Events conspired to keep me out of training both jits and conditioning yesterday so I doubled up on the latter today.

Afternoon session:

4 Minutes of Tabata on the rowing machine. Bluetooth headset crapped out 3 minutes in, so I had to set my phone on the damn neck of the bench and watch the timer out of the corner of my eye.

To the tune of some shitty top 40 song I twiddled my thumbs waiting for either the squat rack or the power cage since for the first time in a year they were both occupied at the same time. And lo and behold, people were more or less using them for their intended purposes *gasp*.

The overweight broskis bailed on the cage first so I wandered in there and banged out a set of 5 squats at 225, another at 315, and then did 20 reps of lying extensions with a 45lb barbell as perscribed by the Super Squats people.

Then I lugged through the 20 squats at 205. 12 in was ok, as I approached 15 my core started feeling wobbly. Gutted through (literally) the last 5 and felt woozy. BP was up. I wanted to get in some core work but after one set of leg lifts I wasn’t feeling so good so I headed home. A bit dizzy, actually. Wonder if it was from the blood pressure increase due to doing the Tabata at the begining, followed by high reps of a decent weight for squats.

Went home, showered, and then turned around and went to AJJ and beat on the banana bag. Caught the last 6, 3 minute rounds of Bas’s All-Around-Fighting, then did some crunches and bounced the medicine ball off the cage for a while, and swiped the Bas boxing CD and did 10 rounds of 2 minutes.

Then I came home and typed this.

I was reading a thread this morning on Bullshido (of course) in our PT forum, about the difference between the Stronglifts 5×5 program, and the old-school “Super Squats” mass building program.

While I’d heard of the “Squats and Milk” maxim, I’d never known there was an actual program associated with it.  So I looked it up and it’s pretty simple; it even includes a diet plan, of sorts.  I’m already doing the Stronglifts program (5×5) and working up towards a 405lb squat (4, 45lb plates on each side of the bar).  30lbs shy of it now, but my form is ugly and I need to get deeper.

Anyway, the bad thing about the Stronglifts program is that while you’ll gain strength, you won’t gain any significant mass.  And considering that I’m built like some kind of goatweasel to begin with and have lost about 20lbs in the last year, the missus is already complaining about how skinny I am.  So it’d be nice to pack on a bit of muscle.

My solution is to blend the two workouts, which makes it that much more brutal, and see how things shake out.  I think I should be safe from overtraining, as long as I get enough sleep and nutrition.  Fortunately, this diet is all about craming food down your throat, mostly cow juice.

So today’s “experimental” workout went like this:

Warm-up

Squats 225×10; Dumbbell BP: 50×12; 5 Dips; 10 reverse crunches.

(Skipping the pullups because of shoulder pain)

Set 1, 2, 3

Squats: 315×5, DB BP: 65×8, 5 Dips, RCx10

Set 4

Squats: 325×5, 10 RC.

Super Squat Set:

20 lying barbell extensions (supposed to do it with 25lbs, use a 30), 20 deep squats -135lbs.

I underestimated the fatigue factor a bit on that, but it was a good workout nonetheless.  Instead of adding another 5lbs on the squat for each workout as suggested, I’m going to step back out of the rack and take my ass to my ankles for each rep which will suck, but is necessary.  I’ll then start adding on the 5lb increments.

Jiujitsu

Headed in to catch some rolling/sparring, and did a total of about 20 minutes.  Banged the hell out of my knee trying to fake a double on a new guy who’s a wrestler so he’d pop up and I’d get around to the side.  Was bad enough that while I was taking one person’s back and it came in contact with their heel  as they defended against the second hook, I yelped.  I also managed to catch an elbow in the face from one of our heavyweights who shucked off my legs into side control and brought it down directly onto my upper lip.  Strangely it’s not swollen, and I credit the “Talibeard” for saving me from both gimping around, and talking like Mush Mouth for the rest of today.

For extra cardio I’m going to speed-mow my back yard.  My last record was just under 2 hours (it’s fooking huge, unnecessary, and all down hill).  It’s tempting to do it at a slower pace because I’m usually listening to an audiobook while I’m doing it to keep me from mowing fractal patterns into my yard out of boredom.  And now with the knee giving me the finger I’ll probably manage to weasel myself into doing just that.

As I mentioned in the post below, my back is killing me after my mostly successful attempt at creeping up on a 400lb squat (375lbs) this past Saturday. Well I didn’t have any nifty ice packs anywhere, and didn’t want the condensation from a regular bag of ice bleeding out onto my desk chair, couch, etc. To boot, I had things to do and couldn’t just sit in one spot for an extended period of time.

