Yet another BB Training Blog

[Pork Chop]

Picked up a Dan Gable book in Denver a couple weeks ago that had a huge affect on me. Dan Gable was the Wong Fei Hung of American wrestling. The words in his book really did a lot to help me find the focus & motivation that I've been looking for since my first injury back in June. The quote "Failure to plan is planning to fail" I'd probably heard before from someone else; but it really sank home reading it from Gable.

The grand effect of this change in mindset is a focused, organized effort to achieve the goals I want for myself. This specifically means logging a well-charted plan to an in-ring victory sometime in 2005. With this thread I'll be logging my progress in the gym, in my mindset, and at the dining table.


Monday Dec 20

Got to work about an hour ago.
Was supposed to hit the gym at 6 this morning for a cardio session and weights immediately after work.
Went to bed at 10 last night to be able, but my body's pretty beat up from the last 3 days- I wussed out and got the extra sleep.
Seems the sleep helped though because I felt 10 times better when i finally did wake up.
Planning on making up the cardio workout later tonite.
Gotta take my car to the shop & should probably stay late coz I came in late; but I'll hit the other gym if I can't finish my workout by the 7 o'clock closing time of the gym here at work.
Started off the morning right with vitamins/supplements and a glass of milk; and 10 started on my bowl of oatmeal at 10.
It's cold out so lots of green tea on the menu and planning for 2 protein shakes while I'm here at work (another tonite after my workout).
Have some apples today & a lean cuisine; gonna enjoy those with my normal assortment of dried fruits, nuts, and granola bars.

The workouts that have me hurting so bad are kickboxing on Friday and Saturday, with kung fu on Sunday.

Friday was 4 hours and covered a lot. Lots of calisthenics & fundamentals drills, as well as bag time. Finished up with 10 min of Interval, 10 min of medium-high paced cardio (that's all my weak azzz can handle atm).

Saturday hit kinda hard. It was relatively short for my saturdays at between 2 and 3 hours (usually do at least 3 to 4); but there were some brutal parts. Rahsaan's calisthenics routines are pretty killer. Overall, eventhough I felt like I ducked out earlier than normal; the workout had this nice ramping up in intensity- with a nice warmup and stretch to start off, then moving on to fundamentals, calisthenics, 2 person drills, and bag work. New guy at the gym, real cool, good size for me to work with. He, along with some of the other new guys that have joined lately give me hope that I won't have to spend all my time traveling around for bigger guys to work with.

By sunday I was achey and sore; but I still woke up early and trekked up to Philly. Bit disappointed in my stances- didn't show any improvement and looked more like I took 2 steps back. This workout wasn't as intense as previous trips up there; but it was a long workout. Started working out by 12 and don't think I'd completely stopped working out till 5 or so. The duration was very taxing in itself. My bones ached as I drove the 2 hours home.

Want to re-focus on stances; for the sheer fact that if I'm learning some kung fu, I'd like to be able to do it more than half-azzzed. As a result; I think my leg workouts from here on out may take a lot of focus off the squat & leg press- sticking more with stances, bodyweight drills, and kettlebells (if they ever get here) for legs. The kicking practise, plyos, kettlebells, and bodyweight stuff should keep my functional strength at least acceptable; while the added leg endurance might do me some good. With the new "space" in my freeweight routine, I'll probably add some calf raise sets, add some more focus on building my core, and going back to pull ups (if my shoulder can handle it).

Sporting some nice old-fashioned kung fu bruises this morning; sweet.

This weekend's diet was nothing short of atrocious; with long periods of not eating (before and during workouts) followed by feasts to try to take advantage of my last few days of "freedom" before the crackdown was to begin. You know you have a problem when you down 2 slices of Sbarro's at 6:30pm, a half plate of sushi at 8:30pm, and a french bread pizza at 10:30pm after not eating since you woke up at 7:30am.

[Oso]

good luck.

what's the title of the book?

my first pair of wrestling shoes were a pair of 1981 Dan Gable Superflex's. still have them somewhere.

[Pork Chop]

Coaching Wrestling Successfully.

If you are the 'controller of your own destiny' so to speak; it's really a good book to use as a resource for planning routines and understanding a good mindset.

[EDIT: oops, forgot to say "Thanks!"]

[Pork Chop]

I actually survived yesterday.

Warmed up with 10 min of high intensity interval work (aerobic cross training routine on 18) on the elliptical cross trainer.

