Fear...

...makes the wolf bigger than he is.  ~German Proverb

Today Mini-Brock and The Dude braved the North Texas heat and visited The Bat Dojo outside (my back yard...the BatYard???)

I had IM'd Mini-Brock earlier today and he said something about, "Never doing cardio blah blah blah...".
My response and I quote, "oh i have big plans...painful plans...explosive lung plans"
His exact response,"...wut....it's always like a painful surprise"
A final terse reply of, "Yes :)"    (that should have been an evil, nasty devil grin with teeth gnashing and slobber spewing, but I'm not quite sure how to spell that in emoticon... I may need a new keyboard, keyed in a pseudo Alien dialect in which I have to lay face down on the device and dry hump it until my emoticon is formed.)

Back to the task at hand. Today's festivities has no name. It just sucks. Lots of running, lots carrying stuff while running and lots of cursing. The basic course is a star shape with some sort of flattened umlaut over it's head. The looks on the faces of my two comrades was of total disbelief and confusion of the task today. Hysterical!

Here's what we did:

Starting in the center. Marked by a chewed up frisbee thingy.
1. Run your ass to the tire. 30 ft.
2. Drag the tire and your posterior to the sledgehammer. (100 ft ish)
3. Hit the stupid tire 20 times (10 left, 10 right).
4. Drag the tire back (don't forget to bring your ass).
5. Run back to the frisbee thingy.
6. Run 60ft to the blue 10lb mini ball.
7. Smash it in to the ground 20 times.
8. Carrying it, run back the frisbee and drop it off.
9. Run to the ghetto Bulgarian Bag. (30ft)
10. Swing it 360 degrees vertically, with arms somewhat straight. 10 times left, 10 times right.
11. Run back, carrying that stupid thing and drop it onto the frisbee thingy.
 12. Run to the kettle ball. (20ft)
13. Do 10 left and 10 right kettleball swings.
14. Carry it back and drop it off.
15. Run to the 24lb plate. (30ft)
16. Do 1980's styled aerobic, jumping jacks with it...20.
17. Run back, yes bring the plate too...
 18. Run off and pick up the 40lb big fat Atlas ball. I love that thing. Bring it back to the frisbee. (40ft)
19. Now undo everything you just did, without the auxiliary exercises.
20. Run the miniball back, sprint back to center.
21. Run the ghetto bag back.
22. Run the kettle ball back.
23. Run the plate back.
24. Run the Atlas ball back.
25. Finish by running back over the frisbee thingy!


Good grief, this was tough! Average times were right at 7 minutes. No one hurled, but we all felt like it. The heat mixed with sprinting, then lifting and swinging was a perfect combination for some oral spewage. I'm not sure if anyone noticed that my Offspring t-shirt had an appropriate slogan on it which read,"shit is f****d up tour". Perfect. :)

This shot is titled, "The Faces of Uncertainty and Fear"

Tire Dragging

Tire Smashing

Bag Flinging

The End

Mark!
p.s. I don't know if you guys know this, but you can click on the images for bigger versions!

Static

I can barely walk. Yesterday's wrestling leg work was killer and I figured today's workout should be the exact opposite. Going for a wrestler's shot is a dynamic, explosive leg movement. Today we'll be doing static, non-moving exercises.

There's a lot to be said about sitting around doing nothing. I'm all for it! In this case, the sitting around is under intense load. Mostly your body weight. For you heavy weights, these exercises suck! For us tiny people, it's not nearly as bad, but it's easy to add some weight.

So here's what we did today:
30 seconds - pull up bar hang straight
10 seconds of rest

30 seconds - pull up bar hang full pull up
10 seconds of rest
30 seconds - ring hangs straight (your feet are kicked out so it looks like an upside down pushup)
10 seconds of rest
30 seconds - ring hangs, bent arms (REALLY TOUGH)
10 seconds of rest
30 seconds - push up hold straight arms
10 seconds of rest
30 seconds - push up bent arms
10 seconds of rest
60 seconds - Guard hang
Done!

