progress

"dude...not my fault you got better. I just wrote the workouts, you're the dumbass who did them" -laura

this particular team trials, i decided to channel my analytical tendencies so that they would help and not hurt me. someone once told me that nervousness was actually a good thing - that a champion knows how to channel anxiety and fuel motivation at the right times, whereas the average person lets the nervousness hinder their performance. and so i learned to embrace nervousness as a natural part of competition - and more so - a natural part of who i am.

i realized - so what if i'm a perfectionist? and yes, i have a huge fear of failure. those aren't qualities that go away just because you wish them to go away - and those are qualities that make me who i am. so why not embrace it, and figure out how to channel these characteristics for the positive?

so as an experiment (or perhaps another trial-and-error iteration in the now 9th year of this process) - i decided this time i would do things differently. i would:

-start training 12 weeks out (which became 8 weeks out, after my death illness) instead of 4 weeks out.
-do all the tape analysis beforehand and lay out incremental strategies and techniques to focus on each week, as well as teaching certain training partners to emulate key opponents.
-strategically place local tournaments and cross training trips to get ringtime against different people
-set up a cardio crosstraining plan outside of the dojang
-attempt an actual periodization schedule with a very specific rampup, peak, and taper
-enlist the help of any and all who were willing to be there for me

i short - i made a conscious decision to do all my analyzing BEFOREHAND - so that on gameday, i would hopefully be physically and mentally peaking, and without need to think.

now who knows if i got it right - but we took our best guess and there are moments when i sit back and think...maybe it's working.

this swimming thing came out of nowhere - it just so happened that the nsyc near my work is freaking huge and awesome and has an indoor pool. it also just so happened that laura turned out to have been a competitive swimmer all her life, with actual scientific coaching, and experience with periodization.

and it just so happened that my achilles decided to succumb to what i call Ridiculous Worst Tendonitis Ever, thereby killing my original cardio plan to run and lift every day. as it was, it was pretty hard to do tkd every day - not so much bc it hurt but more because of the fear that it would just pop and i'd be done for.

so i asked laura to come up with a swimming plan for me, and thus she produced "christina's roadmap to cardiovascular invincibility and vo2 dominance". she started with maybe 6 swim workouts in a progress to help me improve my technique, expand my lung capacity, strengthen my legs and arms - and generally just freaking tire me out.

7 weeks later, I'm pooped. But what's funny is - with the worst behind me where I swam almost a mile every day last week - I'm feeling pretty good about myself. There's something about having something new to learn, and measurable progress, that gives me a little high to keep on going.

Looking back - I started out swimming 900 yard workouts where getting across the pool (25) at a steady pace was challenging, doing a 50 was difficult, and 100 was impossible. I couldn't breathe on my left side, flip turns were out of the question, and my sprint speeds were inconsistent and vary degrees of flailing and gasping for air.

But week by week it got a little better - the yardage of each workout increased, the drills got harder, I was put on real intervals instead of rest intervals...and because it was all so gradual, I didn't really notice progress until last week. I realized that I had averaged out at 1450 swims, could do cardio up to 800's on intervals, and shaved a couple seconds off my sprint times. Granted, I felt like poop while doing it - but when I really think about it, the improvement is pretty exhilirating.

I think it's been a long time since I learned something new. I envy the color belts sometimes because as much as they flail and are uncoordinated - there are so many tangible milestones by which to measure progress. It's been a long time since I've been able to measure my progress by any standard that made sense. Like you could really tell whether my badachagi got any better between now and 3 years ago, let alone 6 weeks ago.

As we enter into the taper phase, I hope that it all translates. That all this stamina trying to freaking motor myself from point A to point B while holding my breath will make it easier to control my lungs in the stop and go of a match. That the mental barriers of having to do sprint after sprint after sprint will make it easier to kick in exchange after exchange after exchange. And that in the end, the technique will come together so that it becomes just as mindless - when the clock says go, I just stop thinking...and just go.

I feel pretty lucky this time around to have had the people I have around me, to make these plans for me, to study footage and make strategies, to be my nemeses, and most of all to be coming with me. it still blows my mind that after years and years of almost always being just me and sab - that we have 4 more people coming this time around, just to cheer. or as dorian said: "i gonna bring a big banner that says GOCHRISTINA!!! or no...i come with a hogu that says CRUSHDALIA"

i'm exhausted. i eat to have energy to train, i work because i have to, i tutor to distract myself between training, and then i train. when i'm not training i'm thinking about the last time i trained, or visualizing fighting the matches in 2 weeks. i eat like the world is coming to an end and i've lost weight. the other day i slept for 17 hours.

but somehow it feels good, because there's progress. i'm better today than i was yesterday. the question just remains, how good will i be on the day that counts?