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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Have to take a break from the motte. Since I had a previous post discussing some anxiety about being here, am posting to make it clear it's nothing to do with anyone here, the discussion was fine and respectful (although I ended up regretting defending Turok lol). I also hope to eventually be back, joining was me dipping my toes but turns out I'm not quite ready for it, might be ready for it someday though. Just wasn't managing to do it with the proper balance for myself.
Proper balance?
Is that supposed to be a thing?
(Best of luck to you.)
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In a previous Wellness Wednesday I talked about my summer challange to climb 41 4000ers, and promised there some trip reports. So here I go!
Prelude
The Climb Against Time, my summer challenge to climb 41 4000ers in one season and raise funds to develop an Implantable Artificial Kidney, started with disappointment. Here, after a good warmup stage of preparing both my body and mind in May, I was hit by terrible snow conditions.
In early June I attempted Allalinhorn through the Hohlaubgrat, mainly a snow route with a little bit of rock scrambling at the summit block. This attempt proved futile as we were bogged down by slushy snow straight from the hut all the way to 3600m where we turned around. This futility was followed by heavy bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, having contracted some stomach bug from the water or the fellow inhabitants of the dingy winter room at the Britannia hutte. Between trying to keep my immunosuppressants down and running to the toilet, days passed, and the snow that had plagued us on the approach had long since vanished in the raging rays of the early summer heat wave.
The week after, I was again in the Alps, this time to try Les Droites or the Aiguille Verte. Neither was in condition; the mixed routes were too soft and prone to rockfall, and the rock routes were too wet and filled with rotten snow. Instead, we did Aiguille du Moine as a workup climb. I was getting incredibly frustrated. I had 41 4000ers to go and here I was, grounded, without any so far. I needed a win, and I needed it fast.
Under these conditions, I accepted Freddy’s offer to try our luck at Dent du Geant. I met him in a cafe just next to the telepherique going up to the Midi. He seemed somewhat out of it, tired and hazy. He had just been up the normal route to Mont Blanc and had come down that night, slightly dazed from the exhaustion. In all likelihood, I had a similar daze, having just come down from my ‘emergency bivvy’ that I had set for myself by the Courvecle refuge at ~2700m to get a bit more acclimatization in and catch the train from Montenvers at 1800m, saving my legs almost 2000m of vertical. Two men, at two different sides of the massif, yet the same cold, sleepless night.
We went over the plan and agreed to meet in two days. We drove across to Italy over the Mont-Blanc tunnel in Freddy’s van. Here we promptly got the lift to Pointe Helbronner at 3462m to make our bivouac. The Italian side of Mont Blanc is steeper and wilder. Layers and layers of rock buttresses rise abruptly from the earth to meet the gently sweeping glaciers coming from the French side at the high summits. It amazed me that there was a path straight down almost from Helbronner to Courmayeur, a sickening amount of vertical on mostly loose rock. Dent du Geant The Bivvy
We got off the lift and could immediately see our objective, Dent du Geant or, Dente del Gigante as Italians would call it. The Giant's Tooth did indeed look like a tooth. I was used to the view of it from the French side; from there, with its sweeping North Face and its cloud perpetually lingering under it, it looked impressive. Now, with us so high up, it looked small and, importantly, attainable.
We moved slowly up the glacier towards our mountain and settled on its shoulder, off the glacier at 3600m. It was an impressive bivvy location. Only 400m below our summit, with the entirety of the Mont Blanc massif to let our eyes gorge upon. Here I started with the ritual of collecting, melting, and boiling snow.
It always amazes me how long it takes to melt and boil snow. For the subsequent bivvies with easy lift access, I decided I would bring water up from the valley and save the time and hassle. Yet the time spent over the Jet Boil was not in boredom, for there was tomorrow's route behind us, and the routes for later, in front of us, to admire.
I had met my partner Freddy on a belay at Pointe Lachenal just a month prior. I didn’t know him well, aside from the coffee shop chat, and we had never climbed together either. Yet from the get-go, I was at ease; things were just meshing well without trouble. So we lay feet to head, as two wide-shouldered men could only lie in this tent, and slept soundly.
