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24 July
2005

Pushups for Overworked Former-Titans

This... sheer volume of work, is really getting on my nerves. I'm losing weight and gaining inches around my waist. Working 60 hour workweeks is getting sucky. But the nice thing about being overworked is one gets creative. Creative means one gets to do nifty things without ever having time to set foot in a gym. Without having to leave the office even. Like pushups.

But pushups are pussy things, if you're the powerlifting type... or are they? I do recall Louie Simmons' Westside crew doing them for GPP or active recovery... The trick is to find a protocol that gets you to do a LOT throughout the day, with a reasonable amount of intensity.

The trick is to, every 10 or 15 or 20 or whenever minutes, when bored, when tired of reading, to get down on the floor and do some pushups. With no warm-up, these sets out of nowhere have a basic progression of feel:

1) You start out CREAKY. No warm up. It actually feels difficult.
2) You're PRIMED. You're warm enough from a few reps and you're in the groove.
3) You're PUMPED. You can feel yourself working, feels good...
4) You're TIRED. Your reps start to slow down...
5) You're STRUGGLING. Your reps are literally grinding. You have little left in you.
6) FAILURE.

So the basic logic of my pushup routine is to have several variants thrown into one giant set. I arrange them in order of difficulty (for me):

Easy:
1) Medium-Width Pushups (humerus 45 degrees relative to central body line)
2) Wide Pushups (like wide bench presses)

Intermediate:
3) Narrow Pushups (arms clipped to the sides)
4) Diamond Pushups (hands touching. Heavy on the triceps)
5) Hindu Pushups (search the net, you'll find these)

Hard:
6) Side-to-Side Pushups (arms at wide distance. descend toward one hand at a time. Almost as hard as one-arm)
7) One-Hand Pushups

Now here's how the routine goes:
1) Do a few arm swings and circles just so you don't hurt yourself.
2) Go down and do some easy variants, til you progress from creaky to primed.
3) Do a few intermediate variants, still remaining well primed.
4) Do the hardest variant, til you struggle. Don't push too far! When the execution speed drops and you start to grind, move to number 5.
5) Go back to intermediate difficulty, which should feel easy. Rep out til you start to struggle and grind.
6) Drop to easy movements, and rep out til you start to slow down. (Don't wait til you grind. Grinding in an easy movement is a sign that you overdid it.)
7) Get back to work.

The thing is after, you got reasonable loading from stages 4 and 5, and a good pump going from stages 5 and 6, but never enough reps to actually be tired. So I can do about 5 of these giant sets all the time.

The reps for me are something like this:

2) 5r fast medium width
3) 5r fast narrow/diamond, 5r wide
4) 3r per side one hand, 5r per side side-to-side
5) 5r jumping medium, 5r wide
6) 5r medium, fast

So that's about 30-40 pushups in a go, getting up to about 85% intensity (with the 1-arm pushups). Keeps me feeling good.

Now if only I didn't sweat, I could do this *much* more often. But I hate sweating at work. Really.

Posted by anton at 23:04 | Trackbacks (0)

15 June
2005

Workaholic's Mass Routine

[Training Routines]

I have 180 students and 24 hours a week of class (12 hours masteral classes, 12 hours teaching assistance). So basically, turning into anything other than a shrivelled cow would be an achievement. In order to save me from shrivelled-cow-dom, I have devised a time-saving twice-a-week mass routine.

Two mottos are operative:
1) There is no such thing as "not enough time," only inappropriate or downright absent planning.
2) If your stress-response is to eat, and you cannot escape your stressful situation, train to gain. Forget fat-loss. Mass your ass up, but try to make it as lean as possible.

Twice-a-Week Workaholic's Mass Routine

Day one (for me, Monday):
1) Olympic Squat 5x5
2) Olympic Squat 3x8
3a) Overhead Press 5x5
-b) Pull-ups 5x5
4a) Bench Press 5x5
b) Bent-over Row 5x5
5) Muscle Snatch 3x8

Day two (for me, Thursday):
1) Power Clean 5x5
2) Olympic Squat 3x8
3a) Overhead Press 5x5
-b) Pull-ups 5x5
4a) Bench Press 5x5
b) Bent-over Row 5x5
5) Muscle Snatch 3x8

Do abs and neck work at home, when time permits (3x a week usually, takes me 10 mins tops)

Weekly Rep Volume:
Quad Dominant: 73
Hip Dominant: 24 (OL squats, while quad-dominant, actually work the hips/hams pretty bad.)
Shoulders: 98
Lats: 50
Chest: 50
Upper Back: 50

Now, unlike most people, I grow on 50 reps a week. But as one might see, I am giving special emphasis to my shoulders, mainly because I love my shoulders. And to my legs, because ladies and gentlemen, nobody grows without legwork. Or nobody should grow without legwork. Though my momma she say I got thighs that belong on a freak show but she's my momma don't listen to her.

For most people though, the weekly volume would have to be higher to grow -- about 100 reps, 75 at least. But for me, (my work capacity needing improvement, and my body generally very responsive to high weightloads due to training age) 50 reps is fine. Especially with the legs.

I may try to up the volume though, if time permits. Due to the supersetting the workout, if rest periods are strict, can stay at 90 minutes.

