Martial Arts - Eve

[Guest guest]

Ok, is the mixed martial arts stuff not a BLAST!! :-) Who would have thought

that getting punched and choked and flung through the air would be so much fun!!

I'm not sure what to tell you about your training split. It seems like your arms

would kill getting hit 5 days a week like that. Although, I don't know that my

way is any better. My way might be worse! I haven't done a traditional weight

training split in quite a while. I do total body circuit workouts (think Burn

Out Circuit and the like) on Mon/Wed/Fri, 60-90 minutes of martial arts on

Tue/Sat, and moderate cardio (like jogging or walking the dogs) every day.

The circuit workouts include all kinds of wild variations like plyometric

drills, drop sets, isometrics, slow negatives, rope jumping, kickboxing, and

HIIT. Even on my " weight " days I find myself sparring in weighted bag gloves and

getting medicine balls thrown at me and stuff. It's all kind of geared toward

maximizing speed, strength and endurance for martial arts rather than a

traditional bodybuilding split where you train something and let it totally rest

for a few days. I would take a day or two a week completely off from exercise

but I can't get out of the dog cardio. They follow me through the house and bore

holes in me with their eyes until I get the running shoes on and pick up the

leashes. :-)

See how your weight training split makes you feel. If your arms are shot when

it's time to do martial arts, you might want to re-think the intensity of your

split. When you divide upper body into three separate days, it means that you're

getting a whole lot of sets, reps, and exercises for each body part (bis, tris,

shoulders, whatever), which tends to destroy you if there's not a proper rest

period afterward. I still lift very heavy, but not as many sets and not as many

different exercises per body part. I also do a lot of compound movements like

push-ups rather than a bunch of isolation movements for each muscle group.

Ok, so there's a big bunch of confusing rambling...

training Re: seattle lady? - Eve

> She's here. She's been posting pretty much daily. Who knows the mysteries of

the photo

section. :-)

>

> How have you been? How's the running going?

>

>

>

Busy as all hell

I started taking mixed martial arts (pankration) twice a week. 3 weeks into

it, I can see

definite changes in upper body strenght. The running is going better since I

figured out

how to breathe properly. For the past month, I couldn't run more than 3-4

minutes

without a stitch. I got a hold of an article on runnersworld.com about

breathing and that

you should intake air 2 steps at a time and exhale 2-3 steps at a time

depending on your

speed. I ran 1.5 mile in 15:45 minutes at a moderate/slow pace -- My goal is

1.5 mile

under 10 minutes by October

I was planning on sending an email your way on how you fit weight training in

with your

martial arts training (ie, do you still work arms as much? how often) I've

found that I get a

lot of ab work in on my martial arts days so I haven't been doing any at the

gym.

I got a hold of a document written by the fitness coordinator of the police

academy. There

are 2 routines in there.. one is for a novice person who never has done

weights and one

for more advanced. The more advanced routine consists of 2 days splits twice

a

week(total of 4 days of weight training in a week).. it also recommends 4 days

of running

or 3 days of running and 1 day for another cross training activity.

Due to time constraints and me being worried about overtraining, I chose to

change the 2

days split/twice a week to a 3 day split, 2 days of martial arts.. I'm not

quite sure when I

should add the running in(I'm mixing up the kinds of run, some are sprints,

some are long

runs etc).

So far, my schedule looks like this:

monday: weights chest/triceps

tuesday: mixed martial arts for 1h30

wednesday: weights - legs/shoulders

thursday: mixed martial arts for 1h30

friday: weight - back/biceps

I add the running at the lunch hour on any of these days but do it at least 3x

a week.

Do you have a better suggestion as how to balance all of this out? I REALLY

like the

martial arts and don't want to give either 2 days up. I've been limiting

total amount of

workout days to 5 instead of 6 simple to make sure I get enough rest.