At the same time, I’ve just started an awesome creative writing class called The Discovery Wonkshop led by Lani Diane Rich over at StoryWonk. It’s all geared around the pre-writing discovery process of writing a novel and even after only one class has kicked my brain into creative mode.

Our first assignment is to create a soundtrack for our story, so I have been spending the last couple of evenings with Spotify, Last.fm and a bottle of wine (as Lani says, “Best Homework EVER!”). I have spent a ridiculous amount of money on iTunes and somehow seem to have ended up with 6 hours of music in my soundtrack. I might need to prune a little.

All good, and all very exciting. Except I’ve just realised that it’s my martial arts class tonight so I need to flip back out of ‘daydreamy plot mode’ back into ‘fighting mode’ and in between find my ‘competent parent mojo’. I think my lead character is going to end up with a split-personality disorder.

Send help. Send chocolate.

I’ve now been going to kung fu for coming up to four months. If anything, I’m coming home after class even more psyched and enthusiastic that I was when I started. I am making clear progress (though every week I find new challenges and my understanding of just how much I don’t know/can’t do expands exponentially the more I learn). I haven’t come home as bruised since that one time, but ice packs are still the best invention ever.

What’s interesting, though, is how much martial arts are permeating other aspects of my life. Some, are not totally unexpected. I’ve been working hard on my upper body strength training just to keep up in class; when I started out I could only manage about 2 push-ups, I can now get up to around 12 before my form goes a bit awry and regularly do around 50 in sets of 10. I bought a chin-up bar and couldn’t even get an inch off the ground, I can now do 7 with a minute’s rest in between. The subtle benefits in life of being that little bit stronger and fitter are definitely a major perk.

I’m becoming quite nicely toned and my body confidence and self-esteem are probably at the highest they’ve ever been. I’m walking taller, sitting straighter and have had far less back problems as a result. I’m particularly interested to see how well I cope with the winter blues this year – will the extra adrenaline and endorphins help combat SAD?

An unexpected bonus has been the way I’m starting to deal with irrational fears. I’ve found that “oh fgs, if you can do kung fu then you can cope with… a spider/the dark/awkward social event/looking like a twunt” is a fine motto, suitable for all sorts of circumstances. Still working on the less irrational fears though: I’ve got another grading coming up, but I’m bottling it on one aspect of the test – still not quite certain whether I should feel the fear and get on with it, or just see it as a sign that I’m not ready yet.

Not bad for something I pretty much started on a whim.

By far the hardest part though, is dealing with injuries, specifically bruising. Not the actual soreness or how long it takes to heal (after all, when I twisted my knee doing a step lunge during an aerobic workout hurt far more and still gives me occasional twinges now, months later) but rather other people’s reactions to that bruising.

The last class I had was a particularly tough one and the bruises fairly spectacular. I’ve had worse bruising from training before (no haematomas this time, yay!) but not quite so extensive or so obvious (last time was still long-sleeve weather and so were well hidden from the casual observer). I really wasn’t prepared for the amount of negative response I’ve had to this, to the point of several people telling me I should quit martial arts.

I haven’t really known how to react to these comments properly. I was already feeling disappointed with my performance in that particular class and to be honest, the criticism of my choice of activities immediately put me on the defensive. I have chosen to react flippantly, laugh it off… “oh these… they’re nothing”, but damnit, they’re not nothing and I am putting myself down each time I say it. It’s true that they don’t hurt much now, but yes it hurt getting them. They’re a badge of honour, I earned every single damn bruise on my arm and each one represents a hard-earned lesson. If I had come off my bike and got scraped up a bit, would people be demanding I stop cycling? Should I stop aerobic exercise because I twisted my knee once?

If I’m honest with myself, I am far more angry with my own response than the criticism itself. By brushing them off as insignificant then later I feel unable to say “actually, I’m really struggling with this class” out of fear it would give my critics more ammunition to use against me. At the same time, it’s been good for me, because I’ve been forced to evaluate exactly why I signed up to do martial arts and why I am going to continue going regardless of how difficult I find it.

So, for the record: I need to do this. Yes, I have something to prove – not to the doubters, not to the other people in my club – to myself. If I quit now… because it’s hard, because it hurts, because it’s embarrassing when I show up the next day bruised, because other people think I should… what does that actually say about me? If I quit now, I will lose all self-respect for myself and I will always regret it.

