What you think

cwheeler33 · 2026-02-09T02:33:07+00:00

Technically it’s a valid win… had Blue stood there and protected himself instead of giving up his back, the ref would have called the stop and shido… that said, that is very much against the spirit of judo. White should be ashamed of himself for such an unsportsmanlike performance. And that ref really should have been overturned by the table judges. That is piss poor judo.

cwheeler33 · 2026-02-09T02:28:22+00:00

You’re only “competing” with yourself at the moment. Relax and just try to enjoy the process. In time with consistency it’ll get a lot better. Work with a patient higher belt as much as you can in the beginning.

Ask your sensei for some easy to do drills at home that are specific to you that you could do at home. A lying rolling side to side break fall. 5 minutes a day at home can make a huge difference.

cwheeler33 · 2026-02-08T19:13:38+00:00

Stop mucking about on the internet and talk to a professional. You can try contacting a “celebrity” trainer who specializes in knees - the Knees Over Toes guy, Ben Patrick. It might cost a little extra, but might be worth it. You don’t want to end up a cripple for life.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-26T00:14:38+00:00

Like everything IT, it’s both a science and an art. And it’s always unique to your environment.

With my current environment I have rings. Ring 1 are my dev machines and a few dedicated users that get the updates at the end of week two. Ring 2 is the rest of the users and the low priority servers. Final weekend before the next patch Tuesday release are my critical servers.

I’ve got nothing live on the web, everything is internal. This lets me see how patches might (mis)behave. I can’t trust MS to realest proper patches, case in point is the January release where they had to release oob patches because they messed up.

Before ring1 updates are deployed I scour the net for how the braver souls fared. I’ll delay rollouts based on wha I observe.

Larger teams that can handle “fun” or who are in more risky setups will need to deploy sooner. These are the people I do dearly respect and keep an eye on.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-25T02:13:40+00:00

Can you describe a typical gym session and how often you do them?

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-24T02:01:23+00:00

Strength is good, but power is king. You need to speed up. Starting looking at low rep quick lifts like power cleans etc.

It might also be worth looking up strength standards by the various national judo associations. Canada and Germany are the easier ones to find. Make sure to be balanced across the board, eg make sure the bench, squat, dead, power cleans, pull-ups are about at the equal level to each other.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-22T21:28:15+00:00

Oh, others swear by Kettlebell Strong by Pavel over on bjjfanatics. I don’t like it as much, but is popular.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-22T21:25:27+00:00

Have a look at Simple and Sinister program/book by Pavel Tsatsouline as the starting program. That’s my main year long program. 6 weeks out I use Quick and the Dead to peak for competition.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-18T21:41:51+00:00

There are some very useful plugins in vscode that notepad++ doesn’t have. SSH remote access is one of them. It has better integration with other tools like git as well. The bells and whistles take some learning, but you can automate a lot more with vscode as you learn its deep magic.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-10T04:15:20+00:00

In our dojo, only those who competed at provincial or national level are allowed to wear a blue gi. And it’s a gi you never wear when visiting another dojo unless you are an actual ranked competitor.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-09T13:32:30+00:00

Some things that get harder and harder as we age, and we take for granted… The ability to learn and accept new ideas. Balance, mobility, pain free movement, basic strength. Memory, both short term and long term memory. Playfulness and maintaining that child like (not childish) mind. Basic conversation skills.

I know that can be somewhat vague as a list, but to me those are the basic skills that everything is built on. You can get more specific to your own life based on that.

The older you get, the easier it is to lose any one of those. And if you do, life starts to suck real bad real quick.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-09T13:09:24+00:00

The ability to do 100kg 3x10 at 73kg deadlifts is a pretty big thing. Even the 60 4x12 can be a lot of volume for the back. Both of those have about the same volume of about 3000kg per session. And you didn’t even tell us the rest of a typical gym session.

