Monday, October 25, 2010

If you woke up breathing...

 ...congratulations!  You have another chance.  ~Andrea Boydston


This morning at the Bat Dojo I woke up as early as I could....Which means something after 0730... I grabbed a rash guard, some sweat pants and a hoodie. It's late October now and the weather is perfect for morning jaunts. With the exception of a fairly wild Rottweiler down the street, my little workout should be successful. I walked my 1 mile loop at high speed, while listening to some sort of animal screams from some guy related to Vlad The Impaler. I don't know how fast I walked it, but I only got through a couple songs before I made it home. 


There is temptation of walking in the front door and plopping my ass back down, figuring this was enough. I resisted the urge to check my email, or compile a Linux kernel and continued my way into the Bat Dojo.


Once in, the feelings of despair instantly subside and I began smashing the heavy bag, and doing pull-ups on my pool ball apparatus. I love that stupid thing, it's so awesome!


Today, I experimented with an old school technique called a breathing ladder. I had read about this years ago and never really put much thought into it until today.


Basically it goes like this, you forget your timer and use your breathing as your stopwatch. Yet the kick in the pants is, you adjust your next interval on less and less air until you drown in your own saliva...


Here's what I did:
Smash the bag at 100% (power/speed) with two hand strikes, two knees and two strikes.
Count 10 breaths
Smash the bag at 100% (power/speed) with two hand strikes, two knees and two strikes.
Count 9 breaths
...
...
...
Count 1 breath
Smash the bag at 100% (power/speed) with two hand strikes, two knees and two strikes.
Then die.

It wasn't that tough mechanically. My lungs were a different story, I thought I was going to suffocate! The desperation for air, gets worse as the intervals continue. This was a test, I'll formulate a nasty workout around these principles later and give it a try. No stopwatch, purely breathing based intervals. Like the famous 300 workout, mine will be 300 breaths!


Later
Mark









1 comment:

  1. Love this way of measuring intervals :) Really puts a premium on slowing breathing down!

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