A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

Yesterday we did holistic training. Holistic training is a form of training where one strives to improve max strength, mass and strength endurance all in one session. Although there's various forms of holistic training around, we've just picked up the idea and adapted it to our needs. Hence, in our case, our holistic training consist of the three exercises Deadlift (stand-up) Pull-Up (pull) Bench Press (Push) where each exercise is done for a single 3rm set, a single 8rm set and a single 15rm set. As strength plays an important role in striking, we've decided to keep reps at the lower end of the range. 20,30 or even 40 reps in a set don't seem overly beneficial to our sport, especially as we're doing high-rep swings and snatches anyway. To integrate the whole thing into the Rites of Passage program, we finished by snatching a 16kg bell at low intensity for 5 minutes. Since yesterday we were only probing our limits, I will post our weights beginning wednesday. So lon...

Skipped training on wednesday and saturday. I wasn't feeling all too well and as I had to teach on both thursday and saturday, training just wasn't an option. So today, we did the RKC rites of passage for the second time with some slight modifications. As always, we started out with light sparring to properly warm up. Today, we donned the MMA gloves and implement throws and takedowns along with the standup fighting. Afterwards, it was all clean&press again. We decided to alter the system in favor of a more drop-set like approach. Basically, once one of us can't complete a rung on the ladder, he switches to the next lighter kettlebell. I switched after set 4, exchanging the 24kg 'bells for 20kg ones. Should have switched after I missed the first rep, but the idea was too late. Today I experimented with a smarter set scheduling. I set my Gymboss to 1-minute rounds and shot for a certain amount of swings per minute. When that amount was reached, I paused for the remain...

So here's todays video clips. The recording is pretty bad, but it gives you an idea of what our training sessions look like at the moment.

After we've built up some decent strength levels, it's time to get back in shape endurance-wise. So today, Chris and I started going through the RKC rites of passage, which basically consist of heavy cleans & presses, swings and snatches. As a warmup, we did three rounds of light thaiboxing sparring. My Gymboss is out of batteries so I'm using my Everlast timer. That damn thing beeps 20 seconds before the round is over, so we stopped 20 seconds early in the first round. After 20 seconds it beeps again, to indicate the round is actually over - we took that as the beginning of the new round and did 3min 40 sec on the second one. All pretty confusing. After warmup up properly, we grasped the kettlebells and went down to business. For us, monday is the heavy day, so it's 5 ladders of 5 rungs for the clean & press. I did the whole thing with 2x20kg, Chris did it with 2x16kg. 5 ladders of 5 rungs means a total of 75 repetitions - this does smoke the shoulders. Afterwa...