Project Battle Fury Week 16: 20% less Body Fat, 100% more Mask

Good news, everyone!  It turns out eating less makes you thinner.  I've maintained a diet of about 1850 calories, still taking in around 150g of protein a day.  Here's what I've got to show for it.

Weight on top, % fat on bottom.  Note the sharp bend around the
June mark, when I started counting calories.

Being roughly on track with the original plan, I started whacking away at Juggernaut's mask, too.  Lots of supplies were gathered.  The general technique was done with the help of a Youtube series of a dude putting together his Iron Man mask, with some extra pointers from the stickies by some Halo peeps over at the 405th.

Sliph managed to get Juggernaut's model out of Dota and into Pepakura Designer.  From that I printed out a paper pattern, which thus far has been hot glued together, soaked in polyester resin, and partially reinforced with fiberglass.  Here's how it's looking so far.

 

Fiberglass is seriously some magical stuff, but the resin stanks awful and, in this hot weather, gunks crazy fast.  I had an adventure trying to wash the crap off my hands the first day I used it.  On the bright side, the mask is already ultra-hard.  Once I finish glassing the thing, I'll apply some bondo body filler to shape it up and prepare it for painting.

I also picked up some brown suede to make his inner pants out of, and some black EVA foam mats to cut for his leg armor and belt.  We have some elastic scraps and other things laying around to sew in to give his lower legs that "flaring" look.  On top of that, 15 square feet of fake fur is on its way via the wonders of Amazon Prime.  I still have to buy the plastic to make the sword, some buckles, and maybe some other little things.

I haven't updated with anything particularly interesting as of late since I've had my hands tied with making the mask and other things.  I briefly considered writing a piece on why it's important to call Dota anything but a "MOBA," but I can't decide if it's really as important as I'm making it out to be.  Personally, I think the MOBA term is meaningless, artificial, and awful-sounding.  But, it's here to stay, and people will call these things what they want to.

Stats:

Weight: 184 lbs

Body Fat after discovering the scale recommends explicitly against weighing oneself right when one wakes up in the morning: 20%

Squats: 276.5 lbs, deloading again soon

Bench: 154 lbs

Overhead Press: 125 lbs (though deloading to 113 next time)

Deadlift: 320 lbs

Power Clean: 135 lbs

Pull-Ups/Chin-Ups: All over the place, trying to teach myself to pull from a dead hang without jumping or kipping.  Got at least 2/1/1 on pull-ups today in this regard.

4 Months in Progress Photo:

Beautiful or Badass? Don't Fuck It Up, Natus Vincere

Over the past year or so, geek culture has seen a massive influx of awareness and understanding with regard to the treatment of women in gamer/geek culture.  Thanks to prolific web artists, actors, and bloggers, the movement is more well defined than ever before, and the true problems in our culture have been thoroughly identified and marked.

I don't know how in-tune Natus Vincere is with the Western Feminist Meta, but judging by their mostly oblivious announcement yesterday, I'd wager they missed the boat.

Now, if I haven't already lost you because you cover your balls and flee at the sound of the word "feminism," here's a cheat sheet if you don't quite get what it's about yet:

• Feminism is a movement about equality. Period.
• We only still call it feminism because women get the short end of the stick 4 out of 5 times.  Both genders are impacted by feminist issues - male sensitivity comes to mind for men, but countless more issues exist for women (rigidity in family roles, sexual roles, body image templates, rape, you know the drill).
• Feminism is not about restricting freedom of choice or speech.  No one is stopping you from making your sexualized all-girl teams, putting up booth babes at your convention, or writing your damsels in distress.  Feminism is just calling you out on how these tropes promote a status quo that is unfair to women.  (It'd be nice if damsel in distress wasn't a default role.)
• Geekdom is a culture about welcoming strange people and their love for strange things.  Geek feminism is about erasing any judgments we might pass on a geek's love for something simply because they are a woman.

The Beast

Yes, the top comment reads "Why
are they not in the kitchen?"

We know that women compose a very small portion of competitive gamers.  The proportions are so bad, some tournament organizers create additional sideshow brackets that ban male entrants.  These brackets exist because, while we want to see more women in eSports, it sadly turns out that the few highly talented women that do currently exist aren't on the same level as the "god-tier" teams of gamers.  So, to promote visibility of female gamers, the organizers invite skilled women exclusively to a separate show where we can be assured a female team/player can make it to the quarter/semi/finals and take the cup.

Here's the double edged sword:

• Spectators get to see that, yes, women do in fact play video games and are teh hardcores about it, supporting the idea that women can be gamers just like us.
• Spectators see that women have to have their own bracket just for them, reinforcing the notion that women are not and may never be at the same level as men.

Na'Vi's female team announcement plays the same part as a female tournament bracket, and then makes it worse.  Na'Vi.5BeautifulGirls is a great way for an organization with international presence to promote the role of women in eSports.  But the team has a birthmark. A taint.

In the back of everyone's mind is the notion that Na'Vi.5BG was not created to be "the best of the best," but to be "the best of the girls."

Every all-female team will suffer this prejudice until geek feminism's goal is reached.  Na'Vi.5BG has the opportunity to make this happen, but so far, Na'Vi's PR guys (gender intentional) are doing a pretty terrible fucking job:

"Natus Vincere present DotA2 female team"

"From now on, five beautiful girls will represent the ranks..."

On top of that, Na'Vi don't link to their Dota profiles, share any stats, or make any effort to identify these girls as any more than six pretty faces.

At least the goddamn Siren let us know what roles they played.

