Hobbies

[Simple Minded]

[Demon of Undoing]

Hoosiernorm

Not a mace. That's a walking stick.

The best thing I could come up with for armor would be two different kinds of leather jackets under a heavy duster. I come from the bare sark/ bear lance carrier tradition. No armor. Hell, no clothes. That's pretty much all I would need to set the enemy to flight.

SM

I'm not exactly from the online era. No videos, no online gurus. I learned a good bit from the ARMA folks I briefly trained with before I had a couple years worth of injuries, but my foundation in the Western martial arts is from much farther back. A favorite uncle was an NCAA- style sport fencer, and a military historian. My brother and I played with foils early on but even at a young age we realized the stylization lacked something.

We used to cut palm fronds into a variety of sizes of wooden wasters and had free form sparring which created quite a lot of injuries. Before you know it, we were putting fist- sized green oranges into the end of tube socks, spinning them in a fast circle until you had a fair approximation of a morning star. Add a couple of garbage can lids and you have a flail duel. We made ten- foot practice halberds, learned to use eight foot bullwhips( a great shoulder workout, still have a slight scar on the back of my thigh) and learned the finer points of using an axe. We made impromptu weapons out of just about any hand tool that seemed like it was fun.

So the crazy workout comes from that. I just got back into it a few weeks ago, but it beats weights and a gym all hollow. You sort of need the formal exercise background to do it safely, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing. The main idea is to perform real work. Stop using the muscles in a simulated swinging maneuver and actually, you know, swing something. Gives balance, a sense of being able to actually perform things instead of fitting yourself into a machine. That, plus if you really use all that crap like it's supposed to be used, the next time someone shows up near you aiming to go on a shooting spree in close quarters, you can do more damage than most people can with a shotgun using nothing more than the contents of a janitor's closet.

Incidentally, you hit what is there. The tire if swinging moves. If fixed, you use the hammer face- on in short range punches as well as in main swings. Sidewall gets hit, backhands hit the bead, and if you don't watch out, the rebound hits your head. It's exciting.

[Hoosiernorm]

Naw all we had were the throwing knives and double headed hatchets to throw at the back of the dead tree in the back yard. Stolen mortars with phosphorus shells for lighting up the sky and field arson. We had a couple of bull whips that we practiced smashing soda bottles with and killing squirrels with.

Nothing really out of the ordinary just the typical childhood. Climbing over barbed wire fences to gain access to the cool stuff, construction equipment and city pool access. My personal favorite was always breaking glass which I preferred to stealing or burning things. There were enough broken down cars and abandoned building that you could have your fill of destruction on most days.

But most days we simply fought with each other because we had nothing better to do. It was and ideal childhood.

[Hoosiernorm]

I always wanted my own mace, that's why I ask.

[Demon of Undoing]

[noddy]

im still working on rebuilding basic fitness enough to even contemplate that hammer work... been breaking up concrete slabs on my property to turn them into productive land and thats been killing my puny computer using arms... so many years of neglect *sigh*.

but regular bush stomps with 2 large dogs and a camera have been steadily improving it all, a heap more capable than i was a few years ago - holding back 80 kg of storming puppy dogs with one arm whilst trying to take pictures of the thing that got em excited with the other has proven fitness inducing.

[Demon of Undoing]

[noddy]

i cant watch bits of chrome go up and down- it does my head in. fitness and strength are always a by product of doing something i get value out of..

"throw your own body around" type activities like climbing, bush walking and physical labour make you better at this world, more capable and more in tune with your body - its inspiring to have those abilities enhanced. fitter and stronger is just a side effect not the goal in itself.

id love to get good at your hammer thing, maybe when ive finished smashing the useless concrete and brick wall areas my missus and i call the "white elephant".. the bloke we bought it off seemed to have spent alot of money on turning this property into a carpark/mall only to have a sinkhole open up in the middle of it.

got my own ancient ruins forming but the archeology isnt as fun as time team.

