DarthPenguin

As a Bills fan the last couple of weeks have been interesting! On the plus side it is great to see us having a genuine running threat now plus loads of targets at receiver for Allen. On the flipside : we really need to get the injured guys back in the secondary soon. Would love a rematch of last night for the Superbowl though

yeah will be interesting to see. He has always been great at extracting the most possible from undervalued players which might mesh nicely with recruiting. Would be interesting to see him win an NCAA title though. Much as he can be objectionable it just seems odd to me how he basically got dumped from the NFL and no-one would think of hiring him. Can you imaging that happening to Phil Jackson after he left the Lakers? I understand that he is a little difficult but he historically does win!

you have just reminded me that i need to get back to these! I stopped part way through Oathbringer for no particular reason and didn't get around to picking it up again! Currently i am reading through the latest Raymond Feist novel. I recently read the Firemane saga and was pleasantly surprised by them ( a lot better than the final riftwar books which seemed a bit phoned in to me). Latest one has started ok so far.

I started adding in Bulgarian split squats too myself and i think they are really useful. Personally, if you are getting sore knees i would try to explore why. Assuming you aren't overloading the movement it might be a sign of some disfunction that you need to correct which could lead to injury at some other point if not addressed. For me i felt quite a lack of stability when starting them so started absurdly light but once you get the form down you can progress quickly

The other point that might be worth thinking of is sometimes it is easier to make changes gradually and let them bed in rather than adopt a large amount of changes at once. A complete change to routines etc. for many people can lead to easily 'falling off the diet wagon'. As an example, i needed to reduce my sugar intake (which genuinely wasn't too high) since when i have more than a certain amount it causes gout to flare up in one of my big toe joints (legacy of a foot injury that i didn't get dealt with properly from training!). What i did to start with was replaced any sodas etc. with diet ones to gradually wean off any sugar, then replaced the diet sodas with diluting concentrated juices, then moved from them to sugar free diluted juices, then made them more and more dilute so that they are in essence flavoured water. Also just stopped buying any sugary desserts etc. For me it is easier to just totally avoid something than have it occasionally in moderation. Doing that allowed me to have the odd amount of sugar when appropriate (birthday cakes etc.) without any worry - since it seems to be a build up over time in my system that causes the issue. I would echo Nidan_melbournes suggestion of speaking to a dietician / nutritionist, though with the addendum of trying to find one who works with people exercising more often, and develop a long term plan to shift towards.

I would echo the other posters comments but also mention that trying to self teach, without significant prior experience, is likely to result in learning faulty movement patterns and having a lot of hassle down the line trying to fix the faulty muscle memory. Once someone has a lot of experience and has developed a lot of awareness of exactly what their body is doing when they perform a technique then yes you can probably self teach to an extent e.g. bushido_man has his 5th dan in TKD : he can probably relatively easily pick up variants of techniques from karate etc. and seek to add it to his technique repository by making some adjustments. Personally, i would suggest googling all the clubs in the styles you like the look of that are near you and just popping along for a trial lesson and see what you actually like when you try it for real. Plenty of times things are different in practice to what they seem like when viewing from a distance

Congratulations! You going to try and push on now for your 5th? Fantastic achievement though

Fantastic, well done!

I wonder if that is a difference between different shotokan classes / clubs. At mine we start the gohon kumite at white belt and they do it in their grading too. My instructor lets people do free sparring straight away too (though obviously it is a lot gentler for the lower grades and usually the white belts etc will be paired up with someone a lot more experienced).

Tuesday 3 December Lifting session Quite a compressed session as needed to get it done in 30min. supersetted every exercise with a set of deadlifts and took max 1min rest between sets of the superset. Managed to get it all done though which was good! Trap bar deadlift 70kg x 5 90kg x 3 110kg x 2 120kg x 1 130kg x 3 130kg x 3 130kg x 3 130kg x 3 130kg x 3 130kg x 3 130kg x 5 Seated overhead press 20kg x 5 30kg x 5 42.5kg x 5 47.5kg x 5 55kg x 6 Cable chest flye (weight is per hand) 25kg x 11 25kg x 11 25kg x 11 Overhead cable triceps extension 30kg x 15 30kg x 15 30kg x 15

Monday 2 December Karate Session Usual warm ups to start the class followed by grade required kihon. Went onto kata working bassai dai first and then backwards through the Heian's until Heian shodan. Did a couple of rounds of jiyu ippon kumite at the end

Saturday 30th November BJJ Session relatively straightforward session . Worked on scissor sweep from closed guard and some options when people defend it. Nothing much to write about tbh though was a good session to get more reps in

Friday 29 November lifting session squat 20kg x 5 40kg x 5 60kg x 5 75kg x 3 90kg x 3 90kg x 3 90kg x 3 90kg x 3 90kg x 3 90kg x 3 90kg x 8 Bench press 20kg x 5 40kg x 5 62.5kg x 5 70kg x 5 80kg x 6 Cable seated row 55kg x 12 55kg x 12 55kg x 12 55kg x 12 55kg x 12 OVerhead triceps extension 25kg x 20 25kg x 20 KB jefferson curl 8kg x 8 8kg x 8 8kg x 8 KB seated good morning 8kg x 8 8kg x 8 8kg x 8

Tuesday 26 November Lifting Session Seated overhead press 20kg x 5 30kg x 5 40kg x 5 55kg x 3 55kg x 3 55kg x 3 55kg x 3 55kg x 3 55kg x 3 55kg x 8 Trap bar deadlift 70kg x 5 80kg x 3 90kg x 3 97.5kg x 5 112.5kg x 5 127.5kg x 8 Cable lateral raise (superset with seated row : reps are total of L + R) 10kg x 20 10kg x 20 10kg x 20 10kg x 20 10kg x 20 Seated row 50kg x 12 50kg x 12 50kg x 12 50kg x 12 50kg x 12

Best of luck (not that you will need it!) for the 5th Dan test At your school will that officially grant you the 'Master' honourific or is it 6th Dan for yours? I look forward to hearing about it