P90X - How It's Done

Is it really that bad? No, not really.


When hearing of P90X, it's usually about just how tough it is. Impossible. Many people start, No one finishes. Really, though, it's just a workout. But it can be tough. It certainly can be impossible, if you approach it at face value and don't listen to the instructions or yourself. I've personally experienced how boneheaded people can be with this workout. They didn't listen to the instructions. They didn't listen to me. And they didn't listen to their body. They finished the routine. It was only a 15 minute ab [ripper] workout. But they killed themselves, have yet to return (over a month back), and I'd bet they aren't working out anywhere else.


So I thought I'd share some "tips" for tackling P90X. Advice that should transform this mythical monster into something a bit more...manageable.


Do every routine, even the ones you hate. For me, the worst workouts are the ones I've never done before. I don't know what's coming. I'm willing to jump over the obstacles, but I need to know what they are. There's nothing harder than not knowing what's up next or when it'll end. So you take the "new" away from the workout. Do each one as it turns up in the rotation. Make each one old hat. "Yeah, it sucks, but I've done it like 8 times already. So what's another one." I hate plyo. Well, just dislike, really. But I do it. I get it over with. And then I see that fucker again next week.


Do what you can. I can't do every exercise in P90X. I can't do as many reps as they do in P90X. I do what I can. If the people on the tape are doing 30 reps of something (and they do) and you can only do 4, 8, or 10 or whatever. It's ok. They are pushing themselves. You're pushing yourself. It doesn't matter the number as long as that number is bringing you to the limit [for that set].


Be a 60 minute man. Most routines are an hour long. Tailor yourself to last the entire workout. You may can do 30 push ups. Once. Maybe even twice. But you've still got arms, back, legs, whatever. Dominating the first 10 minutes of a workout doesn't mean squat if you can't bring it the following 50 minutes. These are one hour workouts. You finish the hour workout. If that only means 4 reps here. 10 reps there. Doesn't matter. In the end, you'll have done more reps than the guy who goes balls to the wall and burns out after 10 minutes. Pace yourself. Probably the most important piece of advice and the biggest error most people make.


Food. Water is important during the workout. I take in water after every 6 exercises, when given a water break, and/or when needed. You're sweating. Losing water. Replace it. Usually you'll hear to take small sips. Not to gulp. If that works for you, fine. Me, personally, I gulp that noise down. 3 or 4 gulps even. I don't get sick and puke so I'm not worried about taking in too much water at once. Afterwards, eat something. Anything. Usually being away from home, I'll having some type of bar with me. Likely a Fiber One knock off. Your body is looking for energy after a hard workout. Give it some.


Simple to do at home. Equipment is minimal. A chair. A pull up bar that you stick in a doorway. Some hand weights. I have 30 & 25 lb dumbbells, 20 lb kettlebells, and 8 & 6 lb handled medicine balls. Can I lift more than then the heaviest weight I've got? Yeah. But these do more than the trick when you've got a lot of reps to get through.


Shit, I had more. But I seem to have forgotten.


P90X isn't impossible. I wouldn't even call it "hard". You can get through it. Take each exercise one at a time. Do the reps. Take a breath. Move on to the next. It's tough, but manageable.

RE: Running

To improve running, I'd focus on the legs (obviously) and core.

For legs,

1. Calf strength is very important and the primary force propelling you forward when running. Calf raises are the go-to exercise. You can do them simply on the floor or from the edge of an elevated platform (like stairs) for added range of motion. Hold weight for increased difficulty. Note: I would not recommend holding weights while doing calf raises off the edge of something.




2. Tip toe exercises are another good way to focus on the calves. Tip toe/Sneaky lunges are great. You stand on your toes and deep lunge forward (back leg straight, front leg's knee over the ankle, & try to step forward as far as you can). Hold the tip toe lunge for a few seconds. Then bring your back leg forward back to starting position and repeat. Find yourself a fairly large area to do this. I workout in a large room and lunge from once side to the other. Ideally, you could do this on your walking path. Just set a distance for yourself. Doing the lunges while remaining on your toes the entire time may be hard at first, depending on your balance and leg strength, but gets easier with practise as most things tend to do. Another good one is Gap Jump or Monster Truck Tires. Just pretend there's large tires on the ground and you're jumping from and landing on your toes from the center of each imaginary tire.
   




