The numbers aren’t nearly as good as previous years. Considering I’ve never reached the goal in previous years on most of them that’s even more depressing!
Tracking has been more of a struggle for me than in previous years. Used a new system, Excel, which I like, rather than the physical book journal I've used before. There are definite pros and cons to each. For some reason I've had a harder time remembering to track the RAoK (Random Acts of Kindness) numbers, which was one of the easiest requirements to complete in previous years.
Haven’t been blogging most of the spring and summer, until now. Hopefully I'm back to blogging regularly for the rest of the Chinese year.
Could I have done better? To be honest, looking back, yes I could.
Yet there are successes
Kilometers have been an effortless effort for me this year (1277 km as of writing this). This number would be more if I remembered to ALWAYS put on my smart watch. Though it doesn't always register kilometers even when I do wear it. Ah, technology!
I’ve been tracking things that I believe affect my ability to stick to the plan. Some examples of things tracked are:
Growing season
Overdoing the physical exertion to the point of not being suitable to get behind the wheel of a car and drive safely is definitely over doing it!
Family members who work out of town being home
People visiting
Health problems of family members
With the new acreage there has been a lot of work to do and there will continue to be as various Permaculture systems need to be implemented and crops need to be propagated, planted, harvested, and preserved. The picture for this blog is of a variation on a willow spiling that we installed to prevent erosion of the creek crossing, which is the only access point to most of the acreage. I hope it grows. Willow spilings are a very old traditional way of preventing stream bed erosion in some parts of the world. There are already things I want to do differently when we install the spiling on the other side next year. Maybe that's also the "eye for detail" that the Sifu's keep talking about in the quest for mastery?
I’ve noticed changes in my body that are making it easier to do some things that were very difficult before. For example, in class the other night the instructor told has to stand up and shake things out after doing horse stance for a while. I heard the usual sighs of relief from class members, which I usually utter too, yet for the first time I hadn’t really noticed it had been that long. It caught me by surprise. Don’t ask me to do 5 minutes yet though please! I’ve noticed the hips gaining more range of movement and that my legs have developed a lot more muscle. Pretty sure this is why horse stance is getting easier (relatively speaking). There’s no skipping “leg day” if you do Kung Fu, that’s for sure!
Still don’t dare try to do many pushups, but my ability to hold a plank is improving, and again noticing the muscle development as a result. The shoulders don't seem to care about holding body weight but they sure don't like repetitive motion with body weight.
Finally succeeded in a reasonably decent shoulder roll… several times. So it wasn’t a fluke! Too many of those still make me dizzy though. With that I have also noticed that as I get stronger and therefore able to trust my body a little bit more the fear of some things like break falls and shoulder rolls diminishes. The fear isn't gone but it's less.
Been working on improving the flexibility and strength of my ankles because I didn’t feel stable doing low back stances with the heal of the back foot raised off the ground (you could probably push me over with a feather that way), and I have noticed that a lot of the Asian practitioners of martial arts do the stance with both feet flat on the ground. My aim is to be able to do low back stances with both feet flat on the ground for stability. I believe I am able to do a lower stance than I was able to a year ago. The ability to get back up from it using just the muscles of my legs, not resorting to help from my arms, seems to be improving too.
Balance is improving. Spinning kicks still suck though! I think they suck slightly less than they used to (instructors can probably tell better than me). Found some exercises to help me with my balance. One in particular has been challenging but I suspect it will help me with those problem kicks.
Stamina is improving. When I started Kung Fu four years ago (I think it’s been that long) I got dizzy in almost every class. Then I noticed that if my pulse got over about 135 beats per minute that’s when I started to get dizzy. Then it was around 145 to 150 beats per minute that I got dizzy. This year I can get to a pulse of 155 to 160 beats per minute before I get dizzy. That’s why you may notice me checking my watch in class; I'm checking my pulse not the time.
Same goes with breathing. Takes more to make me out of breath than it used to. It makes me wonder if I might be able to build up to running a kilometer or two after all.
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