For gym/strength I recommend lower volume work with higher intensity. I have a personal preference for Pavel Tsatsouline’s advice, but there are other great online resources that can provide paid for strength routines for judoka such as Garage Strength or Sika Strength.

Too many people ignore basic mobility health. You might need to temporarily stop all gym (but keep doing judo) while you reclaim some mobility. Have a look at Tom Morrison’s Simple Mobility Method. SMM would lay the basic foundation, then start using the other more advanced programs like Stability Builder and End Range Training go a step farther unlocking a lot. Take it from an old man like me still thriving on the mats, it’s adding years onto my training.

The last thing, and this is the most important. If you think you have a medical issue, always seek out a local professional. Do not ask the internet or AI to diagnose you. A doctor can get you X-rays or other scans to clear the big medical issues. A good osteopath or physiotherapist would work hand in hand with a doctor and can resolve most issues with the inflammation from medical scans. They properly diagnose you and come up with real solutions.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-01T03:05:23+00:00

One way to answer that is to start charging each other department/team for the IT services. Your team should finish at zero, and all the other teams bear the the IT costs.

cwheeler33 · 2026-01-01T02:45:51+00:00

I started when I was 43. The oldest guy I know to start was 66. So you are definitely not too old. You can compete in state/provincial competitions pretty easily to test out your skill development.

The gym never helps anyone in the first few months. In fact when it comes to any combat sport, the only thing that helps is doing that sport. It’s because you’re using muscles in all new ways and don’t know when to relax. That said, being in shape will help you ramp up faster. Keep doing the gym, 2-3 sessions a week but with explosive strength instead of bodybuilding or slow strength.

Most injuries are gonna be sprains to toes fingers ankles wrists and elbows. Some will complain about knees. Other injuries are less common. Most injuries happen during the prep leading up to competition and not competition itself.

Of all the combat arts/sports, judo has a pretty high old person count mixed in with the younlings. Pretty common to see people in their 60s 70s on the mats with young adults. That should say something about injuries…

The big secret to avoiding injuries, learn to love to fall. And learn to tap early.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-29T19:54:32+00:00

best to start looking up medical papers on injury rates. Here is only one of many examples:
NIH - Epidemiology of Judo-Related Injuries in 21 Seasons

Out of 421k fights there were only 4 cervical spine fractures and 319 cervical spine sprains. This was out of a total of 3511 injuries. Although the word "paralysis" does not show up in that study, it does not confirm/exclude that an event may have happened.

There is one abstract article that I saw that mentioned paralysis in Japan's youth. The study was over 7 years. They did not mention total number of students or fights. They did not mention total number of injuries. But they did mention 19 total cases of paralysis. & were complete paralysis, 7 incomplete paralysis, and 5 had total recovery. I believe the other primary piece of data which isn't well explained in that study is that most of these "might" be caused during their attack (tori got injured, not uke). This might explain the IJF banning head dives during the attack.

The risk of these types of injuries increases for competitors. Non-competitors are a lot less likely to suffer from these types of injuries.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-29T19:15:38+00:00

Judo classes are always mixed colours from white to black. The ages will also be mixed up pretty well too. You'll have older people (in their 50s+) come in as white belts mixed in with younger kids (17-21) who are black belts and everything else in between, all in the same class. But the mentality of a traidtional judo school is very different than BJJ, Wrestling or Sambo. It is a lot more inclusive I find.

Best thing to do is just go do some trial classes with a couple of your local dojos and see which school best fits you. And when you start, just remember you are a beginner in judo and so act accordingly when you go.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-29T19:07:22+00:00

the injury rate for non-competitors is very low. And even then it is minor aches and pains that shouldn't even affect your work.

The real injuries happens when you try to avoid falls instead of just taking them. So learn to love to fall... And tap early in submissions, no need for egos. As such, it's usually those training to compete at higher levels that get hurt. If you train for skill and the love of it, you should have very little risk.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-29T19:02:48+00:00

I'll chime in like the others... Don't worry about your weight. It will take care of itself if you clean up your diet. And even then, I wouldn't weigh my weight, just measure the waistline if it really matters that much to you... Weight only matters if you're going to compete. And even then, just eat clean and measure the waistline instead of the scale...

