Water water everywhere...
May. 1st, 2003 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gemfyre2 litres or 8 glasses? Who knows. I figured 2 of the water bottles is 2 litres. I'm pretty sure I've drank (drunk) over that amount today, but the bottles may only be 750mL, not sure.
I decided I'd try for 8 glasses instead. But the glass I'm using is one of our really big cups. I think they hold around 400mL and I'm on my 5th or 6th one.
My kidneys saw the flood of water coming their way and I'm sure they screamed "HOLY SHIZNIT!!" and I've been dashing to the toilet every 10 minutes.
On the upside all I've eaten today was a bowl of Just Right for breakfast (with a glass of juice), a toasted foccacia with garlic mayo, ham, semi-dried tomato, mushroom and jarlsberg for lunch and a small Cadbury easter egg. Hopefully all I'll eat for the rest of the day is dinner (apricot chicken) and maybe another small bit of chocolate for dessert.
I decided I'd try for 8 glasses instead. But the glass I'm using is one of our really big cups. I think they hold around 400mL and I'm on my 5th or 6th one.
My kidneys saw the flood of water coming their way and I'm sure they screamed "HOLY SHIZNIT!!" and I've been dashing to the toilet every 10 minutes.
On the upside all I've eaten today was a bowl of Just Right for breakfast (with a glass of juice), a toasted foccacia with garlic mayo, ham, semi-dried tomato, mushroom and jarlsberg for lunch and a small Cadbury easter egg. Hopefully all I'll eat for the rest of the day is dinner (apricot chicken) and maybe another small bit of chocolate for dessert.
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Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-01 06:57 pm (UTC)As for your personal body weight, I believe you would still be thin even if you 'let go' a bit. You have a high metabolism and it's associated with your hyperactivity as well. I too have/had a high metabolism and at 19 I was rather strict on my diet even though I had absolutely no problems with weight (unlike now). I too used to feel guilty with a bucket of chips (hot chips being a real weakness of mine).
I still think you should do weights and increase muscle mass as a compliment to your martial arts training which brings you flexibility and cardiovascular fitness. it would look awesome with a lean physique.
I'll put a wager that your proirities change a bit when you enter your early to mid twenties. Your current exercise regime reminds me very much of my own in my late teens.
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-01 07:00 pm (UTC)wait till he discovers you're actually 21...
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-01 07:03 pm (UTC)Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-01 07:01 pm (UTC)Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-01 11:21 pm (UTC)I also do 75-100 crunches for each of the four points in the stomach. Thats upper (75-100), lower (75-100 leg raises), and each side (75-100 side crunches). As a result of all these crunches, I've finally gained the stomach strength to do the kip-up, and can take a moderately hard blow to the stomach (stomach muscles r bodies natural armor). I'm very happy about this.
However, I don't want to increase my muscle mass any further, because the muscle you build with weight training is the wrong sort of muscle. I want muscle made out of roughly 60-75% white mucle fibre based and only 25-40 red muscle fibre based. Red muscle fiber is the bulk muscle, used for strength but incapable of sustained use. White muscle fibre is speed, endurance and flexibility. The style of Kung Fu I do is all about speed, endurance and flexibility, and believe me when I say that if you hit someone the correct way in my style, they go down harder and hurtier than if you simply whacked them on the jaw with a lot of muscle.
Plus its a more efficient way of doing it too.
AND it means I also have the ability to run away really quite well and fast, and to keep running for a very long time.
That's the no 1 important lesson in any martial art.
So basically, if I just wanted to look impressive, I'd do lots of weight training.
However, I want to be really really good at my chosen m
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-02 01:50 am (UTC)I agree entirely with your synopsis of muscle fibres. You've read well and certainly know your stuff. But I was thinking 'red twitch slow' muscle fibre for the look, the look, the look!!! As you get older you'll realize that you'll never use your martial arts skills. You just kinda fantasise about the one time you may need them but even that's in vain to an extent because we really are just wanting to show off a little, impress people and have them be in awe of us. Ultimately, there is little to display. However, doing some weights illustrates someone's physical attributes in a way that it is always obvious. The person is muscular, looks amazing in clothes, is fit, agile and flexible.
