2 Workouts… HIIT run, core…Muay Thai Trigg 10, Boxing 20, conditioning

So tired and dead, did not get off the floor to take photo.

I don’t often post about my Wednesday workouts. Just because they are the same as Monday or Tuesday. However today I had a great day! It kicked my butt in every way and I am going to feel it tomorrow in core, legs and arms. I am dead!

Workout #1: 42 minute HIIT run and core workout. 22 minute HIIT run. I got a twelve minute mile in woot.

V ups single leg
V ups double leg
Flutter kicks 
Kick back alternating leg

Workout #2: 1.5 hours of Muay Thai practice training. I left a puddle on the floor. We worked on the Trigg 10, and boxing 20, then did conditioning rounds. Regular conditioning rounds where we do three kicks on right three kicks on left and 4 knees then we push opponent away. After doing that a 4 times I finished off with. Two sets of 3 minute rounds. I did 56 kicks and 35 knees. I will need to get to 60 kicks and 40 knees a year from now if I want to do the Rank 1 test.

Here is a bonus video of me doing the boxing 20. When I stay more static for the first two sets my form and flow is much better. When in the last two sets I aggress I tend to square up my feet and lose my stance, and my flow gets choppier. We filmed so I can see it from an outside perspective.

https://youtu.be/jlQnyBPClE8

So yay! Two workouts in. I am tired, and going to be sore tomorrow, but pushing now will give me results in the future.

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you have any questions.

Tuesday Muay Thai and Kali…Thai 4 counts, snakes and vines oh my!

Today was 2 hours of Tuesday night training for Muay Thai and Kali. I had a blast in class, and although I think I am horrible compared to my class mates I am still showing up and trying every time. All I can hope is that if I keep showing up I will get better. My coaches/trainers and some of the other class mates that study with me, also say that all we have to do is show up and put the time in.

In Muay Thai we worked on the Thai 4 count. Right kick, hook, cross, to left kick, and also the right kick, hook, cross to right kick. Below is a video of me doing the Thai 4 count. I need to pivot more, I need to keep my left hand closer to my face. You can see when I don’t pivot correctly on my second set, that I hurt my foot on the pads a little. (It was slapping pain, I caught the edge of the pad.) Muay Thai is very much a skill set that when learning it is self correcting. Whether you working the bag, or you are kicking Thai Pads. If you kick them incorrectly it will hurt your foot. Not necessarily in a bad way, but will sting, cause a bruise or it can mess you up depending on how badly you hit the pads or bag.

https://youtu.be/O0GvCDULh8Q

In Kali, we practiced snake and vine disarms. These are not something you really wanna do with a knife, but when some one is attacking you with a blunt object or a stick these are effective. If you do it right. I have a lot to learn and am not great at this at all. Here I am practicing Kali, snake and vine disarms. Equal sign disarms, and plus sign disarms are the vine disarms that we worked on today. A vine disarm is one that uses a tool to help you disarm in this case we use our stick to create a fulcrum to remove the weapon from our opponent. The snaking disarms are the ones where we wind our arm around theirs and trap the weapon. In snake disarms we do not use another tool to create a fulcrum, we use our own bodies to trap the weapon.

https://youtu.be/izZckB6jT1s

You made it to the end, so thank you for reading. Let me know if you have questions. I must now shower and go to bed. I have an early morning, and it is almost midnight here.

Thank you Kru Krysta Scharlach, and Kru Kristen DeBruycker for great classes.

Weight lifting workout for the week of 2/11/2019

Do you ever feel like you have aggressively shoved or wedged your workout into your schedule? I do. Today I had to get my workout in before I had to pick up my husband from the metro. I had exactly 55 minutes to get it in, and I did my workout in 40 minutes.

I kicked my own butt in my workout today. Feels good and I am tired. Have to go to work soon.

Workout:

  • 15 minute HIIT run. (Warm up for 3 minutes. HIIT 1 minute push run, 1 minute jog for 11 minutes, 1 minute cool down.)
  • Thruster squat ( 20 lb weights each hand) – Squat with hands in racked position, then stand and press dumbell reps – 12, 10, 8 ( each rep is squat to extend, to squat)
  • Plank Low Row ( 20 lb weight each hand) – Plank and do a tricep pull reps – 12, 10, 8 ( each rep is 1 pull on each side)
  • Running Man reps- 12, 10, 8 ( each rep was 1 knee to chest each side)
  • Reverse Lunge Curl (10 lb weight each hand) – stand and step back with one leg lunge, then bicep curl on stand up, lunge back with other leg, and curl. reps – 12, 10, 8 ( each rep was one on each side)
  • V Ups single leg reps – 10, 10, 8 ( each rep was one v up on each side for 1)

I felt rushed, and because of that I did not take rest breaks. Not resting is both good and can be bad. Just make sure that you don’t do it all the time. I was able to get the workout in, and get the other things I needed to do done. My husband was picked up and not left at the metro. I am about to go to work. The family has been fed and everyone seems happy. My work at home for now is done. =)

Thanks for reading and keep being awesome. Let me know what you think.

