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.