After last blog where I revealed the earth shattering revelation that getting your head hit was not great for you I think its time for a change in tact. The concussion blog made for quite somber reading and was only brightened up in the end by Maisuimi Max’s arse (bet someone gets my blog googling that).

Several awesome things that have been experienced this week  include:

Ninja Assassin

Holy shitting fuck was I excited about this one, eating an entire pick and mix full of red e numbers probably added to my pant wetting euphoria.

Now I am somewhat prone to exaggeration but this is probably the best film ever. If there are two things I like its ninjas and assassination. If I was too add a third it would be trying to inter space a story between random acts of violence in a film called Ninja Assassin it was funny.

The Goods

I, like everyone who has seen Entourage, wish that Jeremy Piven was my Dad. He plays a a car salesman in a film where Will Ferrell goes parachuting dressed as John Wilks Booth without a parachute but with a handy array of sex toys at his disposal.

In a film riddled with great quotes here some of the keepers,

Don Ready: You give away free hot dogs, you blow up an inflatable gorilla, shit’s gonna go down!

Don Ready: I’m sorry. I apologize. I’m… I’m a Christian man or whatever religion dominates the region I’m selling in, but you have to admit it did sound like she was talking about the big va-jay-jay, right?

Teddy Dang: Ahhhh, it feels like a Smurf jizzed all over my face!

And other wonderfulness like the Hate crime scene and DJ Request.

Probably the best movie in the entire world.

Hadouken!

I am listening to their for the masses album as I am writing this (as a break from the tax return). It was one of those impulse buys I make on iTunes when I randomly buy something to see what the cool kids are listening too. So far so good though.

Turn the lights out and Mic Check are bad ass.

Kobe Beef

I got to experience this in a Glasgow restaurant yesterday and……

Now animal rights campaigners might disagree but I think that a life where you get boozed on Sapporo everyday, receive massages from supposedly superior being and get to think deep thought before being killed and eaten sounds kinda alright to me. I’m looking for a job description like that.

My boy Voltaire dropped this knowledge bomb which I feel is apt

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

Voltaire
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 – 1778)

It is freaking nice though, best steak I have had thus far and I love eating cooked dead animal flesh.

Voltaire

I have been reading a biography on him the dudes a pimp.

“God is always on the side of the big battalions.”

“History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.”

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

and this one is fun

“A witty saying proves nothing.”

As I have hemorrhaged man points all over the place by reading about a philosopher (admittedly one who gets in fights, gets involved and makes shit get real) ill leave you with some blog chick.

Who would have thought?

The evidence seems to indicate that getting your bell rung or being lit up a bit could be worse for you than you might think. MMA is an aggressive sport, where toughness is held in the highest record. An athlete can be a total dunger skill wise but if he is tough he/she will be respected to a degree.

With our fight team guys  we have an environment where weakness is not tolerated. Those who sit out rounds of sparring are encouraged to “man the fuck up”. Those complaining or bring in a negative attitude are usually ridiculed and injuries need to be pretty serious before anyone takes notice.

Note: the above description is what the pro fighters get to experience. We are much more friendly and helpful to everyone else.

This environment has bred the countries top fighters in pretty much every weight class. Sparring in this environment can be intense, physically demanding and really freaking sore. In the past we have had guys getting dropped, KOed and dazed. This is never the aim of the sparring but has occured as a consequence of this environment. I am sure we have had concussions in the past and I am increasingly concerned for what the long term effects could be

Check ou theses stories for some scary stuff

‘I don’t want anyone to end up like me’

Plagued by post-concussion syndrome and battling an amphetamine addiction, former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson is a shell of his former self

or

So What Can you do?

For a start coaches need to take this more seriously. Fight Teams revel in the fact that there training is full of carnage but we are dealing with brain injury here and that fact should be respected.

Coaches need to be watching for the signs and symptoms outlined above. They also have to be aware of the fact that fighters are stupid as shit and lie all the time.

Coach: you ok?

Fighter: Im fine coach

Coach: are you sure.

Fighter: Im fine I just slipped let me finish the round.

Coach: You know you have been out for 10 minutes?

Fighter: uhm…….no is wasnt!

It is up to the coach to outline the importance of concussion management, they must emphasise that a concussion means that you are injured and not just hurt.

Athletes also need to be on the look out for each other. If one of your team mates cant remember your name or his own name you might want to bring it to the attention of someone in charge.

Sparring

No matter what you think for the most part professional fight teams do not encourage their fighters to kill each other. Our policy is to never go beyond 80% even in the depths of a fight camp.

Beyond 80% intensity you are

1. more likely to hurt a training partner
2. more likely to get hurt
3. more likely to gas out
4. more likely to be shit.

This goes with fights as well when you try to hit a guy as hard as you can you tense up, get slow and burn yourself out. Our corner teams have a number of phrases and strategies for keeping our fighters from spazzing out “think about hitting fast not hard” etc. This 80% value keeps you safe and sharp and gives you a safe way to prepare relistically for competition.

Outwith fight camps, I like to keep the majority of sparring light (sort of) and technical. Our Thai team has had great results with their “kick sparring” drills, this involves dicking around with new techniques and strategies  versus kicks. The coaches outline this is  a technical drill in the spirit of mutually improvement and it has been paying of in competition.

So what to do when a Concussion occurs?

Once a concussion is diagnosed by a medical professional the best form of recovery is rest. The symptoms tend to disappear with time. One of the golden rules is do not let some one who is still experiencing symptoms to return to training.

Robert Cantu, MD, chief of neurosurgery service, chairman of the department of surgery, and director of sports medicine service at Emerson Hospital in Concord, MA, who has been a pioneer in developing concussion grading criteria and return-to-play guidelines following concussion.

Cantu states that athletes with mild (no LOC; post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) or symptoms lasting less than 30 minutes) or moderate (LOC less than one minute, PTA or symptoms between 30 minutes and 24 hours) first-episode concussions be asymptomatic for one week before returning to play. Those with severe concussions (LOC of more than one minute or PTA for more than 24 hours; symptoms lasting longer than seven days) should wait at least one month before returning to play, according to Cantu, and then only if they have been asymptomatic for one week. Cantu’s guidelines are stricter for repeat concussions, recommending termination of the season following a second severe concussion or a third mild or moderate concussion.

To find out more on this check out http://www.chrisnowinski.com/

This has been some heavy shit thanks for tagging along.

1. Well this time management stuff has proven to be worth while in the past 3 days I have started and finished draft 1 of the griphouses bjj syllabus, speed read a book on speed reading, started going through mell siffs supertraining book again, listened to two audio books, kept my house tidy, prepared all my meals for cutting weight this week, wrote up a few resistance training programs watched Eric Cressys new product Assess and Correct and trained a skank load.

A couple of days ago that list would have went like this, played modern warfare 2 and trained a skank load.

This making a list and working from it deal is a brilliant idea, i always thought my girlfriend was anal as shit for doing that everyday. Turns out thats why she gets shit done and i am a mess.

Lets see how long it takes for someone to mention my use of the word anal in the last paragraph.

2. I know i promised you some video of cool stuff a few posts back. I have done it but you tube is being a douchebag and it wont upload properly. Bear with me and i will sort it out.

3. Did i mention that the guys went 8-0 at Absolute Combat? Yeah probably like 100 times to anyone that will listen. Turns out it gets better the Griphouse/DNFT/Caledonian Muay Thai team has a combined record of 12-1 for bouts that took place in the last 2 weeks. Great achievement for the all of us. Lets see if we can add a bunch more in the win column over the next two weeks to finish of the season.

Great pic by Del at MMA Hit Pit

4. I just managed to check out Strength Coach Ollie Richardson’s Article in MMA unltd last month. This was great piece by a guy who is on the cutting edge of strength and conditioning in MMA. Its evident when his guys get into the cage they have the physical edge in competition.

The article outlined what physical qualities Ollie looks to develop in his athletes at different times within the training camp. He also dropped some knowledge on the state of the industry at the minute and spoke out about the cardio emphasis guys in the sport.

This article and the article in Fighters Only Issue 56 where the two best pieces I have seen with regards strength and conditioning in mma……like pretty much ever.

I reckon the dude needs to write a book and soon.

5. I know how to hit southpaws now….training for my next fight has gone well. Cannot wait to make a spectacle of myself in a cage with hardly any clothes on.

6. Funny but a bit rank

6. Congrats to lightweight competitor Andy Ogle for ending Allan “No” Love’s unbeaten run with an elbow TKO in the late hours of Sunday. Admittedly this was a booze fuelled carnage fest in an Edinburgh Goth Club but i think it should still go on both guys sherdog profiles.

7. And finally congrats to our boy Teen Titan not only did he manage to not get savagely assualted during the booze filled carnage fest mentioned above he ended up going home with two fine ladies for a night of debauchery. Hes only 18 and already a deviant I will endeavor to keep you updated on his progress.

Productivity and organisational skills have never been my strongest areas. But I am hoping to change my ways with the aid of some new reading/listening material I am working my way through.

To be a World Class coach of MMA athletes (its one of my goals) I think organisational skills and using your time well are of paramount importance. Getting your fighters to the people they need to work with to improve them is often a logistical nightmare particularly if both guys are are not full time professionals.

I think that is where guys like Greg Jackson excel, he brings in the people that his fighters need to keep improving. This was evident to me at Absolute Combat 2 at the weekend.

We had a tonne of guys preparing for fights and we were sparring and training regularly, we somehow managed to find a way to train together despite logistics. Ideas and techniques were thrown around strategy was discussed with the top fighters and coaches in the country. The team sparring sessions united us as a unit and built huge amounts of mental fortitude.

The result? The team went 8 for 8. I will discuss this more tomorrow as it is a huge achievement for any team and a day we will remember for ever.

Being a coach involves having a working knowledge of numerous combat sports (Boxing, muay thai, wrestling, Brazilian Jiu jitsu), having the ability to get a fighter mentally (sports psychology)and physically (strength and conditioning) prepared and to be able to construct game plans that increases the chance of victory. This is a lot of training and education and can take up a lot of time when working with multiple athletes. Being efficient with your time is a highly valuable skill in this situation.

I really want to be a great coach and to do that I need to leave behind my procrastinating ways and get shit done. Here is some of the stuff that has been inspiring me to action.

