I have written several times about different aspect of workouts that many people over look. I want to take a break from that and skip ahead to one of the most comprehensive workouts around....CrossFit.
CrossFit is the exercise sport. There is even a CrossFit Games where you can compete.
So what is CrossFit, it Functional Olympic Lifting, body weight exercises, and Gymnastics strength building, all done at high intensity.
The exercises are designed to use your whole body in natural Core to extremity motion that builds upon the natural efficiency of body mechanics. The idea is that if Force= Mass x Acceleration, then the fast you move heavy weights the stronger you are. Most modern work outs deal with either increasing weight OR increasing speed. This does both.
Many of the CrossFit workouts are done with a specific amount of reps/set to be preformed for time. One other common workout set-up is to preform a set of movements for time and record the amount of Reps/Set completed.
This way as you work-out you have many benchmarks to strive for and you increase overall body fitness.
The down side to CrossFit is that if you want to go to the Gyms owned by them it will cost you a pretty penny. At $150 dollars a month it is pricey. What do you get from that, a very personal training environment, once you get in to the Gym your fellow CrossFitters become family.
The upside to CrossFit is that you don't need to go to the Gym. Most CrossFit Gyms have great websites that post the Work out of the Day. with about $50-100 you can set up a home gym with the basic equipment. I managed to make a lot of my equipment from stuff I had around the house. Add an Olympic Barbell for $30 and I was ready to roll. I still need a few pieces but it doesn't really stop me from working out.
If you want more info check out my training forum http://n2.nabble.com/Training-f3618295.html
google Crossfit and find one near you
There is way more info than I could post here but it is worth the effort to find it.
~TJ
http://ggamartialarts.com
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Post fight
So I realize how horrible I am at updating this thing and I apologize.
That being said I figured that I would blog a bit about my fight.
For me fighting was a very surreal experience. I have wanted to do it for so long and I guess the part of me that doesn't believe in myself figured I never would. I owe it to Joe that I took the opportunity when it came because he said one day not too long ago, "why haven't you had a fight yet, you keep talking about it." and it really made me think.
I'll start with the call I got from Jared, who got me the fight. He tried to get me one for august so I started preparing in July. That didn't pan out due to the changing of regulations and the fight got pushed back to Oct. In august Jared calls again, "you wanna fight?" Because of the conversation with Joe, i didn't even think "yes."
This is when I got nervous! I realized that I had to fight or I wouldn't get another chance with this promoter.When I realized what I had agreed to my body just went haywire. fortunately for me I can't keep strong emotions going for long and the nerves just burned up and faded away for a long while.
Training proceed well and for the most part uneventfully. As regular as checking your weight and working out 2-3 times a day can be. I didn't have enough live sparring so i focused more on conditioning than anything and it payed off.
Fight weekend rolled around...
I made the trip to Arkansas 10+ hours each way, with 7 of my closest friends and students we arrived on Friday late in the night.I knew that I wanted to make weight so I went for a run that evening with the guys at 10 something at night. Good times were had trying to figure out which way to go in a new tome in the dark ....lol. I couldn't sleep very well and was up at walmart very early the next morning. Only Thandi was awake so he went with me. After that another weight cutting session before I could eat something. Made weight at the hotel and breakfast. At the weigh-ins I came in at 198.8 , my opponent came in at 203 and had to cut some so the running and sweating helped me tremendously. we hung around at the Fight Center for a little while just getting used to it and then went back to the hotel to relax.
we left for the fighters meeting around 4:00pm. The fights didn't start until 7 but there were lines to stand in and paperwork to do, oddly enough it reminded me of the Marine Corps and allowed me to relax and forget about what I was there for. I don't recall a lot of what happened in that time, it was mostly hurry up and wait. I met some really nice people there, including the coach in charge of wrapping hands for all the fighters from Inferno MMA. he offered to wrap my hands and he did an amazing job. I will have video of it posted soon on YouTube and ggamartialarts.com. by the time I got my hands wrapped and gloves on I Had about 20 minutes till my fight. Stephen and Jeff helped me get warmed up and loose, applied Vaseline to my face and Landon gave me a quick massage.
it was go time...
