Over the past year or so I have been working my damn hands to the bone in preparation for the CNIM board exam. As a result, my training has become pretty disorganized. I pretty much just hit the mats or the weights whenever I have a spare hour or two. I have made some improvements in bjj skills and weight loss (now 269lbs) but I have also suffered some moderately bad injuries such as a posterolateral meniscal tear, dislocated big toe and an LCL tear. I keep pushing forward though. Hopefully this log will help me get my training situated a little better than it has been as I try to make it through the final stretch of ass-whoopery leading up to my board exam in March.
My goal is to get 3 BJJ sessions, 3 lifting sessions and 3 cardio sessions a week. I have been keeping my lifting and cardio workouts pretty short and very intense. This is mostly because I don’t have time but it has turned out to be pretty effective.
Welcome back and lets hope the injury bug has finished with you. BTW, some dickhead will probably read the “dislocated big toe” comment and think you are nothing but a wimp. LOL, I have had a good selection of injuries, but, that big toe bothered me for at least 4 months, try jumping out of plane or rappelling down a building, and you will know the meaning of “sensitive”.
Good to see you back big guy! Sorry about the injuries! Injuries suck!
I don’t see any mobility or flexibility work in your routine. Most of your injuries have been connective tissue related, until you start to address their lack of resilience, you are just setting yourself up for risk of another injury.
Yes, I know that strength work is more fun. Yes, I know that mobility/flexibility work can be boring. But you focusing only on strength and not at all on mobility/resilience of your connective tissues is like a wrestler who comes into MMA and only wants to train wrestling. To be perfectly honest that is the last thing that should have priority if you want longevity.
Sorry for the lecture, I just don’t want to see you continue to get hurt.
I am doing a lot of mobility, stretching and tissue quality drills and am working with a chiro and a physical therapist weekly. I just didn’t write that down as part of my training program, I suppose it is part of it though.
I will generally do about 10 minutes before training of stretching, mobility drills and rolling with a lacrosse ball and a pvc pipe, then I’ll spend about another 10 minutes warming up, working on muscles that don’t want to calm the fuck down and on joints that don’t want to bend the right ways. Then I begin specific warmup, training, and then I do all of the “homework” assigned to me by the chiro and pm&r. I will also have short stretching and mobility sessions throughout the day while I am in the OR or my teaching job. It’s coming along nicely but it is a lot of work!
Haha, the funny thing is that was the most debilitating injury I have had in a looong time. It still bugs me if I bend it the wrong way; although, not that bad. Unfortunately, I think that injury is one of those that stays with you.
I went to the noon class because I had a gap in my schedule. We drilled arm drags from open guard and transitioning to take the back or to a hook flip off of the arm drag. I only had time for 1 roll and it was with a guy that was brand new so I spent a lot of time explaining things to him during the round. The upper belts are getting ready for a tourney so they didn’t want to roll with us white belts.
6am bjj class. Hoping to focus on the armdrags I learned yesterday while rolling.
It was just one other guy and myself at class this morning and he was super new. We worked hook flips from open guard and a hook flip from open guard when your opponent puts one of their feet on the floor. Then we worked transitioning to an armbar from the hook flip and transitioning to a guillotine when your opponent strips your hand off of their head. Good drilling today but no rolls. That was okay with me because I am really tired today.
Between jobs I crammed in a 30 min strength session. My injuries didn’t bother me at all while lifting, although I am still keeping the weights and volume low.
Work has been crazy this week. I put in about 45 hours mon, tues and wed. I was wiped this morning but still showed up to train before heading back to the OR.
6am bjj class. Drilled single leg X guard and getting to it from your back and from the butterfly guard. I had a roll with a new guy which was light and easy. Unfortunately, there aren’t many good grapplers in the AM class which is all I can go to right now so sparring is always too easy. If I can make it up there Saturday I should be able to get some tough competition.
Interesting that the earlier class is so light on competition. My experience has always been that the earlier/morning classes always attracted Military, LEO’s, and other hardcore people (most people doing something casually don’t get up early and go train Martial Arts).
Not that dedicated, serious athletes don’t also make it to night classes too, just interesting that there aren’t any making it to your morning classes.
Remember, rolling with lower ranking belts is your time to work on escaping from crappy positions (put yourself there), surviving and working on reversing submission attempts (let them catch you in them), and trying out new techniques that you are not yet good at but want to develop (you will likely fail a bunch and either lose position or just miss the sub/sweep/escape/etc…before you get good at them). Don’t look at it as some kind of “less important” or “less desirable” training compared to training with better or equally skilled people (though that is of course useful training as well).
I know, you’re right. I always feel like I am not getting anything out of training unless I am getting my ass kicked.
The guys who come to the AM class are all very strong, athletic, tough dudes but they are all new to BJJ. It does seem strange that the AM class attracts all the white belts. The really good people at our school come to the noon classes, mostly. The noon class is very kill-or-be-killed. It is awesome but I can rarely go. Night classes are a good mix of newbies and higher belts.
That’s actually not that strange that all of the really good people (possibly some professionals and/or serious amateurs) would go to the noon class as often times there is less traffic and/or newbies that could attend at that time of day. That would allow them more time with other hardcore fighters/BJJ players.
Still surprising that the early class doesn’t have at least some higher skilled people in it though.
And I understand where you are coming from, a lot of newer BJJ players (especially physically dominant ones) feel like you do. It isn’t usually till they get to Purple Belt (or possibly even Brown or Black depending on their school and/or “pond”) that they realize the benefit of training with the lower ranks and/or less “kill or be killed” training.