3. Squats are good. Aside from the normal ones, there's Goblet Squats where you hold a weight in your hand while squatting. Deep/Floor Touch Squats (no vid?!) where the feet are pointed slightly outward and you squat down as low as you can and/or touch the floor with hands then squat back up. Two one-legged squat variations with [Super] Skater Squats and Dead lift Squat. Oh and then there's the Wall Squat. If you're feeling froggy, there's One Leg Wall Squat.
   




4. Lunges can be done with body weight or added weights. Besides tip toe, there's three way lunges.

Core, I would suggest Wide leg Situps (you can cross legs indian style to make harder) & Pulse Ups (don't rock the legs back and forth as much as the guy in the vid does, should mostly be an up&down movement).

I recommend watching these videos and grabbing various exercises from it. Ab Ripper X Part 1 and Part 2. Legs and Back. Plyometrics (sorry, this is the best vid I could find of it).

I'll post about P90X sometime this weekend.

Running

Stirling,

I'm glad you brought up health. That's actually a pretty fortuitous topic for me right now, because I've just started a new workout regimen this past month. And actually, I've been wanting to write about it, but always had something else I'd rather focus on. Your question brings my workout to the front of my writing queue.

My weight was around 170, which could potentially be a pretty healthy weight for me if it was lean mass, but mostly it wasn't. So in mid-June I took up walking, with a view to intersperse some running as my heart, lungs, and legs got stronger. There's a five-mile bike/running path that runs from a park just across the highway in front of my apartment, along the river, all the way to downtown. I started out just walking the two miles north, and turning around and walking the two miles back, which takes me about an hour. It's about 100 degrees out there, and humid, so it isn't exactly a picnic. I've added a little more running over the ensuing weeks. Now I walk the first two miles, turn around and walk back a mile, then run three-quarters of a mile, and walk the last quarter-mile back as a cool-down. I do this every weekday, weather-permitting, but I've only been out one time this week; the skies have been threatening rain, though they haven't delivered.

I've dropped five pounds, which is nice. I find that I have to drink a lot more water during the days. But I also find that I'm less hungry after a long cardio workout than I was before.

A few observations about my workouts:

1. I never would have guessed just how much of an effect the sun and wind would have on my body while working out. My first two miles are northward—generally into the sun and with my back to the wind. When I was first starting out, I would be completely beat at the end of the first two miles (I've gotten better since then). But within a few minutes of turning around so that I face away from the sun and into the wind, I feel better in almost every way. My muscles loosen up. I sweat less. Before I added any running to my workout, I typically felt more exhausted at the end of two miles than I did at the end of four!
2. The psychological impact that running is having on my life is at least as important to me as the physical. I hadn't really expected that. But I find that being alone in the sweltering, unfriendly elements for an hour, getting sweaty, not talking to anybody, not thinking about much of anything, doing something for myself—something that matters, really, not at all to anyone else in the world but me—is hugely liberating. And at the end, when I've run the distance I told myself I would, there's not only the sense of accomplishment, which can be pretty easily described, but there's also the endorphine high, which feels good, but not in any way that I could put into words. It's become something I look forward to when I'm at work, specifically as a way to disconnect from work.
3. So far, running doesn't seem to have made my legs any stronger. This came as a surprise to me, though probably not to you, given your background, Stirling. In the beginning, I had some muscle aches in my calves, but those have gone away pretty much entirely. Since then, any discomfort has been knee- or ankle-related, in which case I take it easy for a few days and start back up when they feel solid again. But since my calves and thighs weren't aching, I figured they must be stronger than they used to be. So a few nights ago, when the weather was being uncooperative, I decided to test this out by doing some squats. And the squats were just as difficult as they've always been! Furthermore, in the morning, my thighs ached like a motherfucker! The remedy for this, of course, at least short-term, was more running, which loosened up those muscles again. My heart and lungs are almost certainly as strong and healthy as they've been in years, but it's clear that if I'm going to strengthen my legs, I'm going to have to focus on resistance training as well.

I'm certain that you could have told me all of this and more if I'd just seen fit to ask you. Anything else I ought to think about for the kinds of workout I'm engaging in?

I'm interested to hear about p90x, which is something I keep hearing about, but about which I know literally nothing. Looking forward to getting an explanation.

Welcome Back! How's Your Health?

