Musashi

I'm so sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences. Welcome back to the boards!

Currently Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Great story and awesome gameplay. I normally don't like first person games too much with a few exceptions (bioshocks 1 and 2 for example), but it fits this game perfectly. I spent lots of time just wandering around this or that city checkin stuff out and it actually felt like I was walking around the cities. They felt alive. Not a lot of games can capture that kind of immersion. It's also pretty neat how Detroit is one of the major hubs of the game. They did a great job on it. Accurate-ish too......the Sarif building is like a block away from City Club. Soon as it comes out though it's time for Batman: Arkham City! Giddy with anticipation for this one. Gonna be so great! Also The new Assassin's Creed will be out in November....other stuff too. Gonna be a great fall/winter for gamers. Oh! And Final Fantasy 13-2! REal excited about that one too. Loved 13. Don't care what people say about it....it. was. awesome. That is all. Also dabbling in like my 3rd playthrough of Mass Effect 2. Second playthrough of Metal Gear Solid 4.

Downloaded. Not had time to check it out yet. Will return with report!

Dynamic and powerful!

As of yesterday, I've started practicing Parkour! It's hard. Really hard. It's also fairly dangerous. Parts of me that I forgot existed are sore as hell. My triceps and shoulders hurt more right now than they do after heavy lifting. It's amazing how technical parkour is and it's crazy the amount of mental focus and concentration it requires. I did a lot of stuff that first day people shouldn't be able to pull off, so I'm pretty pleased with myself. Actually have a partner to work with who is as motivated and in probably even better physical shape than I am, (I'm in decent shape at the moment too), has much more martial arts experience than I do, and has already been practicing parkour for about a year. So 2-3 times a week we're getting together to practice parkour and to also practice martial arts stuff that requires partners. Specifically grappling, chi-na (sp? it's the aikido style breaks, locks, chokes, and throws. One day I'll be good enough to use it in sparring), and evade/counter stuff. Once I have permission from Sifu, we'll even be able to spar. I can't spar till I hit yellow sash. I know I'm skilled enough for it. Both to stay safe and not cripple someone by accident, but I have to stick to the rules and traditions. And the tradition here is no sparring till master says I can. But I digress. Super happy that I'm gonna be getting many more hours of practice per week. And I'll be doing freerunning stuff soon! Right now still doing drills and conditioning. Quadripedal movement is soo much harder than it looks..... Yay for the physical/spritual arts! Yay for the fact that a year and a half ago I would never have dreamed I'd be capable of doing anything I can do now. A year and a half ago I couldn't make it up one flight of stairs without wanting to die. Now I can handle an entire day of hard varied training with energy and enthusiasm. And in a few years...who knows? Maybe I'll be doing wall running, back flips and kicking out lights from 8 foot ceilings and breaking groups of cinder blocks. It's possible...not yet...but give me a few years...mwuahahaha! UNLIMITED POWER!!!!! RAWR! Apologies if this post was long-winded or sounded douchy...don't mean to. I'm just excited is all :D I've been working really hard!

How very christian are the christians in our country......really....wow. Zealous religious beliefs are clearly the better way that Jeebus would recommend.

Had an awesome night. Met Chernobyl and Troy and Iris. Also always happy to see Shaun. Possibly some others that I'm hazy about. The bands were great (though I arrived too late for d:konstruct, and missed part of the gothsicles., what I did see was awesome. Save Dat Mermaid! Ran into a couple non-dgn'ers that I hadn't seen in a long time including an old friend named Dawn that I hadn't seen in many many years. So that was sweet. Got to talk to Jim, Vince and Britney of I:scintilla for a few. Great folks who were just awesome for coming all that way to play a $5 cover show. They even remembered who I was from the last time they were here! So flattered! Though I am sure I came off as a drunk star struck moron, they were very nice. All in all so glad I came out. Gonna try to be out there more often. Didn't realize how much I missed the shenanigans.

I do believe in being kind, polite and having good manners. But there is a sure difference between courteous and sycophantic.

Is it Saturday yet?

Dynamic and powerful.

About to start a 6 week trapping seminar! Think wing chun stuff (crazy arm grabbing etc. for those that dont know what wing chun is, like bruce lee used to do). Trapping is so much fun and sooo nice for small people with short arms like me. Not that it's infallible, just really cool. Already learned Pak Sao and Lop Sao! Not practiced a ton yet. But I'm on my way!

Nice. I like how he showed the possibility of a shin sweep if you grab under instead of over (I love shin sweeps).