Healthy Lunch…Hummole… Guammus…Guac Hummus? I don’t know what to call it…but tasty

As I have said before eat the rainbow. It is a great way to get your vitamins and nutrients in.

I thought about whether to show this, as it is not exactly “instagram pretty”. Its a cross between a hummus and a guacamole. You can add any spices you want to it to season to taste. Some of the things I have done with this is, lemon juice, onions, cayenne, garlic, and jalapenos.

Today what I made was canned garbanzo beans, avocado, tomato, pickle juice in absence of lemon, and chopped dill pickles. I stuffed that into a pita and added fresh veggies, and it was oh so good.

Tastey Guammus Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 1 whole pita
  • 1/2 avocado smashed
  • 1/2 or euro 4 oz cup of garbanzo beans canned smashed
  • 6 cherry tomatoes sliced
  • 1 1/2 tbs or euro 30 mls of pickle juice or more to taste
  • 8 slices of dill pickles chopped up or sweet and spicy pickles would be good too
  • Veggies of your choice sliced up to stuff in pita ( I did cucumber, and bell pepper, cause that is what I had)
  • seasoning to taste

Directions:

  • cut the pita in half
  • prepare the guammus, in a bowl smash the garbanzo beans and avocado together. I did not have lemon juice so I substituted pickle juice for the acid component.
  • Chop up the pickles, and tomatoes adding them to the guammus mixture.
  • stuff guammus into the pita, and add veggies
  • sit in a sunny area and enjoy your tasty guammus sandwich.

Calories 417, Fat 15.9 g, Fiber 17.9 g, Carbs 60.1 g, Sodium 742 mg, Protein 14.3 g

Just think the colors in your veggies are the sun trapped and transformed to make a nutrient dense lunch for you. =)

Thank you for reading again. I hope you try this recipe and enjoy it. Let me know what you think.

Saturday Muay Thai and Striking… entry, rhythm, and JKD (Jeet Kune Do)

I sit here writing this after a 2.5 hour training session, we also just refueled with some delicious Thai food. Because it is H’s birthday and we are celebrating. In most Asian families, long noodles are the thing to eat to ensure a long life. =)

I trained Muay Thai for one hour before our striking class. We worked on entries to get in and land our punches. We were working our range management. I am very short, 5 foot nothing, and my range is very short. In a fight I am going to get up close and personal. Where a taller 6 foot person is going to be hit me from further away. I have to get in close. There are advantages for the taller person. They can kick and hit from further out, and I have to eat a hit or kick to get into their pocket. However, the advantages for a shorter fighter are to my knowledge I have a shorter range, which is good cause I can then switch up what I am doing faster than they can. I can change my range with moving a little bit. I can cover up my actions by putting interference in their faces and then kick them without them seeing my legs move if I am executing the move correctly.

In Striking class we worked on JKD (Jeet Kune Do). ” Jeet Kune Do, “The way of the intercepting fist” in Cantonese, abbreviated JKD, is a hybrid philosophy of martial arts heavily influenced by the personal philosophy and experiences of martial artist Bruce Lee.” Wikipedia

We worked on both orthodox fighting and south paw fighting. What this means is we had to change our stances. We had to change our lead leg. Orthodox fighters have left leg forward, and south paw fighters have right leg forward. We had to faint, high, and low jabs, then work on entries into and range management to get the crosses, hooks, upper cuts, and then lead pendulum kicks a.k.a. Nao Tek.

From a technique point of view, this is hard to switch up. When I an orthodox fighter has to switch up to south paw, or right lead leg. It takes all your mental acuity to just make sure your throwing a hook with the right hand and not a cross like you would with orthodox stance. We then worked on a pop the leather practice where we try to use the tools we learned in JKD to asymmetrically spar our opponent. It was a fantastic training session, and I had a great time.

I have rambled on enough. I hope you have had a great day. Talk to me if you have questions or thoughts.

Here is a video of me doing some training on the bag. I was working on some left and right kicks. As you can see I am a orthodox fighter and I have left lead leg.

https://youtu.be/cVVcN8lvy3Y
Working on Muay Thai Kicks



PSA: Don’t listen to the scale alone…

PSA: don’t listen to the scale alone. This is the best I have looked but the scale says otherwise. I know it’s probably water weight. It does not help I had weird dreams about weight. Off to breakfast then a 3 ish hour martial arts training. Also as your body is changing the right size clothes make a huge difference. 

