Jolly Good

I see people followed my advice and started following my blog. Good show, good chaps, what ho and all that. Now stop following my blog and find something decent to do with your lives.

Last night was MMA 101 followed by an MMA sparring class. In the 101 we did clinch surfing, a good drill which teaches the fundamentals of good clinch with an emphasis on MMA. It’s a fun drill for beginners and I like coaching it because it’s simple for people to understand, there’s a lot to get out of it and it drives home the fundamentals. Thing is you either love it or you hate it. I know a few of lads will probably walk out if they ever see it again and others think it’s great. I’m in the middle ground there when it comes to actually doing it. I appreciate it and like to coach it, but I’m just not sure I like training when we do it.

Thing is, of all the aspects of MMA, wrestling is the one we least understand in Ireland. People think that you can do techniques and hope for the best but as anyone who has wrestled at a decent level will tell you, being a goo wrestler is not about techniques. It’s about things like head position, angle changes and the like. You can learn all the throws and takedowns in the world but if you can’t dominate with your head or turn the corner or change angle at the right time you will end up on your back with someone punching you. With the new timetable in now we will be doing a lot more clinch in MMA classes without dilution. Fundamentals drilling like the one we did last night will form a big part of that.

I was back with Will this morning for my first session since Christmas. I half expected to be testing this morning again as I thought he was going to be cruel. Instead I did something much, much worse. You just know a workout is good when you fear it, and having a 5am start this morning didn’t help. I texted him last night to confirm we were on and we were, so dropped my boy off and set off and as an afterthought on the M50 I checked my email on my phone. I had one from Will, and my session was in it. It was one of my “benchmark” sessions from a couple of months back, the one where I nearly puked. Oh whoop dee do, I thought, how do you turn a car round on the M50?

So here’s what the story was, I can’t remember all of my scores and I don’t have the rower scores but when I get the results I’ll post them up later.

Bike 5 minute (Level 5)
Begin at 8 minutes:
10x100m with 30 second recovery between efforts… sucked ass. I think my Christmas indulgences had a large negative impact on the rowing.

5 minutes – Lower Body & Upper Body Mobility Work.… I didn’t do this. Just rested. Will mustn’t have wanted to give me whatever version of smallpox he’s been suffering from.

Begin at 23 minutes:
Weights Block 1 – November 26th
Total = 22 Trap Bar Deadlifts, 11 Pull Ups and 44 Push Ups.

Weights Block 1 – January 7th
Total = 36 Trap Bar Deadlifts, 18 Pull Ups and 72 Push Ups.

An extra 14 Trap Bar Deadlifts, 7 Pull Ups and 28 extra Push Ups.

Begin at 35 minutes:
10x100m with 45 second recovery between efforts.
Poxy again. Kept coming off the rower

Begin at 48 minutes:
Weights Block 2 – November 26th
Total = 40 KB Squats, 20 Inverted Rows, 20 KB Shoulder Presses (each arm)

Weights Block 2 – January 7th
Total = 52 KB Squats, 26 Inverted Rows, 26 KB Shoulder Presses (each arm)

Another good improvement of 12 extra KB Squats and 6 extra Inverted Rows and KB Presses.

Begin at 62 minutes:
10x100m with 60 second recovery between efforts.
Finished at 75 minutes.

Very tough session but I’m quite happy with it. The strength block scores are all up even if I think the rows will be down. Christmas doubtless took it’s toll but overall there’s very little to be displeased with. The higher scores in the first strength block are mainly due to the fact that I was able to pull the first 12 pull up reps in batches of 2 (4:2:8), meaning that I was able to crack out more deadlifts and push ups. But also considering I nearly vomited on this before, I kept going fairly well and of the time hadn’t run out, I think there would have been another 3 or 4 singles (4:1:8) in me. So what’s not to like?

The second block was different, I think I actually struggled more on this than last time, even though I beat my score by a good margin. The inverted rows fatigued me quicker than last time, though on consideration that may have been because I did a lot of bagwork last night and I really felt my back tiring in those. Maybe. But the squats were also hard, as were the presses but this could have been due to the extra intensity of the block this time out. I didn’t time myself at all this time whereas last time out I tried to go on each minute. I was also able to sustain the rep range that I started out with (8:4:4:4), bar the last set which I needed to shorten to keep under time. I wasn’t able to do that last time I think I got to 7 minutes before I had to go 4:2:2:2

The less said about the rowing the better. Although Will, in a very unusual moment of sympathy, did note that the scores were probably only a maximum of 0.5 of a second slower than last time. Still poxy though.