How to Master Your Time by Brian Tracy

Wow that cut and paste went wrong anyhoo. As you can probably guess this is a book on time management. Theres a lot of stuff in this with regards business and project management and other grown up nonsense that is not totally applicable to my situation (saving time in the office environment is not really an issue when your office is a 5000 sq ft mma gym) but I did get a lot of good stuff from this here are some of the highlights.

• Make list the night before with regards to things you need to do.
• Identify your 3 ultimate goals and write them down at the top of your to do list everyday.
• Listen to Audiobooks on your subject area when you travel. (I was listening to this when i went to the gym, so I am not totally screwed)
• Learn Speed Reading you get through books quicker and you retain more.

Theres tonnes more good advice on this but this is the stuff I have instantly implemented and its been working out. I may slip back to my old ways but if I do remind me to sort my shit out and stuff will get done.

I like the authors writing style and have bought some more of his stuff. Next up is his Goals book.

Because of Brian Tracy advice and because the internet is awesome I got my hands on the Evelyn Wood speed reading 7 day course book. It promises to take your reading speed from 250 words a min to 1500 words per minute. Sounds cool but also a lot like bullshit but I gave it a shot. In a bout 10 minutes my reading speed went from 376 words per minute to 748 words per minute all by using their hand underling reading method. Was pretty ace should finish the book tonight, and then I am blasting through my reading pile. Only problem is my wrist keeps cramping like a fucker.

Next up is Jason Selks 10 Minute Toughness

This is a great book that aims to make developing your mental game a lot more accessible. I am really into sports psych and a lot of the same stuff is covered here that is covered in other books but I have yet to find another book that makes it so accessible.

Jason Selk

I also finished Kick ass #1 because I cant be productive all the time.

Quick one while I am waiting for a southpark episode to load “Thats not Rasslin, this is rasslin”.

The wordpress site allow you to see what people have been googling when they have stumbled across this blog. Heres some of the fun ones…. and some of the creepy ones

1. Drunk Girls throwing up: 28 people have found my blog looking for this.
2. Rosi Sexton Ass: seems you have a niche market Rosi get your arse out and make some money on a pay per view site.
3. Fit Chick in Singlet with big boobs: ok i can understand this one what with my love of boobs and singlets
4. What the fuck man sloth: no idea
5. paul mcveigh beat convincingly by chris david: fuck you whoever you are it was a split decision and I won the 2nd round.
6. Immense Penis: rather strange
7. Man Squatting Shitting: stranger still
8. Fat girls shitting: come on seriously.

What this little experiment has shown me is that I am not the biggest sexual deviant in the world, who would have thought it. It seems there are many more individuals looking at sicker stuff than me. Humph may need to step my game up..

Heres a conversation I had with one of the DNFT’s best athletes Danny “Boomtime” Gray. What you havent heard of him? Well thats cause hes a mad waste of ability and doesnt compete as often as he should due to having a big sandy vagina.

Heres a pic so you can call him on this if you ever see him.

Anyway me and “One gear” had a text argument with regards to the randy cuture, vera fight heres how it went

DG. What decision did you not agree with?

ME: Couture, Vera

DG. That was a good decision

ME: Daniel your devils Advocacy is not appreciated. If you honestly feel that couture won that bout you should go eat a dick.

DG. Paul I am not winding you up. Randy won that fight. He definatley done more than vera to win. Vera didnt do enough to win.

ME. Other than dropping him with a body kick, getting the only takedown , mounting him and landing the only noteworthy strikes. Pressing a dude against the cage in an effort to not get killed is not being effective. You are being ridiculous . You should probably have a word with yourself.

DG. Ill have a word with you ya wee shite. I think he won. Its open to interpretation I suppose.

ME. No its not Machida vs Shogun was open to interpretation. That was a Vera being srewed.

DG. Naw it wasnay you prick.

ME. I already had a low opinion of you ya diddy but now its sunk lower. You cant score a fight, you have a wee beardy back and you got a kicking of Sean Wright aff the telly for smoking tabs like a smelly student.

DG. Am gonna fuck you up ya wee leprachaun. Those are some low blows you hit me with.

ME. What you gonna do hold me against a cage and hope the judges like you better?

DG. Nah I am gonna punch you in the nose.

ME. Like that will do shit I have a cauliflower face i look like a klingon and am thus immune to facial punching. I am off to bed Ill catch you later dude.

DG. See ya bro.

Admittedly this probably isnt funny if you dont know me or danny and have never witnessed the back and forth banter. I thought it was humourous and he still has a wee beardy back.

And speaking of beards

Here is olympic swimmer Amanda Beard.

And again speaking of beardds and such as it movember and the entire gym (excluding those who puberty has betrayed i.e. me) is growing face fuzz its time for some techno from DJ Spirograph

Its been a great week of training, watching fights, eating nandos and playing Modern Warfare 2. If I lived the rest of my life following this pattern I think I would be content.

1. How friggin good was Ross Pearson.  His bout with Aaron Riley was pretty much a masterclass in how to fight a southpaw. If you are fighting a lefty in the future I would study this bout and pick up some of the good stuff. Great technique, power and violence.

2. Just this weekend my copy of Mike Boyles Functional Strength Coach 3.0 arrived. As far as Strength and Conditioning goes I am a big Mike Boyle fan. I have not always agreed with 100% of his stuff but its always made me think. I have always appreciated his emphasis on logistics (the true limiting factor in strength and conditioning)

Im almost through the 8hours of DVD footage and I have picked up a lot of good stuff. One of the more contraversial topics was the elimination of bilateral squatting from athletic development programs.

He has his reasons and  instead of me repeating everything the video clip relating to this is here.

I dunno if I am 100% on this yet.

It all makes sense to me and to be honest my bilateral squat has always sucked. I can almost do the shift the same amount of weight in a Bulgarian Split Squat that I can move in a Front Squat which is weird.

It could be logistical problem for me. I hate having to many unilateral movements in a workout as it takes longer and the guys wont do it. Or it could be the fact that i have got years of programs with guys getting stronger Bilateral squatting. Or maybe im just a douche who cant let old ways go (surely im not old enough to be a grumpy fart).

I think a bit more experience in my part is needed before I throw it out just yet.

Then again a one legged squat with 100kilos of external load is pretty bad ass

3. I think its getting a bit old, what with me congratulating the guys everytime they win a bout. So I will just list the recent stuff over the last few months.

Ground Control

Scotty “the body” Ward wins middleweight advanced division. Also got the silver medal at the British No gi champs.

Thai Bouts

Jordan Calder, Mikey Wiseman, Jo jo (13-0 yeah), Lyn, Brian,

MMA

Quinny, Lovey, Doolan (Head kick like prophesised), Scotty Ward (Scottish title), Afterburner,

Jiu Jitsu Glasgow Open

9 gold medals, 2 silver

I have probably missed some guys out but its, your own fault for winning everything.

4. I freaking now love wrestling who would have thought it. Back on the good end of the learning curve, everyday seeing progress its ace. Singlets are bitching too. I want this one.

I am one of those curious people who seems to multi task (read procrastinate) like I had a fully developed vagina. At any one time I’m usually Reading 3-4 books. Here’s a quick list of the books I’m Reading at the moment. This is also a quick experiment on using the iPhones wordpress app so bear with me

Currently Reading
Assess and correct manual- Mike Robertson, Eric Cressey and BIll Hartman

This came as a PDF download when I bought the A and C product. It’s a great resource for improving your assesment skills and correct any problems you find. A lot of the corrections I was aware of from their previous products but having it all in one place and in more detail is coolio.

Drop Dead Gorgeous- Wayne simmons

A high school friend made me aware of this one. If there’s one thing I like more than zombies it NOTHING. Zombies rock all. The fact that this paticular apocylypse is based in Belfast with all the sectarian undertones I have missed since moving to Glasgow (eh hang on a minute) and that only super stunning chicks are turning into zombies makes this a really fun read.

The greatest show on earth- Richard Dawkins

Sometimes I which I could adopt father figures. My ole man is cool and all but it would be nice if you could tell people “oh yeah well randy couture is my dad”. Dawkins is up there on that hallowed list that includes Richard Attenborugh, johnathon frakes and batman.

The book acts as a compelling evidence for the already compelling FACT of evolution. It covers everything from fossil records, to breeding control in plants and animals, to the so called missing links (there are tonnes of them) and much more irrefutable evidence supporting the theory.

The fact that 40% of people in the US and a growing number in Europe are sceptical of this theory would be hilarious if it wasn’t so frigging tragic

Music I’m listening too.

On the eve of war-Jedi Mind Tricks and the RZA

Ace song improves boxing footwork 27% factoid

New album-Biffy clyro
Ever listened to the lyrics of a biffy song, proper madness nonsense, great tunage though.

Abagail- King Diamond
Can only listen to about 3 king diamond tracks before I want to staple my scroat to a chair due to his high pitched warbling. But for those first two tracks I’m all over it.

So this app is a bit wank I can’t embed YouTube and it capitalises the world Reading. Good first try though see you tomorrow.

“Im like a godddam navy seal, an olympic gold medalist wrapped in a suit of fucking body armour. Im fucking Elite”

Heres another one about squatting

5. The Griphouse Gyms weightlifting program is in full swing and should be producing some good results. Is it optimal for athletic development, nah probably not. Is it better than getting stabbed in the pancreas, takes only 20  mins 3 times a week and the guys will actually do it, hell yeah.

Sometimes being a strength coach isnt about finding the optmium sometimes it is about finding the most practical. Those awesomely programmed and periodised 2 hr workouts werent getting done by guys who worked all day then wanted to do 2-3hrs of skill training. Ill post it up here next time.

6. I like girls i like the idea of guns….this’ll work trust me

• First up I am like super fit come fight night, i think i really have got a handle on fight conditioning and it seems to me to be a pretty simple equation.Tonnes of sparring + being comfortable in every range + a little turbo hard conditioning= Good to go come fight night.Despite losing, the cardio wasnt an issue.

• Ive gotten pretty good at using the cage to get up to my feet, i think i did it like a million times in that fight…yep definetly close to a million. Problem being that means i got taken down like a million times Baws!

• Managed a few takedowns when i was trying to even things up on the scorecards against a great wrestler, cheers Kieran.

