Working Out Works!

It has been more than 4 weeks of working out with Francesco and It's great especially when we are provided personal training from Peter (year 13). Everytime after working out I feel more relieved and clean from the inside though.  It is a great way of releasing all the pressure that IB gatheres. 

We have succeeded with our objectives by going four times a week to the school's gym and each time training different muscles (chest, shoulders, back and legs). So far we have made a noticeable progress as we have been trying to add more weight every time we train a muscle. That's what we have been told to be the best way of gaining muscle. Progress is also noticeable on the physical look. So far, I'm happy with my results of working out. Sometimes it just feels that an additional half an hour added to our work out would'nt be too bad.

Me and Francesco have been thinking of adding an extra work out only for arms as we have got one day of the week available. Also I have been thinking of going to swim on weekends which would be a good way of supporting the muscle growth. I will definitely go swim during the half-term break in Finland and possibly go to the Gym as well. 

(For next gym post i will try to have a picture of me doing something)

DoReMI...

Since we have got a piano in our apartment and my sister is already taking lessons I decided to have a go as well. Three weeks ago on Sunday after my sister had finished her lesson It was my turn. I had a lesson today as well and i'm starting to like playing the piano very much. I have been learning some basic knowledge of how to read the notes correctly. Last time I was learning to play Jingle Bells and today one Finnish Christmas song.  So far I have had three lessons and each one of them have lasted from 1-1.5 hours. 

I won't be having any more lessons before the term break however i'm looking forward to continue the lessons after the break and will be having them twice a week and hopefully will start to practice some more longer and challenging songs. Not Mozart though! Later on in spring I might actually post a video of me playing.

Poem..

For the sake of the snake,

Or the fish of the lakes.

We should act!

It is a fact,

That all responsibility lies on our backs.

And the conciousness that mankind lacks,

Making them the snacks, that we have,

Is not right.

Should we fight, through the barking nights

Or just wait for hope.

No!

We should be the ones already passing the helping rope...

Basketball

Yesterday was the basketball day! So far, I have participated every time when we have had our trainings.
We have started to play games on half court which allows every team to play continuously without having a ten minute break. In my opinion it's better like that, because everyone is provided with more technical practice than full court games would offer. Half court games aren't as tirying as full court games, which allows every player to concentrate more on the techniques.

I have done a significant improvement on my playing, although yesterday was not one of the best days on the court. I have started to have a better understanding of the game play,  how to act on defense or at attack, however I want to improve more. My goals for the future basketball practices is trying to coordinate myself to available positions nad practicing more and more my scoring skills generally.

Gutter Cleansing

Last weekend I went to Finland to visit my father as he had his birthday on monday.

As my father lives in a terraced house, there are some chores that must be done by every one who live in the appartments. This weekend was our turn to clean up the gutters of the roof. At first me, my father and our neighbour thought that the task will be easy and we could've just place a ladder on the side of the walls and simply use a special brush for gutters to clean all the dropped leaves. However, our expectations turned wrong. At some places the distance between the ground and the roof was too high (4-5 m) for our too short ladder and our gutter was too complex for using the brush anyway, so I was required to climb up on the roof, put on a safety harness and slowly crawl down the slightly sloping rooftop. At the same time, our dear nabour was adjustig the length of the safety rope.

(Not a pic by me and not our gutter)
However, this is the kind of brush we tryed to use.

After cleaning and washing the gutters, it was time to get down from the roof and go home to take a warm shower. The whole process took around one and a half hour.

The task provided me a totally new experience in an unusual environment, but the best part is that I actually enjoyed it. Not a typical father and son activity but an interesting one though.When you add some humour to anything what you do, you can always have fun. I'd do the same chores next year again.

GYM, Week 1

This week, I officially started my gym regime! On Tuesday right after lunch break had started, me and Francesco rushed up to the gym and got ready for the tough week. 

After Peter arrived, we started our work out. On the first day, we were concentrating on leg muscles, though we didn't manage to complete all the work outs for legs because starting up took plenty of time.

