The Blog I Swore I'd Never Start

This is the last ever post on this blog!!!

2009-08-05T16:14:00.003+01:00

As of today, the blog will be at
www.informedperformance.com/barry

While you're there, check out our website www.informedperformance.com and Will Heffernan's blog www.informedperformance.com/will

All the latest news, photos, events related to Informed Performance Gym will be there soon enough. ENJOY!

2009-07-30T22:36:00.003+01:00

Yes I know I know, I've done nothing to the place in ages.

Soon, all of this you see now will be hosted on the Informed Performance website, so no more posts here I'm afraid.

I'll post up and let you know when this is happening. It's all go at the moment!

Concentration

2009-07-11T16:40:00.002+01:00

I'm going to flesh out this entry on monday with some video and photos if I can get a willing model so check back.

A question I get asked a lot is regarding the blog and the fact that I post up a lot of the workouts and test results for myself and the rest of the folks who fight out of Informed Performance. The gist of the questions is that I'm giving something away by detailing this stuff, that by reading the blog and watching the videos, opponents can get the edge or that others can nick the workouts and material we use. The quick answer is that I'm not worried about what others do, but that would make for a fairly short blog entry so let's assume for just a minute that I am very worried. Oh the worry. It keeps me awake at night. Blah blah blah.

Firstly, if someone has so little confidence in their own training that they feel the need to come on and nick some of ours, then I am delighted to have one of my guys fight them next, thank you very much. Sign on the dotted line please. Secondly, only about probably 10% of what we do makes it to the blog, if even that much. I teach about 15 hours of just classes per week, and then do probably the same in fight team training and private lessons and then another 4-5 hours of my own training either on my own or with Will. Very little of it makes it to the blog, mostly because of time constraints. What does make it to the blog when I have time tends to be whatever is running through my head at that moment, or because people ask me a question that I feel the need to answer. So in short, if you come on here looking for a complete training plan, you're going to fall very short.

The next reason I don't worry is because nobody really knows what you're doing, even if I write it down. If I write down 3 rounds of sparring, what does that mean? 3 rounds of hard sparring? 3 rounds of light sparring? 3 rounds of compliant sparring? If you see resisted shooting, what sort of band were we using? Were we trying to get as many as possible or were we trying to make sure the quality was high and only looking for a few? I'm sure you see my point.

So what I'm going to do is show you today's session done two ways. I'm going to take some sample exercises from today's session and record two methods of performing them. Neither will be wrong, in fact they'll both be right to a certain degree depending on the goal of the session.

This morning, we did the following:
Mobility warm up
1) 1.5 minutes of skipping with a 15 second rest- repeated 5 times
2 minute's rest
2) 6 minute round

Baby Grant throws
Max power kicks
goblet squats
push ups
Kettlebell clean and press
Resisted shots

1 minute rest
3) 6 minute round

Baby Grant throws
Shots
Kettlebell split squats
Walking push ups
Kettlebell snatch
resisted bear crawls

2 minute rest then 1), 2), 3), and 1) again to finish.

Quick as a flash update

2009-07-10T09:43:00.003+01:00

The last few days have been great for training, I just wish I wasn't so damn tired so I could enjoy them more.

Tuesday, the day after my last update, I went over to Will in what is now becoming known as "the old gym" for a session. I really thought I was going to get the rower for intervals but Will took one look at me, took sympathy and I had a nice low intensity strength session instead along with some mobilisation work for my back. Myself and Will had a chat before about my back and it's problems and his contention was that not training was more dangerous to me than training. Well, with the new gym and family commitments occupying much of my time, I haven't been able to do as much prehab or strength work as I'd like, and sure enough my back has been troubling me. The noises coming out of my spine during the mobilisation work on Tuesday were actually a bit scary. I don't think I'm able to let my guard down on the back issue just yet.

That night I got punched in the face repeatedly by a really good fighter who was over training with us. I asked for it, literally. I needed to work my GnP and takedown defence against the cage wall as that's where I'd lost both of my last two fights, so I took the chance to make that happen. It wasn't pleasant but progress never is.

And happily, The BOM is here. That might not mean a lot to you but it means a lot to me as we now have someone to look after all of those things I'm rubbish at- book keeping, writing stuff down, remembering things etc. etc. That means more time for blogging! Ah no just kidding, that actually means more time for being busy at other things like coaching and preparing the new gym.

Today was a good day

2009-07-06T23:21:00.003+01:00

Two posts in a day eh? I must be busy.

I had a busy day today and a very enjoyable couple of training sessions. This morning myself and Paddy did:
Skipping to warm up
5 rounds on the thai pads
3 rounds sparring

I am not ashamed to say that I was wrecked. WRECKED. After the pads I thought I was going to die, then me and Paddy beat the tar out of each other for 3 rounds, and when I say me and Paddy I mean Paddy beat the tar out of me. Great fun, sparring is so much better in a ring. Also it was a really simple session, skipping, pads, sparring which I like from time to time.

Later on we had a dojo invasion from 7 of the lads from SBG in Long Mile Road. We did an excellent session of nogi BJJ. All of the guys who were over were training for as long as I've been involved in Irish MMA and longer which means that they have an awful lot of experience, so it was a great opportunity to just roll and get some valuable experience. Unfortunately for me, my leg kept cramping up, which I realised was a consequence of getting some very big leg kicks off Paddy earlier. It kind of spoiled the last few rounds but luckily I'd had a good 4 or 5 before that.

So today was:
4 skipping rounds
5 pad rounds
3 sparring rounds
cycle 5k fast
90 mins BJJ rolling
cycle 5k very slowly.

So quite a lot of volume at pretty high intensity. To make matters worse I'm on a solidarity no-carb thing with my girl so I couldn't even have a big feed between sessions, and there's not a hope of me catching some winks in the afternoon these days. I'll have to start catching naps in the car, or failing that, on the bike. I'm back in the gym with Will tomorrow morning and I really hope it's a strength session, but let's face facts, I will be on the rower doing intervals.

I haven't been doing nothing you know

2009-07-06T13:11:00.003+01:00

I've been training away, doing 2 sessions some days and trying to get back into the swing of things in preperation for a fight in August. The worst thing about doing this is not sleeping as much as I used to. The curse of being a parent to a small baby is that 6 hours is a fantastic night's sleep and feels like a lie in. Luckily, my new boy is quite a good sleeper and I've adjusted a little bit to the sketchy sleeping patterns so I feel pretty good. Here's a sample session from myself Shayn and Grant on Thursday morning.

Warm up
4x1.5 minute skipping rounds (quite fast with a 10 second sprint at the end. 15 seconds rest between rounds

10 minute block:
The kit was set up in 4 corners of the matted area, which meant that there was roughly an 8 metre jog between stations. We would jog to each station, perform whatever the station required and then jog on, the idea being that we were constantly on the move without any stopping for the whole time period.
1. push ups-4
2. Kettlebell cleans- 2
3. goblet squats- 4
4. Baby Grant Dutch Gold Lift*- 4

4x1.5 minute skipping rounds

10 minute block:
Same format as before:
1. Baby Grant drag
2. Kettlebell single arm push and row- 2
3. Goblet Squats- 4
4. Ring Pull ups- 4

4x1.5 minute skipping rounds

Done

*Baby Grant is a 40kg MMA dummy/punchbag, so called because Grant was convinced after the first round that it weighed as much as him. We weighed it, it doesn't.

Then Thursday evening we did a mega BJJ session that almost killed some people. We started out with a 2 minute round, then increased the round time by 1 minute until the last round which was 10 minutes long. Fair play to everyone for sticking with it. One of the things I was laughing about at the last Thursday session was how many people start the Thursday night rolling at 8pm, and how many finish it at 9.30. The answer- not many. But this week only one guy dropped out because he had an appointment to get his nails done or something. It was great, I was exhausted afterwards and I slept the sleep of the dead that night.

Over the weekend I turned my phone off and put my laptop away and took a whole weekend to myself to share with my girl and my two boys, and I didn't miss technology one bit. It was nice not having the phone ringing and even nicer just knowing there wouldn't be an email waiting for me. Lo and behold, the world didn't end and any contacts I had over the weekend were easily manageable this morning before I went training.

I just got internet blasted...

2009-07-02T14:56:00.004+01:00

Well, if you've met me, you'll know that everything this guy has said is true. The therapy isn't working that much is clear. Where to next for Barry?

TheEntrepreneur

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Roper

Yeah I think you're wrong so I must be stirring. And it's been conclusively shown in customer service studies on market dynamics that the 30 plus age bracket enjoy silliness and not copping themselves on. That might be one to take note of in your next get rich qui... eh entreprenurial scheme.

You think I'm wrong yet you are the one who is againt big commercial gyms to begin with. I think you're a hypocrite. I've made valid points here, I admitted because the majority disagree with me that I got it wrong on this occassion, It's not so much that people think I'm wrong, I'm sure people would also like to live in a world where big companies don't treat customers like dirt, it's the fact that I don't have a leg to stand on because 1) my mate ended up paying and 2) They are a big company so this is standard practice "apparently". I disagree with it being standard practice and it's probably a primary reason why a lot of so called big companies are in the **** right now. I've admitted I'm running out of bait here - I've never seen you admit when you get it wrong and you get it wrong a lot not just with your points but with your behaviour.

You clearly don't see this because you come across as a guy who is lacking in many departments - manners, humility and just being a decent guy now and again instead of a downright dick who enjoys attempting to put people down at every shot you can get. It's pathetic and gets very tiring. I really think you need to act your age and set an example to people in your industry because your attitude stinks. I'd personally love to see what you're like in real life - see where the issues lie but I'm not that interested because people like yourself are best avoided as they are a waste of time.

So, what do you think? Does he like me?

What are you?

2009-07-02T00:04:00.002+01:00

Someone once said something about having loads of excuses and not... eh... doing anything about things... I think it was Abraham Jefferson. Or Ghandi. I was going to start this post with some sort of insprirational quote from some bloke who once did something great, but how hackneyed would that be?

The reason for this post is something I said at training last night about a former sparring partner of mine from way back when. Some of you may recognise him, although you may never have met this person. I think everyone has met someone like him and they're quite common in martial arts. This guy would find any excuse to stop sparring or drilling. You might be kicking him from one end of the room to the other but soon he'd stop to tell you what you were doing wrong while you were kicking him from one end of the room to the other. It was annoying. Luckily (for him) I never took Paddy's advice, given to me tonight which was to "keep hitting him til he stops talking and hits back", although I wish I had.

You see ego is a funny thing and it manifests itself in strange ways. If that guy had ever turned to me and said "stop please, I'm wrecked and taking a hiding here" I would have much more respect for the guy, but instead he couldn't say that and chose to take another route to save face. I think the worst part of that is recognising a bit of that in myself from time to time. Coming up with excuses not to do the hard work isn't something I've done a lot of, but when times are tough and your head is down, it's easy to take the path of least resistance sometimes. The difference between my old sparring partner and someone who throws that egotistical behaviour off comes when you look at those times and know what you did and resolve not to do it again.

Do you see that in yourself? I know I do. There are lots of opportunities to not put the work in and lots of excuses to be found. The time you'll really understand how much you've missed out on through poor excuses will come when you have a really good excuse; something that changes that actually prevents you from training. Injuries, job changes, family commitments all keep you from the gym from time to time, and I guarantee you that when they do, you'll look back on the time you stayed at home to watch the repeat of The Two Ronnies and cringe at an opportunity missed.

So that's staying at home. But what of the excuse making sparring partner type? You have to have met one, and if you haven't, take a long look in the mirror because it could be you. Sparring is hard, grappling is hard, but quitting mid round doesn't actually make it any easier the next time around. Progress varies from person to person but the one constant is that improvement comes from doing. In our gym, no one gets eaten alive in sparring. Things get tough sometimes and you might take a hit or two but as long as there's big gloves and good partners, you're not going to get hurt. One thing I repeat so often that people are sick of it is that sparring is a game, just another game. It's not a fight, it's not a war, it's a drill where you practise the things you have learned against someone who doesn't want to let you do it. In other words, it's the most realistic drill of them all. Quitting in the middle of it because you're too tired to go on is a small problem, and can be fixed by doing some extra conditioning. Qutting in the middle of it because you're wrecked and have decided to teach an impromptu seminar/go to the bathroom/strap up a non-existent injury is a major problem which is really hard to fix. Some people cannot admit to being bested, either by their opponent's skill or superior fitness. That is a problem because if you can't admit to a weakness, then you can't fix that weakness.

Some of your new gym

2009-06-30T15:03:00.009+01:00

Here's some photos of the almost completed MMA, BJJ and Muay Thai areas in Informed Performance.

A view of the grappling area from behing the cage wall.

The new grappling area with the new matting laid and completed and the cage 100% done.

Another view from the opposite side of the grappling area.

The downstairs Muay Thai Gym, looking towards the back wall.

Another view of the Muay Thai area, looking from the back wall towards the boxing ring

Living the dream

2009-06-27T23:24:00.005+01:00

Today was Saturday, which to some is their first day off of the week but usually to me is just another day. I tend to teach a lot of my private classes on Saturdays although for the last couple of months I've been saying no to people on account of the move to the new gym and the arrival of the new son. But today I did work. Well, some might call it work, but I enjoyed it.

Today's job started yesterday with the delivery of the upstairs cage wall. Here's one of our neighbours in the business park unloading the posts:
It's a big yoke. 6 steel pillars with A frames welded on for support, 5 box steel cage sections with rubberised steel mesh, a whole heap of padding, ties, post covers all served on a sesame seed bun. So it's a damn good thing I had lots of help this morning. Work began at 10am with the initial set up. All of the 6 posts had to be bolted to the mezzanine floor and reinforced with steel plates beneath the timber.That stage of the operation took the guts of four hours, mainly due to us having to bang a hole in the ceiling (concrete ceiling I might add) of what will become The Athlete's Lounge so we could access the timber above to brace one of the posts. But finally, we finished and found time to pad the posts and wire sections.
And so we have a finished product. The piece of plywood on the wall at the end of the cage is the first section of a padded wall that will run from the cage to the opposite wall. The dirty floor below will be matted on Monday to make a 112 square metre matted area with the best mats available on the market (which we also dragged up the staircase today). It will be unbelievably cool.

But what is actually REALLY COOL about this matted area is that in our gym, it won't be anything special. I'm sick of saying this but it's the reality. This gym will be by some distance the best gym I have ever walked into, and if you walk into the gym when it's finished I think you'll agree. Some will have fancier paint (we may not even bother painting), some will have steam rooms and plunge pools (we'll have showers, they'll have to do) and some will have metrosexual personal trainers saying cheery hellos to you as they gel their hair (I don't have hair, and Will is hardly blessed either). We're going to be about results, not fancy pastel paintwork and juice bars. We will get those results by investing in the very best equipment that we will need to do our jobs, by being the best at what we do, and by hiring the best at what we can't do.

For too long now fitness has been taken over by the profit driven, ultra cheap versions of what we are told gyms should look like. But gyms shouldn't look like that. They shouldn't look like anything in fact, they should be about getting results.

You might enjoy this, they didn't though

2009-06-24T08:41:00.004+01:00

I'm currently beavering away preparing Informed Performance for the grand opening, which we project will be done 100% by the end of July. So my days are mostly spent painting, waiting on deliveries, organising work and answering the many enquiries we've had so far. Also, while this has been going on, I've been teaching classes too, so it's been pretty hectic.
This was Monday night:

On Monday we focussed on lateral movement, and in particular, the step around. Moving at angles is vital to fighting and in this vid you can see the guys implementing it on the pads with varying degrees of success.

This was later in the same class. We've been missing our Saturday sessions so I made up for it with this little 20 minute team challenge.

Basically there were 8 rounds of two minutes each. Each pair had to get as many completed of whatever task they had. I think I'm forgetting some of them:
Med ball chest pass from the knees, run after it, chest pass back. Up and back is 1
Push up walk
Bag lunge
Wheelbarrow
Squat and sprint
Farmer's Walk
Sprints

Everyone was hanging after them, and Glen and Grant got the highest score to take it.

Ethical eating, or at least, my version of it

2009-06-21T10:07:00.003+01:00

If you're reading this, you're probably interested in some way in your fitness, a massive part of which is your diet. Now the pendulum has swung, correctly in my opinion, towards high protein, low carb diets of the type advocated by Atkins et al. Pretty much every nutritionist of note advocates either a zero carb or low carb diet for the best results in fat loss and health, which means finding time to consume quite a lot of protein throughout the day. An interesting footnote to the development of low-carb as an everyday ideal is the parallel introduction of the term GI into the vernacular. Where did this come from? Well, the food industry for a start. It is only natural for an industry that senses a threat to one of it's main revenue streams to react, and the reaction has been to protect it's grains by the introduction of this sciency sounding term. Does that mean that the science is wrong? No, just that everyone living on a low GI carbohydrate diet is preferable to a food manufacturer than everyone living on a high protein diet. Grains are easy to produce and refine, easy to transport, easy to store in times of plenty, have a long shelf life, and are easy to package. They are multi use too, it's easy to imagine that you will probably have a grain for every meal today. There are also vast, vast acreages of land all over the world dedicated to grains, in many cases, these grains have taken the place of indigenous crops.

Protein on the other hand, and let's assume that by protein I mean animals and animal dairy products, is not easy. It has a short shelf life, requires refrigerated storage, the canned and preserved versions are pretty much unpalatable to anyone used to the real thing. It requires specialist handling right the way from farm to fork, and it is labour and land intensive. In other words, it's a low profit, difficult venture for anyone who is interested in making serious money. Oh, and those skilled farmers do kick up a fuss don't they? With their tractor driving protests in ur cities. Now eating meat on a large scale actually has ethical considerations of it's own. The environmental impact of oh so many cow farts has been well documented. But it's a pretty safe bet to say that by buying local meat from Irish farms, you're doing the best thing possible without trying to raise a family of goats in your back garden. The meat is farmed, slaughtered and butchered in your own country, which contributes to your own economy, the finished and raw products aren't being shipped or flown for thousands of miles, which reduces their environmental impact, and the product is usually traceable to the farm. We also have some high standards of farming and feeding in Ireland and indeed Europe, all of which means that you're getting an ethically sound, tasty bit of steak today. Yum.

Seriously, I really think about this stuff.

I have never examined one of my athlete's diets (I occasionally ask people to keep a week long food log) and found it to have adequate protein intake. Protein is the single most important thing you will put into your body if you're interested in muscle growth, repair, recovery or strength. If you are serious about training, you should monitor your protein intake carefully. But if you're like me and you worry about things like the above and basically want to stick it to the man at every available opportunity, then you should also monitor your protein sources carefully too. This is difficult to do, and made extra hard by the the fact that in general, imported meat is cheaper than local produce due to economies of scale and the cheaper feed and transport standards outside of Europe. So what to do in a recession eh? If you're like me and you're budgetting a household it's difficult to justify buying yourself hefty lumps of cow. It's tricky. Thereare solutions though. My local mini supermarket has a Thursday butcher special every... eh... Thursday, obviously enough. I was in there last week.

So the deal is that there are 10 chicken breasts for €10, and these are in packages which have a clear and distinguishable label which identifies them as Irish. So I buy 40 of them (I have a chest freezer at home). There is also a deal going on sirloin steak. It is barbecue season so I'm about to ask for a heap of that too but I remember to ask the origin first. The butcher, who is only a young lad doesn't know where the sirloin is sourced from. This is a problem. I want steak, I like steak, and this is cheap steak, which is my favourite kind of steak. I'm also after getting him to root through about 9 pieces before setting on the lean looking heap of ex-cow he has in his hand right now. It's dangling in his hand and he's waiting on the go ahead to bag it for me, but I just can't say yes just yet. I'm battling with not just my conscience, but with my finicky food standards. I'm really snobby when it comes to food. Frozen meat is for the lower classes I say, as I munch on my grass fed cow with my little finger sticking off the fork. Let them eat Findus crispy pancakes while they watch Big Brother. Imported food is slightly higher on the scale but as long as I'm eating, why not have the best? There's also a woman behind me who has already looked at my flipflops and beard (I don't wear closed toes on a dry day in summer, and since I'm sleeping 3 hours a night, shaving is not a priority) and judging by the look on her face, she's decided I'm either a hippy or have a very rare form of OCD which relates to food but curiously not to personal hygiene. Would there be anyone around the store who knows where the meat came from, I wonder aloud. Thankfully, the question doesn't seem to be a rare one (steak related pun intended), and the guy goes and finds his boss who is in the back and he arrives to assure me that not only is it Irish, he can also tell me from which farm. Go on then, I say. And to my surprise, he can tell me, and it's only down the road in Meath too. I take the steak, thank the lads and perform a small bow to the lady behind me to show that even OCD, unhygenic hippies can be courteous and I go home to light the barbecue.

So some slight inconvenience for the butcher, not too much inconvenience for me and an interesting story to call into Joe Duffy for the lady behind me and bingo, I have reasonably priced, reasonably ethical, trusted protein. Everyone is a winner.

We have moved!

2009-06-16T23:55:00.005+01:00

It seems like we've been talking about it for so long that it would never actually happen, but I got some keys last week and we packed up KO Martial Arts, put the name in the attic and moved everything to Informed Performance Gym. For those of you interested we're now at
Unit 5, Tolka Business Park,
Ballyboggan Road,
Glasnevin,
Dublin 11
After a massive clean up, we hosted the first of the classes on Monday and we had another session this evening. This was Monday:
That looks like a tiny little gym doesn't it, but here's the long view from the front door:
Under the mezzanine there, you can just about make out the shape of 8 guys grappling. They're a long way away though. Right now I feel pretty stupid, like I'm playing 5 a side in Croker but when everything else is in it'll be great and the large echo I'm hearing when I call out drills will be gone.

The best laid plans we had have come a cropper to some extent, the ring and cage wall were supposed to be installed by now but haven't been as they haven't been delivered. I'm told the ring and the downstairs matting is in Dublin somewhere, but where? Has some kid had it delivered for his Birthday celebrations in lieu of a bouncy castle? It's hard to say, but I'm hopeful that tomorrow will bring better results on that front. The cage wall isn't here because of some padding part which comes from Taiwan but didn't come from Taiwan or something like that. I've stopped listening to be honest but again, I'm expecting better news from that tomorrow. In the meantime, it's the old (only 6 months old mind you) mats, underneath the mezzanine and it's some good fun trying to avoid a giant steel pillar. Good times.

Here was some light MMA groundwork from tonight. I seem to be blabbing right through it but in my defence, I wasn't training and I've been night feeding now for a week. I haven't yet adapted to sleeping 4 hours a night and I think I'm talking shite most of the time now. That might account for this. Avid blog watchers may recognise the return of the Vengaboy who dragged his skinny hole up to training for the first time in 2 months tonight. Already, he's bitching about the train ride home and how he has no lift. I think I'll start another swear jar and this one will be the buy Vengaboy a scooter campaign.

This is the sort of sparring we do a lot of on Tuesday nights. When people see an MMA sparring class written on the timetable they assume it'll be a blood and bone session but that's never the case. This is the sort of sparring I'd define as game play. MMA is a game, a very tough game, but just a game. So to be trying to mess each other up every night would be idiotic and counter productive. So here the guys are getting to play against each other. There's light striking but the emphasis tonight was on safe grappling and striking against a superior grappler, this was the game plan we used with Amanda last week as her opponent was an experienced judo player.

So we're up and running at Informed Performance. I hope to see you all on the mat there soon. I also hope that I'll see you all in the ring there soon, but that would depend on the ring being freed from that child's birthday party intact.

I think that went well

2009-06-14T08:26:00.003+01:00

I know this blog is usually about my opinion on training, the weather, the latest fashions in footwear and so forth, but I thought a bit of straight reportage was in order for our fights last night.

The show was the first in Rush, Paul Cowzer the coach out there was decent to us in providing fighters for our last show so we returned the compliment last night. The set up was decent enough, a bit like our own show. There's practically no such thing as tiered seating for venues in Dublin so the likes of GAA halls are your best bet if you're interested in running a show. After that, you need a minimum of two large warm up/changing areas and that's another stretch, so usually you just get what you're given. In this case, we had a divided area of a stage which did the job fine.

