These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (NOT)

Recently I find myself doing a lot of things, haha I don’t necessarily like to do. I do them because I find value in them, but if you asked me if these were some of my favorite things, you may be inundated with my laughter. Things I am not a big fan of that I am currently doing: Reading, Walking, Exercising, Drinking Water, and Dieting.

Recently I find myself doing a lot of reading. I don’t like to read, it takes to much effort and requires the use of that lump of cells in my head called JohnJohn’s super awesome and totally brilliant brain. I guess I have become entrapped in modern gadgets and gizmos that TV, Internet, and Radio have become more interesting than reading. The strange part is after reading I feel so good, so why don’t I do it more? Haha probably because when it comes to reading I am a bit lazy. Although I don’t care for reading I find myself reading a lot. The first book that I am currently reading is A Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren. I have read through this before but a friend wanted to read it and I thought it would be good to go through it with her, especially during this time in my life. Not that it is a bad time in my life, but with not passing the bar a few times, it seems like I am at a point in life where sometimes I am questioning my purpose and God’s calling in my life, so I thought that this would be a good refresher on to staying on track. Plus it gives me some good stuff to talk about with this friend. This is kind of one of those deep books that can give you a lot of insight into yours and other people’s lives that you are reading this with.
The second book I am reading and working through is The Way of The Wild Heart by John Eldredge. This is a book that my church is reading through. We are using a new home model for church so the guys I attend with, well we all happen to be some pretty awesome, single (so ladies if you are looking for some awesome Godly guys, let me know), professional fellas. Because of this we thought that this book would be good, kind of a reminder that God has created us in a certain way and hopefully will provide some insight into how we should be behaving. It is kind of a road map to being “Manly Men.”
The third book I am reading, ok this one I am not reading but it is on my bedside table waiting to be read is Clarence Thomas’ My Grandfather’s Son. Justice Thomas is one of my favorite Justices, second only to Justice Scalia and so I am pretty interested to read his book, even though it has been sitting on my bedside table since it first came out.
Some of the other books on my table to read, and I will read them is Mahesh Chavda’s The Hidden Power of Prayer and Fasting. And last but not least is Personal Faith Pulic Policy. This book is on my to read list because I have come to the realization that I have strong extreme right wing beliefs but I can not back them up with anything but saying that is my religious belief, so to further better discussions on those topics, I thought I should read up on them.
The next bunch of stuff that I am not into but I am doing is walking and exercising. I am not a big fan of walking in general, why walk when you can drive? But I usually walk with a friend and it is a good opportunity to talk with this friend, kind of killing two birds with one stone. I get a little exercise and a lot of good conversations. Exercise another one of those things that I really dislike, but I do like fighting and playing rugby. The unfortunate part of participating in those sports is that they require a lot of physical exertion. In order to be good at those things they require a bit of effort in the exercise department. So I work out, like tonight I worked out like a fiend. I started with a power lifting routine with the boys of GMA and then I went to yoga at the fitness club, and I ended it with an hour and a half ralk at the fitness club. This time yoga was way cooler than the last time, this guy Murti who taught tonight’s class was awesome. He had me sweating like a fat kid walking up stairs in the first five minutes. Plus he didn’t have me all confused with the funny names for the poses and he was like super helpful in getting you into the right poses or suggesting alternates because some of us are so not flexible enough to be doing that kind of stuff. The ralking, well that was so I can go five rounds and win an ultimate fighting championship belt some day, haha maybe not but who knows if this bar thing doesn’t work out haha. Haha and I know you are probably wondering what the heck is ralking, it is my vernacular that I use to describe my forward movement for training. It is not really running, but iit aint walking either, its ralking. My real big motivation for doing this exercising and training is this video: I was so gasping for breath that I wasn’t moving when I was in the non-dominant position. This is unacceptable, I must never lose a fight again.
The last thing is drinking more water and dieting. I really hate dieting, but I have come to the conclusion that my optimal fight weight is not going to be as a heavy weight, where I would have to fight some fat mamajammas. In fact I probably shouldn’t want to fight as a light heavyweight, but being anything less just seems wrong to me. So I am working at getting down to a more optimal weight, plus hopefully it will make me more desirable to the ladies, Hello Ladies! haha if you watch rasslin you know what I am talking about. One of the big causes of me probably not losing as much weight as I would like is I drink way too much sodas, even diet sodas which have other bad stuff in it besides stuff that makes you fat. So I have been trying real hard to drink more water instead. In fact I have cut down from like two or three sodas a day to like two or three a week. As for dieting, I probably wouldn’t do it, but since the guys I fight with are all suffering through it I decided to join them in their pain and suffering, all in the name of teamwork. We fight together, We bleed together, We suffer together, We beat the snookers out of all those who dare take on the mighty GMA together.
So I do a lot of things I don’t like but they all have good benefits. And the desire for the benefits far outweigh my dislike so I continue on. Sometimes we all do things we don’t like because it helps us get to the things that we do like, so we keep pressing on towards the goal.

