5 days

Sat in on 8 surgeries this week with a somewhat... cavalier surgeon who let me take the knife and do the cutting on three of them - after I had demonstrated enough anatomical knowledge to know what to avoid. Excised 3 BCC/SCCs (types of skin cancer for you non-medical types) and did the suturing on the last one, as well as some stitches elsewhere. He said my cutting was good ("perfect", actually, though I think that means I just came through the right layers in the right places), though my suturing needs work - if the stitches are placed unevenly on each side then one ends up shorter than the other and the wound doesn't close well, and that can mean infection. Need to go back to the cadavers to work on my stitching, methinks. It's amazing the differences between living and dead bodies like the strength/turgor of the skin; and even between different living bodies, how some head wounds bleed torrentially and others not at all.

Finally signed my transfer papers to the infantry. Hopefully looking at the November-December IETs, and maybe some advanced courses later in summer if all goes my way. Which it probably won't. But resting will be good for me anyway.

Had the best training session since my Canberra trip about 2 months ago. Turn vaults at speed are wikkid fun!

Following my Canberra trip I had more money than I expected left over, noticed that I needed more power, and wanted to keep working on my strength as my gym membership was about to lapse. I jumped on the website of Australian Kettlebells (apparently they have an actual store/gym in for you Melbournites) and bought me a weight vest and agility bands. A mate was having a play with them whilst I was having a light training session in a tree - he had looped it round a pole and was running towards a drink bottle. A play session turned very, very intense and soon we were running and swearing and digging our fingers into the gaps between slabs to get a hold and let us keep moving. Once we hit that, we switched and moved it further away. For the last round, we decided every failure would mean the bottle was moved an inch further. My first attempt was going well, I was about 10cm out of reach and attempted to leap towards the bottle only to have the band snap off my waist, hook round my ankles and drag me ignominiously along the concrete back to the pole. Right before attempt No. 2 I had a little zen moment - I was going to run, then swear and slap that bottle down. I ran, and with a mighty "You cunt!" - smote that bottle upon the concrete.

Lessons

Wow. Long time no posts. To sum up - I've been doing more work in trees and outdoors - haven't been to the gym in quite a while - the beep tests evolved into a 4-5k run 6/7 which is considerably less boring. More regular parkour training has been much more enjoyable and I have been progressing at a snails pace - but still progressing. In all, various things have been happening - exams and training, none of it really worth writing on; and no workouts to share as they haven't been planned or recorded.

Spent this past week in Canberra training with Eliot. It was a solid five days - more solid than NatSoc last year even though the days were shorter- probably because it was just us and sometimes a few locals, so there was more training and less sitting around socialising.

It was a good holiday though - learnt some things and thought I'd share. Though most of them are personal so I'm not sure how much good it will do you :P.

My problems are still largely mental blocks. Mental blocks of the illogical kind since the pain isn't really a major concern of mine and serious damage is rare. Talking with Eliot about it all he said two things - one of which I had realised already but not enough to articulate and another one I don't think I'd considered.

1. Drilling. A lot of the fundamentals I can do and do well (or at least passably), but not instinctively. This creates some breaks in flow when trying to string a bunch of movements quickly together and causes me to glitch when approaching new/different obstacles. I had figured this would disappear with general training, but E pointed out drilling which makes a lot more sense in terms of getting comfortable specific movements - especially things like cats which can be pretty varied depending on obstacle size/type/approach/exit (to precision or arm).
2. Learning to fail. A lot of the mental blocks I think may stem from the 'what ifs'... If I clip here, what will happen? If I don't make the jump, what will I do? Eliot mentioned that a lot of the better Sydney traceurs (Rhys/Antek/Sammy etc) practiced their bails and breakfalls, how to slide down walls they fail to precision/arm and land well from poor angles. Pays off double - not only because when accidents happen you can turn them around, but also being confident that you can means you attempt things you otherwise might not - and often succeed them, as tends to happen.

One other thing I noticed lacking was my precision strength, and to a lesser degree balance. This makes some sense considering my history, in the gym I (and most people I think) are more inclined to work upper body, and considering most of my leg work is long distance running, my legs are relatively weak in the power and strength areas. This limits jumping distance (especially considering my above average bodyweight) and I think to some extent coordination... as I don't imagine endurance work assists development of fine motor control as much as strength and power.

On a completely unrelated note - I learnt a couple of ways to euthanise animals. I asked my folks how to do it properly- both of whom have done a lot of it in their time - after I recently killed a roo by bludgeoning it on the back of the head after it was hit by a car. Summary:

• Crushing the skull is probably the best for the animal - if its on the road and still alive carefully running over its head is probably the most humane.
• Next most humane is breaking its neck - though this is exceedingly difficult to do on anything much larger than a rabbit simply due to the amount of force required.
  NB: This one I found interesting. A lot of media treats the neck as a rather fragile structure (which it is compared to the stresses that you hear about breaking it - falls and the like. Consider an 80kg man falling from a height of ONE meter generates 784N of force. I did a brief lit search for the amount of newtons generated by skeletal muscle (a broad question if there ever was one) which turned up nothing; but logically I would assume since the same amount of force needs to be generated by the body to raise the centre of gravity 1m - an amount of force generated by the entire body working in unison. Trying to generate the same amount of force by a small muscle group in your upper back special-forces-movie style seems surely difficult. Caveat: Most people can probably jump higher than 1m. I would imagine that most (direct, rather than subsequent infection) deaths from falling also occur from distances higher than 1m. Regardless of the physics, Dad said he struggled with anything larger than a ferret.

