Pork Chop's latest workout blog

[sanjuro_ronin]

I think it tends to depend on WHAT conditioning we are talking about.
Most people have no problem with "MA specific" conditioning - sparring, bag work, pad work, etc, but they tend to not care to pay for 30 min of calisthenics and 30 min of actual MA.
I've always been of the view that class should be about 10 min of "warm ups" - calisthenics- and the bulk of class should be DOING the MA and that means doing it FOR conditioning.
Spending 30 min of drilling the HB full force gives you very good conditioning AND works your MA specific pathways and techniques.

[Pork Chop]

I think it tends to depend on WHAT conditioning we are talking about.
Most people have no problem with "MA specific" conditioning - sparring, bag work, pad work, etc, but they tend to not care to pay for 30 min of calisthenics and 30 min of actual MA.
I've always been of the view that class should be about 10 min of "warm ups" - calisthenics- and the bulk of class should be DOING the MA and that means doing it FOR conditioning.
Spending 30 min of drilling the HB full force gives you very good conditioning AND works your MA specific pathways and techniques.

Sure, I'll be more specific.
My hard routine is usually this:
3min rounds 1min rest
5 rounds: jump rope, 10 pushups, 10 crunches, 10 bicycle crunches, 10 leg lifts on rest
1 round: burpees (shoot for 45)
2 rounds: various calisthenics (jump squats, clap pushups, jump 180 twist squats, jump lunges, etc)
3 rounds: 20 kbell swings, 20 medball slams. Usually last 2 rounds, do a round each arm.
1 or 2 rounds: quick, low box jumps with tire (forward & sideways)
3 rounds: jumping on the tire
3 rounds: flipping the tire, last 2 rounds is 1 round each arm
3 rounds: skip knees, shoot for 300 total
3 rounds: shadow with weight vest, footwork drills on rest rounds
2 rounds: shadow no weight vest - work on speed
4 rounds: shin conditioning on heavybag, at least 2 rounds each leg
1 round: nothing but push kick

Sometimes, I can't get through it all in one workout, so I'll split it up to do throughout the week - like my weekly checklist of things I've gotta cover.
After that, I'll add stuff like pad work, defense drills, sparring, clinch, or free form heavybag, which I'll usually detail in my write ups.

Some of that, I could see people maybe not wanting to do.
Personally, I feel that any of the jumping stuff is really important and all contributes to footwork.
Other stuff is for full body connection, often with explosive movements (slams, etc) - which helps power.
As far as the rest, I do my best to re-create the fatigue of the fight; the burpees and calisthenics really get me to that exhaustion point quickly.

Heavybag's cool for conditioning & building power, but it does have its limitations.
I do 1 straight hour on the bag on Tuesdays (mostly power punching, with some calisthenics & abs); so my muay thai workouts are shaped to counterbalance those workouts.

I find pad work much more demanding than heavybag. Having to work on someone else's pace, with someone else's preferred techniques, & defending attacks at the same time is really exhausting. I find it even more exhausting than sparring (even hard sparring); because either I'm not throwing as hard on a person, or I'm more able to mix up my techniques to spread out the fatigue. Problem is, aside from the coach, there are only a few people that know how to hold. I'm doing my best to spread the knowledge, but a lot of people just don't want to learn it.

[sanjuro_ronin]

If you really want to put a "kick" into your HB routine:
DO a couple of rounds of 3 min with 1 min rest to warm up and then:
2 min rounds with 30 second rest at a moderate pace for 3 rounds.
1 min round with 20 second rest at full speed ( no stopping at all during the round) for 3 rounds
2 min rounds with 30 second rest at full force ( hit as hard as you can in combos but you can stop and move and so forth, but do not pace yourself)- 3 rounds.
2 rounds of a moderate pace to cool down.
One of the things that people do that really hinders their HB work is that they pace themselves, which is great when working on form but makes your conditoning suffer.

Did you see that MT pad clip I posted from youtube? with the pad holder "fighting" the pad striker?

[Pork Chop]

I'll check the youtube clip later, I don't think I've seen your post.
I posted one on my facebook page recently that sounds about the same.
http://youtu.be/4dihIfIgaf8

EDIT: LOL we both shared the same vid!!! Same day too... not sure who came first... good clip tho.. i'll post more as i find them.

