going the distance with a man in a heavier weight category and nearly 20 years my junior, but, I can honestly say, I have never felt more like a winner.

One thing that I have to this point never shared is what this journey has meant to me in terms of goal attainment.  I have been someone that has found many things in life relatively easy at times.  I have been blessed with enough intelligence to get a good job to support my family, enough athleticism to find myself fairly capable in many of my chosen sports and enough common sense to walk a relatively straight path through life in general.  What I have found that this has resulted in me being a little more complacent and even somewhat lacking in what I would describe as character that I have been sometimes willing to admit.

You may remember my post entitled "The Biggest Guy in the Room" where I spoke about the challenges I was acknowledging in regards to the difficulty I was facing in remaining competitive in my MMA training whilst losing size and strength.  These two assets are great tools to have in physical pursuits and a big part of this whole experience has been me confronting the challenges to my ego in things not coming as easily as they have often in the past.  That's not to say that I think I am terrible at the activities that I have undertaken, but, there comes a time in any search for improvement or attempt to reach very challenging goals, where the quick and easy wins dry up and the real effort is required.  Make no mistake, there have been some days when I have been pushed beyond anything that I thought I was capable of physically or mentally in my attempts to reach my goals.  In doing so, I have achieved a goal of attainment.  By that I mean I have reached the extraordinary goals that I set myself.  I got down to 93kg and beyond.  I lost 50kg.  I competed in an MMA fight.  All this and more, where previously I have tried and failed over and over again when the going got tough.

I have lost as much as 40kg in the past.  But, I have never reached my goal weight.  Whether my goal weight is realistic or not, it was my goal.  I trained for over 18 months to compete at the Australian Indoor Rowing Championships.  Yes there were some factors that led to that opportunity disappearing, but, I made no attempt to seek out other, similar events, like the Australian Masters' games that did go ahead.  I competed at state and national levels in Rugby.  Played and won against touring international sides at was considered an elite athlete as a scholarship holder at the AIS.  But, when it came to making the transition into fully professional senior Rugby, when the real work would need to be done, I opted out. These and other challenges and goals I have let slip when the going got tough.  Not when it got hard.  I can do hard.  But, when it came time to bite down and break through the really solid barriers of the tough work.  The extra effort required to take a step beyond what is ordinary for the individual and excel, even in the context of what is extraordinary for just the person seeking to achieve the goal they have set before themselves.

I realise now that it has been the genuine mental toughness that I have lacked more than anything else.  Perhaps that is why I have engage with the aspects of MMA so deeply.  The journey to compete in MMA is above all else a mental one.  Somewhat unknowingly, I took on that aspect of the experience, only to embrace it when it became apparent.  Now that I have walked the full journey and competed in my first bout, I think that the realisation that I have actually seen through to completion all of the toughest challenges I have ever put before myself and done so successfully is what sees me take the most pride in what I have done.  I set difficult goals for myself and for the first time ever, I didn't find a way out when the going got tough.  I kept working harder to reach for the better me that I have been chasing all these years.  Please pardon the self indulgent pat on the back.

So what happens now?  I have always maintained that I am goal driven.  Even if now I understand that it has always been only to a point that left me less than fulfilled in the past.  Now that I have done what I really set out to achieve and more, what next?

I went for a run today.  It's been 3 days since I competed.  I'm still working out a lot of the what next things that are swimming around in my head.  One thing I admit to is being petrified about is putting on weight.  Scared in the good way that makes me believe that it is just not going to happen this time.  I am still hopping on the scales every day.  I am still keeping a food diary.  I just need to work out what normal, healthy eating to sustain my weight and lifestyle looks like for me now.  I have armed my mind with the tools I need to work this out and I have made the important choice to use them.  Part of the point of going for a run today was to do something that I know is good for me, but, that I really don't enjoy at all.  I just don't like running for the sake of it.  I need a purpose.  Today it was really about opening up my mind to thinking about doing the things I know I need to that will keep me where I am today.  That is to say, happy.  The things that are hard.  You know what....I got in there and I did it.

I start back into what I guess will be a slightly modified training regime as of tomorrow.  Different in so much as it will not be at the intensity or frequency that it has been for the last month and a half.  News that has come as welcome relief to my beautiful, long suffering wife.  Will it lead me to the competition mats again?  At this stage I am not sure.  Having said that, I watched the video of my fight for the first time last night and it gave me a completely different perspective.  Although obviously I still view it through somewhat of a subjective lens, the aspects of my performance of which I had been so intensely critical of myself about, did not look so bad when I viewed them from a distance.  It gave me some confidence that I might not be as completely amateur as I had written myself off to be.  I will never be a world beater, but, there might just be a place where I fit in.  There is a part of me that can see a win in my future, even if it is just in my minds eye for now.  I feel like I have some first hand experience in what it might take to earn it now too.

In terms of actual goals to keep me going for now, I have been at this since February.  My first goal is to be at this new healthy place in February next year.  From there, I have set myself a goal to keep the weight off until this time next year.  At that time I can sign up for an overseas study of people who have sustained significant weight loss for over 12 months called the National Weight Control Register.  They collect information about what makes people successful in maintaining the weight loss they have achieved through their hard work.  The site both collects and shares the most successful methods in these endeavours.  Resources that I plan to take advantage of and hopefully contribute to in the future.  Longer still, I hope to mark many more years of living light heavy!