Keep being awesome and thanks for reading.

Thursday Muay Thai and Kali…Working with New Students, Full Box with all the Weapons

my crazy messy self after 2 hours of workout

Today is a good day! I was energized and raring to go to class. My teachers and I too have come to value working with new students. When we started and were new they kept reiterating that the senior students (which I am considered now… that is crazy) like to help the new students. Not only does it help the new students. But it helps us older students to help teach them, and lets us go back to the basics and review things we may have not been isolating.

So today we worked on the left leg or lead leg kicks. That is teeps, leg kicks, and torso kicks or round houses. I was working with a new person, and he seems timid. He does not want to kick or hit hard, and when he gets tired his form breaks down like we all do, but his was faltering more than I expected. I kept checking in on him to see if he was okay. He said he was, and that he was just tired. Today was hard cause he would move away from the teeps, and drill kicks we were doing, so it was hard to get my reps in. But I was able to get him kicking harder toward the end. Hopefully he will see that he does not have to be so nervous in future classes. We worked on catching the kicks again, but this time putting our knee and shin across and into the torso, while clenching up and framing so that your opponent can’t do anything and in the ring the ref would have to break you up. I got dumped by the new guy by accident but he was so afraid of catching the kick that he did not have my leg right and I fell on my side and hip. I hope that my back does not scream at me tomorrow.

Kali, we worked on full box. Using double stick first, stick and knife, double knife, single knife and then stick and shield. We used all the weapons at our disposal, and each change we made to our weapons brought new interesting variables that we had to change for, or exploits we could use more for with one combination than the other. For instance with double stick we had distance and could keep people at distance. Stick and knife we had to get up closer and see where we could cut the opponent all the while keeping an eye on that stick that has more range. Which weapon we used to check and trap changed as well. With double knife, we had to aim more for areas where cutting would not only cause damage, but we had to make sure to place them so that we could control the opponents weapons. Cutting above the elbow to control one knife arm while then simultaneously coming in with another attack. All very much fun, but brain melty.

I had a great day. I loved the workout. I love Muay Thai and I am growing to love Kali as much as well. I am icing my back as I type this up. I hope you are all having a good day, and continue working out. Get up get into the things you love to do. Live and love life. If I let my physical “limitations” stop me from doing things I would just be in the house, babying my back, and afraid to hurt myself. I have scoliosis as I mentioned in my Working Out Through Herniated Disk post. Listen to your body, but don’t be afraid to get out there and do things. Believe me it takes me a minute to quick check and tell myself, that I could just lay there waiting and worrying about getting hurt, or I can just go live life, and see where I can go. How far can I get?

I went to my chiropractor yesterday, to find out my hips were out of alignment and I had a dislocated rib. I live with back, neck, and lower back pain. So small things like that don’t tend to bother me. Till they accumulate and then they bother me. =)

Well that is enough rambling from me. Thanks for reading this far. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and talk to me if you have any questions.

Tuesday Muay Thai and Kali…Free Feeding, and Knife/Stick/Knife and Stick High Box

Do you ever have those days that you really just don’t want to do the workout? Not just a meh day. I have had just a meh day too. But a day where you are so tired you don’t want to go do your workout. You want to lay under covers and not come out. You are tired and don’t want to do anything, except maybe breathing. Yeah… I had one of those days today. I took my pre-workout, I stretched, and I made myself go to the gym and while I was waiting for my training/class to begin I felt this intense desire not to do anything. I almost gave into it. When I am meh feeling I don’t give into those feelings and force myself to do the thing. Today though I almost bowed out of training. I however, did not and I am so glad I did not.

My back and hips have been complaining at me, and my hip has been feeling like that burning sensation I get when the nerve is compromised. I have to get into the chiropractor tomorrow. This may have been a leading contributor to my feeling the way I did.

Muay Thai started and we were warming up. I still had that feeling of not wanting to do anything. However, as Kru Kristen started talking about what we were going to do I focused on that, and now 2 hours later I am feeling much better. My hip is feeling better and I am happy I pushed through.

In Muay Thai we worked on kicks. Right side only, or for those of you left handers/south paws, rear kicks. We worked on teeps, leg kicks, and rear round house kicks. I was happy when we had to do pyramid kicks, where you kick 1 round house kick, then two consecutively, then three kicks up to five kicks and back down again. I was not gassed and I felt like I could do another set right there. Yay!

