Former boxer, current soldier.
Tim Kennedy from the UFC and a US soldier said somewhere that you should train with the purpose of being the hardest person someone ever tries to kill. I think it’s a sound principle and it underpins the shift in focus of my training since stopping boxing and starting with the military.
One of the main reasons for starting this log is that for most of my life I’ve been a boxer, and had done no serious resistance training before the last 18 months or so. Without a background in that sort of thing, it’s been quite a sharp learning curve, one I’m not entirely sure I’ve mastered yet. I now live in the middle of nowhere, with no boxing gym nearby, and no training partners to train with.
I have a home gym with plenty of weight (for my current strength levels), and a reasonable amount of outdoor space. In addition to the barbell, I have a sandbag(favourite tool), and a 25ft 3" hemp rope tied to a tree branch.
My overarching aim is to be the fittest, strongest, biggest, most athletic bastard I can be. Given that I’m still learning how to achieve this aim, I thought a log would be beneficial, particularly a log here in the combat section, where I’ve already learned so much over the years, and where there are a few people about with similar goals who might be able to help guide me on my way.
Training:
Currently half way through my 4th cycle of 5/3/1. I’ve been calorie depleted for the past few weeks, so things have been noticably harder for the last two cycles or so. That is about to change, so I expect to be able to push progress a bit further now before I reset.
Typically I tend to do some low intensity training in the morning, like rucking or gentle longer distance (3-5mi.) running. 4 afternoons/week I’ll train with weights, and follow it up with some HIT, like 350m intervals, or metcon stuff of the kind Donny does in his training. The remaining 3 afternoons/evenings, I’ll do some bodyweight stuff for the basics, and some dedicated grip/hand work.
The daily goal is to always go to bed more dangerous than I woke up, even if it’s just 5 minutes throwing pivot hooks in shadow boxing. All this stuff adds up over time, and the hope is that if I can improve something, however small, even on my worst day, then the cumulative effect can ultimately be more significant.
For a while, when I first made this shift in training, I bought into the whole train 3 days a week and don’t move too much if you want to get big and strong and the idea that cardio killed strength gains, and so on. I’m sure this is good information for many people, but for me I feel like taking this advice totally fucked me for a while. It never felt like enough work for me, and there were too many aspects of training that I wanted to be good at. I can handle a pretty high volume as long as I eat a lot and rest properly. It’s taken me a while to realise this, as I’m more or less a beginner in strength training, and not especially gifted for it by comparison to many on this site. That said, I think the past few months, since I got on 5/3/1, things have started coming together and I’m making progress in every area of my training.
I do all my pressing work with a homemade fat bar - ie a bar with pipe insulation duct taped to it. I’d guess it’s about 3" around. I don’t know if it is limiting what I can lift, but it has stopped me getting wrist pain from pressing.
Stats as of 14/4/15:
Age: 25
Height: 6’1
Weight: 182lbs
Training stats:
Bench TM: 176lbs
Squat TM: 255 lbs
Push press TM: 140lbs
Deadlift TM: 320lbs
Short term goals (Start of August):
Bench: 209lbs
Squat: 319lbs
Push press: 170lbs
Deadlift: 350lbs
I think the lower body lifts are there already. I’ve done plenty of labouring and what-have-you over the years, and had a pretty good base for pulling/squatting. Pressing on the other hand…
13th April 2015
Last night’s training.
3 circuits, no rest between circuits of:
40 pushups
30 neck curls
50 crunches
10 leg raises
20 BW squats
100 flutter kicks
50 chinnies
10 v-ups
5 dead hang chins, 5 second pause at the bottom
10 minutes constant shadow boxing.
Light session, as I was pretty smashed after training the day before.
I’ll post today’s training later, once it’s done.