Be like a...

Cactus

It has humility, but it is not submissive. It grows where no other plant will grow. It does not complain when the sun bakes it back or the wind tears it from the cliffs or drowns it in the dry sand of the desert or when it is thirsty. When the rains come it stores water for the hard times to come.

In good times and in bad it will still flower.
It protects itself against danger, but harms no other plant.
It adapts perfectly to almost any environment.
It has patience and enjoys solitude. In Mexico there is a certain type of cactus that flowers only once every hundred years and at night.
It is a plant of patience, solitude, love and madness, ugliness and beauty, toughness and gentleness.

Today was a (close enough) rest day. All I did was spar at the Dog Pound from 10am-11am. Resting up...at coach's orders.



A picture I made in Costa Rica. (quote from "The Power of One")

Block Better

Click on the image above and you'll actually be able to see the pictures

While I was down in Costa Rica, I was very fortunate to cross paths with Sasa--a pro Serbian kickboxer. He first met me when I was using the boxing bag at the youth hostel and made a comment on the infected cuts I had. Somehow from there, I got the courage to ask him to train me. Little did I know we would later build a gym together and a lasting friendship. My training with Sasa took place on Dominical beach under the shade of some palm trees where we cut away the weeds with a machete. Sasa taught me bits and pieces from all fighting styles and I still have scars on my knuckles from punching the wooden post to get my form right.

"Ok, muchacha, you want to spar?" he asked with a bit of a devious smile. I grinned confidently and nodded. I mean, I had experience sparring back in my boxing club, I could hold my own. I don't remember much from those first several sparring sessions besides a flurry of punches, kicks, and chokes that at first left me sobbing with dirt and sand in my eyes (jiu jitsu in sand is just not fun. Ever).





For the first time in my life I realized what it felt like to get hit with a bare fist and upadded shin. Throughout all my training I was so safe--headgear, wraps, gloves, mouthguard. But in a third world country where you may need these skills to survive, that sort of training that coddled me wasn't helping me. A good analogy is modern playgrounds with all their safe, blisterproof, padded flooring compared to old school playgrounds erected from a pile of wood chips with tire swings, wooden platforms, bars, and mary-go-rounds. It was getting a few hard barefist hits that ironically made me feel more alive and in touch with reality.


What I do remember most is expecting Sasa to apologize or go easier on me, or at least explain what I did wrong. He patted me on the head and his advice was two words long: "block better." Everyone I knew in the small town got used to seeing me looking like a mud monster post training. Good thing I had the ocean only a few feet away.

I was thinking about those moments with Sasa today after MMA practice at the Dog Pound tonight. The teammates go easy on me (which I am thankful for, not only because I'd be a crumpled mound of bones and flesh but also because I am able to learn counters when they slow down or intentionally bait me in for a move). Yet every once in a while I'll get a solid hit from one of the guys. I find my automatic thought to be: "block better...move better." Simple as that.

I found that philosophy extends beyond the ring...including control of your emotions through a difficult or uncertain period of time. To not let other people's actions effect you. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion. But as Emerson once wrote, "Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they can never enter, and with their hand on the doorlatch they die outside." There is a lot to be learned from getting hit in a fight or, similarly, abandoned by someone you care about. You do not have control of these events. In the end, you have the choice of how to react. Give in to your misery? Or rise above it. Learn from it. The more pain you go through, the stronger you will be when you recover. And for the next time...
Block better.

The fastest path to mastery in a skill, in my case MMA fighting, is by doing it. Now I'll talk about the power of visualization at some point, but sometimes you need a punch in the face to teach you to keep your hands up. Or a painful sparring session to push your limits. "You need that sometimes," said one of the pros I sparred with a few weeks back who gave me my first bloody nose in a while. Call me a masochist of you will, but I love the satisfied feeling of a good sparring session.

Looks like I'll be getting another chance in a little bit less than 10 hours.

Crossfit and Parkour Day

"Who wants to do a workout with me tomorrow?"