Glen was first up in a K1 rules match. Now we had awful trouble with this match up. Firstly Glen had a fight at 70kgs which he walks around at , and he took this at late notice, about 3 weeks out. Then his opponent pulled when he broke his nose in training and a replacement was found at 66kgs. We felt this was a little light so we asked for 68kg which the opponent's coach refused. But we really wanted to fight so we agreed to go under 66kg for the weigh in on Friday, which we did. All this served to do was make Glen really pissed off at having to skip in a sauna suit for the morning as he made the weight comfortably enough. So he was motivated which is always a good thing. Glen has fought once before in a C class MMA bout but he has never fought in a stand up match before so we were cautious as his opponent was sold to us as a very good kickboxer. Our game plan was very simple, to come out throwing leg kicks and if he tried to close distance to box, grab and knee until the referee separated. (in K1 you can clinch and strike but there is no extended clinching like in Muay Thai). Glen listened to me for once and threw a monster leg kick from the bell that floored his opponent. He got up without a count and Glen landed another, and then one giant one that knocked his opponent off his feet and through the ropes. His opponent said no mas at this stage and the fight was stopped after just 30 seconds. I actually felt for Glen's opponent as he clearly brought a knife to a gunfight, but you can only fight what's in front of you and Glen did that with some style. He still kicks like a little girl in training though.

Amanda was next up and as you all know, I've been giving her some time on the blog lately because a female fight is rare. Before the show she was a little nervy but actually not too much. For her I think it was the fear of the unknown rather than getting hit as once we started to warm up she felt great, was flying on the pads and it was ideal having herself and Grant in the dressing room as they're more or less the same size to grapple. Come fight time she took a big breath and came out to AC/DC which her coach appreciated. Deadly. Her opponent comes from a strong judo background so it was a big surprise to us when she came out jabbing and throwing leg kicks, but that played right into Amanda's hands and she landed some good shots and some nice body kicks. Her opponent had a sneaky jab that kept getting through and one landed on the cheekbone which gave Amanda a nice big mouse under her right eye at the first break. The second round was more of the same initially, with Amanda getting her opponent into the corner pad and landing a lot of shots, but she was a little over eager sometimes, and allowed her opponent to use her considerable judo skills to get the take downs she craved. Once the fight went to ground, I felt this would be where Amanda would be in the most danger as she's only really grappling a couple of months now. But aside from a couple of close moments in her opponent's scarf hold, Amanda came closest to finishing the fight with a very deep looking side choke at the end of round 2, but couldn't sneak her leg through her opponent's half guard to finish. She actually reckoned afterwards that she would have finished one of the lads in the gym with that choke as they have fatter necks. Ahem. The last round was a great one, with Amanda hitting hard and landing some big body and leg kicks and her opponent showing some good takedowns from having her back on the corner pad. Again though, Amanda nearly finished, this time with a rear naked choke before the bell went. Gordy and myself were sure Amanda took all 3 rounds and we were right as she took the decision. It's not easy being the only girl in an MMA class with a bunch of sweaty men, so I knew that fighting a girl would be easy compared to that. She's never complained (well, not to me anyway) and in Muay Thai she has a great training partner in Dee as well. Well done Amanda. Oh and well done Colin who fought the entire fight behind the camera.

And lastly, my red headed step son Grant. I couldn't wait for this fight because I just wanted him to stop talking about how he was going to do the pirate pass, and what he calls his "whoosh" knee. I picked him up in the evening and asked him if he was nervous. "Nah", and then he proceeded to tell me about the whoosh knee again. Luckily though, Rush isn't as far away as Galway (that was a long drive). A common question is about game plan for fighters, as in how much of a role it plays, and I'll deal with that some other time, but for Grant, there was no game plan last night. Sometimes you can over plan and I only told Grant what I wanted him to do in the car on the way out. Two words- free reign- enjoy the fight and do what feels natural. I'll expand on this in another post but basically, sometimes you need a plan and a structure, and sometimes you need someone to tell you to do what you want. Grant has great ability and I just wanted him to express himself last night. And much to my frustration, he did. I swear I've never seen anyone give up an a dominant position because they were bored before, but he did, I've only ever seen people go for knee bars from mount position in training too, but he did that too, and then finished a straight ankle lock with what I'm going to call the secret Barry finish early in the first round. He was excellent and I collected a fighter of the night trophy on his behalf at the end of the night.

The only thing I missed out on was the after show drinks as I came home to feed my new friend but I'm sure some drink was taken on my behalf. Myself and Gordy, the modest workmen in the corner all night, both headed off before the celebrations began.

Luck is for people who don't train hard enough!

2009-06-12T15:19:00.003+01:00

That being said, I just want to say good luck to Grant, Glen and Amanda this coming Saturday night.

Amanda weighed in this morning at 56.1kgs and is in great shape absolutely ripped. You don't see many women walking around with visible abs so it's a testament to her hard work, dedication and iron will. She has outdone even my high expectations so I'm very confident she'll bring home the bacon on Saturday. She's an example to anyone who wants to fight- put your life on hold for a while, look after your diet, train as hard as you can and put yourself in the firing line. Amanda is singly the most coachable fighter I've ever worked with.

Grant is singly the most uncoachable fighter I've ever worked with, as you'll know if you've attended classes in the gym. He works hard though, is tough as nails and is improving every session. I saw him handle someone who outweighs him by a good 20kg last week so I know he's ready. Grant is only 18 and taking his first semi-pro so I'm a bit jealous.

Glen is taking a K1 fight at 3 weeks notice and is in great shape. His opponent asked him to cut more weight at very short notice which we're not happy about, so I think you can expect to see a very motivated Glen tomorrow night. I like K1 rules and I think the ruleset will really suit Glen's style.

Some videos to share

2009-06-09T15:41:00.004+01:00

There's something pathetic about being immensely proud of a very average lift, but there's some context to go along with this:

So that's me benching a whole 90kgs. Check out my feet at the lockout, very funny. Basically this time about 9 months ago I was all blown out, feeling like maybe the injury problems with my back were going to finally make me quit training seriously for anything and that I would have to restrict myself to light work for pretty much the rest of my training days. About this time I met Will, and already this is sounding like the gayest thing I'll ever write. Anyway he and I embarked on a tempestuous affair... no we didn't but he reckoned he could sort my back out and in turn, I would teach him how to fight a bit. 9 months later he still can't fight for shit but my back is painless and I can bench press decent weight, pain free again after about 3-4 years of not being able to do so. Now all we have to do is get Will fight training again and I can keep up my end of the bargain. I'm also posting this because I benched that on our testing day. About 2 months ago I tested and my results were:

Body Weight 79kgs
Push Ups- 39
Bench- 85kg
Inverted Rows- 30
Pull Ups- 8
TBD- 170kgs

Last week I tested and the results were:
Body Weight 85kgs
Push Ups- 37
Bench- 90kg
Inverted Rows- 27
Pull Ups- 6
TBD- 175kgs

All of which is about representative of the lack of serious training I've been doing. Thankfully, even though I've taken my foot off the pedal of late I haven't declined alarmingly or anything and the extra bodyweight probably accounts for almost all of the result changes.

Speaking of bodyweight, Capper was doing some assisted pull ups the other night and took some abuse from certain sections of the gym. Now Capper is back training after a few months off and has put on a few kgs, I think he's 115kgs, Glen, on the other hand, is 70kgs. And so, here we have proof, if proof were needed, that they way to increase pull up scores is to lose your love handles. Oh and by the way in case you're wondering why we didn't use our harness to hold the extra weight, it's because the harness couldn't hold the extra weight.

And finally, you'll all see a lot of it soon enough, but here is the new gym as it looked three days ago. This will really only give you an idea of the scale of what we're trying to do, rather than the content, but I think you might be able to se the potential. We start our mini-tour upstairs in what will be the grappling/matted area, then down the stairs to where the boxing ring, power racks, astro turf, running track etc. will be, and then under the mezzanine (it's a bit dark I didn't have the lights on) to where the Muay Thai gym will be located.

Stuff is already being installed and while the gym will be far from perfect when it opens for combat sports classes on Monday 13th, it will be on it's way to being the premier training facility on this island in our modest opinion.

Oh and lastly, even though he's hiding behind his hand, say hello to Reuben Oglesby, born Friday 5th of June

Things are still progressing

2009-06-03T08:48:00.003+01:00

Not that I'll be crying into my cornflakes, but this week is the last week of classes in KO Martial Arts. It's been two years since we moved into these premises and at the time they represented such a huge change from the old hall we were renting. In a few weeks time we'll probably be wondering how we ever got along without a ring, and a cage wall, and all the strength equipment. But if you're old school as some of you are you'll know that it used to be that the biggest job we ever did was putting away the mats at the end of class. Ah ye olden days.

Back to the present. Amanda, grant and Glen are fighting in just under two weeks and they've been training hard. Well, Amanda has, the other two have been whining away like a pair of little girls for the most part but they're making some progress. To give you an idea of how Amanda is coming, she strength tested on Monday and from a standing start of exactly zero push ups in November, she did 23 full depth push ups in a minute, benched 37.5kgs, deadlifted 85kgs. She still has some work to do with her inverted rows and pull ups (it's really close now!) but she has made some incredible progress. She has some weight to lose to make weight for her fight which will take place at 56kgs but she doesn't crib or moan about it she just gets on with it.

here was Saturday's Session:
30 second punch outs x 10. 30 on, 30 rest repeated 10 times.
Work block 1
45 second punch outs, 45 rest x8
Work block 2
30 second punch outs, 30 rest x 10
Work Block 3
Some wall drills for takedowns etc. Just light practise at the end.

here's everyone in the middle set of punch outs.

It was a good, hard session, and now there's only two left in the whole fight run in.

Happy Birthday Son!
No not my real son. My red headed stepson turned 18 on Monday which means he can legally drink after his fight on June 13th. I don't know what he'll be like with drink on him but I can only imagine it will be bad. So I'll go home early that night thanks very much.

Ab watch!
Yes I'm aimaing for some abs as you might remember. Well I haven't made a good attempt so far as it was a lovely weekend for eating ice cream. The tan has helped though! Seriously I'm down a little bodyfat so I'll get the calipers out for the next update to see my BF%.

Validation, money and other silly thoughts.

2009-05-30T18:59:00.003+01:00

It's a long time since I've thought about this, but a few things have been put to me over the past few weeks that have made me consider the phenomenon of belts and such in martial arts, and indeed the whole concept of external validation in coaching. This whole concept is a silly mess, and one which is hopefully dieing. Yet in spite of my low opinion of it, I still find myself caught up in it.

It's difficult to express this without coming across as patronising, but everyone needs encouragement from their coach from time to time. Some need it more than others. Some have confidence issues, some need their ego stroked, and some just need the odd pat on the back or "good job" said out loud. However I don't know of any grown up who is serious about their training who needs to be given a piece of coloured material to validate their efforts. Yet due to some bizarre quasi-cultural migration which has now ingrained itself in our culture, we are stuck with an idea that to prove you are good at fighting, you must get a belt of a coloured material wrapped around your waist. Oh, and did I forget? You also must pay for it.

It's bizarre, yet here it is. Can you imagine one day walking into a gym and squatting 100kgs and someone saying "well done, now here's your 100kg cert and belt", or kicking a point from the ground for the first time and being told you were now a level 4 Gaelic Football Player, and should get a different coloured pair of socks. It's idiotic, it's bizarre and quite frankly, a lot of the time, it's about money. People want your money and they want to keep on taking it too. So without further ado I give you...

Reasons someone gave you a martial arts belt today:
1) Instant money- I've heard of "gradings" costing anything up to €500, but usually they're around the €30-€50 mark. Often this is excused on the basis that you're taking up instructors time, hall rental and so on. I've also seen gradings where anything up to 150 people were being tested. Do the maths.
2) Retention- Now it's not uncommon for businesses to offer incentive schemes to their customers to keep them coming back time after time, but usually, the customer doesn't have to pay extra for the privelege. Offerring a reward system (roll over! good boy!) is a method used by pretty much every supermarket or store, but usually you get something for free. With martial arts, YOU pay for your customer loyalty.
3) Retention Part 2- Of course it has long been recognised by psychologists that we are more likely to continue something in which you have invested a great deal. In spite of our feelings that maybe we're being duped, or that we've lost the love of something, we'll keep coming back as long as we can tell ourselves that "a while more and I'll get that black belt".

Now of course I could be accused of being a hypocrite here. I have sat and officiated at many belt tests and I still run belt tests for children (who do require an occasional external reward and a boost from their coach, they like colours too) but somehow I doubt the average 27 year old wants to run home to his girlfriend to show her his new yellow belt the same way a 7 year old would show his mother. Besides that, the tests I do with the kids I have subsidise the class I put on to make the actual monthly cost of putting a kid in my kids class much cheaper. I run my kids classes at a loss and in fact will be reducing the cost of having a child in my class very soon.

However one very significant fact of what I do is that I readily admit that this is my living and my gym is a business. Now that won't surprise anyone who trains with me but you'd be amazed at the amount of people who think that I have committed blasphemy when I admit to that. You see most martial arts clubs are businesses, they just don't like to admit it because of
a) the tax man
b) their members
You see if you make your club more like a business, people might think you're trying to make money, and that will erase your guru status overnight. Repeat after me- If I take money from people to put in my own pocket I am a businessman. Not so hard was it? Yet I dealt with someone not so long ago who in no uncertain terms declared "I don't run a business". The same person takes money for pretty much everything but doesn't have to explain why because he has developed his club into what can quite easily be termed a personality cult. This man makes his living from taking money (often through running in house classes and courses which you just "have to attend") yet had the gall to accuse others of being money oriented because they blatantly admitted to being for profit organisations. To quote The Joker, if you're good at something, never do it for free. The stipulation must always be that you should have good ethics, be honest and always offer a good service. In other words, do what you say on your label and hopefully more.

The difference in what I do now versus the amateur me is unbelievable. My every working (and my wife says waking) minute is concerned with coaching, training and the business aspects of doing same. I literally eat and sleep the job. Now that's because I want to be good at it obviously but mostly it's because I love it. I really, really love it. To get to do it for a living has been amazing and hopefully I can continue doing it. I actually keep waiting on someone to tip me on my shoulder and say "alright you, back to work" and to lead me off into some factory somewhere.

Operation abs!

2009-05-27T16:34:00.003+01:00

More on Operation Abs at the end of this post.

There's a good discussion on weightlifting technique going on here. Some really good coaches read Will's blog so there's always some nuggets of info in the comments. I haven't even attempted an Olympic lift for about 8 months except for some technical work at a few training weekends I've been on, and the max on those days was 30kgs. So this morning, in part because I had nothing better to do and in part because I wanted to do something different, I weightlifted for the first time in a long time. I'll detail it below but firstly here's what me and Capper did last night. It was a decent session which I have dubbed:

Capper and Barry's Lovely Time
Warm up- Pull aparts, bench shrugs, shoulder stretching, lat stretching
Bench partials
Barry Capper
40kg x10 40kg x10
70kg x 5 60kg x 5
75kg x 5 70kg x 5
80kg x 5 70kg x 5
80kg x 5 70kg x 5
85kg x 3 75kg x 5

Bench ab curls 3 x 12
3 way bridge 30sec front, 30 sec right side, 30 sec front, 30sec left side, 30sec front

Trap bar deadlift, low handle position
Barry Capper
60kgs x10 60kgx10
100kg x 5 70kgx5
110kg x 5 80kg x 5
120kg x 5 90kg x 5
130kg x 5 100kg x 5
140kg x 5 110kg x 5

Back raises/reverse hyper superset 3 x 12

Done.

So Capper is easing himself back into it by getting back into it very quickly. It's been 8 months since he's done anything strength wise so while the loading is low for his previous standards the session is about the same as one he'll be doing in the near future. He'll just be able to do bigger numbers. For example in August 08 he was squatting 135kgs for 3 reps and last night he was struggling with his last set of deadlifts. For me, this was quite a weak session and I wasn't all that happy with it. My bench numbers seem to get lower every time I lie under the bar so I think it's time to get Will to have a look at my technique again. I lost an 85kg partial last night after being really comfortable on the other reps. The deadlift was fine except for the fact that I tore a callous on set 3 and really struggled on the next two sets.

This morning I did the following:
Pull aparts/dislocates etc. (you all know the deal by now)
Overhead squat warm up 30kgs x 10
I was planning on doing some snatch grip hang cleans but discovered my thumb won't allow a snatch grip. (I think I've fractured my thumb... again)
Pulls 40kgs x10
Hang cleans 40kgs x 10

Clean
40kgs x 5
50kgs x 3
60kgs x 3
65kgs x 3
70kgs x 3

Overhead work- Split Jerk
60kgs x 3
I had planned on 5 sets of 3 but the thumb won't let me do them. Grrr.

I have to say I found it really enjoyable to do them again. The loading wasn't very high on the cleans but I really just wanted to find my groove on the technique. The last set wasn't great, I think I power cleaned and flopped a bit under the bar, but I don't know as I can't find my camera to tape anything. Anyway, I love to lift like this and it's something I'd like to do a bit more of, but priorities mean I can't do it enough to be either good at it or for it to have much benefit. That said, they're nice to revisit from time to time.

Ah yes, Operation Abs.
So I discovered the other week that I've only really bothered having a six pack when I've had a fight coming up. Other than that I couldn't really care less about what I look like it's just that around fight time I tend to have less body fat. At a conservative estimate, I'd say I'm 90% bodyfat right now. Okay a small exageration but I'll get Will to do my skinfolds this week and see where I'm at. Anyway, I think it would be kind of interesting to get in really good shape out of season. I'll keep you updated.

I'm Updating a Lot Now...

2009-05-21T23:26:00.002+01:00

... because in two weeks time I won't have a second to spare.

There's a saying that goes something along the lines of if you want something done now, give it to a busy person. Well, if you know me personally, don't follow that advice by giving me anything extra to do in the coming weeks. My world is about to explode in several different directions and it's going to take all my organisational skills to keep a lid on everything. This is particularly worrying because my organisational skills are legendarily bad.

Something unsettling happened a while back
I was on a webcall with Will one day and my wife was in the other room. We were talking away about I don't know what and after we hung up I went into the next room and she said "Oh god". I said "what?" to which she replied "If it wasn't for the Aussie accent I wouldn't have been able to tell which one of you was talking. It was like listening to another you". This was worrying.

Informed Performance Update
I'm going to talk about the new gym a little bit, because Dan (our business manager) is currently in Vegas and as such can't give out to me. To be honest so many people have been asking me about it that it has just got really annoying so I thought that putting some information here might stop people from ringing me. so here is a few updates on some of the FAQs and also some of the real story about some of the rumours going around. Seriously. We're so famous we have rumours now.

Q: When is the gym opening?
A: The gym should be open for MMA/Muay Thai and BJJ by June. We've had some delays on the legal end (neither our's nor the landlord's fault) but these have finally been sorted so we're just about ready to go. All of the operations currently at KO will switch at a date to be decided. The rest of the gym (weights, turf, track etc.) will arrive and be installed in stages over the months of June and July.

Q: Will I be able to go to the gym AND martial arts classes?
A: This is the most common question. Yes. It's €79 for EVERYTHING!

Q: What sort of gym programme will I get?
A: A personalised one. This is one of the most exciting parts of what's happening. What I do is penny ante compared to what Will does for Strength and Conditioning, Fat Loss, Muscle gain etc. He's been in the business a long, long time (he's much older than me) and has worked with top organisations. He's actually a bit modest believe it or not and he never puts his profile up on websites of the athletes he's coached and the teams he's worked with. What he does do is tell you about them. Over and over and over. But enough about his annoying habits. What you're going to get is great "on the mat" technical coaching, but also top class "off the mat" training from Will. What me and Will will be doing will have a lot of crossover as he'll be involved in MMA and I'll be involved in the S&C but one of the strengths we have is that we both recognise why we're not able to do this alone. he's the expert at what he does and I'll defer to him, and I'm the expert (stop laughing) at what I do and he'll defer to me.

Q: I heard you and Will have gone bust/had a falling out/some other bullshit. Is this true?
A: None of this is true and it's actually surprising how many times I've heard variations on this. In fairness it's probably from the same source but the chinese whisper machine has done it's work and it sounds slightly different every time I hear it. I've actually heard a variation on the theme of "they're out of business already" 3 times which is weird. Now I'm not going to say I have enemies per sé, but I suppose when you speak your mind and you do what you want to do you end up with some people's noses out of joint. Apparently so much so that people actually want you to fail at whatever you're trying to accomplish. Well we haven't gone bust, in fact we're surprisingly solvent and we actually have people ringing us trying to pay in advance of the opening. We haven't had a falling out, not yet anyway. Things are actually going... I'm almost afraid to say it... great. Aside from delays which we were almost expecting, everything is going better than expected.

On a personal note, I'll have a new member of my little family very soon, due in two weeks time in fact. I know it's customary for men to crap on about how they won't be able to sleep for ages etc. etc. but I'm happy to put up with all that and I don't care. It's true childless people, you get very little sleep, but it's worth it. I feel like I'm 9 years old and Christmas is coming. That being said, if I walk by you like a zombie in a few weeks time, it's because I was on night feeds the night before.

A Video Treat

2009-05-20T20:17:00.007+01:00

I'll follow the last very high brow post with some multimedia madness. Yes, I have video to show you. And don't worry, only one of them has me in it.

Firstly, someone was asking me about skipping and how to do it and make it less "boring". Well I can't show you how to skip I'm afraid, as that would be a face to face item, but I can show you how I do a quick and easy warm up on the rope which I think is good. As usual, I'll have a good oul rant afterwards too so don't worry, those of you who only tune in for the profanities will get their share too.

As you should be able to see, I'm counting off hops from foot to foot. For this one I'm doing
10 two footed
10 left foot
10 right foot
10 knees up
10 heels to arse

And for a warm up I'll repeat that 5 times which generally takes about 2 minutes. After that I'll switch the variations up and do something else, maybe do a double under after every ten ( a double under is when you turn the rope twice as fast, making it go under your feet twice for every jump) or perhaps add in crossovers every 5. And why do I do this? Because, yes, I find skipping a little boring. It wasn't always that way I actually used to love it but these days I'm off it. I don't know why, perhaps it's the menopause. It hits men now you know. So try that out and play with the timing and variations.

Amanda Update
The Amanda project continues unabated. She will be Ireland's 3rd ever semi pro female MMA competitor when she climbs into the ring on June 13th so we're in the midst of getting her really, really ready. (Her opponent will be the 4th as home fighters usually climb in second). She had a small break over the weekend and Monday off for her birthday but was back in for a good session last night.

7pm- MMA technique. Under/over position. Takedowns with a nifty submission. Wrestling to takedown.
8pm- Sparring.

3x3min rds stand up
3x4min rds MMA to takedown
3x5min rds full MMA

Then Stephen (solidarity) and her did this and then another, similar round afterwards.

Round 1

Amanda will be annoyed at me for posting this because she kept missing the switch lunge for some reason, she did much better second time around. I'm really pleased with her progress. About a year ago she was tipping along in the gym, attending classes but not doing too much. She took a decision to fight and she hasn't looked back. Mentally, physically and skillfully she's on another level to most of the guys in the gym.

And finally, me oul mate Capper. 8 months is a long time to be gone, and after discovering he had a previous ankle evulsion after yet another ankle injury, he's keen to get back on the bike. Only trouble is we'll have to reinforce the bike. He's put on 5kgs in weight, but probably lost the same in muscle so I think a conservative estimate would be 8kgs of new body fat. But it's the summer now and that means it's time for...

THE PROGRAMME

I can't wait. Last year was great craic. I'm not sure if I'll have the time this year to revive The Wednesday Afternoon Weightlifting Club which was gaining numbers when we killed it last year but I'm sure we'll come up with something. The only trouble is that there won't be the same class of young ladies doing aerobics this year at the same time so we may not get anyone there. If Capper agrees I'll post the video of what's wrong with his ankle and detail what we're going to do to stop it from happening again. If he doesn't agree, I'll pretend he did and post it anyway. What's he going to do, come over to my house and drink all my beer? He does that anyway so I'll put it up next time and detail his pre-session ankle prehab and some of the other hoops I'll have him jumping through.

The Wisdom of Idiots

2009-05-17T19:58:00.002+01:00

Now THAT is a blog title. Of course, it's not my work, it's a term to describe collectivism which is in fact the colossal bee in my bonnet of late, and since you're too bored to do anything else, now it'll be the bee in your bonnet for the next few minutes. In the course of this post, expect to ask yourself "what does this have to do with training?" at least 15 times. I'll explain later.

