KingGheedora workout log

[SociallyChallenged]

Originally posted by: KingGheedora
Thursday

4x5 (BW-20lbs) pull-ups
2x02:00 jump rope
3x02:00 shadow box
4x02:00 heavy bag
some footwork practices

Today was the first session with my new trainer. New trainer trained my previous trainer, and supervised previous sparring sessions.

Worked on my guard stance: thumbs at eye level, torso turned to the side so there's a straight line between my eyes, left hand, and opponent. Chin tucked down but don't raise shoulder. Hands are away from face so I can parry and shorter distance for punches to travel.

After throwing left hook, take a step to the left with left foot (don't move back foot), then spin around, so opponent has to turn to face me. I throw a 1-2 right then.

My shoulders were completely dead after this, even though the new stance is only 6 inches higher than before. My next few solo workouts are going to focus on keeping the new, high guard.

Probably won't get a chance to workout this weekend since I'm going out of town, so I'll try to get a run in tomorrow morning.

Only 6 inches higher? Where were your hands before? Below your chin? This all sounds pretty different than everything I've been taught or trained in (Muay Thai stance, square shoulders, etc). I'd be afraid of takedowns in real life. The boxing stance isn't really great for defending those. BUT boxers have great hands so I guess it's just a tradeoff.

 

[Pantlegz]

thats the stance I used while training mma, I think it's more effective there due to smaller gloves and to protect against head kicks. with bigger gloves you can keep your hands lower and still cover most of your face. The stance works great against takedowns as long as you're attentive and can sprawl decent

Originally posted by: KingGheedora
Thursday


After throwing left hook, take a step to the left with left foot (don't move back foot), then spin around, so opponent has to turn to face me. I throw a 1-2 right then.

I'm not sure I understand this if you've stepped into them and they're at your side, or at an angle, wouldn't this leave you wide open on that side? I know with mma we use angles a lot, both aggressive and defensive to make it harder to hit you and to decrease the amount of power behind their punches as they're not throwing them straight at you.

 

[KingGheedora]

Originally posted by: SociallyChallenged

Originally posted by: KingGheedora
Thursday

4x5 (BW-20lbs) pull-ups
2x02:00 jump rope
3x02:00 shadow box
4x02:00 heavy bag
some footwork practices

Today was the first session with my new trainer. New trainer trained my previous trainer, and supervised previous sparring sessions.

Worked on my guard stance: thumbs at eye level, torso turned to the side so there's a straight line between my eyes, left hand, and opponent. Chin tucked down but don't raise shoulder. Hands are away from face so I can parry and shorter distance for punches to travel.

After throwing left hook, take a step to the left with left foot (don't move back foot), then spin around, so opponent has to turn to face me. I throw a 1-2 right then.

My shoulders were completely dead after this, even though the new stance is only 6 inches higher than before. My next few solo workouts are going to focus on keeping the new, high guard.

Probably won't get a chance to workout this weekend since I'm going out of town, so I'll try to get a run in tomorrow morning.

Only 6 inches higher? Where were your hands before? Below your chin? This all sounds pretty different than everything I've been taught or trained in (Muay Thai stance, square shoulders, etc). I'd be afraid of takedowns in real life. The boxing stance isn't really great for defending those. BUT boxers have great hands so I guess it's just a tradeoff.

Actually 6 inches is probably an exaggeration. My hands were about chin level before and they were both pasted to my face. Kind of like in this image but my left was a little higher and closer to my face, leaving my forehead exposed:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media...40427171_start_298.gif

The new stance has my thumbs at eye level, which is actually less than 6 inches higher, my body angled to be less square, and left hand held out away from my face (which contributes to the extra fatigue I felt). It's the same stance Juan Manuel Marquez, Amir Khan, and Barrera use. Even those guys rarely keep their hands at full height since they are elite athletes and know when it's the right time to keep the hands up based on the distance from their opponent. The new stance looks kind of like a muay thai stance:
http://www.muaythai.ws/wp-cont...8/muay-thai-stance.jpg.