•  And from the second round on I defended the takedown pretty well, Just forgot to even attempt defending them in the first. Oh and those big triangle advertising blocks at the bottom of the cage are total c units when defending the takedown.

•  Defended the ground pound well and kept moving my hips and standing up a lot.

• I forget to throw combinations or work my footwork properly. Relied too much on single shots. Didnt set anything up.

• Takedown defense in the first was attrocious.
• Entire first rd was shit only really started fighting from the 2nd.
• Backed up straight when he was coming forward
• Forgot to dig underhooks on a couple of the stand ups

• I fell of his back in the last 90 seconds, scrambled like a mofo to get back up to where i could do stuff and ended up with a Chris David on my back, ultimately losing the fight in the last 90 seconds all because of a white belt mistake.
• Pulled the worlds worst guillotine.
• Pulled the worlds worst lateral drop.

• He accidentally let me into his plan, the messages in his magazine articles are all part of the mad bastards scheme for world domination.

• readers of fighters only magazine beware, if for some reason you find yourself standing in front of the bathroom mirror in the dead of night, stretched out foreskin in one hand, kitchen knife in the other, thinking it’s ok I’ll chop it off, post it up to Paul and my place on his space ship leaving earth on judgement day is secure..don’t do it, and stop reading McVeigh’s articles so much

I still have no idea why I was on a giant man’s shoulders, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

I am getting a lot of chat from people asking about our program design and stuff and ill start posting some things up and get more video on the site. But for now heres some…..

And because I love you, all of you but you especially…..

I seem to like tattoos at the minute anyhoo see ya tomorrows for some useful stuff BRATTTT!

1. First up huge congrats to all of the guys who competed at the Hostile Territory Fight Night in Alloa. 6-1 is a freaking awesome result and is a testament to the hard training and all the work put in by our athletes.

Oh and your coaches are pretty smart too.

2. I spent most of this week down at Manchester training with Karl Tanswell and his guys. I had a great time and Karl clearly knows way too much stuff about mma.

I think what makes him unique is that he was the ability to create techniques and systems that most people dont consider with regards mma. His stuff really blurs the lines between striking, wrestling and jiu jitsu. I myself have never had a single original idea in my life so I really appreciate getting to workout with guys like this.

I think you will be seeing some hella wondorous stuff from Karls guys in the future.

3. To round out my week of club whoring I headed down to Sor Thanikul to check out a Crezio De Souza Seminar. This almost didnt happen but after numerous texts and threats Martin agreed to take the hit and drive us down. Really enjoyed it. It was great to add some new things to my game but in paticular it was cool to experience crushing violent pressure from top game from the man himself.

I think a lot of us ease off on this while drilling and sparring as we are being nice but balls to that no one likes me at my gym anyway so you fuckers are getting matt smeared by 70kg of fury on Monday.

3. I really hate feet they make very little sense to me.

4. Myself, Jimmy Chang and Excitement Myn Dyn have been experimenting with our pad rounds recently and have been implementing some more mma techniques as opposed to straight boxing and thai. Many of you guys already do this but for me its relatively new.

While using the coach spar mitts your pad holder can call combination’s shots, clinch stuff and at any moment the fucker will shoot on you preferably when your in the middle of a combo. When we did this the result was everyone was knackered, pad holder, pad hitter people watching. Ill post a video up when it starts to look less like a cluster fuck.

5. Its only a few weeks till Glasgows biggest mma production, in Braehead arena. The fight card is bitching, check it out here http://eurofightxtremefc.com/

6. One of the things I am thinking is that maybe the key to being a great mma coach isnt your technical proficiency. I am sure this helps but I think guys like Greg Jackson might be as respected as they are due to their organizational skills and there ability to get their fighters too the people that can improve them. When you are successful you attaract the people with the skills you want to impart.

Theres a confidence built within a fighter when he knows what he is to be doing every week and day up until the fight. The coachs job is to analyse the opponent and ensure the fighter has improved since their last bout in a way that will be of benefit them in the upcoming fight. Simples right.

Admittedly im an organisational mess most of the time but ill work on it.

As a coach you have to be Like a Boss

Although I do advise against chopping your own balls off.

8. She is probably my favourite thus far, peace.

Suicide girls rawk

1. Ive been a busy little book worm this week managed to get through Practical Programming by Mark Rippentoe, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Got fight by Forrest Griffin and I have started Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk. Here is a one sentence review of each.

Practical Programming- was good, i like for the most part.

Outliers- to be successful be smart enough, work really hard, be fortunate and be Chinese. Really interesting study on how the self made man idea is baws

Got Fight- Forrest Griffin has made the book i always wanted to make, he mentions his penis, fighting and Chuck Norris its immense.

Pygmy- murderous foreign midget operative invades America posing as a foreign exchange student, possessing awesome violence skills and an unhealthy obsession with sodomy. Good book.

2. This made me pee my pants, literally i had a momentary loss of self control, it amazing cause Natalie Portman seems so sweet and nice. Who would have thought she was a bad ass.

3. Been training hard this week but I haven’t been eating well or implementing recovery strategies consistently. Result i am a frigging mess, you only realize what things like foam rolling and EQI’s are doing for you when you lay off them for a while.

4. Good luck to all the guys competing today, cant wait to see what Neil does.

Bricks request today

Its been another good week of training and misadventure.

1. Our guys went 3-0 at the Viper Fight show on Sunday. Wins for Andy “No Fear, War Machine, Shock and Awe, Big Eyeball tattoo on his heid” Hilhouse, Kimbo and Afterburner. Graham “Afterburner” Turner was great in his bout against the very talented Bobby McVitie utilizing a great Stage 2 Ground and pound game for the stoppage.

Being molested by Graham was really helpful in the development of our ground and pound stuff as he did a lot of this stuff naturally, article demonstrating stage 2 to follow on Tuesday (maybe).

2. Ive finished my maximal strength development phase and I am now starting my inseason resistance training. By inseason I mean the resistance training I do in the lead up to a fight. My aims here are to maintainthe strength developed earlier and hopefully transfer that into an improved rate of force development.

I switch from 4 days of weight training to 2 days of weights and utilise the contrast method. This is were you combine a lift with an simalar explosive movement, eg. Bench press to med ball chest pass.

This has worked out well for me and a lot of others in the past and still leaves me able to train at a high intensity during technical training and sparring.

3. On Tuesday I was in Hampden Stadium  with several thousand Drunken Glaswegians watching AC DC. Now despite these boys being old as shit and Angus Young looking a bit like Mo Mowlam/Golem we had an awesome night

Lots of Rock, sweaty middle aged men, people being bald and having long hair at the sametime, 1 pair of boobs on the big screen and a girl peeing in street all made for a pretty special night.

4. On Wednesday we had Rodrigo Medeiros at the gym teaching a class. If I ever come close to his level of coaching ability i will be mad pleased. Everything he covered was high percentage and even the stuff i thought I knew pretty well was given a few tweaks. The guys a pimp.

5. Im off to see Walking with Dinosaurs this weekend, I know… I am 12, dont care its gonna be awesome.

Maeve chose this one as I put up pics of skanks apparently.

The music was inspirational.

2. It seems that the more I learn about all the stuff I am into these days the more basic it becomes. With Jiu jitsu I am constantly telling guys to

1. keep their elbows in,

2. move their arses/hips and

3. Don’t get crossfaced.

With regards to strength and conditioning my answer seems to be constantly GET STRONGER in response to most of the questions I get.

“How do I get better at mma/jits/thai?”

Ok your already really good have you thought about GETTING STRONGER?

“How do I get massive guns”

First of all only gay men like giant biceps, and if you GOT STRONGER youd probably get some decent sized pipes out of it. *I go off and lament my puny arm cannons*

“How do I lose weight?”

Eay healthy stuff and GET STRONGER.

“How do I get that hot polish chick who got undressed in the guys changing room last wednesday to notice me?”

I cant believe I missed that, oh and get stronger Polish chicks dig 200kg deadlifts, FACT.

“I want to have more power, you know hit shit harder and double leg people through walls”

Well power is a factor of the amount of load you can move and the time it takes you to do it, so GETTING STRONGER should potentially make you more powerful (i thought bolding GETTING STRONGER would be a cool to make a point but now wordpress is fucking with me and wont let me unbold stuff so here we have it.)

I think it was last week I spoke about the importance of power and the rate of force development. I use this blog to brain fart a lot so I hope it doesn’t sound like a contradiction. To clarify once a certain degree of strength is achieved the rate of force development becomes more important.

Does is really make any difference in mma performance if you increase the weight you can squat from 250kg to 275kg? (cool fixed it).

3. So how strong is strong enough? For some figures i pulled up an old article by Mike Boyle

The following is what constitutes “strong” in some basic exercises for drug-free adult males according to Mike.

Bench press: 1.25 to 1.5 x bodyweight

Clean: 1.25 to 1.5 x bodyweight

Front squat: 1.5 to 1.75 x bodyweight

One-leg squat: 0.5 x bodyweight for 5 reps

Chin-up: 0.5 x bodyweight for a single rep

If you are hitting these sorts of number it might be time to start working on some speed variations, med ball throws and plyometrics.

4. Most people lack the ankle and hip mobility to do bilateral barbell lifts like squats and deadlifts properly. This is really annoying but can be fixed quite quickly with some foam rolling, static stretching and dynamic flexibility drills in most cases.

5. Heres a lady I found kicking about when i was searching for wrestling videos from the bejing olympics.

hot chick with a pole

Im being lazy and not looking for smut I apologise.

More stuff next week if i dont die in some archery inspired madness.

I am eternally surprised that our gym is busy with this sort of activity occurring daily.

After checking out Transformers in the Imax Tamer demanded a Megan Fox pic today so….

Sorry for not posting last week, but I hope to make it up too you by staying on top of the Making Sense of Ground and Pound Articles. This series is the product of years of jiu jitsu and mma sparring as well as studying the great ground and pound guys in our sport to an almost stalker level. I hope you dig it.

1. The future is here,

I spent most of last weekend watching XARM videos on youtube. I really dont know what to say about it. On one hand I kinda see their pursuit for mainstream acceptance as being simalar to the one undertaken by mma enthusasts a few years back. On the other hand i found it impossible  not laugh my ass of and dance around like an excited monkey. THEY FRIGGIN TIE THERE HANDS TOGETHER AND TELL THEM TO GO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER. Jebus I think I killed my spleen laughing.

