A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

When I woke up today, my knees didn't cause any pain at all. Just as I thought. Hence, I took to the opportunity to begin the day with a run on the beach. This is just plain awesome. Quite intense, too, due to the soft sand. Heart rate is climbing up pretty fast. Suits me just fine - I'm not much of a steady-state guy anyway. In the early afternoon, I went to the height park with my girl and my younger cousin. That's something in between a bouldering hall and an obstacle course. Below you'll find a couple of pictures, so you get the idea. Although I wouldn't tag this a proper training session, it did require some balance, coordination and even strength. Hence, it's probably best described as GPP-Training. I just wish I had a parcours such as this one in my Dojo - the kids would just love it... For a strong finish, I hit the beach again after sunset for 10 rounds of shadow-sparring. It's been a while since I did this, so in the beginning, I...

It's been my second day at the baltic sea. What a great day. So here's what I did today: Get out of bed, go for a run on the beach Have breakfast Hit the gym for a lifting session Go to the beach to bathe in the sun and swim in the baltic sea Have lunch Teach my younger cousin how to deadlift, do some pull-ups Have dinner Sounds great, huh? Since I'm usually on the warrior diet, eating three meals a day seems like a huge waste of time to me. I'm under the impression of eating all the time. My diet here pretty much revolves around dairy(including lots of milk, cottage cheese, cream cheese and whipped cream), fresh fish, carrots, pancakes and sweet cakes. Guess I'll put on a pound or two during my stay here. Then on the other hand, I'm definately not passive. Starting the day with a run is nice. I don't usually run due to knee issues, but running in the soft sand is a compeltely different game. Breathing the sea breeze and feeling sand and littl...

Again, this post is going to be a rather short one. As I'm currently spending quite some time on perfecting my technique on the olympic lifts, I'll try and share some ideas and insights. First off, who should do the olympic clean? Well, probably you should. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume you're a martial artist. If not, I'm not exactly sure what you're doing on this blog (although I'm happy if you like it!). Generally, explosiveness ist more important in the martial arts than raw strength. Consider a kick: All that muscle doesn't make a difference if you're slow to build up strength. After all, you don't want to push the opponent (yeah, I know, sometimes you do), but rather hit him at full speed. So, acceleration is crucial. The same holds true with a takedown: You tackle someone, you don't have the time to slowly lift him up. It's about explosively ripping him from his feet. In both of the above examples, what you need are ...

In Vienna, while doing our 5x5 program, Chris and I usually incorporate the exercises Chad Waterbury presented in his article HERE . We usually start our sessions with an hour of padwork and/or sparring. Therefore, we're not doing the core exercises in a circle before the workout, as Chad suggests - that would prolong the whole thing too much. Also, the core's already pretty active due to all those kicks and punches. Hence, we stick to doing the pallof press and stir the pot in between our heavy sets. Personally I feel that it's those two exercise that offer the biggest benefit in terms of core stabilization. Now in the Gym in Dabki where I've been working out for the last two weeks, the cable station is pretty crappy (no adjustable heights, just the to and bottom position), so the pallof press was really inconvenient. Also, there were so balls whatsoever to stir the pot (insert your own bad joke here - I'm too tired to think of one). So, the core work I usually do...

I just returned from a two-week trip to Poland with my girl. It was awesome. Our trip took us from Vienna to Warsaw, then way up north to Dabki, which is a surfer's paradise at the baltic sea. After spending a week there, we went to Poznan for another two days. From Poznan it was back to Warsaw and eventually home. Although there's so much to say about Warsaw when it comes to the martial arts, I'll skip that for now and focus on Dabki and Poznan instead. You see, Dabki is situated in quite a unique spot: on the one side, there's the baltic sea while on the other one, there's the Bukowo-lake. Obviously, this location makes it pretty much perfect for water-sports enthusiasts. For me, too, the plan was to spend my days doing little but windsurfing and laying on the beach. Didn't turn out that way, though, as the weather had its own plans: most of the time it was rainy and cold, definately not beach-like. Wind-wise, it was either completely still or extremely windy,...