Just finished doing 1000 palm strikes (back hand)! Some on a heavy bag, some in the air. But 1000. One. Thousand. I r satisfied. Now I'm off to the dojo for tai chi and kung fu :D

That one is prettycool. but this one I think is it: My link Though the technique was very slightly different. Essentially the same technique, just some details were different is all. Being small this one is great for me because a little weight shift from me can do horrors to my partners' balance. REally easy to maintain control on this one if you also don't want to hurt your partner or drunk idiot who's attacking you. On a side note...I'm a little sore this morning..love it.

Neat throws. Never done that judo one, but know one a little similar, the entrance is when your partner has you in a headlock and you roll to the side ending up in side top. Can be hard or very gentle. Just got back from a weekend long kung fu retreat at a summer camp in gaylord. Amazing weekend. Did several hours of trapping (pak and lop sao) on the beach in the sun, BJJ under the stars with tiki torches all around, tai chi in the early morning on the beach, so much other stuff. One event we had was 1.5 hours long and we had fasted shields and focus mitts to two staggered rows of trees. We had to move from tree to tree in a zig zag pattern hitting each shield with 3 full power strikes and move on to the next one. Each lap of "the gauntlet" took about 3.5 to 4 minutes (thats basically 3.5 to 4 minutes of intense high impact cardio, punches and kicks) and between laps while waiting for the line to die down, we had to stand on plum posts (really just tree stumps 6-10 inches wide) and do kicks while maintaining balance. Out of about 100 kicks I only lost balance twice. I was pretty pleased with myself, I didnt know my balance had improved that much. I'm not sure if I like the gauntlet or the trapping seminar more. Saw some people break through thier limitations and do concrete and board breaks for the first time. Most impressive was 5 inch and a half thick blocks of concrete with palm strikes and 6 pieces of wood with a hammer fist. Though some of the breaks were done by little old ladies, and this one teeny tiny cute chick broke 3 blocks of concrete with an axe kick. Will be nice when I can say I'm ready to do neat stuff like that. Just gotta keep practicing. And practicing....and practicing... I also had some of the best meditations I've ever had to date. Simply an amazing weekend on both a physical and spiritual level. Was all about zen. There was nothing else in the world to think about but the practice and the people practicing with me. Awesome. On a more vain note....scale hit it's new best reading at 11.9% body fat. And 140 lbs. (I'm not a giant). So things are going well! This week or next week I'm going to be back into a strength phase with weights. And a classmate from the dojo and I are going to start practicing parkour together! He already has experience in it and LOTS more martial arts experience than I do, So it's not gonna be all "let's imitate youtube". So basically I guess things are going quite well! Best shape of my life and my skills are starting to not suck so much.

Stressed, but calm. Pretty stoked that I diffused a hostile confrontation with a co-worker with the power of zen. I tried to make peace at first, saying that we work together, there is no real reason for us to be in conflict and that there's no reason we have to be dicks to each other forever over some petty nothingness, but the guy wasn't having it. So I stayed calm and made it clear that I was not at all afraid of him and said he should not get so angry about things so terribly trivial. He backed away and let it drop but kept the attitude. Later, when I was leaving I said to my other c0-worker with a smile "see ya later man! have a good night!" then turned to the guy with the problem and told him firmly but not venemously that he could go fuck himself. Later the guy called me up and decided to accept my truce saying he wasn't apologizing for things he said and wasn't asking for an apology, but that I was right and he didn't was us to have problems at work. So we agreed to pretend that nothing ever happened. I gained a lot of respect for the guy. But I think that things could have gone far worse had I not both kept my cool and asserted myself confidently. Just to clarify, this wasn't anything that was going to be a physical confrontation (I don't think...) but it was unnerving and brought up the old adrenaline. Strangely though, as the conflict continued, I found myself becoming more calm as he was getting more angry. When I reflected on the events later, I thought about the symbolism of the bow we use in kung fu. Left hand is open and covering the right hand to symbolize that peace is the first thing I offer. The left covers the right hand which is closed into a fist to symbolize that if peace is not accepted, then I offer war. I offered the guy peace, he didnt want it, so I offered him war. He didn't want that either, so he thought about things and later decided peace was a good choice. A little long-winded I know, but I was really surprised with myself for unconsiously using my martial arts practice to end a conflict peacefully.

Oh. Hell. Yes. Been waiting for I:scintilla to come back for a long time now. Looking like a great lineup indeed! I am sooo there. Maybe Jim will drink more now that Rogue isn't around to wag his finger =x Can't wait!