This is a video of me practicing my right side, or rear kicks. These are teeps, leg kicks, and round houses. I am laying in the leg kick so as not to hurt my feeder. I don’t know why I spread my fingers on my left hand when perform a kick. But watching me in the video I can see the things I need to work on.

https://youtu.be/t5TUtPCtzXo

In Kali we worked on the high box. We used first the double stick, then the stick and knife, double knives, then stick and shield. Changing the length of weapon changes ranges you need to hold to just attack and defend in the drill. I noticed when my Kru Krysta asks if we know what the high box is at the time my brain goes no. But apparently at this time my body knows what to do. I have muscle memory of the high box and can do it, but if you were to ask me out of the blue I would stumble to tell you the terms and moves. I was told from a student who has been doing this for 5 years that this is normal, and he has the same problem. Today was a great day for Kali, I have a lot to fix but I felt good doing it.

In Kali we worked on the high box. In this video I am practicing here the high box with double stick.

https://youtu.be/LgI8-lrSjNU

This is the same high box drill with us using knives that I was practicing.

https://youtu.be/cSlTndwdfaI

I need to go to sleep because I have a 5 am wake up, and it is 11:47 pm here. I am amazed you have read this far and thank you. These are my thoughts for the day. Talk to me if you have any questions or want to see something in my blog.

Short workouts have value too…I only had 22 minutes

Today was… heck is a packed day. I am writing this up as I sit here waiting for my Husband to get off the metro. Mondays and Fridays are my cardio/weight lifting days.

Today I have/had to:

  • Wake at 5:30 am to get husband to metro
  • get to grocery store for supplies
  • feed kids breakfast
  • teach kids lessons for the day
  • lunch- meal prep for the week for husband and I
  • workout
  • get husband from metro
  • feed family
  • then go to work till about 10:30 pm

I am waiting for husband and still have to make dinner and get to work.

So today I did not have a lot of time for a workout. I got one in. I got a 22 minute HIIT run in. That’s it. That’s all. No time for weight lifting or anything else. But getting something in is better than skipping it. Making it a HIIT workout increases the value to your body and time.

A HIIT workout is High Intensity Interval Training workout. Basically a HIIT workout is the opposite of a long workout. You do a short workout with bursts of high intensity and active resting.

Some benefits of a HIIT workout are:

  1. The calories you burn during your workout and after it.
  2. VO2 max – which is the amount of oxygen your body can use
  3. The amount of time it takes to do it, so you can squeeze them in anywhere. No excuse not to get one in.

Here is a good article about HIIT workouts and how to get the most out of your workout. This article also has some HIIT workouts you can try. https://www.coachmag.co.uk/cardio-workouts/6419/how-to-get-hiit-workouts-right-because-they-re-easy-to-get-wrong

Here is another good beginner HIIT workouts post: https://dailyburn.com/life/db/hiit-workouts-for-beginners/

There are some things you could be doing wrong in your HIIT workout. This is a great article that talks about them. https://www.thisisinsider.com/what-is-hiit-2018-2#youre-making-the-workout-too-long-1

Things that you may be doing wrong:

  1. Working out to long. If you can go for 40 to 50 minutes doing your HIIT workout, you are probably not doing a real HIIT and not pushing your body hard enough.
  2. Not taking rests between bursts. You won’t see the results you want in your workout. Basic rule of thumb is you want to rest about as much time as it took you to do your burst activity. So if you did 1 minute sprint, then take 1 minute rest. As you get better you can take less time, but not by much.
  3. Trying to do isolation workouts. This is not the time to work on your delts only, or working only on your glutes. There is a time and place for that a HIIT is not it.
  4. Implementing rest times in your normal routine but not upping the intensity of your workout, is not going to get you any more gains.
  5. Skipping your warm up can really harm your muscles and your body. Because you are going to ask your body to do something stressful quickly it has to be warmed up so you don’t damage your body.
  6. Doing to many HIIT workouts back to back. You need to let your body rest.

This is what I did: 22 minute

1 minute warm up, 4 minute jog, 14 minute HIIT run, where I ran at max speed for 1 minute then I jogged for 1 minute, then I had a 3 minute cool down.

That is it. I am finishing up this post at home, kids and husband have eaten, and I am about to go to work. If you want to look it up, just type up HIIT in Google and a crap ton of pages come up. If you have not tried one, I recommend trying one.

Thanks for reading and have a fantastic day! Talk to me, let me know what works for you in your workout.

Working Out Through My Herniated Disk Injury

Warning: I am not a doctor and I cannot speak to your injuries. Please seek medical advice before doing your workout. I was given the ok to do certain things/moves and my doctor knows that I am very tuned into my body, so he was ok with me going slow.

