June update

Numbers

Started the month at 165, tentatively hoping to see 162 before my BJJ competition. I saw 162 on the scale two days before the competition, and then again the day before, and then on the day of - 161!! I felt weird after the competition and couldn’t stop eating and within a couple days was up to 170, but then I felt more like myself after that and my eating returned to baseline and my weight quickly corrected and by the end of the month I was actually down to 162 again.

For BJJ, musculation, and cardio, the goal was weekly consistency as usual, with the possibility of a deload week before the competition, and I did what I aimed to do - weekly consistency and a deload before the competition, though the intensity was definitely down a bit for a while after the competition. 

I had a post about the cruising mindset this month. I want to keep working hard but my goal is maintenance of what I’ve achieved and am happy with, not pushing myself too hard to make progress. Just do the hard work and let the progress happen. I haven’t done the best at that I’d say. Let’s just keep revisiting it month by month and see if I can lock into this a bit better.

Reflections

Wow. Competing was quite something. Not the actual match itself - that was actually remarkably like a pretty normal roll in terms of what happened, not so different from any day at the gym with a white or blue belt. But the way it affected my body. Wow. I was shaking before the match, heart pounding, even in the absence of any real emotional turbulence - emotionally I was quite calm and undisturbed before, during, and after the match (immediately before and after and in the days before and after alike). I was shocked by the absence of fear or anxiety and then doubly shocked at how my body went into overdrive. As soon as the match started I felt exhausted, gasping for breath, with muscles weak like a child’s, seeing spots even though the other guy wasn’t even trying to choke me at the time. After the match I couldn’t catch my breath for several minutes and even long after it was done my lungs ached as if I’d been running sprints on a frigid winter day, and my muscles felt weak and sore for days afterwards. I was ravenous for a couple days as well. Actually it almost felt like I was hung over for the first few days after the competition; it was awful. I think I’ll probably compete again at some point, mainly for the chance to try to get a handle on that adrenaline fuelled reaction. But I don’t think I’ll compete often - it’s the gym time that makes me a better grappler, and while the looming competition did make me more focused in my training, that might be better as something occasional when I’m in a rut than something I put myself through with regularity.

Man. For days after the competition I was still recovering, even though it was just the one match. It wasn’t really about what happened in the match though. I can’t believe how much competing messed up my body’s equilibrium. Like I said, it felt like an extended hangover. 

As you could tell from my description, it didn’t feel like the musculation and cardio made much of a difference in the competition. It probably did - I probably would have felt and done much worse without that preparation. I’m looking forward to some future day when my athletic abilities translate more to the fight when the rubber hits the road, although for now I’m happy to have the guys in the gym tell me how strong I am and to feel at the end of a round how good my cardio is getting. 

I suspect that for the summer, I might somewhat have to choose between an extra BJJ session per week (say a weekend open mat) and more musculation or cardio, not just in terms of time for myself but even in terms of what my body will be able to recover from. We will see - maybe I can do extra BJJ and extra other stuff too. But if that choice is something that I’ll have to make, my instinct is actually to do the extra BJJ time, on the logic that where that might be a possibility in the summer it’s much much harder to add it in during the school year than adding extra musculation or cardio, so I might as well do it now while I can and do the extra other stuff later when I don’t have the same choice available. There’s also the reality that if I miss one of the extra BJJ sessions then I can always add in some extra musculation or cardio at home that week whenever I want to, but the opposite substitution would again be much less frictionless to do. So maybe that’s something I’ll propose to my family this year for summer.

Predictions

For my weight this next month, I don’t know what will end up happening precisely because I’m doing some traveling so won’t have a scale or my usual foods, but basically hoping to stay generally under 170, closer to 160 being preferable. I think this might be my new standard weight goal in the coming months, but we’ll see if that holds or if I get inspired to chase some new scheme. So let’s say under 170 at the end of the month, but we’ll also see since I’ll be travelling for part of the month and the whole family is home for summer which makes it harder to eat only my food, so not a big deal even if I end up a bit over the 170 goal, but I think it’s a good guideline to shoot for. Hard to believe that before I signed up for the competition getting down as low as 170 seemed practically out of reach.

BJJ, cardio, musculation? Hm. That will be interesting this summer. I have some ideas. I’d love to try to get in however much zone two cardio I can this summer on top of the burpee intervals. I’d like to try some BJJ open mats and maybe add in some striking and or mma practice maybe. I’d like to eat loads of cheap protein and do plenty of musculation insofar as the other stuff leaves recovery room for me to be able to do that, but if I end up staying more at maintenance for this one I’ll be very happy with that too. We’ll see how much of this I actually implement; the bare minimum I’ll want to try to stick to is BJJ every week (except traveling probably), weekly burpees, and weekly isometrics.