This workout wasn't super tough. The ring hangs with the bent arms were pretty rough on the grips. There was plenty of grunting and groaning to be performed by Mini-Brock and I.

Afterwards we worked on some halfguard and full guard sneakiness. :)

Here's some images!

 Mini-Brock

  

Mini-Brock

  Mini-Brock

Mini-me

Mini-me

Mini-Me

 Mark!

Deja Vu

Yesterday I didn't do squat. After a long day of semi-productive work, I came back to the hotel, and right into bed...I knew I had to wake up super early as it's a 2 hour drive to the airport...in D.C. traffic. Which could mean 6 hours...

So I make it to the airport in record time! The airline even offered me standby on an earlier flight, which I gladly accepted as a reward for not staying up late and getting my ass out of bed early. Upon boarding my flight a weird sensation of deja vu ensued.
Let's run through the numbers:

1. Same aircraft type as Monday.
2. Same exact aisle seat as Monday.
3. Same exact chair compadre as Monday.

I slightly lied, it wasn't the same woman as last time, but rather another magically gigantic derriere. This time bigger. MUCH BIGGER. I approached my chair. I stuffed my bag into the overhead and looked at the dire seating arrangement. Below me sat a mid forties, African American female of mammoth proportions. In our seating section were two seats, hers was the window, mine was the aisle. I couldn't actually see the center armrest. I was certain her ass crack had swallowed it. I wasn't at all surprised. Had it been one of those Twiggy thin models, I would have been totally amazed.

I contemplated how I was going to tell her the 1/8th of my seat left was mine and I would have to somehow squeeze in. I casually ask her for my seat belt. No kidding, not even exaggerating the next bit. She reaches down with her right arm and lifts up her ginormous right ass cheek and asks for me to fish that thing out. As my breakfast came up to my throat I simultaneously belched out a feeble, "Ok." I wasn't sure which hand I should use to reach in. BJJ and most martial arts tell you to never extend an arm and I was about to do just that. I also had to pick a sacrificial hand. My left had served me well batting off flies, holding shields, speed reloading my pistols and general slapping people around. My right hand was my power hand. I write with that thing, poke people in the eyes and I'm damn good with chopsticks with it. So I choose the left hand, knowing if I lose it, my new nick name would be lefty. I reach quickly into the bear trap, it was dark, humid and oddly warm in there. I rummaged around quickly. Keep in mind my posture was also poor as I was bent over; my face about 2.5 inches from her right boob.

I find my seat belt and quickly yank that thing from it's fate. I couldn't imagine being that poor seat belt end, trapped under that butt cheek. eww.

I squeeze into my 1/8th of a seat. Snap my seatbelt in. She relaxes a bit and lets the mass expand. It's crushing me from the left. I now find my self in side mount, while sitting on an airplane! This is what fighting Rickson must be like. Simultaneously surrounded on all sides, the more you squirm the worse it gets.

We take off and I endure.

2.5 hours later it's time to land and I can no longer feel anything below my seat belt, or my left side. I think I may have had a partial stroke. The only remaining fully operational bit of me working was my right earlobe and most of my shooting hand.

We land. As soon as the seatbelt light goes out, I reach with my only good hand and pop that thing loose. 40000 lbs of side ways pressure on my left, crushing me into my seatbelt and right hand armrest. Once the seatbelt buckle pops, I launch! A nice loud pop and her flubber blasted me into the aisle. Stumbling because I can't feel my legs, I manage to catch myself by clawing the nearest old lady's face and dragging myself up. Wobbly I stand. I'm alive! Hell yeah! I made it! The blood rushed back to the left side of my face and brain and my vision was restored! Woohoo! Time to get the heck out of here.

I get home, get a hair cut and get ready for wrestling practice. One doesn't miss out when a two time Olympic wrestler is offering volumes of knowledge.

