Post 100! The First Principle, Hero of the Month

If you're a devoted reader you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything new in about 6 weeks.  The reasons are entirely personal - new job, marital separation, moving - and something in my schedule had to give way.  I don't know when or if I'll return to a 2-3 posts/week schedule, but I'll try to post as often as I can for now.

Another thing that stopped me from posting was the fact that this is the 100th entry for this blog.  I've been thinking about that milestone for a while now, and wanted to do something significant to mark it.

The problem is that I didn't have anything special to say or do.  I mean, there are topics I've been wanting to address, but nothing really special - nothing to warrant an anniversary, if you know what I mean.  I can't just post something about a recent study about salt and heart disease for my 100th post!  Or my current workout (circuits of chinups, one arm pushups, and one legged squats - surprisingly effective).  Since I couldn't think of anything momentous to cover, I wound up not writing anything at all.

Driving in this morning I realized that I could write a post about procrastination, as long as I didn't keep putting it off.  You see, the exact same psychological factors that have been keeping me from writing this post are the ones that keep many people from exercising or changing their diet.  It's all too easy for someone to want to start going to the gym or changing their eating pattern, yet get caught up in the search for the "perfect" workout or meal plan.  People read blogs, research articles, and watch videos, all from the comfort of their couch, bag of Doritos on the side table, planning their lifestyle change.

Which brings me to my friend Kathy (because apparently I have to mention Kathy at least once every 5 or so posts).  Kathy has never really been out of shape - she's never been fat or anything close to it - but a few years ago she hit a point where her youngest daughter was out of the constant-care stage (I just mean that while infants need almost constant attention, at a certain age kids are in school a lot and you don't need to spend every minute taking care of them) and she hadn't been in a structured exercise program in a while.  I'm not sure why, but she decided to take up running.

Now if Kathy were more like me she would have gone to the library and checked out half a dozen books on running, started reading a couple dozen running blogs, and logged 10-20 hours a week on YouTube watching running videos.  Instead, because she's not insane like I am, Kathy put on a pair of running shoes and a skirt and started running.

And loving it.

Within a fairly short period of time I was reading Facebook posts about the joys of the endorphin rush that accompany a 10 mile run (I get tired driving that far).  A little while later Kathy was running short races locally, and she's been turning her attention to marathons - she finished the Boston Marathon a little while ago. 

The point isn't that she's ignored training theory - she's reading a lot about running now, and putting a lot of thought into her training program, for example.  The point is that at the beginning she didn't spend six months reading and picking the perfect shoes; she put the shoes on and tried it.  Instead of possibly killing half a year prepping for something that she might not have enjoyed she just... ran. 

You know I'm no fan of running, and I have qualms about the long term health implications of marathons, but it's hard to be around Kathy and think that it's done anything but good for her health (not that she seemed unhealthy before or anything). 

I write about ways to tailor your training to very specific goals, maximizing efficiency, and stuff like that.  But designing the ultimate training program will get you far less benefit than actually doing something, even if that something isn't perfect.

The first principle of training isn't specificity of adaption, or recovery, or movement prep - it's getting off the couch.  If you're significantly overweight you might want to do something a little less taxing on your joints than jogging, but lots of chubby people have run themselves into shape anyway.  If you're out of shape - go sign up for a martial arts class.  Will the conditioning you get there be perfect?  Probably not.  Will it be significantly better than channel surfing with an occasional brushing movement to get the crumbs off your belly?  You betcha.

So in honor of Kathy, who embodies the spirit of Nike commercials everywhere, get off your ass and just do something today.  And let it be known that Kathy is my Hero of the Month.  For May.

Hero of the Month: Dan Djurdjevic

My hero this month (this is actually for January, as that's when I started writing the post) is a man I've never met and whose name I can't pronounce.  I know him only through his blog (and a single e-mail exchange of little consequence).

Mr. Djurdjevic writes a blog about karate, karate technique, and its relationship to the internal arts (which he also studies).  His blog is in a way the total opposite, or complement, to mine - it's about technique, fighting strategy, and martial arts lineages, while spending very little time on supplementary conditioning or workout tips (I don't mean to imply that he'd endorse my training methods, just that the focus of his blog is completely different from mine).

First of all, Dan's a pretty good guy, at least as far as I can tell from reading a lot of his writings.  He disagrees with a lot of people but always does so respectfully and politely.  In the one communication we shared he was very polite.  None of that makes him my hero, of course - there are plenty of nice people in the world.

Mr. Djurdjevic is my hero because he exhibits a few particular traits in his writing that I find both admirable and personally valuable.  In no particular order:

Mr. Djurdjevic is completely willing to challenge martial arts orthodoxy.  His take on hip use in kata, the meanings of various techniques, and sparring in karate are all very different from most karateka today, even very many high ranking and prominent presences.  He is polite and always thoroughly explains his disagreements, justifying his positions thoroughly.

Mr. Djurdjevic manages to analyse the internal martial arts - specifically xingyi and taiji - in a way that is completely un-mystical.  He contrasts those arts with karate based on patterns of footwork (things like which foot tends to land during strikes) and the timing of momentum shifts.  No references to supernatural powers or extrasensory perception.  He does so in a way that intrigues me, and I'm hugely skeptical of the internal arts, or at least I was.

Mr. Djurdjevic is very careful and consistent to place his analysis and writings in a very clear context.  He writes about karate as a system of civilian self defense - and he consistently writes that he's using that context.  He's not discussing cage fighting, prison guard tactics, or special forces training.  As such his criticisms are super clear and to the point - he'll often specifically mention the ways that boxing or ring fighting techniques differ from traditional karate but keep the criticism in context - a boxing technique might be appropriate for a rule-bound contest where people wear gloves in a way that it isn't for a civilian self defense scenario.