Kiska, PerfectVoid, or whoever is leading the team charge: demand some fucking respect from the PR guys and tell them to get their act together.  Left on its current course, Na'Vi.5BG is more of the status quo.  If you truly want to give a "substantial boost" to women in eSports, your team needs to demolish the notion that you are merely "the best of the girls."  Call interviewers out on bullshit questions.  Demand that they ask you the same sorts of questions any other male pro player would get.  Call your PR team out when they try to play up your looks or femininity to tantalize their teenage male viewership.  I hope someone in your team has a passion for feminism, because there's a lot of ass that needs kicking out there.  I'd rather you be known as five badass girls instead.

To Na'Vi's general management: You have the chance to make this more than a gimmick.  But only if you stop treating your players like a PR stunt and put some effort into praising these women as gamers.  Your PR department should treat them with "honor and dignity."  It's not their job to prove the worth of women to you.  It's your job, Na'Vi, to give your players Na'Vi's god-tier honor they deserve for being talented gamers, and to give them the respect they deserve for daring to change the world.

And, finally, to the rest of us: promote the ideal.  Make sure it's known that skill, not sex, makes the gamer.  I hold the Dota 2 community to a higher standard.  Higher than the abhorrent fighting game community, and higher than the low-brow LoL community.  This is a community of intellectuals (relatively speaking anyway), surely you understand the impact of this whole thing.

Someday, I hope to see a team of ambitious young men and women holding the Aegis of Champions high above their heads, together, in the glory of Benaroya Hall, in the shadow of the Gaben, in the glistening light of the IceFrog, as they shed beautiful tears for the blossom of the glorious seed they planted.  Such seeds need water.

Project Battle Fury Week 12: Crossing the River

3 months in now, 3 months to go.  Can't say it's going to be easy.

Looking up fitness advice is frustrating.  Everyone has their own idea of how to manage the "perfect" routine - the perfect diet, the perfect exercise, the perfect philosophy.  However, one's personal goals may not line up with the goals of the adviser you've met on the Internet.

My goal is to put together a Juggernaut costume, and to look the part as best as I can.  A lot of people said I should just change my goal - I could've dressed up as Storm Spirit, for example, who requires a bit less fitness.  What I've learned is that at a certain point, you have to draw a line between "doing things the right way" and "doing what you want to do."  I certainly could dress up as Storm Spirit.  I certainly also could forsake the cosplay entirely and just get huge.  But those aren't things I want to do.

So, let's talk about Juggernaut.  Valve have done an amazing job with character design, in that you can spot Juggernaut a mile away.  If I want to cosplay Juggernaut as best I can, then the first thing I need to do is be instantly recognizable as Juggernaut.  Which means, in order of priority:

1. The mask.
2. The armor, fur, and sword.
3. The silhouette.

Out of all these, only #3 is really dependent on fitness.  On top of that, it's less important that I get my muscles up to Juggernaut's size, and more important that I get the shape of my body in line with Juggernaut's.  Which means one thing:

It's time to cut.

I plan on staying with Starting Strength, but dropping my caloric intake and cleaning up the last remnants of my diet.  I've done a pretty good job of cutting sodas and candy out of my diet, so far.  The only sugars I get  are from more natural, less junk-y sources.  However, I still leave some room for flat bread, the occasional fried food, and the like.  For the next 3 months, I'll be cutting those out.

I'm going to tackle this by stocking up on easy, healthy foods I know I will eat - nuts, for example.  I have the great fortune of working at a company that caters lunch and fruits, so I can be more selective for some of my weekday meals.  Plus, I'll continue drinking the Isopure I've been using.  The overall philosophy here is to focus on what I can eat, and make sure that what I can eat is filling, but no longer feel compelled to eat for the sake of bulking up.  It also helps that my medicine slightly suppresses my appetite.

If everything goes as planned, my strength gains will slow and/or stall, but I should expect to see my fat to drop.  Research suggests that a caloric deficit is the One True Way to drop fat, but as long as I keep lifting and eat healthy (proteins, fats, fiber, etc), I should be able to drop it without losing the bit of muscle I gained over the last 3 months.

Weight: 191.8lbs
Fat: 25%
Squat: 285lbs (likely deload incoming)
Bench Press: 145lbs
Overhead Press: 120lbs
Deadlift: 305lbs
Power Clean: 125lbs
Chin-Ups: 5/3/3, kipping furiously
Pull-Ups: 4/3/2, kipping equally furiously

3 Months progress!

Project Battle Fury Weeks 9-10

Nothing to see here folks, besides some stats.  Been busy the past week or so sorting out my new car (!!) and working on a (probably overcomplicated) card game for Tabletop Deathmatch.  Maybe I'll write a post on the card game, but I'm still paranoid because it occupies a space that few other card games do, so I want to keep it stealth-ish.

I had to reset on my OHP and Bench Press the past week, but that's a good thing.  I get to take a second stab at bumping my numbers, this time with better form.

Stats:
Weight: 192.8lbs
Fat: 24.6% (this thing is so noisy)
Squat: 277.5 lbs
Bench Press: 140 lbs (deloaded from 155)
Overhead Press: 110 lbs (deloaded from 120)
Deadlift: 300 lbs (attempted 305 today)
Power Clean: 115 lbs

Project Battle Fury: Week 8

Nothing interesting today folks, apart from a progress pic.  Here're the stats.

Weight: 194.4
Body fat: 23.8%
Squat: 265lbs
Bench: 150lbs
Press: 117.5lbs
Deadlift: 290lbs
Power Clean: 95lbs

2 months in!

Project Battle Fury Weeks 6-7: The Divekick Transform

Hey all, sorry I've been late.  I've been ultra busy the past two weekends: Weekend 7 was spent working on a card game prototype, and this last weekend I've been daring ludums with a couple friends.

The Heart of It All

There's this super cool game called Divekick coming out this summer.  It's half-parody, half-love letter, and 100% fighter.  I absolutely cannot wait for the release.  I've traditionally loved the idea of fighting games, but mostly hated their execution.  Games like Street Fighter and Soul Calibur pit two minds against each other in a test of mental agility, but until you've mastered the combos and memorized the moves, you don't get an invitation to the mind games.