2. If that hilarity wasnt enough I have found my new favourite website.

Texts from Last Night

The tag line is “Remember that text you shouldnt have sent last night? We do” heres some of my favourites,

• (484): he refuses to go down on me anymore when he’s high because he thinks my clit piercing stares at him
• (512): If I see one more duchette wearing Ed Hardy, but not actually having a real tattoo. I swear Im gonna shank a bitch.
• (210): I just want to hang out with her.
  (916): You’re a liar. Why do I have to give you reasons you can’t have sex with my mom? I hate you.

• (216): Where the fuck is Rob at, he hasnt answered his phone in like 2 weeks.
  (440): Dude Rob died 2 weeks ago wtf?
  (216): Holy shit r u serious? How?
  (440): Just kidding, but im pretty sure he boned your gf and doesnt want to talk to you.

3. Well it appears that my inane blogging and cak talking has got me somewhere after all, it looks like im writing for Fighters Only for a few months. Its ubercool and im enjoying it, the next article should get people talking, its on Myths and Misconceptions in MMA Strength and Conditioning. Part of it deals with snorkel and gas mask training.

4. I have noticed a lot of the guys who train jiu jitsu and muay thai at the Griphouse have trouble with achieveing proper squat depth when the start strength and conditioning work with us.

What this usually meant was that I would have to spend a bit of time doing specific foam rolling, working on ankle and hip mobility drills while I got them started on basic split squat variations. This all took up valuable S and C time.

My solution has been to address the squat in our class warm ups. We already do a tonne of lunge variations to address hip mobility but the addition of Gray Cooks “cook squat” has been great for improving the squat technique of our athletes coming to lift weights.

I didnt have time to do a video today so Ill post it up tomorrow.

Conclusion is that if you have problems with a specific movement pattern addressing it for a couple of weeks in your warm ups is a great way to clean things up. We have used a simalar plan to address the single leg deadlift in the past.

Squat girls leg cannons are immense

Playing guard places your hips in an flexed,abducted and externally rotated position. Spending prolonged periods like this can jack your hips up. Jiu jitsu guys tend to have great external rotation but crappy internal rotation.This is something I have seen a lot in our own guys.

This deficiet in internal/external rotation can lead to problems including lower back pain. Hopefully the addition of this new static stretch will help us get to the 40 degrees of internal rotation we are looking for.

5. And finally I am competing again in August, its nice to be busy. Its cool to be fighting in my home town especially when ill be fighting the best guys in Europe. Yes that right, i said guys its an 4 man tournament. Never fought in a tournament and it raises some interesting problems. Should be a good learning experience as well as another opportunity to kick off and not get arrested.

Double hotness today

James was successful in his mission to become the Cage Gladiators Bantamweight Champion. I feel that James has yet to find his level yet and since he has just dismantled 3 of the UK’s top bantamweights in less than a round each that's pretty scary.

This win rounds out a great month for us in which we went, 17-4 in overall results. Looks like all the hard work is paying off.

Here is a pick of the chick from drag me to hell to celebrate me not shitting my pants (fully a little bit may have escaped) in the cinema watching the movie.

I’m currently writing this blog post as I travel down to Liverpool with an emaciated angry James “Disco” Doolan. Dj jimmy D is fighting for the cage gladiators bantamweight title on Saturday. It’s gonna rock.

As I’m using the iphones wordpress app I have no idea how to post pics but if I can find a hot chick in Liverpool willing to take here clothes off I can upload that, here’s hoping we get a result.

1. Was in Sweden at superior challenge last weekend. This was the best mma event I’ve ever had the pleasure of being involved with. We were feed, looked after given free shit and given Swedish girls just like in enter the dragon. Ok that didn’t happen but everyone was nice even if they weren’t hookers.

2. I got the chance to check out some future opponents at bantam. This was cool as I got to see how they reacted to the pressure of fighting, what they did in fights and work out some strategies to deal with their strong suits.

I have a tendency to overestimate opponents. It was good to see that these guys are human and smaller than me BEEFCAKE.

3. It’s good to be back lifting weights. I had a week of after my fight and hadn’t lifted 10 days prior to that. I decided to be stupid and immediately work on my maximal strength development.

The high intensity work and slow eccentric stuff I have been doing has left me walking like I have fallen asleep naked, with my ass in the air in a room with bam bam.

It’s all good though my numbers haven’t dropped to much and I’m enjoying playing with some new exercises like rack pulls, pull troughs and different row variations.

4. Although maximal strength is probably the base of developing superior athletes, we must not forget about developing power.

We are involved in a sport were power and power endurance is critical. The ability to be explosive for 3 5min rounds is the final aim for all of us.

When competition time is close we bump up the amount of med ball throws, jump training, and speed lifts to train for this while doing enough to maintain the maximal strength we have previously built up.

5. Why can I not tell the difference between blue and duck egg blue? Why does looking at sofas not excite me to the core? Why do interior design magazines make me want to rip out my own larynx. Oh yeah that’s right Im not a gay dude, could somebody please tell my girlfriend. Honestly you'd think she’d realise what with all the shit I try to pull on her. Thanks for your help.

Ok I have no pics of hot chicks today but here’s a pic of my new do and Mark Connor prior to weigh in, you’d never guess he doesn’t have a drug problem

Now I am  not one to blow my own trumpet…… but


On May 23rd I was fortunate enough to win in a bout versus Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black belt Marcelo Costa. What really marked this bout out for me was that its the first time i had developed a game plan and worked aspects of it in my training camp.

Marcelo’s Strengths

From checking out Marcelo’s bouts I knew he had wicked jiu jitsu, he was a strong wrestler, favouring single legs and explosive pick ups. He also demonstrated his KO power in a previous bout against Musse Hasselvall and he is freaking enormous. I thought i was pretty big at bantam but he dwarfed me like a child.

So he was a jiu jitsu machine with great wrestling and KO power who is much bigger than me……ah fuck.

The Game plan

My plan involved several factors. With regards to striking, i felt that i had the better striking and would use my jab and head movement to set up the right hand and follow it into a clinch position. I have some pretty decent freestyle takedowns but because my opponent has arms like mr tickle i didnt fancy diving into a guillotine or barabo, so we opted for a lot of clinch wrestling.

The other purpose of this sort of game plan is that if you arent used to it, it will knacker you out. The main position we were looking for in the clinch is the pinch headlock. I had spent ages in training camp hitting this and using it for striking and take downs.

Because my opponent shot in a lot i wanted to work the right hand to the body to make it harder for him to get underneath it for the clinch.

If i was on top the aim was too follow hips, clear attachments and throw lots of short elbows. My best ground and pound position is standing over an opponent but having seen my opponent use a lot of leg locks in Jiu jitsu matches i decided to play it safe and keep to stage 1 and stage 2 ground and pound.

In bottom positions I preferred to be in half guard. I feel I have more options there and can better limit the damage I take. from this position I have the option of sweeps, submissions and stand ups.

On another more strategy oriiented note. If I was taken down in a round and the fight ended up on the feet again I would set up a take down of my own to make sure takedowns where even for the judges benefit.

The Fight Round 1

In the first round we were hoping to get him tired as he had a horrendous weight cut. The first round started off with me using a lot of foot work to prevent him taking an open shoot. I relised he wasnt moving his head and his hands were low so I said bollox to the setting up the right hand and decided to lead with it. However im not roy jones jr and as a result I need a few more punches to hurt someone usually. First mistake not throwing combinations.

Marcelo fluries his way into a clinch, hes throwing big ass hooks from his hips and because hes technically attacking me wrong i get confused and let him hit a single leg. The rounds of defending singles and doubles pay off and when he initiates the takedown I reverse it.

From half guard top in keeping with the get him knackered game plan I decide to crush him. I am still wary of his jits and try to keep him from getting any space while landing strikes.

I could have been more active but hes now tired and I am fresh as a daisy chain.

Round 2

Having disregarded the sensible and correct advice of my corner I again try leading with the right hand with no set up. But to change things up i start throwing it to the body. My opponent looks like hes going to poo so i throw it again and again and again, my creative thinking was a bit impaired for this bout.

After another failed single leg attempt we end up in a clinch and i end up in top guard after a guard pull. From here its all follow hips and throw elbows. I like to tie of opponent arms so they cant defend the Hellbows of doom, mainly because I am a dick.

Marcelo does a good job of tying me up with his long arms and eventually we are restarted, I land some stuff and my opponent goes spassy throwing wide hooks. In my weird logic I started to think “cool thats gonna get him even more tired”. The try and hit me is a great strategy I used on Taz McCombe in our bout last year, but that was a 5 round fight. Need to stop utilizing it in 3 round fights. The highlight for me is my first combination that ends with a decent right hand and a knee to the head.

I can see that he is breathing hard so i decide to throw some more body shots and follow it up with the 100% headkick of little or no effect, 1 per fight gentlemen.

I also manage to hit the pinch headlock but after one knee i get caught with another guard pool. Nice little elbow flurry to finish the round.

Round 3

Hes pretty knackered now and I get some major pop for grandstanding between rounds. I throw the spssy left high and get taken down, what was Doolans advise before the bout? “Dont throw any fucking kicks, not even the spassy left high ok……please?” so theres another fuck up.

I pull halfguard and chillax, i know the impetus is on him to do something and when he does im planning on pulling of some awesome half guard shit, but he doesnt do anything and we are stood up. I noticed a few times that i got the position to hit the love machines shoalin kimura series. I also noted that id never done it before and decided to ere on the side of caution. I got him to teach me it on monday though.

My second combination OF THE ENTIRE FIGHT!!!!! ends up with a sweet double leg. Matching takedowns baby im making it easy for the judges.

Marcelo spins for what i thing is an armbar or triangle and posture up but hes looking for the kneebar i defend well. But as he spins again i posture up again and get caught with the same shit. He trys to lock up a toe hold but gives me my own I check the time with my corner and abandon it and try to get on top.

Neither of us were even close and by this stage i was perfectly willing to lose a foot for the win. Instead i scrambled out got half guard and the fight was over.

It was pretty weird i hadn’t felt any real fatigue during the fight but upon hearing the final bell and realizing I had won, I was immediately fucked. Cant really explain it but wanted to drop the vombomb there and then.

