Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Inadequate ukemi

For whatever reason, my ribs seem to be my biggest weakness when it comes to Judo. Just a week or so after getting over my first round of contused ribs in the front left part of my ribcage (induced by a classmate practicing a Hon Kesa Gatame hold-down), at yesterday’s class I fell hard on ribs in the back right part of my ribcage, possibly leaving them even sorer than those injured the first time. Even after a night with a big of frozen vegetables against them, it’s intensely painful to cough and difficult to get up off my back.

Bruised ribs are quite a liability for Judo practice. They make warm-ups hard in terms of push-ups, sit-ups, and other exercises (even jogging was painful at the end of last class); side breakfalls inevitably involve putting them on the mats; and practicing throws like Ippon Seoi Nage and (especially) groundwork involves more pressure on them.

I hope they recuperate more promptly this time around.

Recuperated ribs

On July 17th I hurt my left ankle running to a climate change consultation.

At my second Judo class in September, I had my upper left ribs bruised by a classmate putting all his effort into a hold down. This made a number of subsequent classes quite uncomfortable in terms of both warm ups and grappling.

Today’s class was the first time I didn’t feel significant pain from either injury.

I also feel like Judo practice is affecting how I move all the time. In particular, the instructors are very effective both with words and demonstrations at showing how having your legs in the right position can help you leverage your way out of a difficult position.

Certainly I need to do a lot to strengthen my abs, but I am generally very happy about how these classes are going.

Beginner Judo

My first four sessions of the beginner Judo course at Hart House have been challenging and stimulating. I think I have already doubled the number of pushups in my entire adult life.

It means not attending weekly climate change meetings, but a break to focus on my PhD research seemed to be necessary anyway. Things are going well on that front, and I am particularly excited to be working regularly with Dr. Andrea Olive and Dr. Kate Neville. I have a lot of reading and thinking to do, but I feel like progress is being made both conceptually and pragmatically.

Fall is my favourite time of year, especially in this part of the world. I should keep an eye on the wind forecast over the next couple of weeks, as good kiting weather may crop up (I find 16-25kt steady winds ideal for two-line delta kites).

My fifth year of teaching

The capricious forces directing undergraduate teaching in political science have set me up for an extremely difficult term.

First, I was assigned to teach an hour’s $6 shuttle drive away, at the Missisauga campus. Second, my “tutorials” are starting with 30 students each. With only five tutorials in the entire course, this raises the question of how students can be meaningfully graded on participation.

Most seriously, they allocated all of my 210 teaching hours for the year to just this term. Since my fellow TAs are only doing half their hours this term, my huge surplus of hours must be dedicated to grading. This means I will be spending huge blocks of time grading the midterm and the essay — so much that it seems impossible within the standard turnaround time for exams and assignments. As a further vexation, all the grading must be done through tedious and fiddly online systems, rather than quickly and intuitively on paper copies.

At the same time, I am working hard with my committee to get my PhD project formally approved by the department, and to get research ethics approval. Judo aside (which ought to help remain sanity), this will be a term where further extras are essentially inpermissible.

Judo begins

I had my first beginner Judo class. While it was just exercise, demonstrations, and practice breakfalls, it was nonetheless a reminder of mortality. It has been a long time since I have done pushups or situps, especially in 20-repetition sets between other exercises. Furthermore, some of the Judo-specific warmups are both unfamiliar and challenging. In the first session, we got as far as practicing straight-back breakfalls and the preliminaries to O-goshi.

I’m confident that I never thought about my dissertation, or even climate change activism, during the 90-minute class.

12 weeks of Hart House Judo

As a way to get more exercise and do something non-academic regularly, I signed up for 12 weeks of beginner Judo classes at Hart House. Classes are Tuesday evenings and early Saturday afternoons.

I’m excited to get into it, and glad I was able to snag one of the last three spots by rushing upstairs from tonight’s impressive demonstration of techniques.