This is precisely why Divekick is so fascinating.  Divekick strips away everything but the real competitive heart of the game.  It's a digital Double Irish to evade Sirlin's "time tax."  You don't need to shell out $150 for a hypercompetitive controller (though you can if you really really want to).  You don't need to spend your nights and weekends drilling combos and memorizing movesets.  You just jump in and get straight to the battle of wits, which, to me at least, is far more fascinating than a professional's ability to execute his unbreakable half-hit combo.  Divekick is a pure test of players' ability to read their opponent and react to an ever-changing situation.

What if we took this concept and applied it to other games?  I discussed with some friends of mine this abstract concept of the "Divekick transform" (or the DKT, if you will).  A Divekick transform is a function that projects multiplayer games into an intensely simplified form that highlights the competitive essences of the game.  It does this by simplifying unimportant elements that are overcomplicated (to reduce distraction), removing redundant elements, and most importantly, by minimizing non-competitive choice. "Non-competitive" in this context refers to user decisions that are made independently of decisions your opponent makes, which we can trivially divide further into two categories:

• No-ops: decisions in which all options are equally effective (regardless of the opponent's actions), and
• No-brainers: decisions in which one option is the most effective (regardless of the opponent's actions).

Our first example, Divekick, is the result of a DKT applied to Street Fighter (or to it and its contemporaries).  The combo system in Street Fighter, while difficult to execute because of tight timing constraints, is ultimately a non-competitive choice, and is thus removed.  Hitting the second button in an unblockable combo is a no-brainer, because there is no reason not to execute it.  Additionally, the wide cast of players is also removed, because while it provides diversity in playstyle, the characters are (supposed to be) designed such that they are evenly matched against any other opponent, making character-selection an unnecessarily complicated no-op.

Divekicking Dota

So, what does a Divekicked Dota look like? Well, to determine that, we need to argue about what choices in Dota are non-competitive, and what mechanics are most important to the game.  Here's the result of one possible DKT:

• If melee heroes weren't artificially compensated for their short range, there would be no reason to choose them over a ranged hero.  So, let's stick with just one or the other.
• On top of that, heroes are effectively sets of abilities, so choosing between heroes is a no-op, so long as the only choice we leave is a sufficiently diverse hero.  For this example, the only hero available will be Skeleton King. Skeleton king has an excellent range of abilities: Hellfire Blast allows him to gank and disable.  Vampiric Aura allows him to take a more support-based role.  Critical Strike allows him to carry.  Reincarnate, while arguably a no-brainer, can still be foregone to gain more effectiveness in a role that doesn't expect to die frequently (take Blast and Stats, for example.)
• The asymmetrical map has a generally minor effect on gameplay, and is unnecessarily complicated.  We'll make the map rotationally symmetrical then.
• However, the uniqueness of Dota's safe, middle, and hard lanes offer interesting choices with regard to inter-lane dynamics, so the asymmetry between safe and hard lanes will be preserved.
• Lanes spawn more frequently, but only have one melee creep in each of them.  Keeping it simple.
• Jungle creeps can arguably stick around, because the decision to farm the jungle offers a low-risk, low-reward alternative to laning.  The jungle creep spawn types should probably be limited to one per camp difficulty, to limit distracting complexities.
• Now that everyone is playing Skeleton King, most item choices are no-brainers, though many of them were no-brainers before then.  Here are some (but not all possible) notable omissions from a Divekicked Dota shop:
• Boots. Boots are a no-brainer.  The choices offered by boot upgrades are still competitive, but what they offer can often be substituted for with other items.  Leaving them in would mostly serve to complicate things.
• Wards - maybe.  Purchasing wards are also a no-brainer.  If you can afford wards, you should buy them and plant them.  Period.  Without observer wards, sentry wards also become irrelevant.  However, there is some merit to the opportunity cost and placement of a ward.  I don't particularly think leaving this component of the game in is too vital to communicating the spirit of Dota, but some do.
• Most upgrade components.  If the upgrade components to an item are mundane, there's nothing interesting to be gained from leaving them in.
• Most carry damage items.  Dota offers many different ways to increase your effective DPS.  Leaving in Armlet and Crystalis might be interesting, since they each have their own times at which they are effective, but more than 2 or 3 damage items in the game gets distracting.
• Keep the runes, but potentially ditch Roshan.  Many tactical decisions must be weighed when deciding to go for a rune, and on deciding how to best approach it, and it would be a shame to omit this from Dota.  However, Roshan is generally a no-brainer decision, and his tactical value is not particularly interesting.  This is up for debate.
• Now that we've radically simplified the game, we can, Divekick style, radically simplify the controls.  Left click Hellfire blasts.  Right click attacks (and denies).

Naturally there are a ton more simplifications you could make to the game, and there are also other directions you could take the game to further emphasize other competitive components of the game.

Limitations of the DKT

The DKT naturally robs a game of its thematic weight and much of its metagame.  It also strips away any entertainment value gained from the interactions of potentially complex, esoteric circumstances.  However, if done correctly, what should be left is the pure competitive essence: nothing but player-versus-player interaction.

I think the real value in executing a DKT would be that the resultant projected game could be used to allow inexperienced outsiders to understand what makes the game so fun.  It massively lowers the barrier to entry, and allows the layman front-row seats to experience the competitive thrill of the game.  I'm sure someone could whip up a server mod to give it a spin.


Weight: 194.2 lbs
Fat: 22.3%

Squat: 255 lbs
Bench Press: 145 lbs
Overhead Press: 117.5 lbs
Deadlift: 280 lbs
Power clean: 95 lbs

Project Battle Fury Week 5: The Facade of Defeat

One of the advantages of suffering from poor short term memory is that you never manage to remember your losing streaks.