Hit dumbell bench to start things off. Went real nice. 3 sets of 7; starting with the max I could handle (80 pounders); then 75 and 70.
I ended up failing at 7 each time.
By the final set I had a nice burn in my chest- something that's been somewhat infrequent the last few years.

Moved on to assisted pull ups after that on the hydraulic machine.
this time i pyramided up, going 10-8-5.
Seated rows definitely didn't help me keep up strength in this exercise; but my shoulder held up so i was happy.
Not quite ready for negatives- memories of the DOMS i used to get from 5 reps of 30 second negatives STILL scares me.
exercise killed me nicely.

From there it was on to calves.
Calf raises for me have always been a weird exercise.
I'm never happy with my form, even if i just do it with bodyweight.
So the first 2 sets were strict form as I could muster with 100lb.
The last set was kind of an overload set at 200.
Lots of room for improvement here.

Finished up with ab and back machines; in otherwords, one where you sit and lean forward, the other where you sit and lean backward.
Pyramided up with both exercises.
The ab machine put a hurting on my chest where it came in contact with the chest.
Back machine feels like a poor man's deadlift.

Went home, hit a shake, rested a bit.

Then it was to the other gym for cardio.

Upped my cardio this time around; 30 min altogether, all on the elliptical crosstrainer.
First 15 min was interval training:
manual setting; sprint for 2 min on level 18 (ie 60+ rpms); rest 1 min on a lower setting.
Second 15 min was like a large hill:
still manual setting; 50+ rpm the whole time; starting at a low setting (resting from last sprint session) & ramping up every minute to 17; stay on 17 for 3 min, stay on 18 till the last 2 min; start cooling down the last 2 minutes: lev 19 at a slower speed.


Diet was really respectable.

• milk in the morning
• Oatmeal for late breakfast.
• protein shake (low carb grow!) and an apple around lunch
• small lean cuisine for late lunch
• 4 oz beef jerky after that
• A shake with 3 scoops of surge (post workout protein drink), a scoop of creatine and a scoop of power drive (pre workout gingko biloba kinda drink) after lifting
• A protein shake (low carb grow!) with some flax seed oil after cardio (before bed)

Doin pretty much the same thing today with a different workout.
Woke up a bit too hungry though so might snack more throughout the day.
ZMA before bed was kinda nice- but then i slept way too much.
I noticed i can't wake up if I take ZMA and get too little sleep, but if I'm sleeping a lot I think it can help.

May have to go on another supplement shopping spree before Feb.

[Pork Chop]

Not gonna call yesterday a failure, because the majority of my day went pretty well.

At work, I stuck to my diet plan.
After work, had an argument with the gf, had more issues with the ex-roommate, and for my "workout" hit up a kung fu school I'd pissed some people off at in order to catch my good friend MusicalKataChamp who'd just come back from overseas.

The diet was going pretty well till the evening; once I'd left the kung fu school.
Training wise, I had kind of a lazy day working skills- little more than an "active rest" type day; but it was nice seeing MKC again.
Between the school and some late night practise at home, I got a decent amount of kung fu footwork in; so I have a hard time whining about that.
After the workout, I made the mistake of deciding to eat.
Didn't gorge or nothing, just ate some bad microwave stuff outta my freezer.

Got a nice cherry on my foot working a couple shoots on the carpet floor of the kf school. Feeling good today in my big heavy shoes.

Weight only went up to 238 (from 235, still a net loss of 2 pounds so far) after my late night snack so no biggie.

Couldn't get to sleep last night for crap. Only got like 4 or 5 hours. About the only time training kung fu before bed actually kept me awake.

Today it's back to weights and cardio.

The roommate stuff is ticking me off. Getting my locks changed this morning so that should help some.

Suntzu hooked me up with some good info that I'll be pouring over today. My skills days need to be a lot better than yesterday was. I'll need to do better, but I recognize that I'm still in the early stages so I'll have to resist the urge to throw everything and the kitchen sink in.

Will probably end up hitting the gym hard Thursday to make up for what's going to be either a kung fu weekend, or just a lazy one.

I figure even if I only pull through today and have 2.5 good days this week, it's a start and it's something to build on.

[Pork Chop]

Awesome day on the weights and diet yesterday.
Ended up skipping the cardio; for which I could list a ton of reasons but in the end I made the choice not to get it done.
I did walk a good mile & still did my 10 min of hiit warmup; so it wasn't a total cardio no show.

