Thursday 11 September 2014

Learning Judo after a forty-year break

The Judo club that my sons attend on Saturday afternoon is planning to run another 'adult beginner' course (lasting 10 weeks) next term (starting about four weeks from now), so I've decided to attend the lessons and see how it goes. I did Judo for a year or two when I was in High School, and as I have to spend a couple of hours watching the kids at Judo most weekends anyway, I thought that I may as well join in (the adult course is being run concurrently with the older kids class). I still have a Judogi from when I made an aborted attempt to resume Judo training in my late 30s (the class was full of twenty-something 'alpha males' and a bit too 'gung ho' for my liking), so the only cost will be $120 mat fees for the 10-week course, plus $120 to join the NSW JFA for a year.

The standard adult class seems reasonably accomodating of older players (there are several black and brown belts that are around my age or even older), so hopefully I can survive the adult beginner class if I don't 'over do' it. If nothing else, the decision to resume Judo training has given my diet and exercise regime a new focus, with a very short time frame in which to shed as much excess weight as possible and do daily aerobic exercise (5BX) and attend the gym until my current membership expires on 10 October.

If I enjoy (and survive) the beginner course I plan to keep attending lessons once or twice a week, and aim to eventually get a yellow and perhaps an orange belt, but I doubt that I'll be able to progress beyond that level even if I keep training indefinitely, as progressing to the higher Kyo grades require attaing some competition points and even the 'masters' competitions (for over-30s) are likely to put me in hospital!

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Tuesday 2 September 2014

Net Worth: August 2014

The past month saw little change in the value of my stock portfolio or SMSF, as the markets dropped mid-month and had only just recovered to the previous month's close by the end of August. On the other hand, Sydney property prices have continued increasing, so my overall net worth got a boost from two month's worth of increase in the valuation of our home (as the monthly sales data were not available when I did last month's net worth calculations). Overall my net worth increased by $18,426 - which seems impressive until you realize that simply keeping pace with inflation (around 3% pa) would require a monthly rise of over $4,000.



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Monday 1 September 2014

Cancelled my gym membership (again)

I had joined the local Crunch Fitness gym with high hopes of regularly attending and getting my money's worth for the modest $15 per fortnight fee. Unfortunately I only managed to get to the gym once every couple of months or so for a couple of reasons:
* the location isn't on my normal route home from work, so it meant an extra half-hour detour on the way home if I wanted to go to the gym after work,
* I couldn't attend three days a week in any case, due to having to collect DS2 from after-school care immediately after work and then prepare the kids dinner on those days that DW works (and usually has to work back), and
* there wasn't any car parking at the gym, which meant parking at a nearby shopping center car park and walking ten minutes to get to the gym - not really an issue, but not much fun during the recent heavy rain storms we've been getting in Sydney.

In any event, I've increased my fitness walking to a brisk 30 minutes every lunchtime at work, and also a couple of extra 30 minutes walks around our local streets after dinner several times a week. While hardly an aerobic work-out compared to spending 40 minutes circuit training at the gym, as long as I ensure I get at least 30 minutes of brisk walking done every day, and some longer walks on the weekends, it is better than nothing, and should help improve my fitness as I gradually lose weight through dieting (a cross between a daily 'standard' diet plan of around 2200 kcals that is a modest version of CRAN, and a couple of low-cal days (of around 1,500 kcals) along the lines of the 5:2 'FAST' diet, and periods when my diet goes out the window and I revert to my 'bad' old habits of eating junk foods and snacks). And when the weather is fine I can go kayaking around middle harbour with DS1, bush walking in the nearby national park, or take the bike for a spin.

All in all, it just didn't seem worthwhile paying $30 each month in gym fees when I was never getting to the gym! And in a few months time it should be warm enough again to swim laps in our backyard pool...

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