Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

Well, it's been a while since I hit the weights. A very long while. My first experience with lifting weights was after high school, circa 1989. Somewhere back around 1992-93 I was a member at Gold's Gym, but finding Windsong and getting an office job (compared to the road construction industry) I felt I didn't really need it.

So, here we are. We're planning our big backpacking adventure for sometime around late May. We have an old friend who wants to go with us, and he's never backpacked before. No big deal. He recognizes his conditioning issue right out of the gate, admits it, and wants to lose about 40 pounds before the trip. He has no workout partner, only our buddy Chris' harassment to encourage him.

Having our collective asses kicked last year, I'm pushing conditioning. When it takes 2 days to cover 10 miles it says something. In our defense, the trail conditions were bad, packs too heavy, it rained & hailed, horses tore the soft muddy trail up badly, and it was uphill about 8 miles out of 10, but to me it's unacceptable. As a side note, it took us only 7 hours to cover the distance on the way out.

Now, I can't make Chris fully responsible for conditioning for him and the other guy. And I don't want to be responsible for my conditioning all by myself either, because I'll procrastinate and find other things that are more fun to do. Working out is so much better when you have a partner. The encouragement and commitment to another person makes you step up and perform.

The first week was sort of spent finding how much weight for how many reps. We figure out what exercises to start with: bench press, lat pull downs, lat curls, bicep curls, leg extension, leg curl, tricep pull downs, reverse crunches & situps. We're using my 1989-ish formula for weight & reps. Do 10 reps with some amount of weight, add weight & do 8 reps, add weight & do 6 reps, add weight & do 4 reps, add weight & do 2 reps.

Tonight marks the end of our 2nd week of lifting weights. This week we added weight, added a couple of exercises.

Tonight though, we really went at it. Do the above progression, but go back up: 10-8-6-4-2-4-6-8-10. Wow. I haven't felt this tired in a long, long time. We made it all the way through the entire thing, missing a single rep on my bench press (I'm doing a 12-10-8-6-2 progression right now). We changed up our curl progression tonight as well, simply because we were.... well, shot. We started with 10 reps of full-size bar curls. Then added a little weight, stood facing each other. I do 1 rep, pass the bar, Chris does 1 rep; I do 2, Chris does 2; repeat to 5. Our arms were shaking, unable to grip much of anything at this point.

Lesson from Judo Playday: Pre-emptive ibuprofen strike.

Well, I've changed my mind a bit.

Muscles are the freshest at the first of the workout. This is when the most weight can be lifted. So, I'm currently playing with a reverse pyramid idea. Heaviest weight first, followed by two sets of 10-12 reps at lower weight. I tried this Monday night, and I felt very exhausted at the end of my program. Quite happy about that.

Kyle,

Here is an article you might find interesting re: post workout recovery. You may already know about it, I had never heard it and thought it was cool. I have not yet, but plan on starting to do it. Good luck, keep up the hard work.

-Damon

http://mmajunkie.com/news/13279/ask-the ... lement.mma

http://www.mmascraps.com/2008/12/wander ... mpage.html

When ever you start to feel tired during your workout and hit that wall, just think about what he is doing in this clip and under what conditions, then keep pushing yourself. 😉

Hey! That's awesome! I love chocolate milk. I buy a quart every time I go grocery shopping and drink it as soon as I get home.

Silva is insane in that video clip. Taping your nose shut, then breathing exclusively via a scuba snorkel is plum crazy. 😨

There's also reports of those guys hopping into trash cans of ice after a workout to "shock" the body and force blood into the core. All the good MMA folks are doing crazy fitness rotuines -- mixing plymetrics, power and carido into a single circuit. BJ Penn also has a legendary circuit he calls "a good fight gone bad." I'll see if I can find any clips or articles for any of the above.

Ha, good to hear you were already hitting the "secret juice."

I thought that was very interesting re: chocolate milk. I have never been a fan of it, always just drank regular milk, but I didn't realize how much water content milk in general consisted of. Instead of drinking a couple glasses of water after I get home from the gym I am going to give the chocolate milk thing a try. The only concern I have on the milk front is the dairy aspect and possible mucas buildup, but thats a minor concern. Over the last few years I have given up on the sports drinks, etc. too much sugar and non-sense in them for me.

