Not much in the way of workouts today. Jogged .75 miles down to the park, warmed up, ran through some katas and did some burpees and squat thrusts. I decided I can’t bail on the burpee challenge, so I have a lot of catch up to do, but I need to scale the workouts so I don’t mess up my shoulder.
So far this week, my only workouts have been from my Kendo classes. Today I did a 5k run to see how my time compared to last June when the heat made drove me indoors for the better part of my workouts.
Last June my best time was 25:49, and I want to get below 25:00. Today’s run was finished in 28:27. I can account for about 1 and a half minutes at water fountains (I didn’t stop for water on that 25:49 time), but that still leaves me about 1 and a half minutes slower.
My goal is to get to sub 25:00, and if possible sub 22:00 for a 5k run on Thanksgiving. Since getting faster is one of my goals right now with martial arts as well, I’m re-working my exercise routine to focus on things that will get me faster. I’m going to make sure I get my running in, but more of my exercise routine is going to be spent doing Tabata intervals to help build explosive power and speed.
Tabata intervals are spent doing an exercise at high intensity for 20 seconds, and then taking a 10 second rest. This taxes the anaerobic energy pathways, but also ends up increasing aerobic capacity. It’s a very efficient type of work out. It is frequently done with sprints. 20 seconds sprinting, 10 seconds walking. This is done 8 times for a total of 4 minutes. It’s a very vigorous workout for just 4 minutes!
I’m going to be doing various circuits of strength or speed exercises in this manner. Since I’m going to be mixing up the circuits, I hope to keep from getting bored with maintaining a routine through the end of November.
Since each circuit will have 4 exercises, I’ll switch exercises with each 10 second rest and go 4 rounds for a total of 8 minutes of high intensity work. Then do an ab circuit for 2 rounds or 4 minutes. Total workout time will be 12 minutes, and I’ll scale up in rounds as I see fit. Most of the circuits have some variations on Olympic weightlifting to them, but some are specific to kendo, karate, or running. As I tweak each circuit and perform it, I’ll describe it in a blog entry. I’ll get video if I can. Right now, all of the stuff I’ve come up with seems very heavy on squatting and pressing movements, so I need to balance that a bit.
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Today’s workout wasn’t all that intense. Not a bad all around workout for a Sunday morning though. After a brief warmup and a longer session keeping warm while I helped my sister with her workout, this is what I did:
3 rounds, not rigidly timed, but about 18-20 minutes of:
Finished that with some light chanbara sparring with 2 on 1 versus my wife and sister, then practiced Empi Sho for a bit. I have it about 1/2 way down now.
As a side note, my sister is making awesome progress with her workouts. She did a scaled version of what I did above, using 15# for the swings and high pulls, subbed sit ups for the TGU’s and pulled a 15# kettlebell on a ghetto rigged lat pulldown machine I made from tying the bell to a rope and throwing it over a rafter on the shelter at the park. She walked about 3 miles just to get to the park, did her workout, chanbara, and boxed with my wife. She’s doing awesome!
On the heels of the disappointment with yesterday’s workout, I did another new Crossfit Hero workout today. This one is “Erin“.
Biked the one mile to the pull up bars I use with dumbbells in my back pack. All I have is 12.5# dumbbells, so I didn’t use the prescribed 40# for this workout. That’s fine, though. 20# would have kicked my butt. 12.5 was challenging, but not killer. Hell, I’m almost ashamed to admit that. Anyhow, here’s the workout:
5 rounds for time of 15 dumbbell split cleans + 21 pullups.
So, I scaled the weight, and subbed jumping pullups since I still can’t do more than 5 pullups consecutively. Again, almost ashamed to admit that.
After warming up, I finished this one in 13:11. This was a fun workout, and I was a bit more inclined to attack the jumping pullups harder than I did yesterday after not feeling any adverse effects from yesterday’s workout. I had not done dumbbell split cleans before, but they were awesome. One point of caution if you try them. Watch your form! I’d make sure you can do a dumbbell lunge with good form first. You don’t want your knees or hip turning out on this one for sure. As fatigue set in I had a couple reps where my rear foot would turn out just a bit. Not enough to injure, but enough to remind me to get it straight on the next rep. Here’s a video of the split clean to give you an idea of what it’s all about.
These olympic lift inspired exercises are great for building explosive power throughout the entire body. As I was doing this I could feel how it could really help build an fast and powerful lunging karate punch. Good stuff for sure!
I'm Eric. Martial artist, exercise enthusiast, website designer, internet marketer, geek, video game player, anime watcher, and all around sarcastic megalomaniac.
