this is how we do -- one session in the gym
Normally, the MMA/BJJ/wrestling/Muay Thai posts end up on my potlimitfighter blog, but I wanted to get the general audience in on this one.
I just wrapped up the Monday Muay Thai (Advanced) class. It was pretty much the most horrendous thing, ever. I don't really mean that in a bad way, though.
It's hard to get a sense watching documentaries, or reading articles, just how hard professional athletes train. Our Monday and Wednesday Muay Thai class is a mix of pro fighters, amateur fighters and just wannabe warriors (that'd be me), but it's designed to condition us all like pros.
I know Mondays are tough, so I didn't go to the daytime class today. But I did get stir-crazy sitting at my computer, so I decided to go lift weights. Big mistake there. I don't really lift weights, but I've been trying to gain some weight and trying to squeeze it into my schedule. Those deadlifts and squats would come back to haunt me 8 hours later.
The first thirty minutes of class is relatively easy. It's just warmups, running, skipping, shadowboxing, light calisthenics. Heart rate probably stays around 130-160 the whole time. Then there is the padwork, which is tough. We do six combinations and we do them pretty much continuously. Then at the end of it, we do a series of kicks all the way down the room on one leg, 40 kicks at the end, and do it again on the other leg. All told it's probably about 80 kicks on each leg without stopping. After that, I doubled over in exhaustion and crawled over to the sidelines. I'm gasping for air; my lungs can't get enough of it and my heart can't get the oxygen to move around fast enough. I was embarrassed to be the only guy completely exhausted. After all, I'm the smallest guy in the room, so my cardio should not be the worst. I'm thin and long for my weight, endurance should be my strong suit, but I haven't been doing this explosive HIIT stuff at all. My jiujitsu cardio is great these days; I can roll for hours, but that is push-pull endurance more than explosive endurance. But as embarrassing as it was to be doubled over, too tired to even take a sip from my water bottle, there was nothing I could do about it. I was just not in shape like my teammates were in shape.
Sparring actually came as a welcome reprieve. I think we did about six or eight rounds of sparring; I can't keep track. It was pretty light and I was able to recover a bit during this period. I was able to use skill to try to slow people down, but mostly I took my lumps. In the very last round I injured my thumb (recurring injury first suffered in boxing) and had to stop sparring, but luckily (?) it was time for conditioning. "Optional" conditioning, said our trainer, Paul. This is where one decides, to put it indelicately, if one is going to man up or bitch out. It would be so easy to walk away. There is no penalty for leaving.
But I thought, what would a pro do? A pro would stay, and gut it out.
"I'm going to regret this," I said out loud, to no one in particular.
The next 30 minutes were nothing short of horrible. Tag-team sprints across the room, jump squats, medicine ball tosses, pushups, sprawls, myriad abdominal exercises, frog jumps around the perimeter of the room, something called "crucifix walks", and supersets of pretty much every permutation of the above. I thought Paul was going to end the class about six times before he actually did. After every set of every exercise I thought, "certainly that has to be the last one. He can't possibly expect us to do more."
But more we did. My body parts were taking turns cramping -- my calves, thighs, abs. It wasn't even just me, by this point. Everyone was in hell. The room sounded less like grown men exercising than zoo animals being tortured for sport. And these were not the grunts you hear from that guy at the fitness centre on his fifth set of bicep curls. These were almost cries for mercy; desperate groans getting us through every individual rep, praying it would be the last one. We all started the conditioning part with our shirts on; despite the gym being 15 degrees Celsius at best, we finished up class looking like greased-up auditions for a firefighter calendar. I'm one of the least sweaty guys I know, but when I picked up my t-shirt after class, it felt like it weighed about four pounds.
Right now as I'm writing this post from the comfort of my office chair, a solid hour after stepping off the mats, my heart rate is still sitting at 96 beats per minute. (I wake up in the morning in the high 50s or low 60s.) This is what pros do. Not elite pros, mind you. The guys and girls you watch on TV -- in whatever sport they're doing -- have workloads that would put us to shame. It's kind of scary. I understand why, in those canned pre-fight interviews, fighters are always saying things like, "there's no way he's trained as hard as me." Surely, it is at least possible that the other guy has trained as hard or harder. But we have the tendency to think of our own stress as being special. It's the same reason poker pros tell bad beat stories and think no one could run as bad as they do. Intellectually, they know that of course everyone else takes these beats, and runs this bad from time to time. Emotionally though, we tell ourselves that our suffering is the worst suffering. The professional fighter thinks that there's no way the other guy could be training this hard. There's no way his trainer is as sadistic as his trainer. When you train to complete exhaustion, it's hard to imagine anything beyond that.
In some ways, I consider myself an outsider in the advanced class. Not because I am not treated as part of the team, because I certainly am, but rather because the work ethic of these guys puts me to shame. To me, today was worthy of a lengthy blog post. To them, it was another Monday. I don't feel like I've earned the right to stand next to them yet, but I will. After all, what excuse do I have?