Until we were woken up around 2 am by the sound of metal and the flash of headlamps. I opened the zip of my tent and looked up; lo and behold, a train of lights heading up the approach gully. "What the hell? It's 2 am, are these people mad?" I asked rhetorically. This was not a long climb, and I certainly did not expect people to start at the hut at 1 am, yet here they were, clambering up the mountain in our backyard. I suppose it makes some sense to be the first on route for such a popular climb, yet the thought of leaving the tent at such an early hour and doing most of the climbing in darkness did not appeal to me at all.
Let them, we thought. We will get going at dawn. No need to rush; let the rock warm up. As I got back inside the tent, I looked up at the Kuffner, the mythical route of my desire. It cut so steeply up the side of Mont Maudit, intimidating at this time of day, with the deathly skirts of the Cursed mountain dropping steeply to either side. It, too, had a train of lights moving up it. I hoped and dreaded for it in the coming weeks.
In our tent, we brewed up, ate, and slowly but steadily got ready. At 5:40, just on the tick of dawn, we joined the light train going up the approach gully. The Climb
The first part of the climb was about 250m of steepish snow mixed with some rocks and rock passages. It was not too difficult, and we had a good clear night and so a refreeze. We moved past these sections to the start of the technical climbing slowly and easily in about 1hr 30 minutes.
We looked up to see that even the first pitch had fixed ropes aiding the way. We decided to simul climb this (climb while moving together). I remember this being the hardest pitch of the whole climb. Perhaps because I was still cold and not in the climbing mindset, but tugging on the fixed line in boots, it all felt very powerful. In either case, we made it up the first pitch to the second. I led the second pitch fairly easily placing a few pieces here and there, mostly just to place something, rather than a strict absolute need to place something.
The last move of this pitch was interesting, a mantle move using huge shipping ropes to help on to a massive terrace, at the beginning of the Burgener slabs. Freddy soon joined me on the belay.
The Burgener slabs, though on every photo I have seen look intense and hard, were far from it. Massive cracks go up the rock with good places for both foot and hand. The climb is only marred by the massive shipping rope yarding up the face, detracting from the seriousness of such an objective and its beauty. Yet the ropes were there and so Tug, started to tug, all the way up the slabs to the steepening just before the summit ridge.
Here it got a bit powerful as I entered the chimney, without the ropes I would definitely need my rock shoes but in this case there was no need. The climb was also as well protected as a multi-pitch sport route. So it all felt quiet breezy. I quickly led the remaining pitch on the summit ridge to the Maddona and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
We had made it, my 1st of the 41 4000ers. There was a huge welling of relief. Finally, at-least one was done.
Soon after this I took my immune suppressants. There is always one set at 10am and one set at 10pm, summit or valley, sleep or climb, this was the 10am set.
After summiting there was only the 7 or so rappels down the south face to do. These rappels were quiet fun (when expertly done as Freddy did so) with large overhanging sections which suspended you mid air.
All in all it was a glorious start a very long adventure, where good partnership met good conditions to give a beautiful outing.
[I am a few weeks delayed with all the write ups by the way but they are coming!]
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BJJ Thoughts
— I’m coming to the unfortunate conclusion that I have a punchable face. I keep getting bruises. Sunday I had a good roll, but after I got home my wife looks at me and tells me I have a black eye. I think I caught either an elbow or an ankle to the face when passing someone’s guard, but whatever it was I barely noticed it in the moment so I’m not sure when it happened exactly. But this is the second time I’ve gotten a visible facial injury, and everyone was roasting me about it. I must just have one of those faces, I do kind of look like the bad guy in a romantic comedy who the female lead inevitably leaves for a local townie lumberjack with a heart of gold or something. I feel vaguely ridiculous walking around day to day with a shiner, though I’m glad I got into the gym again so I could show it off.
