Scramblog

Just wanted to post up a link to the Scramblog.  I love  the style that Scramble have made their own, really fresh with a Japanese flavour.  Aside from selling cool clothing and fightwear the site also has an excellent blog.

Most recently there's been an excellent article about the practice of strength and conditioning periodisation and how it can be implemented by combat athletes.  There is a lot of periodisation information out there but what marks this article out is the accessible style and the real-world-implementation that the author William Wayland lays out for the reader.  Essentially periodisation is a way to organise training in order to progress an athlete's strength and conditioning in order to prepare, usually, for a specific event.  Wayland explains a fight specific method of periodisation, dispensing with as much of the jargon as possible in favour of making the information as accessible and implementable as possible.

Anyway, it's an excellent read and well worth checking out here.  Wayland's own page is also worth checking.

Catching up...

Time for a quick round up to get the blog back on track...

Up to June I had been pleased with my progress. I'd maintained a consistent pattern of training at Leicester Shoot and felt that I was improving. The conditioning still had a long way to go but even that was getting better. The came June, and with it massive work stress requiring extra attention, family members in hospital, an injured shin, a skin infection in the other shin and now finally a nasty gash in the previously injured shin! (Walked in to a broken sheet of glass). All-in-all this has led to me missing 3 – 4 weeks of training and feeling not a little pissed off.

Still, it's a case of train what you can, when you can. I can't deadlift but I can press, clean & use the trapbar. I can't grapple or kick with my left leg but I can box and kick with the right. When I've been pressed for time I haven't stressed about what I'm not doing, just found ways to get some work in – 15 mins of barbell complexes for example.

My last session at Leicester Shoot was an MMA sparring class. It's difficult for me to get to these as I need to look after my youngest on this evening so this was the first I'd been to in a while. Anyway, it was a testing session, building up from drills to limited sparring and then in to less limited for 3 minute rounds. By the time we'd finished I needed to sit for 15 minutes before leaving the gym, and I still looked like this....

 Boxing tonight, on we go....

PS I know I keep saying it but I really am going to try to update more often and add content.