I was the first to enter, and let em tell you what nothing can prepare you for the feeling of a cage door shutting you in with another human being on the other side. I only had time for one thought.... He can't hit as hard a Caleb, who is one of my training partners. after that it started and ended in the slowest 3 minutes of my life. He hit me first, hard. It was a wake up call, the first punch that lands murders your thought process and robs you of the ability to think. I could hear my corners talking, I couldn't understand them but somehow my body could obey. I remember one time hearing "keep your hands up" and not understanding what they said until I saw my hands in front of my face.
I won't claim that it was the prettiest fight of the night, only the bloodiest. Very shortly after the bell rung he hit me square in the nose, if felt like a plumber had installed a faucet under my nose. I remember blowing out and seeing the blood spray in my peripheral vision. from there it was all throwing bombs.
I had trouble keeping my mouth piece in, it cam out twice and I almost lost the fight. I think it was mainly due the fact that it was a heat activated fitted mouth piece and it had been sitting in the ice bucket, the stupid thing shrank! next time I will have a custom mouth piece from the dentist.
I won't lie he hit me like a tone of bricks, and one time he even had me rocked pretty bad. I recovered due to my conditioning and kept coming forward. by now we had trade some heavy shots, my left jab kept most of his harder shots away. My job/cross/kick combo was working well too. Toward the end I landed a double hook combo that rocked him, I could hear my corners come unglued. I thought they we yelling "go,go,go.." but like I said hearing was not a function my body was wasting energy on. They were yelling "attack, attack...." In any case I did both, this is one of the moments I was happiest with my performance when I watched the video. In my opinion too many people don't know how to keep going once they have their opponent rocked. I felt like a shark to blood in the water. I couldn't feel the hits that landed, didn't have trouble breathing, didn't really know what I was doing. I just kept moving forward. There was a moment when he started fighting back but I was already in a punching frenzy. Once he turned away from me I just kept going until the Ref. stopped it just before the bell rang.
It was an unbelievable feeling! I hugged the other fighter and almost left the cage before they announce me as the winner. My mind was still in the cage I couldn't believe it was over and I won.
I will be doing that again.
I feel like now I am an instructor of Martial Arts who as stepped out on my own and now have individual accomplishments in my own right. I feel legitimate for the first time. And if you don't know me well enough to know that I have some severe self-confidence issues, I did. I don't anymore. This was one of the single most altering experiences in my life!
Much love to Brian Hawkins and Solid Rock MMA, it takes guts to lock yourself in the cage with another fighter. Good Luck next time!
Thanks again to Inferno MMA and Kaleb Palnk for an awesome show!!
Sensei TJ Fernandez
GGA Martial Arts
That being said I figured that I would blog a bit about my fight.
For me fighting was a very surreal experience. I have wanted to do it for so long and I guess the part of me that doesn't believe in myself figured I never would. I owe it to Joe that I took the opportunity when it came because he said one day not too long ago, "why haven't you had a fight yet, you keep talking about it." and it really made me think.
I'll start with the call I got from Jared, who got me the fight. He tried to get me one for august so I started preparing in July. That didn't pan out due to the changing of regulations and the fight got pushed back to Oct. In august Jared calls again, "you wanna fight?" Because of the conversation with Joe, i didn't even think "yes."
This is when I got nervous! I realized that I had to fight or I wouldn't get another chance with this promoter.When I realized what I had agreed to my body just went haywire. fortunately for me I can't keep strong emotions going for long and the nerves just burned up and faded away for a long while.
Training proceed well and for the most part uneventfully. As regular as checking your weight and working out 2-3 times a day can be. I didn't have enough live sparring so i focused more on conditioning than anything and it payed off.
Fight weekend rolled around...
