The State of My Life

The State of My Life - September 2010 Goals by Vincent Cooper

Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay up to date or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

I am coming out of my rest week now and easing myself back into training. I enjoyed the week but found that my body is now rejecting junk food more and more. Usually I am very relaxed about what I eat and drink during a rest week, but I simply can't stomach some food anymore. I'm not typically a fan of anything too oily in any case but I can't even manage a cheeseburger any longer. One bite is enough to tell me I don't want to eat anymore.

To be honest it wasn't exactly a full rest week. With my kids being the way they are I still have various things to do that interfere with me actually resting completely. This is fine though and taking a break is still useful and good for me.

I went out for a walk for about 90 minutes last night and did some bag work this evening and will go for a walk later tonight as well and build myself up into a full routine starting sometime next week.

Over the last week, while resting, I have had a chance to focus on my new goals and what I want to achieve over the next couple of months. I want to be publicly accountable for my success or failure, so here is my list.

Find a gym

I have mentioned that I would like to train in a new martial art of some kind. I don't know precisely which one as yet, but the list is: BJJ, Shooto (Shoot fighting), Kyokushinkai or Jeet Kune Do. Starting from tomorrow I am going to visit the gyms and take my time observing several classes and see where I feel most comfortable. My intention is to take morning classes, and for this reason I have a second goal:

Extend my morning workout

While I am looking for a gym I want to develop the habit of working out at around the same time. This will be low impact and is more about just setting myself a routine. I will be doing things like walking, swimming, yoga, and breathing exercises. This will supplement my normal morning speed and heavy bag workout.

Taking my kids to and from school (and particularly Naomi to her English school) for six weeks over the summer holiday has proved very valuable in this respect. By responding positively to the necessity of the situation I have broken through a psychological barrier as much as a physical barrier and don't feel there will be any problem in adding an extra 90 minutes to my training.

My typical daily schedule would therefore look like this:

10:00-11:30 Gym training, return home and do 30 mins speed/heavy bag workout (or do this in the gym)

00:30-04:00 Regular training consisting of various exercises and approaches to conditioning.

Write an e-book

This is a key step in monetizing this site. I have all but decided on the first book (but constantly have new ideas...but settling on just one is the first step to productivity). Most likely it will be an introduction to personal development detailing the importance of focus and how to maintain it. If I can actually get it ready as a published end product that would be great, but my main goal is to simply have the text written, checked and edited and ready to convert into PDF form in the future (no doubt this will be a goal from November - end of January).

Teach Naomi how to swim

We got a bit derailed here. Before summer she was doing well and making good progress. Then they opened her school pool and started teaching her there. Of course, these are group classes so she didn't get a lot of attention but I didn't want to overload her with more swimming outside school. Then over her summer holiday the pool we go to is more for fun and the kids just like to go and play in the water, so again, no swimming instruction from me. We can maybe make it to the fun pool once or twice more this year (depending on the weather) but definitely after September it will close down. So we will be back to our small local pool. Leon is still a little scared of actually trying to swim so I'm happy for him just to come along, watch and play a little until he gets his confidence up.

Reading

I have had a bit of a think about this. Shortly before my rest week I was developing the habit of reading two books a week (not speed reading - with high retention and note taking) but was (as usual) thrown off by certain academic books.

Due to my research (a fraction of which is described in this blog) I need to read dense books, there is simply no getting around it. To give you some perspective on this, I can easily read a 250-300 page book and come away with 5-10 pages of notes. The return on the investment of my time and energy is minimal, but the work simply has to be done.

I have had the problem of simply being bored out of my skull in the past and it has always effected me in a negative way because a bad experience with one book puts me off wanting to read anything at all.

Therefore, what I will be doing from now on is sticking to my habit of reading a fiction book every week but for the non-fiction one, if I don't finish it I will simply leave it for the following week and complete it then (or whenever). In the short term this will slow me down, but I believe it will allow me to get more research done over a longer period of time.

Another goal over the next couple of months is to work through my pile of books that remain unread. These vary from books on ancient Egypt (researching Egyptian mythology to see if there are any suggestions in it of a shift between the brain hemispheres) and Jomon culture (native to Japan and again, for indications on how language and a developing society impacted right brain hemisphere activity) to Leo Babauta's The Power of Less and Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard (which I pre-ordered, had delivered and still haven't read - which will give you some idea of how sidetracked I have become).

After my backlog is complete I will be focusing my increased reading on my research specifically and will be in a position to write more about this in my blog.

Weight loss

Very simple - get down to 65kg.

So those are my goals. If I think of anything else I will let you all know.

Now, turning to sports...

Football

Chelsea have made a good start to the season, winning all three games convincingly and are looking strong.

Baseball

Softbank Hawks again appear to be losing their momentum in the second half of the season, just as they did last year. After leading the Pacific League for more of the season, they are hovering between second and third place. Technically they can still win, but they need to get their act together. Next year two of their star players are heading to the US and that will significantly weaken their team, making it harder for them next year.

NFL

NFL season has started. Really looking forward to this. My team - Washington Redskins - I hope will at least have a winning season. Anything more than that would be a huge bonus, but the most important thing is to just have a positive season.

Okay, that's all for now.

Train hard, live easy.

Return to the top of The State of My Life - September 2010 Goals

Return to the Martial Arts Insight Blog Home Page

Return to the Martial Arts Insight Home Page