Like I have no real friends any more.

Yay new Doctor on Saturday! Can't wait. Also if no one has seen it, there's a little 2 part short called Space and Time. It's only about 10 minutes long in total but it's hilarious. Especially great if you're a Pond fan.

Yeah. Being stood up sucks. The last like....6 girls I was supposed to hang out with stood me up. Except the most recent. That one showed up. Only to ditch me after I bought her a couple drinks.......

A little bummed. First date somehow went bad. All good though at least Angelspit and LoAcid put on a great show! So there's always a positive side to things I suppose.

Ok, the SS program looks good. Curious about neglecting other muscle groups like biceps, triceps etc. do I work on those during an odd week? How does that work. This program seems like a pretty short workout (which is just fine), so I want to make sure all my bases are covered.

So it's been a while since I've been around. Been a long, cold winter and I've gone and let myself go a bit. I don't "look" like I have, but I've lost strength and stamina by quite a large chunk. Looking for a little advice on how I shold proceed with things. I'm now back in martial arts classes and am going back in a full training regimen kind of like I did last summer. This time, however, I want a bit more of a plan with my weight training. My main goal for my weight training is to gain raw strength, muscle endurance, and some tone. I will probably do one bulking day once a week or every two weeks just to round out the routine. My body type is small and kind of sleek wiry. Maybe a Bruce Lee type body if i was super hardcore. In a fight I would for sure have to rely on speed and technique long before any kind of brute strength. That is my reasoning for my emphasis on raw strength, endurance and tone. I also want to maintain flexibility. I practice mostly Chinese style martial arts so speed and flexibility are very important. Invictus should know where I'm coming from on this. Now I have done a good amount of homework on how things work, but I'm having trouble coming up with a specific program. I was doing p90x for a little while to tide me over until I got back into martial arts. But now that I again have a structured, and guided workout, I'm really only going to use it for yoga and jump training. Maybe also for the push-ups-pull-ups video. And if anyone has ever been curious about checking out p90x wondering if it really works and is the real dead, it is. Get it. It's a great program. What I was thinking, in order to help speed things along and to simplify things, was to do 3x weight training per week. Each session would be a full body. When I was doing the full body routine before, it would take roughly an hour, give or take. Sometimes a little longer or shorter depending if my energy level wanted me to add a few more or not do a few specific excersises. Days 1 and 3 would be heavy heavy weight and day 2 would be about 2/3 the weight of heavy days at about twice the reps. As far as sets go, I always do 2 sets. I try to make sure I don't have enough energy left in a muscle group after 2 sets so I can move on to the next muscle group. Also i try to keep it in a circuit, not doing the same body part 2 excersizes in a row (i.e. arms, then legs, then core, then arms, and so on). So with all that being said, how should I progress my weight increases? Is there any reason I should not do a full body routine? Just how neurotic should I be about what I eat? I'm great about eating well and properly all day, but at the end of the day I tend to crap out and just eat the most convenient and/or tasty thing around. So yeah, that's what I got for now. Great to be back on the thread!

14th-16th century Japan. A time in history where every single thing a person did in life mattered. A very "romantic" time period I think. Who is your favorite philosopher (i.e. Plato, Nietze, Socrates etc.)?

Been doing the p90x classic routine with a few modifications. Gotta do something till I get my wheels and get back into martial arts class. Basically I'm doing a little more hardcore than the standard p90x. Not that the regular isn't brutal, but I added more martial arts practice as "cardio" every day. Unless I feel way exhausted.Then I just do one workout. I replaced the kenpo stuff with kung-fu equivalents, so getting a great workout to the video while practicing techniques (only striking and footwork sadly) that I already know. I do an hour of kung-fu, followed by an hour of weight lifting on a specific group or couple groups of muscle (i.e. one day is chest and back or legs and back), followed by an intense 17 minute core routine. That's 3 days a week every other day. On the odd days I do kung-fu followed by as much of the yoga video as I can make it through. Man oh man I had no idea yoga was so awesome. And it's hard as HELL. So far I've only made it about 40 minutes into the video, which is almost all of the strength and conditioning portion minus like 3 minutes. Warrior 3 to half moon to half moon twist is like wtficantdothatman! But I keep trying each time I do the routine I get better. So I think it'll really pay off. Also the yoga helps with my back pain and general happiness a lot. I almost feel euphoric at the end even. God I can't get back into kung-fu/bjj/tai-chi class soon enough. I'm going crazy here!