The end of near

And here we are, the mighty month of June, hinting the arrival of the mid-way point of 2009. It's fascinating how these "dates" act as some sort of miracle turning point for a lot of people. Like new years suddenly empowers thousands to change their ways, all in a day. I admit, I'm one of them, but I often use it as an excuse to make changes. Kind of like I tell myself "alright man, it's a new year, a new mind-set and a new level of success" rather than "ok ok I'm going to do this starting 1 Jan!" the thing is, and if you read my previous posts near the new years' time, I often like to do a new years test run of all my resolutions for a few weeks to work out the kinks of everything before I really go with the "ok starting 1st Jan, I want to..." chant.

Speaking of chanting and repetitions, I've been continuously doing a lot of research about fitness and healthy eating and it feels good to get to a point a lot of the books seem to be repeating themselves. That means I've fully got the concept behind a lot of this. Of course, there's still a lot to learn, but the point is, I can now confidently plan out my meals, my workouts, etc. knowing exactly why I have to do everything. I mean, I've been studying factors such as how fast/slow you should lift a weight as well as let it down. In fact, after knowing all this, a lot of things make sense. I can even feel differences in my body and it no longer is "oh I feel sore", but it's a different type of sore. It's like I've better understood the different types/levels of soreness through understanding the reason behind this soreness. Like now, I'm in a phase of "slow tempo lifting" where I'm working my slow-twitch fibers and this often depletes the glycogen stored in your muscles much more, requiring your body to refuel with more glycogen, thus filling up your muscles more and making them bigger. I wake up feeling sore because I feel like my muscles are empty. After a hearty breakfast, I'm back to normal. The funny thing is, I realize now the benefits of this workout and to be honest, from a strength point of view, this isn't the best choice because I'm neglecting my fast-twitch fibers and eventually I'll be weaker than before. Partly because I'm lifting lighter weights and doing it slower. As they say, lift slow and become slow. But aren't your muscles getting bigger? Yes, that's true, but they're getting less efficient, in other words, my mind-muscle connection isn't being trained. Tell me to punch a guy, and I'll probably not be too forceful. It's a funny reality we live in.

I've found the best way I can improve is to understanding why I improve. Much like how I spent time learning about muscle-memory, I've seen my drumming skills improve a lot ever since I conciously understood why I was practicing a certain way. Sure I wish I had more than 30mins to an hour a day (at most) to practice, but it's still good enough. Oddly, drumming is all about the mind-muscle connection so training my muscles to get bigger helps my drumming in almost no way if you ask me, however, it does help boost my self-confidence, which in turn will boost my on-stage image/vibe and thus probably help my drumming in the end. However, it still comes down to plain ol' practicing in this field.

For comedy, this is yet another thing, body language, voice, tone, expression, etc. all combined! I'm hoping to do a one-man English show this year and it'll probably be at the end of August. I'm not sure if I can make it by then, but that's the goal for now. I've got 10 days to confirm this with myself and get to it. I've been constantly gathering ideas and stuff but haven't had a chance to refine any of them, but it's alright, an idea-gathering phase is very important in itself anyway. So I'll let you know what's going on there in my next post.

And this brings me to my point of being in the middle of 2009. I can see where I was on 1 Jan and where I am on 2 June. It's a good progress, kind of like this year has been a time for me to answer all my "why is it like this" questions, and hopefully the rest of 2009 will be for me to fulfill the "do it like this" part. :) So here's to another 10 days of achievements and successes to everyone :) Enjoy!