Ever hear of Jaron Larnier? Maybe, maybe not. You have definitely heard of one of the terms he is said to have coined; "Virtual Reality". While he's not famous, he is one of the leading thinkers on the subject of our technological future, and as such, the culture of the future (assuming the Taliban, Christian Fundamentalists and Sinn Féin don't get elected). I'm also 90% certain that he was the inspiration behind the character on The Fast Show who experimented with, among other things, the taste of bull's urine. Lanier, being a smart man, has written and considered extensively the onset of digital collectivism, the most prominent example being the Wikipedia. Now love or hate Wikipedia, you must also recognise it's inherent flaws, that literally everyone can post on it, turning their opinion on whatever tickles their fancy into fact. Lanier isn't so much concerned with people's misrepresentations or attempts to win bets (my friend used to alter Wiki entries to win arguments and, occasionally, money), rather he is concerned that collective intelligence is a race to mediocrity. In other words, that the more people who contribute, the more average and faceless the site becomes. If Wikipedia listed the author of the entry for Nigeria as someone called "John Smith", I would categorically be able to say the following: 1) John Smith wrote that article, 2) John Smith sounds a bit like a western white man to me, 3) What's Smithy doing writing about a country he's probably only ever visited? This article may well be inaccurate. That's not to say that if the name was more African sounding that we would believe the article more, but that someone would have ownership (be they my Nigerian mate Moses or Mr. Smith) and that we would be able to identify a person, a questionable, fallible person, behind the entry.

In any case when was the last time that a committee of average people produced anything worth knowing or doing? If you've ever worked in a large company, think back to the last large meeting (in my old job they had the cuddly term "village meeting") you were at and then imagine those same people now coming to a consensus on how to come up with an accurate description of the Holocaust, or of tapeworms, or of a washing machine. When everybody has to be considered, you end up with nothing worthwhile. It's now becoming the same with almost every type of information, from how to best bake a loaf of bread to how to repair a 1979 Ford Capri (that one is becoming of increasing interest to myself). Look behind every significant invention and you'll find either an innovator or a small group of big brains. Have you ever seen a book you'd want to read that was committee written? Can you imagine Heart of Darkness written by Wiki? Can you imagine Goodfellas made by popular consensus?

Well now I come to my point, and by the way I'm aware of the irony of making a contribution to this collective via the blogosphere, which Lanier also has some stern words for regarding it's impact on professional writers, words I agree with. It is of course, training related. I was having a chat to Tom who trains with me and reads this blog. Hi Tom. Firstly, he seemed to think the rant at the end of my last entry was aimed in some way at him (it wasn't), secondly, we were chatting about what the internet says about training. We specifically talked about people following template programmes like 5X5, or Starting Strength, both of which are pretty good programmes, but not for everyone. It doesn't take a genius to know that the internet can be wrong, and wrong quite often. The real difficulty is that not only can it be wrong, it can become wrong so often that eventually it becomes right. As long as enough people say the same thing often enough, no matter how incorrect that thing is, then expert opinion can be drowned out in favour of what the masses say, and say loudest.

A short but significant example is squatting. Squatting is good, I like squatting. But lately if you live near a broadband connection, squatting has become Squatting. (note the capitalisation) It has developed into an anthropomorphic being who is spoken of in almost reverential terms, one for whom you must chastise the wrongdoers who don't Squat. There may be other punishments for non-Squatters or those who bicep curl (nothing wrong with that assistance exercise too but that's another day's blogging) but if there is I haven't yet heard them. There are also hardcore worshippers who are ATG squatters (that's ass to ground). These people in turn mock the regular Squatters as though they were A la Carte Squatting worshippers, picking only what they want from the Squatting bible! Now anyone who knows about training knows that as core lifts go, squats are great, but only really on a par with all the other great lifts that make you strong like presses, deadlifts, cleans, pull ups and benching. So how did squatting become Squatting? I usually blame t-nation but I'm sure it's beyond that. My most plausible explanation is this. Perhaps one day an expert, in an effort to sell some copies of his book/DVD/website, writes what he sees as a relatively harmless article on the benefits of squatting. He clicks Publish and walks away, waiting on the site hits to go up and the dollars to roll in. Instead, his article gathers steam and soon, people forget the message of the original and before you know it, the message is lost and "Teh Squatting" is born.

Now I don't consider myself an expert, I'm not THAT arrogant. What I will admit to is considering myself well informed, and always willing to remain informed, but from the right sources. Everything worth knowing is informed by strong opinion, forged by real experience. If I had one piece of advice for anyone looking to do anything fitness related it would be to go and find one person, a real person, and to get them to train you. If you don't, and you rely on the collective knowledge of internet consensus, I think you're on a hiding to nothing.

It's been a long time since I've updated.

2009-05-13T16:19:00.002+01:00

Firstly apologies to my avid reader. I haven't been able to update due to a lack of access to this here "interweb" and also just being too busy. This is actually going to be a monster post as I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again. I really am that busy.

The New Gym
In a really funny moment, I got a phone call off a bloke I know from coaching who reliably informed me that me and Will had gone out of business before we'd even started. Oh how I laughed. I laughed because that very day we had signed off on a major deal with a Dublin club and we had ordered some of the best strength equipment available in the world. So rumours of our demise have been greatly exagerrated. There have been some delays obviously as we were supposed to have opened on May 1st. These have been of the usual sort when you try to do business in Ireland: legal. But hopefully I should have some solid news in the next few days as to the actual opening date of the MMA and Muay Thai gyms that will be operating out of our facility, with the strength and conditioning elements to follow soon after that. Suffice to say that we have been extrememly busy behind the scenes and are now really just in a holding pattern waiting on some stuff to be signed off.

The Mini Marathon
This was a small and seemingly insignificant event that went on last Saturday. Basically we did
200 goblet squats with a 16kg kettlebell
200 lunges holding a 10kg medicine ball
200 push ups
50 pull ups.
You could do them in any order you liked as long as they were all as close to perfect as possible. Use of the band on the pull ups was allowed as long as you made an effort to get your maximum unassisted ones done first. My own time for this was 47 minutes, which was the fastest on the day. Next in was 15 year old Darragh who completed in 54 minutes. (I'm building some fit, strong, young men in the under 16s) After that the times varied between 56minutes and 70 minutes. The only notable exception was Hugh, who dd it in 80 minutes after realising that he had completed everything but the push ups, and he still had a full 180 of them to do in a row. The pain, the pain. As an aside to this session, Giant Pole Shayn did this on his own last night in 37 minutes. I'd add on maybe 4 minutes for the time it would have taken him to wait on equipment on Saturday, but his was still way better than my time. Damn. My excuse is that ... ehh... I have no excuse, but I'm going to try to hammer him next time.

Amanda
I'm giving Amanda her own little sectionof the blog until her fight on June 13th. Now I know that might seem a little sexist but you have to understand how rare it is to find:
1) A girl who wants to fight
2) An opponent for said girl
3) A girl who actually wants to do the neccessary training to fight
I know that last one might annoy some people but I'll clarify by saying that most girls are fine with hard work, not so fine with getting punched, kicked and squashed. Amanda has no problem with any of the above, and at last she's getting her reward for her patience as we've tried over the last 8 months to get her an opponent with lots of false hopes and near misses. She has one now a very game opponent from a Judo background and we're chuffed. She's been training away with the lads and on her own a bit too. Some of my many, many female readers (like my Mother for example. Hi Ma!) might be interested in the type of training I do with women. So for example, here's a female oriented MMA workout from last night:
7pm- Weigh in (she has to cut some weight to fight at 56kgs). Then:

Warm up
Pummelling/hand fighting 15 minutes with various partners
Technique- duck under to harness position. Takedown finish

8pm- Sparring session

3x3 minute rounds Muay Thai
2x4 minute rounds stand up facing a grappler
2x4 minute rounds grappling facing a striker

8.45pm- Conditioning

5 minute round. 10 fast punches with an explosive sprawl for 45 seconds. Then incline push ups for 45 seconds. Repeat to the bell,
5 minute round. 5 round kicks with a sprawl for 45. Dumbell power clean for 45, repeat.
5 minute round. Single arm dumbell overhead squat for 45. 5 hard teeps, sprawl for 45. Repeat.

So as you can see, a female oriented MMA session is a lot like, wait for it, a male oriented MMA session. Now ordinarily we wouldn't do that sort of volume of work over a 120 minute period. But last night we needed to put in a heavy individual conditioning session as Amanda is in great nick and has been coasting through the team sessions with not a whole lot of effort. To give you an example, the mini-marathon above, she rated as a 3 on her RPE scale. (an RPE scale is a quick and easy guide for coaches to rate their athlete's idea of the session). I won't see her tonight and won't get a chance to put her through her paces on Saturday so we did it after sparring. Not ideal but not bad either.

James
James is a private client of mine who has been with me a couple of months. I'm going to put up some of his sessions as I think they're fairly interesting. Basically he has two goals- to learn how to fight a bit and to get big and strong. Up to now we've been focussing on his wish to punch and kick stuff but we're changing tack a bit and we'll be focussing on putting some meat on his bones for the next few weeks. The reason this may be of interest is because we'll be doing this side by side with his martial arts training. So in essence, I'll have 1 hour per week with him to make him big, strong, fit, fast, and able to kick ass. Sounds like a tall order. That's because it is a tall order. Too tall in fact, for anyone. It's a recurrent theme in the type of questions coaches field. People want everything at once and they want it yesterday. The fact of the matter is that you can't change everything at once, but you can improve one thing at a time and at the same time keep the other things ticking over and improving slowly. In James' case we'll be doing the lifting of heavy stuff for the purpose of gaining some strength and muskles, and at the same time squeezing in some muay thai at the end of his sessions.

Today was a pretty good example of the type of session we do.

Warm up- skipping
Mobility work- pull aparts, dislocates etc.
Partial press 5x5. 40kg working up to a set of 5 at 60kg
Medicine ball lunges (with a twist) 3x12
GHRs 3x8
2 rounds on the pads concentrating on breathing technique

So what you have there is some heavy benching, some lower body assistance work and then some technical pad work. James has a problem with his breathing when he's striking which diminishes his capacity to hit pads, spar etc. so we took some time to work on that today at the end. James has made massive, and I mean massive progress since we started working together and this is the next phase. When we met he was weak as piss and about as coordinated as a baby giraffe, he's now slightly stronger but much more coordinated and ready for the strength work he'll be doing.

I'll start to update more technical sessions for the guys I train in future. I forget to do them most of the time as I leave the records of the sessions in the gym, but now I live closer to work so I'm home in 10 minutes before I've forgotten what I've done. This way, by reading my blog and Will's blog, people might get a taste of what's in store for them when Informed Performance opens. I don't want to rant as this post is long enough already, but I am constantly amazed at the amount of people who just do what they read on the internet and try to self diagnose and design themselves a programme. Actually worse again are the people who are following (Insert Famous Coach Here)'s 5x5 programme. Or AwesumGunz308 from the internet's excellent advice. That's all fine and dandy when you're on your own, but why would you even bother doing that if you had access to a coach? At Informed Performance, if you think some random bloke off the internet's programme is better, we will happily allow you to do that programme... in another gym... and when you come back injured/fatter/not any stronger we'll take you on then. Until then, sod off, until you realise you don't know more than us.

I love training, I hate cleaning

2009-04-22T20:38:00.003+01:00

I showed at the gym last night and was greeted with this:

There are a few things I absolutely despise and one of them is a lack of respect for other people's property. I wouldn't mind but the next user of this gear could well be the people who just flung it in the general direction of the shelves and hoped for the best. Please nobody invite me to a party in you house because I probably won't be able to resist the urge to thrash your house, throw beer bottles in the general direction of your bin and to hit on your girlfriend. The last one has nothing to do with the state of the gym by the way that's just a bonus prize for having me at your party.

On the other hand there was some training done. Amanda has been enjoying her MMA training this last few weeks, and as you can see she's not afraid to show it. I actually took this photo to show how beneficial to MMA training baldness is. Does anyone remember Michelle Smith's (remember her?) shampoo commercials after she won all of her Olympic medals? Basically the gist was that she had messy hair after the pool but her shampoo sorted it all out for her. I reckon Amanda could make a few quid doing one of those. If I get Amanda to agree I might post up some video of a few of her sessions as she prepares to take her first MMA fight.

I think I'll call the blog entires "Fighting- It's Not For Girls".

This must be the world's least updated Blog

2009-04-21T10:33:00.002+01:00

I'd like to apologise for that here and now. Things have been pretty mental at chez Barry, so mental in fact that there no longer is a chez Barry. I sold my house last week and I'm waiting to move into the new one so I'm actually posting this from my parent's home. Eh, yipee.

Since my fight I've been sufferring from a couple of injuries, firstly my knee which went *pop* that night has been feeling a bit weak but seems to be 100% now. I box squatted pretty heavy last week with no ill effects. My shoulder and neck are , as usual, pretty messed up, but I decided to bite the bullet and train last night as I've had enough of the boredom of sitting on the side of the mats. Here's what we did.

Muay Thai- 2 rounds skipping, 6 rounds on the bags, 3 rounds on the pads. Just tried to put a bit of volume in this session with no technique training for the guys at all. Sometimes you just need to hit stuff.
BJJ- The nogi session on a Monday is a good, hard 90 minute rolling session. Sometimes we do some specific technique but last night we did some up and down rounds with a constant 1 minute rest. The session is 90 minutes long and for 70 minutes of that last night we rolled in the following sequence:
3 mins
4 mins
5 mins
4 mins
3 mins
4 mins
5 mins
and so on for the hour and ten. The rest was a constant 1 minute. This was tough enough I think. Maybe I thought it was tougher because I haven't trained in 4 weeks though. The idea was to go all out for the short rounds and to pace yourself better for the longer round. Bjj on a Thursday night has been about doing the same thing, we've done rounds from 3 minutes right up to 15 minutes to encourage two types of rolling. Longer rounds require more thought and patience, shorter rounds require a faster game or you may spend 3 minutes just trying to pass guard.

Part of this time experiment is for a bit of a laugh. I did every round one night with completely random numbers. "okay folks the next round is 5:34 long" and so on. But I'm also trying to encourage different behaviour in the athletes. You can't have everything your own way all the time so if you're a fast and explosive guy, sometimes you'll be up against someone who will slow you down and you need to be able to pace yourself to match that game and not exhaust yourself. If you're slow and patient, sometimes you'll need that quick finish so it's important to be able to push the pace too.

The other part I'm telling everyone is that I'm on the hunt for the perfect BJJ round. The search goes on.

For some reason I've had more time in the last couple of days...

2009-04-07T15:23:00.007+01:00

That's because I've cancelled the fight show. I am busier than a pair of plaid bell bottoms, so something had to give and I'm a perfectionist, so I'm not going to run a sub-par show. Instead I'll do it again late in the summer in super dooper fashion with a really good professional card. In the meantime, I'll start matching up all the boys and girl on the many shows happening around the country.

Gordy sent me some the photos of the fight in Galway and they're hilarious. He was too busy cornering to get any action shots but he got some of the following in which I mostly look like a moron. Have a laugh at these.

Pre fight photo taken just after the medical checks. I think there's something wrong with my gums and Keith doesn't realise that the way to put your arm around your fellow man is roughly at the shoulder, not tenderly around his waist.

This is a great photo. Keith is all vassed up and ready to rock, looking deadly serious, I'm squinting because of the flash, and Ivers looks like some tourist who has just run in from the side to get in our photo. This one will not be appearing in the newspapers. Check out the KO that I wrote on Keith's gloves earlier. I must be psychic.

This photo doesn't have me in it. But it does have Keith much relieved to have come through a scathing bout.

And last but not least, this is me at about 5am. That's a beaker of white wine in my had (oh so classy) which was procured through cunning and stealth by The Artful Dodger and the 21st century equivalent of Fagan. I couldn't put all of those up and not put up this one in which I look a bit rough. I like to think I deserved it.

2009-04-06T14:11:00.001+01:00

I was thinking there (don’t worry I had a spare ice pack handy to cool my brain down afterwards) about the questions I get when I’m coaching. I was thinking about making this a sort of FAQ post but that wouldn’t work. Instead, I’ll split this into the types of questions I get. Obviously this is quite general and there’ll always be ones that don’t fall into these categories. The two I’ll use today are In Session and After Session.

In Session Questions

These are the least problematic of all questions as they’re usually related to something specific. For example, if we’re squatting, someone will ask how low should they go, or if we’re boxing, someone will ask how to hit harder. These questions are all good and are they type you have to ask in sessions. Coaches can’t see everything and won’t always pick out your mistakes, and it’s harder again to spot if you’re uncomfortable. The type of question that isn’t valid in sessions would be things unrelated to the technique or skill being taught. Such as someone asking how to knee in a boxing class, or how they’re pull ups are poor when they’re doing squats. They’re quite obviously wrong. Less obvious are when people ask questions just because they don’t fancy doing the session. It’s easy to mask fatigue by continually asking technical questions so I actively discourage that and have specific Q&A segments in each class. Sometimes I actually lay the law down. I’ll lay out the class in advance and specifically mention that at, say 7.45pm, we’re going to stop for some Q&A after we’ve done our drills. This depends on how complex the material is and the level of the trainees.

After Session Questions

These are almost more important than the in session questions, as when someone takes the time to approach you afterwards, you know they mean business. There’s no end to the type of question I get here but usually they break down into 3 categories.

1) The fighting question. Usually phrased like “Can I get a fight sometime?” or “When would I be ready to fight”. I like this question. There’s no straight answer but usually I say “when you train BJJ for a decent length of time” because pretty much everyone fancies themselves as knocking someone out.

2) The I’m fat question. Usually phrased differently. This is usually people asking about diet and is very hard to answer in the 5 minutes we have before or after classes. I usually end up answering by email afterwards.

3) The make me a programme question. This is the most annoying question of all as I can easily write a strength, conditioning, or fat loss programme. Why is that annoying? Because 90% of the time people waste my time and theirs after I write it by either not showing up to do it or just doing the bits they like out of it. If I had a penny for every time I wrote pull ups or the assisted versions into a programme and the guy/girl didn’t perform it, I would have…. €1.23…. I don’t really understand the attitude of getting a programme written (which is always based on an assessment by the way) and then going and doing what the fuck you want anyway. This is what I do and I’m pretty good at it, but I suppose the workout on the internet is probably cooler.

I might return to this next week. In the meantime, I’ve been negligent about the Monday music for a while.

Some Conditioning Work for MMA

2009-04-04T15:13:00.008+01:00

Here is what the lads did today. Quite a small session with only 5 in attendance but everyone knows by now that they're usually the best ones. The gym was set out into a 5 station circuit, of which one was a mini circuit in itself. The time was 5 minutes divided into 1 minute intervals. So for example the first circuit looked like this:
1. Pull Ups
2. Back raises
3. Plate shifting
4. Push ups
5. Mini circuit.

Now I didn't really give a damn about 1-4, I knew the lads would be saving themselves to some degree for the mini-circuit, the real concern here was the speed at which they completed the circuit. My guesstimation was that each time around should take about 20 seconds, or 3 in a minute. I was proven right as mostly the guys either got the 3 circuits in or just about missed out on getting 3 in. It was 4 punches on the floor bag, run to the med ball, 4 air squats, run for a touch to the next marker, bear crawl to a touch on the next marker and then back in.

This was the first of 5

The second time out we changed the exercises up slightly, but kept the time the same. Once again I was proven to be a genius as it still took about 20 seconds per run. We switched it up to a knee ride and punch for 4 switches, a run out for a touch, back for a touch and then 4 sit-thrus, bear crawl to a touch and then run back in.

The second circuit

I'm a genius, as I was saying, but I really wanted to prove it so I gave the guys a good rest and they all had a go at trying to get 4 complete circuits in a minute. Here's Sebastien trying, he got the closest. Note how all of the guy's superb form from the other rounds suddenly deteriorates when it comes time to try to prove me wrong. This is some of the worst knee-on-belly I've ever seen.

And he won't think me for this, but here's Stephen showing his Bruce Lee stylee one-inch-punching during his round. This has also got some impromptu try scoring technique in the end.

This is probably my favourite video of all time.

Mixed conditioning sessions like these are probably the least understood aspect of conditioning. Most people think that intensity is absolutely vital 100% of the time but really today the guys only did 5 minutes in total at maximum intensity. If we did the same circuit for 5 minutes total the training effect would not have been the same. You can see the guys going balls out to get around for 3 in a minute whereas if we did 5 consecutively, there would have been no hope of that as no matter how much I encouraged a balls out first 3 rounds, there would have been a natural tendency to save something for the 4 minutes afterwards.

We've been told to shut up

2009-04-03T16:26:00.002+01:00

Yeah we have a guy who is basically running the show now and he's told Will and I to be quiet and stop talking about the new gym until we open it up. We're both disgusted of course because we love to talk but in fairness, when he explained it to us we knew it was the right thing to do. He's our boss now. When we hired him I thought we were going to tell him what to do but actually it's all gone a bit like HAL in 2001. He's supposed to be working for us, but now he's taking over. I'm not even sure if I'm breaking the rules by talking about this now but please rest assured that everything is progressing nicely behind the scenes. I can ABSOLUTELY assure you that the biggest progress is being made in the bank accounts which are dwindling nicely as we continue to add toys to our shopping list. I'll finish by repeating a small but significant fact- this will be Ireland's premier sports and MMA training facility and I am so excited by the prospect that I can barely sleep at night.

There Dan, I don't think I gave too much away in that small paragraph. Was that allowed?

I've decided to train tomorrow, pain or no pain. I feel disgustingly sloppy and lethargic so tomorrow I'm going to eat some porridge for brekkie, train away, then have some nice chicken and feta salad with rockette and spinach, follow it up in the evening with a nice meal of meat and veggies. I have to plan these things. It's amazing how quickly you can go from fit to fat and while I'm hardly bursting out of my girdle here, I have noticeably lost definition and worse still I feel lethargic and bloated. A bad diet really is the pits. It's a cliche that you can't out train one, but imagine living like this all the time. Imagine getting zero exercise, eating zero fibrous veg, existing almost entirely on white flour, sugar or soya based products. What's that? You don't have to imagine it, you're doing it already? Well then you should change. It's no secret that I love chocolate. I would have chocolate for every meal if I could and in the last week I've binged a bit but I'll moderate my intake as of tomorrow.

On the same subject of soya, wheat and sugar, I recommend reading Raj Patel's critique of the modern food industry, Stuffed and Starved. It's interesting to read that what you eat today is just as susceptible to business influence as the interest rates you lend and save at.

I burned a whole 7 calories today

2009-04-01T23:29:00.002+01:00

But I ate about 4,000.

So I've taken a few days off because of my knee which is still a bit sore but today I skipped a bit, hit the bag a bit, did some single leg squats (probably a bit hazardous that but wanted to test it- shut up it's my body) and generally faffed about in the gym. Will Heffernan reckons he can get fattest the fastest but I reckon no one can do as much damage in a short space of time to his body as I can. All I've eaten since Saturday is cake and greasy meat and I reckon I'll do likewise for another couple of days yet until my depression clears. In short, I was 77.2kgs on Friday, I'm 84kgs today. Take that body.

The show must go on. Stephen and Keith were in this morning preparing for their fights on april25th at K.O. 2. They did 3 sets of 6 max effort 30 kick outs, and in between did 2 x 10 minute conditioning blocks. They were rightly wrecked afterwards, but with just 4 weeks to go to their event they're starting to step it up. Well, Stephen is anyway. Keith is keeping busy and only fought in a tough bout at the weekend so he's always on.

Damn, lost a fight.

2009-03-31T14:25:00.002+01:00

I keep getting texts and emails commiserating me on my loss at the weekend. They're all pretty funny. Most of them are like my dog died, and others are just pick me ups. Some samples below, try to pick your one out...

"Yo heard u got ur ass kicked u should quit now old man ha ha talk soon buddy"
"Hey man hard luck. Never mind you just have to get back in next time"
"Don't get too down about it you trained well and gave it your best. Next time you'll be stronger"
"Your too fat n old for fightin now if youve any sense youll remember those that cant- teach!"
"You're a warrior man it's just one of those things you'll be back"
"Quit whining bitch!"

So in case you haven't already guessed, I lost my fight on Saturday in quick fashion. It was short and crazy and I could easily have won it in the same time but went all out for glory early on instead of playing safe off my back. I can live with that, it's not the end of the world it's only a fight. Dissappointing of course, but just a loss. I have some busy times coming up so I'm not sure when I'll get back in the ring but I'm planning a Muay Thai fight and a few more MMA fights before I hang up my gloves, big or small. I was thinking about calling it a day but I'm not finished yet. I'd more or less decided that before the fight.

