Jump the fence

As part of my attempt to build a better athletic base this year, I've discovered plyometrics.

I was looking for some exercises designed to improve explosive power (lots of sudden lunging and jumping forwards and backwards in fencing), and some of the sites I found mentioned this plyometric thing.  Being a typical librarian, I raided my library's collection and found a couple of good books on the subject.

Also some pretty average books and some downright boring books, but I can say I quite like these two:

High-powered plyometrics by James C. Radcliffe, Robert C. Farentinos. (ISBN: 0880117842)

and

Training for speed, agility, and quickness by Lee E. Brown, Vance A. Ferrigno, editors. (ISBN: 0736058737)

The core idea behind plyometrics involves a lot of jumping, skipping and bounding - making your muscles work like springs to propel your body in all sorts of ways.

It seemed like a good fit for a sport like fencing, so I've been starting with some of the less intense exercises to build a few work-outs.

I've only done it a handful of times, but I have to say my plyo workouts are amongst the best I've ever had.

I don't need a gym - just a park with a patch of land big enough to do some sprinting.  I don't need any equipment except a pair of shoes (although a boxing bag or a medicine ball add an extra dimension).  If it's raining, I just go to the PCYC and use the boxing area or the basketball court, depending on what's free.

My favourite plyo exercises so far involve a combo between jumping and sprinting.  You jump a few times (either a long jump or a lateral jump), then suddenly change direction and sprint for a few meters.  You feel absolutely hammered after a few reps of these - but it's a good feeling.

I give myself a 10 minute warm-up of light jogging, some skipping and some stretching, and then run through a few combinations of five or six plyometric drills for 20 minutes, then spend 5 or so minutes doing another round of jogging and stretching to cool down.

It's amazing how effective that can be.  I've been doing this as my "warm up" before fencing on a Friday night, and it has completely revolutionised my training...

Just not in the way I expected.

You see, quite often I get to fencing and waste half my warm up time getting dressed, then do a couple of drills with the group, then have a few exercises on my own before a short class with the coach*, then I get maybe two bouts in before it's time to take of my 300 layers of clothes and go home.

So often, I get to the end of a fencing night and thing "I could really do with some exercise or something".

Now that I'm doing this plyo work-out ahead of fencing, I'm actually coming into the fencing session feeling like I've already done a decent amount of exercise for the evening.  I seriously don't care if I spend the next two hours largely spectating - I've moved, I've grunted, I've sweated and I've done stuff that makes me feel kind of like an athlete.

Who cares if all I got was a training session where I felt like a dork and two bouts which I lost?  I had a good session.  I did serious sport.

The fencing is just the icing on the cake.




*which usually leaves me feeling like a moron - for some reason I can never work out what he wants me to do, and when I finally work it out I do it poorly.

Bessie

I have named my softball glove "Bessie".

I've signed up for a softball team, you see, and it occurred to me that I should write some sort of identifying piece of information on my glove, just in case a couple of other people have the exact same size and model.

For some reason, I decided that writing my own name on the glove was silly.

I mean, what would happen if I play for exactly 8 weeks, decide the whole thing is a bad idea and decide to sell my stuff to someone else?  Who would want to buy sporting equipment that has someone's name written all over it?

But if the glove had its own name, that would be different.

You might not want to by a glove with "Sharon B" written on it - but a second-hand glove called "Bessie"?  Well, that might seem fun and light-hearted.

And, in the mean time, should I become separated from my glove for any reason, the odds that anyone will have the exact same size in the exact same model with the name "Bessie" written in the exact same place are fairly slim.

I'm thinking of extending this to my fencing swords.  Most of my swords are recognisable from the grip, but I'm about to buy a sabre that's a bit more generic.

I think I'll call it "Maude".

Painting the house

Redecorations are afoot at the family home.

It's one of those things.  When my grandmother was still alive, I kept making comments like:  "This is rather old and a little bit broken, should we replace it?"

Like the paintwork.  I would say things like:  "This house was last painted in 1988, should we have it repainted?"

Generally speaking, this would result in people frowning at me, and then completely ignoring my suggestion.  The idea was that we didn't want my poor invalid grandmother who was stuck in the house all day every day to have to put up with anything new.

I could never quite work out why a new fridge would cause her distress and sadness.  Personally, I would have thought being stuck in a nice house full of pretty things would be preferable to being stuck in an old, ratty house full of old, ratty things, but then I'm a normal person.

Apparently, in my family, being able to put up with crappy stuff for no good reason is a sign of courage, or something.  Either that or, once you get to a certain age, you no longer deserve nice things.

Anyway, now that my grandmother is long dead, my mother has finally come around to the idea that maybe 25 years between paint jobs is a bit much.

I think it helps that I've mentioned to her that a lack of maintenance lessens the value of the property, which will have an effect on my inheritance.  More than once.

This is the way we have to play in my family:  You have to find the right buttons to push, and then you have to push them multiple times... and wait for many years to see if it had any effect.  However, if you accidentally push the wrong buttons more than once, you may ruin all chanced of ever achieving anything.

So, anyway, my mother came up with this grand plan of wasting her long service leave on repainting the interior of the house herself (she hired professionals to do the exterior).

This does, of course, mean that we are engaging in the following, well-worn pattern:

• I must help my mother as much as I can, or I feel like a failure as a daughter
• She must prevent me from helping her as much as she can, or she feels like a failure as a mother

But, that said, we are managing to paint the house.  Just not well.

For some reason, a 60yr old English teacher and her librarian daughter aren't quite as competent at house painting as, say, professional painters.

We just keep reminding ourselves that it just has to look good enough to convince people that it has, in fact, been maintained over the years.  Once some other poor sap has bought it, they can do a proper repainting job themselves.