You Did What?

Life has an interesting way of taking you onto strange paths, usually by our bumbling around or by some dumb luck. I found myself on this odd path, well not really all that odd, but a little odd for me. One of the joys I find in life is fighting. I love mixed martial arts, although I don’t really consider them a martial art, but more of sports fighting, kinda like sports entertainment. It is not real fighting cause I don’t think it translates well to a real fight cause in a real fight you are going to fight dirty because so much is probably at stake if you are willing to fight over it, instead it is about winning but winning like how you would win in a sport. Anyways I digress, so a lot of things I do are for the purpose of making me a better fighter. I am the kind of fella who when he finds something he loves will do things he doesn’t like at all to get better at what he does love. For instance, when I was playing rugby I seriously considered taking ballet or gymnastics to help with my flexibility and make myself a better hooker, not that kind of hooker, take thy mind out of the gutter. Well now I am fighting and in order to make myself a better fighter I do things that I don’t really like, such as running, working out, occasionally watching what I eat, cutting down on pop and sweets which are totally my favorites. I have also taken a page out of one of my rugby coaches playbooks and taking up other physical activities to improve my flexibility. How odd that at this point in my life when I was considering this option a dear friend of mine asked me if I would like to attend a **** class with her, and of course as you probably know my answer was a resounding yes. Haha and I know you are probably thinking I just did this cause the girl is pretty and fun to hang out with, which I will admit was a part of the decision, but the big driver was I believe that this **** class could help me lock in a better triangle or armbar and maybe even lock in an omaplata(spelling?) one day. So I took the plunge, and yes it is true, and took a YOGA class. I know you are probably thinking, no not you JohnJohn, how can such a manly super macho orange roughy guy take a yoga class, but seriously next time I fight and lock in a vise like triangle you will understand.

So I participated in my first yoga class and here are some of my thoughts. I am used to high impact types of training and one of the best thing crossfit has taught me is that sometimes you need to change your thinking, so while this is a little shocking to me to go through such a low impact (meaning I am not suffering to the point of becoming a barf brother or getting knocked out) workout I know it has some benefits.

What was amazing was that although the impact wasn’t very high man it was tough. I was sweating in there and having muscle shakes and fat jiggles, and even a little soreness today.

Another amazing little tidbit was how peaceful it really was. Normally I like loud pounding kind of sounds and lots of white noise in my life, but it was nice to have a little bit of peace. I was also impressed by an article I read on fox news. One of the downsides to the war in Iraq was the strain on marriages. The Marines came up with a program to help deal with the stresses put on marriages including some couples yoga. This truly impressed me and helped me realize that there are a lot more benefits to this yoga thing than I previously thought.

So all in all, it wasn’t all that bad. In fact it was pretty darn cool. It wasn’t perfect though. First of all I felt really stupid cause none of the “poses” made sense to me, although some are similar to core workouts I have done in the past. Plus I was next to my really pretty friend, so I was probably even more self conscious than I normally would be. The last thing was that the teacher, while helpful, didn’t explain all the poses so when she was saying do a double down dog or a child birth thingy or some other pose I was like what? It was almost as if she was speaking some kind of foreign language, like proper english.

So would I do it again? Of course because the benefits seem to outweigh the negatives. I get more flexibility, which would make me a better fighter and…. plus it is some kind of exercise, which I can always use more of, and it is pretty relaxing.