I have to also give a big shout out to Keith The Artful Dodger Pendred who went out against a hugely partisan crowd and knocked out the local boy in the first fight of the night. Sods llaw of fighting a local is never leave it to the judges and he used his big right hand, his huge leg kicks and a lot of pure old fashioned brass balls to finish his opponent in round two.

Some more updates on the new gym

2009-03-25T14:05:00.002Z

I thought people might like to know how the new gym is progressing. I know I do so in part this is a nice way to keep people informed and have a quick recap for myself.

Things have been pretty crazy in the last while, as you can imagine I'm training for a fight, opening a new gym and running my current one so I'm pretty busy. Here's a few bits of info for you all to drool over.

Grappling and MMA area: The new 14 metre cage wall is on order and being built in a plant in England as we speak. This will form a barrier on one side of the mezzanine to stop people falling to their deaths but also for training against as a practice cage. The other walls will be padded and the matted area squeezed in between them. All in all the matted area will be 14mX8m which means 112sqm. In other words, massive. To give you some perspective, that's the length of the current mats, with almost twice the width, and it'll be wall to wall with no gaps as we have now. There'll also be a 3mX8m area at the end of the mats for storage, shoes etc. etc.

Muay Thai/MMA/Boxing: The ring is also on order and being custom made to our specifications. It will be ready for our show on April 25th and will have be a 20 footer. Under the mezzanine will be another huge class area which I'm delighted to announce will be the home of a brand new Muay Thai gym called Informed Muay Thai. Paddy has decided to take the bull by the horns (it's a metaphor, that really happened though) and form Dublin's newest Muay Thai gym. In addition, we'll have the MMA fighters doing their ring and skill work from time to time downstairs. The area under the mezzanine (which is huge!) will have a matted area, plus heavy bags, speedballs etc. and we have several boxing coaches already interested in running a class or two there.

Sports/Agility: I went to view the artificial surface at Erin's Isle GAA club in Finglas yesterday and was impressed enough to tell Will to go ahead and order it for our specialised area in the gym. It is fantastic stuff, about a million miles from the old "plastic pitches" that you may have played on or seen. This stuff is 3rd generation artificial grass and looks and feels like the real thing. about 100msq of our gym will have this surface and it'll be used for agility drills, circuits and a variety of cool stuff we have up our sleeve.

Speed: I feel the need. I'm currently waiting on a courier to arrive with a sample of the sprint track we'll be using for our 2 lanes of 25 metre track. Our athletes will be treated just like the most valuable athletes on the planet who also use this surface. I mean that literally, you will be getting the same treatment as the athletes that are worth the most money on the earth. Worth more than David Beckham, more than Michael Jordan in his prime, more than Usain Bolt. Have a guess at who these athletes are. I'd be surprised if you get it. I'll give you a hint, they've often been accused of not being human.

Strength: We are going to have all the usual in terms of strength equipment. The racks and bars and benches. But all the cool stuff like sleds and stuff we're going to make and have custom made for the gym is going to rock your world.

The Fight Team: I have finally settled on a name for the fight team. It will be called Wolfpack Fight Team and will showcase the fighters in MMA, grappling and Muay Thai from the gym. These athletes will get the very, very best in facilities, on mat coaching, and the very best in off mat strength and conditioning.

Not one if us?
I also want to open up the S&C programme to fighters from other gyms in Ireland to come and have a look at what we do. As someone who is acutely aware that it's really hard to find the time and facilities to do the work you need to do as a fighter, I want to extend an invitation to anyone in martial arts in Ireland to come along and have a look at what we'll be doing and how we'll do it. The biggest thing that holds us back in Ireland is the fact that we're a small country but we have big country divisions. We don't train with each other or spar each other, and all of our individual pools are too small to get the sort of experience we need. So I want to offer Irish fighters the opportunity to work with a specialist strength and conditioning gym. I hope this invite is taken in the spirit of cooperation in which it is intended. However my experience with Irish sport in general is that people will think I'm trying to "poach" people. I'm not. You don't have to train with Informed MMA to do this.

Check this out

2009-03-21T00:50:00.002Z

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055513575

What's wrong with the internet in 5 easy pages

Carbs

2009-03-20T23:01:00.002Z

Okay so first off you don't need carbs. I want to get that out there and nail my flag to the nutritional pole before I embark upon this entry. There is no neccessity for the carb in your diet. There is a dependence on them in modern life to fill your calorific needs of your circa 2000 kcals per day, but you don't need them as such. Now I understand this, I accept this, but I also accept that I love chocolate, pizzas, sandwiches and pasta dishes. With that as a given, I'd like to also point out that I currently can not eat carbs. I stood on the scales on Thursday night and the weight is not coming off. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly I think I have more muskles than last time out, which means I'm heavier, and secondly there was a good period there when I was dropping a kg a week and things looked good, so I relaxed a bit and I'm paying for it now.

The main reason is that I am not very good with dates, and also I'm 30. I'll explain. I fought in 2007 at 77kgs. I cut easy with no water weight that time. Then in late 07 I busted myself up pretty badly, contracostal seperation, broken ribs, torn intercostals and many weeks out of training right into mid 2008. Then in July 08 I was looking for another 77kg match and couldn't get an opponent so took a match at middleweight 84kgs. The some more persistent injuries meant another period out of action. Now I'm back and fighting at Tribal Warfare next weekend. Why the history lesson? Well, it just means that the last time I weighed 77kgs was two years ago. So it was a bit thick of me to expect to suddenly be 77kgs easily I think. I'm in good nick without being totally shredded right now and I don't really care about that anyway. So I may just have to visit the sauna after all, but I'll try the diet and hyperhydration first to see where that leaves me.

Oh and I have a head cold.

Basically my last week of training

2009-03-19T08:31:00.002Z

I forgot to update a whole load of stuff in the last week so I'll do a fill in post on my own training while I have a few minutes. It has been going great, pretty much injury free, lots of good quality work and a totally different approach to before. I was having a chat with Karl last night about the approach and I think just putting conditioning in Will's hands has been a great decision for a couple of reasons. Firstly even though I might perhaps have done something similar to what Will is doing for me conditioning wise (with a bit less quality), I'm still a bit neurotic about training and I always think I should be doing more. So what has happened in the past is that I end up overtraining, picking up injuries and being underprepared come fight time. Where I might occasionally emphasise quality over quantity with my own athletes, I always want more quantity from myself.

Secondly, the strength work has just been great. I had been drifting and basically just lifting some stuff, thinking I shouldn't do other stuff because of my back and generally just reinforcing old injuries for months. I strength tested last week for the first time since November. Here's some results from November and last week:
Bench Press: Nov- 80kgs fail, March 85kgs (Target 80kgs)
Inverted rows: Nov- 6, March 30 (Target 30)
Push Ups: Nov- 33, March 39 (target45+)
Pull Ups: Nov- 6, March 8 (target 12+)
Trap Bar Deadlift- Nov-160kgs, March 170kgs (target 160kgs)

So not bad. I have to say I wasn't in the testing zone walking in. I had a swollen flexor from sparring the night before that so Will scrapped the original session and we tested instead. I could have pulled more, I think maybe another 20kgs, on the trap bar but with my leg sore I decided not to. Didn't care too much about it anyway it would have just been number chasing as I'm well within my target for it. The dissappointing bits first. Push up score was low, but I had done a lot of technical volume work on the bench before that which I think skewed it a bit but I think maybe only by a rep or two. Secondly the pull ups were far from great, I wanted more and even though I put 2 onto my previous score it would seem that I've some work to do. But there are positives there which far outweigh the negatives. Firstly the bench is pretty good. 85kgs and I stood on the scales that morning at 80kgs. Not just that but the 85 was easy and I was miffed to miss the 87.5 we did next. I haven'tactually done a full bench press session since I started with Will. I've done some partial pressing, sone benching as part of conditioning but not once have we gone for 5x5 on a bench. The real strength gains haven't been there they've been in my back and shoulders, which you can clearly see from the Inverted rows. 6 to 30 is unbelievable and to be honest while I knew I was going to get much better at these, I didn't think I'd make the target. But I've been dilligent about the rehab and prehab work. If any of you reading train with me you'll know me and that band have been inseperable before training.

Will basically turns the model on it's head. Instead of starting with that cardio base, we start with strength and work on how to make that last for as long as possible. Does it work? Well I haven't tested it under battle conditions yet but I can tell you that sparring is much easier. My recovery rate is really high so doing something like a hard take down is still hard but doesn't take as much out of me and I recover better so that I can get to work straight away.

This is my last full week, but I'll still train maybe 80% next week until Wednesday. I won't do anything new or unusual though I'll just spar and roll for the most part, hit some pads and probably do one more conditioning session after today's one.

Feeling Nostalgic

2009-03-18T14:02:00.007Z

I was in the gym today thinking about how in a few weeks time I'll have everything I ever need or have ever wanted for coaching and training, and I began to feel sad. Y'know there's something romantic about making do with what little you have. When we were renting a scout hall for a few hours a week we had so little that we were basically bodyweight experts. The things I could do with a medicine ball, a few boxing gloves as marker points and a stopwatch. It was great and it fired the imagination.

So now we're moving to the new facility and all of the things I make do with now will be gone. This makes me sad in some ways. But in the same way as I would never go back to holding a stopwatch and getting people to do dips on chairs again, I'm pretty sure I'll get over not fashioning a glute ham raise like in the following video.

Someone asked a while back about GHRs on boards.ie and I told them I had a picture of what I do for them in the absence of a GHR bench. I actually couldn't find that picture, and someone mailed me asking for it. So we did one today as I don't like to let down my public. I think the video is easy enough to follow but here's some explanations. There's a kickpad under his knees that we use for.... eh... kicking and I'm standing on the foot pads to stop the tower from tipping over.

Poor Keith. He'd just done an 90 minutes including some heavy box squatting and then I asked him to do this. I'd like to thank him for taking some time out from watching Jenny Jones and Oprah this morning though to film this. Sorry about the bad sound quality but I think James had his finger on the microphone.

If you are not excited about this then you have lost the will to live...

2009-03-15T15:23:00.003Z

So I can finally go public. This is the real deal ladies and gents. This will be the best facility any of you have ever trained in. We are going all out on this so I hope you can come along. The lifetime (or 5 years whichever comes first) memberships are halfway towards being gone. If you want one you'll have to cough up fast. This is all taken from Will's blog so that's why I'm referred to in the third person!

From informedperformance.wordpress.com...

You may have heard some rumours circulating recently about me building a new gym and sports training centre? Well you should have heard them because I’ve started heaps of them and have been blabbing about it to anyone all over town who’d listen….the ones that I didn’t start myself were started by Barry who keeps a secret even worse than I do.

The new gym will be call ‘Informed Performance’ and it will be opening in May this year. I wanted to make sure I got it up here first before Barry tried to scoop me…after all Saturday is a slow day blog wise…I was hoping this announcement might boost my weekly blog readership average.

So this is the scoop…what is happening is that myself and Barry Oglesby of K.O Martial Arts are joining forces…we’ve come to the view that two brains are better than one…or in this case…that between us our two brains should at least be the equivalent of one.

The whole gang from K.O Martial Arts will basically be moving down the road to a much bigger and better facility and all of my athletes and clients on the north side of Dublin won’t have to trek to the many different venues where they currently train. We’ll also be opening the gym to new memberships as well naturally…this will be for both individuals and teams but more about that later.

The new gym will cater to a multitude of sports from Brazilian Jui Jitsu, muay thai, mixed martial arts and boxing to GAA, football, basketball, tennis, hockey and rugby and everything else in between for that matter.

The facility is over 700 square metres or over 7500 square feet…for those of you to whom that means nothing a basketball court is around 420 square metres or around 4500 square feet…to there will be plenty of room to swing a cat…or any other implement you want.

The gym will feature amongst other things a caged 150 square metre jiu jitsu and grappling area, a 150 square metre striking and boxing area, a competition sized elevated boxing ring, a fully equipped gym, 25 metres of track for speed and acceleration training and testing as well as over 120 square metres of field turf for sport specific drills, tackling, agility work, med ball throwing and general messing about.

This should give you an idea of the general gym layout

The building is one thing…what you don’t see is all the stuff that’s inside it…the medicine balls, weights, viper belts, sleds, timing gates, force plates, punching bags, speedballs, tackle pads, sandbags, coffee machine, tyres, ropes, monkey bars, boxes, hurdles, ladders and on and on the list goes.

Barry and I are still fighting over the colour scheme...I'm thinking pink and fuscia?

What you are missing here is the view of the mezzanine...but use your imagination.

So as far as what is going on now….what is changing and what is staying the same?

1. K.O Martial Arts will stay K.O Martial Arts it will just be at Informed Performance.
2. I won’t be leaving the current gym and I won’t be abandoning those athletes and clients with whom I already work…so no tears and no temper tantrums please.
3. There will be a new website for the new gym at www.informedperformance.com (feel free to bookmark it now…you know you want to) and on that website you will find a link to this blog…which will be at willheffernan.com and Barry’s blog will be moving to barryoglesby.com…I was thinking about not mentioning this…specifically to Barry as I personally own barryoglesby.com…which as you all know essentially means that I own Barry…I couldn’t keep it a secret though…I thought it would be too cruel…he has such high hopes of interweb stardom. Now all this isn’t all going to happen right away but it is going to happen…just want to make sure that everyone is a part of the process.

So what about the stuff that is going to be different?
We’re basically going to go all out…it is the all singing, all dancing facility that both Barry and I in our separate ways have always wanted….only it is all in the same facility. What it is in fact is the place that Barry and I want to train in but want you all to pay for. The location won’t be fancy but we are pretty sure that anyone who sees what Informed Performance will have to offer will jump at the chance to join. The entire place will be a reflection of what both Barry and I are passionate about. That includes all of the sporting, fitness and martial arts stuff obviously, but also all the geeky nerdy stuff too. The entire gym will be a wireless hotspot which means we’ll be doing all sorts of cool stuff like having webcams on some classes, webcasts and webinars and so on, and we’ll be able to use all of the cool coaching toys that we’d love to use right now but don’t have the technology to. The blogs will be expanding because now you won’t just get to read about sessions…you’ll be able to watch them as they happen. You’ll be able to watch a MMA class…you can see a team testing…you can watch me sit around abusing people while Barry comforts them. In fact, I challenge anyone to come up with an idea or feature that is gym and or training related that we won’t have in ours…except for the stuff that we have thought about and decided was crap and won’t be putting in.

If you really want to know how good Informed Performance is….then just wait and see how many other existing facilities or facilities yet to be built copy the things that we do. This facility won’t just be a leader amongst Irish gyms but it will be something unique globally. This is something that many of you know that I’ve been looking to do for the last 5 or so years. The chance to go into partnership with Barry who shares so many of my views and aspirations was just too good an opportunity to miss out on. This will be the best sports training centre in the country bar none. Certainly there are other venues that have the bigger facilities and that have more equipment…but if you’re Irish…as I am…well I have the passport to prove it then I’d ask you to have a look where all the money that was poured into Irish sport and in the creation of all these facilities over the past years has got our country from a sporting performance point of view?

If you’re not on the list, you’re not getting in!
We’re satisfied that we’ll have something for everyone, and the people we don’t have something for…well we don’t want them to come anyway. This will not be a gym in the sense that many of you know it. There will be nobody walking in our doors to train who isn’t doing a programme, be it for fat loss, strength, conditioning, martial arts or a sport in particular. Everyone will have a programme designed for them and will be consistently assessed and tested to see if they’re achieving what they set out to achieve. Nobody will be wandering aimlessly around the place wondering what to do next. There will be no arseholes doing 12 sets of deadlifts and tying up a power rack for 2 hours in the process…when it comes to training…you aren’t smarter than us. To make sure progress happens and because we get a kick out of it….every 6-8 weeks there’ll be a testing day. We are going to try to humiliate, impress, astound or amaze each other…I want to make this a BBQ day…but that’s just because I’m an Australian, Barry thinks I’m full of it..but we’ll see how it works out.

How much will it all cost?
It will be about as cheap as we can make it while still maintaining our champagne lifestyle. Membership will work a few different ways because Barry and I love everybody…just some people we love more than others.
These are you’re options:
If you’re a visiting superstar or gun slinger just passing through town…you can pay €20 a visit….we’ll be sad to see you leave…but your money will cheer us up afterwards.
For people living hand to mouth collecting aluminium cans to recycle to raise money or staying in the country illegally and looking to stay under the radar…you can pay cash…the amount will be €89 per month payable on the 1st of every month in advance.
For those of you who are upstanding members of the community and have an established identity and access to a bank account…the amount will be €79 per month payable on the 1st of every month by direct debit. It’s not €79 for martial arts, and then another €79 for the gym, it’s €79 for everything.
If you really want to screw Barry and I out of money then you can join for a year and pay €799…I just got my calculator out…that’s €65.58333333333333333333333 a month…you can see now why we set the prices the way we did…Barry and I really don’t trust each other that much and it would of only been a matter of time before one of us put a virus into the computer to skim off all those fractions of a cent…much like Gus Gorman the character played by Richard Pryor in Superman III…I’m sure the outcome of such a scheme would have been hilarious. What we’re trying to say is that no matter how you pay…it’s a bargain….have a look around…and then try to tell us that it isn’t.

But what about a special once off offer I hear you ask?
As a part of the launch, we’re going to offer 15 people a once off offer of a €1,000 lifetime membership…well let me qualify that…it is either for your lifetime or for 5 years…whichever comes first. That’s pretty unbelievable, and it bears repeating…€1,000 for 5 years….I say 5 years because I bet any of the people that jump at this off will be just those types that will hang on in their till the bitter end of life…long after they should of had the decency and coutesy to have died gracefully. It’s not quite as unbelievable as what your membership of Informed Performance will entitle you to. You will have unlimited access to any class and all classes that run in the gym. Be it any of the martial arts, fitness, strength or fat loss programs. We were initially concerned about pricing it that low as we felt that it might further deflate the economy, but we’re willing to take that risk. If you’re interested in taking up one of the 15 places on the 5 year or the ‘preferably shortened lifespan plan’ as I like to call it…you had better get in now as we’re not expecting these to last long.

Classes
The Martial Arts timetable will be expanding and will have some new additions. But more than that, the whole gym will have a timetable that will give a member a massive choice. There will be Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai and Mixed Martial Arts just as K.O Martial Arts always has…we also have plans to add more…specifically some fighting based classes for fitness along with women only classes for kickboxing and self defence. Outside of the fighting area we’re going to have a heap of speed, agility and acceleration sessions along with and a multitude of other things like strongman training, kettlebell training and kids classes both martial arts and fitness based…so what do you think about that?

A space and place for Personal Trainers as well
We’re also going to do something unique for those people who are already in the industry or who are looking to get into it and want to grow their personal training business. In an era where gyms are letting their staff personal trainers go, or extorting them for large amounts of money, we’re offering personal trainers who want to use our facility for their own means the opportunity to use our gym as their own. As well as all the top class equipment we will also have an open plan office space for personal trainers to use as a place to do all the work they need to do outside of their face to face work with clients…you know what I mean…posting of the global interweb…everyone knows that is the most important side of their business anyway. In fact, the whole facility will be set up for wireless broadband which means you can get online and communicate with future clients right after training a current one. The cost is going to be €20 per client per session…the same fee that anyone visiting Informed Performance would pay…that’s right…€20…what we are going to do though is to cap the cost at €1000 a month. We actually want you to be successful…more than that….we want you to be so successful that you’ll probably make more money than us…that way we can feel OK about being bitter about how unfair life is and despise you for it when you are not around.

But what about a special offer for personal trainers?
As with the membership special offer…we have one as well for personal trainers. At the moment, we’re opening this up to just two personal trainers…for them….if they pay €6,000 you can get access to the facility for our first year of operation…that’s it….everything else you make after that is yours. If you’re a personal training currently working in an existing facility you know as well as we do that we don’t need to justify that price…you’ll know how good a deal that is for a gym, unlimited access to clients, an office, wireless internet access and a really good coffee machine.

MAYDAY!
We’re opening our doors on the 1st of May. Now of course this is Ireland and solicitors basically run the country so we’re opening our doors when they say we can, but we’re shooting for the 1st of May anyway. So if you’re pondering renewing your gym membership, ponder a little or a lot and then if you have any sense…you’ll come and join us.

The Secret is Out

2009-03-14T09:22:00.001Z

Have a look here

Making the best use of your money in the Great Depression

2009-03-13T15:00:00.005Z

An Estate Agent Pictured Yesterday

Hot diggity! It's 1929 again. No more dancing the Charleston in those speakeasies, it's a recession ya hear! I have a mate who lost his job before Christmas and got a nice redundancy packet. Then, in January after taking some time off, he got a new job on 10k more a year than his old job, plus a company car. Last week he patted his pocket while talking to me and said something like "this recession y'know..." He's 10k and a car better off than he was and he's moaning about the recession? That's the way everyone is right now and I've decided to be the voice of reason in it all. So sit down ye children and listen to old man Barry's opinions, as they pertain to the world of coaching of course.

Did anyone really think that their house was going to continue to increase in value until it was worth a gabagillion euro? Or that all of the building was going to continue until you had a block of apartments in every front garden? We all knew this was coming really, we just lied to ourselves for long enough so that we could keep paying €6 for a cappuccino without the horror of thinking how much you could save in a year by bringing a flask. Now that it's happened, we seem to think the world is going to end too. It's not. We'll all have to make do with a little less money, we may have to switch careers, but we won't suddenly all starve to death. Don't get me wrong, as the spouse of a civil servant, our household is already down lots of money thanks to the poxy pension levy, and I work for some state owned enterprises that are making cuts and one of them is me, so I know all about the pinch. But I've decided to be cheerful and look on the bright side.

Firstly, some stuff is cheaper. In fact, lots of stuff is cheaper. My meat bills (I have 3 shopping bills, Veg, Meat and Crap) are much cheaper than before. I'm getting sirloin for the price of rib steak, and fillet for the price of sirloin. I just bought 36 chicken breasts for €30 in my local supermarket. My mortgage is down, way down and the house I'm buying is €195,000 cheaper than this time last year. Okay I had to sell my house for less too, but I'm still better off than if I bought last year. This might all seem awful and like I'm dancing on the property marketeer's graves, but seriously, does anyone really feel sorry for estate agents? If there's an estate agent out there who hasn't squirreled away a nice nest egg from the money they've made in the last 5 years then they are idiots.

Now not everything is cheaper. My gym for example is still €70 per month but since I wasn't a ruthless profiteer in the heyday, it's still really good value. The way I see it is that if I can offer someone a place to go every single night of the month for the price of one very cheap night on the beer, then I am offering value. In fact things to do with your health is probably the one place where people would probably be best investing in right now. There were €480 million worth of health cuts announced in January so right now is the time to get some private medical insurance and do some exercise. It's not about cost anymore it's about value. If you were paying €50 a month for something that wasn't doing what it said on the box, then I'd drop it. On the other hand if there was a price increase for something that was offering you good value then why not keep it on? Looking at the bigger picture is difficult but it has to be done. What is the real cost of say, buying low quality, processed meat versus buying some butcher's meat? Probably a few euro a week but then you have to weigh that against the nutritional content of what you're eating, the costs to your health; the nutritional deficit will either have to be made up for by eating more of the same crap, or will take away from your overall well being because you're not getting the same nutrients.

All of this might seem random but will make some sense in the next couple of days when I release my secret! And no, it's not a new way of de-processing meat. Suffice to say that my members can expect a small increase in price versus a massive increase in value. As with anytime I change anything around, I think it and talk it to death first as I want to see how it will impact everyone I train, me, my lifestyle and so on before I go and do it. I want to wait until a few details are confirmed and some wording is put right before really telling everyone what's what. This will be massive though. Absolutely massive.

The Missing List

2009-03-10T23:16:00.002Z

Are you on it?

I try not to whine and moan too much, I don't like people who do. But sometimes I just feel the need to vent. Since the time I started coaching, I've tried to compete alongside it. It's not always easy, most of the time it's really hard and I have to really kick myself into gear come training time so that I keep going. But what I always make sure is that my guys who are going to fight and compete are getting the best they can get. The best conditioning, the best sparring, the best drilling. when it comes time to compete myself, I just hope I get the same in return.

But I don't. For the past two times I've fought, I've had to either make do with very little sparring and sometimes almost none at all. I put 9 guys through their paces in December and gave them the best I could, put a few of them in the best shape of their lives and gave them the best shot of winning. Tonight on sparring night, one of them was there. Last week on the same night- none. The week before- one.

