Week 1472

I continue to struggle to write these reflections for some reason. I can’t tell if it’s that I don’t want to make the time to write, if it is that I don’t feel like I am doing enough, or something else. 

Regardless, I feel it is important to reflect and to be able to see what I have done historically. I also don’t trust my brain to remember what these weeks have looked like. I want to have the ability to reflect accurately without warping my perception by looking back. 

Firstly, I don’t like that the week starts on a Sunday instead of Monday so I am going to switch that after this session. Sunday feels like a natural close to the week as opposed to Saturday and I like doing all of my fitness check-ins Sundays (check-in with Jack, my nutritionist with The Bodybuilding Dietitians and with Jeremy Ethier’s team as I was on week 9/10 of their an experiment for them this week). 

With two dogs now, I haven’t been taking Truman out as much as I had all summer so I took him disc golfing for the first time in a couple of weeks. I almost lost a brand new disc and ended up throwing a putter into the middle of a pond. Nice. 

Two throws after, I threw my very first ace with an Axiom Plasma Envy. It was a long time coming and I knew it was going in within a second of it leaving my hands. To make things even better, I saw the brand new disc I thought I lost on the hole after. 

I made more of an effort with the dogs this week. Truman got to play fetch multiple times and I have been taking Ellie to the park to work on her training. While she is an idiot and will swallow things whole, she’s able to pick up on training very quickly and has a strong desire to please. 

She also loves getting out, as evident through her jumping all over the outside of my car the moment that I let her in the garage.

I was exhausted all week and spent a lot of time after work sleeping. I believe this is because I have been having a lot of emotionally draining conversations at work and because I have more time on my hands than I would like with me only having to go to the gym 3 times a week right now. 

I also did a poor job of managing my caloric intake. I didn’t track as well as I know I should and I didn’t eat nearly enough because I was sleeping. 

Going into the next week, I will dial back on naps so I am tired in the evening around 9/10. 

I played some Pokemon and practiced Japanese most nights of the week. I have started watching anime on the treadmill at the gym again, which has been nice. 

With my wife and I watching the Final Draft, I realized that it is really nice being able to read English subtitles while listening to Japanese right now as it gives me the chance to have better comprehension as opposed to no subtitles or all Japanese subtitles. I have exposure to a lot of words but sometimes context is challenging. I don’t intend to do this long term but it makes content more enjoyable when you have a better idea of what is happening. 

I did a picture/video check-in this week and a dexa scan, coming in at 12% body fat with 189 lbs of lean muscle. Because I am so tall, they strapped my arms to my side and had my foot flexed for the whole scan after moving me 37 times to best fit me in the scannable range - it was entertaining but holding a flexed foot for an eternity wasn’t pleasant. 

I plan to do this again in 6 months to see where I stand. My goal is to maintain a relatively low body fat gain, increase lean muscle, and decrease visceral fat. 

The picture/video check-in went well and my nutritionist indicated that it looks like my body is still doing a recomposition. I have also noticed that I can still see striations despite weight gain in areas that I haven’t been able to see in a long time. 

I also got to help my wife destage a property that sold this past week. It was my first time seeing it and it was her first stage. She did a great job and I am so proud of her. 

I spent time this week watching videos from The Foot Collective to learn to “re-wild” my foot and have been practicing some of the movements daily. I really enjoy releasing my foot with the cork ball. 

I have been using the Sidekick scraper for fascial release. It seems to be working but I will have to continue using it to make a solid determination of how it is helping. I have been bruising from the use so I am wondering if I am scraping a bit too hard, but I am pretty good at finding tender spots and then not being tender or as tender the next day. 

The last practice I am enjoying is rope flow. I didn’t do it as much this week as I spent a decent chunk of my time sleeping and I like doing it during my workday as a quick break, which is hard when working in the office. I practiced the dragonroll, overhand, and underhand sneak. I suck at the sneak right now and am actively working to improve it. 

After watching a rope sizing video from David Weck, I found that my rope is super short for me and thought that might be part of the issue so I ordered longer and heavier ropes (the heavier part is for fun). 

I still find myself tempted daily to spend money on other courses to help my body recover but I know that is partly due to the novelty, partly because of curiosity, and partly due to impatience in my leg bugging me over a 3 week period.