THIS morning (Saturday, November 5th), I stepped on the scale hoping to see the number 126. What came after the decimal point was almost irrelevant; I just wanted to see that number on the scale since I'd ever-so-briefly touched it late last month before returning to 127, again. I had been sitting on 127 for what felt like months but was probably no more than a few weeks.
The scale read 126.3. Brilliant, I thought, and went off to Kobudo. When I got home and weighed myself again, the scale this time read 125.6. I double- and triple-checked it to be sure. I'd lost approximately 700 grams sweating through that class, which means I've officially shed fifteen kilograms in seven months.
At the end of March / start of April this year, I'd ballooned up to 140. The last time I'd reached that weight, it was deliberate and involved a fair amount of effort to maintain, even for just a month or two. This time I'd arrived there by accident. I took this as a clear sign it was, once again, time to cut, and so I did.
My last cut was late 2019 through early 2020: three (or, really, more like three and a half) months during which I was in a calorie deficit most days. On that cut, I lost a fair amount of strength, as I was in a long rehabilitation phase with a focus on cardio and mobility. I was also spending most of my free time designing and building a greenhouse in my backyard, which helped burn more calories than I otherwise would have. If you look at the 'calories burned' Fitbit charts in the linked entry, I was averaging about 5,500 per day thanks to this project, while training light stuff and cardio only once or twice each week.
This time around, I'm going further. The next goal is 120. And I also want to compete next year, at a lighter weight than I have before. In Powerlifting, I'd need to drop below either 120 or 110, depending on the federation. In Strongman, there's really only two weight classes for men around my height and build: under 105 kilos, and everyone else. And I'm not about to try and cut to under 105.
If I can reach 120 kilograms body weight, I will be the lightest I have been since maybe 2007, a few years before I started my strength journey, at 150! But I'm not going the cardio route this time, at least not in the conventional sense. I'm still upping the weight on my high-volume compound movements (when I can perform them), hitting a new personal record for overhead presses of a 75 kilo axle in my last session. And the three-plus hours of Karate and Kobudo each week is improving my cardiovascular health and providing active recovery, while also forcing my muscles to do things they are not used to doing. At all. Which brings me to the next chapter, about my latest injury.
In recent months, Sunday Strongman events have featured less and less in my weekly programming, so I have been attempting to remedy that by throwing an event - chiefly sack pick - into my other routines. It was the night of October 11th that I felt a back complaint towards the end of a sack pick session. It wasn't a serious complaint and I completed the routine without further incident. But for the rest of the week and most of the week after, I would alternate between having mild back pain but being able to walk upright, to having no back pain but so much tension through my right hip that I couldn't stand up straight or walk without a little hunch.
The following Monday night at Karate, I discovered just how messed up I actually was when I attempted to perform some wide stance, prone positions. My right leg had zero strength or stability. Shifting my weight to that side made it feel like it would collapse under me. Not long into the class, I had to bow out.
I wasn't able to book an extended session with my physio till the following week. He took me through several basic movements to assess the issue, as he was initially concerned there may be spine and/or nerve damage. But he was quickly able to eliminate that, eventually surmising it was to do with the medial glute's insertion point into the quad (a regular problem area for me), aggravated by the new things my legs were being asked to do in Karate class. To paraphrase Adam; my body is very strong in very limited movements, and it is reacting to the rigors of training outside of these limited movements.
He spent most of the hour dry-needling and deep-tissue-massaging the affected area. It has been nearly a month since the injury and I, only now, feel like I can return to lower body and events training. I have continued with Good mornings and Romanian deadlifts, and lower body machine/isolation work, but no events, no squats, and no regular deads. It's been a bit of a drag.
It was confirmed today that my Kobudo grading is in exactly two weeks, on Saturday November 19th. the video at the top of this post is the bojutsu kata I need to complete, along with some basic strikes, in order to attain yellow belt. It will have been just over one year since I started training Goju Ryu Kobudo. When I get the opportunity, I watch this video on replay and practice bojutsu kata in my carport... there's not a lot of room, so I still kinda suck at the direction changes, but I am reasonably confident I can dial it in before game day.
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