So here's today's workout:

1. We spend two hours on perfecting double and single leg take downs. Very very very very very cool stuff. He mixes in MMA and BJJ concepts so that we can connect the dots to our other disciplines.
2. Tire change.

Tire change? Yes I had a left rear tire explode on the way home. Tired, nasty, thirst and sweaty I had to change out a tire. Of course, I had to push the pace. I changed that thing FAST :)

Mark!

Food

Halfway through my work trip to Maryland and itching to get back the bat dojo and do something productive. After some semi-productive work today I went back to hotel and ate a simple meal of scallops, clams and potatoes. Leaving the hotel restaurant I decided for a long powerwalk around the nearby marina. Passing the pool, I noticed my portly nemesis from yesterday splashing about having fun. For a second I considered grabbing my shorts to offer him a rematch. But he was enjoying himself and I was happy to see the little fat dude exercising. Unfortunalty, vacation is probably the only time he ever exercises.

As part of my walk I needed to buy a few things. One of which was a razor. I go to the little quickie mart and find the razor aisle. Actually more of small rack of random junk. I only needed one razor, not a twenty pack. The woman's razors one could buy in pairs for about a $1. Yet, I'm not about to buy a set of pink razors! So I spend the $12 for a twenty pack of tough guy razors, with all sorts of marketing about how manly I'll be and how many woman will be following me back to my hotel...

So I wanted to babble just a bit about food. I think I eat pretty well. I've always had good guidance from my parents. Both are some form of semi-hippy, quasi-new age types. Growing up, fast food and soda was not common. That behavior followed me as I left home.

Here's my basic rules:
No soda
No candy, cookies, cakes
No lard, heavy fats, creams
No "candy" breakfast cereals (lucky charms, coco puffs etc...)
Limited beef, pork, lamb
Very lean cuts of chicken, turkey
Eat fish
Eat a ton of veggies
Drink loads of water
Eat fish oil

Here's my other concept:
Protein and carbohydrates must be balanced to control insulin response. Wander through the snack aisle of any typical food shop and the "food" will be 99% carbohydrates and 1% other useless crap. Even protein bars and drinks have a ratio over 3 to 1 carbs to protein. For port-workout recovery a 4:1 ratio is often recommended. What I want is my non recovery meals/snacks to be fairly balanced. I would really like to hold off adult onset diabetes. You know, the kind grandma gets for having a shitty, carb heavy diet. Exactly the type of diabetes which eventually led to my grandmothers death many years ago.

At the quickie mart I found a bag of seedless grapes and lean beef jerky. These two should balance a bit with each other to keep my insulin from blasting in one direction or the other.

So I'm not perfect by any means. On my work flights in our jets, they pack in cookies, cakes and other sweets. Do I eat a cookie? Heck yeah! Do I eat five? Maybe in a month. I'm not worried about the little cheater snacks once in a while.

There is an interesting Crossfit video of a famous Crossfit Games winner and his diet. In the video he didn't show what he ate to stay in shape, rather he filmed his cheat day! Him and a few friends piled a kitchen table with gallons of ice cream and other junk. My arteries were cringing at the sight of it all. The video ended with this shredded out, champion athlete showing off the empty ice cream containers. There is a great debate as the whether cheat meals are psychological or physiological beneficial. What do you think?

I can't wait to get home and start eating correctly again. Hotel meals and living off of quickie mart food is wrecking my guts.

Mark

Don't Ever %#@#$% Quit!

Today was a fairly boring day of meetings. You know, the ad-hoc ones in a hallway infront of the woman's bathroom. Just because one travels 50,000 miles sitting next to Jabba the Hut's wife, doesn't necessarily reflect in the schedules of others. It's like herding kittens in my job.

Upon my escape, I promptly ate at one of the bazillian seafood restaurants. Each one seems to have their specialty. Today's restaurant had crabs for $1 and homemade crab bisque. I love soups. From a can, a pot, a slow cooker or even superheated via Vitamix. I ate their soup and it was good. I also ordered some coconut shrimp. My eyes were bigger than my stomach and I was barely able to compact it all down. I felt like hurling on my drive to the hotel.

