Endurance Training

Hi All, I haven't done any training in the last few days... but if you ever want to see what kind of stamina you have, attend the hospital with your wife/partner for labour and birth, I know a bazillion people have done this before me, but I am almost unable to describe how great/hard/emotional/draining/happy/terrifying/exciting the whole thing was. I don't think that I am really finding the first 24 hours afterwards much easier, but at least there are three in the team now not 2!

Here are some pics...





For those that are keen let me know, there are some pics of the Patrick's head poking out of mana's tummy during the ceasar, but only if you can take a kind of gross pic (amazing shots though).

Thanks love to all.

Current Progress and a new exercise

I don't have a great deal to add to the blog today in regards to exercises except that I have had a go at putting my gi over my chin up bar so that I can do "choke-ups" basically training the lats and my grip strength by doing a cross lapel choke as a pull up. It is pretty bizarre as the muscle groups that I am using aren't the same as the ones that I usually use for pull ups, plus I am not used to having tired hands and wrists from pull ups as I normally drape my hand over the bar rather that squeezing it tight. The other odd thing about this exercise is that there is nothing to stop you from spinning as you pull yourself up, it made it heaps of fun as I swung round in circles.

I have been trying to variations of this exercise, one is to do short quick reps so that I can get used to "hitting the choke" quickly and deeply. The other is to do a full pull up and then maintain the tension for a slow count to ten to replicate holding a choke on an opponent who doesn't like tapping.

I intend to play with ways to do a similar exercise to train a "No-Gi" choke, but I haven't found an effective one yet, short of grabbing my brother and choking him that is...

On a personal progress note, I am now down to 99kg which is a drop of 17kg since I started really concentrating on nutrition and harder exercise in November. I still have about 13kg to go to get me down to 86kg ("ish") which is roughly where I want to be. It will be weird to wrestle people who aren't lighter than me anymore, but hopefully my ever increasing mobility will make up for the lack of crush in my game.

Training was funny last night, we were doing various chokes and due to the heat when we demonstrated cross lapel choke I almost went out during both demos and saw plenty of stars before I tapped, bring on autumn...

Workouts and Brabos

Well first things first, we are still waiting on our baby to be born, at this stage we are 4 days over due and have another appointment with doc tomorrow morning at 9.00am. We are both a little over the waiting and think that anytime now would be fine...

In training news, we went through a series of chokes on Thursday night to try and expose everyone to a wide variety of positions and options, including Rear Naked, Head/Arm and cross lapel. We also touched on Brabo Choke (and proved that we are basically all crap at it, although I did nearly go out when it was being demonstrated on me at one point). It is interesting to play with this choke as it fits in nicely to the Head/Arm family (head/arm, anaconda, triangle, brabo etc) and they all share a lot of the same angle requirements as each other etc. After realising how poor my efforts at this choke were i trawled the net for instructionals and came up with this beauty http://brazilianjiujitsu.blog.de/2007/03/11/bjj_brabo_choke_instructional~1886105 well worth a look I highly recommend them and think that the delivery is hilarious, "brabo choke is coming...".

Anyways after watching those clips and some of Rick Estrada (from Subfighter.com) I tried it out on my brother when he came round for our workout and I think I have got the angle figured now, interestingly enough it seems to work substantially better if you don't sprawl.

Now, on to the workout...

I have been changing my workout a bit recently and have hit onto a them that I like. Essentially I am combining cardio and strength based training and trying to make it fight compatible. At the moment I am doing 3 rounds which consist of a standard part and a variable part.

The standard part is the same everytime, 2 minutes of tyre chopping with a sledgehammer and truck tyre and 2 minutes of pushup sparring (8-10 strikes in combos on the heavy bag, then 3 pushups... repeat).

Todays variables were as follows:

Round 1:

10 Kettle bell clean and presses on each hand.
10 Kettle bell squats
As many Chinups as possible (3... I was stuffed)

Round 2:

1 minute of plank work (holding my body straight on my elbows and feet)
10 Kettle bell squats
3 sets of 5 Kettle bell vertical rows
As many Chinups as possible (3... I was more stuffed)

Round 3:
1 minutes of hammer balancing (half each arm)
10 "greyskulls" (hold the hammer in front like excalibur and push to the sky)
20 Single hand Kettle bell swings on each hand.
As many Chinups as possible (2... I was done...)

That was the day, pretty worn out at the end, but after about 4 sessions of that I think it is time to increase the length of each stint, I reckon 2.5-3 minutes on the tyre and heavy bag stations will be the goal next time. Anyway I'll let you know how that goes and do my best to find a few brabos at training.

northern guests

Last night we had a good training session and enjoyed the company of Jim, Jesse and Bill Reid on the mat. Typically Jim beat us all up, but Jesse and Bill gave us all a run as well. Jim is preparing to head over to the States to compete in the up and coming and Mundials so is getting as much mat time in as possible.

Jim gave us all a few good points on a triangle setup and also on details for finishing the triangle. Essentially if your opponent stacks you up, immediately under hook their leg to prevent being slammed and to create a sweep. As for the actual choke, use small "crunches" to get position and tighten the choke up.

Connor and I also discussed doing shin blocks from half guard to pull back to full guard or at least hooks or butterfly guard. I suspect that butterfly guard is a better option for me as I am stronger with butterfly sweeps than I am with hooks and it is also relatively easy for me to go to a pendulum setup from there which also works relatively well for me.

Anyway I am off, our baby is due tomorrow, although it isn't necessarily coming tomorrow, but we'll see.