Holidays

The holidays are a difficult season to get training in, so this is a post not so much about amazing dedication as about squeezing a few drops out of what moments we have. In the two weeks, we've had a nearly constant stream of visitors from afar visiting us, one coming in essentially on the day that the last are leaving, and entertaining, maintaining a semblance of a working life, and all of the holiday hustle and bustle have combined nicely to make it seem like every moment that could be set aside for training is filled with something else. I even have some kindly shared notes on ideas for training when time is severely limited, and blocks of time to get through those exercises are as rare as blocks of time for proper training.

What have I done? To avoid being "weird" in front of company, almost every time I turn a corner to go into the other room, there is some form of a stepping drill or small changing drill applied with my hands and arms, and more importantly with my mind. Stepping is a particular favorite, in fact, at the moment. Every time I get the chance, I practice some form of exercise, particularly ones to build and maintain flexibility and strength, for whatever small number of minutes is provided to me. Every night as I go to sleep, I vividly envision practicing techniques in as as varied a way as I can imagine and try to create a real, tactile sensation of those practices and how they would feel "in action." It's been a two-week period of stealing minutes and seconds and making of them what I've been able to.

While I had hoped my brother coming into town for the holidays would provide an increase in my access to a training partner, as it has in the past, it starkly has not this time around. He spread himself, in my opinion, too thin socially, and so the amount of "company" around us when with him is even higher, when he's even around. I don't go out, and he goes out almost daily, so that didn't work out the way I had hoped. As I've said before... one of these days.

Today was nice. I was able to steal a block of time long enough to work up a good sweat with some basic drills, a few hundred strikes, and almost fifteen solid minutes (!!!) on the circle. I'm looking forward to getting back to my long-turning days, though I don't know when they'll be. I'm stealing minutes not just for training, as I said, but also for work, which is in a vastly more intense phase right now than before. Since I think it may be the case now, I think I've just found a couple more minutes to steal, so a few intensely intent-filled runs through some forms is apropos. Hopefully everyone else's holidays have been good to them in terms of the usual meaning as well as finding chances to find training!