Once at my accomodations I grabbed my Vulkan shorts and my Pan Ams 2009 t-shirt and went for a nice long walk. Partly because I needed to buy a toothbrush. The one the front desk gave me was apparently a refurbished unit from Ebay. As I brushed, the bristles would pop out and it felt like I had a semi-digested birds nest in my mouth.

The walk was part of my warmup and to help my coconut shrimp find their way past my pyloric sphincter and into my intestines. I still felt like hurling.

I survived my walk and grabbed my towel from my room and dropped off my shiny, new unused toothbrush. I wandered down to the outdoor pool.

I absolutely love water. I swear I was a sea anemonie in a former life or perhaps a sea cucumber. There exists some weird aquatic gene in my family as everyone in my family are all natural swimmers. My great great grandfather was a stevodore on the docks in New York and in Italy. Old family stories tell of him swimming so far out into the ocean, the lifeguards would send boats out to retreive him. Upon reaching my aquatic ancestor, he would ask politely if THEY needed help!

As you can imagine, today's workout involved water. The pool was a nice big affair about 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. I jumped in the lukewarm water and started to immediately go into full survival water treading mode. It's also in my genes to not want to drown. Of course after 20 seconds of flailing around randomly, I simply put my feet down. Stupid deep end was only 5ft...

A quick story...I am crew on various military aircraft. I fly in the back, I'm not a pilot. They always refuse to give me a chance at the flight controls, or play with sharp objects in flight. It's cool shit, I get to play military for a day..all the time. One particular military aircraft required me to endure full up water survival school. Which consisted of parachute landings in water, parachute dragging in water, dunker tanks, spin chairs, and escape hatches all in or under water; often blindfolded.  Swimming underwater, blindfolded through various obstacles is tough stuff! All of this in full flightsuit, combat boots, helmet, an out of order life preserver unit, gloves and a survival vest. It was actually quite fun. Except for one part: water treading. This, my friends, is where I nearly drowned along with a whole class full of civilians and young, tough military recruits. At first I though things were going ok, I'm 3/4's fish by genetic makeup, I should be able to handle this. We had to swim our asses across an Olympic sized pool and then begin water treading. Tired from the long swim, we began flopping madly around. Keep in mind, I exercise. A lot! Infact I even borrowed the pool card from my strength and conditioning coach. I would go swim in my flight suit for practice while onlookers thought I was a retard. But at this pool, desperation ensued as I quickly realized that I was no longer a shark in the water but rather a brick. I hate dying, it pisses me off. After several failed attempts at breathing, while splashing wildy, I was just barely able to inflate my life preserver and survive. This was probably the closest to actually dying I've been. Unfortunately, the guys I was with were technically dead as they were pulled from the pool unable to continue the exercise. They didn't quit, they were pulled. Which, is quite honorable.

Back at the hotel pool I started doing laps. One lap of breast stroke, one lap of free style, and one lap of back stroke(just kicking). I think I did about a dozen laps at a moderate pace. I wasn't too winded but my coconut shrimp were now firmly lodged into the the first major curve in my intestinal tract.  The feeling of having to projectile spew my dinner had mostly subsided.

In the pool, along with me were three old ladies babbling about apple fritters and knitting. Also in the pool was this fat kid. About 10 years old, I don't want to sound mean; he was morbidly obese. Too many video games and heavy carb McDonalds. Bascially, your average American kid. The little twerp kept eyeing me as if I was a threat to his studliness. I would launch forward with my poor freestyle technique and he would try to do the same. He was probably bored and had no one to play with. Males have an instinctual threat anlaysis and dominance behavior. It started when we were sperm, knocking the other fellas out of the way, racing toward the goal. The first one wins, the others shall die.

