Plans for the new year

After I reviewed the previous year in this post, I guess it’s time to look forward and make some plans. Here we go…

Stay in shape/get in better shape.

As you know, the last few years have treated me to a long list of injuries. 2010 was no different in that regard. In some ways, it was pretty bad: Rushing to the ER in the middle of the night because of my stomach, my back telling me every day it hated me, my arthritis was worse than ever.

In other ways, it was better: my back didn’t get worse, I’m working on dealing with the arthritis and my digestive system has improved a lot.

All in all, I’m in better shape now than I was last year. But I’m not where I want to be. I lost about 7 pounds compared to last January, even though I had lost a lot more throughout the year when I was able to train past the injuries for a while. But some of it came back when I couldn’t, which sucks.

So this year, my goal is to work on getting these things back on track:

• Increase my martial arts training big time. As I get older, the emphasis of the training is changing and I need to focus on other things. That’s fine, it’s part of the process. But injuries prevented me from enjoying the training these last few years and I plan on getting back to having loads of fun punching and kicking things/people. :-)
• I’m going to do more conditioning. Mainly for maintenance/prevention but also to get in great shape. Mobility and staying injury free is my primary goal this year. Another reason for the extra conditioning is my video shoot with Paladin Press this Summer. What I have planned for that one will make all my previous videos look tame and slow, so I better be ready for it…
• Fix what’s broken. I saw one MD. and am scheduled to see another specialist in a few weeks to find out how they can handle my arthritis. I’m in for at least one bout of surgery this Summer, one more in the following year. The down side: it’ll be painful. The upside: when it’s done, I won’t be in as much pain anymore. So it’ll be worth it.

Improve my blog.

You’ve all supported my blog tremendously in 2010 (and before that) and it’s amazing to see the way it’s been growing. I want to make sure you keep on enjoying the time you spend here. So here’s what I have in store:

• Loads of interviews. Looking at my web-statistics, the response to these interviews is always real big so I figured you enjoy them. Which is why I’ll try to do as many as possible this year.
  
• More reviews. I haven’t reviewed as many books and videos as I wanted to but these too seem to attract tons of visitors. So you’re going to get more of these as well.
• Newsletter. I haven’t released my e-mail newsletter in a while now. There are a bunch of reasons for that, many of which I can’t go into and none of them under my direct control. But that has passed now and I’m going to release it on a monthly basis. If you want to receive it, just make your free membership account here.
• Podcast. I got tons and tons of e-mails from people who wanted me to do a podcast. It’s encouraging to get such a response, so I’m going to start the prep work on that too. I won’t put a deadline right now because I have to figure out the technical details first. Stay tuned.

Write more.

Obviously, that means writing here on my blog. It’s been an amazing ride so far and I look forward to what’s coming this year.

But I also want to write books again. For a variety of reasons, I haven’t finished certain books I started on. I plan to rectify that this year. The first one will be an E-book “best-of” of this blog with a bunch of new articles that’ll only be in the E-book. I plan to finish writing at the end of January and then start prepping to publish it.

I also have other plans for books but can’t comment on them publicly just yet. When I can, I’ll do so right here.

Make more videos.

First of all, there’s the upcoming video shoot with Paladin. There should be two products when we’re through:

• One on conditioning and increasing the power of your techniques.
• The other on the strategies and tactics of Combat Sanshou, tentatively called “Tiger and Snake.”

Prepping for this shoot will take up a lot of my time. But I also plan on finishing the leg kick video. That one has been the project from hell with loads and loads of problems. Some of them so bad I couldn’t work on the project for a while. But I really want this one out there because I think it has a lot of great information. So I’m going to focus on this one too.

I  have even more plans for videos, but again, I can’t comment on them yet. Non-disclosure clauses and so on.

Conclusion.

Looks like 2011 will be a hectic year for me… That’s fine though, I like to stay busy. In fact, I have even more ideas to add to this list but I don’t want to make the mistake of taking on too much simultaneously again. Instead, my goal for this year is to focus more on the projects I listed here and avoid distractions as much as possible. Which is hard for me as I tend to be all over the place when things are going well. But I’ve realized that’s just my temperament doing the talking and it doesn’t lead to results. So “focus” is the key for 2011 for me.

Reading back this post, I’m going to be in for a lot of fun this year. I’ll report on how it’s going here on these pages and I hope you’ll enjoy reading about it.

Have a great 2011! I know I will!

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