Risen from the dead like a zombie that creeps Dennis Hopper the fuck out! And we'll start things real easy-like with a simple question, How's your health? What are you doing? What do you feel you should be doing? Goals? Wants? Whatev!

Me, I've spent the last two years going up and down the weight scale. 2009/Tampa saw me drop to 180 lbs thanks to wrestling in a hot warehouse. Post-Tampa, I gained weight up to 215 lbs. That was a mixture of weight-lifting and eating whatever the hell I wanted. September 2010, I then transitioned to a mostly yoga regimen which saw me drop from 215 back down to 180. I think maybe I was eating a little better (not that I ever really ate "bad"). So hey! Yoga does work. The biggest benefit from yoga has been flexibility getting into the poses and strength in holding them. I can bend forward, keep straight legs, and palm the floor. Being a guy, pretty damn impressive. Feels really great. I can move around and quickly switch between positions with ease. I use to hate stretching, but I have come to terms with it. Even enjoy it a little bit now that I can see the results.

This is what I love about having a job that deals with exercise. The thought of working out 3 or 4 hours a day is much easier and manageable when it's your job and you get paid to do it. I lead them through a workout but it's mine as well. I am my best student.

Currently, I do find myself working out 4 hours on any given day as I've thrown P90X routines into my schedule. On afternoons, I have an hour gap between my two classes. Usually, I devoted that time to power naps on a really crappy-looking yet oh-so-comfortable sofa in a room across the hall. Thanks to events with Kyndal, I found myself needing to do something. To keep my mind busy. What happened was sad and I was tired of feeling sad about it. Tired of thinking about it. So I "obtained" P90X dvds and did them between classes. I usually have a guy (50's, great shape, weight lifter, ex-HS wrestler/football player, ex-cop now engineer) from my later class join me as well.

Each routine is an hour or less. Includes warm up, main exercises, and cool down. Workouts include Chest & Back, Shoulder & Arms, Legs & Back, Kenpo (punck, kick, HA!), Plyo (jumping), Yoga, Cardio, Stretch, Chest-Shoulders-Triceps, and Back & Biceps.

I'll try to save my thoughts on P90X for another post, but, honestly, it's not that bad. If you keep certain rules in mind and use your head while working through them. And it does work. There are results. Not the extreme 3 month results that advertisements would suggest. Though I'm not sticking to the P90X nutrition plan, but following my own rules. Proper portion sizes. Lean meats (turkey, grilled chicken). Try to avoid beef and fried crap. Increase protein intake.

With the P90X & yoga mix, I'm stronger. Leaner. Up to 190 lbs. More flexible. Doing more push ups, pull ups, curls, presses, lunges, etc. So what are you guys doing? Give me the details. Tell me how it's going. How you feel. Goals.

To Bing or Not To Bing?

Microsoft recently launched what it apparently hopes will be a Google-slaying new search engine called Bing. The guys in marketing were apparently quite deliberate in choosing a name for their new search engine that could be conscripted into service as a verb, a la "googling." You can see this in an open letter to users, in which the Bing Team enthuses, "We sincerely hope that the next time you need to make an important decision, you'll Bing and decide."

I spot three problems with this potential verb. First, written in its presumed participial and past tense forms ("binging" and "binged," respectively) "to bing" is indistinguishable from "to binge." That's not the sort of ambiguity that I'd generally like to invite.

Secondly, the nearest English verb prototypes for "to bing" are probably "to bring," "to fling," "to ring," and "to sing," all of which are irregular verbs. You don't form the past tense of any of these verbs by adding -ed. No, you turn them into "brought," "flung," "rang," and "sang." Try those endings out on "to bing": "bought," "bung," "bang." And now see how you like substituting those into the sentence, "Last month, I googled Sonia Sotomayor maybe fifteen different times."

(Imagining "bung" entering the vocabulary as a past tense verb puts an inexplicably resilient smile on my face, I have to admit.)

Lastly, the participial form "binging," is just an unpleasant mouthful to spit out. It rhymes with itself in a cloying, ugly, nasalized guttural way. Those double -ng's are just too much damn work. We put up with them in "bringing," etc., because those are part of our native vocabulary, but no marketing manager is going to get me to use as demonstrably foul-sounding a word as "binging" just because it was the best he could come up with.

