The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
May BJJ Notes
— My facial stitches pretty much healed up, and as soon as I got them out I was back on the mats. There’s the start of a nice little traditional German dueling scar on my lip, but luckily it happened after I got married, so I have very little need to look pretty anymore. I am, if I”m honest, deeply embarrassed by all the outpourings of affection from the other members at the gym. I considered the whole matter vaguely shameful and stupid; everyone is way too nice about it, going out of their way to ask me how I’m doing when I come in to the gym. I guess the pictures coach posted to the gym group chat when I got injured were pretty amusing, me smiling with my face slashed open. The scar seems to be healing up fine, my only real concern is making sure it doesn’t reopen or become a weak point that could reopen easily in the future, which I think is a thing but I’m really not entirely sure? I was too nervous to shave while the stitches were in or freshly out, so I grew the worst beard of my life while all this was going on. The most frustrating advice is that I should keep it out of the sun, just as the weather is getting to the point where I want to be hiking and swimming and golfing. We'll see how I do with that.
— My buddy talked me into signing up together for private classes with the head coach, once a week in the mornings. The classes themselves are good fun, but the biggest revelation so far is that I understand the entire business model of the gym much better than I did before. Up until now I’d really wondered at how they offered such a good deal: I pay a little under $150/mo for unlimited classes, which are offered for adults 15 times per week with about a dozen instructors, and range in attendance from just me and maybe another guy to 30+ people. It seemed to me like a great deal for me personally, but a tough business to run even with the cash cow of kids classes and at any gym constant supply of people who sign up and never attend. At the same time, while BJJ pedagogy is a whole fucking category of debate I don’t want to get too far into, while I was pretty satisfied with my rate of improvement I did notice that the classes weren’t necessarily structured optimally for learning. Then I signed up for the 2:1 private classes, which on a per-hour basis run $60, and a lot of things made sense. Turns out they book a ton of private classes, with a lot of people who I didn’t realize were booking private classes; where initially I thought of the standard classes as the main thing, and the privates as an incredibly fancy add-on which maybe a dozen people who were really rich or really serious might book, turns out the public classes are the budget tier and the private classes are premium DLC that probably 30-40% of the students are booking. Cynically, it almost feels like the gaps in the pedagogy are intentional to sell privates, by working on a semi-random assortment of moves in the public classes and then gating those fundamentals behind additional cost you sell your product. Given, I don’t begrudge them that, the public classes are a real deal, part of the reason I was talked into signing up for the privates was because I didn’t mind putting some money in the coaches’ pockets it’s still not an easy business. And while now I’m happy to pay extra and show up at 6am for a private class where we just drill precise details on the armbar, the public class format was way more engaging for me early on because I got to jump right into learning a move and rolling with it, even if as a result I only half learned the move. Swings and roundabouts.
— The biggest thing I think I need to work on to improve at this point is mindset. Pretty predictable if you knew me, I lack some level of necessary killer instinct. Hell, it’s a problem I have as a mechanic, that pretty often I’m unwilling to be hard enough on the machine to get a bolt loose or a clip out for fear of breaking something. I tend to categorize too many of my partners at the gym as either way better than me, so that I’m trying not to lose too badly and unwilling to be rough with them when they’re being kind to me by going easy; or as way worse or weaker/smaller than me and hence I don’t want to go too rough and be a dick to them. Part of this is a sense that I’m a big strong guy, even in the context of the gym, and I don’t want to have the rep as a big dumb moose that spazzes out and hurts people. But sometimes I get the distinct sense I’m stuck at 75% effort, and that if I could just get out of second gear I could start beating some of the guys I think are better than me. I’m thinking maybe the solution is hitting up more open mats at other gyms, so I’m a bit more shuffled. I’m reasonably pleased with my progress in defense, guard retention, and lately I’ve been having some luck with sweeps and guard passes. But I can’t seem to get finishes, and at times I feel like I’m just stalling in the round maintaining mount or side control without getting the finish.
— In the weight room, my Philadelphia Eagles posted a hype video of the guys doing back squats in the offseason. Among monsters like Jordan Mailata and Saquon hitting 6 plates, Grant Calcaterra came in and hit 405. My first reaction was: poor Grant, why did they have to do him like that? He seems so weak compared to the rest of the players! My second thought was: that’s not far past my PR in back squat, and really close to my implied PR from reps, with a little effort I could say I back squatted as much as an Eagles Tight End! So I’m trying to get back under the bar for a couple months after this weekend, when…
— Murph is coming, and I’m gonna fucking die. I’m doing it with the vest, because it doesn’t really slow me down all that much, just makes everything suck more. Will report back if I’m alive.
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