Yesterday I decided to do something a little bit different in my workout. As an experiment, I wanted to look at the effect lactic acid build up in the muscles had on my ability to throw rubber shuriken (ninja stars) and hit a target. The theory being that as fatigue in the muscles increased, throwing accuracy would decrease. Seems like a solid hypothosis, right? Well, here’s what happened…
A Day in the Life…
June 1, 2010 By 3 Comments
At the suggestion of my good friend, and West Coast Buyu, Dave Furukawa, I am presenting a look at one of my daily workouts. Please see Dave’s comments on my previous post here for reference.
This is a record of my activity from yesterday, Memorial Day 2010:
Morning
Life begins early here, even on long holiday weekends, since our 19 month old, Juliana, doesn’t distinguish weekends from weekdays yet! So at 6 am I was up making coffee and searching through her Elmo DVDs to find the particular episode she wanted that morning. As the coffee was brewing I began working through my joint mobility routine in the kitchen. Each joint from neck down to ankles and toes is rotated through its entire range of motion to flush the joints with synovial fluid and increase blood flow to the surrounding muscles. This has the effect of lubricating the joints and removing the “rust”, as well as awakening the entire body.
As interest in her Elmo episode waned and Juliana wandered off to “read” her books and play with toys, I began working through San Shin no Kata, the Bujinkan basic movement exercises. Each movement was practiced stationary, then walking forward and backward with emphasis on using the spine to generate power for the movements.
Mid-Afternoon
In the afternoon I took the kids to the playground. My older daughter, Caitlin, rode her bike while I pushed the baby along in her little buggy. As I walked each step was coordinated with breathing to work on breath capacity. For example, inhale for 5-steps, hold on the inhale for 5-steps, exhale for 5-steps, then hold on the exhale for 5-steps. This can be done continuously with the same pattern or you can alter the number of steps for each breath cycle up or down to make it easier or more challenging. See my post entitled Breathing 101 for more breathing related exercises. At the playground, in between pushing the kids on the swings and taking the little one down the slide, I used the monkey bars for random amounts of pull-ups and chin-ups.
Evening
Finally got the kids to bed around 8:30 and went down to the basement gym for my workout proper. My current program is geared towards developing unarmed striking power and basic weapons work.
- Brief joint mobility warm-up
- Suburi with Yari (spear) – 3 rounds of 10 thrusts from Seigan no Kamae, 10 thrusts from Jodan no Kamae, each side
- Suburi with heavy bokken – 3 rounds of 10 cuts from Jodan no Kamae, advancing and retreating
- Swipes with 15 lb clubbell – 3 sets of 10
- Mills with 15 lb clubbell (think omote shuto type movement) – 3 sets of 10
- Reverse Mills with 15 lb clubbell (think ura shuto type movement) – 3 sets of 10
- Clean to Order with 25 lb clubbell – 3 sets of 5 each arm
- Clean to Order with 45 lb clubbell – 1 set of 5 each arm
- 5 minutes of various yoga asana to cool-down
This is just a quick glimpse into a much larger program that I am testing on myself for eventual release. For more information on my previous programs, please check out my ebook, Warrior Fitness: Conditioning for Martial Arts.
Sometimes It’s OK to Not Follow the Program
April 19, 2010 By 2 Comments
Every have one of those days when no matter how fun, exciting, and productive your workout program happens to be, you just don’t feel like doing it? I don’t mean out of lack of enthusiasm or laziness here though; motivation is not the problem. You’re energetic and ready to train, but really just want to break out of the mold for a minute instead of sticking to the program. This happened to me last night. I went downstairs to my basement gym after putting the kids to bed ready, willing, and able to train. I went through my standard head to toe joint mobility warm-up (sign up for the Warrior Fitness Mailing List to recieve a free chapter on Joint Mobility from my book, Warrior Fitness), followed by some breathing exercises to flush my bloodstream with oxygen and give me a little extra “go”, and then it hit me. I had no desire to do my planned workout for the day. Boom. Just like that. No warning, no indication, no nothing. I stood there stunned for a minute just sort of staring into space, looking around the gym with a “what the heck do I do now” expression on my face. Now don’t get me wrong here, I love the workout program I created for myself that I’ve been following for the past 3 weeks. My results have been spectacular, my energy levels high, and I have, until last night, genuinely been looking forward to the workouts. The exercises I was scheduled to perform were a combination of dumbbell lifts and bodyweight exercises designed to push my anaerobic threshold and build lean muscle while burning fat. Great stuff! So, what was the problem?
What Did I Do?
I took a look around my little corner basement gym and my eyes settled on a pair of 15 lb clubbells against the wall, next to the dumbbell rack and thought to myself, Hmmm… haven’t picked those up in a while…. why not? So I scrapped my preplanned workout for the day and picked up a clubbell. I started out with some basic cleans to order, then moved into working shield casts, followed by mills, reverse mills. No sets. No rep scheme. No timed rest intervals. No plan. Just playing with the movements and enjoying the freedom. By the time I was done, 30 minutes had gone by and I was drenched in sweat and smiling ear to ear.
Sometimes it’s ok to not follow the program. But, tomorrow it’s back to the dumbbells!
