I'm back!

Confession time: I went to my academy and trained this morning.  I have been testing my knee and foot and it just felt like everything was fine, and I really missed my routine.  I was supposed to wait till the end of July, and I have an MRI scheduled for the 29th that I'm moving up to this Thursday-- but I have been working out at my regular gym with no problems, sooooo......  To be honest, my knee has been fine for a while, but my foot is still not perfect.  It takes a while to heal I guess, and though the bone seems solid, there's still some soreness in the soft tissues, but I don't care really.  I just wanted to be rolling again.

Being a morning class, it was a balmy 78 degrees (instead of the 100+ temps we expect tonight) and for warmups we climbed rope, did some ginastica natural, pushups, and stretching.  It was a good class covering attacks from side control and some recounters to common counters.  I felt a little bit "off" getting my leg over my partner's face without thumping my heel into him, but it felt really good to be training again.  I did spar a bit too, first with a generous brown belt who gave enough resistance that I felt like I was really rolling, yet also dangled some bait out there and encouraged me when I took it.  Then I rolled with Bill, a blue belt who has a super super tight side control. I literally couldn't move when he got side on me.  We even started from feet, but I just dropped down to foot on hip guard and tried to play from there. 

All in all a good morning.  I am a little tired-- have had 4 of my cousins in town from Virginia since Friday and between doing fun touristy stuff with them, and some extra work for my real job, I feel like I am ready for a weekend and it's only Tuesday.  I have a deadline tomorrow, so hopefully it lets up a little bit soon.

I was intrigued when I read somewhere on the internet about a guy who wore a heartrate monitor and got a calorie count for his jiu jitsu training.  (It's on youtube but I'm too lazy to find it for you right now.)  So, I bought a Polar FT7 (I think?) and am testing it now.  It's got a chest strap with a snap-on transmitter and then you have the watch to wear on a wrist.  In my conditioning class, I arrived late both days, but it says I burned ~330 calories in ~25-30 minutes, so that's cool (if it's accurate.)  (It uses your heartrate, age, height, weight, and gender to calculate calorie burn-- not an accelerometer like a pedometer uses, so I thought it would work for jiu jitsu too.)  I wore the thing this morning for warmup and most of technique but the watch got in the way on my wrist, so I removed it.  I'm thinking maybe I can connect the watch around the strap of my athletic bra, and maybe that will not be in the way as much.  Anyway, in 90 minutes of light calisthenics and technique drilling I burned 298 calories.... not as many as I'd hoped :\

On other fronts, please check out Christian Graugart's new site and project, Give a Gi.  He's coordinating donations of gis, boxing gloves, punching mitts, etc etc. for people who can use them.  It's a beautiful inspiring project!  So please-- if you have some old gear, if you have a birthday around the corner and get some new "toys" or if you have a gi that doesn't fit-- donate it to a worthy cause!