I'm really happy with my training right now, and I'm getting some good sparring with some other people outside the gym but what I've noticed is that when the time comes for people to get in the ring or on the mat themselves they're keen as mustard and want all the help they can get. When it comes to reciprocating and showing up for other people and helping out, they don't bother their arse even turning up. And it's not just me. Keith goes in 3 weeks time and he's in the same boat right now.

So from now on if you show up to me asking for a fight or looking for some extra training, I'll have a few questions for you. Where were you when people needed sparring partners? Where were you when people needed padholders? Where were you when your team mates needed help? Watching Champions League? Having another rest night? Or in the gym helping out? I can only take it one of two ways: You either don't think that people need sparring partners in which case you're dumb, or you don't give a fuck either way.

Team. What happened to that?

Good Week So Far

2009-03-06T15:08:00.004Z

It's Friday and I'm mightily relieved. It's bee 10 long weeks of waiting for a contract to be signed on my new house and during that time I've lost a lot of sleep. But today the contracts were signed so you can expect to see a moderately less stressted me in the coming weeks. That made my week, but in truth my week had been going pretty well up until that point.

On Monday I got a new car to replace the Canyonero (unexplained fires are a matter for the courts). It seems because of my chosen career I am doomed to drive sedate estates and SUVs. This time in a fit of environmental conscientiousness I plumped for a Renault Megane Estate... 1.4L. So taking off from lights is a real thrill now. It does 0-60 in 3.1 minutes or something. That said, I put 35 litres into it on Monday and it's still running whereas the old yoke would have had to visit the filling station 12 times by now. My boy loves it though because he can climb into it unaided and it doesn't smell like old socks.... yet. I also did an excellent BJJ session on Monday, after I did a really hard conditioning session which is in one of the posts below. Tuesday was MMA which due to a lack of sparring partners was pretty poor. Wednesday I did some pad rounds in the morning with Paddy, followed by an hours MMA sparring in the evening. I got some good strength work, deadlifting and incline benching, done on Thursday morning with some supplementary ab work and followed that up with a really good BJJ session that evening. In short, I think I've earned my rest day today and I plan to get to bed at about 9pm this evening, so no Late Late Show for me. My weight is a small concern. If you've seen me you'll know I'm pretty lean right now without being shredded, but I have a lot of weight still to go and I don't want to go into a sauna to get the last bits off. If I have to I will but I just don't want to.

So right now I'm catching up with work and I'm hoping to get stuck into some eating tonight. I've decided that if I can't have a cheat meal on the night I sell my house, when can I have it?

Lastly for this post, I wish I could have had my camera there last night for 3 of the kids doing their strength tests. All of them have improved from their last test in any case, but I wish I had some video of the three 15 year olds trap bar deadlifting twice their bodyweight. 130kgs and they could probably do more but I wouldn't let them, I'm a spoilsport.

I'm Having Difficulty Holding My Tongue

2009-03-04T17:33:00.003Z

I have a secret. I'm busier than a busy man's business, on the busiest day of his busy life, and one of the things I'm working on is really exciting and will change everything about the way I train and coach. It's doing my head in keeping it schtum because as anyone who has met me will tell you, I like to talk. I like to talk a lot. So really what I'm telling you is that I have a big secret but all you have to do is ask me twice and I'll tell you because I'm really excited about what will happen in the next few months.

If you have a minute or two:

I don't know anyone who doesn't love David Attenborough. I saw him on TV the other night and he's 82 which got me to thinking that although he's active for his age, there won't be too many more of his programmes made. What then? "When Sharks ATTACK!" will probably be the height of nature programming. H'e also responsible for explaining the natural world and the dichotomy of religious belief in a simple and non-condescending way, while still speaking his mind.

"Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."

4 weeks to go

2009-03-03T11:04:00.003Z

I'm getting closer to fighting now. It's something I'm looking forward to, but maybe not for the normal reasons. I'm at home today looking after my son who has the chickenpox so I have some time to be introspective. If you're not willing to be bored to tears, look away now. I don't compete because I want to be a fighter. As I've said before, the sort of guy I want in my gym and on my fight team is not the sort of guy who just wants to fight, but someone who wants to compete. I think if a lot of the guys hadn't found fighting, they'd be competing at something else- rugby, football, athletics. There are lots of guys who want to "foight" and I get one of them into my gym a month, and I lose the same guy usually within a month too because the realities of training, getting fitter and stronger and learning skills are opposed to the image he has in his head of fighting. So I don't want them and usually they don't have any real fight in them anyway. I don't want to go all Rocky on it, or maybe even all Oprah, but real fighting is all about heart. If you can stick at something through the boring stuff, through the hard stuff and through the stuff that makes you want to cry, then you are a fighter. You'll have that fight whether you're a martial artist, a rugby player, a badminton player or a runner. Sure, you have to be tough but if you're a cyclist and you do a mountain stage then you are tough. If you're a rower and you can do 1500m pulling hard all the way in the water beyond all that pain then you are tough. The benefits of being a fighter transcend just climbing into a ring or a cage, and transcend the sports field. Who gives a damn about business decisions, meetings, job interviews, being let go from a job when you know you have the mental strength to carry you through? That's what it's all about for me. If I wasn't fighting I'd be doing something physically and mentally challenging (Lots of people say I'm mentally challenged all the time).

That's enough of that. Here's some video of what I did yesterday. The first thing was a 150m shuttle run, repeated 10 times. 4 really easy and then 6 flat out with a 30 second recovery between intervals. I was WRECKED after these. So much so that I was totally unrecovered for this:

After that, two minutes rest and then into another 6 shuttles, this time with 45 second recoveries in the middle. So hard. At about the fifth I had nothing left. A bit of a better rest this time because it took a while to set up the Viper belt and the X Vest. Then I did this:

Nasty shit. 20lbs in the vest but it may as well have been 200lbs. It restricted my breathing, made the push ups much harder and having the Viper on the kicks was awful. That little bit of drag back made them really hard.
Then I finished up with another 6x 150m shuttle runs. Here was the penultimate one. I'm actually running as fast as I can. That might seem hard to believe since I look like I'm running at marathon pace, but there was literally nothing left in the legs at this stage.
I actually cannot believe how short my stride is, I look as though I'm on an invisible unicycle. At that stage I was so fatigued I just wanted it to be over. Denise came into the gym afterwards when I was still sitting recovering and I think she thought I had the flu or something. The nicest thing I can say about that session is that it's over.

What was the name of that movie?

2009-03-01T21:22:00.002Z

There was a movie, based on a Stephen King book I'm pretty sure, and in it the machines all came alive and began attacking the humans. Can't remember the name and I'm too damn lazy to go to imdb.com

The point is that my machines are now attacking me. Last month my mobile phone clapped out with no warning, so I got a replacement from the network, and within an hour of getting it back and powering it on, it clapped out. So I'm waiting on another replacement. Then on Thursday, the head gasket on my car went. I think you need a bit of background on this. Basically I had a Land Rover Freelander until Friday. I loved that car. When I bought it, I wanted a car that I didn't give a damn about, one that I could throw stuff in like my dogs and my training stuff. Then because I could throw stuff in it, and basically not care about it, I fell in love with it. Then on Thursday, it all ended. The head gasket blew and the thing isn't worth enough to get fixed. So I said goodbye to her. I didn't cry, she wouldn't have wanted it that way. But I'm sad to see her go.

I'm sick of buying stuff that doesn't work.

A few more rounds in the tank

2009-02-25T23:53:00.001Z

"All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and the last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled and oceans bounded by the slender force of human beings."
Samuel Johnson

Am I an Idiot? I could be.

2009-02-24T23:05:00.006Z

Well I've decided to do another show. Yup, that's right. Remember when I was all stressed, couldn't sleep, kept grinding my teeth, was irritable as a bear with a sore head all the time and occasionally forgot my name? Yup, that's right, I want to do it again.

It's ridiculous really but it has to be done because deep down inside, I really loved it. Very deep down inside that is. Buried so deep that you couldn't see it beyond the worry lines and the shouting. With any luck in the match ups there'll be 4 new fighters from the gym on the card and training started tonight, although only two of them showed. Ask Keith what happens when you miss a session when you've a fight coming up. He'll tell you.

The venue will be the same, Whitehall Colmcille GAA club on Collins Avenue. The ring, music etc. will all be equally cool (hopefully the ring will be there on time this time!). The only change will be that there will be more professional fights than last time, probably 3 A class, and 4 B class fights all in all. The rest of the card will be made up of D and C class amateur fights with hopefully a teenager or two from the gym on the card as well.
I can't wait... sort of...
Kyle's back, or at least we hope he will be

On a more depressing note, we've said goodbye to Kyle who is quitting the fighting world to return to playing football. I'm told he's quite good at that so we all wish him the best of luck with it. We'll miss him as there are only so many bet welshing, chronically farting fighters who can swing out of chin up bars and walk like a baboon out there. I get the impression he'll be back though. Few people can get bitten by the bug and walk away, even if they do walk away on their knuckles...

The Saturday Session

2009-02-21T21:43:00.003Z

AKA the Wife/Husband carrying competition.

Today we did this session:

Farmers walks/runs
Basically, there are pairs of plates ranging from 5kgs to 20kgs for a total of 120kgs at one end of the mat and you have to bring them all the way up to the top of the room, and then all the way back. The rub is that you can't just run up and back with them you have to leave them there and then bring them back when all the plates are at the top. Each time up and back with all the plates is one point for your team.

Fireman's Carry
You have to fireman carry all of your team up the mats and then back. Each time you bring ALL of your team up and back is one point for your team.

Rower
In shifts you have to get the maximum distance you can in the 12 minute time period. You can achieve this any way you like, in a relay with a change every minute, or just until one guy gasses or any other way your imagination allows. Your team score is the amount of metres the machine clocks after the last pull.

For each segment, the clock is set for 12 minutes and the guys had to score as high as possible in that time frame. Only completed reps counted so if you were halfway back with a set of plates tough shit, it didn't count.

I really like these sessions as they're a bit different from the usual circuit that group training tends towards. Here we have two groups of people, with similar if not the same goals, and they get to compete and push each other on. If I put the same people on their own or even in partners and told them to do the same work the intensity would be nowhere near as high and I would guarantee that the actual work done would be lower too.

As an example, I'd like to pick on Amanda. (sorry Amanda) If I asked Amanda to carry 615kgs in shifts up and down the floor today in weights she would have told me in no uncertain terms what to do with myself. And she would be right because it would be boring as hell. Yet, in a team that's just what she did. Her team was 70kg (Darragh) + 65kgs (Stephen) + 75kgs (Colin)= 205kgs. She carried those guys three times up and down the mat so 3x205= 615kgs. Then there was the distance, so we have 14 metres in length of mat and for each carry you traversed that twice so that's 28 metres. Done 3 times that's 3x28= 84metres.

Bear with me now.

So 615kgs carried on your shoulders for 84 metres. Hmmm, what else is 615kgs, lets have a look. A quick google for "weight 615kgs" gives me:

Quite a large speedboat. Hmmm. Not quite what I'm looking for. Let's try again:
More like it. A small, 1940s helicopter. A bit old skool though so lets have one more click at it:
BINGO! I think this sums it up nicely. So now I can put it in one coherent sentence- Today, Amanda carried a mini excavator for 84 metres.

Some more quick mathematics. H, aged 15 but training with the seniors today because he's competing next week and because he shaves more often than me carried 90kgs (Shayn) + 80kgs (Keith) = 170kgs and did it a whopping 7 times so 170x7= 1190kgs. Hmmm, that seems like a lot. He is only 15 after all and I've heard that kids under 18 aren't supposed to lift weights because their muscles will explode. I'd better be careful as after all today Hugh lifted the equivalent of this in shifts:Yup, it's a Citroen Berlingo. The shining light of the small businessman on a budget. I'm going to rent H out as a delivery boy and the catch phrase will be "Can he carry more then your van? He can carry your van mate".

I've posted about kids and weight training about twice or three times now and every time I do I get a few emails from people "concerned" about kids. I mean, as though I'm an irresponsible idiot. I am an irresponsible idiot, but only with my own safety (see my physio report below, broken bones not healed etc. etc.) and not with others and especially not with kids. I have 15 teens and 3 of them trained with the seniors today and only one other is capable of it. So that's 4 out of 15, and the other 11 are working up from mastering their bodyweight and light weights towards doing what the guys did today. So what I'm going to do in future is when you mail me (quite a few people mail me you know) about this subject I will post it on the blog and address it. That's not a name and shame thing or anything, it's just putting it out there for all to see. What I would like to do in future is get some parental permission to post up some vids of the two age groups doing some training and I think some peoplem ight be pleasantly surprised by the work they do. Firstly how good they are, and secondly how easily they do it and how safe it is.

Right

2009-02-18T14:30:00.003Z

I'm going to do a video tour of the gym tomorrow night as suggested on the forum. I need your help.

Should I:
a) Do it seriously, and just go around listing stuff off
b) Do it in a faux- cribs style, even though that's done by everyone.
c) Wear my gi and be ultra serious like an old Japanese Sensei?
d) Wear a clown suit or some other comic apparell.

I'll probably just walk around like a gobshite pointing stuff out, but I'd apreciate it if you all picked your crap up off the ground and made the place look neat please.

Someone, can't remember who, was moaning about being a bit sore the other night. So I decided I'd put a stop to that and list my physio screening report from November. The comments at the bottom are Will's:

Pre Injury Screening Findings and Recommendations
Muscular/Skeletal Findings
1. Left sacroiliac joint dysfunction - This has lead to increased development and tone in left lumbar para-spinals. This has also caused excessive external rotation in his left leg increasing the ‘pressure’ in his left hip, knee cap, left ankle and left big toe.
2. Stiff left cervical-thoracic junction about C6,C7 and T1.
3. Left shoulder stiff and has decreased external rotation strength…this is probably related to issue 2.
4. Issue with left radio-ulnar junction.
5. Right scaphoid…in all likelihood…still broken from a couple of years ago (way to look after your body Barry.)

Recommendations and Treatment Requirements
1. Mobilise stiff left sacroiliac joint and work on glute control and deep abdominal control to get back control of ‘freestyling’ left leg.
2. Mobilise left cervical-thoracic spine and begin neck strengthening work.
3. Improve left shoulder external rotation strength.

Isokinetic Strength Testing Results
Right Quadricep = 294%
Left Quadricep = 292%

Right Hamstring = 143%
Left Hamstring = 140%

Right hamstring to quadricep ratio = 48%
Left hamstring to quadricep ratio = 48%

*Brief explanation of results…I usually look for a quadricep strength of 250% and hamstring strength of 160% at an absolute minimum acceptable value…below that and I’m surprised that athletes had the strength to even kick off their sheets in the morning.

So Barry’s quadricep strength was good…his hamstring strength is average…as in ‘man off the street’ strong…not athlete average.

I think a good athletic hamstring to quadricep ratio is around 70%.

So Barry has a lot of work to do to ensure that I don’t look like a complete idiot or maybe I should say…more of a complete idiot.

We’ll retest not long before he next fights to see if his entire training program has been a complete waste of time…thankfully…he couldn’t be much worse.

That made me feel better already…I’ll thank Barry tomorrow.

2009-02-16T09:53:00.002Z

I kep forgetting to bring my camera to training, and when I do bring it I leave it sitting on my desk while we train. I promise I'll be a bit more disciplined this week and bring it to some sessions. I'll actually try to do a video coaching session once per week on some aspect, this week maybe I'll do the triangle on Thursday as promised to someone about a month ago. Don't count on it though I'm really busy I'll just try.

The Monday music I've picked this week which is on my stereo beside me right now is DJ Shadow's Blood on the Motorway. Unfortunately you don't seem to be able to get real videos on Youtube anymore so you have to put up with the visuals

This weekend was Valentine's weekend of course, so I took an extra night off good eating and went to the cinema and gorged myself on popcorn, nachos, coke and sweets. (no expensive valentine's meals in this house, buying a new gaf and prenatal appointments are expensive you know!) I actually woke up on Sunday morning with a hangover and felt terrible all day yesterday. You know you're in good health when sugar makes you hungover. I went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was the first movie I've seen in ages that lived up to the reviews it has been getting. I recommend it although based on the fact that a few people at my showing walked out, it might not be for everyone.

Oh and to cap off a thrilling and romantic weekend, me and the missus watched Black Sheep last night. If you haven't seen this you should make an effort to. It's hilarious, but not quite as good as Dog Soldiers which is in a similar vein.

Primo session

2009-02-12T15:54:00.003Z

This morning I did my most enjoyable (and one of the toughest) conditioning session yet. Here's how it broke down.

Bike 5 mins
Overs and unders, leg swings 3x8
Scap push ups, scap pull ups 2x8
Rower 10x150mtrs with 30 sec recovery
Strength block 1:
60kg bench press 30 seconds
Push Ups 30 seconds
1-2 punching 30 seconds
Repeat for 10 minutes
Rower 10x150mtrs with 30 sec recovery
Strength block 2:
Leg press 140kgs 30 seconds
Air squats 30 seconds
Leg kicks 30 seconds

Vid of block 1

Block 2

Was supposed to do another set of rows and for once was actually really looking forward to them as Damian had given me some handy hints about rowing the 150s to do with the psych element and I did much better than normal on the erg in the first two sets. Unfortunately, duty called and I had to go pick up the boy. I'm sure I'll get a chance to do them again soon though. Really great session though.

I'm a Busy Man Dammit!

2009-02-11T23:01:00.002Z

Which I hate. Anyway apprently I'm "in the well" on boards.ie's fitness forum. It's this idea where one significant poster to the forum a week gets asked loads of questions. To my dismay, none of them have been about my magnificent facial hair, or carrying off thinning hairlines successfully. Paul was kind enough to ask a question on something I'm really interested in, the music of Europe. For the answer to that and other questions, go here.

I have been busy, here's what I've done since the last update.

Monday- BJJ. Piss poor session, low quality rolling, no drilling.

Tuesday morning- strength, must keep diary better. Loads of stuff I'm forgetting about!
500m Rower x 3
Hip pop ups
Standing ab pulldowns- 5x12
Swiss ball Hanstring curl, supersetted with glute ham raise, 3x8
Box squats, 3 w/u sets then 5x3 with 75kg and 80kg
Pull ups:
3@bw
3w10lbs in the x-vest
3w15lbs in the x vest
3w 15lbs in the x vest with a last failure
3w 10lbs n the x vest which Will and Damian called me a pussy on because I didn't let out fully on the last.
Inverted rows, 5x8
Raises and Natrual reverse hypers, 3x12
DONE

Tuesday evening MMA sparring. Okay session, some good stand up rounds, wasn't at all in my game for MMA

Wednesday morning Muay Thai. Just Paddy and me although I think that this session is a grower. 10am and the last 4 weeks now we've had at least 4 people in the gym of a Wednesday. If you want to know where Robbie has got to, he's a morning person now!

2009-02-09T11:43:00.002Z

Music time, it's Monday!

I often try to squeeze in some Nina Simone on the stereo in the gym. Some of these Emo kids need their horizons broadened.
I just spent the weekend at my Strength and Conditioning coach's seminar, and I was shocked and appalled to discover that there are about twenty 19 year olds in that gym who are stronger than me.

Other than that horror, I had a great weekend listening to Will talk, and talk, and talk. In fact he only stopped talking once, to bite his sandwich, and even after that he spoke with his mouth full. I'll have to take some time to digest all the info he was giving out but I got an awful lot out of it on Saturday including how Will designs my programmes. After finding that out I felt a little cheated.

I try to go and watch as many coaches as I can do their thing. Last year I spent some time with an athletics coach to see how he did his thing, my sojourns into GAA coaching are well known at this stage and I have trained with a lot of martial arts coaches as you might expect. I have no problem giving people the respect that they deserve and how they've influenced the way I coach and teach. Everyone is just a product of their experiences, both positive and negative so why not embrace that instead of pretending you came up with it all by yourself. Here's a short list of the people who've influenced my coaching methods in the last ten years. Have a look and see what you think. I've taken some things from each of them and I've seen some things in each of their classes that I knew I definitely didn't want to do either, but I'll accentuate the positives for this post. I'll go chronologically:

James F- (Have to mention him cos he's my mate) enthusiasm infects classes, so be enthusiastic.
John D- Authority effects those who can't do enthusiasm.
JohnK - Method is as important as material
Andy - You can make people do almost anything as long as it's fun
Martin- helped form my opinions on how to strength train kids
Will- if you're not assessing you're guessing.
Sarah- Let them play the game!
Bill- People come and go, relax.

There are lots of others I've worked with/known of that I would list and beside them I could put all the things I shouldn't do. Indeed some of the people on that list would have a lot of negatives beside their names as well and those have been as helpful as the positives.

Oh The Weather Outside is Frightful...

2009-02-06T10:47:00.003Z

There was a time when snow was the best thing that could possibly happen to me. The schools would shut, it was open season to throw stuff at other people and you just didn't care about getting cold. Now, the snow is a bloody hinderance. It stopped training altogether on Monday, we had to stop early on Tuesday so that people could leave a little earlier and get home safer and I had no session with Will this morning because my road has frozen over and it would have taken too long to get over and back and I have work to do dammit!

But I still managed to get an okay training week in. Some S&C on Tuesday morning looked like this:
Bike - 5mins
Y,T,W - 3×5,5,5
3×4minute row with 1 minute recovery
Work Block 1 - 10 mins
1A Box Jumps - 5 reps
1B Pull Ups - 3 reps
1C Elevated Push Ups - 10 reps
3×4minute row with 1 minute recovery
Work Block 2 - 10 mins
2A Split Jumps - 10 reps
2B Inverted Rows - 5 reps
2C KB Shoulder Press - 5 reps each side
3×4minute row with 1 minute recovery
3A III Way Bridging - 2 sets (30second each bridge variation)
3B Natural Reverse Hypers - 2 sets of 15 reps

I did all but the reverse hypers as I had to leggit with the snow. The rows were really hard as we had a distance target for each one. I got some help from Damian the lad I did it with regarding my rowing technique. His heart rate was something like 88bpm 3 minutes after the second sets of rowing whereas mine was 130 or so for the same rest. He had put in much more distance than me too so it was obvious that I was wasting a lot of energy. The back end of the first strength block got really hard. It looks easy- 5 jumps, 3 pulls, 10 pushes, but when you're doing it, there's not one of those exercises you could call a rest. The inverted rows on the second strength block were not too bad and I'd really like to test tomorrow just to see how my back is doing. There's still some pain and immobility but (knock on wood) no training effect. Even when it spasmed the last time I was able to do the very next session pain free. Wednesday was some Muay Thai with Paddy in the morning, and last night was BJJ. So not much done all week but it can serve as a good unload week and I'll get back on the bike Monday again for a double session.

Not a lot of time but enough for today's music selection

2009-02-02T15:30:00.003Z

Currently rockin the ipod dock in the gym is this little number by Mark Mothersbaugh, better known as one of the guys behind Devo. This is obviously a bit truncated but I love Bill Murray's little dance.

If you haven't seen this movie you're missing out.

New Tongue Biting Record Achieved

2009-02-01T09:36:00.003Z

Yup I have a really inflamed tongue today thanks to biting it twice in the last 3 days. Biting my tongue, as in the idiom, is not something I'm known for so I didn't do that. What I did do was actually physically bite my tongue. On Thursday when grappling with Shayn, I passed guard and his arm struck me in the jaw accidentally. I bit my tongue, hard. There wasn't too much blood but it swelled up a bit. Yesterday, with it still in it's swollen state, Gordy's foot connected with my chin as we were both scrambling for position and I bit it again, hard. This morning, I feel like it's about 3 times the normal size. I can't talk properly. And talking is my favourite thing to do in the whole world.

Do any of you float around Strength and Conditioning forums, or maybe just Fitness forums? If you do, you'll notice something. Firstly that pretty much everyone is unhappy with being just a personal trainer or a fitness instructor. Everyone who has an NCEF or helps Maureen to lose her muffin top says "I work with athletes..." or "well, the work I do with athletes..." Now I personally know about 4 people in all of the island of Ireland who I would say would be able to write and implement a good training programme to improve athletic performance. Everyone else I know would write a programme that included bits of what they thought they knew, plus more bits of what they got off youtube/Eric Cressey's blog/a Poloquin article, mixed in with something they thought would make the guy sore and cry, so then he'd know he was doing hard work. I know of an extremely qualified guy (sports science degree, ncef or ncea, did some internships, goes to a course once a week, lots of certs) and if he was the last fitness "expert" on the planet, I'd still sooner make it up myself and hope for the best.

