I hate to sound like a scrooge, but I'm glad the holidays are done. I LIKE the whole, getting back to normal thing, and I think the bod will like it, too. Except for karate, I did pretty much keep up the exercise routine during the past month. Karate suffered a bit due to exams, travel on the part of Sensei J, and class days falling on holidays. I otherwise missed one run due to snow and ice and the rest was business as usual. On that snow day, I did an actual video workout, Cathe's new Intensity DVD. I. Hated. It. While the HiiT sections weren't bad, really, there was far too much step for my taste (nearly half the thing was step) and of course the step was first, so I was on High Annoyance by the time the floor cardio started. Oh well. Can't win 'em all. It'll also be nice to be back to normal, food-wise, too. My weight stayed within my normal range, but was often enough at the high end that I'm not sure I didn't gain a pound. I was trending down slightly with normal eating prior to the holidays, though, so I'll just go back to that and watch what happens.
Didn't mention karate in my goals for the year post. I don't really have a year-length goal for karate because - dun dun DUN - my next grading should be in less than two weeks. And yes, it is the big one, black belt. It's very hard to believe, and something I truly never imagined happening when I started on this journey. At that time I didn't know anything about belts and rankings; I didn't think (somewhat) normal people just worked hard and earned their way up to black belt - I thought it was some title you earned some mysterious way, and never though I'd get to where I am now. It was not my goal and it's not, to me, an end point. There are people in my association ranked up to sixth and seventh dan so it's in the culture to just keep going, which is what I plan to do. I expect my path to be disrupted to some degree - perhaps even set aside temporarily - while I'm in grad school (although, who knows?), but I don't see NOT coming back to it and continuing to progress.
Speaking of progressing, I'm well into the second stage of my RDR workouts. I've been enjoying the flexibility of changing up the routine fairly often, and I've been incorporating TRX stuff into the workouts (following, of course, the general workout structure guidelines) which adds even more variety. I do find these workouts take a BIT longer than I'd like, but they're not so long that I don't plan to stick this plan out for the duration. After the 12 weeks, I do plan to change to his push/pull split (as opposed to total body workouts); those workouts should be shorter, and I plan to add some cardio on at least one, if not two of those days (nothing long; I'm thinking 10 - 15 minutes of either hill work, stadium stairs, or the dreaded step mill, depending on what's available/convenient - that'll be prep for the spring 15K).
Go, Eagles!
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