[Tinker]

Y'all should check out ' Body by Science'. Dr Doug McGuff goes into the metabolic/catabolic cycle in the muscles. He postulates that most of the time spent at the gym is utterly wasted, that muscle is built by the process and not time spent, that once glycogen is depleted, it is depleted, and spending more time than is necessary is not only useless but can have the opposite of the intended effect. His workout is 12 minutes per week. I need to finish his book and start the regimen to see how it works for me personally. Having had some good effects from short rigorous workouts in the past, it makes sense and ties into what I already knew about muscle firing.

For the martial arts, that is more about training the nervous system than the muscle. There is no such thing as muscle memory, only lower order neurological training. Some cross communication happens in nerve bundles, we don't have to process the finer minute corrections of reflexes in the brain, with the really slow rate of electro-chemical signals, it would take too long if it was all done in the brain. So I wouldn't look to the martial training for strength conditioning, when doing that, focus on the neurology of it.

Neurons pay a role in strength conditioning by signaling where to stimulate muscle use and growth.

[Demon of Undoing]

The muscles are rather involved when swinging a four pound hammer on a short haft, at head and chest height.

I agree that most time spent in the gym is wasted. Twelve minutes a week is nowhere near enough for me, but I find myself coming out of two hours on weights and cardio machines, wondering why I didn't just stay at home. I get the same workout or better doing real things, in less time, and I have less injuries. Less distractions, too. I don't like the fact that there are nothing but co-ed gyms.

I don't oggle, go out of my way not to, but the number of women that clearly go to look hot first and work out second is overwhelming. That, plus I don't want to bust out the more effective, Conan the Barbarian - type training shenanigans around a bunch of women. They either start looking at me like a serial killer, or it looks like I'm trying to impress them. It's the" guy with the snake around his neck at the beach" dynamic, and I have no desire to put on a show.

[noddy]

im a simple wally and think you should practice what you want to get good at.. never seen the point in getting good at making chrome go up and down.

i thought the duration and nature of the training affected the development of fast twitch/slow twitch muscles, bursts of power versus all day stamina.

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[Simple Minded]

Demon,
Thanks for the effort you put into that reply.

I have two older brothers and one younger brother. Grew up in an area and era where adults had no idea where their children were, or what they were doing for 4-8 hours each day. You tale sounds like the typical childhood of a boy with brothers to guide him in his search for his inner Lord of the Flies! All while waiting for Dad to show the first signs of weakness and decay!!!

I do not envy my neices and nephews, the wealth of their parents has enable their childhoods to be so structured and organized/supervised.

My acid test for young parents is to tell them "You realize that your child is a barbarian, and that it is up to you to civilize them, don't you?" and then wait for the reply.

I have also shied away from the Meat Market fitness clubs, and any program that requires a TV/DVD player. I think an obese person is an excellent microcosm of what is wrong with the West. We have used our wealth to so insulate ourselves from reality, that we have reduce our functional capability tremendously. Many are no longer capble of comfortably functioning on planet Earth. I shall now add the person using an expensive machine to isolate 90% of their muscles from an activity during a work out to my list of microcosms for the West.

Luckily it is a self correcting phenomena, but don't get me started.........

I think you're right, anything that forces you to control your body and balance while performing a physical task is beneficial. Isolating one muscle from the rest of your body may build that muscle, but not increase functionality.

You might like the following books by two authors who seem right up your alley:

Super Joints by Pavel Tsatsouline
Combat Conditioning by Matt furey

Tinker, thanks for the heads up, I will chack out McGuff.

[Demon of Undoing]

Matt Furey was influential on me a couple of years ago, when I ran into the Hindu squat/ pushup/ back bridge as a workout triumvirate. I can only do the bridge when I am on a suitable floor, and the pushups work my left shoulder in a way the joint doesn't like moving. But the squats, oh man. There is nothing that will get the lower body worked out like several score Hindu squats. if I don't have a lot of time or space, that's what I will do. Assuming I don't mind being sore for the day after.