I posted that on facebook sometime around midnight. I got a few replies, but the one that caught my eye was Jack Cotter inviting me to Crossfit Montana to try it out at 8:30AM. The workout today was a shared load...which means you have a partner and you can split it up however you want to. But, you cannot both be working at the same time. I was partnered with a girl named Genvieve. She didn't want to do rope climb or pushups and I wasn't too keep on pounding the pavement for a run. So I did all 10 rope climbs and 100 pushups. The rest of the workout we split 50/50. I stayed for a while after and some of the guys helped me with my muscle-ups.

Right after that, I drove to Golds for a bit more:

1) Prowler push down--> 5 pushups and explosive transition into prowler push back (10 reps)

2) Dueling ropes for 30 seconds (3 sets)

3) 100 sledgehammer hits on the tire

Then, I took Sonic for his promised Blue Mountain walk. I just got back from the Mismo Jam Missoula Parkour Group puts on. It was fun...just made me really nostalgic for Zombiefit. I encourage you all to check out that site. There are workouts of the day posted and plenty of fitness and diet tips. I enjoy watching them grow and gain national/international attention.

A large part of parkour is the community. It is not a competitive sport; rather, everyone is there to help each other improve. I met some really cool new people at the jam though. Worked mostly on backflips off a wall, wall spins, and precisions.

During this Mismo Jam, Michael and I thought about planning a Journey to the End of the Night Missoula. THIS is what I did in Chicago: http://chicag0.org/ The shortest way to describe it is, its a cross between capture the flag, tag, and a scavenger hunt lasting from about 4pm until midnight or later taking place across the whole city! You have a map, checkpoints, and chasers out to get you. I was with my parkour buddies so we traversed fences crawled through trenches and took the craziest route! Most memorable was walking behind Wolf in a trench by the junkyard full of crushed cars and this huge claw crusher machine.

Me: "Uh...Jesse? This might not be such a good idea."
Wolf: "Why"
Me: "Well..you know what comes with junkyards....Junkyard dogs."

I was preparing myself to get eaten alive, yes. But somehow we made it to the next checkpoint where some people were giving out candy under a bridge. And to get the stamp on our map, we had to answer a 70s trivia question. All three of us looked at each other and laughed as we failed miserably. We're not fossils!

So I'll keep you posted on how our plans go. It was so fun, its worth the trip home to Chicago for 2011 Journey to the End of the Night!
http://www.chicag0.org/journey/Journ2010final.html

Just...Play

Today I went to Blue Mountain with my dog. I don't bring a phone or watch. I prefer it to be timeless. I ran, climbed, did pullups, pushups, squats... An instinctively random workout. I just simply took the time to go outside and play.

One of the biggest things lacking in American culture is play; doing something unscripted, unregulated, solely because it's entertaining.

I see a lot of people going to the gyms trying to attain a certain "look" (be in surfer, model, bodybuilder, MMA fighter, etc).

It's about the appearance. The illusion. Bodybuilders spend all their time pumping and building large, pretty muscles to create the façade of strength and masculinity with actual physical capability being only a secondary consideration at best.

I say, rather than trying to attain the appearance of one of these things, become them. Stop trying to gain the upper back development of a climber and go climbing. Forget about your workout routine that is supposed to give you the lean, ripped physique of a surfer and go surfing.

MMA fighters are possibly the greatest example of all-around athleticism. Thousands of people go to gyms and perform "MMA workouts" in hopes of developing the physical appearance of a fighter. Stop it. Go join an MMA gym and train in Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Live a life with some substance. With some actual experiences.

These are real worlds. Real rocks, real water, real physical struggle.

Here, you will actually fall. You will feel the the cold sting of snow on your skin when you slip sprinting up a hill, the bark of trees may cut your hands, you will feel what it is like for another person to submit you, to have control of your body to such an extent that without your tapping a signal of submission, he or she could break your arm or choke you to death.

This is what life feels like!

So get lost.

Lose yourself. As critical as I have long touted the process of meeting your challenges head on and embracing the many stresses of life, I will again emphasize the dire need for that lofty, abstract concept I so often personally struggle with—balance. “All or nothing” has long been the name of my game, but to be honest, no matter how high the stakes and no matter how intense the tension, I have always found that I need to be outdoors or do something unusual and out of the ordinary (i.e. parkour) to restore this balance.