Like a pair of teenagers in our rides at a stop light, we revved our engines. Two sports cars geared up for a lighting fast take off to see who's best. In actuality it was more of a Doughnut Van vs a Honda Civic. Both poorly setup for what was about to happen. My little rotund challenger eyeballed the end of the pool as I readied myself for what was going to be his first major asskicking at a real sport. I launched forward, he launched forward. The little chump actually had the lead for a microsecond. I slammed past him grinning, blowing out pool water, which was probably 6% urine as there were tons of kiddies in the pool before my warmup walk. I made it to the end of the pool (in record time I'm sure) and looked back to survey the devastation I had left behind. Where the hell was the fat kid? I looked around, he was gone! Thinking he had gassed and drowned, I quickly stuck my head under water, subjecting my eyes to the pee soaked, over chlorinated water. I didn't see his fat rolls stuck in an intake vent, he must be above the water. I popped my head up and saw that he had quit. He realized he was outclassed and jumped out of the pool and ran over to his mom while she smoked a cigarette.
     
One thing I cannot stand is a quitter, even in the face of certain defeat. This disgusted me as the feeling of hurling quickly came back. I grabbed my towel and dried myself off. Atleast the lifeguard chickie was cute.

Mark

I'm punching this out in a Maryland hotel on my spiffy iPad. I've been traveling all day for work. I had tried to get upgraded to biz class, but so did 876 other people. 875 of whom had higher airline status than I. One poor chump is below me, I hate to be that guy! The nearly 3 hours in flight crushed up next to a caloric over achieving lady was awesome. She had to lift the armrest up so that she could fit in her seat. A nice, soft chunk of her kidney flesh flopped over into my lap, which made for a handy iPad stand, while keeping my thigh sweaty and warm.
I survived, to drive 2 hours to the facility I'll be visiting. It's one of the centers for Naval Aviation. Being a closet aviation geek, I was grinning from ear to ear as F-18's and choppers were shredding the air. For dinner, I sat outside at a dockside restaurant. While I ate some fresh seafood, two choppers flew right overhead and practiced an in-air refueling! How awesome is that?!?! Mmmmm the soft mist of diesel on my crab cakes was scrumptious!
At the hotel, I dropped my gear on the floor and laid down on the bed to rest for a few moments. I blinked, looked at the clock and 5 hours had disappeared from my life! Laying there Apocalyse Now style, thinking to myself, "Nice one bonehead, it's 10pm, you're wide awake and you have nothing to throw or break!"

RESTDAY!
Restdays are VERY important. Much like rest cycles in interval training. One needs these things to recover, rebuild or grow back that ACL one tore while running from the cops. I take calculated rest days ALL the time. My longest was just recently at nearly 2 months. I still did basic stuff, such as long walks through airports with heavy luggage. I'm a firm believer rest days make you stronger physically and mentally. Rest days are also my mental training days. I dig through the net and read everything. I search for answers to my many BJJ sticking points and ponder them. Here's also my chance to spend hours visualizing in my mind in full HD 1080p! I relieve past fights, try new things, develop new attacks and new counters. I asked a psychologist once, "What is the best way to visualize for sports?" He said studies suggest spinning around in 3D looking at yourself from the spectator's viewpoint to be highly beneficial.
Rest days are my injury recovery days. If I feel like something may get wrecked while working out, I'll abstain. There is a catch though, rest days are not for rehabilitation. I believe you've got to get off your ass and do something with the damaged appendage, whether that be physical therapy or slapping a Tito Ortiz blow up doll.
In 2000, I was racing a motorcycle in central Australia. Of course, going obnoxious speeds and silly me decided that the right hand turn ahead was attemptable at warp factor 5. I was right! I attempted it with glory and failure! I sheared the left hand side of my bike off, whilst doing a right hand turn...yeah figure that one out. Along with the bike remodel, my left shoulder helped soften the blow.
At the hospital, I was hoping for something simple like a dislocated shoulder. Pop that bad boy back in, I'll be as good as new! The doc came in, saw that I was now able to scratch my eyelid with my collarbone said, "Well mate, looks like you have a separated AC joint. Go home and keep it mobile, don't want it freezing up on you." Holy crap man! The oxygen levels in my head dumped and I nearly passed out. They put me on some O2 and sent me home. I immediately loaded up a backpack with books to help compress the joint back into place. Once I was able, I started doing pushups, and pull ups. The joint is 100% now. It still makes funny noises, but that's probably bits of my liver and tail lights embedded from the crash.