I made the trip to Arkansas 10+ hours each way, with 7 of my closest friends and students we arrived on Friday late in the night.I knew that I wanted to make weight so I went for a run that evening with the guys at 10 something at night. Good times were had trying to figure out which way to go in a new tome in the dark ....lol. I couldn't sleep very well and was up at walmart very early the next morning. Only Thandi was awake so he went with me. After that another weight cutting session before I could eat something. Made weight at the hotel and breakfast. At the weigh-ins I came in at 198.8 , my opponent came in at 203 and had to cut some so the running and sweating helped me tremendously. we hung around at the Fight Center for a little while just getting used to it and then went back to the hotel to relax.
we left for the fighters meeting around 4:00pm. The fights didn't start until 7 but there were lines to stand in and paperwork to do, oddly enough it reminded me of the Marine Corps and allowed me to relax and forget about what I was there for. I don't recall a lot of what happened in that time, it was mostly hurry up and wait. I met some really nice people there, including the coach in charge of wrapping hands for all the fighters from Inferno MMA. he offered to wrap my hands and he did an amazing job. I will have video of it posted soon on YouTube and ggamartialarts.com. by the time I got my hands wrapped and gloves on I Had about 20 minutes till my fight. Stephen and Jeff helped me get warmed up and loose, applied Vaseline to my face and Landon gave me a quick massage.
it was go time...
I was the first to enter, and let em tell you what nothing can prepare you for the feeling of a cage door shutting you in with another human being on the other side. I only had time for one thought.... He can't hit as hard a Caleb, who is one of my training partners. after that it started and ended in the slowest 3 minutes of my life. He hit me first, hard. It was a wake up call, the first punch that lands murders your thought process and robs you of the ability to think. I could hear my corners talking, I couldn't understand them but somehow my body could obey. I remember one time hearing "keep your hands up" and not understanding what they said until I saw my hands in front of my face.
I won't claim that it was the prettiest fight of the night, only the bloodiest. Very shortly after the bell rung he hit me square in the nose, if felt like a plumber had installed a faucet under my nose. I remember blowing out and seeing the blood spray in my peripheral vision. from there it was all throwing bombs.
I had trouble keeping my mouth piece in, it cam out twice and I almost lost the fight. I think it was mainly due the fact that it was a heat activated fitted mouth piece and it had been sitting in the ice bucket, the stupid thing shrank! next time I will have a custom mouth piece from the dentist.
I won't lie he hit me like a tone of bricks, and one time he even had me rocked pretty bad. I recovered due to my conditioning and kept coming forward. by now we had trade some heavy shots, my left jab kept most of his harder shots away. My job/cross/kick combo was working well too. Toward the end I landed a double hook combo that rocked him, I could hear my corners come unglued. I thought they we yelling "go,go,go.." but like I said hearing was not a function my body was wasting energy on. They were yelling "attack, attack...." In any case I did both, this is one of the moments I was happiest with my performance when I watched the video. In my opinion too many people don't know how to keep going once they have their opponent rocked. I felt like a shark to blood in the water. I couldn't feel the hits that landed, didn't have trouble breathing, didn't really know what I was doing. I just kept moving forward. There was a moment when he started fighting back but I was already in a punching frenzy. Once he turned away from me I just kept going until the Ref. stopped it just before the bell rang.
It was an unbelievable feeling! I hugged the other fighter and almost left the cage before they announce me as the winner. My mind was still in the cage I couldn't believe it was over and I won.
I will be doing that again.
I feel like now I am an instructor of Martial Arts who as stepped out on my own and now have individual accomplishments in my own right. I feel legitimate for the first time. And if you don't know me well enough to know that I have some severe self-confidence issues, I did. I don't anymore. This was one of the single most altering experiences in my life!
Much love to Brian Hawkins and Solid Rock MMA, it takes guts to lock yourself in the cage with another fighter. Good Luck next time!
Thanks again to Inferno MMA and Kaleb Palnk for an awesome show!!
Sensei TJ Fernandez
GGA Martial Arts
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