“Down there we know, the streets we know, but up here? Nobody’s been here.”
-David Belle

Fear, Risk, Desire

Today's Training:

I woke up at 5:30AM to walk my dog and wake up before meeting Jory at the Dog Pound around 7:15AM for a workout.

(It was a long one...I'll try to recreate it as best as I can)

Warmup: 5 minutes of jump rope, a lot of track-type exercises, medicine ball passes, bear crawls, 1-legged squats, back bends

Powerlifting: Front Squats, Clean and Press (split squat stance), Push Press into Overhead Squat

Plyometrics: Lunge jumps, scissor jumps, bounding (1-legged), duck walks

I know I'm missing quite a lot, but it was the most I can recall

10AM: Clinch and Half Step Sparring. I need to work more on clinch!

2-3PM: I went to Matt's MMA 101 class on campus. It was nice to go over the details of some of the jiu jitsu moves again

4PM: Met my friend Brooke at Gold's and started teaching her the basics of boxing

6:30PM: Back to the Dog Pound for some light bag work

When I got home, a quick workout Ross Enamait style:

4 Rounds as fast as possible of:

10 Burpees

10 Pullups

10 Squats

10 Pushups

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And now, my section of thought for the day: (be warned, its a long one!)

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden turns to his passengers in a car and asks them, "What do you want to do before you die?" As Tyler lets go of the wheel and the car veers off the freeway, two men are able to immediately answer.

"Build a house."

"Paint a self portrait."

Jack, the fourth man in the vehicle, yells in bewilderment and fear for Tyler to turn the wheel and steer back onto the road.

Tyler ignores him and says, "You have to know the answer to this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?"

"I don’t know, I wouldn’t feel anything good about my life, is that what you want to hear me say? Fine. Come on!"

It's at that moment that Jack has an epiphany and begins to see what Tyler has been talking about.

This relates to all of us. Why did you get out of bed this morning? What is your passion in life?

The word passion is derived from the Latin verb patoir meaning "to suffer and endure." Eventually the word came to mean not only suffering in itself, but also the thing that sustains a person who suffers; what enables them to keep going.

My passion is fighting. To quote fight club again, "how much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?"

I was introduced to boxing by pure accident. One night I was training for a bodybuilding show at my college gym and a man walked up to me and started a conversation. He asked if I had ever considered boxing. I shrugged it off, never thinking I'd show up. Well, obviously I did and it changed my life. Gordon Marino is one of my mentors and has changed by outlook in life. Though I have yet to fight for him in a boxing match, he has been "in my corner" throughout all the hardships and down times. He spent countless hours working mitts with me late at night or inviting me over to his house or out to lunch to talk things through. One of the most incredible people I have met in my life.

*Check out his blog here:

http://www.ringsideboxingshow.com/GordonMarinoBLOG.html*

To those who think MMA and boxing are violent and senseless, I will try to change your mind by quoting from one of Coach Marino's articles that appeared in the New York Times:

"The deeper you get into the fights, the more you may discover about things that would seem at first blush to have nothing to do with boxing. Lessons in spacing and leverage, or in holding part of oneself in reserve even when hotly engaged, are lessons not only in how one boxer reckons with another but also in how one person reckons with another. The fights teach many such lessons -- about virtues and limits of craft, about the need to impart meaning to hard facts by enfolding them in stories and spectacle, about getting hurt and getting old, about distance and intimacy, and especially about education itself: Boxing conducts an endless workshop in the teaching and learning of knowledge with consequences."

"According to Aristotle, courage is a mean between fearlessness and excessive fearfulness. The capacity to tolerate fear is essential to leading a moral life, but it is hard to learn how to keep your moral compass under pressure when you are cosseted from every fear. Boxing gives people practice in being afraid. There are, of course, plenty of brave thugs. Physical courage by no means guarantees the imagination that standing up for a principle might entail. However, in a tight moral spot I would be more inclined to trust someone who has felt like he or she was going under than someone who has experienced danger only vicariously, on the couch watching videos."