So I've rambled a bit, incoherently I'm sure. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a workout in. They have a nice pool with some great genetic material bound together by bikini's :)

Mark!

Farming Gone Bad!

Today I dug through the internet looking up formulas for force, impact energy, kinetic vs potential energy all that stuff we learned in high school/college science classes...but forgot. My goal was to calculate how hard my 25 lbs basketballs hit when I slammed them onto the cement. Some online calculator did say I used 56 calories to pick that bastard up. So I guess that's kinda cool. Annoyingly, my poor math skills demonstrated a wildly impressive variance in solutions. One time I came up with over 5200 Newtons or about 12000 lbs of force. Uh, nope, the next time I did the equation I came up with a more reasonable 595 lbs of force. Yet, who cares how much energy is expended and impacted? All I know is I get really tired doing it and enjoy the hell out of breaking shit. Here's a nice little shot of some DIY carnage.

Multiple layers of Gorilla Tape didn't help. It somewhat reminded me of the Death Star upon explosion...while sandblasting my most sacred of nether regions.

Today's carnival was twice the pain and suffering as last. Four minutes is all we had to do. This time I had no clue as the the length of time, it was purely task oriented. Get shit done as fast as possible, I don't care how much you cheat, lie, steal or bribe the neighbor kid to do it. Just get it done.

The task was simple. Fill my wheelbarrow with a bunch of random heavy crap, run it to the other end of my half acre, unload one piece, and do an exercise with it. Then, run the wheelbarrow back, unload another piece, do something freakin' cool with it and run the wheelbarrow back... The only stipulation: the heavy as hell, wobbly as a drunk, 35lb cement atlas ball had to be the first in and the last out.

Here's the junk to carry:
25 lb plate
10 lbs mini ball
14.5 lb kettle ball
25 lb Cement Atlas ball

Here's the field of battle. My dog Zulu making sure the area is secure, while The Dude paces out the length. I think he said about 25 yards. But his legs are nine feet long, so it's probably 3000 ft.

The Dude with the wheelbarrow filled and running.

 Unload the miniball and slam that thing 10 times.

Unloading the heavy bastard.

  Me doing my best monkey impression while swinging the kettelball wildy.

 Carnage. Keep going!

 Sinking the miniball. The soft dirt let us dig holes about 4 inches deep! Yes, we're proud! :)

Here's what we did:
1. Load the wheelbarrow with all tortures.
2. Run the wheelbarrow to the other end (25-ish yards)
3. Unload a single random torture
     a. Miniball - slam it 10 times
     b. Kettleball - swing it 10 times each arm
     c. Plate - 360 rotates around the head 10 times each direction.
4. Repeat #2 then #3 until the wheelbarrow is empty.
5. Run the wheelbarrow back and reload the Atlas ball.
6. Run the wheelbarrow back to a torture, do the exercise then load it.
7. Run back and grab another torture and so on until the wheelbarrow is full again.
8. Unload the whole mess. done! 


Between the two of us, we had an average of 7 minutes. Back and forth running, then loading/unloading and exercises. It was exhausting! I must stress perfect loading form is IMPORTANT. You will hurt your back! Plus the stupid wheelbarrow kept falling over dumping the gear! What a kickass accidental improvement to the whole mess! You had to finish your set then reload all your junk! It sucked! It was wicked!