Week 31 - Crisis Averted

Multiple meanings from the title of this post.  Last week I suffered somewhat of a crisis of confidence in relation to hitting my target weight for the impending event this Sunday.  Inexplicably, for the preceding two weeks, my weight loss had stalled completely.  I was pretty concerned about it to be honest.  Having said that, perhaps equally unexplainable has been the turnaround this week.

On Saturday morning at my usual daily weigh in I recorded 97.3 kg.  Bearing in mind that my scales weigh about 600-700 grams over I was sitting at 96.7 kg.  A full 3-3.5kg off the target weight to compete at light heavyweight.  Now there are ways and means of dropping that much weight quickly that of course are not sustainable.  The big thing in my mind was that they essentially involve differing levels of dehydration.  Given that doing so can impact on your physical performance and that I have no guarantee of enough time to rehydrate, this was quite a disheartening prospect looming on the horizon.  That and the thought of missing weight and having to compete against guys in the heavyweight division who could be anything up to 10+ kg heavier than me.  Not so appealing.

Bring on Sunday morning and although I had done 4-5 hours mat time on the Saturday, I had eaten accordingly and it had not been that physically taxing so much as mentally challenging in maintaining focus on Coach Richie's latest seminar at Synergy.  So I figured that nothing much would change on the scales.  How wrong I was.

Having been 97.3kg on my scales the day before, I registered 94.9kg on the Sunday...To say I was shocked is an understatement.  I hadn't seen anything under 96.0kg before.  What is even better is that this loss has been maintained and improved upon.  As of this morning I was sitting at 94.1kg on my scales.  The critical thinker in me puts it down to being strong and consistent in my diet and being owed that number after the last few weeks.  The more spiritual side of me says that I've been looked after.  Either way, I feel an enormous weight (pardon the pun) has been lifted and I am now free to focus on the other aspects of this weekend.

I visited my dietician this week.  I made the appointment with the view that at this time, I will be the fittest and leanest that I may potentially ever be.  Based on that, I wanted a measure of the fruits of my labours.  Some advice on pre and post weigh in diets and what a maintenance plan in terms of my food might look like were also on the agenda.  I was very, very pleased with all aspects of the visit and the outcomes.

I weighed in on the super duper proper scales at 93.6kg.  That means a few things.  I make weight for the competition and I am now living light heavy!  Important to me also were my skinfolds measurements.  Using the chart below as I have done before for context, last visit my total measurement was 59.8mm.  This snuck me into the excellent range for male athletes.  Yesterday's measurements totalled 43.8mm.  This puts me right near the top of the same range.  Gotta be happy with that right!

Yes I am very happy with the outcome.  Let's unpack it a little further though.  At the level of body fat that I have, for every kilo of weight that I lose that is fat, I should see 5mm drop from my skinfolds results.  Anything less than that and there is some muscle loss to go with the fat.  Assuming a 15mm loss of skinfolds in my case, the best result I could hope for in terms of muscle retention would have been to weigh in at around 97kg give or take.  Given I was 3.5kg under that, it stands to reason that I also lost that amount in muscle.  That is not unexpected as at my last visit, my dietician explained that to reach my goal weight would involve some muscle loss as I just didn't have enough body fat to lose to get there.  I guess the system works.  There is a little tolerance in there for human fudge factor in so much as the measurements are taken by a person, not a machine and there is some variability as a result.  Having said that, my dietician does everything to maintain a level of consistency in the process, by marking out the different points with a tape measure based on different bone structures on my body.  Bearing in mind that my bones don't change in scale or position (generally).  As a yardstick, I am satisfied that it is a good measure of my progress.  Ongoing, one of my challenges will be to put on a little muscle weight whilst maintaining similar body fat levels.  But, that is another story.

You may remember from my first post - The Magic Number - that competing in some form of Mixed Martial Arts was the method to my madness in trying to get fit and healthy.  Reaching a goal weight of 93kg was at the centre of it all.  I dropped another couple of hundred grams this morning, putting me at 93.4kg as best as I can tell.  I have reached my goal and as my first post suggests, I feel completely uplifted by it.  What remains is to complete the MMA journey on Sunday.  I have taken so much from the experiences along the way that, contrary to what I expected, I am not feeling a lot of pressure or placing expectations on myself.  I have, with the help of so many people along the way, changed myself, grown and met my goals.  I have dived deep into the well of what competing in a combat sport means to me and I know that I have already had the victory that matters most to me.  That leaves me with a couple of things remaining to experience.  I get to become the 'Man in the Arena', a topic on which I have written more than once and I get to measure myself with no strings attached.  That is the gift which my opponent\s will give to me and I to them.  To see how we stack up after having worked so hard.  Better or worse than my opponent\s, win or lose, I will be measured.  Nothing like direct feedback at the cold face!  An exciting prospect in of itself.

The plan from here?  Keep a close watch on my diet for the next few days.  Execute my pre match day diet plan.  Weigh in, victorious at that moment.  From there, get on the mats and throw down, knowing that at that moment, I AM the best I can be!