On one of the martial arts boards I read, one of the posters talked about training “mental toughness” and that’s a concept that’s really resonating with me at the moment. I’m discovering that Martial Arts is as much of a mental discipline as a physical one and learning so much about myself in the process. If I do get attacked and get hit, then I will not curl up into a ball in shock at the pain, I will be able to react and (hopefully) react hard.

I’m not doing this for approval. I’m doing this for me.

This wouldn’t normally be an issue, I’d just avoid doing them – problem solved. However, my martial arts class last week included push-ups as part of the warm-up, plus some weird sit up thing where you have to lift your legs at the same time then slap your ankles (on a hard floor – I still have the blister on my back from that!). Needless to say, I was beyond pathetic.

Anyway, @tinyblob pointed me at the one hundred push-ups training program, so I’ve started on that in the last couple of days along with the two hundred sit-ups companion program for good measure.

I will not be defeated. I will rise above patheticness.

Current status: I still suck.

I’ve mentioned learning Kung Fu to a few of my female friends recently, and their response has been overwhelmingly positive: “good for you”, “excellent”, and “wow, I’ve always wanted to do that” (surprisingly, this was the most frequent response). The lack of women in the sport doesn’t seem to be due to misconceptions or a negative view of martial arts among women, then (at least not in the tiny sample I spoke to). So what is the issue here?

While reading around the subject, I came across this article: On kickboxing, women’s aggression and self-defence. It talks about the subtle taboos in our society of viewing women as aggressive or violent, but most striking is the joy the author, Jessica Burton, finds in kickboxing. I recognised a lot of my own reasons for beginning a martial art in there, and was inspired by the rest.

I was also amazed at my body’s ability to respond to the demands the sport made on it. After three weeks, I no longer felt like I was about to die from exhaustion during class and after a year I had very well developed muscles all over my body. I was strong, fit and confident.

And this is one thing that I hadn’t anticipated: kickboxing made me enjoy my body as a sensuous and capable thing. Not only did I like being able to lift more shopping and open all my stiff jar lids, I realised I was allowed to enjoy my body, nurture it and its new demands (“Must have food! Now!”) and be proud of what I could physically achieve.

Makes it a thousand times more compelling than pilates, for me at least.

Only, I feel like that now and there’s nothing wrong with my head – I’ve taken it to take the edge off muscle soreness from Wednesday night (even worse today than yesterday, ugh). That means it’s probably my body reacting weirdly to the codeine.

Oh well, something else to add to the list of things I’ve learned this week. Just goes to show that I don’t use painkillers that often to never have noticed before.

I decided to sign up for a martial arts course – first lesson was this evening. Akra Jr in particular was very excited and wanted to come too. He thinks I want to be a Panda, for some reason. He kept following me around waving his arms around and going “hi ya” type noises. Bless.

First lesson was a bit of an eye opener – it wasn’t going to be as easy as just waving my arms around and making threatening noises. I think I’ll be okay as long as my potential attacker stands still for a while so I can think through all the moves: “right, just stay there, that’s right. Now I’m going to push down on your arm and go for a palm strike, ‘k?”

There was only one other girl there, and she had been going to martial arts classes from the age of 3 so I felt particularly weedy. I was also paired up with a bodybuilder and possibly one of the toughest guys there. Fortunately a very nice and patient bloke who didn’t laugh at my pathetic attempts at co-ordination. In the interest of not building up fake confidence, he didn’t hold back (at least he said he didn’t) with the wrist holds – so I know I can get out of one now, regardless. However, can I just say …. OW!

Still, I’m going back again next week. Assuming I recover the use of my arms by then. Pass the Nurofen.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve done too bad an injury – it’s uncomfortable but I can put full weight on the leg without problems and it doesn’t bother me while ambling about or going up and down stairs. It’s just frustrating to have to take time off when I’ve got such a good exercise habit going lately.

Any seasoned exercisers got advice on how long I should stay off any weight-bearing exercise for?

Most of the sites I’ve googled seem to refer to major strains and torn ligaments where you’re walking on crutches, so the guidance doesn’t seem appropriate. I was thinking of maybe just doing some upper body exercises for the rest of this week, then only cycling next week to give me chance to recover, but can’t work out if that’s being overcautious or over-optimistic.