The Bing people were right to note that the verb form "to google" gives Google a word of mouth marketing advantage. The word makes for a pleasant mouthfeel. But on the Internet, these verbs spring up all the time, even when they aren't quite so easy and obvious, as long as the service is actually good for something; "to facebook," "to imdb," and even "to wikipedia," are all verbs I've encountered in real life. So I'm partially annoyed that Microsoft ever decided to make the verbiness of its search engine's name central to its ad campaign. Build a better product, and your users will take care of the linguistic bits for you. But what sends me over the edge is that, having decided that it coveted Google's verbiness, Microsoft couldn't come up with a name any less problematic than "Bing" in terms of precision, morphology, and phonology.

The Sotomayor Nomination

Yesterday, I came across this in an opinion piece by Ilya Shapiro posted on cnn.com, criticizing President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:

[I]n over 10 years on the Second Circuit, she has not issued any important decisions or made a name for herself as a legal scholar or particularly respected jurist. In picking a case to highlight during his introduction of the nominee, President Obama had to go back to her days as a trial judge and a technical ruling that ended the 1994-95 baseball strike.

Moreover, Sotomayor has a mixed reputation among lawyers who have practiced before her, some questioning her abilities as a judicial craftsman, others her erratic temperament, according to a piece by Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic, which itself has come in for criticism.

Such anecdotal criticism is to be taken with a grain of salt -- while Justice Antonin Scalia's bench-side manner is more vinegar than honey, even his detractors recognize his brilliance -- but it does need to be investigated. So, too, do certain statements she made in presentations at Berkeley and Duke, respectively, the former arguing that a Latina necessarily sees the law differently than a white man, the latter suggesting that, at least to some degree, judges make rather than interpret law.

Am I correct in reading this to mean that Shapiro's primary beef with Sotomayor is her lack of "brilliance"? I mean, he shrugs off criticisms of her demeanor (apparently on the grounds that any failing of Antonin Scalia's must not be a failing at all), but huffs and puffs that she is no "legal scholar," "respected jurist," or "judicial craftsman." Seriously, how important is brilliance?

Here's a lesson from the real world and the practice of law: past a certain point, additional intelligence provides only short-term advantages. Being smart means you'll pick up the concepts more quickly than others. It means you might be able to come up with cleverer or more intricate arguments, more quickly. But over the long haul, those benefits never trump experience in the trenches. Yes, the Supreme Court is a very important post, and an impressive intellect is an asset; but an astounding intellect is unnecessary.

Secondly, there seems to be something hypocritical (or at least dissembling) about Shapiro's admonition that Sotomayor "has not issued any important decisions or made a name for herself as a legal scholar or particularly respected jurist." To me, this reads as follows: "Judge Sotomayor has failed to leave a satisfactory smoking gun evidencing her liberal activism, which makes my job difficult, since I'm supposed to call her a liberal judicial activist. Therefore, I will paint her failure to stake out such liberal positions as evidence of her intellectual lethargy." In other words, had Sotomayor staked out any clever, novel, or interesting legal positions, Shapiro would be criticizing her for having taken those positions, instead of criticizing her, as he does here, for not having taken them.

Thirdly, Shapiro criticizes Sotomayor for commenting that judges make rather than interpret the law. If you read Shapiro's bio, you will see that he is a lawyer with an impressive-sounding resumé. This is surprising, because he is apparently quite a dim bulb himself. I attended a state law school, where I was taught by outspoken liberals and outspoken conservatives. Not one of them, regardless of their political persuasion, would have denied that in certain circumstances, a judge has the responsibility to make the law. "Interpreting, not making, the law," is something the public likes to hear about its judges, but it has never been the whole story.

Imagine this scenario: a criminal defendant has been tried in state court and found guilty of first degree murder. The jury deliberates, and votes 11-1 to impose the death penalty. A state statute provides that an 11-1 vote is all that is necessary to impose the death penalty. The defendant objects, saying that the state statute violates the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ought to be interpreted to require unanimity in order to impose the death penalty. All the Due Process clause says is "No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." So which is it? Does the Due Process clause require unanimity or is 11-1 good enough? Either answer is plausible, but you can't support either one just from reading the Due Process clause. Say yes or say no, but your decision is not extrapolated from the meaning of the phrase "due process"; your decision gives meaning to the phrase "due process."

The take-away point is this: when the drafters of the Constitution or the legislation punt, the judiciary has to pick up the ball.

