Training Journal 4.12.08

So I had been thinking of doing this run on Saturdays after a morning workout, from my apartment to the Osu/Sakae shopping district, the idea being that I could bust my ass in the workout, run over there (it’s probably about 4-5 miles or so) with my wallet in hand, and treat myself to an all-you-can-eat Brazilian lunch buffet ($15, no time limit like stupid Japanese all-you-can-eat places) and then take the subway back to the apartment and relax until evening practice.

Sadly, today was not the day to do it. I just didn’t feel like eating Brazilian food – blasphemy, I know – and I ended up idling around my apartment in the morning and working out closer to noon. Still had a good workout though – did weighted pull-ups, dips, jump squats, wall squats, the funky pull-up thing with the leg lift, and a light stretch.

Evening practice went well, too – on Saturdays I usually only go for the 830-10pm sparring session, which is a nice way to end a week. I gotta say, little things I picked up from the Rigan Machado half-guard DVD, like making a frame with the arms to prevent them from flattening you out and controlling your head, make a WORLD of difference. Before, I was too busy trying to get the underhook, and now I realize that even if I have the underhook, it doesn’t usually do me as much good against experienced guys if they’re crushing me. Especially with the bigger guys. Making more space seems to work better for me because I’ve got such long arms and legs that I can keep them away reasonably well. Even Hosokawa, the brown belt who usually passes my guard at will, was having problems with it. It’s like I’ve got a new toy to play with!

pat m.

My Gym

This is what my gym looks like.

I’m too cheap to spring for a gym membership and a BJJ gym membership, so I make do with what I have around me, and more than a little bit of inspiration from the cats at the RossTraining forums. I am slightly hindered by the fact that my living circumstances are temporary – I’m only in Japan for another 5 months – so I don’t really feel like investing the time and effort into figuring out how to build my own sandbag or anything like that. Fortunately, this country seems to love pull-up bars of all shapes and sizes. So I make do.

As you can probably tell, the gear shown above consists of:

2-liter bottles of water x 6

Nike Duffel Bag x 1

Small blue hand-towel I probably stole from my folks x 1

Tennis ball x 1

Since dealing with a weight set would be a total pain here, especially in my 6-tatami-mat apartment, I opted to recycle instead! Water weighs 1kg/liter, meaning that each of those bottles weighs about 4.4lbs apiece, and all six of them weigh approximately 26.4lbs or so. Not exactly the heaviest weight for something like a squat (though I do jump-squats holding the bag, sometimes – it’s better than nothing), but for a pull-up it adds a substantial amount of resistance. I’m at the point where I can do 10 pull-ups with the bag around my waist, but I’m worried that if I load the bag much further down the strap will break, so right now I’m opting to increase the reps a little more first. Likewise, 26.4lbs is a pretty crappy weight to bench, but if it gets added to bodyweight resistance during chest dips, then it starts looking like some more substantial work. Also, if I’m doing dumbbell swings as a finisher for a workout or part of a cardio routine, I just load the bag up with the water bottles and grab it by the two mini handles, vertically – and since the weight isn’t at the center of my grip, it works the hands differently than it would if I were using actual dumbbells.

The towel is used for pull-ups, mostly. Since BJJ is so taxing on grip strength, I’ve found it’s good for me to add the occasional grip workout to my routine. I’m working my way towards a straight towel pull-up (where you throw the towel over the pull-up bar and use it to pull yourself up) but I can’t do more than one or two with any decent form before needing to land my feet. Instead I wrap the towel around the bar and do normal pull-ups, and the thickness of the bar + towel makes my hands and forearms work much, much harder. The tennis ball is for grip, too – I just squeeze it a lot when I’m walking to/from the gym to strengthen my fingers a bit.

Of course, most of my conditioning work doesn’t require much in the way of equipment – burpees are free, and I already have running shoes and a jump-rope. To be sure, none of this is any replacement for having access to a decent weight room (oh Pitzer! How I miss your free gym access.) but it’s nice to know that I can manage a decent workout routine without hundreds of dollars of equipment.

pat m.