I agree with you that pacing yourself on the heavy bag is it's biggest weakness.
Of course, with the swing of the bag, you can't always help it.

As far as the rotating intervals - in the muay thai gym, I don't have much choice; there's a clock with a broken second hand and a timer that everyone else uses. Even if I could modify the timer, it would take a LONG time to adjust.

In the bag class we do alternating intervals.
Some are 30 seconds, some are 1 min, some are 3 minutes.
"Rest" is never really rest; we're always doing side-to-sides, jumping jacks, or ab work.
"Rest" will be anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute.
Very hard to pace yourself in that class.

[Pork Chop]

Mon 6/4/2012
First workout back in a week.
Yoga first, for 1 hour. Worked out a good sweat. Had/have a lot of toxins to get out.
After that was Muay thai for 2 hours; focusing on shadow and defense/counter drills (dutch style), with a little heavybag mixed in.
Feel a lot more fresh now than before - feels like I can move 3 times faster.
Got back on the diet, which also feels much better.
Diet does have 1 tweak - i went back to large meals that they pick for me (large victory march); this is what I started with and had most of my success with. Calories may be slightly higher, but I don't mind.
Back is a bit tweaked and still have a little bit of a chest cold. My wife is going through the worst of the chest cold right now and I'm basically sleeping on the couch in order to get any sleep at all. Haven't slept much the last 2 nights, but don't feel too bad. Drinking hot green tea with local honey as a preventative.

[Pork Chop]

Tuesday 6/5/2012

Cardio bag class at krav maga gym first. 1 hour. lots of core work and focus on proper punching mechanics. Didn't really do straight up interval training till the end. First 30 minutes was pretty "meh", because it was more about teaching noobs how to rotate into their punches than actually getting a good workout. Second half hour was pretty brutal - lots of exercises I'd ever done before with rubber bands, lots of twisting and balance work; not interval training, but exhausting.

Muay Thai about an hour and a half to 2 hours. Started out with speed kick rounds on the heavybag. Then shadow for a little bit. Did 3 rounds of hard boxing sparring with pretty much the top guy at the gym. We're within 6lbs of each other. I'm taller with longer arms, he's shorter with really muscular upper body. Sparring wasn't 1-sided, but still feel like I got my a$$ beat. He spars a lot more often than I do, so he was a lot more comfortable in there. I got a lot to work on. We were both wearing the new gloves I bought (the ones I was actually afraid of sparring with), surprisingly the gloves worked out really well. Finished up holding 3 rounds of pads (feeding kicks & punches) for my sparring partner and 3 rounds for the girl fighter. Kinda blew that nobody held for me (ran out of time); but I was pretty tired.

Thinking with this new routine - i'll workout late monday & tuesday; have a long muay thai day on wednesday; sparring day on saturday; take off Sunday and either Thursday or Friday, then use the other day for weights & jogging. Trying to spar as much as possible. I'll be happy if I can get over 100 rounds by the end of August.

[Pork Chop]

Wednesday 6/6/2012
Muay thai for 2.5 hours
Dude from Tuesday didn't show up.
Was really hot in the gym
Made it through as much of my conditioning workout as I could
had 3 killer 5-minute rounds on thai pads to start it off.


been sick since thursday, didn't go to work on friday.
not quite sure how to proceed.

[Pork Chop]

Saturday 6/9/2012
Been sick lately but ended up working out anyway
muay thai for 2 hours
highlight of the workout was:
3min round of thai pads, 1min round clinch, rest 3min while clinch partner did thai pads, 1min round clinch - rinse, repeat 6 times, for a total of 6 rounds on pads and 12min on clinch.

What I initially thought were pimples are turning out to be a bunch of bug bites; most likely spider bites. The phrase "throbbing pain" is coming to mind.

[Pork Chop]

Monday 6/11/2012
1 hour of yoga
Then off to the muay thai gym for an hour.
Bug bites got worse last night.
Looks like I"m going to be out until these things heal.
Pain so bad, I can barely focus.

[Pork Chop]

Turns out I've got a mrsa infection.
I was out of work Wed, Thurs, and Fri.
Left work early on Tues.
Pretty serious.
Very painful.

I don't think I will be going back to the muay thai gym after this incident.
Apparently nobody's been mopping the floors.
On top of that; after I announced my infections, one of my teammates let me know via text that he had mrsa at some point in the past and had never bothered to tell me.
It's common courtesy to let someone know you have/had a highly infectious, penicillin-resistant bacterial infection before you start clinching with them.

