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Week 1: Ken/Iaijutsu – Currently using bokto and practicing kata.

Week 2: Jujutsu & some hanbo.

Week 3: Bojutsu – I really like the 6 foot staff. Its powerful and useful. When you get good at it then it looks great too.

Week 4: Ken/Iaijutsu again.

• Monday: Conditioning (MMA workout, ICT, EIT, etc)
• Tuesday: Ju Jutsu (dojo) + Strength
• Wednesday: Koryu/Kobudo + Yoga
• Thursday: Conditioning (MMA workout, ICT, EIT, etc)
• Friday: Ju Jutsu (dojo) + Strength
• Saturday: Conditioning (MMA workout, ICT, EIT, etc) + Ashtanga Yoga + Koryu/Kobudo practice
• Sunday: Conditioning (MMA workout, ICT, EIT, etc) + Ashtanga Yoga+ Koryu/Kobudo practice

Some notes:

• No core – This is because I’ve had the biggest core strength benefits from my Ashtanga yoga. The vinyasas alone really work the abs and back.
• Conditioning 4x a week on top of ju jutsu sessions. I’m a big fan of conditioning and I started this thinking it was all about strength. I couldn’t bring myself to accept Ross’ belief that “conditioning is king”. Now I know form personal experience its 100% true!
• Ju Jutsu – This normally has a 5 minute warm up beforehand and then 1:15min of practice which often ends in grappling or kumite bouts at the end for about 10 mins.
• Yoga – I want to do more and so I’ll be greasing the groove plenty with mini yoga workouts throughout the week.
• My weekends are the only time I get a decent amount of time to myself so its pretty crammed with stuff but it’ll be spread throughout the day to allow for recovery.
• No more diary – I won’t be posting every single days activities anymore. I don’t see the point and I wanna concentrate more on posting things that are useful to people.

(as well as a few hours of work – thoguh I won’t bore you with that)

The skills work I started off by doing 3 x 3 min rounds of Bas’ Thai Boxing audio.  However, this time when he called out “Defence!” I did an ukemi (front, side, back, etc), defended form the gorund and got up.  That added a whole new dimension to the warm up and I reckon I’m gonna try adding ukemi and throws into my conditioning routines some more.  After all – its what I’m training for!!

Another problem I’m having is the clashing with ju jutsu and ken jutsu.  If I’m doing a 5 or 6 day split then its inevitable I’ll end up doing something completely incompatible.  E.g. Maximal strength + ken jutsu = not being able to hold a sword.

So I’m switching to a 7 day programme which follows the days of the week, my training schedule and the rest of the world!

I’m going to put this in the calendar on the left as well as publishing a Google Calendar feed at a later date.  Theres notes explaning this below.

But in summary:

• Stretching – Every morning or lunch time (time dependent) I’ll go through a stretching routine.
• Push Ups – My push up endurance isn’t developing as much as I’d like so I’m upping this and creating a seperate programme for it.
• Core Work – I’m doing core work almost every day.  I’ve found my core recovers and develops a lot quicker than anything else so I’m not too worried about hammering it.
• Tricking – Part of the reason for doing all this is I’d like to do some of the funky stunts or even just hand stand push ups would be nice!  So I’m going to do the following on alternate days:
  • Assisted (against a wall) hand stands x 3
  • Spin kicks x 3 (both legs)
  • …etc…(to be completed)

We did 3 main katas of the school I’m in: Enshin Ryu.

I can’t go into it as its part of the agreement of the school but it was great to finally be doing kenjutsu and iaijutsu while dressed in the proper way.  It was also really calming too.

I can see this taking over my life!

On Tuesday (Day 27) I had a Ju Jutsu class which resulted in me feeling like road kill.  I’ve never normally felt as bad as I did that day and the aches I had from the previous days chilled strength training were getting worse as opposed to better.  This was meant to be a core, neck and forearms day but managed a pretty weak effort:

• Wrist Roller: 3 + 3 + 1.5
• Abs Roller: 2 sets of 10 reps

The abs roller was a nightmare because it requires tricep strength and for some reason my tri’s weren’t having any of it.  After the two sets they were dead.

Then Wednesday (Day 28) everything was getting terrible.  The pain (DOMS) wasn’t getting better as I’ve come to expect – it was getting worse!  Much worse.  I had an iai/kenjutsu class that evening and I felt ill before, during and after.  None of which was normal for me.  My triceps which hadn’t been targeted for over 48hrs were agony – what the hell was wrong with me?!?!

What was worse is the rundown feeling – I just didn’t want to do anything full stop but I managed the following ‘endurance strength workout’:

• 10 V-Ups
• 25 Push Ups
• 3 sets x 15 reps Dumb Bell Side Bends (an attempt to make up for yesterdays poor core workout)
  

Today (Day 29) I’m still feeling bad but things are looking up.  My fruit intake the past 3 days rocketted though I don’t know why…

I started to eat clementines again which is something I’ve not eaten in years!!

• For lunch on Day 28 I had 4 bananas and 1 clemantine.
• Breakfast the past 3 days has been muesli and bananas.
• Today’s lunch was 2 clemantines and a banana.

For me – thats unusual!!

If I do an enhanced Interval Workout today I’ll post into a separate blog.

Why The Problems?

I’d guess its three things:

Poor Diet

At the weekend I bought a box of chocolates which I ate in two days.  Not bad – we all have our breaks form eating good food.  But then I ate loads on Monday and Tuesday too.  4 days of intense sugar intake for a body that had become accustomed to complex carbs and whole foods = crash and burn!

Glucose does compete with Vitamin C absorption so its feasible that high levels of glucose will diminish your levels of vitamin C to unhealthy levels.

This may also explain my sudden love of clemantines and bananas – was my body trying to tell me something?

Over Training

I started this programme 29 days ago and I kept increasing intensity over and over again.  My lay off week I hit running and I don’t think my body was ready to keep going as I’d timed it so I had an EIT day then an ICT day one after another.  Then a ‘relaxed’ strength day.  For someone who hasn’t trained this intense before it may not have been a good idea.

Sleep (or lack of it)

I’ve started to get more sleep than I used to.  I used to average 3-6hrs per night pre-programme.  Now I get 6-7 which is better but I think I need more.  When I very first started I got about 7-8hrs which was good.  As much as I hate to say this though I think I’m a long sleeper – and prolly need about 8-9hrs of good quality sleep!  This may explain the lethergy, insomnia (mad I know), low mood, etc.

Having tried it on before the big day I have to say: Its complicated as hell!!!

How on earth do I work it?

I put on the jacket which is different to my usual gi as it has two small straps mid way up.  Then I put on the hakama (umanori 馬乗り “horse riding” divided variety) which has four straps – two at the rear and two at the front.  You need to get the straps tied while your hakama is falling down your legs and the jacket starts flailing open.

All very confusing – and it ended up looking a mess by the time I’d finished with it.  Hopefully I’ll be shown the proper way on Wednesday.  If so I’ll take a pic and post it up but in the mean time there’s one on the left in case you haven’t a clue what one is (its the blue thing – yes I know it looks like a skirt but it isn’t!)