thebatdojo

I'm punching this out in a Maryland hotel on my spiffy iPad. I've been traveling all day for work. I had tried to get upgraded to biz class, but so did 876 other people. 875 of whom had higher airline status than I. One poor chump is below me, I hate to be that guy! The nearly 3 hours in flight crushed up next to a caloric over achieving lady was awesome. She had to lift the armrest up so that she could fit in her seat. A nice, soft chunk of her kidney flesh flopped over into my lap, which made for a handy iPad stand, while keeping my thigh sweaty and warm.
I survived, to drive 2 hours to the facility I'll be visiting. It's one of the centers for Naval Aviation. Being a closet aviation geek, I was grinning from ear to ear as F-18's and choppers were shredding the air. For dinner, I sat outside at a dockside restaurant. While I ate some fresh seafood, two choppers flew right overhead and practiced an in-air refueling! How awesome is that?!?! Mmmmm the soft mist of diesel on my crab cakes was scrumptious!
At the hotel, I dropped my gear on the floor and laid down on the bed to rest for a few moments. I blinked, looked at the clock and 5 hours had disappeared from my life! Laying there Apocalyse Now style, thinking to myself, "Nice one bonehead, it's 10pm, you're wide awake and you have nothing to throw or break!"

RESTDAY!
Restdays are VERY important. Much like rest cycles in interval training. One needs these things to recover, rebuild or grow back that ACL one tore while running from the cops. I take calculated rest days ALL the time. My longest was just recently at nearly 2 months. I still did basic stuff, such as long walks through airports with heavy luggage. I'm a firm believer rest days make you stronger physically and mentally. Rest days are also my mental training days. I dig through the net and read everything. I search for answers to my many BJJ sticking points and ponder them. Here's also my chance to spend hours visualizing in my mind in full HD 1080p! I relieve past fights, try new things, develop new attacks and new counters. I asked a psychologist once, "What is the best way to visualize for sports?" He said studies suggest spinning around in 3D looking at yourself from the spectator's viewpoint to be highly beneficial.
Rest days are my injury recovery days. If I feel like something may get wrecked while working out, I'll abstain. There is a catch though, rest days are not for rehabilitation. I believe you've got to get off your ass and do something with the damaged appendage, whether that be physical therapy or slapping a Tito Ortiz blow up doll.
In 2000, I was racing a motorcycle in central Australia. Of course, going obnoxious speeds and silly me decided that the right hand turn ahead was attemptable at warp factor 5. I was right! I attempted it with glory and failure! I sheared the left hand side of my bike off, whilst doing a right hand turn...yeah figure that one out. Along with the bike remodel, my left shoulder helped soften the blow.
At the hospital, I was hoping for something simple like a dislocated shoulder. Pop that bad boy back in, I'll be as good as new! The doc came in, saw that I was now able to scratch my eyelid with my collarbone said, "Well mate, looks like you have a separated AC joint. Go home and keep it mobile, don't want it freezing up on you." Holy crap man! The oxygen levels in my head dumped and I nearly passed out. They put me on some O2 and sent me home. I immediately loaded up a backpack with books to help compress the joint back into place. Once I was able, I started doing pushups, and pull ups. The joint is 100% now. It still makes funny noises, but that's probably bits of my liver and tail lights embedded from the crash.

So I've rambled a bit, incoherently I'm sure. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a workout in. They have a nice pool with some great genetic material bound together by bikini's :)

Mark!