Tinker

I see what you are saying about glycogen depletion, and he probably has the right of it. SEALfit, a program bassed off of Crossfit with that Coronado treatment, does things that may take a while( say, 400 yards of wheelbarrows), but there is rarely or never an instance of running 3+ miles. That is a huge change from the old( time wasting) ways. Check out that website, the workout for the day looks like Jack LaLane's hell. Or heaven. But one of those guys could pull three hours a week a get more done than most will in a month.

My only objection is that the value of doing high intensity things for longer terms( well, longer than 12 minutes a week) is in the mental aspects. I don't give a damn what anybody says, there is a value in suffering when it comes to using your body. This is the mental game endurance athletes talk about. The SEALs have indeed gone to shorter, high intensity workouts, but will still do ten mile night swims from time to time.

There has to be an element in the workout somewhere where literal endurance- the ability to endure pain- should be developed. Another beef I have with the gym mentality is the idea that a muscle is developed, but the mind is not. Anybody in shape can push the Wheel of Pain, but it's lessons are learned only by long and yet timeles exposure to it's instruction. There is something there that a high intensity, short duration regime may miss. It's not all about CV efficiency. Sometimes, there are great distances to be traversed. I do admit this may possibly be my own peculiarity.

[Hans Bulvai]

[Tinker]

Demon: Conditioning the mind is a different beast from conditioning the body. Though I am not sure how much suffering is required. I used to have a much better ability to simply turn my mind toward whatever I wanted it to. Perhaps suffering played a role in that. There was a lot of shit that went down for me as a child that required me to be able to simply switch gears. After a while I got into a spiritual practice that became more about open and honest expression as a form of coming to one's true self. Now, I suppose it's time to integrate them. The first time I calmed myself to the point that the Great American Scream Machine wasn't even exciting, I kind of decided it was a bit over-rated to overcome fear to that degree. I can turn emotions on and off at will, project fear when I want to, turn it off when I want to. Not to a point of complete mastery, but to a degree. I can even communicate fear by looking someone in the eye and just pouring all my fear through the eyes without fear coming from the rest of my body. It's an interesting technique and your average psycho doesn't know how to deal with it. Those who smell fear come after you when they sense it your body, but when you turn it into a focused weapon, it is beyond their comprehension and they don't know how to react. At any given time I am full of fear, sorrow, rage, joy, all at once. So I can honestly express any of them, because they are all there. The sort of 'tough' guy who likes to pick on those who are afraid, I don't think gets that.

I am not sure how much the seeking of suffering has any useful utility. We are all suffering tremendously all the time. Hell, gravity hurts. The subjective experience of being crushed is always there, it's just that the brain which works by perceiving dynamic changes has relegated the sensation of being crushed by gravity into the null-set of constants that it devotes no resources toward experiencing.

Simple Minded: I was recently introduced to Tsatsouline. I have heard some criticisms but am not aware enough of his work to really form an opinion.

[Demon of Undoing]

I'm talking about the pain of doing true endurance. It's one thing to feel the fatigue associated with a couple of miles. It's another to cope with it for mile after mile. There are definitely places that a mind in long suffering goes that it simply will not without it. Knowing you can put up with it and putting up with it in fact yield entirely different things. Pain is an unreproducible door to another reality.

Like I say, it's not something that needs to be done daily, but even a few minutes spent there vs spending no time there at all is beneficial.

[amos]

[Demon of Undoing]

[Tinker]

[Simple Minded]

[noddy]

i get what demon is getting in my way - that teaching yourself you can grind through pain and weakness is a powerful thing.

you do need to remind yourself of that skill from time to time, lest you wallow in paranoid self limitations and fear worship.

[Tinker]

To be more succinct: I am not sure that experiencing pain and suffering makes you more capable of withstanding pain and suffering. Maybe at lower levels of pain, like the kind you get from a gruelling workout. But I think there is a plateau, beyond which, pain is simply excruciating.

[Simple Minded]