For the last two years I've researched courses and attended a few. But the thing that I've realised is that my time is best spent in the gym working with real people, with the odd jump outside to work with other coaches to see how and what they do. Classroom sessions do nothing for me (I hated school!) and although I read incessantly, I have this healthy (I think it's healthy anyway) tendency to doubt everything I read until I see it in action. Luckily for me I seem to have accidentally fallen in with the right people from the world of athletics, rugby and football, and even if there's lots of things some of these people do I disagree with, I still get to see them in action, coaching skills and making their athletes stronger.

The other really funny thing is that when you find that people say they work with athletes, they then go on to say that they train "professional athletes", which I think is awful funny. Ireland, in case you hadn't noticed, is hardly awash with professional sportsmen and women. There is one true professional sport, Rugby, with several supported athletes in various athletic disciplines who rely on the sports council for money (think Kenny Egan etc.) and after that there are others dotted around the place including soccer which looks doomed to amateur status. I estimate that if every fitness professional who claimed to be working with professional athletes was actually telling the truth and training just one, then one in three people in Ireland would be a professional athlete (Source: My Creative Imagination, 2009).

I train a professional athlete. Did I ever say that before? It's true. His name is Keith, and no, I didn't just make him up. He does nothing but train MMA and watch Kilroy, Trisha and Ready, Steady, Cook. Of course, I should point out that the reason he's so professional is that he's deferred college for a year and is a bum until then, but since everyone else is doing it, why can't I? He and I are going to have a great year together, making him fit, strong and skilled until such a day as he can go off to college and ruin in it all by eating Super Noodles, drinking special brew and chasing skirt.

LOADS of video.

2009-01-28T14:19:00.012Z

In the interest of making my blog look a little better and in response to some slagging in the gym about it, I'm going to make a very informative post today, full of video footage and lots of stuff like that

Here's stage one of last night's beginner MMA, or MMA101 as we call it. Some of these guys have had 6 months, some 2 hours. This, for the uninitiated, is called pummelling and it's a drill from Greco Roman Wrestling. This is the compliant version of the drill, this is stage one of most of the beginner's MMA classes as it involves some fundamental clinch skills which people are not exposed to regularly. I use it as a warm up most nights even if Greco isn't the subject of the night's session.

Stage two of the warm up, a light jog around and some people REALLY desperate to share their love. Have you ever seen men so willing to embrace each other?

Then the class proper. Tuesday was all about shooting- ie. how you get from standing position to a position at your opponent's legs to take them down. This is the first stage, although we'd done some basic working through the technique of the shot before this, we were still introducing the technique here, but correcting some of the common errors, in this case not following through the opponent.

This is the next stage, the actual takedown along with a bit of correction on the shot involving the tendency not to level change. The usual reason for this is a lack of flexibility and/or strength in the legs and lower back, although this comes over time.

Next we worked into a slightly more difficult finish, and emphasised the importance of turning the corner on the takedown to change the angle. This time the partner is half sprawling or defending the takedown. We're still only drilling here so the resistance is light.

And lastly, the drill itself. This is the isolation stage where our partner begins to resist the technique, starting from a low level of resistance and working his way up to almost maximum resistance. This is the most important drill of the night as it's here that we start to ask questions of the technique and hopefully self correct.

And that's all.

The beginnings of a weekly tradition

2009-01-26T15:32:00.004Z

I'm going to start putting up some Monday music to start the week off. I get lots of enquiries as to what songs I'm playing in the gym on my ipod (mostly in the form of groans) so I thought I'd share with the world.

Blackalicious- Chemical Calasthenics

I was going to post up that Mos Def track that has him spelling Brooklyn in it that a couple of the lads love so much but there's only maybe 4 people going to get that.

Was supposed to have a session this morning but had to cry off as my boy has an earache so I've stayed at home, watched Go Diego Go, Thomas the Tank Engine and played some Lego. The I was thinking about heading off for a run with my dog but that's just depressing now because he's getting so old that he's having difficulty standing up in the mornings and now when we run I almost have to wait for him to catch up. On the plus side, he's just about the best footwarmer I've ever had when you want sit and do some work.

So even though I was up most of the night with a litle boy with an earache, I still had to show up in my gym at 6am with the sum total of 2 hours sleep to work with a client. J is a 40 odd year old who wants to lose a few kgs and to be able to hit a golf ball longer. Actually, I think he'd be happy enough looking like a whale as long as he could hit a golf ball longer, he wants to play off scratch this year (let's face it, who doesn't?) so he's got a full 5 shots to knock off before the summer is out. He's a clever guy so has identified that all those niggles, the stiffness, the soreness and yes, the tiredness towards the 16th is a part of what's preventing him from getting an invite to the Masters. In most conversations I have with people about golf they seem to think it's a "game" rather than a "sport". In other words it gets put in the same category as darts, snooker and tiddlywinks. All it takes is for you to swing a club at a little white ball and bingo, off it flies. This of course is not so. The golf swing is no different to say, that of a tennis player or a hurler other than that the feet are (relatively) static. It's an enormously powerful action that, like any strike in any striking sport, takes in the whole body from toe to head. In fact, the rotation through the hips and the power generated from the trunk is not too dissimilar to throwing a rear leg kick. So if you're approaching the end of that fighting career and are looking for a sport to go into that doesn't involve getting hit, golf could be your new gig. Being a busy guy, J only has the very early morning to do his stuff so he gets me full of espresso and probably at the most energetic I'll be all day, but man am I tired now.

The Present and the Future

2009-01-24T14:57:00.010Z

Was asked a question at training today about what I reckon the future of MMA was. Would people no longer be "specialists", preferring instead to be just good enough at everything to win fights? The short answer is no. I don't think so. What I think is hard to put in one post but I'll try, and it comes back to why I teach kids so I might be answering another question I got during the week too.

In the future in MMA, I think that every single guy who walks into the ring or cage will be a superb grappler, wrestler and stand up fighter. What they prefer in their game will not depend on what they specialised in before they started MMA, but what body type they have, how fast or slow they are or even just their opponent's abilities. You don't have to go too far to find a black belt in BJJ with superb Muay Thai (Anderson Silva) or someone with great skills in all ranges (George St. Pierre) but I think fighters like that will be the norm, not the exceptions in the future. I helped out with an athletics coach a while back and he was involved in a ground up programme. The club took in kids at age 5 and they all did the same training until they hit puberty and began to develop into adults, only then was there specialisation. Rugby has the same system, and those two sports are the only two I can think of that would have different positions or events for different body types. I believe martial arts for kids should be the same, especially for MMA.

What this doesn't mean is that we can "adapt" or "include" different martial arts systems into one sort of hybrid style. Nothing irritates me more than seeing someone saying that their club "style" includes "elements" of BJJ, or "techniques" of Muay Thai. What does that mean exactly? I've rolled, wrestled and kickboxed with a lot of different people from lots of different backgrounds and one thing all the good ones had was a really defined game. I've never seen a good Thai boxer switch to a boxing stance just for the sake of throwing an overhand right a slightly different way because he "adapted" some techniques. What I mean when I say fighters will have top skills in all ranges is that they will all be, for example, black belts in BJJ, accomplished boxers, and good wrestlers. Not because they adapted a few techniques, but because they trained in PURE BJJ, PURE BOXING, PURE WRESTLING. Or pure sambo, muay thai or whatever. Saying that because you've got some judo you can "adapt BJJ" is just fucking offensive to the BJJ players out there who eek out every inch of improvement with hours upon hours of mat time. Saying because you can do Taekwondo or whatever, that you can "adapt" the kneeing of Muay Thai is offensive to the millions of thaiboxers who have spent years perfecting their stances, their knees, their padwork just for the sake of 1 extra pound of force.

That's why I train kids. My kid's classes make a loss, you heard it here first. I don't care, I'd like them to break even but they don't. I don't train them for money I train them because in a few years time those kids may or may not fight, but they won't think about fighting as stand-up, clinch or ground, they'll just think of fighting and be able to do it, win, lose or draw.

So that's the future, here's the very recent past. Today we did some conditioning followed by some sparring. Here was the set-up:
The kick out rounds were max power efforts. In other words not like repeat kicking on the thai pads. Less reps, more power in each one. The punch outs were for as many fast, hard punches as possible in a minute, trying to keep the same strike rate as your power deteriorated.

I really have to start remembering to take my decent camera along to training. These are pretty blurry and short but they're just to give you an idea.

Max Punch Outs

Circuit

Max Effort Kicks. Just 10 secs cos I was on my back doing hamstring curls

So you may have noticed...

2009-01-23T16:52:00.003Z

... that I've started to tag my posts. Yup, I know, it smacks of organisation and order. Not something you'd normally associate with me but I was reading about Will's efforts to organise his blog and it suddenly occurred to me that the 1,000 people (yup I know, but I think 900 of them are my Ma checking on me) who read this blog every day might want some degree of order and searchability. So here it is. On the right you can see all of my posts, categorized into em, categories. Hope it helps a bit.

The Teenagers doing MMA last night on the mew mats

Rolled on our new surface for the first time last night and I have to say, it was a lot of money well spent. A lot of money. Lots. But the new mats really are the mut's nuts I can't say better than that. I'm delighted we didn't opt for the tatami (read Judo) mats in the end they suck for stand up training. I blasted away on the pads with Paddy on Thursday morning on the new ones and there was still plenty of grip which isn't there with the tatami. I still have to sort out putting the 2X1 frame around the edging to keep the edge mats in and prevent gaps... did I say "I still have to"? I meant "Jonny still has to" of course. He's my skills guy. I'm just the ideas guy.

I think 2009 is going to be a great year for the gym based on the end of 08 and the month we've had so far.

At Last - Some Video

2009-01-22T15:06:00.005Z

Had my first training session on the brand new matted area this morning with Paddy and I have to say they are beautiful. I can't wait to grapple on them this evening. I am literally going to allow people to pass my guard just to shrimp out. Prepare for gward spinning invertedness, you have been warned.

So I promised more video in the blog and this morning I had the best of intentions of bringing my camera but instead I forgot and so you'll have to put up with the grainy video from my phone. This morning I did some pads with Paddy. We didn't spar because I had to quit early and clean the gym up for the kids tonight so we just got 5 rounds each in but that was enough for me because by round 3 I was pretty tired. I've had a really good week training wise so far but a pretty poor week sleep and eats wise and I think it caught up with me today. This was round 4 but it wasn't much better before this.

Look at those skinny legs man!

Now if right now you're thinking "oh stop being so modest" cos you think that was actually good, I'm going to throw up a vid in 4 weeks time of a morning session, 4th round and we'll compare then. If you still think it was good, check out Paddy's 5th round, I'll put a very simple comparison in afterwards.

Hard to do. Harder to hold for!

The simple comparison between the two? I'm fitter than Paddy but Paddy is better than me... We'll leave it at that shall we? In about 4 weeks time when his fight is almost around, Paddy will be fitter AND better than me so I'll feign injury come sparring time I think, it's already bad enough.

We got to talking about quotes this morning, and Paddy reminded me of something I said once, I think it was either after hard sparring or after some cardio rounds. Someone was moaning or heaving and I said "Newsflash. Fighting is hard." Anyway Paddy liked it and is going to give me royalties whenever he uses it. He gave me a good one from his coach in Cork which was "A smart fighter wins fights he should lose". I like that but no one is getting a penny from me.

MMA and Conditioning

2009-01-21T08:49:00.004Z

So some updates on my own training, which in spite of the lack of updates in this blog has been ongoing. Basically I've delegated the task of making sure I get enough hours in to Will. So not only does he now look after my strength and conditioning, but he's also going to check my logs at the end of each week and make sure I've put in enough quality hours on the mat as well. Reason being that as a coach, it's very difficult to get your training in when you're also making sure everyone else is getting their training in. It's also very easy to just not do anything when you're feeling tired or pissed off. As I've said before on this blog, training for anything is about logging hours in the gym, putting enough in the tank so to speak. I've lost count of the number of times I've got to the end of a week thinking that I'd done a lot only to discover that I'd only logged, in real time, 2 or 3 hours.

So I've given Will yet another job. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, if I gave it to one of the lads I train they'd only do what I told them and I'd probably ignore them anyway in the same way that they ignore me when I tell them what to do. The second is that even though Will is a member of the gym and harbours ambitions of competing, he's the only one in the gym who tells me what to do on a regular basis so he fits the bill. So I've set myself a target of at least 8 sessions per week. I think that would be a good average for the next ten weeks or so, with some weeks going above and some below. I'll send my hours to Will at the start and end of each week and he'll rate them and let me know if I have to do more or less the week after. In fact, I'll probably know myself but it's good to have that fear of an external examiner.

Here's this week so far:
Monday: 8-930pm. 3 rounds hard boxing on the pads with Jonny after helping him make the new weightlifting platform. Then about 7 or 8 rounds rolling with the boys.

Tuesday: the following session in the morning-

Rower - 4x500m with 60 sec recovery between efforts...near on max effort.

1A Punch Bag Zercher Squats

1B Pull Ups

1C Push Ups

12 minute work blocks. 4 rounds of 3 minutes. 50 seconds work and 10 second change over. Do as many reps as possible in each 50 second work period.

Rower - 4x500m with 60 sec recovery between efforts...near on max effort.

2A Punch Bag Lunges
2B Barbell Rows

2C KB Floor Press

Hold each for 30 seconds and transition from each directly to the next without letting the hips hit the ground.

1x500m effort on the rower at max effort. Record time.

Thoughts- very, very tough session but not as tough on the rower as the last time I did the 500s. The first work block was insanely hard on the arms, I had to drop the punchbag a couple of times on the Zerchers towards the end my arms were so tired. The second block had rows in it... that is all you need to know about how my back feels today.

Evening: MMA, 20 minutes wrestling to takedown. 4 rounds MMA in the wee gloves. Not too many of the fight team around last night but got absolutely dominated by Ger so it didn't matter. A really good session.

I'm off in a few minutes to the Wednesday morning class in the gym, a significant occurrence as it represents the very last time rolling on the old mats. The new mats arrive at 6.30 this evening and with enough help we'll have them down for Muay Thai at 8pm. So if you've nothing else to do at around 6.30, come on down and help out. You'll get to say you were there!

Unstable Surfaces, Bosu, Swiss and a load of balls

2009-01-19T14:47:00.005Z

Fielded a few questions and got into a few arguments on my opinions* on unstable surface stuff on Saturday, and then later with beers on board before and after the UFC. Most of the questions were comical enough without the ensuing arguments.

Usually you get two types of opinion on Swiss Balls:
Bloke 1- "I think they're great, I use mine instead of a bench for dumbell presses and stuff, I'll never use a regular bench again"
Bloke 2- "They're a fad, they'll be gone in a year or two"

To the untrained eye, it might seem as though my opinion falls into the middle of those two, but it doesn't as the middle ground between those two polar opinions is, in my opinion, just as stupid as either side. I like the swiss ball for the limited number of applications it has. By limited I mean in the same way that dumbells are limited, and a barbell is limited, and a pull up bar is limited. You can't do squats on a pull up bar, nor is there any real benefit to doing your press ups on a barbell. The difficulty with the swiss ball is that in the right hands they are a great tool, and in the wrong hands they're just for tools. I spend little or no time in commercial gyms these days which is great. The two gyms I spend all my time in now are my own and Will Heffernan's, which means that I get to see good training practises most of the time. But when I did spend more time in the big warehouse gyms of this world I saw lots of things. Some guy taking his 10kg dumbells in each hand and lying on the swiss ball would have been common enough, so lets have a look at that exercise. The dumbell bench press. Let's assume the goal is strength (what else?). Let's set up an example. Let's say a guy can bench 60kgs. Now lets say his dumbell press would be less than that, say 40kgs as a nice round figure. Now lets put him on that unstable surface, in this case the swiss ball. Whaddya reckon? Down to 30kgs? If that? (these are all wild figures, though I might try it one day). Now a 60kgs bench for an average guy of say 75kgs is not very strong, so what possible benefit can having a wobbly ball underneath him have? What would he be better doing? Some more 30kgs dumbell presses on the ball, or just some push ups?

I blame the parents, and youtube, but mostly youtube. The bosu ball is another one. Actually, it's slightly better as they're not so available as the swiss ball. They had a few in a gym I used to be a member of and they were the platform for some of the stupidest exercises I've ever seen. The guy doing the half squats on one in a smith machine has to be the worst, but there were others.

Hope that sounds clearer than it did on Saturday night!

*opinion meaning whatever I feel like today

2009-01-16T13:32:00.003Z

I haven't been as diligent with my updates of late, apologies for that. This month, as you can imagine, is the busiest month of the year for me. Lots of calls to field from people looking to train, lots of emails to answer from just about everyone, and lots of people looking to literally change their whole life around. Seriously. Factor in that I'm trying to move house (almost there!) and refit the gym before next weeks arrival of new mats while still trying to keep my obligations to several schools and businesses I work with and you have a busy Barry. So sorry readers, I'll make up for it now with an extra long post. Someone was suggesting to me that there should be more video posts. They'd like to hear me articulate my thoughts through that medium, presumably they think that I'll be less boring that way. I assure you sirs, you are wrong, I can be very boring in real life. But I will do it anyway as my lovely wife bought a nice new camera before Christmas and it would give me great pleasure to swipe it and misuse it.

Something came up in the gym last night. We were doing a bit of Q&A as it was a small attendance and a good opportunity to ask specific questions and to see if anyone could shout out an answer for you. The questions were the usual ones anyone asks "I am having trouble in X position, what do you think?" or "I can't do Y, what do you suggest?". The first thing is always that I would never call myself an "expert". I don't believe that many of those exist in Ireland at least but I answer to the best of my ability and I think my greatest strength as a coach is my ability to say "I don't know". I've trained with too many bullshitters who waffle and waffle and provide answers of sorts and seem to know everything, and that's their ego talking, inventing techniques and things to do which are either misguided or just plain wrong and occasionally dangerous. I should qualify "I don't know". I don't just shrug and say next question please, that would be ignorant. What I really say is "I don't know, but I'll find out" and 9 times out of 10 I come back with an answer a day or a week later. Usually I just hope that the guy forgets, but often their memory is better than mine so I have to arm myself with an answer just in case. Usually my answer is along the line of just keep doing it a bunch of times, for a month or so, and see if you can get it to work. Quite often you just need more practise but people are impatient they want it and they want it now.

The next thing that came up this week was with a guy on the phone (for half an hour, long story) who rang me after attending a class the week before Christmas. He wanted to come back but was dissappointed with a few things. Firstly he felt that the gym was too expensive. It's not, in fact it's dirt cheap. I think about €2 per hour is dirt cheap anyway but he had a different opinion. Hmmm, actually I'll do the conversation blow by blow as I remember it, I think it's easier that way:
Him: "Well, it's not €2 per class if I only come once per week"
Me: "Well, by the same token somewhere like a commercial gym would be €400 an hour if you only went once. You pay for the availability too and we're pretty flexible"
Him: "Yeah, but I'm not joining somewhere with a swimming pool and loads of weights, all there is is just a room really"
Me: "What do you mean?"
Him: "No treadmills or bikes, it's not a gym"
Me: "It's not Jackie Skelly's you know"
some more back and forth like that and then:
Him: "So basically, I'm not sure I want to come back"
Me: "Well it seems pretty simple then"
Him: "No it's not, another reason I don't really want to go back is your language"
Me: "English?"
Him: "Don't be smart, you know what I mean."
Me: "If you mean that I occasionally use an expletive when I'm coaching, then yes I suppose I do, if it offends I'm sorry. I am actually trying to stamp it out."
Him: "No it's not that, you called one of the lads that night a prick" (I had called someone a little prick the night before, but that's because he's Grant)
Me: "Little ginger lad?"
Him: "I have red hair as well, I take offence at the word ginger"
Me: "This isn't going to get much better is it?"
Him: "What, the phone call?"
Me: "Yeah the phone call. 20 minutes ago it was about how expensive the gym was, then it was about the lack of space on the mat, then it was about the fact that it's two buses away from you. Now it's about my language. But lets face it it's not about any of those things is it? What's your point"
Him: "My point is that I'll come back if I can pay by the class"
Me: "I won't use an expletive right now, so I'll just say sod off, you're wasting my valuable time"

Pretty infuriating to say the least. 99.9% of people who call me are nice, polite people. Even if they never actually show up in the gym they're always nice about why it isn't for them, be it money (it rarely if ever is), time travelling or just that the classes don't tick their boxes. It's fine, we're not for everyone. But when you ring just to run down the gym and the classes it just drives me nuts. Especially when all it is is to get the price down.

he was right about one thing though, my language. I plan to not swear anymore while teaching. In fact, I've decided to go one better. I'm going to tick a box on the board every time I swear in class and to pay a euro into the all new Social Fund Box for every cuss word I use. The bad news is you're all going to join me. One euro for every swear, and then once the box is full, we'll go out and the funds from our language can buy us some beers. What say you? Sorry, you have no choice, it has been written on the interweb, and so it shall be done.

My gym is in someone else's hands tonight

2009-01-14T14:40:00.002Z

What will I do? I reckon at about 8pm tonight I'll want to ring and see if everything is okay. Did Paddy get in the door alright? Is everyone taking their shoes off on the mats? Will someone get injurred? Will he know to turn off the lights?

The gym is my baby and tonight, I'll feel like a dingo has got it.

Ways to annoy me:

2009-01-10T20:36:00.008Z

Spot the Idiocy

A) Don't indicate on a roundabout.
2) Indicate right when you're going straight on a roundabout
C) Litter
5) Don't show for your strength test

Also that Heineken Cup ad that's on lately with the old man talking about the "sense of things" he gets from the ould stadium is pretty headwrecking.

But strength testing it was today, and I had the grand total of 2 of the fight team as most of the lads haven't yet drifted back into the gym yet after the break, and those that have were either sick or working. But what the heck, it gave a few of the guys who have fighting in the back of their mind an opportunity to test and see where they're at. Here are the results:
And some of the targets below the scores. As I was saying to the boys today, it's not that you must hit these targets before you fight, but that everyone should be aiming for the targets. As you can see the results were what you might expect from people who haven't undergone a strength programme yet. The notable exception on the list is Kyle who as you can see has some almost up to standard upper body scores on his bodyweight tests, though he still has some work to do. The reason he's above the others is because he's been doing the strength programme for about 3 months now, although he was a pretty strong kid to begin with.

The lower body tests have been shite thanks to the lack of facility and equipment but I'll sort that out in the next couple of weeks by finally investing in a decent trap bar. For the last training period we used the SLJ and I did it again today for pig iron. If I could scale lower body strength tests, the SLJ would be about number 5, but of that list 3 require some technique to be learned first, and the other we don't have the facility for.

Jolly Good

2009-01-07T17:32:00.005Z

I see people followed my advice and started following my blog. Good show, good chaps, what ho and all that. Now stop following my blog and find something decent to do with your lives.

Last night was MMA 101 followed by an MMA sparring class. In the 101 we did clinch surfing, a good drill which teaches the fundamentals of good clinch with an emphasis on MMA. It's a fun drill for beginners and I like coaching it because it's simple for people to understand, there's a lot to get out of it and it drives home the fundamentals. Thing is you either love it or you hate it. I know a few of lads will probably walk out if they ever see it again and others think it's great. I'm in the middle ground there when it comes to actually doing it. I appreciate it and like to coach it, but I'm just not sure I like training when we do it.

Thing is, of all the aspects of MMA, wrestling is the one we least understand in Ireland. People think that you can do techniques and hope for the best but as anyone who has wrestled at a decent level will tell you, being a goo wrestler is not about techniques. It's about things like head position, angle changes and the like. You can learn all the throws and takedowns in the world but if you can't dominate with your head or turn the corner or change angle at the right time you will end up on your back with someone punching you. With the new timetable in now we will be doing a lot more clinch in MMA classes without dilution. Fundamentals drilling like the one we did last night will form a big part of that.

I was back with Will this morning for my first session since Christmas. I half expected to be testing this morning again as I thought he was going to be cruel. Instead I did something much, much worse. You just know a workout is good when you fear it, and having a 5am start this morning didn't help. I texted him last night to confirm we were on and we were, so dropped my boy off and set off and as an afterthought on the M50 I checked my email on my phone. I had one from Will, and my session was in it. It was one of my "benchmark" sessions from a couple of months back, the one where I nearly puked. Oh whoop dee do, I thought, how do you turn a car round on the M50?

So here's what the story was, I can't remember all of my scores and I don't have the rower scores but when I get the results I'll post them up later.

Bike 5 minute (Level 5)
Begin at 8 minutes:
10x100m with 30 second recovery between efforts... sucked ass. I think my Christmas indulgences had a large negative impact on the rowing.