Since you are kind of being forced into that type of training though, you have the choice to either look at it as a blessing and start utilizing the mindset/approach to rolling with the lower ranks, or to continue to look at it as “crap I just have to get through till I can do the type of training Inreally want to do against the higher ranks.” Either way you are being forced to do it, but one mindset will produced far better results from that time spent than the other.
Sentoguy: That is true, I should definitely try to make the most of it and having a good attitude about it will help. At open mat today I did notice that my conditioning has diminished a lot as a result of it, though. Once I got under some better guys I was pretty gassed after 3-4 minutes and during my last roll my forearms got so tired and pumped that they started to ache really bad.
Today’s training:
BJJ No Gi class, we drilled double under guard pass defense. The first technique was an armdrag to sort of a Russian tie and the second was by putting both legs on one side of your opponent’s head and scissoring your thighs hard to break their grip. Then you would pass an arm between your legs and chase the armbar, triangle, omoplata, kimura or you could sit up and use the Russian toe technique from earlier. I had some good rolls today but I did have to cut it a little short to go teach (at the neurophysiology school).
Try to put more pressure on yourself while you roll with the lesser skilled guys then.
Like:
-let them get Mount, Side, or your Back and then try to escape in 10 seconds. Successful? Let them put you back there and try 5 seconds next time. Or see how many times you can escape and gain a dominant position within a minute (all they have to do is hold position, not sub you).
-try letting them get submissions on you and then try to defend and reverse them. Again, see how many reversals of the same submission you can get within a given time frame. To make things even harder on yourself, experiment with letting them get deeper and deeper into the submissions before you start your escape (just be ready to tap if you wind up in danger).
-try telling your rolling partner exactly what submission (or sweep if you wanted to work on a sweep) you are going to hit them with, then see how many times you can hit that sub in a given time frame. Since they know that it’s coming it will allow them to put all their focus and effort into stopping that sub and really force you to both work much harder to get it and/or develop better set ups.
-try handicapping yourself in some way, like place one of both hands behind your back and try to escape/control your opponent. Or do some sort of exhausting cardio exercise like an all out minute of Battling Ropes while they stay fresh, then grapple with them and again put pressure on yourself (like you have to try to submit them say 5 times within a minute starting from neutral/knees/standing/with them in Mount/Side/Back position.
Really there are lots of ways you can go about this, though, depending on the format of the class some options might be more practical than others.
Sento: Thanks for the tips, I will try them out when rolling tomorrow morning.
Last night’s training: 1 hr drilling techniques on dummy while watching a DVD on bjj concepts. It was mostly technoques to stop people from getting the guard back after you have passed.
Squats: bw x 100
Push ups: bw x 100
Sit ups: bw x 100
BJJ AM class: We worked on hook flips from guard and they started coming along very well. I rolled with Chris who is a white belt but he is progressing very, very fast and is a harder roll everyday. We had a solid 10 minute roll today with him exerting himself 100% the whole time. I handicapped myself by not allowing myself to use explosive movements or any level of strength. I just focused on staying super calm and dealing with his aggression without having to use a lot of strength and it went well. About a minute in I got him with a hook flip to scarf hold and then I set up the americana. After we reset I had his back for a long time but was unable to get the choke so I transitioned to side control where I got a kimura grip and set up the armbar. Good times.
PM Strength session:
I took short breaks between sets to keep my fatigue accumulating. The delt raises between every set really started to take a toll by the time I got to overhead pressing.
Incline DB Press…ss…DB Delt Raises
60’s x 15 - 15’s x 10
70’s x 15 - 15’s x 10
90’s x 10 - 15’s x 10
90’s x 8 - 15’s x 10
90’s x 6 - 15’s x 10
DB Rows…ss…DB Delt Raises
90’s x 10 - 15’s x 10
110’s x 10 - 15’s x 10
110’s x 10 - 15’s x 10
110’s x 10 - 15’s x 10
DB Overhead Press…ss…DB Rear Delt Raises
50’s x 10 - 15’s x 10
50’s x 10 - 15’s x 10
50’s x 8 - 15’s x 10
Pull Ups…ss…Anterior Delt Raises
BW x 10 - 15’sx10
BW x 8 - 15’s x 10
BW x 6 - 15’s x 10
Yesterday-Noon BJJ class
We mostly just rolled. The really good guys weren’t there but I got some good, tough rolls in with guys that were better than me and big enough to make it count.
Today:
6am BJJ class
Drilled various straight armbars from bottom butterfly guard and knee on belly. I love going to this class because the guy who teaches it, Jesse, is a great teacher and shows very simple, effective and straight forward techniques.
Weights after lunch:
Box Squat
45x10
135x10
225x8
275x5
315x5
*slowly working my way back up on these. Adductor feels good so far.
Elevated foot lunges
BW x 20
25 x 20
Band Hamstring Curls
2 bands x 3 x 10
Bench Press
135x12
225x12
225x10
225x8
6PM BJJ class
We drilled armdrags from butterfly guard but we kicked the knee out from under them so they’d fall forward and we could take their back and get a rear naked choke.
I rolled with a guy named Jerod who is by far the best guy at the school. I spend 90% of the time just trying to survive. He tapped me once which is actually really good for me. He usually taps me around 4 times. I rolled with some other really good guys and got worn the hell out.
7PM BJJ class
We drilled double under passes and countered the stiff arm by knee riding their arm and tossing them backwards into turtle, wrapping the leg in for a crucifix and then getting the armbar, kimura, rear naked choke or guillotine depending on how they defend. No more rolling. I was totally spent.