It doesn’t matter what new behaviour you’re trying to introduce into your life (cutting out smoking, change of diet, reducing computer time), the simplest way of tracking how you are doing is to ask yourself each day: did I succeed, fail or was today exempt for some reason?

HabitCal tracks each of these states using the colour code of green for success, red for failure and yellow for exempt days. It’s easy to set up and you can update in seconds.

I’m finding its simplicity so useful. While I still feel I need to track something (it’s like being three years old and earning stickers all over again – there’s an incredible psychological urge not to slip up just so you don’t have to mark the entire day as a FAILURE), I’m also not over-tracking and ending up with a pile of irrelevant data.

For example, a list of the exact number of calories I ate every day for a month isn’t actually that useful if I end up not losing lost as much as I hoped. With HabitCal, though, I’m getting an immediate visual picture where I can see that Friday is a real problem day, or that there’s a huge bunch of reds the week I had a friend to stay.

You can use HabitCal to track anything you like, not just the systems outlined at Everyday Systems. One thing you do have to be aware of, though, is that your data is completely public. So don’t put anything on it that you wouldn’t want anyone else to know!

You can see my HabitCal tracker here. I’m currently tracking the No S Diet, Weekend Luddite, Glass Ceiling and Exercise (this last row is deliberately blank as it’s an established habit of mine so I’m only tracking failures). It’s currently a pleasant display of greens and yellows, but feel free to hassle me if any reds start appearing!

It’s a very well written and comprehensive review. The author has obviously had similar issues to me with both games, but goes into more detail on how My Fitness Coach works. It’s worth taking a look at if you’re still deciding which fitness system to get.

In other news, I’ve finally unlocked a new location and new music! I’m making progress!

I’ve been asked by several people how they compared with each other, so it seemed sensible to compile my thoughts into a single blog post. Rather than describe each one separately, I’ve decided to split the post into various categories to give each a fair comparison: price, navigation and tracking, quality of the workout, longevity.

WARNING: this is an excessively long post and a thorough review. I will not be in the least offended if you just skip it. The rest of the post continues after the jump…

Price

Assuming you can find a copy of Wii Fit, as supplies still seem to be limited, it’ll set you back somewhere in the region of £80-£90. For that, you’ll get a copy of the Wii Fit game and an extra wii peripheral: the balance board. This, hopefully, will be used in other games but at present the range is still quite small.

My Fitness Coach currently retails in the region of £15-£18, significantly cheaper. It comes with no other equipment than the game, but if you have other exercise equipment (hand weights, heart-rate monitor, exercise ball or step) then it will incorporate them into your routine. I’d also recommend some sort of floor/yoga mat. While not essential, the extra equipment is nice to have so for a fair comparison you might want to factor in additional purchases into the cost, making the potential saving slightly smaller.

As a side issue, with both products you have to consider how you will store the new equipment when you’re not using them. Living in a small modern house, these extra bits can easily start to take over the living room!

Navigation and Tracking

The Wii Fit is very much a Nintendo branded product. It uses the cute Mii avatars for everything, many of the screens feel overly cartoonish, the text is large and clear, and the buttons are a decent size making it easy to point the controller at to click.

The Body Test tracks your weight and BMI (and rather alarmingly, adjusts the size of your Mii’s tummy accordingly) and also tests your balance, giving a seemingly rather arbitrary “Wii Fit Age”. I was a little dubious about the potential obsessiveness of weighing yourself every day, but it did seem to help motivate me to snack slightly less in the evening if my tracking showed that I had put on weight!

Over all, the interface is cute and fun, giving the feeling of playing a game rather than going to do the dreaded exercise, and anything that helps to get over that initial hurdle is fine by me.

In direct contrast, My Fitness Coach is obviously a game ported from another console system. The dialogue choices are minutely small and it’s often a challenge to click on the right one. The interface feels far less playful and game-like.

However, where it really shines is in the very thorough tracking. The initial assessment takes in a whole host of details (including weight and various body measurements) and then puts you through your paces to test your current fitness level. It will then (apparently, I haven’t got that far into it yet as I’ve only had the product for a couple of weeks) reassess you at intervals to see how you’ve progressed – your weight is not the main focus of achievement, which seems a far healthier attitude to me.

I just wish it would tie in with the balance board in order to get the weight rather than having to enter it manually, but I am probably being over picky on that score.