I thought you would get a kick out of that Silva video, be sure and let me know how it goes after you try it. 😂

Keep up the hard work.

My workout buddy had a headache for our last workout. He didn't want to use high weight, thinking any straining might worsen the headache. But, we wanted to workout too because once a week isn't really going to do the job.

Enter low weight high reps.

We used a much lower weight than usual -- in some instances half of normal. We went for a lot of reps instead. I tried to do 3 sets at around 30-35 reps per set. I have to say, not only did I wear out, and not only was I a little more sore than normal, I enjoyed that this really got some cardio working as well. Trying to knock out 30 reps of bench press with only 65 pounds doesn't sound particularly difficult. Well, I beg to differ.

In fact, we're thinking about altering our workout schedule to have this become part of the norm as much as once per week now.

The thought process is that this sort of work is really endurance work, not strength or power work. Endurance is really what we're looking for as we carry our packs over miles of terrain. Strength & power are important as well, because more muscle mass should mean less work for the individual fiber which should result in some endurance as well.

I am not a huge body builder, and if you have seen me you this. But I remembered something we used to do with less weight. Mainly slow it down. Do it in slow motion. Another thing that really made me sore wth slow reps was doing a set only going halfway up. Then a set starting halfway up. Then doing a full set. This really made it burn.

Here is an interesting cardio workout I found. Take the extra content other than the program for what it's worth and use your judgment as to it's relevance, but the workout itself seems like it would be a real gasser. I have also posted a link to demonstrate what 'burpees' are if you are not familiar with them. You should be able to google the others if you are unfamiliar with them, there are couple I'm not familiar with. If you decide to give it a try, let me know what you think. I'll do the same if I go there first. Best of luck.

http://mmamania.com/2009/01/29/gym-dand ... ur-wallet/

http://xercisefactor.com/view_video.php ... 0b08d62b00

I have suggestions for us more mature folk trying to keep in shape or getting in shape. With weight lifting if you go hard with either lots of reps or low reps with lots of weight there is a good chance that you will experience pain and injury. First with quick movements you are increasing the chances of tearing or shearing your joint ligaments or cartilage if you have been out of sorts with that type of lifting or training for a while. Lifting heavy is another challenge in that your muscles might be stronger than your connective tissue and you can easily find your self in a position in your lift that compromises your joint strength and have a tear or injury.Being older your recovery is slower than what it used to be and that really sucks. I have had that happen already and had to lay off the weights for a while. In the meantime I have researched several alternatives to the old ways of lifting when I was younger and stronger, and found some good alternatives.

First if you want to continue lifting ,cut your weights to 70 to 80 percent of your accustomed workouts and now do the same exercise on a count of ten down and count ten up. Doing slow reps will cause you to recruit many if not all your muscle fibers and reach failure without having to go heavy and placing all that strain on your joints.This is called the power of ten.If you combine this with reverse pyramid training yo get a real bang for your dollar.Reverse pyramid would work with doing 12 reps with light weights then doing 8 reps with more wieghts then 6 reps with heavier weights then coming back up with the same weights going down in weight and keeping the same reps. This will give you one great pump to your muscles and it also trains you to work out hard and avoid failure which according to some martial artists will ingrain in your muscles and mind to never give up especially when you are trying to survive a vicious attacker.This will train the mind and body....

Another alternative is using body weight exercises which will give you more of a dynamic motion and core workout without isolating any one part of your body which will prepare you more for a combat full body action.

Yet another alternative is what the old man Dan Inosanto has been doing for several years which is kettleball exercises. This form of lifting also emphasizes full body complex action and the weights rather than solely compressing your joint space it also pulls on them with the variety of swinging motion sets.This will help alleviate the shrinking joint spaces that occurs with aging....
Hope this information adds some new ideas that you can incorporate into your workout regimines...

Seriously John...who do you think you are? Some sort of doctor or something?!?!

Eh...be careful...it's April Fools or something...no beating me up! 🙂