Losing sucks.  Everyone knows this.  And few things suck as hard as losing at Dota.

Dota is a kind of game where losing is incredibly painful experience.  First a mistake is made, but you're still not quite sure whose fault it was.  So you get frustrated at both pubbers and friends and swing the blame bat around.  They didn't stun.  Their build is awful.  They aren't warding.  Blame comes back around at you, and you lose your concentration.  Maybe you start forgetting your own stuns.  Maybe you start picking fights you know you can't win.  Maybe you keep trying to "rush" that desolator that you swear will turn everything around.  All this comes to pass, and you're left in well wondering why there's no concede button.

Well, defeat is unavoidable.  Half of all played games of Dota are lost.  If you're new to Dota, most of the games you play will fall into at least one of two sucky categories:

• You go 0 and 7 and get stomped over, or
• Some prodigy (read: smurf) singlehandedly facerolls the enemy team.

Defeat happens to be a reward of sorts, though.  We never learn so much from the games we win as from the games we don't.  There are an infinite number of ways a game can play out, and our mind is a limitless well of planning.  Only by losing can we trim those creative branches that bear no fruit.  So, then, how can we make defeat suck less, so that we may rule out our bad ideas more quickly with less frustration?

Anger management

Defeat is not the enemy - anger is.  And anger does not come from defeat.  They both come from the same place: from a loss of control.

What feels bad is not the fact that you have been defeated, but the fact that you have lost this control, be it control over your own actions or the actions of others.  The second situation above is maddening even if you win, since you doubt your own contributions.  I know that I am most angered by situations where I feel I know what the "right" play was but was unable to act it out.  I believe we get angry to attempt to intimidate control over others, or "faulty" modules of our own self, but generally all it does is cloud our judgement.

So then, if anger comes from a loss of control, then to quash anger we must get ourselves back in control.  Here's my take on how to avoid anger so you can lose gracefully and learn to be better:

1. Communicate calmly and without accusation.  Anger begets anger, since everyone wants to micro their allies, but nobody wants to be microed.  You might have luck with a common technique where, instead of asking your allies to change how they behave, you communicate in terms of how you personally feel.  For example, instead of yelling at the supports to ward, say something about how you personally can't farm or gank because the map is dark.
2. Focus on what you can still control.  If you think your teammate is feeding or playing poorly, forget that you want to micromanage them.  Do everything you can to help the team out, regardless of whether or not you think you're supposed to do it personally.  Zone in on your own hero instead of the others.  If you're a support, just start warding and counter-warding instead of trying to back up your aggressive ganker.  If you're short on cash because you keep losing it, spend it on something cheap that will keep you in the game (like drums or a bracer).
3. Play with your friends, no matter how much worse (or better) they are.  Pubs don't trust you, and you don't trust them.  You won't ever feel like you have control over them unless they really open up or you lead by example, and in Dota, usually only one player in each pub game will present the level of skill required to gain trust.  If you play with (and be nice to!) your friends, you can calmly direct them, and this will keep you focused.
4. Accept that any failure may in part be your own.  Even if you made every right decision for your hero, Dota's nature as a team sport means that it's up to everyone to scrape all the data and communicate.  You may have been able to explain to the rando what was wrong with his build before he started feeding.  You may have been able to call miss on a lane that wasn't yours.  Realize that, the next time around, you may have more control than you think.

If you want to learn Dota, you must come to terms with defeat.  To get good at a game, you must know what can be done better, and only in the throes of defeat can you learn how to get better.  This is going to sound cliche, but it's a lot like weight lifting.  Your muscles don't get stronger from lifting weights they can easily push around, they get stronger when you lift weights that break them down.  After a good bowl of meat and some rest, they rebuild back stronger than before.  And that's where the real victory lies.


Weight: 194.9 lbs
Fat: 26%

Squat: 225 lbs
Bench Press: 130 lbs
Overhead Press: 110 lbs
Deadlift: 255 lbs
Power clean: 75 lbs

(No missed sets this week! Woo!)

Project Battle Fury Week 4: Gettin' Heavy

Hard to believe it's already been 4 weeks into this thing.  The most important thing about exercise and dieting is making sure you stick to it.  The change that comes with exercise is a slow and laborious climb up a tall ladder, and you quickly learn that it's easier to fall five rungs than grab the next.  Doubly so for someone like myself.

I made some changes to the plan.  My "Phase 1" hope was to burn off a ton of fat, then mix lifting and cardio during "Phase 2."  Turns out this is a serious pain in the butt.  Building muscle requires a caloric surplus, high in protein.  Rapidly losing weight, however, requires a caloric deficit.  Taking some advice, I solidified some suspicions: it would be much smarter for me to gain muscle mass now, then worry about burning off that fat later.

It's actually a pretty simple principle if you look at it from a Computer Science standpoint.  Doing cardio burns fat at a constant rate - O(1), as we like to say.  However, putting on lean muscle is a linear-time improvement - O(n).  This is because while cardio is excellent at burning calories while you're doing it, the only lasting improvement it makes is to your heart strength.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that, though.  Your heart is a pretty big fucking deal.)  Gaining muscle improves the rate at which you burn fat just sitting around.  It's a choice between $25 now, or getting your account's interest bumped to 5%.  Putting on muscle rewards itself in the long run, and the longer you wait to do it, the less time it has to work its magic.

So, who knows if I'll be hitting that 175lbs mark at June. The one thing I do know is that if I do all this right, I'll have less fat around my waist by then, and I'll be in better shape to do harder exercises.

By the way, here's what 4 weeks of lifting and judo have done to me:

Antediluvian

Postdiluvian 

Doin' it right, every night

The fact that I'm already writing my fifth consecutive blog post just further reinforces my understanding that human memory does not keep memories linear.  While it's been an entire month since the first post, each of these Sundays has felt closer together than the rest of the days in the week, scrunched together like the neck of a drawstring pouch.  Yet, I still can hardly believe that I'm still in the game.