You may not agree with everything written in his blog, but I guarantee that reading through it and thinking about all of it will at the very least improve your understanding of your own karate.  I can't recommend the blog, the results of Mr. Djurdjevic's complex and contextually aware thinking about karate, highly enough.

I was going to put links to several of his posts in here, but I'd rather you just troll through his archives and see for yourself what treasures await.

Osu.

Hero of the Month: Bruce Lee

First of all, I apologize for the lapses in this series.  I have no excuse, really, other than laziness.

If you haven't heard of this month's hero, Bruce Lee...  Actually, I don't even know how to finish that statement.  Crawl out from under the rock you've been living under?  Carefully reach down and remove your head from your colon?  I'm not sure...

I will admit that many people might not understand how far reaching Lee's influence was.  Lee is probably best known for being one of the most charismatic and visually impressive martial arts movie stars in history - his popularity was extraordinary, and was partially responsible for the explosion of martial arts awareness in the US in the 70's.  He was not only popular but innovative as a film star.  His action scenes and even the structure of his films were vastly different from the work that had gone on before.  But even if he hadn't made a single movie Lee would still be an important figure in martial arts history:

1. He was one of the first to popularize cross training.  Lee studied not only different Asian martial arts but also Western boxing and fencing to try to cull out the best techniques for his own system.  He's been called the first mixed martial artist.  I can't say he was the first to do that, but he was certainly the most influential.
2. Lee was an early adoptee of weight training and cutting edge (for the time) fitness and nutrition ideas - remember, this was at a time when most people thought weightlifting would make you "musclebound" and inflexible.
3. He rigorously tested his ideas in combat, rather than accepting the old "my master taught me this way so this is the right way" ideology so prevalent in martial arts.  Lee was famous for taking on all challengers in no holds barred streetfights even while his fame grew as a movie star.

Bruce Lee was a scientist, a self-experimenter who constantly sought out new ideas in training and in fighting, tested them, and ruthlessly discarded the things that didn't work.  You can argue with some of his conclusions but you can't fault his methodology. 

There's a ton of material about Lee - movies about his life, biographies, and his own writings.  You can read inspiring stories - one after another - about his wife finding him on the floor in front of the television with a boxing match on while in a full split working a hand gripper in one hand with a book open in front of him.  He trained constantly - not jogging mile after mile, but working on his speed, his precision, and his art.  That combination of intellectual openness, work ethic, and intelligence made him a powerful force for change.

Lee's movies changed my life.  I was a kid during the kung fu explosion of the 70's, and the central theme of the martial arts film (which to me was always that with hard work and correct training a person could overcome literally anything) might never have trickled into my consciousness if Lee's films hadn't pushed so far into the public awareness.  Now what's interesting about this is that we can imagine that someone like Jackie Chan or Jet Li, had they been around earlier, might have had the same cultural impact if kung fu films hadn't been popularized by others before them.  But neither of those individuals were anywhere near as accomplished or innovative as actual martial artists.  Lee was, in that sense, an awesome talent.

And my hero.  This month.

Hero of the Month: Denise Minger

I"ve been more than lax in my "Hero of theWeek" entries, so I'm going to try to post monthly and hope I can stick to that schedule. 

Denise Minger is many things, I'm sure, but she's my hero specifically because of her blogging activities.  As you can probably tell by the name of her blog, Denise is a raw food advocate, and I'd place her roughly in the raw paleo camp - she eats foods available in paleolithic times and doesn't cook them.  Yes, that means raw meat, egg yolks, and so forth. 

Now I'm not a raw food advocate - I'm not against it, but I can't personally get over the ick factor of eating raw meat.  Would we be better off eating raw?  I'm not sure - the science I've seen on this seems mixed.  Some nutrients are more bioavailable in cooked foods, some less.  I don't do a lot of research into this area because even if I discovered that an all raw diet was healthier I just can't bring myself to do it. 

There are two overall reasons Denise is my hero.  The first (but not the one that brought her to my attention) is her overall approach to nutrition.  You can read her blog yourself to see what I mean, but she's the best kind of scientist.  She has experimented with  many diets, on herself, and made many modifications until she found a mix that works for her - makes her feel and look good.  She's very open about acknowledging that this eating style may not work forever and that she may tweak it further in the future if she finds something else to make her healthier.  So a strong research background combined with a nice lack of dogmatism - that's how you get at the truth.

The second thing I love about Denise is her posts dissecting various scientific publications, including most famously The China Study.  If you're not familiar with it, The China Study (I won't link to it out of sheet spite) is a book based on a massive amount of data taken in China (go figure) that got detailed dietary information and health status information from a huge number of people.  The book took this raw data and tortured it to make a case for veganism.  It's been torn apart by a number of people - the authors don't understand statistics, they ignore strong correlations that don't match their argument, so on and so forth.  Denise took that criticism to another level entirely.  She took the raw data (publicly available) and did a much more sophisticated analysis of it, showing how specious the book's authors conclusions were and finding some new stuff - like a very nice demonstration that wheat consumption may be pretty bad for us. 

This was a massive task, labor-wise, and not done to further a book sale or supplement company.  She did it, I assume, to satisfy her own curiosity, and shared it to edify the rest of us.  To be honest, these posts could form the core of an intro to science course at a university.  In fact, we'd all be better off if intro to science courses were all based on this kind of writing.  Until then, I highly recommend going through Denise's blog regularly.  I guarantee it will provide food for thought and help you clarify your own thinking about science and research and the dangers of just reading abstracts!