I decided, in January, to enter the Berkeley Chinese Martial Arts Tournament, in the push hands division, for a couple of reasons:
broken toe in summer 2013 plus baby (which meant no more jujitsu and no more shuai-jiao, though I stuck with taiji) in winter of 2013 plus bilateral pneumonia in early 2014 plus a year of inertia meant I had expanded back into the mid-190s, pounds wise, and stayed there for a year.
CMAT expanded the rules to allow for one round of "restricted step" push hands (which I don't like) and one round of "moving step" push hands (which I do like). Half a loaf is better than none, and that second round seems to have attracted more competent practitioners this year. (In prior years, Cal students seem to have won many of the medals.) At best, restricted step is kind of like fencing footwork meeting collar tie-ups and slapboxing to the sternum. At worst, moving step is like slow less-naked sumo. It was that kind of day on both accounts.
We'll start with a spoiler:
![11000472_10155342962530385_207071614740367707_n]( "11000472_10155342962530385_207071614740367707_n")
I got skinny, weighing in today at 172.2 lbs, and I won the silver medal in the light heavyweight division.
In mid-January, I started intermittent fasting, specifically an "eight-hour diet", in order to squeeze into the 146-175 pound weight class for the push-hands matches. For me, that mean no food before noon and no food after eight pm, every day of the week. As an inveterate midnight snacker and often a big breakfast eater too—yes, a bagel sandwich with egg and sausage, and why not a brownie too, and I'd better have a banana to neutralize the brownie...—just slicing off either end of the day took of ten pounds pretty easily. Obviously, this won't work for everyone. About three weeks out, I started restricting calories within the noon-eight window: Trader Joe's lentil soup makes a great lunch, and anything for dinner. My home scale and my gym scale disagreed—home told me I was fine so for the last week, I went very hard:
Lunch: one spinach bolani, three slices of deli-style low-sodium turkey, one orange
Dinner: one can of tuna fish packed in water, one banana, one orange, one square of 72% chocolate
Snacks: sugar-free Jolly Ranchers as needed, which have a laxative effect. I went through about four packages.
Drinks: water only, with only about four ounces of water on Friday despite high exercise loads.
I wouldn't recommend this last week's food load at all, especially not coupled with one-two hours of exercise a day. I experienced fairly severe cognitive and emotional deficits.
For practice, I recruited my pal and taiji classmate Gabriel, and we played for between forty-five minutes and an hour twice a week for the two weeks prior to today's event. He's about my weight, but taller and quite strong, and the rules were that he could do all our normal push hands attacks—neck wrapping, grabbing the legs, forearm smashes etc.—while I'd stick with the fairly strict rules for "sports" push hands. I found myself getting a lot "softer" in taiji terms, meaning going with the attacks and succeeding in turning them around.
On non-pushing days, I did my usual taiji exercises, plus burpees (pyramids of 100), pull-ups (groups of 10), and some elliptical and occasional kettlebell cleans and presses with the 28kg bell. Taiji class on Sundays are four hours long, and push-hands club (just once a month: Jan and Feb) are about five hours long, though of course one takes little breaks in between partners.
Anyway, that's how you lose 25 pounds in seven-and-a-half weeks with a forty-three-year-old metabolism.
My taiji teacher had a pinched nerve, so couldn't practice with me much. He did tell me two important tips, which I copied down and brought with me this morning.
![CAD51DBVAAAB6Cm]( "CAD51DBVAAAB6Cm")
"Spine" and "belly." The meaning of these are either already obvious or can't be explained over the Internet.
I got to the event very early, wandered around for a couple of hours, met a bunch of people I know from my local park-based push hands club and soon enough, we were off to the races. I'm so lazy I only put the videos up on Facebook, which doesn't make for useful embedding, but you can always click.