Some stuff was good some was bad, all in a good performance and learning experience against a very dangerous opponent.

Heres a request to balance the force since you have been looking at two half naked guys wrestle for 15 minutes

Sorry for the hiatus, but i had a few thinks on like solidifying my status as Europes number one bantamweight, boo yaa. Heres the second part of the functional training summit review.

• Utilising Combination lifts Coach Dos
  

This was interesting, first we were introduced to the differences between

1. Combinations- eg. Power Clean + Front Squat
2. Hybrids eg. thrusters- movements flow into each other
3. Complexes eg. Each Movement is performed through a set number of reps before moving to the next movement.

I have always felt that combining strength exercises always limits one of the movements and i have never really been a fan of the strength cardio stuff. But then again i live in a freaking gym and have all day to dick about with stuff. The number one reason to do these sort of variations is to save time and from that perspective i could see its value.

It also seems to be a great way of increasing volume in assistance exercises.

• Combat Sports- Nick Grantham and Neil Parsley

This was pimp. Neil is working S and C for GB Wrestling and has the opportunity to check out the different training strategies of teams from around the world Por exemple

Eastern Europe
•S&C-Mostly done after wrestling
•Very little use of weights
•Mainly bodyweight exercises
•No programs
•No formal monitoring
•“Athlete driven”
•All metabolic conditioning-running

And they friggin love climbing up ropes. A lot of their faith is placed in this modality.

Far East
•Always in camp!
•Train X3 per day 5/6 days per week
•General prep
–Session 1 Run-Steady state or interval
–Session 2 Technical/Tactical
–Session 3 Weights

Neil also stated that he has yet to see a japanese wrestler who wasnt in super shape and mental explosive.

After the overview of different training regemes we were advised on what we should be thinking about with regards to training combat athletes. I have always been of the mind set of get them monster strong and shit will work itself out.

But a factor i havent been thinking about enough is the importance of velocity. Maximal Strength may be the foundation of sports performance but the rate of force development has more correlation to actual sporting activities a lot of the time.

The hands on was fun I got to crush some rugby players with cross faces and pretend it was core training.

• CHAOS Speed and Agility Training Coach Dos
  

I enjoyed this even though it probably has more application for team sports where they have to you know run and change direction and stuff. But some of the concepts and progressions gave me some ideas for footwork drills in boxing.

The basic premise was that closed agility drills can be learned and improved to make you better at the drill. The open drills preferred by Coach Dos have an element of decision making that make them unpredictable and therefore harder to figure out. In his opinion this is better for training decelerative abilities important in sports.

The hands on was wicked fun, as the only person there who didnt own a pair of football boots i spent most of my time falling on my hole and telling everyone that running was for losers and that team sports were for sissy girl men.

It was a great weekend all in and i picked up some new ideas and progressions and reinforced a lot of the stuff i already believed.

Sorry no fat girl this week instead you get

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Functional Training Summit organised by Nick Grantham of Smart Fitness. I think its really important to check out events like these they are a great way to pick up new ideas and network your ass off.

The Keynote Speaker was Robert Dos Remedios. He’s the Author of the book Power Training and is the Director of Speed, Strength & Conditioning at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA, a position he has held since 1999.

I really liked his philosophy on strength development and his emphasis on developing mental toughness. Check this out for a look inside his weight room.

Here’s a review of the presentations.

• Ultimate Core Conditioning- Strong and Stable

This presentation kicked of with some of the current thoughts on training for core stability and strength. We were shown the dangers of trying to isolate a particular muscle group and reminded that a lot of the core training info comes from physios who are awesome at bringing you back from injury but may not have the same insight with regards to performance enhancement.

The hands on was wicked fun, got to play with the land mine thingy and picked up a bunch of good plank progressions and anti rotation stuff with the bands. The spider man push up was hella cool.

• Recovery and Regeneration Strategies…The 24 Hour Athlete- Nick Grantham

This was a last minute addition to the summit but was one of my favourites. I have really got into the recovery aspect of performance and I suspect i would probably be dead by now if it wasnt for my foam roller and contrast showers.

The presentation introduced us to the Recovery pyramid, beginning with the most fundamental aspects of the recovery equation, adequate sleep, stretching and nutrition. Going up the pyramid the modalities become more involved culminating with stuff like flotation rooms and cryotherapy (which sounded ball shrinkingly terrifying).

• Performance Management in Strength and Conditioning Coaching Nick Ward National Lead Strength and Conditioning Coach, Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme

I think the basic premise of this talk was write shit down and keep records of your results. This was good for me as i can be pretty lazy with that side of Strength Coaching. This one was more applicable to those looking to work within established teams and have proof of their abilities, as opposed to me who already has a gym and body of athletes who have to do what i say or i kick off.

• FUNCTIONAL REAL-WORLD STRENGTH & CONDITIONING-Robert dos Remedios

This was the first Keynote presentation and was turbo good. This was chopped into 2 parts the first being stuff people do wrong in the gym while the second part focussed on Coach Dos training philosophy and methods.

Heres some of the mistakes we talked about in the first part:

1. Steady State Cardio for Fat loss- not as effective as you know not eating cake.
2. Not enough resistance training- strength training is the shit
3. Not enough patience with progress- program jumping
4. Ridiculous diet practices- like i am curently doing,
5. Too much time in the gym- his athletes get about 15-16 sets max
6. Too much socializing in gym- I pod in and go.
7. Scared of athletic movements- olympic lifts, medball stuff, plyos
8. Not Enough Variation- same old routine
9. Too much focus on Isolation Exercises
10. Ignoring the overload principle- progressive overload is key.

The next section covered a lot of the stuff covered in the power training book. I liked the idea that athletes look totally awesome as a byproduct of their performance enhancement training as opposed to training for asethetics.

We went through the way he ratonalises his philosophy and program design. His ideas on alternating linear periodisation was interesting and made a lot of sense. This was 3 hours of awesomeness.

ill do the next part tomorrow but first

2. Ive been giving some serious thoughts to giving myself an off season of sorts. An off season is present in most sports, its a period of time when you dont train for the sport but focus on making yourself a better athlete.

Up to this point i have been trying to do everything at the same time jits, wrestling, Muay thai and strength and conditioning. I cant help but thinking that im limiting development in all these areas by not specialising.

The shear volume of cardio we do training for the sport has got to be limiting strength gains and I am constantly banged up which cant help. I think a few months of dedicated strength work coupled with tonnes of low intensity technique work might be a nice way to change things up.

Problem is a get a bit twitchy if i dont have an awesome gym war every few days and I dont think ill be able to sit and watch guys sparring and not try to jump in and maul someone like a spider monkey hopped up on mad chinese shit.

3. I dont think I get periodisation. I know its fundamental to the whole being a strength coach vibe and I understand a lot of the concepts. I just dont really do well with options (you should see me in blockbuster trying to find a movie to go home and illegally download) does linear still have value, what about undulating, then there is linear alternate, should i be concurrent with strength and power development, which is better for in season training and lets face it we are always in season as mma athletes.

At the minute all is well  due to the training age of most of my athletes i could tie a pig to there backs all day and they would probably get stronger, but as they get more advanced i may be in the shit.

Thankfully i have guys like Ollie Richardson at fighterstrength.com to annoy and a few others who will be getting spammed with my brain farts.

4. whoops gotta go sign a mortgage thingy and im still in my pants later guys have some blog mainstay

This is a quick one folks. When I was a personal trainer in a normal gym people would often tell me that my meal plans and eating schedules were unfeasible.

The food was too expensive, tasted crap, took too long to prepare, blah blah whine. The bottom line is that if you are a interested in fat loss, nutrition should be your main focus. Learn what you can about it and start doing things right. If that means finding some extra time for food prep you just do it.

As I am a total dick i used to love to make people do horrible metabolic circuits or interval training only to tell them that they burned about the equivalent of the Powerade they drank during the session. Its a great reminder of the importance of nutrition.

Nutrition doesn’t just apply to those trying to lose weight. If i eat well my performance in training is much better. Its just a happy coincidence that it helps make me totally jacked and tanned.

“Not now chief I’m in the fucking zone” I love guidos.

I am a big fan of the whole Precision Nutrition program and the Gourmet Nutrition cookbook was one of the best things I have ever bought. However with fight training I have been getting shit lazy with everyday activities like cleaning up, preparing food and maintaining basic standards of personal hygiene.

What i have gotten good at is making sure I get decent nutrition with virtual no preparation or cooking. Heres an example from today.

• 8am 4 egg omelette- 4 eggs, half an onion, skank load of tomatos, peppers and mangetout. I chopped everything up the night before. Prep time about 3 mins
• 11am protein shake- 2 scoops, big whack of raspberries, banana, flax meal. Prep time about 1 min
• 2pm- Cottage cheese blueberries and some almonds. Prep time about the time it took to take of a lid.
• 5pm- Pre packed Chicken breast with no mu spice stuff, green beans and red pepper. Prep time about 1 min
• 8.30pm- John West no drain tuna, balsamic vinegar spray, sugar snap peas. Prep time about 10 seconds
• 11.00pm- 100g herb ham. Prep time it took me a while to find it in the fridge.

Apart from the omellette (i use the name in the loosest sense it was scrambled eggs with vegtables really) nothing required much more prep than using a tin opener. I do like to cook but if im short on time its cool to know that i can get great nutrition without eating crap.

If I do eat something thats a bit shit its because ive chosen to do so not because im forced too by circumstance.

Now get some Famke Jansen

Sorry for the delay folks, Friday was a total write off. My day began with the infamous hill sprints which you have seen before. However this time imagine I’m by myself and its monsoon season in Glasvegas. To be honest i think my sprint times were faster because of the sheer desire to get back home before i drowned.

A few hours later we were off to Bathgate for a new mma show. We had 3 guys on and went 2-1. Danny Boomtime won by armbar (his opponent subsequently proposed to his girlfriend in the cage) and JC decapitated a guy from Manu Fernandez’ team with a head kick. Bam lost by armbar but knows the mistakes he made and will be better for it.

1. There really is no better preparation for a fight than sparring. We have been having regular team sparring sessions, bringing together our best people and letting them kick my head in. This has been great for several reasons

I was tired of being ridiculously, ridiculously good looking

If you have only a few hours to train for a fight hard sparring a few times a week is the way to go. Everything else falls on top of this sparring foundation. Don’t get so caught up in a particular program or workout at the expense of the most sport specific form of conditioning available to you.

