Fighting is about as taxing physically as anything could possibly be. In all my time (3 years and change) in the Marines, I have rarely done a workout that hits as hard as the ones I get pretty much every day at my dojo, or what I put myself through at the gym so I can progress with Mixed Martial Arts. Things that come close are, multiple runs of the obstacle course, humps of 10 miles with 80 pound packs, and for just a couple minutes at a time, the CFT.
Anyway. When I began training at Blackout, my shape was pudgy, and I thought I was a real badass. A meanie of the Nth degree, ready to twist limbs and ground and pound my way onto the team and start competing for fortune and glory.
I was sorely, quite literally sorely, mistaken.
Practice begins at 6:30, (1800 for us military types) but I'm in there much earlier, wrapping my hands and working on footwork, followed by stretching, and drinking some water to get ready.
Every workout begins with two or three 3-minute rounds of shadow boxing which is throwing punches and moving around at an imaginary opponent, to get your heart pumping and your mind right.
Then after that, usually I go practice Muay Thai for half an hour, pretty much non-stop kicks and punches on a heavy bag. In between rounds of throwing heavy punches, speed punches, jabs, rear leg kicks, push kicks, speed kicks ("Speed" herein means to throw a kick, bring your foot back to the initial position and immediately kick again, no pause, and attempting to keep perfect form.) our Muay Thai coach Rich gives us lectures on theoretical spots we might be caught in while fighting in the cage...where to throw counter punches, why we follow up combinations with a jab, why it's imperative to "turn the hip over". While reading, I hope I'm making a point of how much this strains your cardio and endurance. If you don't believe me, try throwing kicks and punches non-stop for half an hour, taking a 30 second break every couple minutes. It sucks.
Then, with no break in between, myself and the people that I train with head ou to the mats and begin to warm up for brazilian jiujitsu and wrestling practice. Warm ups consist of "shrimping" and various other techniques. After about 5-10 minutes of shrimping and warming up, we go "live" which is to say, for 3 minute rounds we grapple with a partner, going for submissions, better positioning and looking for holes in our ground game. If we're not live rolling, we're practicing single techniques such as triangle chokes, kimura and various other moves that involve bending an opponents limbs the wrong way, or choking them out, all with the intent on getting them to "tap out" which is tapping the mat or your opponent to get them to let go, thus giving up.
Practice lasts usually an hour to an hour and a half, and at the end I'm pretty much drenched in sweat and just want some water and my futon. However, I'm an animal and instead of resting and playing Call of Duty, I usually read about fighting or call my girlfriend, and she'll tell you, I usually talk about MMA.
That's a pretty fair synopsis of my MMA training, and even on the days that I have practice, I skip eating lunch with the people I work with and I go to the gym.
I usually do something that looks like this...
-Warm up of hitting a punching bag for a couple minutes
-Followed by 3 sets of max pullups
-Either Back/Bicep lifts, 3 sets of 12 reps, 3 exercises for each, or Chest and triceps, same thing
-an ab routine, 50 normal crunches, 25 side-specific crunches on each side, leg lifts, flutter kicks, and kick outs and other ab exercises. All in all about 10 minutes
-Rope Undulation
and I finish every workout at lunch with 20 minutes of running on an elliptical machine with a variance in slope and resistance.
When I don't have MMA practice, I'm at the gym twice, and my second workout usually involves an hour of elliptical and a shortened verson of my ab routine.
I don't know if these workouts would work for everyone, but in 5 and a half weeks i've lost 23 pounds and have gotten big ups from people around me. It is pretty cool not being a chub-chub anymore haha. I pair this up with dietting, but I'll save that all for another blog entry some other time.
Until next time, and thanks for reading my blog!
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