I got the results in the mail last week, and I now can officially say that I have that thing everyone thought/thinks was/is bullshit and wasn't/isn't actually a thing. It's good to have this kind of perspective about yourself - to know what exactly is and is not within the jurisdiction of your executive consciousness.

The report says exercise is one of many things that helps with the focus problems.  First-hand evidence compels me to agree, though the effects don't last particularly long.  Still, it makes me feel even better about having taken the hit to my gaming time to go to judo and pump rubber-coated-iron.  What I've always worried about is having the focus in the first place to stick to an exercise routine in the first place.  I have to show up at the gym, three times a week, do this ancient pole-and-disc ritual, then go home and make sure to eat exactly the right things.  This must be repeated every week until I stop caring about the well-being of my meat bag.  So far, so good, as they say.

I usually quit after an excuse floats through my head.  Archery fell through when the costs added up and lasting benefits failed to manifest.  Fencing provided no community for my age, and plus everyone there was either far better than me and grew impatient teaching.  One of the unfortunate effects of this condition is having difficulty internalizing the outcome of past challenges - success or failure.  When you fail to internalize success, they call it the impostor syndrome - though it is not an official pathology.  I suspect it is one end result of many different diseases, ADHD included.  When you can't remember the successes of past trials, the only thing you can remember is how embarrassing starting as a newbie can be.

So, how is it that I've managed to log a full month's worth of lifting and dieting?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Publicizing Project Battle Fury may be keeping me honest, knowing that I'd let more than just myself down if the whole thing fell through.  The fact that the whole project is non-competitive helps a lot too.  I don't have to compare myself to other people to strengthen myself.  Finally, I suspect the simplicity of the whole thing plays a big part.  The biomechanics of lifting weights is so simple, I know that if a press seems impossible one day, a couple good nights' rest and a pile of dead animals will make it possible the next time.  Every other activity requires what appears to me to be a gargantuan level of focus, but the simple, steady progress of lifting asks nothing so strenuous of me.

Only time.

Weight: 194.9 lbs
Fat: 24.2%

Squat: 210 lbs
Bench Press: 120 lbs
Overhead Press: 105 lbs (seriously fuck these)
Deadlift: 245 lbs
Power clean: 55 lbs

Week 3: Building Character

I started doing power cleans this week.  The first time I tried them, on Tuesday, I was well convinced that the form was impossible or my body somehow did not properly support it.  I stood cluelessly by the squat rack, phone in hand, attempting to discern just how far up my elbows were supposed to be and how in the world I was supposed to do this when I had a neck in the way of the ideal place of the bar.  I made a couple awkward jumps up, bruising, in turn, each of my shoulders and each side of my collar bone.  I gave up that day after "completing" a 3x5 set of power cleans, resolving to stick with the barbell weight the next time.

Then, Sunday rolls around.  Turns out a few good nights' rests, forgetting your lifting gloves in the car, and generally chilling the fuck out makes the impossible possible.  I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out today.

Keep doing what you do, Dota

People have a lot of arguments they make when asserting one roughly comparable game is Clearly Superior(tm).  Usually people criticize how "competitive" a game is versus how "fun" the game is (presuming the two can be exclusive), or how steep or shallow the learning curve is, or how realistic or visceral the experience might be.  I personally have one big test for video games that Dota 2 happens to pass in flying colors: how much character the game has.

Character is two-dimensional measure of a game and its components: it is both how unique a game and its components are, and how consistent that uniqueness is.  For a good character to stand out in any story, he must be unique (or otherwise be unremarkable), but also have integrity (or otherwise be poorly defined and difficult to grasp).  Character can be found in many levels in Dota 2:

• The consistent, colorful art style.  The beautiful pastel approach to Dota 2 makes it stand out at a distance, and the insane level of polish that goes into the models and UI make it look crisp and confident.
• The styling of the characters themselves.  From the pefect silhouetting that Valve honed in TF2 and brought over to Dota 2, to the absolutely astounding writing and voice acting, Valve have brought each of these little action figures to life with their own unique egos, personalities, rivalries, and senses of humor.
• No-holds barred hero ability design.  Each of Dota's Ability 4-Paks contains thematically consistent and hard-edged skills that further compound the character of the hero, and no idea is off-limits.  A hero that only works at night time? Sure, why not.  How about a hero that can physically rewrite the map?  While we're at it, why not add one that can ignore it completely?  One of Dota's heroes has exactly one clickable ability.  Another has no less than  fourteen.  Many of these abilities are instantly lethal in the right circumstance, but can be rendered useless with a bit of wit.  Dota's heroes are generally jacks of no trades, but masters of one.  Though Invoker happens to be a master of one trade, that trade being the mastery of all trades.
• Compare this to LoL, where Riot's own hero list suggests the heroes can be roughly compared just by looking at a few bars.
• Hard-edged item design.  Like the heroes, items in Dota have particularly specialized purposes.  Their abilities are generally the reason you buy the item, and every one of them is a game changer - in the right hands.
• The Physical/Magical distinction.  This is a highly under-appreciated feature of Dota, in my opinion.  Physical and Magical damage are not treated as simply as, say, "elements" in other games.  If your game has Fire damage and Lightning damage, chances are I can get otherwise-identical items that provide me X points of Fire resist and X points of lightning resist.  It's not quite so simple in Dota.
• Physical damage comes from auto-attacks.  Magical damage comes from abilities.  This distinction is still pretty common across MOBA's, but the addition of Harkon's Blade to HoN muddles it in a way that bothers me.
• Physical damage is naturally scaling.  Magical damage is naturally static.  There's no "Ability Power" stat in Dota.  Dota's flat treatment of spells, which are magic damage unless with exception, give them a very unique flavor - one that spikes in usefulness the moment you get it, and tapers off if you don't capitalize in it.  Physical damage, however, scales naturally with items you would normally buy for your hero - even for spellcasters (thanks to the STR/AGI/INT mechanic).
• Physical damage is common-place and slowly adds up.  Magic damage is sudden and violent.  Even the weakest of magic DoT abilities are threatening until they expire.
• Physical damage takes a lot of work to protect against, while magic is easily foiled with a focused effort.  Black King Bar is, in many ways, one of Dota's most defining items, as it renders all magic damage and, with few exceptions, all disables, completely useless.  This causes you to suddenly value your auto-attacking carries that have been otherwise totally useless all game.