In a civilised country like Australia there are very few, if no, occasions when our martial arts skills come to use and if they do become important due to an attack of sorts, especially in full blown adulthood then one really ought to have a gun or a weapon.
This ultimately leads to the conclusion that the true benefit of doing martial arts rests more with the discipline and philosophy of self mastery that comes with the martial arts and the pride of having such a skill.
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-02 01:51 am (UTC)Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-03 02:01 am (UTC)If you want to make a point, thats fine, do it with your arguments, I don't mind. Leave your age out of it.
Now, as for your point:
If I'm going to do something, then fuck doing it just to look amazing. I want to do it well. Looking amazing fits into a second category of mine, stuff I call "flippy shit" where I learn it just to show off and so I can feel good that I can do it. The kip up that I tried so hard to do fits into this category. This category is a lower category than wanting to do Choy Lay Fut well, and I'd NEVER consider "flippy shit" as being part of a martial art.
I love Kung Fu. It's fucking amazing. It's a life style, not just a martial art. Every time I do it, I learn something new, about myself, about my mind, about my body, and how they all combine together. And these revelations only happen when I put my heart and soul into it. Whenever I don't train hard, or I have stiff muscles, or something's not right, this does not happen. I come away feeling unfulfilled. If I build the wrong sort of muscle, it will do nothing but get in the way.
Btw, not to knock your conclusion, I like your conclusion. Its logical. It ties into your previous arguments.
I just don't agree with it. But nobody ever accused me of logic. Feeling unfulfilled is not a logical reason to want to do something well. Its an emotional reaction more than anything else. It doesn't, for me, make it any less of a valid one.
One other reason I dislike the idea of making myself look amazing just so I can look amazing, is that I'd prefer people think me incapable of the things I can do. As I am now, I have muscles n stuff, but I'm still pretty small, and look completely harmless (my "16 yr old innocent" face helps here). Nobody will ever take me seriously as a threat.
The smartest thing you can do is hide your abilities.
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-04 07:44 pm (UTC)Firstly, Ant, I know you're older than me and all, but please leave all the patronising "as you get older" stuff at home. Regardless of how you intended that to come across, perhaps you meant it to be matured wisdom or something, but coming from someone I've met once or twice at a party, talked to online, and never really revealed any real thoughts or feelings to, it comes off as hugely patronising. I'm not an idiot, I'm not stupider than you because I'm younger than you, and you don't get some kind of magical +1 to your wisdom stat every time you have a birthday. The phrase "as you get older" implies all of these things are naturally true.
If you want to make a point, thats fine, do it with your arguments, I don't mind. Leave your age out of it.
If it came across as patronising I apologize. I've always thought of youth as an asset, a measure of the amount of possibility still waiting to come to fruition and something almost to envy. When people used to tell me "when I get older" I used to take it as praise. Praise that I am young enough to make mistakes and praise that they are acknowledging the potential that still lies before me. Frankly, there is no substitute for experience with some things and even though we don't get a +1 tick for wisdom when our birthday comes around we get a +1 tick every day that we experience something new or a change or a life trial of some type. Naturally, as we get older we have amassed a greater sum of experiences and life lessons. Despite this view, at no stage did my views represent this notion of 'my age'.
My contribution to your thoughts about martial arts and exercise have everything to do with my common interest in those areas when I was younger and still, to an extent, to this day. They have nothing to do with my age. If you were 40 I would still share these thoughts with you .
You are not an idiot and you are not 'stupider' than me. I didn't even allude to these things. In fact I consider you to be very bright. Enough so that I would spend time sharing thoughts and information that I think you might find useful. However, there is no substitution for experience particularly the kind of experience that comes with knowing the certain phases and changes in preferences may go through as they get older. Some things are universal and don't require a deep knowledge of an individual. They are still significant enough to discuss because they may very well be true across many grades and types of people. I haven't said that I think "this and that WILL happen to you as you get older" but more that I think 'this and that MIGHT happen' because of my own experiences and the what I've witnessed in my friends as they got older.