— The week before the 4th of July I was really down on my BJJ practice. A new guy showed up, L, a big strong black kid. We drilled together and he really didn’t seem to know anything about BJJ technique, so I went into the open mat portion of the class to roll with him feeling pretty good about it. Which meant I was quite surprised when he immediately fired off a beautiful, explosive single leg and slammed me, drove a shoulder into my jaw, and tried a series of clumsy guard passes and subs. I was able to get back to guard, and ultimately take his back as time ran out, but I was getting beat on pretty good most of the round before that, my jaw hurt eating after. And I got kind of down about it, feeling like, man it’s been seven months, and I’m still not really beating anyone who either knows a little and is bigger than me or anyone who knows more than me, I’m not making any progress, maybe it’s time to wind this experiment down, maybe jiu jitsu just isn’t for me. I wasn’t thinking of rage quitting, but maybe stepping back, fading out of it, prioritizing other things…then we had an open mat the morning of July 4th, and it went the complete opposite way. It was around two hours straight of rolling, and I got stomped by the upper belts as usual, but I finally got exactly what I was looking for. I rolled with a guy who had been going for a lot longer than I have, and who had typically beat up on me, and I got the takedown, landed in half guard and started working on a knee slice, he shoved his knee in to block me, and without thinking about it I wrapped his leg dropped back into a straight ankle lock and tapped him. One of the few times I’ve hit a leg lock successfully (more below). We restarted the round and I passed his guard and stayed in mount until the bell. Then I rolled with L again, and this time I was ready for him, he hit a single leg immediately and while he got me to the ground I caught him in half guard which I knew he wouldn’t penetrate easily, I hipped out and got him into closed guard, got him into a shoulder crunch sweep, and popped right to mount, it was the best sweep I’ve ever hit, his strength wasn’t as useful once I was in mount. Suddenly, I’m feeling good about BJJ, I’m excited to go into practice every day, I’m thinking about how to fill the holes in my game to keep progressing. I tell these anecdotes just because it’s amazing to me how I can swing so far in my assessment of my abilities in the course of just a few days. One loss and I'm sure I suck so bad I should think about quitting, one success over expectations and I'm loving it. So much has to do with the expectations: when I think I'm gonna lose I don't mind too much, but when I think I should win losing hurts. I should probably work on moving past that.
— In terms of moving forward with BJJ, I do feel like I’m finally approaching something like a style. When I first started, my strategy was nonexistent, entirely reactive, trying to survive what my opponent was trying to do, stalling and hoping he made a mistake, I got submissions or sweeps when I got lucky, and frequently I found myself in positions for which I had no answers at all and either flailed aimlessly or just tried to lose slowly. Now, I don’t necessarily win a lot, but in the vast majority of positions I do know what to work on, and have a move or two to attempt to hit. Which means I’m no longer just passively trying to survive and avoid my opponent’s efforts, I’m at least forcing them to react and defend, I’m not totally surrendering initiative. I have a few moves from open guard, from closed guard, from half guard, from side control, from mount. I still badly need to improve my game from back control in either direction, and work harder on sealing submissions up. But I think the biggest thing I need to work on now is seizing control of my own training and education. I am, by nature, a teacher’s pet and a rule follower. So I come into each class and I pay attention to each move that each coach teaches and try my best to follow instructions. Typically each coach tries to teach 2-3 moves around a theme or a position, and pretty often (depending on the day and the coach) there’s one or more moves that I look at and immediately go “I’m never gonna do that.” Either because the move involves too many too intricate dance steps, which I know I’m not going to execute; because it involves things I can’t do (front rolls into kimuras and chokes never work for me) or won’t do (throat posting/rape chokes, which I don't do because I have to think too hard about modulating pressure on my opponent to not hurt him during sparring, and that means I can't execute it live because I never practice it right); or because I already have a move I like better there. So if we’re working on three or four moves in a day, it’s often that I like one and two, but three and four I know right away don’t fit me. I think I need to work on being more willing to give up on moves that don’t fit how I roll quickly, and instead talk to my partner and use that time to drill the simpler moves that I might actually use day to day.
I always found that focusing on principles more than technique helped me link things together better. The move of the day stuff sometimes lines up with what you need, but not often. It's worth learning that stuff, but my advice is to focus on things that connect to parts of the game you already know decently well.
So, if you're confident defensively in half guard, maybe try learning a couple sweeps and subs for that position, preferably ones that branch off each other. That gives you a simple choice matrix for that position.
