Next Practice

Next practice is scheduled for Saturday 8/2 at 11:00am.
Come join us!

Fun with the Heavy Bag

We were a bit hurried today due to Mike being called into work after arriving here. As a result we cut the workout down a little while still covering the skills that we set out to cover (mainly working on round kicks with attention to doubles). Mike had to leave before the “Finisher” so I completed it on my own – the bag carry was a bit tough due to sweat making it slippery (had to squeeze harder as a result).

Roll Call: Mike

Warm-up:

2x3min jump-rope (last 30sec double unders)

2 rounds – 10 pull-ups, 3 ring dips, hip stretch, 10 GHD sit-ups, 10 hip extensions (I changes the name of this to more accurately represent the exercise – back is kept in neutral and the hips extend – lumbar muscle work is more isometric/stabilizing)

Footwork/Agility

3 rounds (continous)

• 1min agility ladder
• 1min footwork with round and foot jab kicks

Defense Circuit 3min/1min (1 circuit)

• Maize ball
• Rope line (I'll have the video on the basics for this up within the week)
• Speed bag

Heavy Bag 2min/1min (1 round each leg)

Double thai kicks (bag hung low) – 2 kicks thrown as fast and hard as you can separated by touching foot to ground

Thai Pads 2min/1min

Double kick work w/foot jab

Glove Drills

• Low line kick defense (leg block)
• Mid line kick defense angling away from kick
• Mid line kick defense cut kick

Finisher

4 rounds Bag carry- bear hug 30sec work/30sec rest
After last 30sec rest followed with
4 rounds Bag throw - alternating shoulders 30sec work/30sec rest

You can see an example of the drills used in today’s “Finisher” in the video at the start of this post.

(Please post questions, comments or suggestions to "comments" below)

Maize Bag

Everyone is out on vacation this week and I’m left to train by myself. As a result I thought it would be a great idea to do a few videos on what I feel is the best equipment training to keep you sharp when you have to train alone. Everyone is familiar with the heavy bag (I would hope) and so I won’t cover that now. Instead, I’ll cover two drills that we use in almost every workout in the gym here – Maize (or slip) bag and the Rope Line. Today I’ll be showing the Maize bag. I’m not really sure where I first saw this used but with all the different boxing gyms I’ve trained at I can say it is not a standard piece of equipment, even though it is simple and cheap to construct (I even made one out of a sandwich bag, some sand and a piece of string when I was on vacation with my parents back in High School).

When training by your self you’re training is generally limited – shadow boxing, bag work, and general conditioning, which are all things you should be doing while training solo (or in the gym). When solo I like to also be able to practice my timing, being aware of distance and especially defensive skills. The Maize bag fits the bill for these things.

The Maize bag is simply a bag, hung from a chord or string, that swings back and forth allowing you to practice slipping, maintaining distance etc. The one I use in this video is made from an old Speed Bag filled with beans (to give it some weight).

Inspiration

The IronMan Triathlon is a true test of endurance and perseverance. This father and son team present an amazing example of this.

Following is IronMan’s video of this father son teams journey to the race and their amazing accomplishment.

Hot and humid glove workout

Friday 7/19/08, 6pm (a hot an humid evening that really pushed our conditioning)

Another video for everyone who wonders how we actully train.

Roll Call: Tony

Warm-up: 3min jump-rope followed by -

3 rounds of

• 10 sprawls
• 10 situps
• 10 pushups

Defense Circuit 2min/1min (2 circuits)

• Maize ball
• Rope line
• Speed bag

Shadow Boxing 2x3min/1min

Glove Drills 3min/1min

• Jab
• Double Jab
• Jab Cross

These rounds were split in half, Tony on offense for 1/2 and me on offense for 1/2.

Offense Circuit 3min/1min (1 circuit)

• Heavy Bag hands
• Heavy Bag hands and feet
• Top and Bottom bag

Glove Drills 3min/1min

• Low line kicks
• Jab cross hook rear kick – counter

Rounds split in half like earlier glove drills.

Finisher
Ring Rows and Thrusters
21, 15, 9 reps

(Please post comments, suggestions or questions to"Comments" below)

Staying Hydrated

If you want your workouts to be more enjoyable (easier) and perform at your best you will need to stay hydrated. A loss of just 5% of your body weight in sweat is enough to significantly decrease your performance (that works out to 7.5 lbs for a 150 pound person). Even a loss of 2% (3lbs for a 150 pound person) can result in a reduction in your performance, as well as placing greater stress on your heart. In addition, all of us remember the Gatorade advertisements stating that thirst is a poor guide for hydration.