On the weights I did:

3 sets of 10-10-8 assisted pullups & 1 10 second negative- it was pretty killer but not so much to make me useless

3 sets of 8-1-10 dumbell bench with 70s, 90s, and 60s respectively - was proud that the 90s were a 1rm. I might be able to shoot for 3 with the 90s next time.

3 sets of 10-10-10 calf raises with 10, 11, 12 plates- more weight than before, different brand of machine, went up easier, maybe my form wasn't perfect?

2 sets of 4 different neck exercises done as a superset on the neck machine; 10 reps each exercise and set.

4 sets of 20-15-10-5 on the twisting oblique machine. I do it like i'm throwing hooks. The last 5 were with the whole stack, which was surprisingly easy.

After that my foot was bothering me (the cherry from the day before bled through my sock), I had a headache, I was just plain sore & worn out, and I wanted to go home- so I opted not to force the 30 min of cardio on myself.

Diet wise:
oatmeal
grow! protein shake
boston market micro meal (turkey I think), with a lean pocket
a few breakfast bars (think nutrigrain with fewer sugars)
lots of green tea
surge protein shake w/creatine before bed

Broken sleep last night.
Laid down 12.5 hours before I got up but it felt like I was waking up a lot- mostly due to my gf who watched a movie & then played video games. Took ZMA though, so that explains my hard time waking up in the morning when it was time to go. Don't feel quite so sore, so I'll give ZMA benefit of the doubt.

Gonna try to hit the cardio and some skills tonite. Not sure what my gym options are this close to the holiday. Have a bandaid on my foot now so that should help.

Eating fruit this morning.
Don't see myself being too strict on diet over the holiday.

Weight was promising at 236 this morning.
Think the trick is to make the weight drop just enough to make progress, while dieting just enough to make progress but not become a starving nut case, and working out just enough to make progress but not become an aching & injured ball of hurt (this can be offset with sleep and supplements).

[Suntzu]

dude..... just enjoy the holidays.... looks like the new year is gonna be plenty busy.... we'll have all the work we can handle...

[Pork Chop]

Yah think I'll go ahead and do that.
Post back on here monday if i do anything significant over the holidays.
Not a lot of pressure of these 2 weeks so whatever I do's kind of a bonus and will help me later once January gets started.

had heart attack in a box last nite; in other words beer battered chicken strips and cheese fries from hungry man
ironfist's the one that got me to experiment...now i need a 12 step program...

[Pork Chop]

Nothing significant happening except that my rug burn cherry was a lot deeper than earlier percieved and ended up getting infected.
Hard to work out when even shifting your weight makes you wince and stuff's oozing through to your shoe.
Monday I didn't even go to work- between the foot and a killer headache that lasted all day I barely left my room.
I'm going to see how I'm feeling after work; but am planning to hit the gym.

Diet was pretty bad the time i was off; looking a lil better today.

[Pork Chop]

reasonable diet and good exercise on tuesday.
warmed up with my customary 10 minutes of interval.
put up 90 dumbells twice with a nice long negative at the end.
really hit the squat hard.
nice work on the assisted pull up too, with a best effort 10 second unassisted negative at the end (don't have enough strength at the top of the movement to really spend any sort of time there).
really burned my hamstrings on the squats. they felt pulled.
my cardio at the end was just 25 minutes of best effort- no high intensity; but with no break between the weights and the cardio, i'm not complaining.
The only part i really cheesed was skills work at the end. I was just too burnt to really do anything.
Made up for it at home with a good chunk of form work before bed.


today, wednesday i've been a big ball of pain.
probably ate too much for lunch.
passed out immediately after work.
woke up and ate some dumplings (decent protein probly not the best diet food).
Did a little bit of kung fu this evening on some burnt legs.
probly not going to get enough sleep tonite- guess that means more sore tomorrow.
Guess I didn't hit the protein and supplements well enough today.

Foot's healing slowly

[IronFist]

w00t @ your progress

[Pork Chop]

Thanks, appreciate it

Trying not to stress about the weight, as creatine's part of my supplementation- so kind of expecting some ballooning; but was 245 right after the christmas holiday which normally would scare the crud out of me.