My own progress really took off when I started to focus on staying in and advancing the control position. Six months I learned to sit in mount, six months on back mount. Still working on Kesa/Side Control. Once you understand how to progress the position, submissions sort of fall out of the process. About a third of my subs now are unintentional, before I start chasing anything.
I absolutely agree, but that's how they teach at the school that's five minutes from my house. Even if the one ten miles from my house taught more in line with my pedagogical preferences, I'd value getting into the gym more often, which given my tight schedule I can do so much more often with the short travel.
What I want to start doing is focusing on, during open mat periods, doing more limited rolls with guys. Start in half guard and play "Pass/sweep" for a whole round. I should probably start studying outside of class, but I never end up having the time.
I'm definitely similar, I'm very much a station-to-station or move-the-chains kind player, depending which sports metaphor you prefer. If I'm in bottom mount I'm trying to get to bottom half, from bottom half I'm trying to sweep to get to closed guard, from closed guard I'm mostly trying to sweep but I'll grab a sub if it's offered, then I'm only trying to finish a sub if it's on offer when I'm in mount or side. Hell, depending who I'm rolling with I spend most of my time in mount or side control rapidly transitioning positions trying to stay on top. I just try and stay calm and stay in my game. If I don't lose too quickly in the takedown phase, I can normally get to half guard top or bottom and work from there.
Of course, part of this is just a matter of depth of experience, and just the luck of who shows up. Some days it's still just nothing but guys who kill me, because I'm not very good.
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You could be making up all of these terms and I'd be reading and nodding yep, yep, sounds right, I kind of get where he's coming from here. Anyway good on you, I have been seeing some progress in the gym but still haven't gotten a foot in the door of BJJ. I believe there's a class (?) locally but haven't looked into it. Mildly daunted. Even in aikido there was a certain kind of guy who seemed to look at me and think "Ah, an excuse to hurt this one."
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Ozempic Update:
I think I've been on it for over a month now. Down 3 kilos and change. No real negative effects noted. I estimate I eat at about a 30% caloric deficit, though I haven't been explicitly counting.
Unfortunately, it's been rather difficult getting back in to working out at the same time. I'm having a hard time eating enough, be it protein or otherwise, and the last time I went, I decided to try and beat my PR on the leg-press and almost passed out. Not sure whether to attribute that to slacking for the week prior, not eating enough, not hydrating enough, or skimping on the electrolytes. Lifts stalled too.
If I had to choose one over the other, I'm going to err on the side of losing more weight. In the meantime, I'm hoping the extra fat allows for some body recomposition despite the rather inadequate diet. I've been having creatine powder on the side, but irregularly.
Some have claimed that Ozempic helps with willpower in general. While I'm sympathetic to such, I can't say it's made any difference for me. It's certainly not going to replace the ADHD meds.
This was what I suspected would result from your prior post on recomp. Losing weight first is definitely the right call, dropping the fat and then starting with a clean slate will be great for you. 3kg in a month is quite a bit, if I dropped 6kg I'd probably be at my ideal fighting weight.
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I was lifting and running 6 days a week before I started GLP-1s about six months ago. I've had to stop lifting such heavy weights because it's just too much to do during consistent weight loss. I'm still hitting PRs from running that can be attributed to more than just weight reduction but damn is it slow going.
I'm eating as much protein as I can stomach. It's a challenge.
Unfortunately the best results from exercising come while eating like a pig.
Anecdotally, I would say the slowed digestion regularizes my mood a bit better. I have fewer moments where I feel really crashed, which sort of helps with willpower.
Additionally, I don't get as many distracting dopamine hits during the day making me seek out snacks or going for a walk to a cafe for a goodie, so that probably counts for some utility gain.
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I think I'm putting dating on pause at least for a few months but probably until I finish my PhD. I'm finding I'd much rather train or spend time with friends (or making new friends) than go on a date with a stranger that probably won't go anywhere. Of course at some point I do need to focus on dating: I think finding someone to spend the rest of my life with is important. But I think things will go easier when I earn more money, have clearer work/life boundaries, and in an era of my life where I don't want to train as much.
In the old days this would mean you'd immediately meet someone and be so unburdened by expectations that the two of you would hit it off and begin dating. But that was pre-online matching. In any case, good luck.
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