One last thing...here's a picture I took just as we were done warming up. Perhaps as a reminder of our purpose today? Maybe it's symbolism demonstrating that the struggle for life and death is a constant? Or the fight to survive is all around us, at all times? I don't know, but it was an interesting matchup.

This smaller fighter won by North South choke! Good job buddy!

-Mark!

P.s. I know, I was supposed to show some Bulgarian Bag stuff but it was a bit muddy out and didn't really want them too sloppy as I prefer to use them on my (clean!) mats. Next time!

Sore Core and DIY Junk

Yes, from yesterday's workout, my core is sore! Pain expanding from my chest hair and penetrating into what feels like my duodenum. I'm either about to give birth to a nematode-gazelle hybrid or I'm just sore.

I really believe in the static and hold position type exercises i.e the plank and incline one armed holdups on the rings. Great stuff!

Onto today's crap. There are two reasons why I like having my own Bat Dojo:

1. Making up shit to do.
2. Making shit to do.

Today is #2, as I'm resting from #1.

A few days ago I took one of our shattered 10 lb rubber medicine balls and filled it with concrete. I searched through the internets for Atlas ball howtos etc.. There were a few, but nothing interesting.
Taking advantage of the gaping crack in the ball, I decided to stuff some commercial grade, crack resistant concrete in it's gullet.
During creation of this Atlas ball I stuffed in one of those 4 inch diameter foam balls from the local craft store. This helped lighten the Atlas ball, as I wasn't sure how heavy it would be once completed. I was afraid of creating something too heavy, creating some sort of gravity well or black hole. An alternative would be to mix Perlite in with the concrete mix. Which I believe would be the better way.

Another added element was the polyester strings from a rope I pulled apart. These get mixed in with the concrete to act as mini-rebars. Probably didn't do shit! It was recommended on an Atlas ball forum and thought I would give a go. Next ball, I'll skip that part...

Here's a pic of the ball in progress, using the amazing jumpbox as my impromptu worktable.

Here's the demon device in it's glory! 40lbs of pure hate!

You'll notice the snot along the crack in the ball. That is foam sealer. I put that in because one major issue with concrete is it has 1/4 inch rocks in it. These rocks fall off, rattle around and fall out the crack. I learned this with my mini-kettle bells. Annoys the hell out of me. So I sealed them in! I think next time I'll use a hot melt glue gun, as the foam is fairly messy.

So does it do it's job? Am I now a gigantic Viking warrior ready for invasion of Northen Europe armed with nothing more than an axe and a pointed helmet? Not quite! But it is fun to lug around and drop in the grass. The rubbery surface is comfortable and provides excellent grip. DO NOT USE THESE BALLS ON CONCRETE OR YOUR MATS! DO NOT USE THESE BALLS TO PLAY HACKY SACK, FOOS BALL OR AS AMMO IN YOUR PAINT BALL GUN! KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN AND CHIHUAHUAS!

Onto project number duex.
Bulgarian sandbags are pretty cool. Surprisingly, Bulgarian sandbags are rarely sold. Everyone just builds their own. In fact I tried to find a supplier for these and could not find one. Don't flood me with emails with where to buy them, I don't care. I'm with the crowd on this one, DIY is the best way and here's my recipe for success.

Get yourself a roll of that frenchdrain/leech line pipe filter stuff. Looks like a 6 inch diameter sock about 1000 feet long. Probably costs you about $5. Then buy some small, smooth rocks. A bag of which is about $3 at the local builders supply. Get yourself a dozen medium zip ties.

Take some tube sock about 4 feet long, tie a knot on one end, fill it with 8 lbs of rocks. Then choke it off with two zip ties. Fill the sock again with 8 lbs, choke it off again and keep going until you have four 8 lb sections. Tie off the last section with nothing more than a basic knot.

At this point, take your handy hose and soak the segmented worm to blow out the sand and dust particles from the rock. It will tint your sock red. Who cares? If you train properly, your blood and the blood of others will tint it some more.