Just a slight note about deep kung fu stances and weight lifting.
Doing both HURTS.
But i think doing both ensures that you get that good break-in period.
At the beginning of stance training, you should get that kinda DOMs so severe that touching your legs hurts.
The funny thing is that eventho it hurts, it's not necessarily getting worse.
Squatting on really sore legs usually means the weight goes down (in my experience); but for some reason my stances get lower when doing them through pain.
Actually I have a theory on this.
Squats really work the protagonist muscles well- the ones pushing the weight from the ground up.
In the squat, on the descent you have the added weight to keep you from using the antagonist muscles (pulling yourself down to the ground).
Ever try doing horse stance in a swimming pool?
It's almost all antagonist muscles keeping you in that stance, very little protagonist; as you're fighting your own natural buoyancy.
Burning out the protagonist muscles really lets the antagonist muscles work hard.
Aside from hanging leg lifts - which would burn out your abs and arms long before your legs, I don't know of too many other ways to hit the antagonist muscles.

Another thing about the stance training- I may hold a single position for as long as a minute or two, but as far as stances go, i'm generally focusing on moving through them. Got a stance set and sit in each stance for 10 to 30 seconds before moving onto the next. This ends up being a lot more taxing than static single stance; coupled with the fact that doing this for multiple stances will mean you're in stance a greater amount of time, it really lets you push past some limitations you can build for yourself in static horse.

Finally, I'm doing these stances so I can do the kung fu. I'm not expecting some drastic change in muscle size/body composition or really even much of a change in functional strength/endurance (outside of the scope of kung fu). I just want to develop this so i can develop the skill. I've been assured that after a certain point the DOMs isn't so bad and the stances don't make me limp so bad; from my memories of the first 3 times around of doing this, I think I can concur, though a lot of times I remember getting lax on the stance focus before I saw it through. I guess the body adapts, the antagonist muscles eventually build up, and the protagonist muscles get used to the work load.

In other words, I'm still a big ball of hurt. LOL

[EDIT: PS- still no kettlebells]

[Pork Chop]

lazy weekend.

thursday i got out of work late and i was still real achey, so i just chilled & got started on my new year's drinking a little early.

friday i was hung over but had the day off so still managed to hit the gym. weights went pretty well- though being hung over i could see the performance hit. Finished up in time for class, but like 1 guy showed up. My foot's still (even today) messed up so that was going to affect what I'd do- with it being a holiday and all, i just didn't want to deal with it. i was already ready to party. hehe

Saturday was hung over too; but didn't really leave the house.
At least I got all the drinking out of my system.

Sunday- no alkyhall, so no hangover; but woke up late.
Had to do a ton of laundary so didn't hit philly.
Got to bed late, which was amplified by a firetruck and an ambulance pulling up in my apartment parking lot, lights going, not once but twice: once at almost 4, once around 8.
The second time they had sirens going too.
When I tried to wake up from work, my body was just a bit too sleep deprived, so my throat was hurting- called out sick.

Going to boxing xtreme fitness http://www.bxfclub.com tonite.

In a nutshell, they're close to work, along roads that have a minimal amount of traffic, they have ridiculously cool hours, their BOXING facilities are better than any boxing gym in the immediate area (let alone everything else they have), and they have a pretty open attitude (no scheduling aerobic room time).

I may not have a trainer there, but the vast majority of my work at Gold's tends to be self paced and I won't be having the same problems with availability to the facilities (ie early closing times and vicious fitness directors who always schedule aerobics classes over our gym times).

Julio said he'll hook up with me around once a week; plus i think he wants to start sneaking people over to that gym anyway- Gold's has given us a pretty raw deal.

I'll post tomorrow with an update on how it goes.


[EDIT: PS, finally got confirmation that my kettlebells are at least 3 days out from January 28]

[Pork Chop]

Never thought I could fall in love with a gym.
Signed up as soon as I got there.
That is the coolest place in the world, part 2 (part 1 is the RexPlex in Elizabeth, NJ).

The workout

Still kinda draggin it from this vacation.
Warmed up 10 min on elliptical.
DBell Bench- 3 sets: 10 reps with 70, 5 reps with 80, 2 reps with 90
Assisted pull up: 10 reps with 85 (assist), 7 reps with 70, 3 reps with 55
Squat: 10 reps with 135, 6 reps with 185, 4 reps with 225.

Worked skills- boxin and kickboxing for at least an hour and a half to 2 hours.

Finished up with another 15 min of cardio- was totally dyin by this point.

[Pork Chop]

lovin this gym.
Worked skills for like 2.5 hours yesterday.
Warmed up, held mitts for some of the guys in the beginner class, then did bag work (including uppercut bag), shadowboxing, falling practise, some bridging & neck practise, and finished with some kung fu stuff.

Working out's fun again.

Tonite it's going to be weights, calisthenics, and cardio.

Trying to up my protein intake to make sure my body can keep up the pace.