Maintaining hydration is especially important when engaging in longer duration exercise in hot weather (greater than an hour) or even high intensity exercise for a shorter period of time. These are just guidelines – the harder you exercise the greater the sweat loss and the more you need to drink (water and electrolytes). Electrolyte replacement is especially important if you are a salty sweater (do you get white salt stains on your cloth’s? – then you need to replace more electrolytes, especially sodium).

The first step in staying hydrated during exercise is to stay hydrated during the rest of the day. As a minimum you should be drinking a half-gallon of water (or at least total fluid – not counting alcohol) over the course of the day. If needed, you can flavor water with sugar free drink mixes or mix juice half and half with water. Drinking flavored water has repeatedly been found to increase fluid intake (most of us can down a glass of juice or other beverage faster and with greater ease than the same volume of plain water). PowerBar now makes an electrolyte drink mix that is a good low carb alternative for the electrolytes that you loose in sweating (think Gatorade without the sugar). Chilling your drinks also helps increase consumption, especially on hot days.

It is actually better to drink small amounts over the whole day instead of drinking all your water in just a few sittings – this is because too much water at once just results in more of it being lost in urination.

I make it a practice to keep 32 and 16oz refillable bottles of water in my refrigerator at home and the office. Anything larger than that becomes warm before I can drink the whole thing (some people I know use just use 8 oz bottles).

Hydration during workouts:

Prior to your workout

• When to eat – any meal should be eaten at least 2 hours before your workout, to soon before your workout and you could end up with cramps, nausea or worse vomiting. What you eat is something you’ll have to experiment with, as a general rule eat something light and easy to digest. – you will want to experiment with what you can eat before your workouts to find out what you can tolerate.
• About 2 hours before your workout drink 17oz of water or sports drink.
• Weigh your self as soon before your workout as possible and record it!
  

During your workout

• Aim for about 8 ounces every 20 minutes. You may need to adjust this depending on weight lost during previous workouts as well as your opportunity to drink during your workout (between rounds have a bottle handy that you can drink from with your gloves on).
• On workouts longer than one hour you also need to pay attention to electrolytes and carbohydrate.

Sports drink guidelines:

• Max of 15g of carbohydrates per 8 ounces (any more and absorption slows down)
• 70mg Sodium per 8 ounces
• After your workout

Weigh yourself at the end of your workout and compare to pre workout weight.

If you have maintained hydration you should weigh the same, if you weigh less after a long workout you didn’t drink enough to keep up with fluid loss (you aren’t going to lose pounds of fat in one workout). To replace fluid loss you will need to drink 23 ounces of water for each pound lost (eat some salty snacks with the water or consume a sports drink that has sodium).

If you want more detailed information on hydration during exercise I encourage you to follow the links below:

American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand: Exercise and Fluid Replacement
http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/pt-core/template-journal/msse/media/0196.htm

National Athletic Trainers Position Statement: Fluid Replacement for Athletes
http://www.nata.org/statements/position/fluidreplacement.pdf

Gatorade Sports Science Institute
http://www.gssiweb.com/

(Please post comments, suggestions or questions to “Comments” below)

New Video

For the first time we have actual video footage of our workout (had to use a Kodak Easy Share C613 to shoot it). It was a challenge, the camera kept turning itself off (I think I can correct that now), and a neighbor’s dog wanted to come in and play in the middle of out warm-up and then I found that instead of recording in avi format it recorded in mov format (not supported by Windows Movie Maker), finally after a few hours of work I figured how to convert and edit the video, just keep in mind that this is our first attempt and some of the really good stuff didn’t get recorded.
A couple of notes: you’ll notice in the warm-up that Mike makes a few errors, that I’ll correct next practice, knees to far forward in the overhead squat, not enough extension in the GHD sit-up and not full ROM in the pull-up. If it wasn’t for the video I might continue to miss these since I’m working at the same time as him.

Roll Call: Mike (Tony was stranded and couldn’t make it)

Warm-up:

• 2x3min jump-rope (last 30sec double unders)
• 2 rounds – 10 pull-ups, 3 ring dips, hip stretch, 10 GHD sit-ups, 10 back extensions

Defense Circuit 1 round 3min/1min

• Maize ball
• Rope line
• Speed bag

Shadow Boxing 3min/1min

• 2 rounds

Glove Drills 3min/1min (each round was split so one worked offense and the other defense for half a round)

• 3 way jab
• Jab cross – slip to right with cross hook counter
• Jab cross – slip to left with hook cross counter

Low line kick block and counter

• Right low line kick with block followed by right kick
• Left low line kick with block followed be left kick
• Either kick followed by counter as above

Finisher

4 rounds of 30sec punch out on bag followed by 30 seconds rest.

