If only I had a dodecahedral tamale right now.

[flexagon]

Last night, studying NASM stuff with my friend Pole Dancer, I was nattering on about something, maybe the heartbeat: the atria contract and then the ventricles (based on the same nerve signal, but the AV node slows it down en route), and thus we get the classic two-beat lub-dub that you hear when you press your ear to someone's chest. She said "You make this stuff all so interesting!" I said "It is interesting and cool... isn't it? All this stuff is real, it's about what's inside us all the time!" And she said "It's exciting and interesting when you teach it. Have you ever thought about being a teacher? You'd be a great teacher."

I think she thinks a bunch of things about me that I think about Dan the Cat. Without trying to duck the compliment, it's kind of scary to realize it's all relative. I feel a certain weight of responsibility -- which I guess is the whole point of studying with someone else. I don't necessarily mind, because if I'm studying while thinking how to not only understand but teach the material, I'll learn that much better and I know it.

I hope I have mentioned that working on handstands every day is the bomb. I'm used to extremely slow progress, but, well, not lately. Today (when I took my daily PT-stretch-and-handstand break) I held a freestanding handstand and counted to 20; it probably was not 20 seconds but I bet it was a record. Tonight at gymnastics I also measured that mat I straddled up to last week: seven inches thick, not four or five. Tonight no such heroism was on display: I just straddled up normally in front of a crash pad, again and again and again. Once or twice I caught my balance for a few seconds, but I made it up, I don't know. Definitely over 20 times. I still seem to lose the feel of straddle-ups in between sessions, but by the end of a session it feels like I hardly need to jump. And every time the neural pathways get reinforced. You know what I really like? The word accretion. Yep, and tamales and dodecahedrons. :)

Comments

[nahele-101.livejournal.com]

i'm sorta similar...in that i lose the feel for inverted things until i do them again and again.

muscle memory is a fascinating thing.

your way of studying works well!

[flexagon]

That makes me feel better, actually. I thought it was just me. I agree on the muscle memory - something I've always wondered is how the body knows which attempts "work" and which "don't". It must depend on a flood of dopamine from the pleasure center or something like that, because it's not like it can be obvious to the body what the brain is trying to do and which attempts are failures.

[nevers.livejournal.com]

so glad you are seeing progress from the daily handstands!
ahhhhh i miss hss. all i do is trapeze anymore and i can't stop. my workout plan always looks like this:
1/2 hr trapeze
tuck presses from a med step
tuck press negatives
frog negatives
hs for time

and my workout always looks like this:
1-1/2 hr trapeze
shit i better get back to work

[flexagon]

man... all i do is WORK anymore and can't stop. i won't give up my little handstand break though. i only do a few each day, but a bad day now would have been a great day 2 weeks ago, and that's pretty ridiculous.

damn trapeze and its stealing of hs time! can you land the frog negatives yet?

[nevers.livejournal.com]

as of today, YES! the trick was to start bending my arms sooner. i still fell the last 6", but it was a fall into a frog, not onto the floor :)

[flexagon]

*gasp* that's wonderful!

post video, post video. :)

[jg26.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's the second time I've heard that electrical explanation of a heartbeat this month. A co-worker of mine is taking 6.555 (Biomedical Signal and Image Processing), and he had an entire lecture on just that, and all that can go wrong. Very interesting stuff.