Before I started boxing, I was a timid kid who played into all of society's expectations. Training and fighting taught me to embrace fear...it is the excitement of life! You take a risk and sure, it could end poorly.

Like me moving out to Montana. I always get the "what brought you to Montana?" question.

For simplicity sake I usually come up with some reason or another. The truth? After experiencing freedom in Costa Rica, I wanted to start over somewhere new. Random, perhaps. Its thrilling! If I wake up in a different place, in a different time...am I a different person?

Was I afraid to move?! Hell yes! And I had a 3 day drive to ponder "what ifs" in my mind. But I convinced myself this was what I wanted. After all, you create your own reality. I believe it was Milton who wrote, "The mind is a powerful thing, it can make a heaven out of hell, and a hell out of heaven."

Before I had a place to live, I found a place to train. I had heard of the Dog Pound six years ago when I visited Missoula for all of 24 hours or so. I vividly remember walking in the first day and meeting Matt Powers, the head coach. The Dog Pound is inside a warehouse by a Budweiser distributor. First impression? Awesome. Looks like my kind of place.

For those of you who know me better, I've always talked about the idea of finding a place to call home. I always said, if you make that "home" within yourself then you are never lost. Over the past six months I've lived here (seems like so much more!) the people at the Dog Pound have become my family. Matt is also a mentor; he cares about his fighters beyond their statistical performance. For my first boxing fight in Montana, what made me the happiest was not that I won; rather, it was that I had a coach who genuinely cared about me in my corner.

A person to whom I've admitted some of my fears, weaknesses, and insecurities. Oh...and finally, someone I could tell one of my dreams that I've kept secret for so long.

I want to be a pro MMA fighter. He didn't smirk or tell me it was impossible.

He lets me train with the guys and pushes me to improve (but also encourages me to balance the physical with the social/mental aspects of life as I tend to get tunnel vision and obsessed once I have a goal in mind)

(view looking up as I climbed the Carleton Water Tower in 2009)

So I have friends right now who graduated from Carleton with me...who are more "successful" by the societal standard of job security or whatnot. But sometimes I wonder. If they were in that car with Tyler, could they answer the question? What do you want to BE? I've asked a few, and the most common answer is "I don't know."

A large part of my happiness stems from the fact that I know what I want. Perhaps I don't quite know how to connect the dots between where I am now and my end goal, but there isn't supposed to be a set path anyhow. Many gave me the quizzical "you're crazy" look when I told them I was moving to Montana. Well, so far I can say it was one of the best decisions I've made. I'm happy here. I have "family" (family is not denoted by blood ties) in Illinois, Minnesota, Costa Rica, and now in Missoula.

Dog Pound Family in Missoula, Montana

"Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most."—Chuck Palahniuk

Don't Let the Days Go By....

Today's Training:
10 AM: Boxing/Kickboxing (only Tim, Frank, Lloyd, and Jaris were there)
12PM: Grappling

This evening I ran 3 miles at Golds and stretched. Tomorrow is going to be brutal.
-------------------------


Most of your boundaries and limits are self created by your mind. Society locks you into its grid of pre-built sidewalks, infrastructure, separate rooms, and a 'proper' way to maneuver through town and life.

Today, Britnie, a good friend of mine, braided my hair for my upcoming fight. During that time we talked a lot about living contrary to what society defines as "success." I told her stories about Africa...and she mentioned her long term plans of going there to visit a penpal. I have not met too many people that are like-minded in the pursuit of enjoying life and taking risks if need be. Surviving without the comforts we are afforded daily. The things you own end up owning you. This is a topic I will elaborate on more in another blog entry. Its really one of the defining topics of the book I'm writing, so it would be redundant if I went on and on about it here.

She did a really good job, didn't she? I like it

Since I'm getting up very early tomorrow to workout with Jory, and THIS time I'm not oversleeping... I'll leave you guys with a short note:

The sun rises every day, but how often do you take the time to notice it? Have you ever felt like it was something so far away as to be nearly impossible?

