tubby

before the colonoscopy that found the cancer i'd never been to a hospital apart from the birth of my kids. now I am such a regular it's like walking into the bar in cheers, everybody knows my name and I bump into various medical staff all over the place who have helped me. think of me as the perfect case for insurance , the last person you'd expect to come down with this. Finished up chemo on Friday , back to training on Tuesday. fatigue and head spins ensued, that was the day for the painful leg exercises too. felt like a noodle afterwards but am getting better each day.

15 rounds is a pretty high standard you are setting to get back to. here's hoping it's a clear path for you to get there. As for not making it through class, you are doing better than you were yesterday, so it's all progress

Just getting chemo pump out aftet last session. Told it will take up to 4 months for all cells to regenerate now but it will all be slow and steady improvement rather than up for 1.5 weeks then crash. CT scan in 3 weeks tho ugh to check if things have spread. Anxiety awaits

since I've mentioned my health battle in a couple of threads, though I'd put it here. not sure if i am after encouragement for the down days, or just to get it off my chest. Last year I was sitting with another older guy, the only ones above about 25, in a poomsae tournament commenting on the aches and pains of doing TKD into middle age, but it was much better than just getting fat and waiting to die. A couple of weeks later I got a diagnosis of bowel cancer, which surprised even the doctors based on the symptoms and my age at 42. After seeing several doctors and scans, it was decided the way forward was oral chemo tablets and radiation first, then to cut out the affected bowels. This gave me a 3 month period of radiation and recovery before surgery, and in that time I decided to enter sparring and poomsae again. I struggled from about 3 weeks of treatment on, I could exercise for about 45 minutes before a fog hit. Come tournament time I was looking ok in warm ups.but a bit slow in the head, and got flogged, or rather kicked in the head quite a bit. during sparring i can recall my thought process, theres a kick coming i should move, I really should move, I should have moved.I probably would have lost to this opponent anyway, but I am not normally completely useless as I was that day I am still not entirely sure I did the right poomsae later on but think I went ok. some may wonder if I should have competed, i was told there would be other tournaments but there were many things the surgeon couldn't know until he cut me open and it was very possible there would be no more for me after that. I kept training up until the days before surgery, and in fact 2 weeks after the end of radiation I felt better than i had in a ages. Surgery was technically perfect and I was recovering ok. Then the physio was pushing for more exercise. This combined with a window facing the sun and tramadol (painkiller whos known effects are sweating) and my natural sweatiness made for quite temperature rises and for me to feel really awful. Not pain as suck just really yuck. I am not exaggerating when I say those were the darkest days I've had. finally I got home and tried walking, got 3 houses up the street and wasn't sure I could get home the brochuers said you could be playing tennis 7-8 weeks after surgery. I didn't believe them but 7 weeks later I was back at training. Gently at first, but then found I could kick full range but had to temper power, my stomach still had a few holes in it as well as a stoma. I had been doing poomsae at home for a couple of weeks, though it would have made tai chi in a retirement home look dynamic. then started the heavy chemo, hoping to clean up any particles that got away. Like all treatments his built up fatigue over time but overall it wasn't as bad as suggested. I worked most days around treatment, and to be honest felt like a fraud in the chemo ward, everyone looked a lot sicker than I felt, and on the bad days i felt people wondering what's this guys excuse for stopping half way up a set of stairs. Now I'm close to the end of chemo, one more day of the pump i take home each cycle, then 1 more treatment in 2 weeks. Fatigue is hitting hard but I am trying to stay on top of it. My home sessions usually consist of warm up, then 15 1 minute rounds of skipping, shadowboxing or bag work interspersed with 1 minute of stretching. Of Late I've struggled there and after about 10 rounds it's much slower work. rather than pushing for that minute I'll recvert to slower exercises, mainly working on my side kick - the double kick and the walk-in front leg side kick from koryo, and the side kick from taebek. This is where I came away feeling i had done a good bad workout. Comparing to where I was 4 months ago, leg pressing 450kg, this was very weak. But I pushed my current boundaries and felt I'd improved a technical point that would limit my competition poomsae with my side kick. I sat on the floor for half an hour in front of the fan before I had the strength to leave the garage, but felt very calm and happy when i did. the journey is far from over. I was in emergency last week when i couldn't handle any more pain from dvt/blood clots. 3 doctors and the clinical nurse from oncology had said it wasn't clots over the past 2 weeks but it was. now my final surgery for next month is off until at least june as I'm on a heavy course of blood thinners. That was a major blow, that milestone of final surgery was something I was counting on, and now will probably mean missing next dan grading scheduled for around that time but a day later I realised my stoma isn't the issue (unless I want to show my scarred dad bod off at the beach) but recover from the effects of chemo are the major issue and I am enjoying my training again, both in class and at home. after all that it's just regular blood test and scans to see if it comes back. that and hug my wife and sons every day. I've swapped work about to coach my kids under 5's aussie rules football team, and am doing the courses for that, and will probably sign up for WTF sparring ref and coaching courses. So despite all the aches and pains, training through tkd really has proved better than just waiting around to die

The details aside, anyone who changes important details of motion (you must train kids) gets supoort to pass it without putting for open discussion and vote is a dangerous person to any committee. Good luck with youbpath, whichever one you choose. Sounds like you have agood student base who understand and appreciate what you offer them

What does the doc say about fighting through fatigue ve resting when your body says? Not trying tk say either way is best but often you have to fight these things smart as well as hard