I had been going merrily along my fitness journey, and made one simple mistake stepping off a ladder. I thought I was on the bottom rung, and I was not. I ended up landing improperly and herniating a disk in my lumbar region. The pain was bad but I as able to mitigate it a little with ibuprofen.

I continued to to do my Muay Thai workouts and even forced myself through sit ups for three days after that. You see I have scoliosis and deal with back pain daily. I don’t let it stop me generally, so this time I tried to tough it out. That night and into and into the next morning. I was in excruciating pain. I had exacerbated my injury and could not move much. As a matter of fact any movement sent shooting pains down my leg. Any movement in my back, hip, and leg would cause pain. I ended up going to the doctor to find I had a herniated disk that was pushing on my sciatic nerve. That the pains I was feeling and the instability was normal with this kind of injury.

I had to lay down on the floor of my living room with my legs propped up barely moving, only to get up to attend to my human functions. I was in pain walking, in pain sitting, in pain laying there. I had to convalesces in home for 2 weeks. I saw my chiropractor 3 days a week to keep things in alignment and it was a game of waiting. I kept asking when I would be able to get up and do anything again. I even had a bit of depression, thinking that I would never be the same and never be able to move again. Because you see, when you have incredible pain, it is hard to see to the future. Depression is also I am told is normal in an extreme injury.

My doctor said it would take 3 months for it to heal completely. After the second week, I was given the ok to do what I could. No kicking, no bending, no twisting, and absolutely NO jumping.

I started slowly. I informed my trainers that I was severely injured, and what my doctors said I could do. They worked with me helping me, and giving me alternatives to my training. I made sure to ice my back before and after work outs. They let me lay down on the mat when needed, and they were there when I had questions. They helped me work around my injury. When I first started it was painful, and I paid for it afterward. However, I kept going. I kept going to my doctors appointments. I pushed through. My doctor was surprised at how fast I was healing. How my pain and numbness was ebbing. It would get better and I would aggravate it. But I was making steady progress towards better. Every two weeks or so my pain in my back and hip, and numbness in my toes would ease if just a bit.

My doctor truly believes that my activity though painful, and sometimes tear inducing, was what lead to my rapid amazing recovery. Because I did not lay and only let my muscles atrophy, I was able to ease back into the workouts I do now. It kept my spirits up, and I as able to keep working at it. If I had to lay there and not move for 3 months I might have given up on a whole lot of things. I enjoyed realizing that after a week, the pain of just twisting and moving would be slightly less, even if just a bit. Through out my training I had to lay on my back, no sitting, and only standing when I needed to. The only time I was up on my feet was to work and to workout.

See this article from Beachbody.com about tips for working out during injury. This is a great article to get you started.


“It is very important to know the difference between a real injury and pain. During a workout, you may tweak something and experience pain.
Your initial reaction might be, “Ouch … but OK, I’m not bleeding, let’s tough this out.” If you have pain, stop working out right there and evaluate your symptoms to check the severity. Don’t just try to walk it out and hope for the best.
Of course we all want to be tough and gut it out, but the consequences for continuing to train and not taking enough time off to heal can be severe. Most of the time, it is a good idea to just stop and heal up before training again.”


https://www.bodybuilding.com/content/10-tips-when-training-with-an-injury.html


Tips:

  • First and foremost… listen to your body ( I admittedly have a hard time doing that. The drive to excel can make me blind to my pain. )
  • Inform your coach/trainer. (Let them know what you are going through. Let them know what your doctor said. A great trainer will understand, and tell you to let them know when you need to stop, or the movement is painful.)
  • If you feel a pain stop. (Learning what muscular pain is vs. skeletal, or joint pain is important. There is a difference between tired muscle and pain of injury.)
  • Be kind to yourself…(You are going to take time to heal, so do the things that you can. If you are not able to do everything, know that after you heal you will be able to.)
  • Don’t loose hope
  • Work around your injury
  • Keep your nutrition up (Don’t just let your nutrition slide cause you have been hurt)
  • RICE method is good to use ( If your injury is such that Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation will help your injury)
  • Use lighter weights if you are weight lifting
  • Warm up
  • Ice before and After injury (If it is applicable to your injury. If you have just had a say hysterectomy, icing won’t help. =) )
  • Stretch after workout
  • Use proper form when working out (Go slow and make sure you use proper form. Using proper form will prevent more injury.)

My back is much better now. I am back to running, and can sit for a few hours without pain. I train hard now, and kick at 100% now. When my back starts to hurt or feel not 100% I lay down, stretch and try to rest it. I also go to my chiropractor often to keep back and hips in alignment.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions let me know.