"Fighting is an incredibly honest form of expression. There's no real equivocation in an elbow to the jaw, no pussyfooting about the gray shadings of meaning inherent in civilized and power-shielded discourse. It's a potent tie to our immediate and ever-present animal."

Eugene S. Robinson

http://www.eugenesrobinson.com/

I have decided to change my workout plan slightly. I've not specified any goals yet, I will do that when I get bored to keep me motivated.

Monday

Pull ups
Overhead tricep extension (or dips if feeling strong)
Shrugs

Roadwork - 45 mins minimum

Wednesday

Chest fly
Single arm row
Twist crunch (dumbbell)

Roadwork - 45 mins minimum

Friday

Jumping squats
Dumbbell lunges
Turkish get-up

Roadwork - 45 mins minimum

Each exercise will generally be done in sets of 5, containing 5 reps each with 2 minutes rest between each set and 2 minutes rest between each exercise. This means each day is around an hour of exercise in total including roadwork. Roadwork is running at a slow jog, usually for minimum of 45 mins but generally no longer than 90 mins.

I will be doing all of these with the equipment available to me at home - two 10kg dumbells, two 6kg handweights and a belt which I use to hand weights from my waist. Each week I will try to post with an update as to what I can lift with each exercise. If I miss a blog update, I'm also keeping a paper diary so will update from that.

I'm doing this in order to get stronger, basically. My weakness has always been strength. Once I've reached a level of strength I am happy with in terms of exercises here, I will start doing sprint intervals and hill sprints instead of roadwork. I will also start to work on speed and co-ordination (still researching this). While I'm not training regularly in MMA or Muay Thai and not training for fighting, I might as well get better at something!

This is a list of dudes whose striking techniques I plan on dissecting in order to make myself a better fighter. I'll be making a grappling one soon too.

Low Kicks: Pat Barry; Jose Aldo

Body Kicks: Mauricio "Shogun" Rua

Head Kicks: Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic

Knees (head & body): Yasuhiro Kido (not MMA, but applicable)

Boxing: BJ Penn

I'll add to this list in future posts when it isn't 2am!

Kieran

Forgot to mention in earlier post...

I've introduced a new structure to adult classes at Arbroath Thai Boxing.  A number of students were not happy with the balance given in classes between hard graft and technique work.  My structure gives a good warm up which makes the students work hard while also warming up all the major muscle groups.  I introduced tabata after the cardio and before the stretching.  This went down well with people enjoying being pushed and getting a good sweat on.

Padwork seen students rotating partners and taking turns on the pads for teacher lead drills.  We worked on throwing the left kick and how to throw it from different angles, covering your intentions etc.  To end the session we warmed down with footwork drills and demonstrated yaang saam khum.

Hopefully we can stick to this and make the class interesting but structured in a useful way for working within a one hour time constraint.

workout routine

I plan on fighting again, hopefully MMA in the summer.  With this in mind I've decided to start working out properly again.

I'm using weights for just now as well as bodyweight but for the first few weeks I'm only using weights. This is because it's much more fun to try new things and I've never really worked out with weight before. Plus, the only goal I have just now is to get stronger, especially in my back and triceps

Monday

Concentration curl - 10 reps/3 sets
Overhead tricep extension - 10/3
Chest flie - 10/3
Front raise - 10/3

Wednesday

Shrug - 12/3
Single arm row - 12/3(each arm obviously)

Twist crunch (dumbbell) - 12/3

I was going to do pull ups as well but because I've not really done anything for a while I was sore after Monday and thought I'd ease into it.  Friday is lower body, so its looking like this:

Friday

Jumping squats (up stairs) - my stairs x3
Dumbbell lunges 12/3
Hill sprints (make it up as I go along!)