Lastly (for now), Shapiro criticizes Sotomayor for remarking that a Latina and a white man necessarily view the law differently. I actually can join Shapiro in being a little riled by this comment. Obviously she's playing to crude racial stereotypes here. Behind it is something like the ethnic imaginings typified in Jennifer Lopez romantic comedies: Latinas are all sassy hotel maids, and white men are all running for the U.S. Senate. You might as well say that black men and Sicilians necessarily have different views on the law—but then how do you explain Justices Thomas and Scalia? These are oversimplifications that should make us all blush, and frankly they're offensive.

On the other hand, by adding a little nuance, I don't think Sotomayor is very far from the truth. I think it's true to say that there are a lot of factors that influence one's view of the law (upbringing, religion, socioeconomic status, etc.), and many of those factors, statistically speaking, break along ethnic, racial, and gender lines. Because I am charitably-inclined, I'll spot her the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Sotomayor's comment was just ill-advised shorthand for the more nuanced version I've put forth.

Lip-Syncing and Musical Authenticity

It's not the sort of thing I talk about with you guys, but for the last three seasons, I have watched American Idol. This week was "Rock Week," but we can talk about "Whole Lotta Love" another time. What I'll talk about now is Paula Abdul's turn on the stage during tonight's elimiation show, performing a song called, "I'm Only Here for the Music." If you can YouTube it—well—I still couldn't really recommend it, but what you will see is a fairly intense dance number coupled with barely half-hearted lip-syncing. It's bad enough to make you wonder why she bothered moving her lips at all, when it was clear that the dancing, not the singing, was the focal point of the show. I got to wondering just that.

Why do artists lip-sync? Let's break lip-syncing down into it's two, even simpler components. Lip-syncing consists of: (1) not singing, but (2) appearing to sing.

There are perfectly good reasons why an artist might choose not to sing at his "live" performances. He might be sick. He might not actually be a very good singer. The choreography that the show demands might overtax his respiration, precluding vocalization. If you were a fan of a certain kind of music, and of the stage show that most often accompanies it, this last justification would be particularly forceful. Think about Britney Spears and her "Circus Tour" stage show.

But what purpose is served by appearing to sing? To the pop music concertgoer, is your enjoyment of the dance numbers augmented by the fact that the artist's lips are moving? To the afficionado of musical authenticity, would your opinion of Milli Vanilli be diminished if, instead of dancing and pretending to sing, they had just danced?

After Abdul's performance, No Doubt performed "Just a Girl," and Gwen Stefani was awkwardly as frenetic as she was in 1996: leaping, writhing like a tsunami was running up her spine, maybe almost actually throwing elbows at the audience as she made her way back up on stage after jumping down among them. Her painfully live vocals were not at all spot-on, but I can't help but feel like a part of her energy was inspired by the impossible-to-the-point-of absurdity "vocal" performance that Abdul had just given. It was a fuck-you. She was saying, "Here's what it really sounds like when you dance while singing."

This is why I love Mike Leach...

Aside from how much he whines, he might be more entertaining than Spurrier.

From Mike Huguenin at Rivals.com (story):

Third, Leach was incredulous that Texas A&M quarterback Stephen McGee – who was a reserve for much of his senior season – was drafted in the fourth round by Dallas (and Tech quarterback Graham Harrell – who led the nation in passing – wasn't drafted at all): "The Dallas Cowboys like him more than his coaches at A&M did."

Fourth, after Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman talked on back-to-back days about Leach's comments on McGee, Leach let fly again, with tongue firmly planted in his cheek: "I've always known A&M had great players. The fact that they have the luxury to put a third- or fourth-round draft pick on the bench, to me, identifies what a truly great team they are. It's an honor for us at Texas Tech to have the opportunity to play them. There are numerous players on our team that will never get a look or play a down in the NFL, so you can imagine how exciting it is for me and them to go play a team the magnitude of Texas A&M and look over there on the bench and see third- and fourth-round draft picks."

FCW: First Practise [Tag] Match

So, last Monday we had our first tag matches. For me, it was my first practise match. 10 minute limit. Steve would watch our matches and give critiques post-match.

I was working with three guys I never worked or trained with before. They were always in another ring. My partner was fine, but our opponents gave me a bit of worry. One of them was the moonsault guy and the other was the guy who may, in some ways, be the worst of the bunch. I've no doubt that he tries his best, he's just uncoordinated. Confusing his left with right. Positioning mistakes. Going waay too fast and not thinking fast enough to keep up with himself. We'll call this guy "J" to make this story easy.