As for the takedowns, you're looking at boxing from the wrong perspective. Fans of the "sweet science" think of boxing as a sport, not a real fight. There are a lot of rules and restrictions on what you can and can't do in boxing that don't apply to a real fight or to an MMA match. When you are training for boxing you're training for a sport with the narrow set of allowed movements and attacks that are allowed. Applying these skills towards a real fight doesn't make sense. If I wanted to learn to defend myself I would have taken up MMA or one of the major styles they use like BJJ. I'm not that worried about defending myself in real life though since I don't get into confrontations too often and if I do I'll take my chances along with the vast majority of the general population that has no combat training.

Someone trained in boxing might have a slight edge over an untrained guy off the street because they are more fit, know how to throw a proper punch, and are less phased at the sight of someone's fists coming towards their face, etc. Most street fights would end up on the ground though, where the boxing training is useless.

 

[KingGheedora]

Originally posted by: Pantlegz1
thats the stance I used while training mma, I think it's more effective there due to smaller gloves and to protect against head kicks. with bigger gloves you can keep your hands lower and still cover most of your face. The stance works great against takedowns as long as you're attentive and can sprawl decent

Originally posted by: KingGheedora
Thursday


After throwing left hook, take a step to the left with left foot (don't move back foot), then spin around, so opponent has to turn to face me. I throw a 1-2 right then.

I'm not sure I understand this if you've stepped into them and they're at your side, or at an angle, wouldn't this leave you wide open on that side? I know with mma we use angles a lot, both aggressive and defensive to make it harder to hit you and to decrease the amount of power behind their punches as they're not throwing them straight at you.

It's a sidestep to the left and then an immediate pivot on the left foot so you are back facing your opponent. Your back foot doesn't leave the ground until it is pushing off to rotate your body clockwise. Your opponent has to turn to face you again in order to hit you. Sure, you can get hit during the step but it's actually harder to be hit during the movement than if you stayed still because you are not in the same place you were when you threw your punches. The opponent has just finished blocking a left hook to their head so their right hand isn't in a position to hit you (you are stepping to your left = their right). You can get hit with a left hook or uppercut but that is also a stretch since you have moved away from their left hand and the angle is awkward for them to put power into a left handed punch.

That's the theory at least, i haven't tried it in sparring yet.

 

[KingGheedora]

Monday

2.15 mi. outdoor run, 20:28

173bpm avg. heart rate

 

[KingGheedora]

Originally posted by: KingGheedora
My focuses for the next few weeks will be conditioning, and boxing skills, and if I can fit it in there, continued increases in all the lifts. I want to get my conditioning to a higher level than before I got sick. I never was able to pick up running to the extent that I should have for boxing due to various injuries. I still have about 4-6 training sessions paid for, which I will use with my previous trainer's trainer. Previous trainer said it was better to continue training with this new guy since he's actually a trainer and my previous trainer was really just a fighter coming off two golden gloves wins, but no real experience training fighters.

Goals, to achieve by November 15th:
Weigh 160lbs

Strength & Conditioning
Get up to running 4 miles, 3x a week
5x8xBW pull-ups
5x5x200 squat, deadlift
5x5x125 OH press

Boxing
Pick up training with new trainer
Re-develop combos and balance while punching
Be able to shadow box 1 round with strict form, high-ish intensity, with defense/evasion incorporated after every attack (bob, weave, spin-outs, and evasive footwork)
Same as above, but on the heavy bag

Well I was able to finally maintain a controlled diet last week, except for the weekend since I went on a two day trip to a beach house with some friends, and pretty much knew ahead of time I wouldn't be paying attention to my diet. Hovered around 2100 cals/day M-F, and even got a run in on Saturday.

