A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

Today, Chris and I did our first "Push" session in our reloaded 5x5 program. All those little tweaks probably make the program even more awesome than it was before. As usual, after warming up, we worked the pads for 5 rounds each. Today, we didn't freestyle a lot but rather worked on specific drills, some of which are inspired by Anderson Silva's instructional videos. (I've compressed the video to just a few seconds per drill so as not to bore you.) Then, we hit the gym and lifted some heavy stuff. Well, ok, nothing all too heavy today, but then it was only our first session. Basically, there's been two changes (improvements?) over the original program: Front squats became Overhead squats At the end of the session, we'd do 25 bottom-up presses on each arm , following Chad Waterbury's recommendations in his article, the 25 Method . Hence, the new "push" session is structured as follows: (Snatch to) Overhead squat, 5x5 Clean & Press, 5x5 ...

Alright, Chris and Elias came back from their tournaments (they just recently fought in Germany, then in Steinbrunn, Austria, and each of them scored medlas in both tournaments), so we went back to doing our saturday sessions again. Due to a high level of fatigue, we skipped circuit training this time and focused on really implementing new stuff instead. In the following, I'll show you some of the cooler exercise - the highlights, if you wish. Just give some of those a try in your next workout, you won't regret it. Suspended Reach Side-Plank Ok, quite frankly, I've no idea how this exercise is really called. Regardless how one might call this beauty, it definately rocks the core. The setup is pretty simple, so instead of describing it in theory, I just put up a video. Enjoy! Single Arm Power Pull Another great way to work the core is the single arm power pull. I first saw this on the "TRX Essentials / Cardio circuit DVD" and instantly liked it. Pulling strength an...

So today after some padwork for warmup and specific training, Chris and I jumped into some more structured, more serious strength & conditioning program again. After some hard thinking, we concluded that after all the instructor courses, seminars and workshops we attended, we still don't know a better system than the 5x5 program I've written so much about on this site. Hence, we'll do it again. Anyhow, although they say you should "never change a running system", we've decided to tweak some parameters to even further increase the program's effectiveness. Let me recap the original program again Monday, Thursday: "Pull"-type movements (horizontal pull, vertical pull) and hip-centered "Stand-Up"-type movements Tuesday, Friday: "Push"-type movements(horizontal push, vertical push) and knee-centered "Stand-Up"-type movements Sets/Reps: 5x5, with progressive load (e.g. 130 in the first set, 132.5 in the second, 140 in ...

As promised, here's a summary of our conditioning session on Saturday, April 23th. You see, Chris, Elias (the new guy on the team) and I have decided to make saturday our "crazy stuff" day. Basically, that's when we'll try new drills or do stuff we can't do in the dojo for obvious reasons. Without further ado, I'll just jump into the the session and give you an overview of what our saturdays look like these days. Goes without saying, we start the whole thing with some warmup. I won't go into great detail here, but I'll present you my favourite warmup toy (at least for now): behold, the speed ladder . I tend to use this a lot in my youth and children classes and I also love to warmup with some stepping myself. Below, you can find a short clip of a "2-in-2-out" step. This form of training develops quick feet and mobility - definately something worth working on for a standup-fighter. In my opinion, explosive strength is the single most impor...