A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

No comment on this one. just lean back and enjoy. So long, take care

Last Saturday, this year’s first Shinergy[battle] was on. Great fights, great event, Fighters competed in four divisions: Men, full contact sparring, +80kg Men, semi-contact sparring, +185cm Cadets, semi-contact sparring, catch weight Women, semi-contact sparring, catch weight For a short recap considering the rules, let me summarize the key points: Fights are “best of three”, so it takes two won rounds to win a fight Each round is two minutes, with one minute break in between rounds Low-kicks, throws and takedowns are prohibited. Pretty much everything else, including but not limited to the following techniques, is fair play: all kicks above waist level all hand strikes (closed and open hand) above waist level knee strikes above waist level, also to the head elbow strikes above waist level, also to the head, foot sweeps it goes without saying that dangerous and unsportsmanlike actions such as fish-hooking, biting, eye-gauging, etc. are prohibited full-contact bouts...

As mentioned in [this post] , I had a chance to attend [Ludwig Bernhard’s] new show “Neues von Herz, Diet und Sex” at the end of the last year. In case you don’t know him, Bernhard, who studied medicine (although never graduated from what I’ve heard – roger that, just checked Wikipedia, he never graduated) considers himself an “Infotainer” and his shows [“Cabaret Seminars”]. That means that although you definitely get a good laugh or two while hearing the guy talk but still, he tries to actually educate his audience, to transport a message. Now you have every right to wonder how all of this relates to a martial arts blog. Fret not, for the answer will be served shortly… You see, Bernhard is a proponent of [intermittent fasting] . I’ve written quite a few posts on that topic myself and feel that it’s probably the best way for a martial artist to eat (and live, for that matter). In case you’ve never heard about the concept, quit reading now and go to [www.leangains.com] or fetch your...

Just recently I had a chance to watch the movie “The Green Hornet”. How does a movie make it’s way to a martial arts related blog, you ask? Quite simple – as you might (or might not, depending on your age) recall, the original green hornet starred the great Bruce Lee as Kano. in fact, while Bruce played the role of the green hornet’s sidekick, the show was actually called “the Kano show” in Hong Kong. Obviously, if something can be traced back to the dragon himself, it has every right to appear on this blog. Now I have to say my expectations were quite low when I read about [TGH] , simply because most remakes suck rocks. I was positively surprised, though. The producers didn’t make the classical mistake of attempting to make a better TGH. Let’s face it: you simply can’t take a Bruce Lee show, do a remake without Bruce Lee and hope for it to beat the original. Not going to happen. Not in a million years. Instead, the film focused on the meta-details, on everything that made [the or...

 Ok, so my next fight is coming up in march at the [open polish championships] in Czestochowa. That gives me roughly three months to prepare. My plan is to finish another three 5/3/1 cycles (without deload weeks), then take a break for regeneration and go to Poland at my strongest. I hit the gym on Wednesday and Friday. Sparring is Saturday and Monday. Over the week, I do quite some technique practice. Also, this week, I’ll take up my Judo practice again. That’ll do a lot in terms of lactic acid tolerance. Now although that’s quite some training volume already, I’m adding in another bodyweight S&C session on Monday.  You see, I’m currently in off-season. After I fight in Poland, there’ll be some kickboxing bouts here in Austria in April and Mai. After that, I don’t have a plan yet, but I’m fairly sure there’ll be some interesting fights to pick in June as well. Hence, I’ll have to decrease my S&C training volume soon enough. All that being said, I'll briefly outl...

Just finished this year’s first 5/3/1 cycle. As usual, we had two weekly S&C sessions. Unlike our previous cycles, we upped the volume a bit. Instead of limiting ourselves to [Wendler’s original 4 exercises] , we did the following 6 as “main lifts”: Deadlift Squat (atg) Bench Press Press Bent over barbell rows Pull-Ups So, following a functional line of thought, we cover the following movement patterns: Hip dominant stand-up Knee-dominant stand-up Horizontal push Vertical push Horizontal pull Vertical pull Obviously, splitting those into two sessions yields three exercises per session. We split everything into a horizontal day and a vertical day, hence we had the following: Deadlift, Bench Press, Bent over barbell rows Squat, Press, Pull-Ups Also, we took our time to implement a “core circuit”, i.e. a circuit where we’d do modified versions of the main lifts that focussed on joint and core stability. Each exercise is done for 8-12 reps (to or near...