One thing I've noticed which I'm not sure is related or not to the medication I was on, is that my motivation ever since I got back from LA has been much lower. Before getting sick I was making all my meals at home and working out 3-4 times a week. Now despite being back for over two months I'm still barely working out 2-3 times a week, and I've been wasting money eating out a lot. I've been too lazy to prepare meals or keep my apartment as clean as I'd like. The prednisone did give me high levels of energy, i did some crazy organizing of my financial situation and some other organizational things while I was on the higher doses. One of the withdrawal side effects is fatigue so maybe this is how it's manifesting itself. I know I'm still going through withdrawal as I'm still having the aches in my hip flexors and some of my joints. My work is also suffering, as I'm procrastinating more and getting distracted more easily with web browsing.

I'm still pushing ahead with fitness though. I decided to completely forget about the weight lifting goals for the time being, and focus solely on cardio and boxing. There's no way I'll be able to do both and still have time to take care of myself by eating right and getting enough sleep (btw, i desperately need to get more sleep, and onto a more normal sleep schedule). I'm not ditching resistance training completely, will still probably do a few exercises before or after my boxing workouts 2-3x a week but I won't be worrying about hitting any specific targets. While I'm very happy with the strength gains I made, my body feels pretty stiff and a bit less agile than I am used to it being, even though I end every workout with stretching. There's a good chance this might also be attributable to the prednisone withdrawal though.

I'm still tweaking the goals right now, and I'm being more aggressive with the running goals at the moment. Even though I want to be cautious about doing too much too fast, I might have been overly so. Instead of starting with lame .36 mile runs and incrementing by that much each week till I get to 4 miles, I'm jumping to 2.15 miles on the 3rd week (which is now).

Here's the schedule I'm thinking of following now:

week 03: 3.0 x 2.15 miles
week 4 - 10: 3.0 x (15% distance increase / week)
week 10: 3.0 x 5.72 miles
week 11: 3.5 x 5 miles
week 12: 4.0 x 5 miles
week 13: 4.5 x 5 miles
week 14: 7 day vacation (Costa Rica!)
week 15: 4.0 x 4 miles
week 16: 4.0 x 5 miles
week 17: 4.5 x 5 miles
week 18: 5.0 x 5 miles

Might be a tad aggressive, but I'm taking the runs very easy and don't care about speed as I can work on that later on. In the past I've gotten some minor running injuries I think from trying to increase my running speed at the same time as increasing mileage too aggressively. I was doing some major heel striking. With my recent runs I've been trying for POSE technique, but haven't been too strict about it yet.

My goals in the post quoted above mainly intended for me to be able to do 4-5 mile runs by the time I went to Costa Rica, so should I fall short of this new schedule I should still be able to meet that goal. After coming back from that vacation I'll ease back into it and then continue increasing till I can do 5 mile runs every morning, Bruce Lee style, yeaaah (still not yet sure how I will be managing that in the New York winter, but I'll deal with that when it gets here). For my boxing it is very important that I get excellent cardio, and once I can do 5x5 runs I will have a solid base from which I can add HIIT/sprint type work to increase my conditioning even more. This should also help with my long time desire to eventually run a marathon.

A lot of forward thinking right now. Things always seem to change from how you envision though.

 

[KingGheedora]

Wednesday

Morning:
2.17 mile outdoor run, 162bpm, 5.7mph

Evening:
5x5x160 squat
4x02:30 shadow box
3x02:30 heavy bag
3x15 BW hanging leg raises

for some reason did 2:30 rounds and 00:45 rests instead of the 3:00/1:00 that i usually do. Mainly worked on the new stance, and a little bit of the left hook + pivot that my trainer showed me. Meeting w/ him again tomorrow but tonight was the first chance I've had to get some practice in since last week's meeting. Hopefully my shoulders won't be tired tomorrow.

 

[KingGheedora]

Also, inspired by the sugar thread, this is my first day of eating nothing but natural foods. Just trying it out for now to see if I notice any positive changes. Well, I had coffee not sure if that counts as processed.

Man, I'm actually having a hard time reaching 2,100 calories this way. I'm feeling pretty full even though I ran this morning and worked out in the evening. The past 2 weeks I've been cutting weight and have been eating 2,100-2,500 cals/day. Every day during those 2 weeks I've been going to bed hungry, but this isn't the case at all today. It makes sense that since my diet today had no empty calories, plus very little fructose, I am able to eat a fairly low amount of calories for my height and weight without going hungry much.