I have a feeling the August event is off the table.
Not sure when I can return to training, at least 2 to 3 more weeks, probably longer.
Not sure what gym I will work out at when I return.
I have a feeling it's going to cause a stink when I switch gyms.
At the same time, I don't feel guilty about it.
I feel like I'm doing it for the sake of my health and not any other reason.
I could go back to my old gym & mop the place up with heavy duty bleach, but in the back of my head I just keep thinking "it's not my friggin responsibility."
Pretty peeved about this whole experience.
I don't feel like I owe my old gym anything (I've done too much for them as it is) and I hate the idea that I'm going to have to deal with their reaction if/when it comes out that I'm going somewhere else.
Call me passive aggressive or whatever, but I don't even want to make that announcement.

My old training buddy's coming back from Afghanistan in September/October time frame.
He's going to ask the coach for permission to teach at this other gym that's not too far away and has a very nice setup.
We've talked about partnering up for a long time and I think this is the perfect opportunity.
I trust that he knows what he's doing and he's one of my favorite guys to work with.

[sanjuro_ronin]

You don't fool around with infections, period.

[Pork Chop]

So I've been healing up from the mrsa infection.
I got off the antibiotics about a week ago.
Just waiting for my wounds to close.
Not too much has changed otherwise.
My diet has been garbage, my head's all screwed up, the fight's off the table, I'm not going back to the muay thai gym, haven't told my coach, and still not looking forward to it.

Tuesday 6/26/2012
Managed to jog a mile at night with my wife.
Mowed the lawn after work in 100 degree weather too.
Felt good to get some exercise.

Really getting the itch to train again.
Even getting the itch to get back on the diet.
Monday's the day I start everything over again.
Still waiting on the finger to close to be able to punch stuff, but it doesn't appear to be draining anymore and looks like it's on the verge of closing.
This weekend I'm going to wipe down all my gear.
Defense soap sent me some free samples after they read about my situation on sherdog; looking forward to trying them out and maybe ordering some more.

This is eventually what I'm going to work towards for my schedule:
Monday - krav maga gym - yoga
Tuesday - krav maga gym - cardio bag at 6 or strength training at 5:45 (depending on wounds)
Wednesday - krav maga gym - cardio bag at 5:45 or cardio kickboxing at 6:15
Thursday - krav maga gym - mixfit punch at 5:45 or cardio bag at 6:15
Friday - gym at work - lift weights & jog

Once I'm able to do that consistently, or if I get bored of the routine, then I will add fight training back in. The gym my friend has been talking about starting a program at is here:
http://www.theclubko.com
If i do go to this gym, I imagine that I will be dropping all other gym memberships next year when contracts expire. It's probably going to be expensive.

Other gyms I'm considering:
Evolution mma's boxing coach is a friend and it's cheap; it's not too far from my house but gotta go through some crazy traffic to get there. Drive home will be 5 min, drive straight from work is going to be over an hour, if I drive home first, total drive will be well over an hour. Couple of my muay thai friends are already working out there. One of the guys at the head of the muay thai program can be a little bit of a jerk, but in general the gym's got a great vibe. Equipment-wise, this one is a solid second place.

Jesse James Leija's Championfit gym - expensive, great for boxing, located close to my house, again I have to go through heavy traffic to get there - but not quite as bad as evolution. Equipment-wise, this one is tied for #1 with Club KO.

Rodrigo Pinheiro's BJJ - Pete Spratt (UFC vet) is the muay thai coach; he was Saekson's prized student and recently hosted Saekson for a seminar. I liked the vibe of the gym, everyone seemed pretty friendly when they were sparring, only one or two mma guys upping the contact level and they got spanked. Expensive, right next door to the Jesse James Leija gym, so same issues with traffic. I imagine this one would cause the biggest beef with my old coach. There's been a lot of talk by guys from there that Pete's been more invested in his own training than bringing up students. I didn't see anything to support that when I was there. Equipment-wise, this one is the most lacking, with only a few heavybags and not much else.

[Pork Chop]

Had to cut this off before when I was writing:

The time off has given me time to reflect on what I was doing, what I feel the shortcomings were/are of my training, and to visualize what I want from training.
I'm realizing that the whole "step up the training camp for the fight, get injured, miss the fight" is becoming way too much of a habit/routine for me.
I gotta do something different, this bad luck has already gotten in my head.
That's one of the biggest drivers for me to change gyms.
I haven't given up, just changed my goals.

