I am officially, a Certified Muay Thai Instructor.
What’s Muay Thai? Some people call it Thai Kickboxing, some in the know call it Muay Lao as it arguably originated in Laos (though it’s the national sport of Thailand and is promoted heavily in Thailand because they gots the cash to do so). Think boxing, but being able to use kicks, knees, and elbows as well. It’s the “art of eight limbs”. Two hands, two elbows, two knees, and two legs (Shins, actually. We don’t kick with feet unless we want broken footsies).
It’s an awesome and highly useful fighting style and I love it. But something about the whole “Certified Muay Thai Instructor” thing kinda bothers me.
See, I’ve been training casually with Muay Thai for the better part of a year or so. I know all the strikes, I’ve got power and speed, have had plenty of sparring time, and I can certainly teach someone the art. That’s not the issue. The issue is, I wasn’t a “Certified Muay Thai Instructor” one day, though I had all this knowledge. Then the next day I completed a 6-hour “official” Muay Thai Cert Program, and the day after that, I’m a certified Muay Thai Instructor.
Honestly, I was a Muay Thai Instructor the day before the 6-hour cert class. The difference now is, I have a piece of paper that says so.
Kind of like a college diploma, only the Muay Thai certification didn’t cost 40K a year, took only a few hours, and I have a decent chance of working in this field successfully. Contrast that with someone’s opportunities after blowing $100K+ and four years of their life to become a 13th Century Byzantine Architectural History expert and I think it works out okay.
So … here’s something that may or may not help – advice from a newly minted Black Belt who charged through 1000 push-ups and kicked ass for nearly 5 hours on that BB test. :-)
How to learn to love working out all over again.
The key thing here is variety. People get attached to workouts like they get attached to sneakers. Eventually, they’re beat up, you know them well, they fit you perfectly, and they hold all those wonderful memories of where you walked and what you did. They’re YOUR comfy sneakers.
That sucks. Workouts should be like new sneakers. Exciting. Unspoiled. Uncomfortable. Miles still to walk, run, and play and memories yet to be made. Break them in, use them for adventure, then toss ‘em and do it again! That’s what you want! They still need to be your size, yes. They still need to be your style. We don’t need a bunch of 40-something-old male gun-bloggers walking around in hot pink leopard-patterned pumps, now do we?
Ick.
Anyway …
So here are some ideas …
1) Pick up a sport/hobby. Racquetball/Squash is a good one (Squash, in spite of the stupid name and stupider goggles you have to wear so you don’t lose an eye, can make grown men cry because of how hard a workout it is for you). Squash is a HARDCORE workout, and it’s competitive and fun. Tennis is a winner as well. It’s fun, it’s social, and you can get going for not much more than a half-decent $60 racquet and a place to play. Cheaper than golf, with all the country-club appeal. You’d be surprised at how awesome your cardio gets by running sprints side to side on a court for an hour and a half twice a week. There’s usually a membership fee involved unless you know a tennis player who likes to play outside for free – ask people, you’d be surprised at how many people like to play.
2) HEAVY BAG! It’s an excellent workout as long as you have a plan. You can get a decent bag for under $100 (don’t get anything more than a 70lb bag if you’re just starting), pick up a round timer at Amazon for $30 or $40, and a pair of decent gloves, and you have an instant, and very variable workout machine. It’s a bit of an investment to start, but the variation you can get out of a bag, timer, and gloves is SO worth it.
The great thing about a bag and a timer is that you can ALWAYS vary your workout, but make sure you always have structure. “Go hit the bag for 15 minutes” sounds like fun, but it sucks and after awhile you’ll have a pretty bag hanging in the basement that nobody uses. Structure – jabs for a round, jabs/crosses, knees, elbows, kicks. Do a workout with just your right hand, then one with just your left. Drop down and do pushups/crunches in between rounds, etc. etc.
Pick up a cheesy “how-to” boxing DVD just so you don’t injure yourself punching the bag incorrectly, and off you go. The other excellent thing about a bag and a timer is you can set yourself up with a 30-minute workout that’ll darn near kill you and you know it’s going to last 30 minutes. Let that timer go, and try to get through it. Start with a 15-minute session (one minute rounds with 30 second breaks or something similar), and work your way up to full 2-minute rounds with a 20-second break in between.
And one more thing …
If you have someone you can work out with regularly, split the cost for a pair of these. They’re great for kicking, punching, elbowing, and knees. You can easily get a full-body workout and the best part is you can go through a few rounds, then switch pad & gloves and have your partner do the same. Believe me, just holding those pads while someone’s wailing away for 10 minutes is a crazy good workout in it’s own right.