Quality of the Workout

With Wii Fit, you pick each exercise you want to do individually, do the exercise and then pick another one. There are four categories to choose from: yoga, muscle training, aerobics, and balance games. Initially there are not many to choose from, but you quickly unlock new games and new difficulty levels as you progress.

There is no way to set up an exercise routine and then go ahead and do it, although it does suggest additional exercises that would go well with the one you just did. This means that you can waste an awful lot of time navigating through the exercises – a 30 minute exercise routine can easily take up around 45 minutes of actual time, which can be incredibly frustrating.

The exercises themselves are surprisingly good, though. Given that its focus is mostly on improving balance and posture, there were many exercises that were challenging and tough. With the short bursts and scoring, it does feel like a game and so mental resistance is much lower as a result.

The balance board itself is a great tool for feedback, and it’s used well throughout most of the exercises to let you know how you’re doing and if you’re performing the exercise correctly (although it didn’t always get the latter right, in my experience). I did however, loathe pretty much every game in the balance category despite lots of practice and improvement.

My Fitness Coach is a completely different beast. When you start a workout, Maya (your virtual trainer) gives a recommendation for a focus (yoga, cardio, upper body, core, lower body, or flexibility) but you can override her suggestion if you so choose. You let her know what equipment you have available, what location to exercise in and what music you fancy and then you are off. She’ll stop the routine a couple of times to check that the level of exercise is about right, but other than that you are working hard for the entire duration of the routine.

I have to say that the first couple of times I was in shock, as I consider myself fairly fit after regular Wii Fit use and cycling three times a week. How wrong I was. I had the overwhelming impression that she was trying to kill me. Every set I was selecting the “I couldn’t keep up” option in the dialogue and she promised to adjust the routines next time – it did get easier, but took a few sessions until she adjusted it until I could keep up.

The tutorials are also a lot harder to access, and the pace is very fast. However, it does make good use of any equipment you have (make sure you have them out ready at the start though, you only get a few seconds to switch!). I miss having the ready feedback of the balance board, but not nearly as much as I thought I would – once you start thinking of it less as a game and more as an interactive fitness DVD with a huge variation of routines, then it makes a lot more sense.

Once the program has learned your level, this is really an effective workout system, and by god the endorphin rush at the end is good! Didn’t get that with the Wii Fit.

Longevity

The key question is, will I still be using this in several months time? Is it a fun gimmick or a worthwhile tool I’ll want to be using daily? This, to a certain extent, will depend on your own personality and needs but I’ll try and answer this from my perspective.

The Wii Fit looks great and is fun and easy to use. However, for me there were a few key areas which ultimately irritated me enough to look elsewhere and I would want to see changed for longer term use:

• The trainer’s speech and other seemingly ‘random’ dialogues within the game are repeated way too frequently. Clicking through loads of the same dialogue at the end of each exercise just wastes time and adds no useful function. Can’t it tell that I’ve showed up every day for the last 2 months and so don’t need reminding that the most benefits will come from daily practice?
• Unlocking of new exercises and difficulty levels was far too quick. I’d unlocked pretty much everything there was to unlock very early on and had nothing new to look forward to. Also, often higher difficulty levels were unlocked before you’d really mastered the lower levels which just made no sense.
• Ultimately not knowing what combination of exercises would make the best well-rounded routine meant I wasn’t being stretched enough, especially with so much downtime between individual exercises.

That said, I’m still using the Wii Fit Channel daily for weigh in and the motivation of putting a virtual stamp on a virtual calendar to “prove” I exercised. I do realise how pathetically sad that last sentence sounds.

I will probably also revisit it from time to time when motivation to exercise is low and I just want to do something light and fun to show willing.

In contrast, despite having spent at least 3-4 hours in total using My Fitness Coach, I haven’t unlocked any new locations or music yet. This is actually a good thing – I have to work at unlocking new content and I feel I have something to look forward to.

The virtual trainer and the dialogue is not getting in the way of enjoying the exercise program either, although there is some repetition, it’s minor and doesn’t grate nearly as much. There is little getting in the way of just getting on and exercising, no pages of “tips” to click through before you can get started.

The routines are varied enough that they seem fresh each time and now that the program has worked out the right level for me then I’m being challenged enough to work really hard each time without being difficult enough to make me want to give up. The music is upbeat and has done a lot to lift my mood – I’m looking forward to each day’s exercise (and even sneakily hoping it will rain on cycling days so I can substitute it with some fitness trainer time instead).