Sunrise on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica

When was the last time you felt a sense of true, deep appreciation for something? When we're stripped of the nonsense we surround our modern lives with, the things that really matter in our lives are very simple. The warmth of the sun, the glow of a loved one's smile, laughing uncontrollably with your friends.

Take a moment today to recognize that and truly appreciate something. (To be continued tomorrow...)

Life is Just a Lullaby

Today is the closest I've gotten to a "rest" day.
10AM: Grappling
12PM: MMA sparring

Stayed after for a bit to stretch and talk to my friend, Michelle.
I don't know...just wasn't feeling that edge today. Probably lack of sleep.

What I like to call the "hunger (and these days, also anger)" edge helps me keep my stamina throughout the day.

I'm following Ori Hofmekler's Warrior Diet, where you basically eat one meal a day at the end of the day. Its brutal at first, but I do pretty well with it. Until 7 pm hits. That seems to be the magic time when I get really hungry and lose energy. I'm experimenting with how this effects muscle retention and keep updates. Though I'm not convinced this is the best way to go for fighting performance. I was introduced to this first by Wolf (Jesse Anderson). I had told him about the paleo diet I was doing...and he took it one step further.

Tomorrow is going to busy day. I just got back from Al's and Vic's. It was Paul's 32nd birthday. But once again...I can't...sleep...yet.

(moonrise in Namibia, Africa 2007)

It's hard to comprehend one person's struggle with sleep when you are the type of person that drifts into the land of dreams the instant your head comes in contact with the pillow. You can never imagine how it feels to be trapped between complete awareness, an alertness so acute that no minute sound or movement goes unnoticed, and the sweet oblivion that sleep rewards, a peaceful, senseless rejuvenation of body, heart, and mind.

At night, the whole world seems to have retired and the distant revving of a car's engine and far away flicker of a lonesome light are the only races of human life left...the only evidence that people ever existed here. The streets are utterly deserted and the wind howls noisily as though reclaiming its nocturnal haunt. The hanging light glimmers powerfully like a beacon, shining more brightly than you could ever remember. Emitting a white, piercing light that encompasses you in its glow, illuminating the contours of your face and hiding the rest that lingers ever closer.

The clock chimes loudly and seems to weaken under the unremitting hum of the apartment, empty of every sign of life despite you being hunched in a shadowy corner.

Life at night for me is something extremely hard to put into words. Your senses work in overdrive as your mind attempts to organize the day's events with a tinge of naive apprehension that something would have transformed into faith and beauty; failing every time.

Depending on who you are, night can be a congruent experience of the previous day filled with noise and activity, full of action, and full of life. I consider myself a thinker so the pain becomes easier to bear as the night draws on--and the ghosts formed by the ethereal light of normality prance to shine hope into hopeless, faith into faithless, love into broken.

Nights consist of failed attempts to understand nothing and everything. With the strange, unforgiving darkness and deceiving silence, the night is unpredictable; anything could happen. You've say there night after night since you can remember and NOTHING ever changes...everything is simply the same yet unrecognizably different. The last day has stolen another part of your soul and you feel the crevice that has been left gradually become filled with the familiar unexplained mist that encircles your very being every moment of every day. You shiver as icy fingers play that haunted melody on your spine...taunted echoes of forgiveness and regret bombard your ears as you try desperately to forget past events that threaten the complete destruction of everything you once thought to be solid.

But what is it mean to be solid, anyhow? Nothing lasts forever. Everything, thus, is fluid.

"Sleep away and dream a dream, life is just a lullaby"

Master is Different Cat

Its 1:35 AM and I'm still awake. I struggle with insomnia often. Its surprising sometimes I have as much energy as I do to work out so much. Mostly it is that I cannot quiet my mind.

When I was in Costa Rica, Sasa once told me, "Master is different cat." I never understood it at the time. I think I do, now.