Pre-match, I wanted to just take it as it happens, but J was plenty nervous. So I came up with a beginning. Being the heel, I would play around a little bit. Once we lock up, J, being bigger than me, would power me around. Push me down. Back me into the corner, etc. When we locked up again, I would out chain wrestle him down and work on his leg as agreed upon. I also pointed out that we need to pace ourselves and slow it down.



So the match starts, I play around a bit. We lock up and J puts me into a headlock. Completely bypassing the opening setup of our characters. He then starts calling moves, something he said for me to do, and none of these moves involve me taking him down and working on the leg.



So I follow and the the opportunity arose, I put him in a top wrist lock and told him to work it (to make sure he didn't reverse it 2 seconds later). I took him to his knees and held the lock. I told him to keep it slow, work the hold. He looked confused as to why he shouldn't reverse. I then told him to slowly power up (making him look good). Once he he regained his footing, I took him down and worked the leg. Elbow drops to the knee. Leg grapevines. I then dragged him to my corner for the tag. My partner came in and worked him over.



At some point, my partner hurts his knee (for real) and limping jumps over to tag me back in. By the time I reenter the match, J's knee has magically healed (Hogan-style) and he's on a blind, God-knows-what rampage. It was horrible. I tried to lead him into moves but he was lost.



In one spot: he called for me to give him a fireman's carry, a move where I drop to my knees and flip him over my shoulders. I drop down and, instead of flipping over my shoulders, he falls with all his dead weight on my shoulders, neck and head, nearly driving my face into the mat.



In another spot, he takes me down and tries to apply the figure 4 leg lock, but gives up half way and expects me to sell it. I shoot a "What the...?!" look at the supposed leg lock, then to Steve, then back to the leg lock. A classmate called it a "Figure 4 Lay There". I grab his unlocked leg, flip him over, and transition from a leg lock to a headlock which got laughs and cheers.



In the final memorable spot: He shoots me into the ropes and I tell him to bend over. Bouncing off the ropes I flip over him and school boy him into a pin. Kick out. I call drop toe hold, where you drop down and trip up your opponents legs with your own. I drop down. Trip the legs. And J falls RIGHT ON TOP OF ME.



I sold the "splash" but J didn't know what to do. 10 minutes ran out and the match was stopped without a finish.

Steve directly critiqued everyone in the match but me. As of now, I'm taking that as a positive. I did try some different things. Saved some spots. And suffered for others. Now I just need to have hopefully better matches with better opponents.

Note this to facebook as well.

The Stir-Man's Mega-Update

So, I've been locked out of facebook since....whenever was the last time I posted on facebook. The computers keep crashing here at the apt complex and they decided to install a internet protection program (K9) which blocks facebook. Maybe even worse, I got an okcupid email (as told to me thru lsu.edu) but I can't open it. All I know is that she thinks I look nice.

So, if any one of you could, please upload this entry to facebook and attach the usual names as my past posts. I think the only friend we don't have in common is Tommy Garza. Add'em and slap 'em on there. You can leave out the okcupid part.

FCW

So, our class has finished learning all the moves from the wrestling move/hold worksheet. Now we are either reviewing, cutting promos, and/or starting to have practise matches. Last Monday was our first practise match session. 6-minutes in length. Steve's only direction was show what you've learned. I didn't have a chance at a match along with a few other (ran out of time), but I saw some interesting stuff.


One guy tried to do a flipping springboard moonsault off the ropes onto another guy. The moonsaulter ended up landing on the guy on the back of his head/neck (he didn't completely flip over). It looked sick, but it seemed everyone was ok. The next class I found out the guy who got landed on broke off a part of his rib. The moonsaulter wasn't in class that day. I don't know what the hell that guy thought he was doing. It was the first practise match of a beginner's wrestling class. Some guesses are that the guy was/is a closet backyard wrestler. Completely stupid that the guy would take a chance like that, fuck it up, and hurt the other guy. As for the hurt guy, don't know if he'll be able to finish the class or not.


Protect your opponent. It's a law that's posted around the arena. That guy just wanted to look good, failed at it, and hurt someone. If I get paired up with this guy and he tries that shit, I'm moving. He lands on the back of his head in the ring and breaks his neck, I'll feel kinda bad but I'm not getting hurt cause of some guy with a reckless attitude.