I'm literally at 1,544 cals so far for the day and about to reluctantly plod through some canned black beans. The can lists "prepared black beans, water, salt", as the only ingredients, so I'm a little unsure about the "not processed" status. I also can't find any info about whether or not it contains gluten so I hope it doesn't (see below).

Today I've also started to avoid eating anything containing gluten or dairy, just to see the effect. I've had a lot of the symptoms that might be explained by gluten intolerance for several years (depression, fatigue, strange stomach and bowel behavior), and a couple weeks ago when I had 2-3 straight days of eating a lot of bread and pasta my stomach was cramping and I had a lot of gas. I was worried my IBD was coming back or something but it seemed to pass. The gluten thing might be my imagination but I may as well find out for sure.

 

[KingGheedora]

Thursday

Met with trainer for an hour. All rounds today are 2 minutes, with 1 minute rest.
2x jump rope
2x shadow boxing - more work on the new guard
2x working the rope - when pivoting crouch down so I'm stable first, keep distance between feet constant
2x shadow boxing with more movement. Triple jab: use back foot to pivot with each step so I stay facing opponent as I move in an arc towards him and slightly around him.
2x double end bag
3x heavy bag - after left hooks and uppercuts move to the left, moving to the right puts me back in range of opponents right hand. No fidgety useless motions in between attacks. Stay calm, otherwise judges look upon this as you being nervous.
5x pads/mitts - (1) on 1-2-3, after the 1 bring hand back to guard instead of cocking it back in preparation for the 3. (2) eliminate extraneous torso rotation after throwing 3.

left hook needs more extension
1-1-2-5-3
use jab to close distance
commit to the attack

punches are weak, especially jab. Partially due to being rusty, but also fatigue from new stance.

 

[KingGheedora]

Saturday

Morning
2.38 mile outdoor run, 22:53, 165bpm

Woke up at 8am today without alarm clock. That is rare for me to do on a weekend. Continuing to eat super clean and still feeling good as a result.

Evening
2x03:00 jump rope
4x03:00 shadow boxing
4x03:00 heavy bag
3x15 BW leg raises

After morning run and doing some errands and eating I took a nap until 5pm. At a little more and then went to workout. I was feeling way more sluggish after the nap than when I woke up this morning.

Although my energy was low for my evening workout, today is the first day the pain in my hips is markedly diminished. Hope this is a sign that it finally is going away, and hopefully taking the fatigue away with it.

 

[KingGheedora]

Monday

Morning
2.6 mile outdoor run, 25:49, 162bpm

Evening
5x 02:10 shadow boxing
5x 02:10 heavy bag
30 minute stretching


I always stretch after workout, but my body was feeling pretty good today, and I got into the stretching. Felt pretty energetic and powerful during the boxing workout. Mainly focused on jabbing and a little of the 1-2 during the shadow boxing. Went through my list of canned combos on the heavy bag. Basically the point of today was to practice maintaining the new guard -- trying to improve shoulder endurance.

Caved a couple of times in the past three days on eating all natural. I ate a couple junk food items on Sunday and today. Feeling physically awesome today for some reason. The Prednisone withdrawal symptoms are going definitely going away. I'm not sure if how awesome I feel today is because I'm just finally getting back to normal or if this is also the result of eating a super clean, nearly all natural, and low sugar diet for a full week now.

Running and light boxing again tomorrow, rest Wednesday, and then meeting w/ trainer on Thursday. Skipping jump rope today and tomorrow since I'm running two days in a row, saving the feet and calves until they are a little stronger before subjecting them to consecutive days of both jump rope and running.

 

[KingGheedora]

Tuesday

Morning
2.64 mile outdoor run, 26:02, 164bpm

 

[KingGheedora]

Thursday

Session w/ trainer
3x shadow boxing
2x double end bag
3x heavy bag
5-7x pads
1x heavy bag

After session:
3x5 (BW-20) pull-ups
3x20 decline sit-ups

Turn shoulders into the 2. Sets me up for 3.