2. Unless you are way better than your sparring partners and aren’t getting a conditioning effect because of your superior skill set, then some fight replication circuits are in order.

We tend to use these a lot when approaching a fight as we get fight level intensity, mixing lots of the energy systems involved and utilizing techniques we expect to see in a bout, all with a decreased risk of injury. They are great from a strategy standpoint as we can use these to reinforce game plans even when the fighter is megatroned.

Here’s an example for a grappler vs striker scenario

Repeat till it becomes immoral, usually 4-5 rds with 1 min rest between them.

3. I took trip down to Newcastle at the weekend to corner Mark Connor who was competing on Strike and Submit and attend the functional training summit hosted by Nick Grantham and featuring Robert Dos Remedios.

After the fights i bummed a lift to manchester and trained with Karl Tanswell and the guys at Straight Blast Gym. Will give this all  a bit of a write up on its own later in the week.

By the by Mark won via triangle against the very dangerous and undefeated Bill Coultas in what turned out to be a great fight.

4. Heres a band we have been checking out at the gym that you may not have heard off.Well unless your really into J Metal but arent we all.

Later

P Nice

Stop press: just heard that my brother from an Asian mother Lyn Excitement Minn Dyn just kicked a dudes head of in his Muay Thai bout at the Power Of Scotland show. Thats 2 head kick KO’s by my team mates in one weekend. Flash fuckers well done guys.

1. Its great to see the effect this blog is having. I walked into the Jits room at the griphouse to find 5-6 guys rolling around on various implements improving their soft tissue quality.

Here is the last part of our SMR (self myofascial release) routine. Thorasic mobilisation on a home made peanut thingy.

The penut thing is basically two tennis balls covered in zinc oxide tape. The gap in the middle is a bit more forgiving on your spine.

The sound of gunshots in the background is James smashing stuff.

2. I was listening to the Fitcast yestertday and Fat Loss Expert Leigh Peele said something that really stuck with me. Some one had asked about whether eating a certain food (like doughnuts or summit) was bad or not.

Leigh mentioned that it probably would not do anything too catistrophic but it certainly wouldnt do anything good for you. For me this was a new concept, looking at what i could get from the food i ate as opposed to the harm it could do.

I know that when im eating better i train better. If I hit up Where the Monkey Sleeps for lunch and order Taxi for Brown and the french toast and a coke and a kurgan and a piece of rocky road the size of my head chances are I’ll be in an insulin driven coma in 30 mins.

If I eat some chicken and green beans I might just be able to train the several times a day that this fight camp requires and not get beaten to death. Great incentive there.

3. I am off to Newcastle this weekend to corner Mark Connor at the Strike and Submit show and to check out the functional training summit being hosted by Nick Grantham and Robert Dos Remedios when all thats done ill be heading to SBG UK Headquarters to pick Karl Tanswell’s massive mma brain. This should be a fun weekend of knowledge and violence.

4. Am I the only one that thought that Anderson Silva retaining his title at the highest level of the sport while basically fucking about and not getting hit in the face was hilariously funny? Yeah thought i was the only one.

5. And after seeing the best film ever last night Crank 2 High Voltage i think ill be going with Amy Smart as todays Girl

1. Trainings been great recently things are starting to really ramp up in intensity. Its great when we have so many guys training for big fights (see absolute-combat.co.uk). Everyone is really sharp and willing to help out with whatever needs to be done. Consequently not a day goes past where i haven’t taken a hellacious beating of someone oh the joys of a professional career in mma.

2. Activation of inactive or inhibited muscle groups is something everyone should be checking out. I know that if I stretch my hip flexors aggressively then do some glute bridges before I squat, deadlift, box jump etc, i will shift more metal. Only recently have I started doing this before Muay Thai and jits. RESULT? Better at hitting stuff and a spassy bridge.

Could this all be a result of my imagination? Maybe, but for the 3 minutes it takes im going to stick with it. Activation article coming soon.

3. I hate to give props to anyone who isnt me but DNFT fighter Allan Love has done something quite remarkable. Not content with winning his 2nd Pro MMA bout. No Love went on to take Gold in the Bristol BJJ open in his weight class and the absolute, a week later he won Gold at the Grappling Challenge sub wrestling Event and to top it off last week he won his first Muay Thai bout. The guy likes to keep busy check out his blog here Allan No Love Blog.

I  actually banned him from training for a week to let a couple of niggly injuries clear up and by tues he was already doing my tits in asking to train. Any more of this shit and ill be unleashing the monkey hitman on him, but he’d probably kick its pie in too.

4. Yeah ok I just wanted to use the Hitman Monkey meme.

5. So the Cris Cyborg chick missed weight by 7lbs then promptly battered an undersized Japanese pixy girl. As someone who has spent 3hrs in a fecking sauna (and 7hrs in sauna car woo) making weight i feel that missing weight is up there with slapping children, robbing grannys and raping farm yard animals in a list of things that just arent cool.

Despite having done a shit load of physiology in Uni Ive never got a handle on the whole menstral cycle thing. Oh sure i knew it for exams but some part of my brain has decided im not supposed to know about it and im cool with that. But what sort of hormonal reaction can occur to make you miss weight by 3 kilos im not even sure mainlining cake would do that.

6. heres the blog bird for today have a good one.

1. Are you an elite level Jiu jitsu guy? Have you only got rudimentary striking and takedown ability? Want to be successful in MMA?

If you answered yes to these questions, wow thanks for reading my blog, your much better than me and I probably would give a nut to have your game. Anyhoo, I have seen a big half guard trend in mma of late. Cant take a guy down no problem pull half guard and sweep him.

Just this week we have seen great half guard work from the likes of Martin Kampmann, Andre Galvao, Shoalin and Jeff Curran.

Half Guard has gone from being a position where you get melted  to an offensive position for sweeps or for standing back up. I have been playing with it for a while now and im much more comfortable in half than in full guard when mma sparring.

2. Miguel Torres vs Takeya Mizugaki gave me a massive chubby. Both Guys leathered each other for 5 rounds and had great conditioning. For me this was fight of the year so far. One day i hope to get to the level these guys are at. Bantam and Featherweight bouts are always amazing

3. My Winnings Gloves are winging there way to me from Japan. These are supposed to be the best gloves in the world and are great for guys like me whos hands decide to periodically disintegrate. Either that or ive been suckered by marketting. Great service from the site as well.

Winning-usa

4. Great article on teaching power cleans here by Tom Oberhue.

Power Cleans of Doom

5. Special thanks to Will Smith for helping me with my Hill Sprints (VIA iPod) “Getting jiggy wit it nah nah nah”

Later

Ok I know i claimed that there would be a veritable treasure trove of strength and conditioning information for you guys to feast on when i started this blog. Instead you made do with drunken antics, random waffling and scantily clad ladies.

I appreciate you for still being here and in return here is the first part of the putting it all together series. Soft Tissue Work.

As a full time coach i end up doing a lot of stuff. I honestly believe that without foam rolling, stretching and EQI’s id probably be dead by now. OK maybe not dead but I would definitly be carrying around a lot more injuries and my quality of movement would suck the big one.

In my first brain draft of this article i wanted to write about awesome stuff like Golgi tendon organs and autogenic inhibition. But I have come to relise there is a definate correlation between me dropping knowl(edge) bombs and being called a fag by the Firestarter and No Love. So heres the dumbed down version.

Physical activity will effect your musculoskeletal system. If you pick up heavy stuff you will get stronger. If you dont move around much you will get adaptive shortening.

If you are alive chances are you have certain muscles that are riddled with adhesions and scar tissue. These muscles are commonly shortened, hypertonic and not preforming optimally.

Foam rolling and the like can reduce the amount of these adhesions and scar tissue and improve the muscles tone.

Leading too:

• Improved Mobility and Range of Motion
• Improved Quality of movement.

No longer will you have to look like a goon doing the overhead lunges during line drills and if your moving better its less likely Gazz will kick off on you during one of his inverted guard classes.

Sample Routine

I use 3 pieces of kit for my soft tissue work.

1. A roller/the video below features my home made one. This video was made with guys pulling faces and exposing their wangs off camera, i feel my professionalism shone through . Heres what I am looking to hit in each position.

• Calves- Gastocnemius
• Calves outside- peroneals
• Thigh Front- Quadriceps (rectus femoris) and a bit of Tensor fascia lata
• Thigh Side- Illiotibial band and vastus lateralis
• Thigh inner- Adductors
• Upper Body- Latissimus Dorsi

2. The next piece of equipment I am using is a soft ball. Its smaller and the pressure is more focal making it useful for getting at certain muscles.

What we are looking for here is:

• Sole of foot- plantar fascia
• Arse- Gluteals and piriformis
• Armpit- Infraspinatus and teres minor
• Chest- Pec Minor
• Hip- Tensor fascia lata

Ill add the last piece of equipment in tomorrow or whenever i have time.

This is an example of pretty decent soft tissue management program. Obviously do both sides of the body and the durations will depend on what you find in the muscle. Spend longer on areas that make you want to cry and less time on areas that are not so bad.

Initially i would recommend trying to get this done everyday. Over time as your soft tissue quality improves you will need to spend less and less time on the movements.

Heres a request from the G-Unit

This should be an awesome weekend, Loveys fighting thai, sportfight is on and the afterparty is shaping up to be carnage.

Later

P Nice

I've been having a great time of late. Training has been bad ass, placed on offer on a flat, seen Metallica and celebrated Guys 40th Birthday. Here is some things that occurred during this time ill let you guess at what event each took place.

• Lovey destroyed a mosh pit full of teenagers like Godzilla
• Jason and Garry “firestarter” Christie got barred for life from the strip joint mentioned in a previous post.
• Paddy O’Brien (i hate how he’s significantly more Irish than me) got twisted drunk and sang the “gay bar” song at Karaoke. Only to forget all but two of the words  (see the title) and make animal noises throughout the rest of the track.  The sexy dance interlude  with bam bam was amazing though.
• I used a devastating spider guard sweep to drop brick on his head and compact his spine a few inches in a sumo suit battle. He countered with a dropkick and was declared the overall winner.
• I got caught saying “this flat is fucking shite and looks like a tramps arsehole has been living here” by the owner.

