Adam’s Cerebral Spillage

...and it is there, only there that you shall find the master

It really doesn’t matter how long I’ve trained for, I permanently feel like I’m only just getting to grips with a lot of things.  Last week we worked one of my favourite combinations;  san dan tollyo chagi > san dan dwi huri chagi (high section roundhouse to high section spin hook kick), and doing that against a slap paddle is enormously satisfying when you feel the heel whip through. Right-sided was fine, I’m quite obtuse in as much as I prefer left footed spin hooks, which is unusual for a righty. Left side though was a nightmare, the roundhouse coming out 6 inches lower than they should with enormous tight pain across the front of my pelvis. Something’s not right here I thought, and over the course of the next few kicks I started trying to analyse what I was doing wrong.

I’ve always trained for myself, to make myself better. Being a big guy I was never in any illusion of being 6 feet in the air with a perfect box splits kick, or side kicking vertically, so right from the off I’ve never been too… competitive. I’m naturally a very competitive person, and it’s not a trait I’m always very proud of, but I temper it back significantly during training. I think it can be good in a way, but only when it’s either asked of us (endurance and speed exercises), or when you’re competing against yourself. Some people seem to try to compete at just about everything, and the times when I see it most I notice how detrimental it is to progression. It’s not even when you might expect it, like sparring for example (where it obviously does belong to an extent), but something as silly as stretching. I’ve seen people trying to be the furthest turning during spinal stretches, the longest in a splits stretch etc., but all of that negates the point of a good stretch.

I think the problem comes mostly with advancing rank when it does happen, which is ironic as we should be showing more kyum son (humilty) as we progress. It’s almost as if some feel the need to prove their rank, and more often than not it seems to lead to bad technique if nothing else. I’ve been guilty of it in the past I know, but I make a concerted effort to keep my head in the moment now.

The reason for my apparent tangent above is because the situation I found myself in on that Friday could well have led me to making my technique sloppy just to try and touch the target and avoid some pushups, and I hate it when hook kicks get sloppy, as they turn into ugly looking crescents. Instead I just made a concerted effort to look at what I was doing and see what I could do to fix it. In this case I was holding my hips back, under-rotating, and not leaning back on it far enough. I didn’t fix it, but I at least managed to get a few kicks out without hurting myself or looking like a praying mantis with an inner ear infection.

I still find it amazing that even now, over four-and-a-half years after I started learning, I still have to look at how I throw a roundhouse kick and make big changes. And it’s not just with roundhouses either, I could write a list of things which need improvement but I’d be here all day. If I could give anyone any advice to help them make the most of their training, it would be to swallow their pride and look at themselves, not the people around them. I’ve been training for such a short time relatively, so this will probably sound very up myself with an over-inflated sense of self-importance, and I feel a bit stupid writing it if I’m totally honest, but this is my place so there you go .

(and I managed to get a very tenuous link to The Last Dragon in there too!)

Technorati Tags Kyum Son, The Last Dragon, training

I got hit with a sudden urge to learn something and become creative again last week (it happens sometimes, it rarely lasts), and for whatever reason I’ve decided that I want to start some programming again. I’ve wanted to become a good programmer for a long time, despite the stereotyped images that go along with it – most of which I probably fit already – so I’m going to. My intermediate goal is to be able to create a simple, one-screen game of some kind.

The first task was deciding what to learn to program in. In the past I’ve had a quite a bit of experience with various forms of BASIC (QBasic, Amos, ZX Basic, Blitzbasic etc.), a bit of Pascal (I sitll use pascal of a kind as the built in language with the database I use at work), and I even did a few evening courses in C++. However, there’s a lot of choice nowadays, and it’s been surprisingly hard work whittling it down. I was wavering between the likes of C++, C, C#, Java, Ruby and a few others, but in the end I’ve gone for Python. After a lot of reading it seems to be a very powerful, very adaptable language, and it’s already proving to be very easy to get into. How long that Honeymoon period lasts is another matter of course. The IDLE interface and built in editor are quite good, but I’m loving Komodo at the moment for authoring stuff, I love the way it illustrates loops for me.

I’ve stumbled across the very excellent-looking Pygame libraries and modules, so I hope to be learning to use those once I’ve got to grips with the basics. Basic logic is fine, I can handle that with no problems, my hurdles are going to come in the form of maths and physics. I have no idea what kind of game I want to cut my teeth on, but a simple platformer seems my best bet at the moment. I’ve found some great collision detection tutorials and references, and I even spent an hour reading up on A* pathfinding (that’s an interesting read in its own right, even if you aren’t going to program a thing).

I expect I’ll pop the results of my work on here, the growing expectancy from you lot (yeah, right) will force me to keep my hand in and keep working on it. More as and when it comes, and only if I don’t deem it coma-inducingly dull.

(the post title is a reference to the first program you learn in just about any language, how to print “Hello World!”)

Technorati Tags hello world!, Programming, Python

It’s another catchup post, hooray!

Last weekend was the first Moo Do Summer Retreat for our club, which meant ~15 of us packed up and headed off onto Dartmoor for a few days to completely immerse ourselves in Tang Soo Do. We had a hostel to ourselves to cook and sleep, and a field about half a mile away for training, and we didn’t need any more. I couldn’t get the Friday off that I’d already booked (….not that I’m bitter), so my brother and I headed up on the Friday night. I was gutted to have missed the first day of training, but glad that I could be there for the other two.