Once the water dried, I took three more 4 ft sections and stuffed them inside of each other creating one big sock. I figured with all the slinging at each other with this thing it would need all the support it could get!
I then tied a simple knot on one end, then dropped the weight into the mess. Tied it off on the other end and it's done. Note: the inner sock holding the weight is not part of the knot of the outer three socks. This allows the rockbag to drop and squish down into one end, changing it's shape. Which is AWESOME! Spin it around and it slips to the other end. Grab both ends and it levels out. How badass is that! An infinitely changing shape to contend with. Not nearly as tough as holding up a menstruating Wolverine, but we take what we can get.

First layer of sock, holding the rocks in. Make sure you cut the zip ties close, but leave 1/4 inch for expansion. Also trim the edges, because they are SHARP!

Here's the segmented worm all put together, inside a three layered sock.

When you grab one end, it all slips to the other end. The weight stays stacked and inline so that nothing goes funky when you spin it back around!

I made a one segmented bag(2 sock layers) to see how much weight it could handle. This one weighs 12 lbs. I'm confident it could hold twice that.

I'll probably use this one as some sort of grip device or marker for sprints. Run to it, pick it up, run back holding it in your teeth type stuff. You think I'm joking!

Next workout will be concrete balls and rock bags!


Mark

Fireworkout!

Happy Fourth of July. A day to eat and blow shit up!

As write this, the little bastards next door are popping fireworks and flaming rockets are whizzing by my house uncontrollably. Earlier we had a different sound.  The sounds of heavy death metal rang through The Bat Dojo. The minute timer ripping out the sound of an annoying boxing bell beginning our duty to suffer. Sweating, cursing, we engaged in our endeavor to endure some pain. The airhorn fires. Relief. Something our opponent probably would not provide... The boxing bell fires! Eight times we ran through the mini-circuit. Every minute one guy would work while the other rests, reminding the worker how crappy he is performing. Pushing each other until something spewed uncontrollably from our cardiac sphincters.


In total, each person worked for four minutes. Short and sweet. Hey, if training for one five minute round works for Shane Carwin, oh wait...

As I've said before, it's not easy. One of the words slurred during today's training session was either "puke" or "throw up". I can't remember exactly. I was busy lowering my center of gravity, collecting my chi energy and preparing for battle in case a prior meal was used as a pre-emptive military strike upon my mats and I.

Here's the break down for today. It's upper body centric due to some sort of alien life form embedded in The Dude's knee. Probably having little alien-squid hybrids which will one day burst from his patella during Muay Thai, infecting us all. Couldn't be as bad as ringworm or staph right?

- 15 minutes of basic warmup, punching the defenseless bag and general mucking around as usual.
1 minute - Pushup with a crunch in the middle, while your feet and stuck in the rings about 1.5 feet off the ground.
1 minute - Gi pullups
1 minute - Decline, one armed pullups on one ring, while punching a 10 lbs weight up into the air.
1 minute - Incline, one armed straight stability hold while yanking up a 10 lb weight(looks like you're elbowing a guy behind you in the liver).


Then we cooled off with some core exercises.
 - Stick your feet in one of the rings and swing using the core 180 at the hips back and forth, keeping your ass and head off the floor. Tough!
- Basic plank on one forearms (1 min hold)
- Modified lunges with 10lb miniball. Lung and raise the ball straight up as you launch a Muay Thai knee forward.

After that we sat around and watched various Marcelo Grappling videos, reminding us actually how bad we really are at jiu jitsu.

As we continue, the workouts will get a bit more difficult. I have several new little evil bastard tortures built. I'll probably blog them tomorrow. They are awesome :)

Here's some shots of the action.

The Dude doing crunch push up thing.

The Dude immensely enjoying gi pullups.

Me having a great time dangling by my fingertips.

The Dude punching a weight while performing a pull-up. Multitasking!

Me trying punching weights with BadBoy eyes hovering over my head.

That's gotta mean something!

Mark!