First match, against a UC Berkeley taiji club member named Jack. He was a beginner. I won handily, 7-0. My strategy was to get a lot of easy points in the first, restricted step, round, and in the second round to test how much the judges would let slide as far as rough-housing goes, by pushing my opponent into a judge's lap. (Push hands in the US has a seated judge on three corners and a ref-judge watching the action close up.) I scored with that, then let the clock run out to save some energy. Here's a video.
Second match, against a man with ten years experience in the powerful Zhabao taiji system, and a lot of tournament experience, including five medals. We were evenly matched—he was too well-rooted for me to move; I was too relaxed for him to move. After finishing 0-0 we went into an overtime round. There I got a push on him, but only the ref and two of the seated judges thought it was sufficiently destabilizing to count. (I agree that he was still mostly stable.) Then he accidentally jabbed my neck and I got a point (and a slightly bruised throat) for the violation. Clock ran out, I won 1-0. Here's the video. As he'd beaten his first opponent at 11-3, he won the bronze.
Third match, gold medal round, against a very strong and experienced Chen taiji teacher and artist. He'd torn through his first couple of opponents at 19-0 and 13-0 if I remember correctly. (It might be 19-3 and 13-0.) He was also booked to play as a heavyweight, but showed up at 174.2 lbs and thus was a light heavyweight with me. Anyway, my thought process went from "Maybe I can win!" to "Maybe I can score some points!" to "Maybe I can keep him from getting ten points on me!" I did manage that much—I lost, 8:0. Here's the restricted step round video, and here is the moving step round video.
Anyway, losing the gold means I get the silver. Still pretty fun, and Opie enjoyed playing with the medal.
The heavyweight winner was also a teacher, this one out of Davis. One can't be sure, but I think moving to moving-step rules got more and more competent people interested in CMAT this year. It's certainly why I signed up. My ultimate preference would be to dump the restricted-step round and expand the moving-step to allow for leg sweeps and three-points-of-contact throws.
As for me, I went immediately to a ribs joint for a real meal, then to my friend's barbecue. I think I will stick to noon-to-eight eating periods, which both reduce food intake and something something blood sugar timed digestion for four days a week, and have Fri-Sun for more expansive eating. That should keep most of the weight off, and I think I'll start training for next year...on Monday!
broken toe in summer 2013 plus baby (which meant no more jujitsu and no more shuai-jiao, though I stuck with taiji) in winter of 2013 plus bilateral pneumonia in early 2014 plus a year of inertia meant I had expanded back into the mid-190s, pounds wise, and stayed there for a year.
CMAT expanded the rules to allow for one round of "restricted step" push hands (which I don't like) and one round of "moving step" push hands (which I do like). Half a loaf is better than none, and that second round seems to have attracted more competent practitioners this year. (In prior years, Cal students seem to have won many of the medals.) At best, restricted step is kind of like fencing footwork meeting collar tie-ups and slapboxing to the sternum. At worst, moving step is like slow less-naked sumo. It was that kind of day on both accounts.
We'll start with a spoiler:
I got skinny, weighing in today at 172.2 lbs, and I won the silver medal in the light heavyweight division.
In mid-January, I started intermittent fasting, specifically an "eight-hour diet", in order to squeeze into the 146-175 pound weight class for the push-hands matches. For me, that mean no food before noon and no food after eight pm, every day of the week. As an inveterate midnight snacker and often a big breakfast eater too—yes, a bagel sandwich with egg and sausage, and why not a brownie too, and I'd better have a banana to neutralize the brownie...—just slicing off either end of the day took of ten pounds pretty easily. Obviously, this won't work for everyone. About three weeks out, I started restricting calories within the noon-eight window: Trader Joe's lentil soup makes a great lunch, and anything for dinner. My home scale and my gym scale disagreed—home told me I was fine so for the last week, I went very hard:
Lunch: one spinach bolani, three slices of deli-style low-sodium turkey, one orange
Dinner: one can of tuna fish packed in water, one banana, one orange, one square of 72% chocolate
Snacks: sugar-free Jolly Ranchers as needed, which have a laxative effect. I went through about four packages.