I just wrapped up the Monday Muay Thai (Advanced) class. It was pretty much the most horrendous thing, ever. I don't really mean that in a bad way, though.
It's hard to get a sense watching documentaries, or reading articles, just how hard professional athletes train. Our Monday and Wednesday Muay Thai class is a mix of pro fighters, amateur fighters and just wannabe warriors (that'd be me), but it's designed to condition us all like pros.
I know Mondays are tough, so I didn't go to the daytime class today. But I did get stir-crazy sitting at my computer, so I decided to go lift weights. Big mistake there. I don't really lift weights, but I've been trying to gain some weight and trying to squeeze it into my schedule. Those deadlifts and squats would come back to haunt me 8 hours later.
The first thirty minutes of class is relatively easy. It's just warmups, running, skipping, shadowboxing, light calisthenics. Heart rate probably stays around 130-160 the whole time. Then there is the padwork, which is tough. We do six combinations and we do them pretty much continuously. Then at the end of it, we do a series of kicks all the way down the room on one leg, 40 kicks at the end, and do it again on the other leg. All told it's probably about 80 kicks on each leg without stopping. After that, I doubled over in exhaustion and crawled over to the sidelines. I'm gasping for air; my lungs can't get enough of it and my heart can't get the oxygen to move around fast enough. I was embarrassed to be the only guy completely exhausted. After all, I'm the smallest guy in the room, so my cardio should not be the worst. I'm thin and long for my weight, endurance should be my strong suit, but I haven't been doing this explosive HIIT stuff at all. My jiujitsu cardio is great these days; I can roll for hours, but that is push-pull endurance more than explosive endurance. But as embarrassing as it was to be doubled over, too tired to even take a sip from my water bottle, there was nothing I could do about it. I was just not in shape like my teammates were in shape.
Sparring actually came as a welcome reprieve. I think we did about six or eight rounds of sparring; I can't keep track. It was pretty light and I was able to recover a bit during this period. I was able to use skill to try to slow people down, but mostly I took my lumps. In the very last round I injured my thumb (recurring injury first suffered in boxing) and had to stop sparring, but luckily (?) it was time for conditioning. "Optional" conditioning, said our trainer, Paul. This is where one decides, to put it indelicately, if one is going to man up or bitch out. It would be so easy to walk away. There is no penalty for leaving.
But I thought, what would a pro do? A pro would stay, and gut it out.
"I'm going to regret this," I said out loud, to no one in particular.
The next 30 minutes were nothing short of horrible. Tag-team sprints across the room, jump squats, medicine ball tosses, pushups, sprawls, myriad abdominal exercises, frog jumps around the perimeter of the room, something called "crucifix walks", and supersets of pretty much every permutation of the above. I thought Paul was going to end the class about six times before he actually did. After every set of every exercise I thought, "certainly that has to be the last one. He can't possibly expect us to do more."
But more we did. My body parts were taking turns cramping -- my calves, thighs, abs. It wasn't even just me, by this point. Everyone was in hell. The room sounded less like grown men exercising than zoo animals being tortured for sport. And these were not the grunts you hear from that guy at the fitness centre on his fifth set of bicep curls. These were almost cries for mercy; desperate groans getting us through every individual rep, praying it would be the last one. We all started the conditioning part with our shirts on; despite the gym being 15 degrees Celsius at best, we finished up class looking like greased-up auditions for a firefighter calendar. I'm one of the least sweaty guys I know, but when I picked up my t-shirt after class, it felt like it weighed about four pounds.
Right now as I'm writing this post from the comfort of my office chair, a solid hour after stepping off the mats, my heart rate is still sitting at 96 beats per minute. (I wake up in the morning in the high 50s or low 60s.) This is what pros do. Not elite pros, mind you. The guys and girls you watch on TV -- in whatever sport they're doing -- have workloads that would put us to shame. It's kind of scary. I understand why, in those canned pre-fight interviews, fighters are always saying things like, "there's no way he's trained as hard as me." Surely, it is at least possible that the other guy has trained as hard or harder. But we have the tendency to think of our own stress as being special. It's the same reason poker pros tell bad beat stories and think no one could run as bad as they do. Intellectually, they know that of course everyone else takes these beats, and runs this bad from time to time. Emotionally though, we tell ourselves that our suffering is the worst suffering. The professional fighter thinks that there's no way the other guy could be training this hard. There's no way his trainer is as sadistic as his trainer. When you train to complete exhaustion, it's hard to imagine anything beyond that.
In some ways, I consider myself an outsider in the advanced class. Not because I am not treated as part of the team, because I certainly am, but rather because the work ethic of these guys puts me to shame. To me, today was worthy of a lengthy blog post. To them, it was another Monday. I don't feel like I've earned the right to stand next to them yet, but I will. After all, what excuse do I have?