On Wednesday we were doing work outs intended for shoulders. Some of the weight lifting methods turned out hard but we managed to overcome the difficulties and had a pretty nice work out!

The last but certainly not the least work out of the week took place on Thursday when we were training our chest muscles. In my opinion that work out was the most fun of all the previously mentioned. 

Thanks to Peter, I have now a much clearer idea of what i should be doing on the gym and how should i do the wok outs properly. However I still need to practice in order to form the correct flow for my working out.
The target for next week is to try to use up the one hour we have more effectively. We should start working out immediately after arriving to the gym and keep up a quick tempo. And most importantly I will try to leave at least few minutes for stretching especially after the leg training!

GYM

Last week me and Francesco decided to start going to the school gym regularly. After few times though, we discovered that it was much harder than we thought because of the fact that neither both of us didn't know what to do in what order and how much should we do. I was lifting the weights and hitting the boxing sack but still I didn't feel like doing much 'working out'... 

Me and Francesco decided to ask help from Peter and he was more than willing to help us. On Friday Peter was spending his lunch break showing me and Francesco some methods for gaining muscle. These methods seemed very useful though we didn't have much time for actual working out but still we got the basic idea of how we should be spending time on the gym and how should we be managing our working out through out the week. 

Next week we will start serious working out for three times a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) with the guidance of Peter. 

Our goal is to gain muscle and later on we will start getting rid of the fat.

SWIMMING!

Since i was in Finland earlier this week i decided to use my opportunity to go swimming. The town were I live in Finland has a very nice swimming hall which includes the actual 25 metre long pool divided to several lines, a relaxing pool with water massages etc. and two pools for children and a water slide. 

(not a pic by me)

The first day I was just swimming without keeping a count on the distance, however the next day I decided to pay attention on how much I would swim just to feel more organised and to have a result from what to start improving. Firstly I started with breastsroke swimming for 200 metres, secondly 200 metres freestyle swimming and right after around 100 metres freestyle swimming only by using hands which I tried the day before as well when it felt much more difficult. After the first drill I wanted to relax my muscles in the bubbles and after 5 minutes I swam exactly the same amount as in the first drill. I included backstroke swimming as well but I prefer more the styles previously mentioned. This was the first time i swam since summer.Overall I swam a bit more than a kilometre and next time I would like to do the same drills but maybe lessening the amount of breastsroke swimming and adding more freestyle and backstroke swimming.

INTERNATIONAL DAY

International day is one of the best days of the entire school year! I participated this event also last year. The whole year 12 group was required to organise activities and information of everyones countries for the younger students. Me, Elvijs and Måns were provided the history room for our activities. Since our group included people from two northern countries the group was called 'The Vikings + Latvia'. We all had our little picture emphasised presentations of our countries (Finland, Sweden and Latvia). However, showing few presentations wouldn't be too amusing especially for the youngest students, so we also included draw & guess activities and music from our countries.

Later on when everyone had finished eating all the delicious dishes from different countries and cultures came the time for the legendary International day's music show. I and Mr Grey performed as well. I was doing beatbox and Mr Grey was playing the drums. The combination was great and I would be more than happy trying it again!

READY FOR CANNES?!

This week's best achievement was finishing our group's short/silent movie! We (me, Francesco and Elvijs) spent over all three evenings for doing the movie. We managed to film every seen on the last sunday evening and the start of the movie is filmed in Afi Mall Moscow from where the story starts to develope and finally after many metro journeys we end up at the bridge next to Gorki park. One scene required extreme accuracy because we had only one chance to film it.

On Monday and Tuesday evenings we went straight after school to Francesco's place to edit our movie. Our editing took a lot of time because firstly no-one of us knew how to use Imovie especially the 'how to add audio' part but after many tries and few youtube tutorial videos we discovered the proper method and bit by bit by bit finished our struggled editing scenery. 

In my oppinion our short/silent movie turned out pretty good for an amateur movie but we still need a lot practise. We had scenes which were relatively too long and could've been shortened a bit. For our next movie we should pay more attention on audio inputs in order to make them flow smoothly with the video.

