A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

Yesterday, I hit the gym for what I thought was going to be a recuperation session. I had my last fight on april 14th, after which I basically took a week off in terms of training. So, instead of jumping right back into Wendler's 5/3/1 training, I decided to do a "hotel room workout". You know, that's one of those workouts when you're abroad and all you have access to is the hotel gym (which more often than not is in a pretty bad state). That's when you try out new exercises and basically just do everything that doesn't suit your current program. Iron Core For me, this was an opportunity to finally give Chad Waterbury's Iron Core circuit a try. On paper (or rather, on screen), this stuff looked so easy. The circuit consists of four exercises:     Dying bug with wall push     Leg curl with stability     Stir the pot     Pallof press I won't bother giving a detailed description for those exercises here, just check ou...

Introduction So last saturday me and my team competed at the WKF Austrian Open 2012. Let's start the review with some facts and numbers: General/Starters Result 5 starters for the Shinergy[supreme team] 4 gold medals 4 of which are from my school 4 silver medals 3 injuries 1 bronze medal 2 of us got away without a scratch We all competed in Semi- and Light-contact events. You can find the team roster in the table below Name (alphabetically) 1st Event / Division 2nd Event / Division Result Eppensteiner, Christian Semi-Contact Men / -75kg Semi-Contact Men / +91kg Silver / Bronze Krzan, Gabriel Semi-Contact Juniors / +71kg Light-Contact Juniors / -67,5kh Silver / Gold Mehic, Andreas Semi-Contact Juniors / +71kg Light-Contact Juniors / +71kg Gold / Gold Pezenka, Lukas Light-Contact Men / -71kg - Silver / - Zauner, Frank Semi-Contact Men / -75kg Semi-Contact Men / +91kg Gold / Silver A chaotic schedule Now you might be wondering why everyone was starting in so many different classes. T...

Tomorrow's weigh-in. Still need to lose quite some weight. I never attemted to make that much weight before. If this actually works, it'll definately be something to be kept up for future full-contact bouts. Jesterday's session was short and technique-centered. 5 rounds of shadow-sparring, 5 rounds of padwork, for a total of 10 2-minute rounds. While the technique-goals were rather strict while working the pads, the shadow-sparring was rather freestyle. I didn't ask Chris what he was doing, but my concept was very straight-forward: Stepping / Movement only Boxing, freestyle Boxing, freestyle Kickboxing, freestyle, Kickboxing, freestyle Nothing fancy here. Since Chris is competing in the semi-contact (a.k.a Point/Stop) division while I'll do light-contact (a.k.a continous), our padwork obviously differed a lot. Chris devoted his rounds to the following: Roundhouse kicks only Spinning kicks Lead leg kicks Adding punches and mixing it all up Punches only On the other h...

Three more days until the WKF Austrian Open in Steinbrunn. I'm fighting a hard battle against my weight - for the first time since 2004, I've decided to fight in the -71kg division. Weigh-In is friday from 4pm to 8pm. I'm drinking quite a lot, more than 7 liters a day. Thursday, I'll cut to 3,5 liters. Beginning thursday at 6pm, I'll stop any water or food intake until the weigh in. Really curious as to how much weight I'll be able to drop. Anyhow, when it comes to training, we're not doing a lot anymore. No hard training whatsoever. You see, recovery is becoming an issue when food intake is limited. Probably the single most limiting factor is the absence carbs. This might be less of an issue with traditional diets where you're eating 5 to 6 times a day - with the warrior diet, however, this definately makes a difference. Coming back to the topic at hand - training -, I did 15 2-minute rounds of shadow sparring today. I really come to like this stuff bet...

Today's sparring session was great, so was yesterday's. You see, to prep for the upcoming Austrian Open (WKF, Steinbrunn, April 14th), we totally commited yesterday's class to kickbox sparring. I'm pretty proud of my guys - not only did they perform good, everything was also very controlled. Having said that, I have to admit there was some blood and a broken toe, but then it's a combat sport, right? Anyhow, I've posted video footage of the entire session below. Alex took his new 1080p camera with him, so the video quality is quite astonishing. Today we had another great session, this time at the Shinergy[zone vienna], our official headquarters. I did plan on shooting some video footage, yet I failed to press the record button. Hence, no footage. Apparentaly, those headshots are becoming something of an issue after all... Enjoy the videos and feel free to post your opinion to the comments section below - looking forward to reading them! So long, take care

So today Chris and I finished our first 5/3/1 cycle. 5/3/1 is a strength training protocol designed by Jim Wendler. You can find some information on the program [ here ], a follow-up article to clarify some points is given [ here ]. Also, you can buy the 5/3/1 ebook [ here ]. After neglecting proper strength training for quite a while now, Chris and I realized it was time to get our weak butts back in shape again. One of my athletes, Alex, has successfully been on the 5/3/1 program for a while now, so instead of going for our [ 5x5 ] training again, we decided to give a try to Wendler's approach. The protocol Although you can find all information following the links provided above, I'll give you the idea in a nutshell. First off, the program's goal is to increase maximal strength on the squat, deadlift, bench press and shoulder press. The original program has the athlete train four days a week, performing a different lift on every workout. Hence, each lift will be done ...