Guarden’s Focused Strength

My trainingconcept HardCore including kettlebells, sandbags and bodyweight conditioning is going to be one of the events on this years Nike Convention in Denmark. Awesome that this kind of training is beginning to become popular to more people. I like the idea about making training fun while being very effective to create a healthy body.
Come and join at

www.nikeconvention.dk

As Will Rogers quotes: “Even if you are on the right track, you might get run over if you just sit there”

Here is a video of some very good Wing Tsun Chi-sao performed by Sifu Emin Boztepe and one of his students. Nothing has been setup or arranged beforehand. Reaction is pure instinct based on proproiceptive feedback. Enjoy!

19.05.07 Wing Tsun
45 minutes of Wing Tsun Chi-sao and some standing clinch with QueenPearl :-D. My left shoulder and right elbow is aching. Very irritating, so I am not able to do anything that places big demands on these structures. Hmmm, think I need to talk with a phys-wizard I know. The Chi-sao is beginning to flow more freely, nice. It is very relaxing to do these drills, a kind of joint mobility. Think that all these low-force interval/external rotation in the shoulder-girdle are good, just as long as no sudden high loads are involved.
//Jacob

18.05.07 Boxing
1 hour of Boxing was on the program. A good friend of mine called Taninja asked me out for some hurting love with her coach De Lima - a former Olympic boxer. I did a couple of rounds on pads a some more on the bag. Nice way to start the morning. The boxing techniques are very different from the Wing Tsun techniques because your shoulders are pointing in another direction, the way the fist turns on the impact and the stance.

BTW, check out this amazing video


17.05.07 Wing Tsun and BJJ
1,5 hours of Wing Tsun followed by 10 minutes of BJJ with a black belt guy from brazil weighing 155 kg. Oh my good it’s all about survival against this kind of mutant. I got beaten up, live with it Guarden.
Stay tuned for more workouts!!!
Guarden

16.05.07 Griptraining
Yesterday was a relaxation-day after all the handstand attempst. My entire back was tired, so instead I stood on a tennisball for 2 hours. Auch it gotta hurt, but afterwards it gives some relief in the legs and lower back. By some weird reason I got a headache by doing that. Hmmmm..
During the day I did some grease the groove with the COC # 1. great.
In the end of the day, me and 2 of my friends went out to shoot with guns in a facility made for this. I tried the HK, Glock 19 and Magnum 357 It was extremely funny and very potentiating. Wanna do it again.

15.05.07 Handstands
Tuesday was Handstand-day. I want to be able to do handstands, because I am very fascinated by the gymnastic disciplines. I started out with 30 minutes of training, focusing on total body tension especialy in my stomach. Then the best Ring-Gymnast from Denmark came by, and gave me some tips about how to place my hands on the floor. Very nice guy with a lot of knowledge. Then I teached 1 hour of HardCore followed by another hour of handstand-training. At the same time assumed the planche pushup stand, not perfect but closer than it has ever been. Nice. Damn, this kind of training just works every little part of the body with balance, timing, muscles etc.
Here are some tips if you want to do the handstand:
1: Start with your back against the wall
2: Extend your elbows and shoulders (push away from the floor)
3: Use the fingertips to create the balance, extend the hips, and keep those legs straight!!!!
4: When you get better move further away from the wall
5: Do it free standing.

I will not recommend to do to much of this in the beginning. It creates a lot of stress to the ligaments in your wrist, so start out slowly to avoid injuries.



I the end of the workout I incorporated some OAPU: 10/10 x 2 sets

Outstanding
14.05.07 Ropeclimbing, rings and Wing Tsun Kung Fu
This morning I went for the gym to do som ropeclimbing with my friends Dennis, Niko and Carsten. I am not totally done with the infection, so kept low profile on the workload. Not my strong side, hehe..

Parallel Ropeclimbing (no feet): 6 meters, 5 times. Damn it gives this burning sensation in the palms when I haven’t been doing it for 1,5 weeks. Keep climbing Guarden….

Ring Dips: 10 reps, 5 sets.

Wing Tsun Kung Fu
In the evening I did one hour of Wing Tsun. I have been training WT from 1997-2004, but the last few years it has not been consistent enough. Not very motivating only to keep the same level. But now I will be back. The focus of today was specifically on how to deal with your opponents arms, when he has both on the outside of yours. This position is very difficult, because it’s hard to win the so-called centerline. In short, it’s about winning the forward energy by placing yourself in a position where you can apply pressure towards your opponent without him being able to hit you, because his energy/pressure is heading in another direction than yours. It is way easier to be on the outside, because you only have to deal with one arm at the time. Does it make sense? If not, I will try to rephrase it.

13.05.07 Wing Tsun, Kettlebell Snatch, Turkish Getups, Military Press, See Saw Press/ROW, Highland KB-throws
Started out the day with 75 minutes of Wing Tsun with a friend of mine. We practiced the chi-sao, which is an exercise which address the ability to stick to your opponents arms in infight. Actually you are not trying to stick to his arms, you are trying to hit him. Because of the positions on yours and your opponents arms the path wont be clear and then the chi-sao starts to happen. Check out the video posted in the “Todays Workout” for come chi-sao demonstrations.