1. As I sit here my legs feel like they have been run over by a bus and my arse is so taut (like a tiger) i could use it as a snare drum. Here is why

Death sprints

Apologies for the stalker breathing and the use of the word “rapey”.

Bottom of the hill

I think its important to have a few aspects of training that you literally dread. The act of overcoming something physically demanding is great for a fighter and breeds mental toughness. In sparring if your the best guy (I really don’t have this problem) you can slack off and coast. Unfortunately theres no hiding behind a superior skill set here its simply a matter of pointing your balls (or ovaries sorry Jo) up a hill and going as fast as you possibly can.

I woke this morning and spent about 20minutes thinking up excuses for why i didn’t need to do it, “I trained six hours yesterday feck that hill”,”my legs are jacked form weights”, “I am already fit, I dont want to its too fucking hard” and the best one “i think I have sand in my vagina”.

Did it anyway and feel like a king now…… A really sore, immobile king that cant stand but a king none the less.

Outstanding achievement award

2. John West no drain tuna is my new favourite thing.

Its a handy 36.7g of protein and its dolphin friendly if that makes you happy. Personally I feel that meat tastes better when you know a large range of animals have suffered but that’s just me….. goes out to make sure PETA haven’t kicked in my door.

3. I made a new foam roller out of a drain pipe i had lying around the gym. I thought i was being resourceful everyone else things im being a c-unit.

4. Ok my secrets out. Im pretty much immune to the wily charms of the opposite sex. I dont read nuts magazine and use words such as phwoar. Nor would i follow a girl in the street just to see where she lives, then set up camp in some nearby bushes with duct tape and cable ties. I know i am losing man points but i cant seem to care. I have been out of the game for 10 years with the one-gina condition and perving requires way too much effort.

So if anyone can recommend some decent blog birds for me to litter round this page ill appreciate it.  In the mean time ill play it safe with a picture of Jessica Alba’s arse.

Dewey you run a very successful bjj/mma school. Do you offer strength training classes at your facility and how to you deal with logistic problems like varying training levels and equipment usage

All training in our facility is done with me as one on one training or group training (no more than 4 per group). In these scenarios we really don’t run into any logistic problems. Equipment usage is not an issue and true beginners will never be paired with my advanced guys.

We will be starting some group fitness classes in the next month. The classes will have a heavy metabolic emphasis. Basically it will be structured group interval training using different tools like kettlebells, dumbbells, bodyweight, etc. In this situation we will probably limit class sizes to around 10 or 12.

How do you warm up for a Jits class and how does this differ from schools that don’t have a coach with a background in strength and conditioning.

This is a great question. Our warm ups definitely reflect some strength and conditioning. I think traditionally you will see BJJ gyms warm guys up with some stretching, jogging and a boat load of flexion abdominal work. As a side note, BJJ/MMA guys perform WAY too much spinal flexion. Some of the best advice I could give to keep them healthy is to cut that junk out.

As far as our warm-ups go, we start with some soft-tissue work using the foam rollers (this has become a habit in our gym. Guys immediately grab a roller). From there we will spend a few minutes stretching and move right into some movement prep. Our movement prep will start with some basic lunging variations, a lot of crawling movements and then move into more specific drilling like shooting, arm bars, triangles, etc. After movement prep, our class lesson will begin.

Your recent article “Common Mistakes of a Mixed Martial Artist” raised some interesting points. Your opinion of long distance running goes against the opinion of many combat sport coaches. Why do you feel that low intensity cardio isn’t optimal for combat athletes.

In the article I put this as the number one mistake. The bottom line is, if a coach is giving a combat athlete LSD (long slow distance), they generally do not understand the physiological demands of combat sports. That may piss some guys off but it’s the truth. There may be some valid reasons for recovery to use LSD but other than that there is NO place for it in a program. Your body will adapt to the training stress that is place upon it. Train slow, perform slow. PERIOD! Simply ask yourself, are you going to fight at slow pace for 45 minutes? No. So why would you train that way? LSD is the kiss of death for combat athletes.

In your article you mentioned you used Gray cooks Functional movement screen. What does this screen assess and how does it help you enhance your athlete performance?

We screen all of our athletes using the FMS. What it shows us is mobility problems, stability problems and asymmetries in the athlete. The screen consists of 7 tests which we score between a 0 and a 3. Basically we are looking to see if they can function at a fundamental level. If they are scoring low on these tests, we know they are compensating at a more dynamic level on the mat. The FMS really helps us see common limiting factors in our sport. If we can recognize these and clean up our athlete’s movement patterns, then we are more likely to prevent non-contact and overuse injuries. Realize we can’t prevent an arm from popping in an arm bar. That’s not what we are talking about. Non-contact and overuse injuries are a big problem. BJJ/MMA guys just don’t take care of their bodies like they should. If they can avoid more injuries, that means they can train more consistently. That in itself is going to increase an athletes’ performance.

How do you deal with the hyperkyphotic posture you have encountered in many mma athletes?

This is like a plague among MMA athletes. It’s ironic because bad, hunch back posture is actually “good” posture in fighting. The first thing is to get the athlete aware of what good posture is. They need to understand that walking around with Neanderthal like posture is going to lead to pain and eventually injuries. Beyond that, we address soft-tissue work around the pecs, lats, t-spine and posterior shoulder. We will work a lot on t-spine mobility along with general upper body flexibility. And then we will compliment the mobility we have gained with some good scap activation exercises and rowing variations. In our strength training, we make sure that are equal in their pulling to pushing exercises. Too many guys are pushing dominant from so much bench pressing and suck at pull-ups and rows.

How often do you recommend that your athlete’s strength train and what is the breakdown of typical session?

Our guys will generally be on two or three day programs depending on they often they are training MMA/BJJ, how close they are to competition, etc. A typical session will look like this:

Soft-tissue work (foam roll, tennis ball, etc)
Flexibility
Activation (glutes, scap, etc.)
Movement prep
Power/Speed (med ball, plyos, Sled, etc)
Olympic Lift
Strength (generally total body)
Conditioning (no LSD)

Depending on what phase we are in and how close they are to competition this can look a little bit different but we will still address all of these components.

Part 2 HERE

            In what ways do you train your athletes for the isometric portions of a mma/Jits fight?

In our sport, guys must address isometrics. And it’s not that hard to fit into the program. We just put an iso emphasis in during the third or forth week of a phase. We will generally use iso holds on things like split squats, pull-ups and bench press. Iso holds don’t work well on all exercises. Some lend themselves better than others.

Your DVD combative conditioning was one of the first DVDs aimed at the combat athlete. What did you hope to achieve with this DVD?

At the time of making the DVD, the goal was to give combat athletes tools that they could implement in their current programming. Collectively we had decided with the production group to make it very user friendly so that folks could do the program at home rather than joining a gym. Making a DVD was not the most positive experience. I hate the camera. But I’m not ruling out doing another one. It was a learning experience.

Has any of your training philosophy changed since the video was made? What would add or remove if you had to redo it?

The DVD is fairly old now and the thought process is even older (by the time a product comes out, there are already things you would change). Some of my views have definitely changed. There are a lot of things I would do different in remaking a video but also a lot of things that I wouldn’t. The two big ones that come to mind are that there would have been a greater emphasis on basics and simply getting people stronger. Also, we had a ton of lumbar rotation stuff that I cringe at now. But I can’t apologize for education.

What are the most common injuries you have come up against training combat athletes? What would you recommend to help avoid these?

Low back, knees, neck and shoulders tend to be the main injuries I see. Obviously we can’t do much for contact injuries. If a guy is doing a can-opener on your neck and it is sore the next day, there isn’t a whole lot we can do to prevent that.

With the low back, we will look at overall core stability, hip mobility and t-spine mobility. With knees we will address hip strength/stability and mobility and ankle mobility. With shoulders and necks we will look at t-spine mobility. Guys are really locked up in the t-spine. We will see that athletes generally have poor shoulder mobility due to poor t-spine mobility. I tell them the rotator cuff is a slave of the scapulae and the scap is a slave of the t-spine. A lot of things always come back to the t-spine.

You emphasised the importance of power endurance for mixed martial arts. How do you train this component of strength?

This is an interesting one. Athletes first need to become proficient at the basics. They need to really be dialled in on their form, because as we get into training power endurance (which is actually an oxy-moron) form can deplete quickly. Once we have a solid strength and conditioning base, we will have athletes doing power endurance circuits which will be one exercise after another with almost no rest period. The circuits will be specifically put together to mimic the fight time, rest periods and rounds (ex: 5 minute circuit with 1 minute rest). Will we combine power and strength exercises along with specific drills like shooting. There must be a logical progression to get athletes to train like this. It’s something that guys should not just jump into. If form gets too ugly, you increase the risk of injury and decrease the effects of training.

Static stretching has been a topic of hot debate in the strength and conditioning community. Do you recommend that your athletes stretch and what do you hope it will achieve?

Static stretching gets a bad rap and it shouldn’t. The popular statement that static stretching reduces force output has made individuals completely over-react to static stretching. Some trainers and coaches now avoid static stretching like the plague, especially the use of it before resistance training. Many world class coaches use static stretching and use it before resistance training with great results. Mike Boyle, Alwyn Cosgrove, Joe DeFranco, Martin Rooney and many others all incorporate static stretching in their program design.

You must understand that it is NEVER the modality that is the problem…….It is the misunderstanding of how to USE the modality and the misinterpretation of research.

We use static stretching all the time and you know what? We use it BEFORE resistance training. I can hear the shrieking screams now!! Look at this logically. We know that static stretching has some inhibiting qualities to it. Basically if you static stretch a muscle, that muscle will be a little more relaxed for a short duration following the stretch. This is not really a bad thing. If someone has tight pecs, I could stretch their pecs and before doing a set of Rows in order to get more scapular retraction. I could also stretch someone’s hip flexors before they do a vertical jump in order to get the hip extensors to do their job without interference of the antagonist. So, the inhibition of the muscle was exactly what I was looking for. As you can see, it is not the modality that is the problem but rather not knowing how to use the modality.

A chainsaw is a great tool in a logger’s hands but may be extremely dangerous in a 4 year olds hands.