Say what you will about if these are good or profitable design decisions, but I would argue they give Dota 2 a unique flavor that makes you feel like you're dominating the game in your own special snowflake-y way.

Weight: 194.1 lbs

Squats: 185 lbs

Bench Press: 115 lbs

Overhead Press: 95 lbs

Deadlift: 220 lbs

Power Clean: 45 lbs

Week 2: Muscle Memory

I started playing DotA back in high school.  That was an ancient time - an time when Skeleton King's first ability was Storm Bolt, clinching him the title of Least Imaginative Hero with four cloned abilities.  When Keeper's ult was Furion-in-a-box.  When Razor had chain lightning.  When legacy keys were the only keys, and the only thing you had to threaten a leaver with was your shitty local banlist.  Despite all this, the barrier to entry for DotA was still lower than WC3, so I stuck with it.

I sucked. Hard.  Most of my games were spent flailing about mindlessly.  I'd never understood denies, last hitting, clash control, or warding.  I would spend every 5 games crying to the Internet about how much I sucked and how hard it was to get better at it.  Obviously the Internet was not usually receptive to a bawling crybaby teenager.  Eventually I heard what would be both the worst and the best advice I'd get: "Stop playing."

So I stopped.

Just like I did with soccer, football, basketball, baseball, piano, tae kwon do, and judo, I stopped playing DotA before I ever got good.  I would continue to start things up and shut them down within a short bit of training all the way through college.  This continued to feed into a loop of self-deprecation.  I would identify as a man incapable of finishing things I started.

It became my opinion that games that didn't have a smooth learning curve were poorly designed.  Games needed to have seamless tutorials and snappy interfaces: if the game did not present you a step-by-step route to victory, it was "unintuitive" and "unwelcoming."  My champion game for this time was Team Fortress 2: a well-designed breath of fresh air in first person shooters, designed to allow smart planning to defeat twitch junkies, but still gave them their competitive edge.  It was easy to pick up and play.  It coached you through defeat with its kill-cam system, allowing you to know exactly how you died.  Perhaps best of all, it was anything but Call of Duty.  It was the Anti-CoD.

I began using TF2 as my australium-standard for self-aware game design.  I raged at fighting games that rewarded drilling complex combos over mind-games.  I accused them of lacking true depth.  I raged at games that didn't properly align style and gameplay - games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, where walking was replaced with this surreal technique known as "wave-dashing" that was better than walking in almost every way, and looked clearly like a bug.  Any competitive complexity introduced by the game was irrelevant; it looked silly and did not properly put me in the shoes of the character I was playing.

Eventually I heard about Heroes of Newerth, S2 games' attempt to revive the original DotA.  I was, strangely enough, ecstatic.  Despite my disdain for "competitive" level games, I had been meaning to get better at one eventually - perhaps to see what awaited me on the other side of the barrier to entry of games of this caliber.  Perhaps bringing back an old game would keep me engaged in a way that Street Fighter could never do.  Well, it succeeded, in the biggest way possible.

I wasn't a professional by any means, but I could at least tread water in higher skill games.  Team composition began to matter to me.  I understood clash control and lane pulling.  All those skills I failed to pick up when I was younger came back to me, despite my complaints and pessimism, and I didn't stop to think too much about how remarkable it was.

Fast forward to 2013, at the Sensei Memorial Judo Tournament.

Every year, I would accompany my father, a long-time sensei at our judo club, to this large tournament.  A massive mat covered the open auditorium floor, providing 8 fighting spaces for the hundreds of judoka that would attend the tournament.  I was always fascinated by the logistics involved, and enjoyed score keeping, so every year I volunteered to help run a few tables at the tournament.  I would sit behind a ladder bracket or a scoreboard each time and watch as competitor after competitor fought for that victory, despite how many times they had fallen before.  This year, I began to really appreciate the nuances of judo: the importance of timing, balance, prediction, and taking a good fall.  Perhaps, I thought, I could give this sport another shot.  Where every previous activity had failed me in its seeming simplicity, judo might be just the thing I need.

I went to the lunch room and sat down with a pile of home-made sushi and other treats, distributed free to the volunteers.  Almost ritualistically, the sensei would tease me a little bit about when I was coming back to judo.  This time, when they did, I suggested that I might actually want to begin practicing again. I got a long pep-talk from Sensei Albert, who told me that it was worth a shot.  He asserted that, now being a mature twenty-something instead of a developing child, it would be easier to appreciate judo and properly learn all the techniques available.  I would have the patience required to drill the moves.  I would have the self respect to get up when I fell down.  He claimed that he knew many people enjoyed judo much more as an adult than they did as a child for these very reasons, and stressed that it would be worthwhile. 

It all echoed my experience with DotA.  When I was a kid, I lost every match and cried about it afterward.  Now, I'm playing Dota 2, and my favorite heroes are Meepo, Pudge, and Invoker - easily some of the hardest heroes in the game to pick up.  My short-term memory might still be lacking, but I had managed to train my fingers to memorize Invoker's Cyclone -> Sunstrike -> Chaos Meteor -> Everything Else combo, and even feel confident taking blink dagger on Meepo.  Things that appeared unreachable when I was a child were mystically resting in the palm of my hand.