5 minutes - Lower Body & Upper Body Mobility Work.... I didn't do this. Just rested. Will mustn't have wanted to give me whatever version of smallpox he's been suffering from.

Begin at 23 minutes:
Weights Block 1 - November 26th
Total = 22 Trap Bar Deadlifts, 11 Pull Ups and 44 Push Ups.

Weights Block 1 - January 7th
Total = 36 Trap Bar Deadlifts, 18 Pull Ups and 72 Push Ups.

An extra 14 Trap Bar Deadlifts, 7 Pull Ups and 28 extra Push Ups.

Begin at 35 minutes:
10x100m with 45 second recovery between efforts. <48>
Poxy again. Kept coming off the rower

Begin at 48 minutes:
Weights Block 2 - November 26th
Total = 40 KB Squats, 20 Inverted Rows, 20 KB Shoulder Presses (each arm)

Weights Block 2 - January 7th
Total = 52 KB Squats, 26 Inverted Rows, 26 KB Shoulder Presses (each arm)

Another good improvement of 12 extra KB Squats and 6 extra Inverted Rows and KB Presses.

Begin at 62 minutes:
10x100m with 60 second recovery between efforts.
Finished at 75 minutes.

Very tough session but I'm quite happy with it. The strength block scores are all up even if I think the rows will be down. Christmas doubtless took it's toll but overall there's very little to be displeased with. The higher scores in the first strength block are mainly due to the fact that I was able to pull the first 12 pull up reps in batches of 2 (4:2:8), meaning that I was able to crack out more deadlifts and push ups. But also considering I nearly vomited on this before, I kept going fairly well and of the time hadn't run out, I think there would have been another 3 or 4 singles (4:1:8) in me. So what's not to like?

The second block was different, I think I actually struggled more on this than last time, even though I beat my score by a good margin. The inverted rows fatigued me quicker than last time, though on consideration that may have been because I did a lot of bagwork last night and I really felt my back tiring in those. Maybe. But the squats were also hard, as were the presses but this could have been due to the extra intensity of the block this time out. I didn't time myself at all this time whereas last time out I tried to go on each minute. I was also able to sustain the rep range that I started out with (8:4:4:4), bar the last set which I needed to shorten to keep under time. I wasn't able to do that last time I think I got to 7 minutes before I had to go 4:2:2:2

The less said about the rowing the better. Although Will, in a very unusual moment of sympathy, did note that the scores were probably only a maximum of 0.5 of a second slower than last time. Still poxy though.

First Session of 2009 is over

2009-01-06T09:57:00.003Z

And boy do I feel good about it. Light evening last night, some pads for everyone else in Muay Thai and then some rolling plus some kimura technique in BJJ. Very nice though I made the big mistake of making a chicken curry for dinner which gave me heartburn for the whole night. Overall, an enjoyable return to training though.

Tonight is the first night of the new MMA 101 class. Here's what people can expect from tonight's session:
Pummelling basics for greco clinch- how to pummel with a partner and why. This will cover cooperative and non-cooperative pumelling. This will form part of the warm up.
Clinch basics- head position, underhooks, neck ties and crashing. This is the 'call out' drill that many of the old skool guys will remember. Ain't done it in a while but it's an ideal drill for beginners.
That will take up an hour or so. And you'll sweat, oh yes you'll sweat.

Got interviewed before Christmas

2009-01-05T16:35:00.004Z

Here it is. It never got printed as the article was canned apprently so the guy sent it back to me yesterday. Anyway, I'm sticking it here for posterity. Enjoy.

Most people’s experience of martial arts is from Jackie Chan or The Karate Kid! Tell us a bit about the type of martial arts you do:

I train and coach Mixed Martial Arts. Essentially it’s a no limits style of unarmed combat where opponents are allowed to use anything they can to win the fight. They can box and kickbox, a range we call stand-up fighting, they can grab each other and wrestle which is what we call clinch, and if one of them takes the other down they can continue to fight on the ground. It’s a pretty far cry from the Karate Kid but I wish my coaching style was more like Mr. Miagi’s. At least my car would always be clean.

It sounds tough. People will be aware of it from the popular Ultimate Fighting television shows. Is your training like that?

If you mean the UFC fighting, then yes, they’d be the professional athletes to our amateurs. Sort of the Premiership to our League of Ireland. If you mean the reality show ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ then no, because we don’t lock our people up in a house with lots of alcohol. Although I think the gym would be a lot more popular if we did! There’s a sporting side and a non-competitive side to our gym. Some people compete and some people train to be fit, some for self defence and some just for fun. That’s the non-sport side.

It seems as though everyone now knows about this style of martial arts now, whereas a year ago nobody had heard of it.

Yeah it does, and to be honest it doesn’t seem like that long since there was only one club in the whole of Dublin that was training in it and anyone who wanted to do it had to go there. But lately yeah, there has been an explosion in the popularity.

Is that due to the UFC? Even some of my female friends seem to know the names of the fighters involved!

Just the handsome ones though right? I think yes, that is mostly to do with the way the UFC has marketed itself. It’s been pretty big in the states for quite a while and because of the TV channels over here catching onto that it’s become popular here too. My father in law who’s a pensioner watches it now!

The popularity must be a good thing?

Well, of course. It’s nice to see more and more people involved and there’s a much greater understanding of the sport in general. I used to just tell people I did kickboxing but now I can tell them I do MMA and they don’t need explanations. But like everything, popularity has its drawbacks.

Well that’s an answer that’s begging for another question! What do you think those drawbacks are?

Various things I suppose. I’ll probably come across as a grumpy old timer or something. I’m only 30 for the record! But I’m not the biggest fan of the way the sporting side is marketed. Now of course who am I to complain as some very intelligent people have made the thing go huge in a very short space of time but I have some problems with it.

What way would you market it?

Well I’m in the great position of being able to complain without having to come up with any ideas of my own of how to do it. But seriously I think the sport has much to recommend it and the raw grit and bravery, and yes the blood too I suppose, is a lot of that too. And having been on the other side of the promotions game recently I understand why people market certain things the way they do. It’s about bums on seats and on a greater scale, pay-per-views purchased. Whatever brings the crowd in I suppose and in the future maybe we’ll be able to advertise “gentlemanly sport fighting” but I won’t be holding my breath.

So you don’t enjoy the sporting side?

No I love it! I really do but the way I talk about it you’d swear I hated it! I didn’t start out doing MMA for the sport, that’s just been a great bonus. I started it because it was, for me, the ultimate expression of what I was doing, which was other types of martial arts. Everything else was limited but MMA had everything. The fact that it was a sport made me love it more.

What about the non-sport side as you call it?

Well, non-sport is probably a bad term, I meant non-competitive. That’s the bit that’s most people I think. I like the way you can do it, especially grappling (the wrestling part of mixed martial arts) without having to compete. About 90% of people who train will probably never compete although they’ll prove me wrong I’m sure. It’s great that there are lots of levels. We have a few golden oldies in the gym although I’m sure they won’t appreciate me calling them that. Everyone just does what they can and tries to push themselves on.

Have you ever had to use the skills you know outside of the gym?

Not right outside, I park my car there and I don’t want it dented. Seriously though I think that the best thing that doing this type of training and competition has ever taught me is the restraint and confidence to walk away from a confrontation. I’d say that goes for most people in my situation.

That’s not a no! Go on, any good stories?

Loads. But I’m saving them for my grandkids.

Thank you for your time Barry.

No problem!

Barry Oglesby Runs KO Martial Arts Gym in Glasnevin, Dublin. He is currently promoting The Fight Before Christmas, a Mixed Martial Arts fight night on December 12^th. More information can be found at www.ko-martialarts.com

I want more followers

2009-01-03T18:03:00.003Z

I was looking at my blog and thinking about revamping it, you know, change the colours, themes and so forth. Instead I decided that I want people to click on the follow tab and have their little heads on my blog. I only have two followers, one is Clive so that should actually be "stalker", and the other is Will, who just follows so he can make sure I do my band pull aparts.

It's 2009, so without further ado I'd like to wish you all a happy new year. I hope 2008 was as good to you as it was to me. I know I've been on here moaning my arse off about my injury difficulties in the last year, but overall, professionally and personally, 2008 was great for me. After a slow start, the gym is more successful than I could have ever imagined and although there were speedbumps along the way, it grew beyond my expectations and the people who come are just great. I mean that. The fight show and the work that went into it from all the volunteers on the night, the fighters who put so much hard work and training in, the people who showed up week after week to spar with the team and the guys who flogged tickets in the weeks before really brought home what a good bunch of people I have in the gym right now. Thanks everyone, and thanks for a great 2008.

Personally, the year was a successful one. Those of you who know me personally will know that I'm not exactly...eh... motivated. That's not to say that I'm lazy, I'm not, but there are certain things that I just can't raise myself to do. Advertising, for example. I can't do it. When I do an ad for the gym it tends to look like I'm trying to sell the place as a home: "Spacious matted area, dressing room, 4 punch bags, spacious toilets". I read someone's ad for their gym the other day and it was all "Kapow!!! Ultimate training for this and mega pads world class this and super and all that yeah!!!!" I can't do that. No it's not that I can't do that, I find it very hard to do that. So it's been a surprise to me that so many new people show up to the gym. When they do, I'm chuffed of course. I suppose I just always think that everyone is like me, they'll research where to go, ask around, investigate and THEN decide where they want to train. That's not the way of course. Someone was telling me a few weeks ago how many hits a day his club's website gets. I wouldn't have a clue about how many hits my site gets, and to be honest, I don't care much either. Right now, enough of the right kind of people come through my door and that's fine for me. I'm not sure I want many more people.

In 2009, I actually have one of my major headaches gone! At last, we have a replacement Muay Thai coach for Yusuf (who left a year ago now.) As I've stated many times before, I am not a Muay Thai coach. I love it, I love training in it, but I can't coach it. I can coach pretty good stand up for MMA, I can teach you how to kick, box, knee and even elbow, but I can't teach you Muay Thai. Some might say they're the same thing but anyone who has done Thai to a decent level will tell you they ain't. So Paddy will now be taking a Muay Thai class on Wednesday evenings. If you've sparred him you'll know he has a lot to teach.

I think I'm about to burst.

2008-12-28T16:28:00.005Z

My festive indulgences later, but first a reminder to all my festive readers that we're back in the gym on Monday 29th from 7 -8(BJJ) and 8-9.30 (MMA), and then on Tuesday 30th from 7-8(BJJ) and 8-9.30 (thai). After that, there's another wee break to get over the new years celebrations and then back in the gym on Monday 5th as normal. The all new timetable for 2009 begins on January 12th.

I have eaten too much, I have drank more than a reasonable amount, I am full of sugar. But I have a New Year's resolution to enact. As of Thursday, January 1st, not a drop of alcohol shall pass my lips until the evening of March 28th*. Now it's not that I drink much, I don't, in fact I drink about once a week and at that it's a maximum of about 3 bottles of beer or a glass or two of plonk. Also, no pizza, chinese or Indian take away food shall I have, but for once per month on a predesignated weekend. You see I've been really busy over the last few months and I haven't had time to look after myself as per usual. I quite fancy meself as a cook, so on any given night, time allowing, you'll find me in the kitchen, cooking up something, or in the butchers, looking for the best steak or chops, or in the veggie shop near my house, asking the guy what the fuck zuchinni is. (it's just a courgette) So I haven't had time to cook for myself or my little guy lately so he's had to make do with frozen veg and waffles while I've had to make do with reaching for the phone to order my meals. All change in January. Back on the cooking buzz, going to be in magnificent shape by March. already feeling better.

I have about 90% of the new timetable done and dusted, and it's looking good. I can reveal that there will be 3 new classes, and one extra day on the timetable, coupled with an entirely new programme for total beginners. I have never actually put in a 101 programme that took in BJJ, MMA and Thai before but now that there's a new coach coming on board (you heard it here first) this can happen.

I've actually been really busy in between eating leftover ham designing the new programme. There's lots in it fo the beginners as I've said but also for the guys who are more experienced. One of the biggest things that will be in for the guys who are interested in fighting will be the strength standards. Will has come up with a difficult but attainable list of strength standards for those who want to compete in MMA. They're about bodyweight management, or rather bodyweight plus 100% management (you may have to see them in the gym to understand that!) and while there's nothing to say that not reaching them will deny you the opportunity to compete, they should be everyone's goal. They'll be on the wall from the beginning of January onwards. In fact I may put them up in the fashion of the poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling. "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing their's and blaming it on you, if you can do 50+ push ups in 1 minute and 40 plus inverted rows..." and so on. Maybe not.

Anyway, I will have no more entries in this blog until 2009. So I think I'd like to wish my reader(s?, nah, a bit hopeful that) the very best for the new year. May you get fitter, faster, stronger and more dangerous. I know I intend to.

Later.

*I will take an evening out of this for the UFC on January 17th. I will be out with my three best and oldest friends that night which means that if I fail to drink, then I will be the voice of reason that night. This has never happened with these three before, and may set an awkward precedent, or disrupt the universe in some way. I can't take that chance

2008-12-22T12:00:00.004Z

Easily the best thing about Christmas time is the queuing. It's fantastic. You go out to the shops, you queue to get into the carpark, then you queue to get a space, then you queue for the bank machine. Once you have money to spend, you queue to buy stuff followed swiftly by an intense queueing session at the coffee shop to keep yourself alive. Once you've survived all that fun, you queue to get your kid to see Santa and then queue on the way out of the car park again. It really is the season to be jolly.

Moan over.

The new year is going to be an exciting time for all at KO Martial Arts. I'm changing around the timetable (yet again) as it's becoming just too difficult to manage all of the beginners we're getting in the doors. I want the classes to give everyone the best possible chance of improving, and with the greatest of respect to everyone who comes in, there's only so much head squeezing experienced guys can put up with! For those of you who don't know about BJJ, head squeezing is a vital learning process- you do it for a few weeks of your early days thinking that it makes people tap, then someone tells you that it doesn't and just makes people's head sore the next day. Then you do it for a few weeks after that anyway in case they were wrong. Then you quit on it but bring it out occasionally when you're being owned so that you can slow someone down, then hopefully it goes away forever, but not before you've cause 3 neck injuries, annoyed the shit out of 10 experienced people and cauliflowered at least 3 ears. It's mostly found when people train in the gi.

Here I am, trying in vain to finish a
footlock for Youss, Gordy just looks bored

So the new timetable will have beginner and intermediate splits for BJJ and MMA especially. With stand-up it's not so bad as people can pair off as they see fit anyway and the material can be totally different. I've yet to figure a way of doing this that will squeeze it's way into the time available by the way, but I will. I've been sitting here all morning (supposed to be doing some ahem, other work) with several sheets of paper figuring out the best way to squeeze all of this in, but no joy yet.

The basic idea is to finally put in place the plan I've always had for the gym but have never either had the time to do it or membership numbers to justify it. The formation of the fight team (cool name to follow) has meant that now there are a guaranteed 10-15 guys who are there to compete all year round, which means that they're going to be looked after seperately and will do their sparring, conditioning etc. at different times. The other classes will be dedicated to those people who are either beginners or just training to train and learn. It means that in the casual classes (for want of a better word) people will get more attention than they would if there were fighters training beside them. I will still continue to train fighters in the same classes as beginners as if you read back on the blog, you'll see that I have some strong opinions on that too. We're a team, from the guy who walks in the door to lose a few pounds by hitting some pads to the guy who wants to fight pro.

Bah Humbug, I'll do it.

2008-12-21T14:26:00.004Z

Anyone for privates? After some careful and reflective thought, a few beers and lots of people calling me stupid on Friday, and one of my mates laughing like a fucking hyena on Thursday, I've decided that yes, I will take on more personal training in the new year. This comes from taking to a friend over the weekend who thought this would be like some sort of social experiment where he could see how long it took me to break. I actually think I'm quite good at it, and quite patient. Nobody has sacked me yet and I actually enjoy the limited amount of clients I work with. Mind you, anyone who I train right now or have done in the past has come directly to me, and hasn't answered an ad or something like that.

While this isn't exactly new territory for me, I do feel like a bit of a whore. I've sold out man...

A bit of an update on my own training

2008-12-19T13:21:00.005Z

It seems I'm the only one in the gym really training for anything right now. Olli and Keith were the only fighters to show up for training last night as I think everyone is taking a bit of a break after their busy 12 weeks. Who am I to argue?

Monday I was back on the bike, not literally, I was actually back on the mat, rolling. So, in conclusion, Monday I was back on the mat. We did an hour of rolling with some arm bar finishing techniques, then sat around talking shite about the fight show. Not the hardest of sessions but when you're easing yourself back in it was a good one.

Tuesday was a session with Will aka that Aussie fucker who I hate with a passion. He forced me to do the following:
Bike - 5 mins.
Some lower body mobility work and some upper body stability work.
Rower - 3x4 mins with 1 min recovery between efforts...I got 1091m, 1052m and 1033m.
Plate Shifting - 3 sets (4x5kg + 4x2.5kg over and back in each set)
10 min 40kg Barbell Complex - Deadlift, RDL, Clean, Front Squat, Push Press, Back Squat, Good Morning...behind the neck push press with the bar returning to the floor. As many complete sets as possible in 10 mins... I got 14 done.
Bike - 5x30/30 intervals at L5 and L10...easy spinning for 30 seconds at level 5 then out of the saddle and hard fast climbing for 30 seconds at over 100rpm. When I finished he stayed on the bike just spinning easily for 5 mins.
Cable Single Arm Press and Row - 1x12 each side at 40lbs, 3x12 each side at 50lbs.
1A Back Extensions - 3x12
1B Natural Reverse Hypers - 3x12

I hated that session but afterwards I felt great, and I can feel the fitness returning. There's definitely a marked improvement in my back and my ability to engage my scapulae. I know this because on yesterday's session I had a degree of control I didn't have before.

Here is Thursday's session:
Treadmill walk 6mph 6% incline for 15 minutes
Box jumps. Not too sure of the heights but basically up to a low box, down and back up to a high box and down was one rep. Concentrating on quality, with the smallest time possible in contact with the ground between boxes. 3x10reps
In between those was the YTWL with 4kgs dumbells, 3x8
Chest supported scap row/scap push ups superset 3x8
Laugh at Garret doing his rowing test- 2 sets of 1 (good for the abs)
Push up with knee tuck/pull ups with knee tuck - 10/4 reps, 5 sets.
In between that Will did some mobility work on my back and hip. Really, really sore but the difference in the ROM was unbelievable afterwards.
Turkish get ups 3 sets of ten each side- 14kgs and 16kg I think.
Then some ab rollouts supersetted with bicep curls for the guns.
Then BJJ that night, loads of rolling including schooling Grant and being schooled by Olli.

My thoughts on training with Will so far:
My back is far from healthy, but I can feel the difference and I think it's improving. The YTWL work was noticeably easier and when I get to look in the mirror doing my band work I can see a difference in the control of my shoulder.
My conditioning is poor but getting there. I knew I'd let that lapse over the last couple of months but I also know it won't be long before I'm in good shape again.
I'll be interested to see my test results from my next test.

Diet wise, it's terrible. I'm a pretty good cook if I say so myself however I haven't been doing it enough as I've just been too busy. Meals have been on the fly or just ordered, a lot of petrol station sandwiches and pizza. I'll be expecting the body fat digit to drop when I clean up the diet. Unlike most I don't really gorge at Christmas. I like a big ass dinner on Christmas day but to be honest, it's not that much more than I normally eat day to day. I eat between 4,000 and 6,000 calories a day although lately that's been on the drop as I haven't been training that much. When I'm not training I just don't feel the urge to eat as much so it's easy enough to cut down for me. In any case I went to the butchers yesterday and bought my next two weeks of meat, followed by a quick stop at my veg man and into the spice shop next door for tastiness.

Ah yeah, we're losing Olli from the gym as he's going back to Finlandia. That sucks. Olli is like the anti-me on the mat for BJJ. He does everything I hate people to do when I'm rolling with them so it's been a great training experience having him here. He also smiles just about all the time (except during cardio!) so he's been nice just to have around too. Best of luck Olli!Olli doing his best Fonzy impression

Privates

2008-12-17T18:03:00.005Z

So, I'm looking for feedback on this one, maybe people can help by commenting.

Basically right now I do 'a few' privates, with people of, ahem, varying bodytypes. One of the guys is a web developer who makes sites for people who want to sell stuff. He's overweight, but on his way down quite quickly (could work harder on the diet and beer front)* and basically he was saying to me that since I'm doing such a good job getting him down in weight, that I should be doing this for more people. So he's offerred to make me a website with all sorts of info on it and says he knows how to sell it and all that stuff. Now I'm sure he knows what he's doing, I've seen what he drives up to the gym in, but I'm having this moral dillema right now.

Basically I am really, really picky about all this private training lark. I prefer to do it with guys from the gym who want to learn a bit more and accelerate their training. So when I get phone calls about training for fitness, weight loss etc. I usually either turn them down flat, or make it very awkward for them to come. Some people actually think that's me playing hard to get and making myself seem exclusive, so they keep ringing. It's not, I just wanted to work a bit less especially this year as I had exams and other things going on. But anyway, now I've a bit more time and while I'm not one of those money hungry fuckers, I do like hats and I'd like to fulfil my lifelong ambition of having a wardrobe entirely dedicated to headwear. I see private training as my way to achieve that dream. In all seriousness and with less preamble, I've decided to make myself available for more privates.

So my dilemma is this. Pretty much everyone I know who does personal training is either a) an idiot, b) a metrosexual or c) just really good at selling themselves. Anyone who knows me will know that while a) sometimes describes me, I'm about as faraway from b) and c) as possibly can be. Now my client's idea would mean that I would have to be a bit of c). The problem?

I HATE that shit. Can you imagine me with a website saying "I am deadly and I'll make you beautiful and you'll be amazed at the results" and so on. I was trying to explain this to a guy the other day (he's a personal trainer). Getting average people into good shape is an absolute piece of piss compared to getting fit people into great shape. He thought I was being a bit arrogant and didn't take it well (He swung his manbag at me. Nah he didn't but he does have a manbag. Nah, he doesn't but he looks like he should) but it's true.

Lastly, I don't have one of those poxy courses under my belt that people look for. My mate Paul (some of you may remember him from ye olden days, he kneed himself in the head pretty famously at an MMA session) went through one of those and nearly throttled his instructors every time he went to lectures. Everyone who is worth their salt that I know says they're a joke. I have other qualifications of course but mostly I have thousands of hours of training people.

So what to do? Sell out, let the man design the site and not be able to look at myself in the mirror anymore? Or just keep doing what I'm doing? Or something else? It's not that I don't like doing it, I do, it's just I like it being my classes, plus one or two others exclusively.

Man, asking for business advice from my one or two blog readers. This is a sad day. It must be Christmas.

*only saying that cos he reads this. I won't charge you for that extra motivation don't worry.

Savage, savage night

2008-12-14T08:09:00.005Z

And now, the dust has settled, and I feel like a ten tonne weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Firstly I want to say my thanks, then I'll give a quick review of the night and how it went below. So in no particular order, thanks to:
Paul, Pete, Edward, Stephen F, Hugh, Conor, Darragh for the gimp work and generally getting sworn at.
Dee, Eimer and Susan for the ticket work, getting hassle from punters oh and the water and bananas!
Shane, Shaun and Mark for the door work, keeping the way clear for fighters etc.
Gordy for taping hands better than I can, Trish for pads and warm ups, both of them for getting spat on in the corner!
Capper for the deadly music and all the effort and organisation that went into it.
Fiddler for the design and getting me out of a tight spot with ring cards!
The ring girls, Aisling and Jacqueline who looked great and took it all in good fun, just as it was supposed to be.
Jay for the 1000 (yes 1000!) pics he took. We'll root through and get the ones that make us look the best.
Will for the videoing and helping with some of the little injuries the guys picked up in training.
Willy for the professional timekeeping job.
Max for less lego building time than usual.

