Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Getting it Together - What Percent am I at?

I'm off to a good start on my comeback trail.  I'm working out daily and I made it through class last night.  While some people talk about percentage as a level of effort or against their own abilities, I've often though of percentage in terms of performing everything asked for in class.

Realistically, I was at 75% meaning that I didn't do every pushup cleanly, hit every roundhouse hard and high, do my top speed on every drill get 100% of my leg lifts up properly, or do every drill to its fullest. Like I said, I was at 75%.  At this time last year, as I finished up cycle, I would say that I was at 110%. I did everything in class with full energy plus  a full set of katas before class and extras afterwards. To be more specific, I was having shoulder problems so except for pushups, I was over a 100%.  I was in pushup avoidance mode so except at the prechecks and Power Weekend, I limited my pushups to keep the shoulder problems at bay.

Looking forward, I would like to be at 100% by the end of May.

Right now, I've decided to rely on an old friend to help me move forward. My old training partner Mo (as someone put int).  Mo means Motrin which is one of a number of NSAIDs, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.  The best-known and most popular of course is aspirin or acetylsalicylic acid. Aspirin has three effects: minor pain-killer, reduces swelling, and fever reduction (analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and  antipyretic respectively). It's also a antiplatelet to thin the blood.

The three most popular NSAIDs:
Aspirin
Ibuprofen
Naproxen

In my next post, I'll figure out all the commercial names for these active ingredients, distinguish them from tylenol and paracetamol and from steroid-based drugs.  I'm doing this as an exercise in improving my understanding of what I'm putting into my body (btw, the aspirin is really helping my back!).

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