I'm impressed that an organisation has grown to that size focused on adults, that shows the value people place on training that often just isn't possible in mixed classes with younger kids. I gather the reason for wanting to expand is money, but is it possibly queries from the current adult students about their children joining? Have they tabled plans for how they would handle this? Will they be having kids only classes? Are the instructors in a position to take on more classes or will you have to promote new instructors? and book more time in shared facilities. If they are combined classes that may deter a lot of current students as, in my limited experience, you are offering a significant product in the market without the kids.

my 2 kids wipe me out all the time, a class full of other peoples kids must be hell sometimes its hard to wan to do physical stuff but be unable, but keep at it, you'll get there sooner than you think

they are meant to be hard to help distinguish the top level competitors where they are so close to perfect already. and to look nice to casual observers with the threat of karate in the Olympics. Also made extra hard by the awful dissemination of information about them. Nothing on KKW site, I found some links on the KTU site and dribbles over facebook. Just hoping Ik Pil Kang is working on another great book for these

https://youtu.be/_4y50bJvvMM

I doubt my condition is 100* as bad, it's more the case of good days then really bad ones. I hope you can find the balance to help you get through. For a lot of the time my poomsae had the appearance of a very fragile person doing tai chi, but it all helped when I was tired, sore and stiff. best wishes on your battle

Thanks everyone. Im doing ok now, was quite happy to.pull a hamstring last week, it means my stitchd up bowels arent the weak link now. I skip one session every other week the day after chemo, apart from that and one day absolutely flattened in bed im in the very lucky group. Its very confronting to see others in the chemo rooms who cant get in under their own steam and they arent all old. The new poomsae are very flashy. In the two for the 30-50 age group's theres things like back hook kick into jump back hook kick and roundhouse into spin jump rh. All seems to be geared to that showy side of tkd but ill give them a go and expect them to be fun to try if KKW ever documents them properly

I went through this during medical treatment this year and didn't want to sit out. I was under par and could only really manage about 45 minutes before a heavy fog came down. However, exercise was important to outcomes, mentally and physically. I worked around it in a few ways - I took on more an assistant instructor role. I did my own warmup and just stretched when others were doing more cardio stuff. I also found when training a home I got 45 minutes out of myself pretty much whatever I was doing so I went for skipping rope and bag work in intervals. It's also important to know limitations. I went in a tournament, and if you watched me warm up you'd think I was fine, but mentally I was slow. I can recall clearly thinking there's a kick coming at my head, I should move. I really should move. Yep, I should have moved. listen to your doctor and your body.

2016 got kind of waylaid by cancer, surgery and radiation/chemo, though I managed to compete in the midst of that. so my goal for this year is to finish all that crap about March and get back into shape and show my kids dad ain't done yet. I was pretty happy with where I was right up until the surgery, I want to build on that level. I was aiming to compete in poomsae in the open groups and hopefully qualify for higher tournaments, KKW adding some new and more acrobatic patterns for us middle aged folks means I need to work harder on that. Part of all this is the next grading, not to get the grade but to do the grading and come out knowing I'm back in the game by my standards.

can't say I have anything to add in terms of how you should do it but the more I think about it the better this exercise sounds as part of training. Maybe not to practice the kata you come up with, but to put real thought into how one should be constructed.

apology not needed but appreciated. It is a comfort at this time that I didn't cause extra issues by delaying. My outlook is good but I can imagine the turmoil if it was worse and I was thinking if only I'd done something sooner.

this may well be the case, in my case it turned out to be cancer. Even after diagnosis the doctors said we did not expect to find this. the chances are low, very very low, but not 0. If its that sudden and no obvious cause, please go an discuss with a doctor.

Definitley see a doctor. Might be nothing much but i went through similar symtpoms this year at 42. Very glad im not looking back at a worse outlook by failing to get things looked at.

the local branch closes for a week over Christmas (that's also the long summer holidays here), but you can go to other nearby branches during that time if you want, they close only a week around christmas/NY

To me its like always addressing the referee as sir, there is no religious connotation at all, merely respect for the role. Of course some may argue that the referee is the devil when their team loses. I have seen it come up a couple of times in kung fu schools where bowing upon entry is to a Buddhist shrine, and they have never had any issue with students who prefer not to do that, but they still bow to instructors and at the start/end of class.

I'm sweaty enough that my belt is damp most classes, I just hang it out in the shade each week after washing the doboks. Breeze and some UV is enough to keep it clean.

I've got an SMAI branded free standing bag, very similar to the wavemaster. I find it fine for my needs, it is a lot softer to hit than the heavy bag, it moves about a bit but not excessively. I have the base filled with water only (some recommend sand and water to get as much weight in there as possible) but I wouldn't call it portable. I certainly wouldn't want to be moving it away to a cupboard each time. I have it in the middle of a car spot in a double garage, I move all the other stuff we keep in there away from the bag to make space to train as moving the bag is quite difficult. You could get away with it if you put less weight in maybe, but that would make it less stable, or could empty the base each time which would be time consuming and messy.

socksey - how did you raise the tops? something you did yourself or took in for alterations?

I'm also a heavy sweater and find just as much a problem is the way they seem to catch on the outside of my thigh. I'm not the lean body type most doboks seem made for so I wear a 190 size despite being 180 tall. I also wear them a bit low on the hips so the crotch area is a bit low and the pants catch a bit on my legs. apart from always tucking the sides up under the drawstring all the time are there better ways or better cuts? Has anyone just stitched the pants to ride a little higher? On the plus side, all that sweat makes the uniform give a much more satisfying snap noise.

the concept from cycling and running of junk miles comes in here. you can become a good cyclist in 10 hours a week if you are following a program. On the other hand you can toddle along for 10 hours a week and not improve at all. How are you deciding how to train in those extra hours? repeating a mistake or focusing on a weakness or technique, improving strength, flexibility or cardio.