Holidays are tough. The entire months of November and December seem tailor made to screw up my kung fu and workout schedules. That we’re moving into a new house this year leads to a noticeable magnification of this effect as I traipse home for various appointments that seem to be invariably scheduled during my workout and training time. Add to that the fact that I came home from my vacation in Pensacola with some manner of cold or flu and I may as well just shrivel up and die.

Before it took complete hold of me I had started a new supplemental training regimen based on a book called “Combat Conditioning.” The ideas aren’t necessarily new, you could probably find the material elsewhere for free, but I got the book and intend to make use of it. One thing I’ve found as my time to train has decreased is that my endurance during sparring — both striking and grappling — decreases exponentially as I get more off-schedule. That’s a hard thing to take as “earning” more endurance is much harder than losing it. This exercise regimen is based on body-weight exercises (meaning I can do them wherever I can, whenever I get a chance) and proposes to increase muscular endurance more than weight-lifting and road-work could. The theory is sound in my mind as weight-training, unless you’re training with very light weights and going for repetitions which is essentially already a body-weight exercise at that point, is intrinsically ill-suited to building muscular endurance. You may be able to lift more weight after a period of time, but being able to lift more weight doesn’t help you survive a 3 minute grappling or striking bout. I think that these exercises almost certainly still enable one to effectively deal with more weight, and help you to do it longer. Which may be important if that 3 minute bout is against someone much heavier.

I only got to perform the exercises twice so far before my cold knocked me out last night, but those two days have me convinced that they will have merit. I only did about 20 minutes worth as I’ve been about a month behind in my workouts and don’t want to kill myself at first. But those 20 minutes of exercise got me well worn-out and my muscles pretty shot. Some of that I can blame on the cold, but a lot of it is the strenuousness of the movements.

The regimen is based on 3 main exercises with optional extras. The 3 main ones are hindu squats, hindu pushups, and back bridges. You can see the first two being performed here and you can probably imagine what a back bridge looks like. I did a total of about 80 hindu squats, 25 hindu pushups, and maybe a minute of back bridging. Add in some fingertip pushups and ab exercises and there went my 20 minutes. At the end of it I was quite winded and my entire body knew it had been worked, with the only possible exceptions being biceps and hamstrings… once I get to the new house I plan to have a place to do various pullup exercises to mitigate the biceps at least.

I can certainly see how this style of exercise lends itself better to getting into fighting shape than weights and running. I look forward to seeing my progress both at the exercises themselves and at the studio.

Yeah, we have carpet at the studio. This does not bode well for the overall aesthetic appeal of my various appendages. My elbows and knees are continuously torn up. I’ll commonly come home with rug burns on my bald [ObCatEdit: shaven] pate. It must be said that few things turn on my little lady than a bleeding noggin… I mean dysentery and chronic halitosis come close, but for shear, estrogen-producing power, you just can’t beat it. That’s what we like to call “facetiousness” for those following along at home.

You’d figure it would eventually dawn on me to wear some manner of padding, but my neanderthal, macho side invariably kicks in. “Sooner or later — when I layer the scars thick enough, for instance — I will simply be impenetrable.” I’ll let you know how that goes.

I have to teach a 2-hour class tonight. I’m wondering if I can get away with “and now, we’ll use this next hour for independent study and exploration. I’ll be over here working the double broadswords and you… won’t.” Heartless, I know.

As an interesting addendum to yesterday’s blabber, today I happened to look up from my wooden dummy workout to see two yutes (”Oh, excuse me your honor. Two YOUTHS.”) outside the window with — I’m not making this up — their faces pressed against the window, hands shading from the glare so they could see better. Odd feeling, that. Random thoughts flit through the brain like “is my ass hanging out?” and “I didn’t scratch my butt recently, did I?”. I’m generally a relatively private guy, so having utter strangers engrossed in watching me was roughly akin to being caught masturbating on center ice at the RBC Center, a scenario that I’ve so far managed to avoid.

What do you do in those situations (the former, not the latter… I’m hopeful that a majority of my viewing audience can with good conscience say that they’ve kept it zipped in hockey arenas)? I was admittedly at a loss. So I did the first thing that came to mind… the natural thing, really: leapt toward them menacingly, tongue waggling Gene Simmons-like, arms wildly flailing and shouting harsh obscenities. I imagine I resembled a cross between an orangutan and an utter raving idiot, with subtle moronic overtones — like Scott Baio, really, if Scott Baio was bald. Man, you should have seen the look on their Mom’s face. I mean, who woulda thought that 2nd graders could be so sensitive?

The place where I train (OT: odd little verb, “train”, isn’t it? I feels so unverby. It’s akin to saying “Gee, I sure wish I could luggage faster than him.”) is located on a street that — at the time I usually train — has an almost continual line of stop-and-go traffic going past. This doesn’t bother me. However, I really have to wonder what goes through their heads when they see me beating the stuffing out of the heavy bag in an otherwise unpopulated room. It never fails, I look up after a session on the bag (or for a real crowd-pleaser, the wooden dummy… oh the blank stares I get on that) and invariably there’s either a) a soccer mom, b) a construction worker, c) a whippersnapper hothead staring in through the large, plate-glass windows with looks of consternation, disdain, or angst. The truly fun ones are the “young bucks” — or, as I like to call them, assholes — with that measuring look in their eyes, and that glance that implies that they have 15 years of youth on their side. That’s when I casually sling one of the broadswords through the window and impale them on their 2 Fast 2 Furious fluorescent-green Acura interior. This provides me tremendous joy.