The "main event" was between 2 guys who wanted to tear the house down, but tried waaay too hard and failed. They didn't communicate. Constantly got lost. One of these guys was Austin "The Mayor" from Canada. His practise match was alot like his training. Too intense. Too fast. Though he seems nice, he wants to be the best and prove it to everyone. But with all his intensity and selling, he forgets to communicate and even how to properly do moves. I'm a bit worried to work with this guy as well.


A couple Mondays ago, I was in class and, upon landing from a leapfrog, I must have rolled my ankle. Right afterwards, I knew it was hurt, but I thought it must have been only a slight sprain as it didn't hurt much. I redid the spot and continued. Once I stopped training and the adrenaline wore off, my ankle started hurting big time. I could barely put any weight on it and the walk back to the car was a long one. This was probably the worst pain I've ever been in. Now, for the most part, it's healed. Though I do still have some slight pain in certain positions. Back in action, I now wear an ankle support.

Three Thursdays ago, I made my FCW TV [taping] debut in a non-wrestling, acting role. I was a member of a protester mob against Steve and for a wrestler called Abraham Saddam Washington, who's working a heel/bad guy Barack Obama character. Washington was having a debate with Steve. Washington would answer his questions, but, when Steve tried to answer his, our protest group busted in the FCW arena and chanted "Washington!" throughout Steve's 30 seconds of response time. Rinse. Repeat. At the end, Steve confronted Washington face-to-face and Washington dropped acting as if he'd been shot. Our group pulled Washington out of the ring and towards the backstage area while chanting something.

A funny side story on this: 4 members of our group got to hold signs. During the end part where Washington is being pulled to the back by his secret service and us the protesters, I stole the sign from another protester (the blonde from class) and kinda charged the ring, pointing at Steve, yelling, "GET HIM BACK!", etc. I then made my way backstage holding the sign above my head, reversed so it could still be read.

Another side story: Afterwards, I looked at the sign I stole and saw that it said "Veto Keirn!". I crack a little smile as I realized that, with the little show that I put on, I did it with an incorrect protest sign. I'm pretty sure it should be "Impeach Keirn!". It would seem that I was up in arms about some bill Steve wanted to pass, I suppose the "Keirn Bill", and I wanted it vetoed.


The episode will air this coming Sunday at 6/5 central on Bright House Sports. If I can find someplace showing it online, I'll let you know.


The TV taping lasted from 7:30 till 10:30. They taped 3 episodes. I was there from 4:30 till as they wanted us there early to practise our roles. While waiting, I watched their heavyweight champion tape a promo. Took 2 tries. The first lasted 57 sec and the second was 1min 2 sec. The goal is to get as close to 1min.


Backstage were all the FCW wrestlers and several WWE/ECW wrestlers who still do the FCW show. Nattie Neidhart (Jim Neidhart's daughter). Alica Fox and DJ Gabriel. Harry Smith (son of the British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith), Tyson Kid (adopted Hart family member), Katie Lea, etc.


Afterward the taping ended, I was backstage shaking hands and watching some video of the taping (the wrestlers were watching their matches to review themselves). Harry Smith was showing some holds to another wrestler and asked me if I could help out, meaning have to holds put on me so the other guy could see the positioning. I said ok. He asked me if I was a wrestler. I just responded that I was in Steve's class. The holds were pretty tight and nothing that hurt much. I shook Smith's hand afterwards and went back to watching the video. A few minutes later, Smith came up to me and asked my name. I told him and he thanked me for helping out.


From reading wrestler books, I knew that letting another guy put holds on you is an iffy situation. The guy can push the limit, hurting you to make you "humble". While in a hold, I saw a guy walk by and shake his head, giving me that look that I was stupid to put myself in this position. Maybe I was, but Smith was a nice guy and didn't hurt me, even asking if I was ok. I'd like to think that by voluntarily asking for my name, that I got a little respect for myself from Smith.

Don't know how long I'll be out of facebook. Most likely a while as the liberry has it filtered as well. I know this is not what this site is for, but I'll try to keep updated through here (unless that's a problem). Whoever post this to facebook, maybe forward either the comments and/or the readers here so I can read them/respond. Also if everyone can keep me updated about everyone else as no facebook pretty much leaves me out the loop.