Drinks: water only, with only about four ounces of water on Friday despite high exercise loads.
I wouldn't recommend this last week's food load at all, especially not coupled with one-two hours of exercise a day. I experienced fairly severe cognitive and emotional deficits.
For practice, I recruited my pal and taiji classmate Gabriel, and we played for between forty-five minutes and an hour twice a week for the two weeks prior to today's event. He's about my weight, but taller and quite strong, and the rules were that he could do all our normal push hands attacks—neck wrapping, grabbing the legs, forearm smashes etc.—while I'd stick with the fairly strict rules for "sports" push hands. I found myself getting a lot "softer" in taiji terms, meaning going with the attacks and succeeding in turning them around.
On non-pushing days, I did my usual taiji exercises, plus burpees (pyramids of 100), pull-ups (groups of 10), and some elliptical and occasional kettlebell cleans and presses with the 28kg bell. Taiji class on Sundays are four hours long, and push-hands club (just once a month: Jan and Feb) are about five hours long, though of course one takes little breaks in between partners.
Anyway, that's how you lose 25 pounds in seven-and-a-half weeks with a forty-three-year-old metabolism.
My taiji teacher had a pinched nerve, so couldn't practice with me much. He did tell me two important tips, which I copied down and brought with me this morning.
"Spine" and "belly." The meaning of these are either already obvious or can't be explained over the Internet.
I got to the event very early, wandered around for a couple of hours, met a bunch of people I know from my local park-based push hands club and soon enough, we were off to the races. I'm so lazy I only put the videos up on Facebook, which doesn't make for useful embedding, but you can always click.
First match, against a UC Berkeley taiji club member named Jack. He was a beginner. I won handily, 7-0. My strategy was to get a lot of easy points in the first, restricted step, round, and in the second round to test how much the judges would let slide as far as rough-housing goes, by pushing my opponent into a judge's lap. (Push hands in the US has a seated judge on three corners and a ref-judge watching the action close up.) I scored with that, then let the clock run out to save some energy. Here's a video.
Second match, against a man with ten years experience in the powerful Zhabao taiji system, and a lot of tournament experience, including five medals. We were evenly matched—he was too well-rooted for me to move; I was too relaxed for him to move. After finishing 0-0 we went into an overtime round. There I got a push on him, but only the ref and two of the seated judges thought it was sufficiently destabilizing to count. (I agree that he was still mostly stable.) Then he accidentally jabbed my neck and I got a point (and a slightly bruised throat) for the violation. Clock ran out, I won 1-0. Here's the video. As he'd beaten his first opponent at 11-3, he won the bronze.
Third match, gold medal round, against a very strong and experienced Chen taiji teacher and artist. He'd torn through his first couple of opponents at 19-0 and 13-0 if I remember correctly. (It might be 19-3 and 13-0.) He was also booked to play as a heavyweight, but showed up at 174.2 lbs and thus was a light heavyweight with me. Anyway, my thought process went from "Maybe I can win!" to "Maybe I can score some points!" to "Maybe I can keep him from getting ten points on me!" I did manage that much—I lost, 8:0. Here's the restricted step round video, and here is the moving step round video.
Anyway, losing the gold means I get the silver. Still pretty fun, and Opie enjoyed playing with the medal.
The heavyweight winner was also a teacher, this one out of Davis. One can't be sure, but I think moving to moving-step rules got more and more competent people interested in CMAT this year. It's certainly why I signed up. My ultimate preference would be to dump the restricted-step round and expand the moving-step to allow for leg sweeps and three-points-of-contact throws.
As for me, I went immediately to a ribs joint for a real meal, then to my friend's barbecue. I think I will stick to noon-to-eight eating periods, which both reduce food intake and something something blood sugar timed digestion for four days a week, and have Fri-Sun for more expansive eating. That should keep most of the weight off, and I think I'll start training for next year...on Monday!