Duck and slip more during shadow boxing. Circle, side-to-side more. More unpredictable footwork.

On pads, focused on turning the 2, lean into it more. Keep feet under me, less wide stance. Roll shoulders into 2, and then roll opposite way with 5. Don't stand up before the 5, when doing 2-5.

 

[KingGheedora]

Sunday

2.71 mile outdoor run, 167bpm, 25:50

 

[KingGheedora]

Tuesday

Morning
3.17 mile outdoor run, 169bpm, 29:39

Evening
1x03:00 jump rope
4x03:00 shadow boxing
5x03:00 heavy bag
4x03:00 shadow boxing
3x15 BW leg raises

plus biking 1.5 miles in each direction to the gym, legs are dead now.

 

[KingGheedora]

bizzump for my evening workout

 

[KingGheedora]

Wednesday

Light workout today since I want to be fresh for tomorrow's training session.

5x95, 6x115, 6x115 deadlifts
4x BW decline sit-ups
2x03:00 jump rope
2x20 BW push-ups

 

[KingGheedora]

This weekend I might be helping a friend film some videos for a fitness website. From what I understand I'll just be doing random exercises as demonstrations or something. Should be fun.

 

[KingGheedora]

Thursday

Session w/ trainer
(2 minute rounds)
2x jump rope
3x shadow box
8x heavy bag
2x pyramids

pyramids: on the heavy bag, throwing series of 1-2, start with two punches go up to 10 punches, then going back down. so: 1-2, 1-2-1-2, 1-2-1-2-1-2, 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2, 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2.

two rounds of the heavy bag where actually sparring, sort of. this 250 lb guy who won golden gloves gold in the heavy weight division came off the speed bag and started slap boxing me and my trainer was like "go for it". so we kind of sparred for a couple rounds. i'm still not in shape for it. i hit him in the body and it didn't faze him at all. I'm gonna get that fool next time. it was pretty hard cause he's at least 6'3" or 6'4" too.

 

[KingGheedora]

Sunday

2x jump rope
3x shadow box
12x heavy bag
15-15-20-20 decline sit-ups

I brought my camera to the gym to film myself training but i forgot to start taping till I got to my 11th and 12th rounds on the heavy bag. Was tired by then so I'm sloppy and not moving defensively too much in these, but here they are:

heavy bag 01
heavy bag 02

Will post the link to the 2nd video when it's done uploading

 

[KingGheedora]

Some things I see from the video clips,

not keeping hands up
not maintaining angle
back foot should be more parallel to front foot
arm never extends fully on jabs; my reach (74" arm span, 70" height) is very good for someone my height so i should learn to take advantage of it
not turning over jab enough, and forget to turn it at all a lot of the time


starting at 1:10 of the first video there's a nice sequence of a 2 hit combo, followed by a 5 hit combo, followed by a triple jab
at 1:24 of video one there's a 1-2-5 combo i've been working on w/ trainer.
@/00:47 in 2nd video there's a good example of springing forward off the back foot to close the distance with the jab. Too bad even that jab connects with my arm only half extended. Really need to work on that!

 

[KingGheedora]

Monday

3x02:15 jump rope
3x03:00 shadow box
5x02:15 heavy bag
3x5 side bends w/ 22.5lb dumbbell

 

[KingGheedora]

Thursday

02:15 rounds
3x jump rope
5x shadow box, mainly jabs and crosses
8x heavy bag
20-20-20 decline sit-ups

 

[KingGheedora]

Monday
02:15 rounds

2x7 pull-ups
3x jump rope
3x shadow box
8x heavy bag
4x20 decline sit-ups
3x7 25lb side bends

 

[KingGheedora]

Wednesday

Went in to box but the boxing area was busy. I kept going to do other exercises and checkin every 15 minutes but it was busy for almost 1:45 so I just did the other stuff and left.

3x5 BW pull-ups
15:00 stationary bike
3x02:00 jump rope
3x5 squats (115, 125, 135)
3x15 leg raises
4x5x115 bench press