A 4am wakeup call was harrowing after a couple of hours sleep, and that Saturday was a long one, but at the same time the various sessions went very quickly. Before I knew it 10 hours of training were over and it was back for a chilled out evening with a couple of barbecues. Sunday started with a more humane 7am alarm, but again was a very tiring day. I won’t go into all the details of what we did here, as the vast majority of people reading really won’t be interested, suffice to say I came back exhausted, blistered and very happy. The fact that people are already asking to be booked onto the 2011 camp is a sign that it went very well.

Because of being away all weekend, and then being so tired I could barely function for the next couple of days, I’ve not been out for a proper ride for a week now. I mean, I’ve ridden it training and to the shops, but that doesn’t really count. If the weather stays not-too-monsoony today I’ll try to get out for an hour tonight, but the impending apocalypse clouds out the window suggest otherwise. The cycling is really working my legs, and the weight is continuing to drop off which I’m very pleased about. It was one of the main reasons I bought a bike again, as I know how good the exercise is. Time will tell how far it’ll get me before I have to start putting some more serious miles in, although I hope being lighter by then will make it less arduous than it feels right now.

Things are going well all in all at the moment, a bit more summer sun would top it all off.

Technorati Tags bike, Moo Do, tang soo do, training

After a couple years of saving, spending what I’d saved on something else and doing the same again, I finally got my act together this year and made sure I had enough money to buy something I’ve meant to for a long time; a bike! Nothing with a motor, a proper bicycle with no horsepower, just one adampower. I went through the usual process that I go through whenever I buy anything that costs more than a hundred pounds, which means lots of reading, researching, umming and ahhing until I finally make a decision and go for it.

The biggest decision I had to make was what kind of bike I wanted to get; should I get a Mountain Bike (MTB), a straight out road bike or something else. Once I’d looked at what I actually wanted to do with it I went with the third option, which turned out to be a hybrid. Hybrids can be a real mixed bag (as the name probably suggests) and range from the not-very-different-to-a-mountain-bike-at-all to the almost-a-road-bike, and I went for the latter. What I wanted it for from the outset is a mixture of commuting and fitness, and definitely nothing off-road, so I knew suspension of any kind was unnecessary and would just be slowing me down and adding weight to it, so anything MTB-ish went out the window straight away. With the likelihood of going for bags or packs of some kind at some point any advantage gained speed-wise by going for a pure road bike would probably have been negated, and until I get my confidence back up in heavy traffic I’d prefer the upright seating position a flat bar would give me. So I narrowed it down to a few different choices, including a really nice Trek and the new Specialized Sirrus, but in the end it had to be this…

My shiny new best friend

It’s a Bianchi Cameleonte (Alu II) and I’m over the moon with it. I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of what’s on it, but in a nutshell it’s got disc brakes which are really only just coming through on Hybrids, and much thinner tyres than many, much closer to Road wheels. In fact Bianchi refer to them as Sports rather than Hybrids, and they’re much closer to a road bike than many. For now I’m sticking with the toe clips which came with the pedals already fitted for me, just until I can afford to get a half-decent set of clip-ins and a pair of cleated shoes, it’ll give me a chance to get a bit more fitness and leg strength.

The first time out on the road on the evening I took it home was pretty wobbly. Once I thought back I realised I hadn’t really ridden a bike (not counting a ride on the Camel Trail a few years back) for about 15 years, so it’s no great surprise that I wasn’t completely comfortable with being sat up very high on a much lighter frame than I’d ever been on, looking down on wheels that seemed far too thin to be carrying me. For the first half-mile every bump had me thinking ‘crap I’m going to crash’, and I wasn’t having much joy with getting my other foot into its toe clip (which I figured out much later was because I hadn’t secured the buckle in the side of the pedal). Three or four miles on a quick loop around the block was all I needed to confirm to me that I really needed to get some miles under me and get comfortable in the saddle again. So, with best intentions (and after buying a bracket and recommended bottle) I got up extra early on Saturday morning with a route in mind and was on the road by 8am.

I took myself on some small roads out past the woods, down to the beach and then along the North cliffs road all the way down to a local viewing spot (and end-it-all jumping off point…) called Hell’s Mouth for a quick drink stop. After a few minutes enjoying the view and quietness of a Saturday morning on the cliffs, I hopped back on and took a different route back past the house my Granddad used to own. Unfortunately, I don’t go that way very often and I’d forgotten just how many hills there were on the way home! An hour after I set out I was home, thirteen miles under my belt and a lot of sweat lost – most of which seemed to have soaked into the chinstrap and padding in my helmet. I absolutely loved it, it was exhilarating whizzing down hills, albeit with a bit of trepidation as my brakes haven’t quite bedded in yet. I also need to get the front gear shifter looked at as it was reluctant to jump up to the biggest chainring unless I held it just past the clicking point. I get a free service at eight weeks from the shop though, which will give the cables plenty of time to find their length and settle in.

The view over Hell's Mouth on a sunny Saturday morning

Now all I have to do is keep going out, two or three times a week at least, until I get my stamina up where it needs to be. Ideally I’d love to be riding in to work in the mornings, which is thirteen miles each way, as it probably won’t take me much longer than it already does. I also need to plan out some routes for weekend rides, to get out and use some of the back roads and have a good look around the county. Great fun, although I’m not looking forward to making my first ‘I crashed’ post here .

Technorati Tags Bianchi, bike, Cameleonte, Cycling