Becoming an Athlete

Man, oh man. I'm not looking forward to this, but I know it is the right next step. My shins and calves have been absolutely devastated by sprinting so many 100-120 yard sprints. Now its time to work further into the lactic acid threshhold by bumping it up to 400 yards. These make me puke pretty regularly, but its been YEARS since I sprinted this sort of distance. I'm sticking to the same schedule, with a 5K added in on Wednesdays. Monday: Sprint Tuesday: Lift Wednesday: 5k run Thursday: Sprint Friday: Lift When I run 400s, its more of a heel-to-toe gait as compared to 100s, where I'm on the balls of my feet every step and my heels never touch the ground. I'm hoping this will be a little less stressful on the shin splints I've started to develop and will allow for the added cardio run on Wednsday. The sprints aren't much of a progression this time, as I know it'll take me longer to adapt to the distance: The Tuesday workouts will be a pain: Fridays will be ...

This evening, my two kids, ages 8 and 5, my girlfriend and I went to a lake that has a 5K trail circling it. The kids were on bikes, so the idea was hat my girlfriend and I would essentially do 5K worth of intervals as we tried to catch them, at which point we'd slow down for a while together. That worked OK for about 2/3 of a mile; then my kids got tired. The rest f the way was spent alternating between a jog, and me alternating between pushing my son and my daughter on their bikes. We had lots of breaks, and it took us nearly 45 minutes, instead of the planned 25, but it was fun and my kids got an aerobic thrashing. My girlfriend and I got a good sweat, but not the sustained level of intensity we'd hoped for. Either way, I got in two workouts today. Tomorrow is going to be bitch of a weight session.

I'm not sure how long we sparred, but five of my coworkers met this afternoon for kickboxing sparring. I usually get a nice clench and work knees to the body and few fake knees, and work towards a throw setup. Since we meet in a room that isn't padded, I never throw anyone. Today we did a lot of mitt drills and kept the pace high, with very light sparring for the last 30-40 minutes. We call this tempo-sparring at my martial arts school. Its just going for speed, technique and position. So no breaks, and no excessive levels of force; just hard work for a long time!!! Tonight I'm running sprints, so hopefully this has drained me too much!!!

I didn't start lifting last night till 9:30 PM. I started with barbell calves. 3 x 10 @ 265. Next was single leg calves off a step, 3 x 20 for each leg. Close grip Chin-up: 4 x 6 reps with bodyweight Supset: a) deadlift: 3 x 10 @ 205lbs. On the 3rd set I only got 7 reps b) incline dumbbell curl: 3 x 10 @ 30lbs each hand Barbell curls: 4 x 5 @ 95 Superset: a) bench press: 3 x 10 @ 185 b) inverted side-to-side row: 3 x 10

Let me start by saying I'm not a fan of direct bicep work. I find it boring and of limited value to the world of sports performance. But, as ridiculous as it is, so many people judge strength on the size of your arms and how much you can bench. So I'm doing direct bicep work for a while. After phase 2, you won't see nearly as much upper arm work. A good grip is worth far more in "ground and pound" than bicep size. I'm ending the 1st 4 week phase that introduced sprints for the first time this year. Monday: Sprints Tuesday: Lifting Thursday: Sprints Friday: Lifting The actual sprint progression was this: I took week 3 off of sprinting due to my groin and shins being so beat up, but yesterday was solid! Tonight's workout: Friday will be the end of phase 1! Friday's workouts have been: After this, its time to start sprinting further and doing barbell complexes!!!!!

My good friend Jacob got me interested in blogging this. He's currently doing a Crossfit experiment to see what kind of results he gets by sticking to it exactly as planned, including the diet. I train to improve my fighting ability, and to create general capability. I rock climb, kyak, hike, and playt with my kids, so I have to be able to do more than just three 5-minute rounds. On July 4th I'll be doing a 5K in Georgetown, TX. Since I pulled my groin a few months ago and haven't rested and allowed it to heel, I'll be lucky to reach I don't follow any one fitness expert's advice or one fitness system. The thing I've learned is that the body adapts to any type of stimulus over time. At first, the adaptive response is the increase in strength, or mass, or any of the other desired effects. But after a certain amount of time, which is defferent for nearly everyone, the body become efficient at handling the type of stress you apply, so the training effect is ...