DarthPenguins Training log of an unfit person!

[DarthPenguin]

Wednesday 12th October

Karate Session

Was beginning to feel a little better so i thought it made sense to try a karate session and see if things were genuinely improving

Warm ups

Kihon

Usual grade kihon

Kumite drills

We were doing some kumite drills which involves a leaning tsuki punch to the same side as the arm throwing it and then darting through into the same space following the punch. Not an oi-tsuki . Can't remember the exact phrase. Was an interesting exercise, but if i am being honest i can't see when i would ever actually use it!

Kata

Several rounds of Heian Yondan and the CI picked up some more bits for me to work on, which were good. Thankfully they were straightforward enough - more a case of "just do this rather than that" so seem straightforward to apply

Then we did multiple rouns of kata, starting with Kihon kata and progressing up the katas one by one until you reached your grading kata and then keep performing that one until everyone had reached their grading kata. Was as useful exercise

Session felt slightly more tiring than usual but nothing concerning so that is good!

[DarthPenguin]

Saturday 15th October

Weights session

I decided to try an ad-hoc lighter weights session to see how i was recovered. I thought i might as well do a lighter arms session as that would be a good test and then can get back to the 'proper' sessions next week if all is good

Olympic Barbell curls

20kg x 10

25kg x 10

30kg x 8

Straight bar pushdowns

25kg x 10

25kg x 10

25kg x 10

KB hammer curls

16kg x 10

16kg x 10

16kg x 10

Single arm KB triceps extension

8kg x 12

8kg x 12

8kg x 12

wrist curls with E-Z Bar superset with below

10kg x 20

10kg x 20

10kg x 20

reverse E-Z bar wrist curls (second part of superset)

10kg x 20

10kg x 20

10kg x 20

reverse ones felt a lot harder as expected but got all reps in

Hand gripper

S x 10

S x 10

S x 10

I looked out my old 'captains of crush' grippers and thought it would be a good idea to start using these again. Started with the S for 3 sets of 10

Overall session felt fine

[DarthPenguin]

quick update - took longer to recover than expected (hence the lack of updates to this thread!). Finally feeling better now though so going to try a gym session tonight.

Have also decided to slightly adjust my programme. I have been following a 2dpw 531 programme pretty much continuously but i thought it was worth tweaking it a little now. Often when i go to lift i end up on a short timer (45min/50min) before i need to be back to help out with the kids, which means i often don't get to do quite the assistance work i was planning to do volume wise) so i think i am going to shift slightly to a 2dpw 531 krypteia variant.

This involves supersetting in some of the assistance with the main lift and should allow me to get everything done faster. Programming based on the time now should allow me to plan everything in advance and get exactly what i wanted to do done in time.

Structure goes :

Set 1 of main lift

Set 1 of assistance lift 1

set 2 of main lift

set 1 of assistance lift 2

....

set 10 of main lift

set 5 of assistance lift 2

for the main lift sets i will use the 531 percentages for the relevant weeks but the reps for the main lift will be 2 warm up sets, 3 'percentage sets' for 5 reps each, 5 sets at the weight of the first percentage set for 5 reps.

Assistance rep ranges will be adjusted based on the lift but ideally 10 reps. Will start out lighter to start with to get used to the additional workout density

Am also adjusting the TM downwards to start the programme. Took the weight i managed 5 reps for in prior routine and have taken 80% of that for the TM.

Increases will be either applied at the end of every 'cycle' or the end of every 2nd cycle. i will see how it is going and adjust accordingly.

Goals from the programme are to increase overall strength and get into better condition. This should then carryover well to the martial arts training

[bushido_man96]

Is there any way you can get more than 2 days per week in? I'm not sure of your age, but if you are younger, 2 days per week may not be delivering enough stress for you. But, you got to do what you can.

Could you get away with more days at the gym doing 1 lift per day? I believe there are a few 5/3/1 templates out there like that. Could that work for you?

[DarthPenguin]

Is there any way you can get more than 2 days per week in? I'm not sure of your age, but if you are younger, 2 days per week may not be delivering enough stress for you. But, you got to do what you can.

Could you get away with more days at the gym doing 1 lift per day? I believe there are a few 5/3/1 templates out there like that. Could that work for you?

3 days per week works better but the issue is the other half flatly refuses to let me have that many evenings per week plus martial arts training due to us having 2 small kids (one is 2.5 one is almost 6). I was doing 3 days per week throughout the covid lockdowns and it worked best but 2 days is what i can generally get away with. That plus karate once or twice a week and ideally bjj once or twice a week seems to be as much as i can fit in and also allow for recovery etc.

I try to get to bjj on lunchtime at work and take my son to the karate which means that on a usual week i can get in bjj mon, lifting tues, karate wed, bjj thurs and lifting Sat

Thats why i thought the new programme might work best as it should let me get the lifts in but also get a relatively high workout density. A quick google about seemed to show it was a oft used 531 template for martial artists / mma guys and is actually the one that Wendler recommends.