A recent e-mail from Sasa (my mentor, trainer, and co-founder of our Martial Arts gym):

HOLA ROMA , DO NOT BE SEAD LIFE IS GREAT , changese happening every second and we cannot bring back a past no mether how great it was but we can ahve great present lesrning from our past, you remmember MASTER IS DEFFERENT CAT , and Im gatting there. Im probobly goning tommorow to look for GOLD agin YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS, AKCION GRRRRRRRRRRR , So head up smoke one and paint tha is greattrip .MAHI , MAHI ask about you he is groing his hair long for you only sides Girl think about it and write me back yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee SASA

Haha! Sasa is a great guy. And for reference sake, "Mahi Mahi" is the nickname of this tico who worked at Roca Verde and claimed he was totally in love with me. Sasa just loves to give me shit about it. Apparently...STILL!

------------

This morning:
10AM: ground and pound
11AM: mitt work
12PM: kickboxing sparring

Around 4:30 pm Jory, Travis, and I drove up to Hamilton. We thought we were late, but the 5 pm class got canceled. Instead I got to see Brandon's pot dispensary shop.

Training there was a LOT of fun! I put together everything to try a little MMA with Brandon and if felt amazing. I need to do this more often. I like his teaching style also. Plus I got to see Amanda again.
I was dead tired by 9pm. Jory drove us back and I fell asleep a little bit in the back seat.

Came home...ate...and now I'm just unable to get to bed yet.

Adapt or Die

It is nature's cruelest law...intended to remind you that there is only now. Tomorrow is a dream and a day away. Can you go after what you want? Yes, only if you are motivated. The real question is, are you? Or do you believe that tomorrow will come and bring the motivation with it? Yeah well while you are waiting for tomorrow, I will be doing tire flips and sparring today to turn pro while you are watching me do so on TV.

Be real. Don’t be fake. Be smart. Don’t waste your time. Find that spark inside you and make it the biggest fucking fire around. Let it burn out of control. Take control of your destination and never give it up. Stop making excuses. Make it work. All the pleasures in life cannot compare to living your dream. If you dream of being big, strong, beating your opponents, competing, and winning then go do it. Get off your ass. The only thing that I fear is the thought that one day I may not have a dream, so I will not let this one go until I get all that I want. Take it. Fuck everything else.

Workout of the Day

1) 20 minutes of the following:
10 sledgehammer swings per arm + tire flip down and back [20 minute block]
surprisingly, I completed the whole 20 minutes with hardly any rest!
Maybe just enough to say hi to Jory. :)

2) 10 minutes of supersetting pullups and lunges
total pullups: 30
total lunges: 120

3) 10 minutes of supersetting pushups with ab wheel rollouts
total ab wheel rollouts: 70
total pushups: 60

Today was a lighter day. I'm resting up a bit for some intense fight training this week. I alternated between the steam room and cold shower before leaving Gold's to meet Marina and work on our business plan.

Comfort

"Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul,
and then walks grinning in the funeral."
-Kahlil Gibran

Lately I've been really nostalgic about my time in Costa Rica. I've come to realize that comfort ironically produces the most misery. I have never been happier in my life than in those moments either in Africa or Costa Rica when I was living each day to survive. Perhaps its just as simple as Maslov's Heirarchy of Needs. When you don't have guaranteed food, water, shelter, etc...you don't have the time nor capacity to be sad or depressed about anything because in comparison, it just doesn't matter. The biggest mistake "developed" countries make is to mistake comfort for happiness...

I started the day off with a cold shower. Reminds me of my days up in Providencia (near Cerro do la Muerte...which for you non Spanish speakers translates to "Mountain of Death") where I had to do burpees to get warm enough to take a frigid bath in the river. So comparably this is nothing! I didn't go to sleep until 5AM this morning. I was celebrating Brooke's birthday last night at the Badlander.

(cat ears made by Brooke ;) )
Came home...slept for four hours...walked the dog and ran four miles at an 8min/mile pace with varying incline. Today I decided to let my friends decide my workout. In the spirit of Wolf's postings on facebook, I did something similar. Here were the results

Copying Jesse 'Wolf' Anderson's idea for a randomized workout: Until 3 PM for every "like" of this status, I will do 10 squats, 10 pushups, 5 pullups, 1 handstand pushup.