The day began well, then went bad, then got good again. That's it in a nutshell. I arrived at the venue at 4pm, met the sound and lighting guys and unloaded my jeep, which looked like the Beverly Hillbillies car at that stage. I must have taken half the gym with me between mats and banners, pads and gear. People started to show up and we got to setting up the dressing room area, the banner and putting out the chairs. The ring had left Tipperrary (long story) at 2.30 or so. I took a call saying that they'd left and was it Collins Avenue East or West they should look for on the Sat Nav, so I reckoned they'd be there at 5.30 or so, no probs. The lights went up, the sound was installed and ready and fighters began to arrive. The ring was nowhere to be seen. I went through this will I/ won't I call him thing for a few minutes and then gave him a ring. He was in Thomas Street... yes, Thomas Street. I have no idea how coming from Tipp to Dublin's Northside leads you to Thomas Street but apparently, the GPS system the guy had did just that. Traffic was terrible, Capper had intended to be in the venue by 4.30 and by the time he got home from work and out again he didn't make it until 6pm. I went for a walk outside, shouted at myself like an insane person and in spite of assurances that it would be grand etc. etc. from everyone I met, I was wound up like a spring. Another phone call, the doctors would be late, later than the ring! The kick off time of 8pm was now looking like a very distant dream. In fact, I'd be lucky to get going before 9 at the rate it was happening. Eventually after 15 calls and some emergency directions from me the ring arrived and was up in about 30 minutes and looked fantastic. The docs arrived soon after.

I told the bouncers to tell everyone that the event was running about 15 minutes over time and to send people into the club bar next door and ran about a bit again, mostly headlessly and without any real idea where I was going but somehow there was something to do no matter where I went. I had planned to sit down with Richie and go through the sponsorship announcements and so on, but it didn't happen so he had to make do with catching me as I ran by. D class gloves discussions, shinpad problems, you name it, I had it. Eventually I realised that I no matter how many times I ran up and down the steps, it wouldn't get any readier. The crowd were there (in great numbers), the first fighters were ready. It was a go. Cue the music!

From here in it was all fun. Grant was first up and did really well against a much more experienced grappler in Enda Fenton. This match had been changed to a league class rules match a few days before the event so Grant had been training for a far different, sprawl and brawl type match. He survived an omoplata attempt in round 1 and finished on top, but in the second he got caught in Fenton's tricksy guard and had to tap to an armbar. He'll be back!
Keith is only training 3 months and had also been training for a D class match up. He dominated this from start to finish and looked really calm, stuck to his technique and never looked in trouble. A good decision win for him on his debut.
Mick lost the rag and wanted to knock the guy's head off in the first ten seconds but his opponent stayed calm and took Mick down ad controlled well. I had to calm him down on the stool in the break but to no avail. Once the action started again he went out like a man possessed and despite landing some clean strikes he left his technique in the dressing room. These things happen, it was his first fight and next time he'll be calmer and more able to bring his skills to the ring.
Kyle fought a war with Lee O'Liathain from Spartan. This was a great match and was ruined by the stoppage but it couldn't be helped. Colm, Lee's coach, had called him feisty and that was putting it mildly. Kyle was a good 3 inches taller but that didn't stop Lee from throwing overhand rights and catching Kyle flush on the chin a good 4 times. Kyle responded with some shots of his own and both guys seemed to have each other rocked once each. In the second we tried to get Kyle to box straight and stand off a bit but it turned into more of the same. Late in the second, Kyle clinched and was getting good change from some knees to the body, but one caught Lee in the head which under D rules is illegal and Lee was unable to continue (though to his credit he really wanted to). Great match, hard luck Kyle.
Colin stepped in for the first C class match against Brian Kenny of Rush Fight Academy. I saw Brian at UC a couple of months before and he was wild, swinging for the fences as they say, so we had prepared for that and were expecting more of the same. Instead, Brian came out and showed what a difference getting your first fight under your belt can make. He was calm and cool and worked off the jab, using his reach. It was even enough and maybe with the advantage to Brian but in the second Colin took the back and that was all she wrote as he sunk in a deep RNC for the finish. Text book. Fair play as well because he had to train alone a lot in York for this one.
Youssef was up next against another Rush opponent, Lee Metcalfe. Lee showed some good boxing but Yous calmly took him down and worked his submissions. Apparently the video of this match has some hilarious bits of me miming how best to finish a footlock in the middle of the first round. I am a little animated in the corner it's true. Lee was a tricky opponent and survived that footlock attempt and was dangerous off his back, landing a couple of good upkicks, but Yous was well worth his win. Really good match for the moaniest guy in the gym. "MERDE!"
Olli took on John Redmond of Rush. This was a tough match for Olli on his debut. John is a big, tough lad and had ring and cage experience. Olli walked into the ring and I couldn't help but smile. He looked like he was walking into the gym. I don't think he has any adrenal gland. Gordy told me later that when he was vaselining his face, Olli said "put some in my hair" so he walked out with this There's Something About Mary 'do, smiling, stood in the centre of the ring, smiling and then started the match, smiling. He almost finished lots of times, smiling, but John escaped really well and got a few standups to land some big shots, Olli took them though, probably smiling and said he couldn't feel them at the time but I'd say he can feel his ribs today! He's probably still smiling though as he took the win by decision.
Aaron fought in a war against a really tough opponent. The two guys left it all in the ring in a great stand up, clinch and ground encounter. The moment of the fight had to have been the attempted Kimura by Aaron at the end of the second round. His opponent Bogusz must have bendy arms because it was so close to being on I thought I was going to hear a pop but the horn went just as it looked like Bogusz was ready to tap. Bogusz had a guillotine attempt on and it looked deep but Aaron kept his cool and looked for the escape calmly. A really good match and I have to admit I was hoping for the decision a bit. It was close but Aaron took it by split decision, collected his medal and went off to the jacks and had a good oul puke.
Jonny was our last fighter up in a B class match. he started well, landing a high kick and the action was frenetic from there. We wanted to control the pace, bring his super fast opponent down a notch but after an exchange on the ground, Jonny stood up, dropped his head criminally and took a knee to the forehaed which rocked him sufficiently for Davis to land a huge left hook as Jonny was stumbling back. Jonny was out cold for a good minute but the docs just gave him time and he came round by himself and walked out of the ring under his own power. Superb knock out, right on the button. I've been there and it's not a nice feeling.

What next? It was a madcap scheme to begin with and it didn't got any less crazy as it got closer. The good news is that we got enough money for the new mats in the gym, which was the goal of this whole enterprise. The other good news is that 8 guys made very good debuts regardless of the result, the bad news is Jonny's KO but these things happen in fighting. The measure of anyone isn't how you react to things that go right, but how you come back when things go wrong and we'll come up with a good strategy for Jonny's return to the ring or cage.

Here's simple formula I've just worked out on my whiteboard:
Win + good/bad match = back in the gym Monday
Loss + good/bad match = back in the gym Monday

I'm going to organise getting the video of the fights up on Monday and we'll watch it from 8 onwards, even if you're injured or hung over you should come along anyway.

Well done to all involved. To the fighters, my respect, to the helpers, my apologies for being rude and abrupt, to the crowd, my thanks for being a great and appreciative audience and for making the atmosphere so good.

Oops, forgot someone

2008-12-10T22:28:00.004Z

Amanda: Yeah I forgot about Amanda when I first wrote this which is criminal really. The only thing missing for her was an opponent. I have to be honest here, when she came to me asking for fight I was dubious. It didn't help that in the first two weeks of serious training nobody would actually hit her. After that though, the lads got stuck in although they had some trouble hitting her after a while and I was convinced. Unfortunately, there's not too many girls out there wanting to fight, but hopefully in the new year we can get something together and get this great girl a stage for her talents.

Well spotted Dee.

A Few Updates on the Fight Show

2008-12-10T11:18:00.005Z

In the last couple of weeks, the hassle of having to organise this show has almost made me want to quit, go home to bed and not bother anymore. Then there are moments like the one yesterday, which made everything seem worthwhile. I was in town, picking up Christmas presents when I came upon a Santa suit for sale. Now myself and the ring girls have been looking for a Santa's Helper suit befitting a ring girl since we started organising the show 2 months ago, and we haven't found anything until yesterday. I was given a choice of which one I wanted out of three, and it was with great pride in my organisational skills that I turned to the lady and said "I'll take the skimpiest ones please". Ah the small victories. I did this for you guys and don't forget it.

So it's now just two days from The Fight Before Christmas and things are coming together nicely. We've had a couple of dropouts due to injury from the card, but no more than could have been expected from such a large amount of fights. It's looking like we'll have 13 good quality fights on the card from beginners right through to the best Ireland has to offer in McCombe and Murphy, which is eactly what I wanted from the show, an opportunity to showcase the new talent alongside the best national talent. Luckily for our guys, none of the dropouts were from opponents of ours so all of the KO fights are still on.

We had our last training session last night, a light session for the guys who will be fighting with one last blowout of the lungs for one or two. From here it's just make weight on Thursday and then relax until fight time. On a personal note, I'd like to say that in spite of all the headaches of training and organising, the lads have been a pleasure to train most of the time and their condition does them credit.

Conor: Our young lad who has been training with the seniors a bit for this show has shown that 15 year olds can take down much bigger 24 year olds!
Grant is a little runt and I'd love to beat the tar out of him, he's like the little brother I never wanted. He's done really well and is getting stronger all te time too.
Keith joined up the squad a bit later but has shown he's well capable and I look forward to getting him for a full training period
Kyle is like a machine and I made it my goal to try to tire him out, it didn't happen too often. Add a few more skills onto that frame and we'll be looking at an impressive fighter in the future, he's already a real handful.
Yous has to be the moaniest guy I ever trained, but in between the "Merde!" shouting he got through a lot of work and kept the smile on. I'm looing forward to seeing him fight.
Colin has had to train alone a lot and put up with jibes about his age, not from me though cos we 30+ guys have to stick together. He's missed out on some training but is one of the most experienced guys so I think he'll take the win.
Olli has all of the ground skills a fighter should have, and he's added to those some pretty decent striking and impressive fitness now.
I don't thing Aaron will be too offended if I call him a cruiser, in that he was cruising in the gym for a long time. Since he took the fight he's gone from being a guy in okay shape who had some skills to being a guy in excellent shape who can keep using those skills round after round. Probably the most improved guy inthe gym.
Jonny is everyone's least favourite sparring partner. There are always things I'd have him do better but because of the level he's at he is improving by inches and not yards. He's taken another leap forward this training period. He's up against a really quick, aggressive guy on Friday, and it has all the signs of being a great fight. I'm looking forward to it!
Me. I've stood around watching you all but I'm back in training once this is over. I look forward to you all beating the living crap out of me for a while until I get the motor running again.

My respect gentlemen.

Final Week of training ahead

2008-12-07T09:54:00.003Z

So we're in week 11 of 12, and the guys are looking and feeling good. I'll spare a bit of information in this post as the lads are yet to fight so we'll see how that goes before I really assess things. But here is a rough idea of what I tried to achieve in the last couple of months.

Functional Testing:
I did two sets of functional tests on the guys using the overhead squat and inline lunge protocols. This is an area I'm still learning a lot about although everyone I know who does it says that you only really get the eye for this after doing a few hundred athletes. I'm a way off that but I still found this a very useful tool for diagnosing structural weaknesses and thinking about programme design for the guys.

Strength:
Obviously, I wanted to make everyone stronger. More strength equals better performance, but also less injuries, more speed and power and more ladies after the show. I reckon the guys have achieved the first bits but are just too fugly for the last bit. For this training period, I tested three times, once on October 6th, once on October 28th and once on December 6th. The final test should have been in late November but due to a couple of guys being a little sick I decided to hold it out until yesterday. Results wise, there was a significant improvement from almost everyone, particularly in their weaker areas. From the first test to the third test for example, one athlete massively increased every single one of his upper body scores, and he started on what I would have called an reasonable base of 5/24/5, and went to 12/47/16 (pull ups, push ups, i-rows).

I screwed up a little by not being able to accurately assess lower body strength. Initially I had planned to use the counter movement jump but our ceiling isn't high enough. I decided to do it outside and pretty much every time I scheduled it, the rain came. Then on the one good day we had, I went outside to find a suitable wall for marking and would you believe it, the whole building has fortacrete blocks which would have made it impossible to mark. So eventually I decided to use the standing long jump as the test for the lower body, but because I'd delayed this long, this only happened at the second test. There were good improvements between the second and third tests from the guys but I would have liked to have seen what the first night scores were. The increases were between 15cm and 40cm for the 4 weeks tested.

There were 3 phases to the strength test. The first was a twice per week, unweighted circuit block of 3 weeks, plus one day's conditioning on a Saturday. This was followed by an unload week, and then a second phase of circuits with increased resistance for 3 weeks, followed by an unload. The final 3 weeks were more intense, with one circuit replaced by a high intensity cardio session, and the other a strength endurance session.

The biggest difficulty I faced was the micro management of the entire system. It was giant, unmitigated pain in the ass. Sometimes I felt like part office manager, part psychologist, and part dietician. This was only for ten guys! How do large squads do it? I suppose they have more than one guy in charge for a start. Getting people stronger and fitter was easy, managing their attendance and mindset was the hard part. Some nights guys bounce into the gym and others they look like they'd need Prozac to train. There were endless text messages and emails saying that guys couldn't make it due to work, family, illness, injury... well, maybe not endless, but some, and they always seemed to happen on a night when I wanted the whole team together.

Anyway, it's over now for the most part. This week is easy by comparison which is good as I'll be up to my eyes with organisation. Some of the guys will have to make weight, but only one of them will have a real battle to do it but I'm confident he'll be fine. In fact, I'm confident all of the guys will be fine. They've stuck, for the most part, to the things they were told to do and have seen the benefits in their tests and their fitness. Could they have done better as individuals? Of course. You can always do better. I'll do better next time and so will they. That's the point of the programme I'm putting in place, the details of which I told the guys yesterday and I'll let everyone know about soon. I'm pretty excited about 2009.

2008-12-06T22:00:00.002Z

Heard on The Premiership tonight:
"Oh poor clearance by Cech. He deserves to be punished!"
Interesting insight into one commentator's secret life.

Today was the last day of serious training and sparring. It was a good session, but I watched it with my eyes half shut half expecting to see someone turn their ankle or twist a knee. A little part of me hopes that there's similar, injury free sessions taking place countrywide right now. If so, I won't have to make late changes to the fight card.

Punches in Bunches

2008-12-05T13:17:00.004Z

An actual fog descended on the gym on Tuesday

So last night we did a high quality boxing session, or at least it was supposed to be high quality. It looked like this

2 rds shadow boxing with sprawl every 30 seconds

Actually for every round we did last night, there was a beep every 30 seconds and on it the boxer had to either sprawl or shoot to their padholder's legs. I'll explain why in a mo.

Three minute rounds:
rd 1- Focussing on technique, simple combos. Concentrating on extension from the toes through the hips with good quality 100% of the time.
rd 2- 1-4 pyramid combos. Focussing on speed in each combo rather than volume. So if your partner slows down or loses technique as he's striking, you give him more of a break between combos. Each combination should as fast as possible but also as close to technically perfect as the first round as possible
rd 3- Standard round, mix up combinations but retain technique. This round was a rest round before the last one to try to keep the quality high.
rd 4- Pyramid 1-10 and back as many times as possible. Speed and power with the same technique as before. The idea being the same as rd 2, where the padholder controls the rest period between each combo to make sure that each combo is as fast and as powerful as possible.

I've done these sessions before for technique and I've always found that beginner's combination punching improves almost immediately. I did something different last night with the 30 second beeps. The sprawls and shoots are in there to be a) and audio cue for a specific reaction. The beep goes and you sprawl immediately and explosively. And b) a rythm breaker so that nobody falls into the trap of just rythmically hammering on the pads, which is easy to do.

The feedback was as I'd hoped. People were more fatigued after this session than after normal boxing pad rounds. This was because of the sprawls and shoots for one, which were pretty alien to some of the stand-up only people in the gym, but also because they were forced to 'fire' from the hips explosively every time because of the focus on quality. Sometimes, through fatigue or a will to get things done harder and faster, hip motion deteriorates during pad rounds. The first round cues and hopefully my explanation of the goals of the rounds helped to keep the focus on that high quality, high power goal. So people who maybe arm punch a bit when things get going were forced to constantly think about their technique, and it was tiring to do so.

That being said there were still some people arm punching a bit towards the end in both groups but I'll get them next time.

Yes it's 2am again

2008-12-05T01:43:00.003Z

What breed of saddo am I? It's 2am, I can't sleep and I've chosen this time to update my blog, now that I've taken care of some paperwork that is. It's annoying to be lying in bed with 1,000 things running through your head, and worse again when you get up to try to solve them and realise that aside from making a list and sending some emails, you can do fuck all until the morning when the rest of the sane world are up and about.

Anyway really surprised I can't sleep because this morning I did this:
Bike - 5mins easy

Rower - 4x500m with 60 sec recovery between efforts...near on max effort.

1A Bent Over Barbell Rows
1B Barbell Push Press

32 reps of each in 10 minutes with 40kg

Rower - 4x500m as above

2A Close Grip Bench Press
2B Close Grip Lat Pulldown

49 reps of each in 10 minutes.

Rower - 4x500m with 60 second recovery between efforts

3A Bicep Curls
3B Hanging Leg Raises
3C Overhead Tricep Extensions
3D Standing Ab Pulldowns

60 reps of each in 10 minutes...we used 30kg on the bi's, tri's and ab pull downs.

I thought I was going to honk during the push presses but really the overiding feeling of this session was utter exhaustion. I felt like I had nothing in the tank during the rows which is a feeling I'm only beginning to now get used to under Will. Thought I did okay on the second set of bench/pulldowns but was let dowm from making it an even 50 with a failed rep on my last bench. The ab/knee raise/curls thing sounds easy but after a hellish session before I jut wanted home and bed. Now I'm home and was in bed up to an hour ago and can't sleep. There is no justice.

Maybe when he's 4

2008-12-03T15:06:00.006Z

I was driving with my son (aged 3 and 1/2) today, on our way to playschool, oohing and ahing as only kids do at the sight of the frosty fields near our house. One of the only things I really like about where I live right now is the setting. Drive one way and it's bustling town and suburbia, drive the other and it's rural. Anyway, Max asks "Where did the frost come from?" And I open my mouth to answer the usual way you would to a 3 year old, blame Jack Frost. But then a thought struck me. Really, as an atheist, a skeptic and a man with certain convictions about the corruption of children's minds at an early age, what way do I want my son to start out in life? As a believer in myths, magic and spook stories? Surely he'd appreciate the real and profound beauty that is the real story of how frost is formed, through frozen moisture? I could link it to his previous curiosity about the dew in summertime. This is fantastic. What an opportunity to spread seeds of inquisitiveness his mind! I can already see the Nobel Prize being presented to him, with me in the front row kept alive by way of his invention. ( a cure for syphilis perhaps?) So I begin.

"Do you remember the dew in summertime?"
"Yes"
(flying start)
"Ah, well the frost is that dew, but because it's cold outside, it has frozen"
*silence*
"and now all the fields are covered in frost"
*silence*
"Eh? Isn't that cool?"
*silence*
"Eh?"
*more silence, I glimpse in the rearview mirror and he actually looks a bit depressed*
"Aw, no wait. Jack Frost came and put it there!!"
"Oh yeah Jack Frost!"

Damn. I suppose the science lessons will have to wait. I can't decide whether I'm ruining his childhood or enhancing his life to come. Maybe those two aren't mutually exclusive. I'll have to ask others of the same mind, like Serena and Venus's Dad...

Saw this last night and had to share:

This is how I like to see padding done. Keep it simple, good technique, movement and timing and two people in rhythm. When I say rhythm by the way I mean that the two people have adapted to each other and the boxer is 100% confident in the padholder, and the holder is in tune with the speed and timing of her boxer. What I don't mean by rhythm is that the padholder establishes some sort of artificial rhythm for the boxer to fall into. If anything, Dee in this video keeps Amanda out of a pattern, gets her to adjust her feet, cover up and move at angles. Padding is for technique, conditioning and building speed and power. It is not an end unto itself, it's not fighting. Unfortunately, some people use it as such. Walk into any gym, anywhere in the world and I guarantee you that there will be someone there who will do their 4 or 5 rounds on the pads and probably be magnificent, and then when it's gear on for sparring time they develop a headache, a bad knee, a bruise or anything that will stop them from having to get hit. That's why some people walk in and call all sorts of crazy combos on the pads and expect the same, because they think that looking cool and making the right noises on the pads is the shit, and as long as they do that, they're a fighter. I've even had someone recently ask me if they could do a fight one day when I have literally never seen them spar, but I've seen them do lots of ice pack holding and toilet visits right after padwork...

That's not to dismiss people who want to just hit pads and are honest about it. I've got plenty of people in the gym who have come to me and said that they're just here to get fit and have a bit of fun, and have no interest in getting punched and kicked. That's understandable, (I actually don't have too much of an interest in that either) and I would say that probably 80% of people in the gym will never fight or compete. You still have to spar though! It doesn't have to be hard but sooner or later, everyone should have a test of what they've been learning in the gym where it's safe and comfortable and you can ask your partner to stop.

Interesting Evening

2008-12-02T14:43:00.003Z

Carb depletion, you've gotta hate it. You think you don't need pasta and then you go and do a session like last night's. Some of the guys are on the cut right now and one or two are slightly above target. One guy in particular has been set a diet to get him waaaaaayyy down, and he suffered last night so I think for quality of training for him we'll have to up the carbs a bit. I'd say this is common across all sports but December sucks for colds doesn't it? Lots of snot floating around last night and one guy back after a week of coughing and spluttering. Let's hope the guys all stay illness free for the next week and a half or so.

Last night we did some work on the Brabao choke from side control and from half guard, as well as a sneaky baseball bat variation that I've been digging on lately. First we rolled for 4 or 5 rounds to shake the weekand off. The Brabao is one of my favourite submissions because it catches people doing the right thing. A lot of submissions rely on mistakes but this one involves your partner getting to his side as he should, working his underhook in as he should and then bam, you hit him with the brabao. I likes it. MMA involved about 30 minutes of takedown finishes with your partner sprawling, the idea being to sharpen people's finishes and run over some technique variations on the sprawl. We finished with sparring and then master blaster awesome super secret rounds of cardio. Deadly... to watch. Not so deadly to do.

I had a session this morning. It would be wrong to say it was hard. Will said that my strength sessions will actually be quite easy, by comparison to my conditioning work. It wasn't hard in the traditional sense, but I found it really mentally straining. After some brief, technical 500s on the rower focussing on technique, I did a shoulder helath/scap circuit. Very annoying to do this. It's like learning how to write again or something. It's very hard to describe the feeling of watching your body do something on one side that you know is wrong and having almost no control over the result. The best example I can give you about my back imbalance is when your grip goes after a while of squeezing something. You try your best to squeeze but there's just no power there and your hand ends up trying to recruit your arm for help and it moves involuntarily. Ever happen to you? Even if it hasn't, I'm sure you can imagine the frustration. Still I actually feel a slight difference with the band work from when I started. My shoulder doesn't seem to raise as much on them and I seem to have more control of the band. This may just be a neurological response to being more familiar with the exercise rather than the back becoming stronger, but even if it is just that, that's good as it means I'm learning how to engage the back more on the pulls.

After that, 50 band assisted pull ups supersetted with blast strap push ups (sets of 5 each), ab roll outs supersetted with reverse hypers, 5 sets of 10, and then natural ham glute raises, 8 sets of 5. I think maybe my hamstrings will die tomorrow from those last ones. I'll let you know.

2 weeks to go

2008-11-29T15:16:00.009Z

I went down to the venue last night to have another look, take some measurements and so on. I'm bound to forget something but I'm really trying to cover all of the bases. So last night I measured out the warm up area which is basically a stage which we will screen off. It's smaller than I thought originally. The last time I was there it was covered with chairs, goalposts and so on and when I went back last night it was cleared and I discovered that there's a good few things that I thought were removable which aren't. So what we're left with is an area for each corner about 15 foot by 15 foot. Not bad but not as plentiful as I wanted originally. In better news the venue will be nice and compact without anyone being squashed in. There'll be a good view no matter where you are in the room and the guys who run the club have been really cool about everything.

Strength and Power, eh, and some guys standing around
looking at strength and power

But what about the guys who will be gracing the arena? Well we had our penultimate fighters only session this morning and I'm happy to report that two niggly knocks have cleared up, and one weight difficulty is well on the way to being solved after some really disciplined eating. If you like carbs, it sucks but sometimes sacrifice is necessary. This morning we did some competitive relays, a good set of strength endurance work followed by 8 rounds of MMA. As I've said before, sparring is general to a point with only the last few weeks tapering to game plans but we're starting to focus on individual game plans more now. Hopefully no surprises between now and then so it's one last high intensity week next week and then maintenance for the last week unless there's some serious cutting to be done in which case you may have one last night of work on the Wednesday evening.

I dropped €2 on the ground and this scramble ensued