A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

Today, I finished another 5/3/1 cylce. Tomorrow, I'll be on my way to Poland for a short vacation with my family. Good time for a deload week. The Program  I've covered the basic idea of 5/3/1 as well as my tweaks in quite a couple of posts, so here I'll just present the weekly schedule: Monday: Power Snatch from Hang, Power Clean from Hang Wednesday: Deadlift, Bench Press Friday: Squat, Shoulder Press I didn't always manage to stick to those days, so this week, for example, I had to work out on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. However, the general idea should be clear. For energy system work, I did the following: Tuesday: Anaerobic capacity (stationary bike sprints, I1/I3) Thursday: Aerobic capacity (steady state stationary bike, I1) Also, this time I tossed in some assistance work. After each 5/3/1 session, I'd do 4 sets of pullups to technical failure with 90 seconds of rest in between sets. The stats As a base for my calculations, I used the fo...

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...

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 ...

Our 5x5 training is making progress. Today, after working the pads for 10 rounds each, Chris and I pushed some heavy metal around. Here's todays stats: Overhead Squat: 40kg, 45kg, 50kg, 55kg, 60kg Clean & Press: 45kg, 47.5kg, 50kg, 52.5kg, 55kg (Quit after 3 reps to avoid failure. Those buggers are heavy) Bench Press: 70kg, 72.5kg, 75kg, 77.5kg, 80kg Those are my stats, I can't really remember Chris' weights. Also, since the camera's memory was pretty full, we couldn't film the last set on the bench. Therefore, I've used a lighter set for the video. That's 2 passed exercises out of 3. Not bad. Since we've implemented an A-B-A, B-A-B organisation, we'll pull on thursday and push again on friday. I'll post new stats next week. So long, take care

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 ...

There's been so much going on last week I didn't really have a chance to post. So today I'm beginning week four of my nine-week program. Sadly, I have to admit I missed quite a few sessions so far. To every bad thing there's a good thing, though. In my case, that's massive strength gains. Chris and I have just completed the second out of six cycles, each cycle consisting of three workouts. Altough I have been talking a lot about the program lately, I'll describe it here once again, this time with visual footage, as I'm convinced this is one of the best programs when it comes to building raw strength at a basic level. Introduction As I've been out of the strength game for about 6 months, I consider myself something of a beginner again, both in terms of technique (which needs to be rebuilt) as well as power (which I need to regain). The programs main purpose is injury prevention through muscular improvement. I once heard the sentence "a strong back do...

Hit the weights the first time today. It's a great feeling to be completely wasted. Basically, the routine was: Deadlift, re-estimate 1RM Military Press, 4x8 Bench Press, 4x8 Squats, 4x8 Bent-over rows, 4x8 After readining Mark Verstegens "Core Perfomance Endurance", I've decided to try a very short and - for me - untypical "warmup". Basically, instead of riding a bike or stepping on the cross trainer, I've focussed on myofascial self-release and art techniques along with what Verstegen calls "movement prep" - that's exercise that revolve around the concept of doing specific, biomechanic-enchancing drills to prevent injury. Interessentingly enough, we have been using that concept for quite a while in the Shinergy system, at an even more basic level: we have our athletes stand correctly. Sound weird? Well, yes, I guess it sounds that way. Anyhow, proper standing contains anything that differentiates a "good" movement from a "b...