The most popular time to do static stretching is post workout. This is fine but it only restores tissue length back to what it was before the workout. If you are looking to improve tissue length, stretch cold…….YES COLD. In fact, most soft tissue experts will tell you that if you want a structural change in the tissue you should stretch cold. And even better is to stretch directly after soft tissue work. This is exactly what we do. Foam roll first followed by static stretching. By the time we are strength training, it has been nearly 30 minutes since we have stretched. Do you seriously think that we are going to have negative benefits on our force output 30 minutes later?

Really we could make any research support a belief. If I tested your 3RM in the bench press and then immediately tested your 5RM, you would be significantly weaker. SHAZAAM!! We just provided research that says “Strength training makes you weaker”!! I think I heard Alwyn Cosgrove say that. Kind of funny.

Dewey Nielsen

Impact Jiu-jitsu & Performance Training

503-550-3326

http://www.impactjj.com/

http://www.impact

Sorry to all of you whom where holding your breath waiting to see what drivel i spouted on friday only to be dissapointed by my no show.

Heres what i was upto instead.

• Resident Evil makes me so happy
• I am buying a house soon therefore every minute of my free time is taken up by talking about dwellings, furniture, mortgages, storage space and council tax banding. Have you ever wanted a conversation to end so much that you would consider chewing of your own arm just to get a reaction?
• Refereed a fight show in baby eater country and got to see big willy style mccracken get his 6 professional win. 6 fights and he hasnt even been punched yet. I feel his talk of retirement may be a bit early.

So heres my delayed musings.

1. Strength Coach podcast is ace http://strengthcoachpodcast.com/
2. Mike Robertsons Podcast is also ace. http://robertsontrainingsystems.com/feeds/podcast.php
3. When i stop foam rolling for a couple of days im screwed. My movements of and all the jits and striking stuff i do well goes to shit. Note to self keep foam rolling and stretching its as important as all the other more fun stuff.
4. EQI’s (eccentric quasi isometrics) are a great alternative to stretching see issue 50 of fighters only for more details.
5. I will be getting my finger out this week (how did that expression come about? and what sort of orifice are we discussing? free griphouse t shirt to anyone who can tell me) im even putting my camcorder into my bag now. Yep right now….. “oh whats that my beloved PS3 you want me to murder zombies”, but i have things to do like a foam rolling article, ok maybe for a few minutes”.
6. Megan the fox

This should be quick today folks as i have a busy schedule of reading  Marvels Secret Invasion story arc and killing everyone as Ryu in Street Fighter 4, HADOKEN indeed.

I know what your thinking, “i wish i could sit on my ass all day playing computer games and reading comic” well to balance it up I will also be getting punched in the face of some of our best facial punchers at 7pm.

1. At last i have a fight confirmed its against the Brazilian jits Blackbelt Marcello Costa in the Absolute Combat show in Edinburgh in May this show will be the biggest and best to take place in Scotland so far. Its a great vibe in the gym when everyone is competing so i am really looking forward to it. http://www.absolute-combat.co.uk .

Dont know a whole lot about the guy but i do freaking hate Costa coffee so that will be my motivation until im creative enough to make something up about him.

2. Yes I do find it helpful to dislike opponents.

3. I relised in my putting it all together article i mentioned Activation of inhibited muscle groups, but didn’t explain this at all.

Basically when a muscle on one side of a joint is shortened it inhibits the activity of the muscle on the other side of the joint. Your hip flexors get shortened from sitting down all day and this inhibits the activity of your arse (glutes). This means your hamstrings will end up doing the work of your glutes and be more prone to overuse injury. At the very least you wont be able to shift as much weight or accelerate or whatever.

4. I know i need to put more videos up here. Heres some stuff im working on (after ive finished reading comics and dragon punching foo’s)

Foam Rolling Article
Ground and pound article
The high and low level double leg
Activation Article
Plyos and jump training
designing strength training programs
Now i have a list to work from hopefully ill get on to it.

5. I did get to spar with Rosi Sexton and she is an awesome competitor all of us at the Griphouse wish her luck on he upcoming bout. Even though her son streaked the womens Thaiboxing class.

6. Krystal Forscutt again

Will throw up an interview i did with strength coach and BJJ coach Dewey Nielsen tomorrow.

Hello all.

So after last Sundays alcohol infused awesomeness I just about feel that i can train well again. By well i mean i can get up at 6am get violated of The Doug for an hour at jiu jitsu and not cry.

1. ITS ON. The long awaited bout between Rosi “best chick fighter in the world” Sexton and my badself is on.  To help Rosi train for her upcoming bout In Bellator i agreed to the only fight i have ever ducked. If this blog is silent for a while it will be because I am sulking.

2. Here’s a tip for the coaches. When one of your less experienced guys asks you to show him rubber guard or mentions eddie bravo kick them in the face. Its a new policy we have implemented with those who still cant be arsed doing what i say or lack the ability to move their hips. If however you have a guard and have flexible hips go buck wild  rubber guard is cool.



3. Half Guard is better than closed guard for mma.

4. Hitting bags on the ground develops ground and pound power.

5. I have a new clinch position that makes it really hard to be taking down and is a great platform for kneeing the shiz outta fools. (May show it here when ive played with it more)

6. This girl was on Australlian Big Brother and got to touching a dudes wang in a bath while going walkabout in the bush down under. She now makes the sort of money that would make me consider following her career path

                   wang toucher

7. And heres the video of the incident.

See you next time im off to tidy my house, spar a 112kg man with tattoos on his face and hit up a pro wrestling show in cumbernauld.

For any of you who check out the dinky ninjas forum on www.cagewarriors.com you may have come across this thread by James Doolan.

“Paul’s blog should be interesting 2moro had the following texts from gazz this evening:

Me: gazz you home
Gazz: nah mate Paul’s fucked and needs baby sitting
me: what like drunk?
Gazz: yeah
Me: cool make sure he is ok
Gazz: he has only had 2 drinks
Me: Big drinks
Gazz: no bacardi breezers
Me: tell him to man up he is a disgrace to ireland
Gazz: he just pissed all over his leg
Me: Cool get a pic for his blog
Gazz: heading to a strip joint.later”

Although there was some poetic license used you get the idea. My subsequent hangover of death made me as always question my drinking habits. To this day it involves drinking alcohol very rarely but when doing so drinking until ive at least soiled myself or fallen asleep somewhere.

In an effort to curtail this behavior I started looking up the effects of alcohol on sporting performance. Not the immediate effect, as most people wouldn’t bet on a fighter who had lost the ability to speak and who’s only offense came in the form of projectile vomiting. I wanted to know the effects of binge drinking on the days and weeks after the session and how it can negatively impact training in mixed martial arts. Heres what i found with a quick pub med search.

1. Alcohol will impair reaction time and mental acuity for up to several days after consumption. The delayed reaction time and decreased psycho motor abilities are never good for those training in combat sports. Performance will be reduced and injury risk increased.

2. Alcohol is a powerful diuretic and dehydration decreases athletic performance. It can take days to recover from the associated disruption to electrolytes.

3. Decreases in serum testosterone levels caused by binge drinking can lead to muscle wasting and decreases in athletic performance.

4. The huge increase in calories taken in on a night out is not conducive to looking like a pro athlete. My two bacardi breezers would have boosted my daily calorie intake by 440kcal. If I some day I become a man and drink 10 stellas on a night out ill be hitting an extra 2200Kcal for the day not counting the extra kebab required for the way home.

5. Alcohol has also been shown to effect sleep quality and attention span for days after a heavy drinking binge.
I havent even mentioned long term health effects like cardiac muscle atrophy, impotence, liver failure and all that other good stuff. Seems that for professional athletes drinking in moderation or completely ditching the sauce would be the sensible thing.

That being said….

Good posture for boxing is bad posture for nearly everything else

3.  After catching Watchmen today i realise my entire career in mma and strength and conditioning is based around the fact that i want to be a superhero.

4. Myself and Alan Love have come up with a new game. Its called Loki. Apparently Loki was a bit of a dick. The premise is that you enter a room where respectable people are gathered and say something horrible or cause some other mischief. Brick is current champion by writing “jizz on a baby” with his fridge magnets.

5. I love the fact that i can say the most hurtful and abusive things to my friends and they don't seem to give a jobby.

Let me begin by giving you an insight into my typical morning. First of all i crawl out of bed, switch on my PC, grab a shower and other things beginning with S, play about with a foam roller and then check out the latest blogs in my Google reader.

Heres a list of some of the ones im reading at the moment and steal from on a regular basis.

Absolute Gold Fitness

http://absolutegoldfitness.blogspot.com

Conditioning Research

http://conditioningresearch.blogspot.com

Eric Cressey

http://ericcressey.com/

IOL Strength and Conditioning

http://davedraper.com/blog/

Mike Boyle

http://mboyle1959.wordpress.com

Mike Robertson

http://robertsontrainingsystems.blogspot.com

Rosi Sexton

http://rosisexton.wordpress.com/

Dewey Nielsen

http://impactpt.blogspot.com/

And before i forget

that outfit matches my gold txedo

No ones ever got dumber reading something, except maybe heat magazine.

Proper blog post tomorrow

So anyhoo I think my ego has finally plateaued with the creation of this blog. I mean there is something inherently conceited about those who publish their daily musings on the internet and expect others to give a feck.

I'm just that person.

As well as using this blog as a tool for self gratification I hope it will allow me to formalise my ideas on stuff like:

Strength and conditioning For Mixed Martial Arts

I really feel a lot of us are missing the boat on this one as MMA people (is there a collective noun for us?) tend to be a masochistic breed. Find something hard do it till you want to die, vomit artistically then go do some more training which is primarily cardio based. We love cardio and rarely train for power, when everything we do is cardio intensive anyway aren't we operating using a form of anti logic.

Mixed Martial Arts Tactics

I think its true to say that I have never had an original idea in my entire life but I am pretty good at putting the various aspects of MMA together in a systemised way. I hope you agree.

Random Pictures of Hot Burds

Someone told me this is a great way to get readers

GRIPHOUSE ANTICS

I'm fortunate enough to get to play with some of the funniest people ever on a daily basis. Whatever gold pops up you’ll find it here, for example

I will leave you with a question,

“Would you rather have a monkey butler or a panther that kills on command?”