Sweat-tastic

By Julius Anastasio
Julius Anastasio is a Green Belt at Wu Dao

Saturday marked the end of my first week of intensive tournament training. Things went really well almost all week, (I went to 6 classes according to my incredibly nerdy spreadsheet), until around Friday when I completely lost all steam and became a walking zombie. No matter how much I tried to psych myself up, I just couldn't get my body to go. When my crescent kicks started to look like they'd only be able to reach a 3 year old's knees, I decided it might be a good idea to take it little easy and not go to class on Saturday. I tried to go out and train on my own on the weekend, but my body still felt like it was moving through molasses. I forced myself to take Monday completely off to give my body a rest and get my energy level back, and that seems to have worked. Now it's just the heat I have to contend with.

It's suddenly gotten hotter in Boston. A lot hotter. Yesterday was in the 90's. This kind of temperature is normally reserved for August.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the heat. In fact, I thrive in it. But my uniforms are getting so soaked that they barely have enough time to dry before the next time they're worn. I know, gross, I don't wash my uniform after each time I wear it. But it's kind of hard to do that when you don't have laundry and you're going to class two times in one day.

One of the things I've noticed is that training in the heat gets me very loose and very flexible, very quickly. While it IS awesome to say "hey look at me, a full split after only about a minute of warming up!," this also tricks me into pushing myself a lot harder than I normally would, which leaves me completely exhausted and spent after only a single class. I'll have to be careful over the next couple days not to overstep my bounds. We'll see if this heat wave breaks as quickly as it came. Now that it's getting hotter, and training is getting more intense, I'll have to pay a lot closer attention to my body in order to train intelligently in the days coming up to the tournament.

Days until tournament: 37