Then I had a mild eureka moment and solved the problem. Here it is:

Step 1: Fill a ziplock bag with ice (duh)

Step 2: Open up the drawer by your oven

Step 3: Remove the oven mitt from said drawer, and insert bag o’ ice

Step 4: Put oven mitt between your waistband and sore back, go about getting shit done

Now, if that last picture gave you a headache (pretty hard to get a decent picture of one’s own back), then you could probably use a variant of this solution, but it’d probably require some duct tape thereby making it a bit less elegant. Depending on your cold tolerance you might want to decide if you want the mitt against your skin, or between your underwear and shorts/pantaloons/ass-less leather chaps (hey, I promise not to judge your lifestyle as long as you don’t make jokes about my choice in pain relief treatments).

Matt Kirtley demonstrating double-under/"Bonaduce" guard pass. Aesopian.com

Server was out so I got to class technically late but in time for the rolling. We did a round-robin and somehow I ended up as the guy for the station that was in the cage.

Rolled with a female fighter prepping for an upcoming fight and focused on technique as we started from my guard. She did her best to drive me into the cage, and I baited with a leg on the fence to spin away; she didn’t bite and we scrambled. Kept my hips moving and grabbed an outside half guard while working for a banana-splits sweep. I didn’t have the lockdown but managed to get it anyway. Though I probably could have muscled straight into the sub by pulling her leg past my head, I chose not to. Got to her guard, Bonaduce passed and backed her into the cage without being too much of a dick about it and using my weight advantage. Ended up in a bastardized twister side control threatening a kimura but decided to abandon it and restart from my guard in the center. The round ran out shortly thereafter. Pretty strong for her weight class and she’ll definitely give her opponent hell.

The next two rounds were with 3 newer guys, two of which I had at least 20lbs on, one was about my weight but very green behind the ears. Starting from my guard I had a heck of a time working a rubber guard for some reason and it seems I’ve lost flexibility after a layoff. Still, I scored two omoplatas, a Mir armlock, and a reverse, head/neck/arm armbar, and something else that I forgot.

I took a round off and then rolled with Jimmy, which means I basically spent the duration of the round trying to avoid getting submitted. I maintained top guard after starting from the knees while he worked a variation of a z-guard with me working to clear his hand off my neck. Felt I did pretty well for the most part but it was probably because he wasn’t in “tap or squeal” mode because he wasn’t digging bony parts of his appendages into soft parts of my neck/face/ribs/legs/etc. I attempted a knee wedge since he had a butterfly hook but couldn’t get it and we spent a bit of time doing micro-movement fighting for micro-superior position; a battle of inches, which of course I lost. I did manage to weasel my own hand onto my bicep to improve my grip on the wedge, but I knew there was no way I could then clear the hand controlling my neck to sit back and finish the sub. Abandoned it, worked for another Bonaduce pass and nearly got triangled but managed to defend by sitting on my heels and digging my chin into my chest to keep the arm away from the artery. I figured he’d switch to an armbar and was waiting for it. Got both arms past the guard for the pass, finally, but I guess he got tired of screwing around and before I could posture up to stack, he gable-gripped my head squeezed his thighs, and started to crank the crap out of my head/neck. I tapped before the full pressure came in, which surprised me a bit, but it was undoubtedly instinct mixed with experience; I knew that was going to hurt for at least 48 hours if I tried to tough it out.

I spent the remainder of the class working positions with one of the newer guys, one I outweighed by a good bit. Started him in side control, and had him try to maintain or improve to mount. Without using too much strength I was easily getting back to guard so I impressed upon him the need to keep me from getting space and to control or react to my hip movement. Started him in mount and he did a lot better, had decent balance and defended a few upas. Back was killing me for some reason (Saturday’s squat max attempt) so I’d lost a lot of my range of movement and flexibility. He defended a double under escape well but I finally got him, as well I goddamn should have. Props to the kid though, he stayed on the mat until class was over while I spent the last 5 minutes stretching and rolling my back on a medicine ball. What the christ? I guess it’s more ice and stretching for me today.

Don’t be “That Guy”.

I realized that since I rarely use this blog like all the other jerks who feel the Internet actually cares about what they have to say, I might as well keep a record of things I find interesting or useful at the moment.

So here’s a video I’ve found helpful considering the amount of money I waste on supplements.

Make Your Own Protein Bar.