Way to the TKDI EC 2012, Part XIII

Introduction & General Thoughts

Another hard day comes to an end. On days like this one, being on the [Warrior Diet] proves invaluable. You see, my schedule was extremely tight today. I was either training, at the university, or on the way from one place to the other. The below table sums up what I did today...

09:00 - 10:30	running session at the vienna university of sports
11:30 - 12:45	class at the technical university of vienna
13:45 - 15:30	technique session at the Shinergy[zone vienna]
16:00 - 18:00	class at the technical university of vienna

Normally, I would have had another, last session scheduled in the evening - a regeneration run of 30-40 minutes at an easy pace. However, as I had to go and pick up my (now fixed) laptop from the service point, I had to skip that last run. Not that I'm overly sad about it...

Anyhow, a 5-meals-per-day-approach just wouldn't cut it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm ok with cooking. I've even come to enjoy it. It's not hard physical work, it's not too hard on the brain, either... but to stay real, a schedule like mine doesn't allow for freshly cooking each meal. So in the end, this takes us to eating out. Which, obviously, results in

1. high expenses
2. a loss of control about what exactly is being eaten

Of course I could also just prepare all meals in advance and take them with me in tupperware containers. Then again, I'd probably need another trolley just for the food... very inconvenient. Another good thing in not eating breakfast is I would probably have lost that after the second 400m dash anyway...

It's much more time-efficient to just cook one huge meal in the evening. During that time in the kitchen, I can really sort my thoughts and wind down. Having complete and total control over every detail of my food intake even further unstresses me. Due to weight issues, I'm not exactly in a position to be sloppy about eating... 

Morning Session

Since I was tight and sore from yesterday, I felt I had to warm up much more than I usually do for the 400m dash, so I turned to the (second) best form of warmup I know: shadow sparring. Did 5 rounds of two minutes, with one minute break in between rounds for dynamic stretching drills. When shadow sparring, I tend to start out in a very simple way and gradually build up intensity and technical complexity. My current standard progression for five rounds looks as follows:

1. Movement only
2. Movement + straight punches
3. Punch/Kick/Punch combos
4. Kick/Punch/Kick combos
5. Free shadow sparring

Then, properly warmed up, I did three 100m sprints followed by three 400m dashes. For the 400m dashes, I took as much break in between the intervals as it took my heart rate to get back down to approximately 120bpm. On the third interval, I felt like I was going to die. Oddly enough, though, my time was better for that third interval than for the second, if only by one second:

• 1st interval 01:15
• 2nd interval 01:22
• 3rd interval 01:21

As a means of active cool-down, I took Ronny's class through the [Warrior Warmup routine] (yes, I do realize the irony in that...)

Afternoon Session

Around 1:30pm, I met up with Chris at our headquarters in Vienna's 8th district for some technique practice. Warmup was just like in the morning session - 5 rounds of shadow sparring á 2 minutes. Even pursued the same technique goals as in the previous session, as this is something of a standard progression for me. For more intensity, we took up the pads and each of us went on to do another 5 rounds of padwork. [Alwyn Cosgrove], world renowned S&C specialist, always says that "he who coaches himself has an idiot for a client". Hence, I had Chris coach me for the padwork. Now since Chris and I know each other pretty well and see fighting from a very similar point of view, the whole thing basically didn't show much difference to what I'd have done. Such were the tasks for each round:

1. Throw Kick/Punch/Kick combos
2. Throw Punch/Kick/Punch combos
3. Decide wheter to throw a Kick/Punch/Kick combo or a Punch/Kick/Punch Combo based on the first technique
4. (I honestly don't remember...)
5. Free padwork

All pretty basic stuff, but for me, it all boils down to fighting at a high pace and throwing a whole lot of combinations. For cool-down, I did quite some [smfr], really breaking up all those trigger points on my thighs on calves.

The Coming Days

Quite frankly, I'm pretty beat up. But then that's what you get when playing any sport at an elite level. I'm fine with that. A more serious issue at hand is the fact that I'm going to be pretty short on time over the course of the next couple days. My academic commitments are very time consuming, especially until the end of november, as my math course is going to be finished then... math never was my strong side.

So, since I'll have to cut back on training volume in the next time, I'll increase intensity. Tomorrow I'll take Chris' class for some sparring, on saturday I'll participate in the sparring during my advanced class. As for friday - that'll be rather easy, so recover in between sparring sessions. Of course, I'll shoot some videos of those upcoming sparring sessions, so make sure to check in again soon.

So long,

take care