The Other Hand

Today at the basketball club before the match we were practising exercises aimed to improve the usage of the worst hand and the fast movement through the court. Firstly we started with the fast movement drill which was done in groups of three people by passing the ball as fast as you can while changing positions from one side of the court to the other side and at the same time moving quickly towards the other end of the court where the last one receiving a pass will make a layup. This was followed with the worst hand ball dribbling drill which needed to be performed by moving as fast as possible to the other end of the court and straight back, using first the better hand and the worst hand when coming back. This turned out much more difficult than I thought. Finally before the match started we carried out a lyaup drill where i managed to score points with a significant improvement compared to our last weeks training.

Finally we started the game and today i had a better clue where to be positioned during the game, unfortunately I didn't score any points but I will try to do that in the next weeks training. I should still keep concentraiting on my in game tactics especially during our teams attack  where you need the most important coordinating how to manage to be in a free space where the ball can be easily passed.

SERVING SERVICE

Delicious tea & coffee

Today was the parent's evening of our school's youngest students of where I among other IB students stayed after school to help in guiding parent's' way to correct class rooms and help serving refreshments (coffee & tea) for them. Parents started to flow in around four o'clock and continued till around five. last teas and coffees were served at 17.30 for parents about to leave the school. Teachers as well didn't miss the chance to grab a cup of hot refresher during the parents evening. Finally after our Headmaster's order our team was allowed to go home after collecting empty cups around the school and cleaning up our stand. After all, I actually enjoyed this activity because i got to know better some of my class mates and got free coffee and tea ;).

COOKING CLUB

Today I attended the first time the cooking club! We were making pelmenis (dumblings) filled with meat or strawberry jam, both of them were delicious. The dough we used was already prepared but it can be bought from local shops as well if not feeling like making it yourself. Firstly we took small pieces of the dough which we dipped into flour in order to make them easier to be formed into circular shapes. Secondly we added the filling either the meat or the jam. Thirdly we were thought how to form the pelmeni into a shape that the filling will remain securily inside the pastry. And finally we dropped the rare pelmenis into the pot and let them boil for as long as the pelmenis started floathing which meant that they were ready to be eaten! Someday when i will make pelmenis all by myself i will try to make the pastry around the filling more thinner so that it will taste better and boil faster.

TIME FOR TEAMS

Third time on the basketball court and the amount of participants is continuosusly increasing.Today we started the club with layup practise which was followed with fastpass practise to improve our passing skills in order to pass the ball quickly and to make it more difficult for the opponent to catch the ball. After that was the time to divide all the participants into three teams which most likely will be permanent till the end of the year.Finally, after gathering the teams we were able to start the match! Firstly our teamplay wasn't working very well. At least I was running all the time somewhere at the court where I wasn't supposed to be but after a while when we had already played few games and were warmed-up enough we all started to understand how to make our teamplay better when we started to get the ball into the basket which is all thanks to our well doing quick pass method that we started to combine with new tactics that we had developed during the games.

I need to improve my orientation skills on the court as well as my 'positioning' tactics and precisely my layups which weren't too good in today's practice.

My CAS Plan

1.Playing basketball every wednesday at school from 16.00-17.30. I want to learn good game tactics and develop my skills as a basketball player.   Action

2.Starting a beatboxing club which shall take place twice a week at lunchtimes for half an hour. Teaching beatboxing, at first some basics and as 'beatboxers' proceed in their learning they'll get to learn new sounds and how to construct them into a beat. If participants want to it could be possible to perform to other students as a beatboxing orchestra.   Creativity, action and service.

3.Going to school Gym three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Keeping up/improving physical shape by lifting weights and slowly aiming to more and more heavier weights as well as doing ab exercises.   Action

4.Photographing local community and environment (mostly in weekends), perhaps some future events and adding them on internet e.g. compiling a bunch of pictures and making a video of them and putting on youtube. By time I want to improve in my photographing skills and also want to learn how to edit them properly.   Creativity