The following Monday, my dad found my old grade school gym bag, and packed it with my brother's old gi and a well worn white belt - more accurately, a beige belt.  I took the bag in hand, and took my first step back into the dojo.  With a bow, I understood that this time, things would be different.

Better.

Weight: 195.4 lbs
Squat: 150 lbs
Press: 85 lbs
Bench Press: 95 lbs
Deadlift: 220lbs

Power Clean: Starting Tuesday!

PROJECT BATTLE FURY: Week 1

A lot can happen in a week, evidently.

I'm pretty pleased with the responses to posting the plans for Project Battle Fury on reddit. /r/dota2 had nothing but love and wit - easily my favorite subreddit. The quality of fan submissions are always top notch, and its sense of humor is often subtle and classy. It even sounds like a couple other redditors were excited by the idea and are jumping on the bandwagon too.

/r/fitness, unsurprisingly, was a bit more critical. Don't worry guys, I got your message loud and clear: <b>cardio is for ignorant suckers.</b>

I didn't actually take that at face value, obviously.&nbsp; Training your heart is pretty important.&nbsp; And, over the course of the past week, I found that the judo I had started up a few weeks ago, combined with the extra lifting and ellipticalling I did, have made noticeable improvements to my endurance.

Admittedly, I did take some of your sometimes contradictory advice. I replaced my 3 cardio sessions a week with Starting Strength, and plan to use a more advanced plan for Phase 2. Some of you that actually paid attention to my article recommended I consult bodybuilding guides specifically. More than likely, I will, especially in Phase 2. For now however, I'm setting the personally important goal of losing weight for these first few weeks.

Knowing the StrongLifts community, and those of similar minds, I understand how great and healthy it is to just concentrate all your effort on lifting hard and eating enough for those muscle gainz. I realize that these "power lifters" have great practical strength, but also that they tend to look like generally overweight dudes. I think the people that are very much convinced that my realizations are "unrealistic" are, in part, assuming that I should be doing their program, and then, assuming I use their program, complaining that the results I want are unrealistic.  Which is why I've laid out my plan as such.

Now, I'm not saying that my goals are <i>guaranteed, </i>either. Allow me to digress for a moment:

Enthusiasm is a very tricky thing. In my experience, to get somebody to believe in something controversial, you have to overshoot a little bit to compensate. For example: when Fox News tells us that video games make our children violent sociopaths, how do we respond?

Like this?
"Well, it's difficult to pin direct causal relationships on this sort of thing. Playing violent video games and having real violent tendencies may merely have a common cause. But, it's fair to consider this from the perspective that violent media, in general, has a reciprocative dialogue with our culture that may propagate a culture of violence, and it's also fair to consider that interactive media might, read <i>might</i> have different effects on us, especially in our early developmental stages. I would, however, note that no study has conclusively proved this."

No, that will get you called a spineless apologist that's trying to hide behind fancy words. Instead, we respond with this:
"Absolutely not, you ignorant cudger. Violent video games have absolutely no effect on who we are as people, it's just media. You could say the exact same thing about violent movies, but nobody ever blames <i>them</i> for our mass shootings. When will you accept the overwhelming data that proves that video games are strictly entertainment?"

In judo, if someone attempts to throw you, but you keep dodging their attacks, you will get penalized for passivity. (<i>Shido!</i>). Likewise, in arguments of this nature, if your response is a defense, rather than a counter-attack, you will appear weaker to the opponent, despite having defended yourself successfully. So, we always respond, almost instinctively, with an overreaction. When we respond with an overreaction, people begin to take both sides seriously, and then some of these people realize that the truth lies <i>right in the middle</i> of these two radical statements.

This is very much my approach to getting my enthusiasm up and sustained for the duration of Project Battle Fury. Will I actually get that Bruce Lee body that I'm targeting by the end of this venture? Honestly? Probably not. But the idea of the one-in-a-million shot that this might give me perfect results is enough to persevere and try, even if realistically it will be somewhere partway there.  Your inspiration should always be an <i>ideal</i>, a perfect representation of an ultimate possibility. We will naturally only make it part of the way there, as humans are known to do, but if you set your goals high enough, you'll find you've still made a huge difference in the end.

Anyway, my plan is looking like this now:
SS: Tuesday Friday Sunday
Judo: Monday Thursday
Extra cardio: Saturday, or days I miss judo

This week went mostly as planned. I hit up judo on Monday, and did my weights Tuesday and Friday (if you're interested, I started at squatting 95 lbs, pressing 65, deadlifting 145, and benching 85.) Thursday, a lot of hard shit came up at work, and I missed judo because of it. My great lady friend I mentioned earlier offered to come work out with me after I got home to make up for the lack of exercise though, so I came out of that doing pretty well. Fitness dudebros will sometimes brag about how, in the face of adversity, they still found the time to make it to the gym. One guy went so far as to brag about how despite running late after crashing his car, he still went to the gym before sorting out all other manners of important shit in the day.

Well, when my apartment flooded Saturday while I was out on Saint Patrick's Eve downing whiskey, my schedule got a little bit whacked up. I sadly didn't make it to the gym to do SS today, but that was more than compensated for by the amount of shit I had to lug around to move into the new apartment. I figure the gods of stronk will forgive me for this one.

If you were wondering at any point why this blog post is a massive wall of text, without the luxuries of right-aligned images and heading formats, it's because I'm in the living room of a <i>new</i> apartment that isn't soaked in water, on my dinky android tablet keyboard, punching out an already-pretty-late status update.