For example: If I were to tell you that by 28 you might have given away your martial arts and become preoccupied with family life and your career, perhaps gained 10 or 15 kilos and taken up darts or lawn bowls instead as your interests change with the chanigng landscape of your mind and your priorities? Is this invalid and is age not some sort of measure on the accumulation and aggregation of experience? Why does it have to be demeaning? Im not passing character judgement, Im passing information.
So in essence, Im just sharing with you my path and changing shape of my perspective as I got older because when I was 20/21 I was doing the same thing as you exercise wise.
I hope this has come across the right way, this time.
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-04 09:37 pm (UTC)and
Im not passing character judgement, Im passing information.
Your wording previously did not get this across sufficiently, not from my point of view anyway, which is why I felt obliged to bring it to your attention. I'm glad you weren't thinking that way.
I don't know if my interests will change as they get older or not, but I know that my obsession with body image will. In reality, I'm doing it because I know these things will change, and I want to be able to say to myself whenever I see a young sprightly lean fella on tv: Yep, I did that too.
I don't think that I'll allow myself to get overweight when I get older, because I am far too aware of the negative health impacts of too much weight, but I do think I'll relax my highly stringent standards a little. As it is, what I'm actually aiming for right now is just skirting the lower end of the the healthy body weight percentage. To make a six pack visible, you need 8-9% body weight. It sucks, but that's guys for ya, we put so much god damn weight around the abdomen so easily. Stupid body.
As for my martial arts. I don't know. I love them so much, I want to learn more that complement the one I've taken up, and the one I've taken up can never be truly mastered, because its not just thousands of years old, its constantly being revised by the masters in China and those changes are being conveyed to us. Its a living martial art, not a traditional one. Not all martial arts are like that.
I don't think I'll ever take up lawn bowls. Not unless my AADHD (first A stands for "adult") goes away, and I don't really think it will, not completely. Lawn bowls would be so boring! :P
I don't know about family life at 28, that's something I don't really think will happen, mainly because I don't really want it to happen. I mean, me, with a child? Wtf? Since when did the world get that fucked up that it'd let me breed? I certainly don't wanna do it to the world.
And I don't want to pass on my genetic fuckup to my kids. Not unless they come up with a really good way of treating adhd. It'd be best just not to have kids, and let at least one genetic breakdown not be passed on into future populations.
One of the reasons the human race is fucking up so badly nowadays is that all the genetic defects are not dying out as nature intended. This is good and bad, its good because they're still human and have a right to live, its bad because they often have children and pass on the bad gene. Even if it doesn't immediately show up in teh child, who could be a perfect, they will still have that bad gene that could show up in THEIR children, and so on.
They need to hurry up and learn to fix some of the worst genetic defects. I'm not advocating making perfect babies, because that's that will mark the end of human physical evolution (thats bad, things that don't evolve, go extinct), just stopping some of the nastier genetic diseases that do nothing but cause misery and suffering.
I certainly believe stupidity is a gene. It would explain so much. :)
Anyway, I'm glad this all got cleared up.
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-06 05:59 pm (UTC)As for ADHD, I don't think it's a genetic defect. One who has ADHD has many strengths and advantages over people who don't have it. It depends on what degree a person has it but its very common. For example, someone with ADHD can focus intensely on a matter and generally, people with ADHD are very intelligent and brilliant at absorbing new information.
I think ADHD is just another way of experiencing life rather than an inherently damaging condition. In fact, it isn't a clear cut condition as you probably know, it's just degrees of certain neurochemicals in the brain.
Re: This is kinda long, but I've got some helpful stuff to say.
Date: 2003-05-07 01:50 pm (UTC)Drugs like dexamphetamines mainly work by increasing the blood flow to the areas of the brain which you need to concentrate.
Um. No, we can't focus. That's why its called Attention Deficiency Hyperactivity Disorder. Heh. If were all druggied up, suuure. We can focus fine. One, well, anything. At all. This includes the pattern of veins in leaves. For hours.
Its a blessing and a curse. But in children, its a curse.