thebatdojo: Everybody...

...has a flavor of neurosis.

"Crazy!" is often the response of my coworkers to my workouts. Occasionally, at lunch we might chat about nutrition and exercise... Actually it's less than occasionally, it's rare. But when we do, I try to softly lend out a helpful hint, then quickly shut up. No one likes a zealot proselytizing their doctrine! I prefer to just be a good role model. An extremely overweight individual I know bought a popular prepackaged exercise DVD plan... I'm typically straight forward about these things and told him he'll never use it. Not in a nasty way, but in a brotherly, truthful method with a genuine interest. He obviously wants to change, yet does not want to attack the problem at the source. Diet? Nope. Exercise? Try again. Killer instinct? Yes.

He has no intention of actually doing the work. No predatory demeanor, stalking good health like a lion in the jungle. Humans have a highly evolved and primal instinct to stalk, hunt and kill a prey. Why cannot your well being be the prey in the absence of a tasty wooly mammoth? Use your carnal skills to rip and shred illness, tearing it apart leaving the bloody remains of modern environmental diseases for buzzards. Not that I want buzzards to get sick, I actually like them.

Today I wanted to get a good feel to see if I'm injury free-enough for BJJ. I wanted to see if I could handle grappling takedowns and vertical stress(parallel to the spine). So far so good! We'll see in the morning though. Maybe this week I can get back into BJJ :)

Here's what we did, incrementing by 2 mins per week:
1 minute each - 20 seconds of break x 2 rounds = 18 mins 40 seconds.

1. Texas Triangle - 3 miniballs setup in a big garage sized equilateral triangle. With the Atlas ball in the center. Run from the Atlas ball to one of the mini balls, touch it with your palm. Run your ass back to the Atlas ball and perform one pushup with both hands on the Atlas ball. Repeat this mess to another miniball etc.. etc.. etc...
2. Bearcrawls around the mat edge - Two opposites sides are just normal bearcrawls. The other opposite sides have a kickpad one must hop over during the bearcrawls.
3. Grappling Dummy squats - underarm grab the bag, step back into a reverse lunge. Stand, swing the bag under the other arm, step back with the other leg and repeat.
4. Grab the 10lb sand filled miniball and beat the hell out of the punching bag with it.
5. Double leg takedowns vs the hanging bag. To make things worse, you have to snatch a kettleball under the bag with the rear hand and stand.
6. Shoulder walk shrimp with the 40lb nut crusher on your junk (lower stomach). When your legs are almost straight, bring feet to your ass and bridge fast keeping the ball crusher connected to your belly button. Repeat the mess.
7. Simple. Low crawl and drag the grappling dummy with you. :)

This workout was tough! A quadriceps beatdown with some nice hamstring action as well. I can already feel my hamstrings getting sore three hours later!

MiniBrock busted up the Grappling dummy a few workouts ago, blowing a nice chunk of guts out's it's newly formed A-Hole(yes, again!). Immediately, during the live workout we taped it up, just as MiniBrock used it for his next exercise. For today's craziness, I added another layer of Gorilla Tape...just to be sure :)

Heartrate graph:

Some cool shit in this graph. 5 BPM psychosomatic lump...40 seconds before the beginning. There are 14 peaks matching the 14 exercises. The 1st round BPM were about 10 BPM lower than round 2. The shrimp with the Atlas ball was a huge rest period with a mini spike both times(~9:00/18:00 min) and a quick drop off. This means, it immediately reached it's maximal intensity then the body recovered quickly while keeping up the pace; interesting! All of the other exercises had nice wide peaks (with the exception of the first exercise in the 1st round). I believe this is the goal. Wide, long duration at maximum intensity. Imagine being about to sprint at 100% for hours!

Sixty seconds of recovery from workout end: my heart rate dropped 37BPM. I'd love for this to be about 50. We shall see if this happens :)

Here's some proof of today's insanity:
**Technical note on the photography. No flash today. Batteries were dead. I cranked the ISO up to 3200 running f5.6/24mm. With almost no ambient light, noise and bizarre artifacts crept in. This time I'll just call it art instead of photography. Enjoy :)

The Dude Ball Bashing