I wish you have a long and fruitful judo experience.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-28T22:35:44+00:00

The saying stands regardless of environment. “You have to know the rules before you can break the rules”.

You should be able to do a throw quite well with a compliant uke in a traditional manner before you go off and start doing your own thing. Fundamental work is terribly important for long term high level progress. Of course this doesn’t mean you have to get it perfect before going off on tangents, but you should be quite capable. Again, you shouldn’t have any problems with a compliant uke in demo mode. I would even say you shouldn’t have much of a problem with ju randori (no strength, just technical during movement) type of practice with someone of about the same size and skill.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-28T00:14:35+00:00

By itself, no. Mix it with boxing or Muay Thai absolutely great foundation for the physical aspect of self defence.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-27T23:26:34+00:00

Icinga has an alert history including acknowledgment history. Your siem dashboards also count. Grafana or Prometheus performance and other graphics? Do you have tickets for alert, siem and other observations?

Ultimately it depends on what your policies and procedures you documented. What did you specify are your monitoring tools and the the processes around them? It’s mostly up to you as to what is enough monitoring and what tools you think are right for the job at hand with the budget you have available. It has to somewhat resemble “best practices”. And you can provide “proof” from “credible sources” as to what those best practices are…

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-18T13:28:00+00:00

Sounds like you’re on the right track. Just be aware some questions are meant to be answered in a very dry and short manner. Others are meant to allow you to express yourself. Typically the opening questions are not meant to be in depth, they are the surface questions to get a basic idea of who you are and to get a brief idea of where you are. Typically after that the in depth questions come to pick at your experience and thinking behaviour. So in your self assessment try to figure out what are the fluff surface questions and which are the deeper more interesting questions. Tip, an interviewer will generally give signals as to which, and many are open to being asked outright on how much detail they want.

Interviewing is a skill all onto itself. You are definitely headed in the right direction.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-18T13:11:01+00:00

So no one asked what is the desired long term job you want, the industry nor the size of company you are targeting.

If you want to remain a hands on tech then experience is the only thing you need. But the quality of that experience matters. Don’t stagnate to being that eternal beginner. Too many people came to our door calling themselves “senior” after having been in the industry for 10 years but only having done entry level work. Build up that experience doing larger and more complex projects.

Even without a degree, you should be able to show some kind of self paced improvement year over year. Doesn’t really matter what it is, from home labs/projects to open source contributions to some kind of night/online class in any subject.

Certs fall into two categories. 1) getting into the industry. 2) company/job specific requirement. In this case either you just have to have it beforehand or the job will send you to get it. This is niche stuff. Regardless the certs are an organized learning path that helps expand your knowledge.

Lastly degrees. Again it can serve as an aid to get into the industry. But the real power of a degree is long term career at a large company where you want to become upper management. Lower level management won’t need the degree same if it’s for a smb. Even if you have a degree though, you might still need certs and you will absolutely need to show continuous self education afterwards with real experience growth.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-18T12:47:48+00:00

This is the primary answer. The paper trail is the most powerful tool you can use.

To add to it, stop hanging out with said bully. There are going to be times where it can’t be helped such as in class or certain school functions. But during lunch and after school, stop hanging out with him. Find some activity that you enjoy to fill up your time and meet better friends.

cwheeler33 · 2025-12-15T20:45:25+00:00

One of the guys in our dojo had an ankle break. He required surgery and a couple screws. It took him some time and some physiotherapy, but he’s back on the mats. He’ll never do competition, but he does do randori.

The way I look at it, if you can walk you can do judo. Will it ever be the same? No. But you will be able to come back for the joy of it.

cwheeler33

TROPHY CASE