[NR] "Granola Bar" - Chapter 736

Rosha laughs, watching as Jason does push-ups with a backpack on. Said backpack has lead in it. “Up Down, up down, keep your back straight! Don’t cheat on the push-up. That’s just cheating yourself! Now snack!”

Jason sighs, but takes a bite out of what could generously be called a granola bar. Except many would compare it more to pemmican. What with the added fat. The food is in bar form because that allows them to spear it on a stick and position the food in front of him for easy consumption.

At this point, Jason had been doing pushups since dawn, and it was nearly noon. Which is a bit extreme, but that is sort of the point. Besides, while they are using lead to increase the weight of the pack, that was less about straining him and more about being able to have a decent amount of added weight without too much bulk.

Not that his stats hadn’t gone up. Jason sighs as he thinks back on the last three days. Every one of which netted him a point in each stat and three in Stamina.

Rosha, “Look at the time! Switch to high-speed katas!”

Jason glances up at the sky and yep, the sun was around the right place.

He stands up and shrugs off the backpack. That wasn’t the point of this next bit of training. Besides, using weighted clothes wasn’t actually a good idea, despite popular media. It was in fact a good way to hurt yourself with little benefit. This was proven time and again, you could even find videos of people debunking it and showing the science why quite easily online.

Still, the myth survived. Jason wasn’t exactly going to blame people? The idea that training with weights in your wrist being able to increase your strength makes sense. After all, lifting a barbell works. The problem is that lifting weights is a controlled exercise and uses a lot more weight. Just having some weighted wrist wraps is a good way to overextend your elbow because you’re moving your hands around like normal.

Jason shakes his arms out, grabs another bite of his “granola bar” and gets into position.

One, two, three

And he’s off. Block left high strike, step in, punch, retreat, block forward mid, kick low, and on and on. Jason flows through general katas first. The simple kinds of routines that simulate certain circumstances. Though the chances of you finding yourself in exactly that fight are low, they’re more meant to drill the flow and reactions into your muscle memory.

Though in this case, Jason clearly doesn’t need that. He will never claim to have perfected them, no matter how much some martial traditions both here, irl, and in his last life all like to have a “perfected” stage. Jason long ago saw that there is always more to improve.

On the sidelines, Rosha refills his water and brings out another bar of food. Then, satisfied he should be good for a while, wanders off to have lunch. After a few days of this, she was used to the honestly shocking speeds that Jason could go through these katas at.

Especially after Jason made sure to pound into her head that he can’t actually fight at the speeds he is displaying. An actual fight would be much too chaotic and require him to think about his next moves and react to what is happening. Well, this is mostly true.

Rosha makes sure to have finished her lunch to be back in time for when Jason practices the more practical side of things. Where he moves from simple long chains of moves to specific combos. From the simple one-two punch to complex combos that almost focus more on keeping the single target in place over ten or moves instead hurting them.

For these, Jason is even faster, but more importantly, this was actually useful in combat. The classic example of the “one-two punch” shows this off perfectly. If Rosha didn’t know he favored punching first with his left hand, she would have no clue which one hit first. The combo attack was a blur.

Which, while exciting, was also why Rosha preferred to watch the longer combos. Despite it still happening in a blur of motion, those combos lasted long enough to be watched, instead of being over in a flash.

There was one problem to all these combos and a big part of why Jason didn’t put much focus on them. They’re inherently limited in scope. After all, most of them were developed to fight fellow humans.

Sure, a one-two punch would work just fine against a bear, but anything more complicated falls apart. They won’t respond how humans would. Their anatomy isn’t one-to-one. Plus any number of slight differences between humanoids and others.

Still, they were all great training for Agility, especially when being run through at full speed. Even though it did require Jason to stop more often. After all, moving around so much means they can’t exactly put a bar of food on a stick in front of his mouth.

Though there are only so many katas to do and so Jason soon moves onto other forms of exercise. The only constant being that downtime is reduced to the minimum. Which turned out a lot easier than it could have been.

The first day involved Courtney hovering nearby, fully intent to apply healing magic the moment his muscles started to show signs of exhaustion. Except they never did. It was as if lactic acids weren’t building up at all.

Which, upon thinking about it, was exactly the case. Or rather, he technically didn’t have muscles to begin with. Jason’s body being a void wrapped in a facade. As long as he isn’t cut open to reveal the muscles or some enemy hits him hard enough to bruise, he doesn’t technically get tired. At least not in the same way normal flesh and blood sorts do.

Courtney compared his situation more to that of an elemental. Everything being run off of his Energy and as long as there is Energy, things were fine. That did raise the question of what Stamina was doing for him.