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Writer's pictureDave Hedges

Last class of 2009


This week was the last week of training I’ll be doing in 2009, also we took everyone out with a bg! particularly the groups. The Tuesday MMA conditioning group and the Thurs Kettlebell group pushed themselves through some very tough work, no questions, no quitting, just pure grit and determination. They really do make me proud. So what did we do with them? Well I’ll tell you now.

Tuesday is the day my MMA group are in, they train most days and this is the only day I get them all to my self so we try to make it count with a good conditioning session, last Tuesday was no different. We set up a circuit of 8 drills, performed each drill for 20 seconds and took 10 seconds to switch. Basically using the Tabata protocol.

Here are the drills: 1- Ring Push ups 2 – Explosive Medicine ball push ups 3 – Ab wheel Roll outs 4 – Double kettlebell burpees to the rack position 4 – Towel Pull Ups with knee raise 5 – Heavy swings 6 – Shoulder and squat with the heavy bag 8 – Sledgehammer slams

3 rounds of this had everyone breathing hard, a good mix of strength based and explosive based movements. To finish we performed 90 sec of hindu push ups, 3 min hindu squats and 45 sec neck bridge. A job well done!

Then on Thursday my Kettlebell group were in, which included some of the Tuesday guys, always nice to see. I’ve just been reading through some articles I have by Boxing and conditioning coach extraordinaire Ross Enamait (rossboxing.com) so we adjusted one of his workouts as our year-end special. To start we worked the Turkish Get up to a 1 rep max, looks like I’ll be getting in some heavier bells next year, they flew up! This was followed by the Ross inspired circuit:

12 Burpees 24 Push Ups 36 Squats 48 Swings (here Ross would have you run a 400 meter, but as I’m slap in the centre of Dublin, it’s little impractical, the swings did just nicely though)

This was repeated 4 times round with the finish times recorded. A race against the clock. It’s with some relief that I finished first, but the others were snapping at my heels, I’d better do some work over the holidays to stay ahead!!

Speaking of the Holidays, this is where I believe the Eat Stop Eat program I’m currently trying out will come into its own. I have to say, Tuesday was a very tough day for my Fast, I hadn’t eaten a great deal on the monday before even though I worked on some heavy deadlifts and snatch, so even though the fast didn’t start till after my breakfast, I was struggling against the hunger pangs all day. I still felt very sharp and focused, but the tummy was growling… Then, joining in with the MMA circuit may have been a mistake, I was strong right to the end and had a cracking workout, but very soon afterwords the shakes came in, I felt hypoglycemic and had to reach for the fruit bowl and a recovery shake fro fear of loosing the run of myself. This just about sorted me out along with a stack of water, but by bed time, I was hanging. I felt rough so I had to cave in and eat something. I kept it to fruits and nuts, but still it wasn’t a full fast, I managed 17 hours (yes, Tuesday was a looong day…) After a good nights sleep, I was back to normal and good to go, I’d expected to wake up starving but this wasn’t the case, I was fresh as a daisy and ready for the day ahead.

The moral here I think is to avoid any seriously intense training on the fast day, otherwise, this second week has been great. With the excesses of the Christmas period coming, I can see having a fast day as being a bit of a life saver. I’ll be staying at my parents so there will be lots of food around, plenty of cake and tons of drink. Taking a day off will actually come as a relief I think. I might not come back with a spare tyre……

To wrap up, I want to wish all the gang a Merry Xmas and Happy New year and I look forward to training with them again in the new year. In the meantime try either of the two workouts listed above, they are short and sweet, and will raise your matabolism to seriously counter the inevitable christmas pudding.

See you in 2010

Dave

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