3) Learn to love failure.
In many of my workouts, I push myself to failure. So there’s no “25 pushups” here and “25 pushups” there. No. Keep going. When you’re dead and you can’t get another one in, do another one anyway until your arms buckle and your face hits the floor. Don’t even count. It’s hard to get used to, but it gets you a real good workout. Also – don’t just use weights. Use cinderblocks or patio blocks (I keep a couple of these in my home dojo for workouts), your kids (they like when you use them for bench presses!), whatever. Strangely shaped/textured items build forearm strength, offer a very varied workout, and you can walk into work on Monday morning and tell people you were doing sit-ups with a cinderblock for fun over the weekend. Sometimes I’ll go juggle three of these suckers for five minutes at a time. That’ll turn your arms into noodles, it’s fun, and a nice little way to throw something different into your workout once in awhile.
And if you’re a runner, change it up. Run hill sprints instead of a flat jog. Is there a hiking trail nearby? Well … run up it! It’ll come darn near killing you, but it gives you a goal. Time yourself, then try to beat the time.
And lastly … get an iPod and load it up with aggressive music. Working out to Country sucks. If I’m doing a bag workout, I want stuff like this in my ears:
(caution: If you’ve got virgin ears, or there are little ones within listening distance, don’t hit play)
Hell. Yes.
(and this reminds me – I have what is essentially a, “Kill Em All And Let God Sort Them Out” playlist on my iPod. I need to post up that list with some links one of these days.)
Anyway, that’s it for some random advice. Time for a new pair of sneakers …
Put yourself back in 2008 for a moment. It’s election day – Obama vs. McCain. Imagine an alternate reality. Imagine, outside a building where people are walking in to vote, there are two white-robed klansmen, holding nightsticks. Staring at everyone walking in. Being confrontational. Not blocking the entrance, but not getting out of your way either.
Maybe you’re a black man. Maybe you’re white. The klansman have an aggressive stance as they eye everyone going in and out.
Would that be considered voter intimidation? Would you think it’s a “weak case” proving that there is voter intimidation?
Now imagine if McCain won that election. Charges are filed against the klan member(s) and then suddenly … inexplicably … a white AG drops the case.
Do you think it would be all over the news?
Would there be protests? Would it be front page on every paper on every newsstand? There’s no way to know, but I think it would.
Interesting when you flip the circumstances in a little thinking exercise. I don’t believe the DOJ is biased, and I don’t believe they showed bias in dropping the New Black Panther suit in the manner they did.
No, not bias. It’s racism. An openly racist act by our federal government refusing to prosecute someone exclusively because of the color of their skin.
I was supposed to head to the Republican candidate Gubernatorial (Goobers … heh), debate last night in Manchester, NH.
A range of circumstances contributed to me not going. Most importantly, my boy got sick. 101 fever shortly before I was to go. It’s not hard to stay home when you’ve got a sick child. So, I skipped it. Pumped him full of Children’s Tylenol and he got better pretty quick, and more importantly both myself and the car were home – just in case something crazy happened.
I thought any felon from across the globe could waltz into a gun show, pick up a Ma Deuce with a chainsaw bayonet attachment and four billion rounds of ammo with nary a background check? And free grenades! Lots of free grenades. And lasers to blind pilots, and stuff? For about a hundred bucks?
I’ll be driving down there to see these folks in person to see if any of them are worth a vote. I know very little about the candidates. Here’s a basic rundown:
Jack Kimball – businessman, Tea-Party kind of guy for limited government, reduced spending, etc. Supposedly Chris Christie of the North. We shall see.
John Stephen – He’s got the GOP backing, apparently, which immediately makes me wary of him. Curious to hear what he has to say, I know very little about him.
Karen Testerman – I met her at the NH Tea-Party-Express rally in Concord a few months back. She was very pleasant to speak with. From what I understand, she’s “religious right” (whether that’s accurate or not, I don’t know, but I’ll find out tonight). If that’s the case, she wouldn’t have my vote.
At any rate, it should be an interesting night. I’ve been to political events and I’ve seen up close and personal plenty of politician-folk, but this is the first time I’ll be present at a debate. Very exciting!
And this is about as plain, simple, and logical an argument as you can get:
“If somebody, whether it’s an employee or a citizen, decides they want to do harm to somebody, they’re going to do it,” he said. “They don’t care what was written in a policy.”