• Jade 'Ecko' Amber, Dogpound Fight Gear, Jack Cotter and 24 others like this.
• • 

    Jesse Ward If only it was possible to like things more than once.

    11 hours ago ·
  • 

    Roma 'Panther' Pawelek ‎@Jesse Ward: DISLIKE! ;p
    @Wolf: I don't doubt it for a moment. Excellent.

    9 hours ago ·

I keep my promises....tonight I did a grand total of:

230 Squats
230 Pushups
115 Pullups
23 Handstand Pushups

Not all at once...but throughout the day. Which included a South Park marathon and catch up session with Cami and Karisa, which was a lot of fun! I finally bought my own sledgehammer again. Walked into Golds at 7pm with it. Got some strange looks, yeah. Garrett and Marina showed up shortly after and we put together what I will call

The Starfish Workout

we went through all the exercises twice. Ideally aiming for 30 seconds per station, but it was
hard to watch the clock so usually took longer. Starfish (aka Garrett) did the workout with a gas mask and a backpack full of weights!

1) 5 sledgehammer swings per arm then tire flip down and back


2) Balance on medicine ball (aka, ankle breaker)


3) Medicine ball pushups (where you switch the ball arm to arm)

4) Resistance band twists

5) Resistance band squat and press

6) Balancing on your shins on the big bouncy ball

7) Lunges

8) Wall Sit

9) Bear Crawls

10) Medicine ball slams (12 lb medicine ball)

Yep, this picture says it all.

"The price of memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings"
-Counting Crows

I often have found that the best memories are the ones that make me saddest when I reflect on them. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Costa Rica and the people I miss out there. Every place you visit, you find a piece of yourself but in exchange leave a part of yourself behind. While I was down there, I think I experienced the purest happiness thus far in my life. I will return.

Speaking of memories, I decided to wear my Vibrams on a run through Blue Mountain with my dog to visit the fort . Starting with driving up the snow-covered road in my rear wheel drive, manual, no snow tire mustang. The cold seeps right through the soles of those Vibrams. Nope, I'm not in Costa Rica anymore, that's for sure. But I figured it was a good test of mental toughness. Once I made it up the mountain where there was less snow it wasn't so bad.

At the Dog Pound today, it was all girls. So a lot of groundwork technique. At the end, I rolled with Matt again. His advice and biggest critique to me was to flow more...use less muscle. I did, and he told me I did very well and was impressed. I'll bask in that for a little while longer ;) A compliment like that from a coach I respect means a lot to me.

Cardio for the day:

If that's a bit hard to read:

Two times through as fast as possible:
25 Flying Knees per leg
25 Thai Kicks per leg
25 Shot-Sprawl-Shot
25 Box Knees extending per leg
25 Spiderman Burpees

Stayed after to hit the bag until the gym got cold. I'm forcing myself to work through discomfort, and for me, my most hated discomfort is not being warm enough. Starting tomorrow, cold showers.

"Overtraining"

"There is no such thing as overtraining...just under-resting"
-Mark Toorock (or Wolf)

The minute you think of the word overtraining in the gym, conciously or not, you are placing limits on your workout. These limits attempt to hold you back and stop progression through the fear of overtraining.

That said, I've found myself falling asleep and taking random half hour naps or so. For those of you who know me, I pretty much NEVER take a nap in the middle of the day.


Woke up at 6AM excited to train with Jory (one of my favorite pros at the Dog Pound). Turns out he was too sore and was taking the day off so postponed it until the next day.

Went to Golds:
Ran 2 miles
50 reps of Bench Press at 115lbs

Went to the Dog Pound and trained technique and sparring from 10am to 1pm. For the first time, several girls stayed after to spar! Matt said I went a bit too hard on them. It was fun, though!

Around 6, I picked up Maria and went to Golds. Drew, one of the trainers, let us borrow the Prowler. Marina and I alternated going up and down for 12 minutes, first with 90lbs added then we upped it to 180 lbs.




Finally....it was time to go to the GFS and catch up with Marina a bit! The home...food...shower....spending time online. 6:00 AM is going to come awfully fast.... I hope to workout with Jory! Hope I'm not too dead tired though.