Next come the two more common (at least in media):

• Cutting its throat. Most humane in a laboratory setting (i.e. killing lab animals...though I believe they are killed by injection these days. Not likely you'll have your hands on those substances, anyway.), though my father always used to carry a carving knife with him for roadkill until he was pulled over by the police one day. Method: Grip the base of the mandible tightly and fully extend the neck. Feel for the lateral masses of the atlas (deep and inferior to the mastoid processes), and cut from above tracheal cartilage back to the lateral masses. By fully extending the neck you allow the blade to pass above the body of C1 and sever the cord, which stops the pain of bleeding out. Violence of action is very important, as quicker movements will cause less pain.
  
• Stun/Bolt gun. Method is to place the gun on the skull and fire the piston in - ideally penetrating enough of the frontal cortex to kill the animal instantly. However, if the gun isn't fully in contact or the animal moves its head the pistol can recoil, only wounding the animal.

NB: Again, differs from the common media representation here. Perhaps since cutting its throat is seemingly more violent its also more frowned upon, though Dad favoured it, either because he felt it was more controlled or because he is of the old school. Also mentioned was that the biggest variable is the skill of the butcher rather than the method.

Lastly - some inspiration: +Barnz 08-09 and Trace Elements Melbourne 2008 videos. Watch, and be amazed.

1:28.4

Is my new 500m ergo sprint PB.

Happy with that considering I've been sedentary for the past 3 weeks after an AC injury, tired, dehydrated and sick after the last army weekend. Also done at the end of a gym session, after muscle ups and one-legged deadlifts @60kgs.

Feeling like I want to break 1:22 on a row.
Kicking around the idea of getting a part-time job as a personal trainer.
Started running the beep test daily, as whilst at uni I don't run and think it may be holding me back some.
Started gymnastics more frequently and slowly getting some saults down.
Still not sure what I'm chasing parkour-wise. Enjoying it immensly when I train, but training is still pretty unscheduled and uncommon.

Peace.

Flight of Ideas

Life has been very good lately. Due to exams and assignments and the like I havn't been getting as much physical stuff as I want to done lately, which while sad on its own I guess, has been buffered by the amount of stuff that I have been learning. Second year is more intense, but infinitely more interesting, especially as you start to head into the next level of detail. Principles are beginning to become more important which suits me fine - rote learning is something I have always had a problem with, but my reasoning is starting to come more into play - which has provided a happy boost to my self-esteem as I begin to realise, 'Hey, I could actually be good at this.'

Heard a nice story too about an emergency registrar who had a patient present completly blue after being hit by a car on his left side. The registrat worked out it was a flail chest and grabbed the nearets object (a pillow), pushed it into the flail segment which immobilised it, and allowed him to ventilate on his right lung. Very cool.

Training has been different of late. I've been doing weighted muscle ups lately (locally known as man-ups), by best 1RM so far being with a 20kg dumbbell between my feet. Still struggling to get a consistent muscle up on rings however, I think due to technique being largely 'pull hard and hope for the best.' I've also taken to climbing trees, which has helped my upper body strength immensly as my arms have to work at all the odd, natural angles one dosn't find in the more inorganic gym. I'm beginning to find I train parkour more often now too, and also more spontaneously, and I've decided when my gym membership runs out in June/July, I'll make the call as to whether I want to renew it, or move all my training outdoors. We shall see.

But yes, life is good.

Yesterday

Randomly pulled a 1:28:8 500m ergo sprint.

Knew the answer to all bar ~3 questions in a CVS tute.
(NB: I know the difference between 'knowing' and someone saying the answer and going 'I knew that'.)

Progress has been made.

March 26th

Did a workout I saw on GymJones, which they took from CrossFit (150 squats, run 800m, 150 squts). I was originally planning to do a 50kg, 45kg, 40kg progression, but I forgot to add the bar, and then forgot that 2x10kgs is 20 kgs. Sets broken down as follows:

2x 25 squats @ 70kgs
2x 25 squats @ 55kgs
2x 25 squats @ 50kgs

Run 1000m

15 squats @ 70kgs
10 squats @ 70kgs
15 squats @ 70kgs
10 squats @ 70kgs

20 squats @ 55kgs
20 squats @ 55kgs
10 squats @ 55kgs

20 squats @ 50kgs
20 squats @ 50kgs
10 squats @ 50kgs

End result; my legs are shaking.

Still not dead

- Did the overland. It was a beautiful trip, though physically piss. Kicking around the idea of doing it with eliot in winter.
- Back at uni, back at the gym. Still trying to find a nice goal to work for (my workout buddies are tough but don't have any specific goals of their own), right now a planche and iron cross are the main ones, and I'm a fair way from both. Uni is sweet, second year kicks ass. Feel like I've learnt more in the past week than in the past year... Maybe I just forgot everything I learnt last year :).
- Have started stretching. Seen a *little* bit of improvement over the past week or so, which is very comforting. Beginning to enjoy doing it too.
- Set up a 10 minute timer on my computer which starts and resets itself automatically. On the alarm I do a set of something. Nice way to keep active.
- Didn't celebrate my 3rd birthday (was out bush). Februrary 14th or 16th - I've tried and I can't remember which. Felt kind of sad... sometimes I look at all the stuff I can't do and realise how far I havn't come. This is tempered by the thoughts that I havn't dedicated myself to being solely physical, it has been the smaller part of my life. Mostly though I think I have good friends, good food, good challenges... it makes the details matter less.