I was going to talk about my Dota game and myself a bit more, but I'll save that for next week. For now, some stats:

Weight: 196.5 (Down from 200.3 last week)
Squat: 130 lbs
Deadlift: 165 lbs
Number of LoL'ers wearing Team Solomid t-shirts at 24 hour fitness: 1
Sobriety: 100%
New Apartment: 85% bitchin' by volume

PROJECT BATTLE FURY

PAX Prime 2013 is in less than 6 months.  Last year, I cosplayed The Kid from Bastion with the help of my lady friend (who went as the Scythian from S:S&S EP).  This was my second big cosplay undertaking - the first being an old FFXI Red Mage costume.  This year, I plan to dress up as Yurnero, the Juggernaut from Dota 2.  

There's just one problem:

FAT.

As a generally out-of-shape motherfucker that spends all day programming and all night playing Dota 2, staying in shape doesn't come naturally. Obviously, being overweight is problematic in more ways than one. So this year, to get two birds stoned at once, I'm starting PROJECT BATTLE FURY.   PROJECT BATTLE FURY is a plan to motivate both my fitness life and my creative life by getting in respectable shape for the concrete goal of putting together a totally slammin' Juggernaut costume for PAX Prime.

The Game Plan (A Draft)

PROJECT BATTLE FURY is to be executed in three phases.

Phase 1: GET DOWN 

Right now I'm 200 pounds at 5'9.  This BMI is unnaceptable.  So, to hit an aggressive target of 175 pounds by the end of May, I'll be making diet changes and ramping up my exercise.  This includes:

• Judo, twice a week (Monday/Thursday) for two hours each day to keep myself mentally stimulated while burning some fat.  My body weight makes the Judo warmups insanely intense.
• Cardio, 2-3 times a week (Tuesday/Friday/Sunday?).  There's a local gym near my apartment, but regardless the idea is to run for upwards of 20 minutes to burn fat and get my heart in shape for judo.
• An as-yet-undetermined weight lifting routine at the gym, once a week (Saturday mornings).  Moderate on the intensity for this phase.  Bench presses and other upper body exercises will be emphasized, thanks to my unusually weak upper body strength  Ab strength could also use some work.  Again, the exercises at judo also include some strength training, so I don't feel too guilty about planning weights for just once a week for Phase 1.  (My friend has informed me that if lifting weights on Saturday seems difficult, I should try doing a second day to stay in shape.  I'll have to test this.)
• Slashing sugar intake.  This is going to be tricky, but the idea is to drink water at every meal instead of whatever fancy drink I might lean towards first, and to snack exclusively on fruits, veggies, or nuts.  Or maybe jerky, if it ever comes back to the company snack shelf.
• Skipping rice/bread/etc as "necessary meal components."  We have catered lunches at my work, and often times they are delivered with a big tray of rice.  For these meals, any rice I would normally grab will be replaced with more meat.  If sandwiches or burritos get catered, if practical, I'll remove the carbs.  I figure this way I'll get enough carbs in my system with the "unavoidable" meals.  I'm still not particularly sure this is a great idea, so feedback would be more appreciated.
• Shrinking portions and chewing thoroughly.  I eat crazy fast.  I intend to pay more attention to chewing meals thoroughly from here on out, to give my body more time to react to being full.

So, to reiterate, this is all with the goal of hitting 175 pounds at the end of May.  That's about a rate of 2 pounds per week, but I'm hoping that after I burn off the water in the first couple weeks, the burn rate will be less stressful near the end of this phase.

Phase 2: GET HYPE

Hopefully, by the start of June, I'll have hit this goal.  At this point, costume design and construction begins.  My lady and I will start scoping out the types of materials we'll be using (likely lots of plastic, again, maybe even wood for the mask).  Designs will be forged.  Materials will be gathered.  Focus will be tested.

In addition, my exercise routine will shift from a focus on rapid weight loss to a replacing fat mass with muscle mass.  The cardio routines will be replaced with more heavy lifting.  Ideally, by this time, my judo's body weight exercises will not be as painful, and I will need to push myself with real strength training workout routines.  I'm currently looking at this Breaking Muscle article on judo-related strength training, but after feedback from Phase 1, I may come up with another plan.

Phase 2 "ends" one week into July, at which point, at the very least, I should be able to do a good set of pull ups, and all plans for the costume should be finished.

Phase 3: GET RIPPED

This is where the fun really begins.  For the next six weeks leading up to PAX, the costume will be assembled.  The most important part of this is getting my upper body to dudebro levels of "beach muscle".  I don't have to make it to Schwarzenegger-tier, but I should at least look good with a shirt off.  Which means:

• An incredibly cliche strength training routine, with the following goals:
• 0% Manboob.  Those should actually be pecs, at this point.
• Legit arm muscle.  I may have to resort to the dudebroiest of dudebro exercises for this: the dreaded curl.  Among other things.
• No belly fat.  I've been told 6-pack abs are not necessarily genetically possible, but at the very least I should be able to see where my pants begin.  Muscly things are a plus.
• A tan.  Preferably a natural one.  I do have Filipino blood, so I do tan, if I actually bother to go outside.  That's going to have to happen to get the part down right.

All of this might come at the expense of judo-related optimizations (unnecessary muscle mass will muck with your competitive viability), but for Phase 3 and PAX, it's all about the character.  And the character demands a shirtless dude.

What's the gold medal for this phase? To walk into a 24 Hour Fitness in costume the day before PAX and geek it the fuck up.

A Leviathan Task

Obviously PROJECT BATTLE FURY is not going to be easy.  This is where I need your help.  Since this plan is kind of a rough sketch at this point, any input you guys have on relevant fitness, costume making, scheduling, or motivation are super welcome at this point.  Specifically, any knowledge on dieting, exercise, and staying motivated would be a great boon to this guy.  Any positive thoughts or encouragement to keep me on track would be awesome, too.  And hey, if it inspires other lazy-ass geeks like me to get in shape for a thing they love, then that's some bonus points right there.