No Excuses

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem."
Emil Zatopek

Many mornings lately I've been waking up tired, sore, and sometimes a bit unmotivated. Sometimes I fall into the trap of convincing myself I "need" an off day. I guess I'm a very goal oriented person and if I don't write those down and keep them in mind sticking to a plan becomes much more difficult. The mind and body adapt to both comfort and deprivation. Against the typical training philosophy, I'm going to purposefully overtrain. Force my body to adapt. No more excuses to skip lifting by telling myself I want to "save my energy" for fight training. No. Working through the pain and soreness will make me a better fighter.

I'm supposed to go to yoga with my friend Brooke at 11:30 today. Haven't heard from her...honestly part of me is dreading yoga. I seem to have no patience for stretching. I feel like Matt Powers, hahaha.


Yay! No Yoga. Marina texted me asking if I was going to the gym conveniently as I was writing out my workout:

Movement 1: Body weight squats and Sledgehammer hits on the tire [20 mins]
Squats: 18 sets in 270 reps
Sledgehammer: 92/92 in 7 reps

Movement 2: Still Legged Deadlifts (95lbs) [20 mins]
77 reps in 14 sets

Movement 3: Body weight lunges [15 mins]
150 in 5 sets

I deviated slightly from my workout since Garrett and Marina were doing a circuit and I talked to Taylor, one of the trainers (I guess he knew me), and asked to borrow the sledgehammer. I also got permission from him to use the other equipment. Sweet! Leg day is brutal. I felt really weak even though I drank some Surge. The whole adjusted Warrior Diet is still difficult. I find myself hungry and weak during workouts with a tendency to way overeat at night.

Training for MMA

Its been a very long time since I've made a post here, but I figured it is the perfect place to keep track of my workouts.

I have my first MMA fight February 25th, 2011 at the Adams Center in Missoula, Montana. I'm determined to win this one. But that means I have a lot of work ahead of me. This log will mostly be lifting and conditioning workouts though perhaps I'll add thoughts on skill training sporadically.

Lifting: I'm doing an EDT (escalating density training) program slightly altered to my preference. Its kicking my ass.

January 15, 2011

Bench Day

Movement 1: Wide Grip Bench [20 min time block]
with 95 lbs completed: 102 reps in 16 sets

Movement 2: Close Grip Bench [20 min time block]
with 65 lbs completed: 142 reps in 18 sets *(too easy. will increase weight next time)

Movement 3: Lat Pull Down [15 min time block]
with 75 lbs completed: 118 reps in 18 sets

Movement 4: Clean and Press (65 lbs)
with 65 lbs completed: 50 reps in 9 sets

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Before I was supposed to meet Garrett and Marina at Golds again for another workout, I went to Blue Mountain with Sonic with the intention of doing hill springs. In my Vibram Five Fingers. END POORLY. It was snowy and icy...oh, and those shoes are not meant for cold weather. So the "hill springs" turned into a dog walk.
----
Back to Golds. Garrett, Marina, and I did two circuit training routines

Routine #1:
We used the perimeter of the room to progress through these exercises 3 times as fast as possible.

1) Tire Flip down and back
2) Reverse frog jumps
3) At the corner switch to front frog jumps
4) 10 burpees onto a bench
5) Crossover Pushups
6) Lunges
...and then you were back at the tire again.

Routine #2:
This was a Garrett creation; a bit more focused on strength over conditioning. Garrett let me wear his gas mask; in his words, take away Oxygen and you'll see how much harder something is. How very true! I felt like I had asthma. Or was a longtime smoker. But great addition to make it a bigger challenge. I will have to ask him to try that again sometime. Of course, we got some pretty strange looks. I could always say I was wearing it because Travis walked into the room...

Go through the following 3 times:
1) Tire flip down and back
2) Shoulder circles with 45lb plate (10 each way)
3) 10 Dumbbell Clean and Press (40 lb)
4) 10 Incline Pushups
5) 20 Russian Twists
6) 10 of Marina's "Starfish" exercises (hold weights in your hands and touch hand to opposite foot)