(Please post comments, questions or suggestions to "Comments" below)

Gloves, Gloves, Gloves

Our focus last night was on using the boxing skills we have learned so far in actual sparing – but first we did lots of rounds of glove drills to sharpen everything up.

Roll Call: Tony

Warm-up:
800 meter run – 400 forward, 400 meters backwards
2 rounds – 10 pull-ups, 3 ring dips, hip stretch, 10 GHD sit-ups, 10 back extensions

Shadow Boxing 3min/1min
2 rounds boxing/thai boxing

Glove Drills 3min/1min
Each of the below rounds was split in half so each person worked as aggressor.

• 2 rounds 3 way jab – this is a jab catch/slip drill (aggressor jabs, defender evades and jabs back followed by aggressor countering with another jab).
• Jab cross – slip inside return cross hook
• Jab cross – slip outside return hook cross
• 2 rounds Jab cross – either slip and return cross hook or hook cross
• 2 rounds in-fighting - toe to toe work aggressor throws hooks, uppercuts, etc defender works on covering and absorbing punches. We used a 1 foot square taped on the floor and we both had to keep our right foot in the entire round.

Our final rounds were done with both sides working offense and defense at same time.

• In fighting – both sides punching and defending
• Working on covering up on the inside – keeping chin tucked behind shoulder, head tucked behind opponents shoulder and moving side to side.
• 2 rounds free sparing

Tony did great with the free sparing – remained relaxed and kept moving and punching. Next we need to work on lengthening combinations and working more on the in and out (short attacks followed by moving out effectively).

(Please post comments, suggestions or questions to “Comments” below)

Sled intro

We had a bit of a late start today but still put in a solid 2 hours of training. We are continuing to include some ground fighting basics in the workout to keep things a bit more rounded. Today was a bit of a mix between skill and conditioning emphasis since we haven’t all worked together for about a week.

Roll call: Tony and Mike

Warm-up

2x3min Jump-rope

2 Rounds of: 10 pull-ups, 3 ring dips, hip stretch, 10 OH squats, 10 GHD sit-ups, 10 back extensions

Footwork/agility 3 circuits of 1min rounds

• Sprawl – from squared feet at start and work in throwing combination to a sudden sprawl.
• Ground drill – on back, bridge up and roll to side control, kick leg through to kesa-gutami, roll onto back and repeat. This is a basic flow drill performed as shadow wrestling.
• Shoulder Roll – this is presenting a challenge to Tony and Mike since it is a new skill and different from anything else we have done

Defense Circuit 3min/1min 2 circuits

• Rope Line
• Maize ball – 1st round 10’ 2nd round 8’
• Speed bag

Shadow boxing 3min/1min

2 rounds

Mitts/Top and Bottom Bag 2min/1min

• 4 way hook
• Slip jab and return with round kick (outside slip return right, inside slip return left)

Alternating rounds with top and bottom bag

Glove Drills

• Jab – round robin, switch each minute (everyone had a round of offense and a round of defense with everyone else)
• Jab Cross - round robin, switch each minute (everyone had a round of offense and a round of defense with everyone else)

The focus for these two drill was developing a clean defense and working on firing back after a block or evasion.

Finisher

3 rounds

Sled pull hand over hand to you with 150lbs in sled (50 foot pull each round)

KB swing 20 (using 16kilo)

Med ball throw supine single hand throw 10 each (4.4lb ball, throw as high as possible)

Grappling

On Tuesday only Tony could make it practice and he was wiped from training at the firehouse. Because of this I scaled down the workout a bit (no finisher) and due to my having a patient due at my office we had to cut the workout a but short. As a result of these factors our workout was more skill based, with the focus on grappling basics

Roll Call: Tony
Warm-up
3 rounds of:
10 jumping jacks
10 sprawls
10 pushups

Footwork agility
Ground drill - solo drill focusing on pushing off an opponent in the mount to cross control
Shoulder Roll - see prior video, this took some time to get right

Ground work
Worked on getting the Kimura or "chicken wing" from the guard position.
Worked on getting the arm bar from the mount
Worked on the escaping the mount position

This was workout was only about an hour but served as an introduction to some of the basic ground techniques.