Ultimately, whether I’ll still be using it long term will depend on whether it continues to be challenging as I become fitter. So far, from what I’ve seen, it will.

Conclusions

Wii Fit has justifiably been a sell-out hit. In my opinion, it’s a perfect proof of concept product, rather than a complete exercise package, and I’m really excited to see what other games in the future will make full use of the balance board. It probably suits best someone who is starting out at regular exercise to whom the gaming aspect will appeal, and those who think they’ll use the new balance board peripheral for future games.

On the other hand, My Fitness Coach will probably suit the more advanced exerciser better, people who need a more structured workout and want something more challenging, or those on a limited budget.

However, both products are high quality, and if there was a game released tomorrow with all the best qualities of each, then I’d be very interested indeed.

I have been slowly getting fitter this year and am getting to the point where I have more control over and more strength my body, so it does appeal. I mentioned it to Sylvia the Cynic who reckons they’ll try and recruit you by the end of the training, but still might be worth a play.

Anyone tried it who can give some feedback?

• It was unbelievably thorough. I had a suspicion it might be (seeing as how I was warned it was going to be an hour and a half long), but didn’t really appreciate how much detail she would go through. Pretty much every condition and illness in my life was gone through in meticulous detail (from the mysterious coughing up dried blood incident as a baby, childhood asthma and attacks, allergies, headaches, throat infections, migraine, pregnancy complications) all with exact symptoms and a load of other incidents I didn’t expect to bring up (what my childhood was like, the death of my father and how I dealt with the aftermath, my relationship with my mother, character traits, how I deal with change, the move three years ago). I felt physically and mentally DRAINED and exposed at the end of it all.
• At the same time, she was very good at putting me at my ease. She freely gave information about her own life which in turn helped me open up more. I feel like I had an hour and a half of therapy thrown in free.
• A few things gave me pause for thought. In particular, she’s not keen on the Mirena (“women are meant to be cyclical beings”) and feels that it could well be a major factor in my declining health since having it inserted just over two years ago. I’m reluctant to have it removed quite yet (for one, we’ll need to re-evaluate our contraceptive options – another child really ISN’T in our plans).
• She didn’t just dole out a treatment at the end, which I found quite impressive. She wants to give it a few days deliberation before prescribing. She noted that I like to be in control and in a position of knowledge, so she has already advised that any remedy will be given in liquid form to more easily control the dose as per the effects.
• Next appointment due in 6 weeks.

I’m celebrating with alcohol, icecream and chocolate… is that bad or mandatory?

Since getting the SPD and OC diagnoses, I’ve been religiously practising daily yoga rather than relying on the bi-weekly antenatal classes, making sure I’ve been drinking eight glasses of water a day to help flush out toxins, and using a hypnotherapy/relaxation tape in the evenings. Not that I thought it would necessarily help, but wanted to at least feel I was doing *something* rather than blindly accepting spiralling medical diagnoses.

This has had three effects:

1. I can wear my rings again. For many weeks now, I have had to remove my wedding and engagement rings because they were just too tight and cutting off the circulation in my hand. I’ve now discovered that they fit perfectly again without the slightest feeling of snugness. Presumably, I’m now less “puffy” and have less water retention. Either way it’s very nice to be able to wear them again.

2. I’m keeping my mobility. A couple of times I’ve mentioned when I’ve overdone it (the walk to the hospital and carrying Akra Jr back from nursery yesterday) and I’ve hardly been able to get out of bed the next day. Every time I’ve “forced” myself to do yoga on waking and have found that it makes the difference between being in so much pain I can hardly move to being able to make fluid movement with only slight discomfort. On good days, I don’t have any aches at all as a result of the gentle exercise.
3. My last blood test came back normal. Yup, no more raised bile acids, next hospital trip not until the 22nd! Okay, I can’t necessarily claim it was the yoga/water/relaxation that has achieved this – maybe I just had a bug that my body was fighting off, maybe it was going to sort itself out anyway, maybe it’ll come back in a week or two. I don’t really care. I’m now back to “normal pregnant woman” status!

Going to be keeping this up for the rest of the pregnancy I think. I hereby declare that yoga is the best thing since sliced bread…