I didn’t venture to look around Mt. Vernon because I was pretty tired at this point and wanted to make sure I had enough left to bike back. Plus the last 1-1.5 miles were a good (bad, that is) climb (while the rest of the trail is pretty flat with some rolling hills). I’m glad I didn’t know about this last mile or so (never mind that it is called Mount Vernon!)  because as they say blessed are the ignorant.

I find it very difficult to stay low and not go up and down when moving to the side and keeping my stance and posture steady. Worse, I end up wobbling. It is hard to generate power when the feet and most of the lower body stay put. This is done by moving the hips, sharply, but just enough to start the move. The hips have to stop moving (e.g., snap back) with the end of each technique (punch or block) and in my case they keep going (vibrating) with the end result that the little power I’ve mastered is not concentrated but dissipated at the end.

I checked my boxing cross punch and this extra movement still happens but to a much lesser extent: as I rotate the hip into the punch I can’t lock the hip in place at impact. It’s a tiny movement that I haven’t noticed before until I started doing this kata.

Luca Valdesi who has numerous European and world titles performs Tekki here and looks quite impressive.

This morning was the Nation’s Triathlon with the bike route on Canal Road and alongside the trail for a few miles. But I left the house late and missed the action (though you can’t really see the road from the trail but I could have gone to watch alongside the route). Not surprisingly I didn’t get passed by many aerodynamicly-equipped high-speed cyclists today.

Virginia viewed from the Georgetown Waterfront

Along the Capital Crescent Trail

Capital Crescent Trail

My bike and (not my) car

Downtown Bethesda

(It would have been nice if I was actually facing the monument on the last photo.)

View of the Air Force Memorial and Reagan National Airport from Haines Point

Washington Monument from Independence Ave SW

Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin

I started with a 12-10-8-6-12 repetition sets that were recommended on the Body for Life website and this has so far worked for me to increase the weight: I do the 6 (or 3-4) reps with the heaviest weight I could manage sacrificing form and then, the last 12, at a comfortable weight but going for speed.

In July, I started doing squats and deadlifts and incorporating exercises from The New Rules for Lifting for Women (Lou Schuler).

The weight that I am able to lift is still quite pathetic but I couldn’t even imagine before that I could do the ass-to-ground squat with a barbell! The deadlift is the hardest for me, I think because my lower back is weak.

These are my stats at 6 reps in pounds:

• Squat: 65
• Deadlift: 40
• Bench press: 45
• Push press: 30

Based on the ExRx.net calculator, my 1RM (one-repetition maximum) are 75 (squat), 46 (deadlift), 52 (bench press), and 35 (push press). These place me at (much) below the performance standards for a novice (doing the exercises regularly for 3-9 months). A novice adult woman at about my weight is expected to do 1RM squat of 110, deadlift of 137, bench press of 82, and push press of 55. My numbers are closer to the standards for an un-trained person which might make sense as I have been doing them for barely 3 months now.

I’ll keep working on this and post the hopefully improved stats next month.

The class was fun! (I can’t say that for a typical karate practice which has a very rigid structure.) We were doing intervals, rounds of 3 minutes, I think, which is great for conditioning. Plus I was actually hitting a target. At the dojo it’s a big class and usually only the brown and black belts work with punching pads and what-not when the class is split by rank and the rest of us are toiling over katas and sanbon kumite (3-step sparring) (ok, it’s not that bad, I’m just impatient).

I’m prepping for my brown belt test in a few months and need to be able to hit a target effectively, so I think the kickboxing stuff would be useful and can hopefully supplement my karate training. I looked at another gym that offers MMA and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu but that club seemed geared towards people prepping for MMA tournaments. And after it turned out that I couldn’t do additional training at another karate club, LA Boxing seemed the best option that fits my schedule.

Today, the kickboxing instructor noticed that I didn’t have boxing gloves on, just the wraps, and told me not to forget them next time and I was like “I need to condition my hands” ha-ha. No seriously, I do.

On a more philosophical note, I don’t think I could accept the notion that one person has the ultimate knowledge and I could unquestionably entrust that person with all my learning. I can understand to some extent the importance of a tradition of passing on knowledge to (select) dedicated students but I don’t think that style of teaching would work for me. In any case, if someone asks me to train at their dojo only I can’t deceive them and say “I’m only training here” while training some place else.