Move Jutsu

I’m about to save you a lot of money and time by telling you something:

You already have a 6 pack.

With just that little fact you should be able to workout that all those ab miracle pills and exercises are a waste of time. Don’t believe me?

Well tough – its fact. Everyone has the same set of muscles in their abdomen and doing magical exercises won’t cause them to miraculously appear. The key to getting a 6 pack is decreased body fat. We’re talking in the single figures here: 7-9% should get you a 6 pack.

There’s an old saying: A 6 pack doesn’t start in the gym – it starts in the kitchen.

So don’t bother with all these miracle ab workouts hoping to get a magical 6 pack. Stick to a good diet, regular exercise and you’ll eventually get what you want.

I’d also like to add: Getting abs like that isn’t easy and it takes time. So don’t beat yourself up over it.

My ju jutsu organisation is now running a revised schedule so we get to use more weapons throughout the month:

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.

I’ve been doing Ashtanga with regularity now since December and I’ve had some great – though slow – benefits so far. The two biggest areas of improvement which I felt in the space of 3 sessions was:

Balance – this has improved and still gets better every time I do another session. There’s a lot of positions that require great balance. So what impact has it had on my ju jutsu? Well balance is pretty damn important to staying on your feet and its getting people off your feet that’s one of the keys in JJ. So its helped to some extent with that though not as much as you’d expect. You see the yoga is done without resistance – its basically static balancing while performing a posture. Although it does help with balance you’re not training yourself to stay standing during pulls and pushes with aggressive changes in direction as you do in JJ. Its still come in handy though.

Flexibility – This has been great. Its becoming harder for my partners or opponents to put on locks and holds due to an increase in flexibility.

Core Strength – this has had the greatest impact of all and my core is a lot, lot stronger from doing yoga than 50 days of a core heavy training programme. It works your entire abs, back, obliques, and deep core. You have to apply locks (suck you stomach in) while performing many of the moves. There’s also numerous exercises requiring you to lift you legs off the ground and arse while pulling your abs in to keep off the ground. Core strength is one of the vital components of ju jutsu and a storng core really helps in every sphere from powering punches and kicks to working on the ground to get the advantage. Your core is the powerhouse of every other muscle group so when this gets stronger YOU get stronger.

Verdict: Go for it if you can fit it into your existing schedule!

I’ve got the following ideas for this blog and I’d be interested in hearing other people’s thoughts and ideas too:

• Fitness, health and fighting book reviews.
• And DVD reviews too.
• Ashtanga yoga info and how it affects fighting ability and general fitness.
• Koryu/Kobudo experiences.
• Ju Jutsu experiences.
• Suggested training routines for different people, different sports and outcomes.
• Training routines of the rich and famous.
• Specific exercise tips.
• Science Summaries: Summarise wordy science into bite-size chunks that can be read in less than a minute!

Any thoughts?

This is for the long haul now after numerous changes. Now I’ve learnt how my body works and read up on just about every source I can lay my hands on I think I’m pretty happy with the following:

• 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.

Well its obvious considering the lack of posts lately that I’m losing focus of my goals. With not posting I’ve lost the much needed monitoring the stay motivated. So here’s a quick update on what I’ve been upto and what I plan on doing this weekend….

On the 9th (Friday) I did a 13min conditioning workout which had a “training effect” of 3.5/5 (according to my Suunto T6).

At the weekend I did Yoga on both days for 1:30.  this is doing my flexibility and balance wonders but I need to cut down the time to complete it otherwise it’s not going to be practical.

Tuesday 13th was my first day Tuesday back for ju jutsu training. It was a great lesson and it not only made me realise a lot about the art but also my fitness – more to come (subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!).

So what am I planning after this weekend???

• A brand new 70 day programme.
• A Google Calendar feed available with workout and training schedule – follow along!
• New goals.
• New tracking of results using funky interactive graphs and stats.
• More ju jutsu info.
• More training info and insights.

Finally my some stats are:

• Pull Ups: 5
• Chin Ups: 6
• Weight: 66Kg (10.5 st | 147lbs)

So keep connected and subscribe to see what happens next week.

It’s getting harder and harder to keep this blog updated.  Not only have I started back at work (which is a HUGE time sink) but I’ve also taken up Ashtanga Yoga in a big way and now learning Spanish.  I’ve yet to have any formal training in the yoga but I follow Dave Swensons DVD and have done the first series for 4 of the past 6 days.  Each session lasts for 1hr 30mins.

I decided to wear my heart rate monitor for the duration of Saturdays session – you can see from the read out that it doesn’t push the cardiovascular system much but it certainly helps with stamina, flexibility and balance.

Its also a great core and quad workout too. They both burn hard. If anyone thinks yoga doesn’t do great things for strength then they’re massively mistaken.  Its doing great things for me all round.
One area its really boosting is foot and ankle strength too.  An area that doesn’t get much training but in yoga it hits them hard because of the constant balancing.  Some of the poses make your feet kill!!!

On Saturday I also did a 30 min All Round MMA workout with the Bas Rutten audio.

Sunday I greased the groove with loads of pull ups, push ups, etc. I’m noticing very little improvement in my pushing ability still.  Will have to work harder on that methinks.

Monday
Well today I’ve done a strength session….

• 3 Pull Ups + 2 Pull Ups & 1 Chin Up.
• 1 Wide Grip Pull Up.
• 10 x 4 sets of Decline Push Ups.

Then 30mins of yoga to finish off with.

As its a new year I thought it was time for a weighin in as there’s not been one in a while so here goes:

“If training is hard, then winning will be easy, but if training is easy, then winning will be hard.” – Norman Harris

No – I don’t have a clue who he is either. But he talks sense.

Thursday is meant to be plyometrics.  However, I did that on Wednesday (got confused) and so for New Year I did 1:30 of Ashtanga Yoga with David Swensons DVD.

Oh how I hurt.  I used to think Ashtanga made you sweat and heave a lot but it wasn’t much of a workout as such.  Certainly not as intense as say a ‘proper’ strength or conditioning workout.

Put simply: I was wrong!

In the past I struggled to do the first 10 sun salutations but this time I managed them with relative ease.  So I went further into the programme and it got more and more difficult.  For the core its full of bridges, L-Sits, V-Sits, downward dogs, etc etc.  It also works the shoulders, forearms and arms a lot too as my arms were like lead afterwards.

It was the most incredible workout though and I’m definately doing it more often.  I just wish my area had a teacher but for now I’ll have to make do with the DVD – its a great DVD, but I want feedback on how I’m doing.

Oh – and I had a shoulder stand for a few seconds too.  I almost got it!!

Read about Ashtanga Yoga at Wikipedia.