Posted by anton at 10:35

28 May
2005

[Boxing] Focus Pad Drills

[Combatives]

Focus pads are a great way to train form, aim and snap, while simultaneously working on realistic defense and footwork. Combos are great to work on, but a problem is naming them. Naming combos is important, so that the coach can quickly call out the combo. Bas Rutten asigns one number to each combo but I find that undescriptive and hard to remember. I use the following system:

"1-2" Jab-Cross
"1-2-3" Jab-Cross-Hook
"Four straight" Jab-Cross-Jab-Cross
"Four hooks" Lead Hook-Rear Hook-Lead Hook-Rear Hook
"Four up" Same as above but with uppercuts
"Hi-Low" Lead Hook high-low

The rest of the punches I call out by name. Everything's monosyllabic. "Up" is an uppercut. "Rear" is a rear hook. "Spear" is a hard lead straight. So i can call "1-2-3-up" or "1-2-3-four up," you get the gist.

A great drill I call "starch." I swing a mitt/pad at the boxer and instead of blocking it, he punches it as fast as he can. It's a great drill for beating a guy to the punch and for reflexes.

Posted by anton at 13:01 | Trackbacks (0)

Back to the CERSA Basement Gym!

[Updates]

After a long hiatus of home-gym training, I am back in the CERSA gym! I realize that single-dumbell has some rather severe disadvantages.

1) You can't really squat heavy.
2) The rotational torque on the spine can worry a weary back.
3) It's hard to get that whole body exhilaration.
4) It's particularly [unfairly] heavy on the shoulders.

But otherwise, it seems it maintained my explosive pulling quite well, and my shoulder strength and wrist strength is up too!

Right now, I'm doing some basic reintroductory work. OL Squats, Pause Squats, OL Presses, Bench Presses, Long Bent-Over Rows... all just repping out six then upping the weight til I'm down to moderately easy triples. Just getting the groove back.

I've found, one has "training comfort zones," which are important to observe as either ruts or zones of high performance. I for instance work very well with 2-6 reps. Anything more than six reps gives me a horrible feeling of malaise -- though I do go up to 12 reps for some exercises, to torment myself. Also, doing more than 4 sets of anything generally becomes a drag, but I can work an exercise daily when I choose to.

I think it would aid anyone to take note of one's comfort zones in terms of reps, sets, workouts per week, workouts per bodypart per week, etc., and to make sure that while one is not confined by them, one takes advantage of the groove one settles into when working them.

Posted by anton at 12:38 | Trackbacks (0)

21 May
2005

[Boxing] Analysis of the Crab Defensive Stance

[Combatives]

I have been trying the Crab Stance for my boxing. Now before some thoughts of Kung-Foolery get into your head, the Crab Stance is a rather rare boxing stance. It was used by Archie Moore (who holds the world record for most knockouts in a boxing career [190 I think]), and Ken Norton (who broke Muhammad Ali's jaw).

Basically it looks something like this: In an orthodox (left foot forward stance), your right hand covers your left cheek and your left elbow is covering your ribs (on the left side) with the left hand moving about to protect yourself. There's quite a bit of crouch (the head and body faces almost 90 degrees to the right) with constant bobbing of the head. It may be a bit back-weighted.

Advantages:

Solid defense. Crouch nullifies the hooks of your opponent. His left hook will land on top of your crown, where it is unlikely to hurt you. His right hook will hit your back. The body is covered on all fronts. The face is slightly vulnerable to the left uppercut, but the crossed arms can cover that easily. An opponent's right cross will be a problem, though in dire situations you could use your left arm as a shield. The jab is the biggest problem, hence the regular up and down movement. So overall your opponent is down to straights and an occasional uppercut, and if you keep your headmovement good you should have no problem with anything except a constant flickering jab.

Offense is power-based. Because of the crouch, your right uppercut and right rising cross are weapons from HELL. Provided your aim is good (keeping balance and aim in this posture is a bit tricky) you could really take someone's head off. The left can be used as a power jab (lead straight) to dive in on his ribs to discourage his jab. The left hook is great if you precede it with a weave to the left. The leaping hook in this case, is a shocker.

Disadvantages:

The jab will destroy you. If your opponent throws the jab regularly, because of your body's angulation (it will hit your left temple) you will be forever off balance. Throwing combinations is not entirely easy, and it is difficult to get punches out quickly. This stance has relatively less interrupt punches (that come off really fast) and it is necessary to rise out of the crouch to bomb. (But of course it makes up for the lack of speed with much more power). The balance in this stance is difficult, and moving around is tough as well.

Basic strategy:

This stance is classified as a slugger stance, though it is a very defensive one. Forward pressure is low, power is high, mobility is low.

Because of these attributes, the crab seems best suited against swarmers (people who fight with strong forward pressure and a high volume of punches largely consisting of hooks). If a person is reliant on hooks, this stance can be very confounding.

Try to work around any feeler jabs with your head movement and your left power jab to the body. Absorb the punishment using body movement to make him miss, and catching anything else with your arms. If he throws the right overhand often, you may try to block it with your elbow -- this can be very upsetting for him. As he wears out, systematically put in your right uppercut and cross. Your right hand here is key. Occasionally surprise him with a leaping left hook, followed up by a right uppercut if his defense opens.

The key counters here are:

1) Against the right overhand cross - Bob down, weave to the left, and rise up with an uppercut to the chin or body, followed by a hook to the temple.

2) Against the left uppercut - Ride it up and respond with a tight right hook to the head.

Hope that was helpful. If you know any other fighters who crab, or have any other tips, do share via comments. :-)

Posted by anton at 10:28 | Trackbacks (0)