If you have a better idea to point me towards then happy to take a look!

Age wise i will be 43 in December and i work in a professional job (i'm an actuary) so typical work days are 9 til 6/7 Mon-Fri with the odd time needed at weekends etc if that helps

[DarthPenguin]

Tuesday 1st November

Lifting Session

All sets were supersets. first set of bench press was followed by first set of kb cleans, second set by first set of KB goblet squat. Triceps pushdowns were superset with KB towel curls.

Got main part of workout finished faster than expected so added in some arm work - it is listed within the prescribed assistance work anyway and i don't do enough of it!

Erred on the side of caution with the assistance work since i don't often do such a dense workout but pleasantly surprised as managing it all fine

Bench Press

20kg x 8

30kg x 3

42.5kg x 5

50kg x 5

57.5kg x 5

42.5kg x 5

42.5kg x 5

42.5kg x 5

42.5kg x 5

42.5kg x 5

These felt easy as expected since the TM used to calculate was lower. Concentrated a lot on form, exploding the concentric up fast and tried to work on holding an arch for benching. I usually don't but i know it is ideal form so thought it was worth working on while i am using lower weights

KB Clean (reps are per hand - did Left and Right)

16kg x 6

16kg x 6

16kg x 6

16kg x 6

16kg x 6

KB Goblet Squat

16kg x 10

16kg x 10

16kg x 10

16kg x 10

16kg x 10

Triceps Straight bar pushdown (superset with the KB towel curls)

20kg x 10

20kg x 10

20kg x 10

KB towel curls

20kg x 10

20kg x 10

20kg x 10

Captains of crush grippers

S x 10

S x 10

S x 10

Total workout time : 38.5min

Total poundage lifted : 5022.5kg

density : 130.45 kg/min

[bushido_man96]

With your time constraints, it sounds like you're doing the best you can right now! Keep up the good work!

[DarthPenguin]

With your time constraints, it sounds like you're doing the best you can right now! Keep up the good work!

Thanks! Should hopefully not be as constrained for too much longer - the main issue is getting the kids to bed, i put one to bed and my other half the other. When they are both old enough to go to sleep easily themselves then it frees up more time - will also let me get back to judo!

[DarthPenguin]

Wednesday 2nd November

Karate session

Warmups

this was slightly different to usual, more aerobic (more running round the hall) and less static stretching. Kicks actually felt looser during the session so this was fine with me!

Kihon

Practiced grade kihon techniques. Comments were fine which is good!

Kata

Did multiple runs of Heian Yondan. Was curious how it would go since i have not been able to make it to class for several weeks due to illness. I was practising it in the house working on the areas that the instructor had pointed out before.

Was pleased with how it went, the areas he had mentioned before seemed a bit better. Got a few comments but they were straightforward ones to implement : slow down the initial two moves even further, leave the 'receiving hand' out longer for each of the empi's (i was pulling it in as if pulling a head into an elbow strike as i thought that was the form so a simole fix) and to time the last two moroto-uke's to land when my foot touches down in the stepping forward into back stance. I'd been working a lot on making it clear it was a back stance i was stepping into so this is a logical next step to clean up.

All in all i was happy with it. Might still be on track for the December grading it seems - if not i'll sit March

Kumite

Quite a bit of kumite practice. As usual i paired up with the 2nd and 1st dan males that were there and we rotated amongst the three of us.

Firstly we performed some restricted work with the only techniques allowed a kizami-tzuki or a gyaku-tzuki to attack. Was an interesting drill. Did it taking unannounced turns and if you went to close before striking the reciving partner was allowed to just kizami tzuki you in the face (lightly) to show you had your distance wrong.

Then we did multiple rounds of free sparring. Went well, i find that my lead leg chudan yoko geri keage seems to get a lot of success, i don't see a lot of my training partners throwing it but with my leg length i can reliably get it up and under the guard for a body strike.

Got some feedback from the instructor that i had started to display a bad habit when sparring with shorter people and i was leaning forward slightly into them. I told the 2nd dan that i would like him to clip me in the head every time he catches me doing it as i really don't want to make that a habit - will get me ko'd. He found it an odd request but agreed lol. The 1st dan is just a little smaller than me (he's about 6'2") and said i don't do it with him at all, so it must just be with the smaller folk. I told him the same too: any time he catches me doing it in sparring give me a light dunt in the head - that will sort it! They have my full permission: would much prefer that to a full force punch from someone down the line!

Few more rounds of kata at the end of the class.

Good session, enjoyed it and got a few good things to work on going forwards

[bushido_man96]

Those "restricted" sparring sessions can be quite valuable, can't they?