Hate to say it, as much as I like my coach, I have doubts about his ability to prepare me for a muay thai bout.
Sounds weird, but the time off made me realize that I didn't trust that I would be prepared for the fight with the program I was on under his tutelage.
Rather, I could be prepared for the fight as long as I sparred hard every day for those 12 weeks with a guy who was going to beat on me, because I wasn't able to put together my "style" very well at all otherwise.

I honestly felt that the coach wasn't really fixing my style.
Yes, he did try to help, he did scream at me every time I sparred, he did completely revamp my offense or defense every few months, but I really couldn't pull off what he was suggesting.
I felt like my style was not "gelling."
In fact, it felt like I was getting worse.
He was confusing me - too many options to choose from, too many things to remember, too many counters, no straight forward path, nothing I did was right, the only way forward was to bang it out with a guy I didn't really enjoy working with.

That's why even though I could heal up and probably get in good enough cardio shape to fight by the end of August; I pulled myself from the card because I didn't feel like my skill would be where it needed to be come fight time.

On top of that, I felt like the training was disorganized.
I had no guarantee that I would get any sort of pad work or clinch work in a given week; only a guarantee that I'd get my head caved in by my "partner" when he actually felt like sparring.

I know the fighter mentality is "if he hits you, hit him back 10x harder."
I used to do that, but it requires a lot of anger.
I'm not as angry as I used to be; especially after doing yoga, which has a calming effect.
Staying angry for 12 weeks straight was just not going to work.
Certain people I enjoy working with; even if it hurts, my "partner" just wasn't one of them.
It was the attitude that any time I landed, it was just a cheap shot that "didn't hurt" but still needed to be avenged. The attitude that anytime something landed on me I would hear "almost knocked you out there, you feeling okay? I better take it easy on you" (until the next time I landed anything).
By the time I got sick, I was sick of it (redundancy not intended).

The opportunity I'm looking at with the new gyms is having a coach who will tailor a program for me and legitimately help me get ready on a day-to-day basis - not just make empty promises and try to blow my ego up when I show up to class.
Should have a fresh batch of sparring partners and legitimate supervision.

I want it to be fun again.
I never stopped enjoying pushing myself, getting in shape, and working on my conditioning.
It was the actual fight training that was leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
This will give me a chance to see if it's something isolated to that gym or if I am really losing the taste for it.
At the very least, if I go 35-and-over amateur boxing, I reduce my risk of serious injury.
I have missed boxing for a while; so I'm looking forward to going back "home."

[Pork Chop]

Monday July 2, 2012
yoga last night for 1 hour
got back on the diet.
don't want to weigh myself for the next 4 weeks - i'll worry about the damage my time off did at that time.

[Pork Chop]

Didn't realize that I forgot to update this...

Tuesday July 3, 2012
Did "strength training" class at the krav maga gym.
Ended up being a 1 hour long full body circuit, med-high reps, med-low weight.
Cr@p ton of squats and lunges with low weight.
DOMS was so bad I was still having a hard time walking on Saturday, July 7.

Put my door-frame pullup bar back up recently and crank out reps when I can.
Can usually get 5 when I'm not too sore.

Tuesday July 10, 2012
Joined a new gym: http://www.theclubko.com/
Did the Camp K.O. and Boxing Technique classes; each was 1 hour, had a 1 hour break in between to recuperate.

Camp KO was pretty awesome - a total body circuit of a bunch of different exercises.
Lots of plyometrics & core training.

Boxing Technique was fun. Would've maybe liked some pad work, but with that many people in the class, I could see how it would be unfeasible.

I really like the people at this gym.
The volume on the fighter machismo has been turned WAY down.
So far, I don't get that vibe that the other people are looking at me like lunch meat.

Cancelled my Gold's membership on Monday; after touring the gym (skipped yoga coz I forgot my mat). My wife switched her Gold's membership to her own credit card a few weeks ago. That's $60+ back in my budget. The new gym's only $20 more than the muay thai gym so I think it's gonna work out well. Kinda wish I could opt out of the krav maga gym contract and just stick with the free, on-base gym and this new gym; but at least I get some really good yoga out of the deal.