Warmup: 10 min HardFreestyle.
Played around to groove some basic movements on the floor, preparing L-sits and V-sits. I have this goal to be able to go from L-sit –> to handstand, then do a couple of handstand-pushups without support, and then go back to the L-sit touching the ground only with hands. Starting to feel some improvements. Much easier sitting in the V-sit than before. Great.

Workout:
Double Snatch: 2 x 24 kg, 10 rep, 4 set (short rest between sets)

Double No-hands Turkish Getups: 2 x 24 kg, 15 singles

Military press: 2 x 24 kg, 8 rep, 3 sets

Walking Lunge See saw press: 10 press with each arm –> See Saw Rows: 10 with each arm –>double BOR, 4 sets to technical failure

Highland Games back-toss with 24 kg kettlebell incl. primalsound ;-D: 10 reps.

The walking lunge see saw press combind with the see saw rows is a blaster. It takes a lot to stabilize the pelvis to the upper body while balancing the weight over the head in the contralateral side of the leg. For those of you who want to try an excellent abdominal workout, give it a go.

12.05.07 Yoga and soft tissue treatment
The time was right for some yoga for Guarden. I went to a class where my friend Christian Ørsted teached. Fabulous to get confirmed in how stiff I am. Especially my hamstrings are tight. Something to work on. One thing I like about yoga is the focus you put into the breathing pattern. The sense of attention on the respiration puts you into a kind of trance, and afterwards I always feel very relaxed.

Take care people, and train hard.

Jacob Søndergaard.
11.05.07 Soft tissue treatment, stretching, pistols and griptraining
The last few days I have been having a kind of infection, that has limited my capacity to do hard physical workouts -annoying!
But then there are other areas of physical excellence that can be adressed.
Through out the day I have been using the training principle Grease The Groove (GTG) established by strenght coach Pavel Tsatsouline. GTG simply implies, that you distribute the loading of an exercise over the entire day to groove motor patterns while never reaching failure. The tool I used was for handgrip strength, a gripper named Captains of Crush # 1. To squeeze the COC # 1 together you need to apply 140 LBS. Not very hard for somebody who has regularly been doing demanding handgrip work, but a good challenge if you make many repetitions. I find handgrip strength to be essential if you want to be as strong as you look. Way to many use wrist-straps while lifting heavy weights, which in my opinion is a NO-GO. If your hands are not strong enough to lift a certain weight, you need to work on your grip-strength before lifting any heavyer. In my kind of training you always address the weakest link in the chain. Imagine that your body is a wheel construction with these metal pins going from the center to the perifery. If some of these pins are broken, the wheel wont spin consistent, and especially not at high speed through the woods. Exercises like pullups are much easier after a period of griptraining. Take a look at rockclimbers. These guys have amazing gripstrength. By saying that there is a but. Gripstrength is as all other kinds of training specific according to Specific Adaptations of Imposed Demands (SAID). Thats why crush-gripstrength as COC-traning is not necessaryly transferrable to holds you use in deadlifts, but some kind of transfer will take place. Think about that when you need to increase your gripstrength. If you need any tips, please don’t hesitate to ask in this post.

I believe I did a total of 50 crushes with each hand.

Another exercise I practiced yesterday was the Pistol.
The Pistol is a delicate exercise, that isolates vertually every muscle in your lower body. The pistol is a one-leg squat variation, with the inactive leg in a straight line in front of you. One of the good thing about it is, that it forces you to activate your gluteus medius and minimus all the time. These muscles are so-called phasic muscles, that works on the pelvic as hip abductors (move lower leg from midline to the side) and internal rotators, but the most important role of these muscles is to control the pelvic tilt during standing on one leg.



This means that they are the main controllers of your balance while you stand on one leg. Phasic muscles tend to become long and weak if there are any dysfunctions. To get over this problem you need to strengthen them. Everybody needs strong gluteus medius and minimus regardless of gender, ambitions, occupation, sport or age. Women especially needs to be aware of weak hip abductors. A way to find out if you have weak hip abductors is to look at your knees when you perform a squat. Are they bowing in, you definately need to do some one-legged squat variations.

Here is how to perform it:

1: Extend one leg in front of you
2: Extend your arms in front of you to create counterbalance and make white fists
3: Start the exercise by pushing your butt backwards as far as it can go, while maintaining balance
4: Pull yourself down actively with your hip-flexors
5: Keep your heel in the floor ALL THE TIME to minimize shear loading in the knee
6: As soon as your heel starts to lift from the floor, don’t go any deeper. You can put a piece of wood under your foot in the beginning, but progressively move towards doing them without that support.
7: Emphasize keeping your torso as vertical as possible. It will pay of when you start doing pistols with extra external weights.
8: Keep tension in your glutes all the time, as it will take care of your knees.
9: From bottom position push with your heel through the floor, and push your pelvis forward.

Congratulations, you just made a pistol. Tell me about how you did in this post. If you need advice, let me know.

Now I will go do some yoga with my good friend Christian.

Have a nice day, and remember to go and do your workout.



//Jacob

08.05.2007 HardFreestyle
Yesterday I experimentet with the my concept. Quite exciting just to play around while you get an awesome workout. The textbook Anatomy Trains talks about how different movement patterns will affect several so-called muscle slings. To mention af few there is the anterior oblique sling, that consist of the oblique ext in one side, the oblique int. in the contralateral side and the hip adductor in the internus side. By doing one-legged or one-armed exercises while keeping the upper body and hips tight and locked you are forced to tighten ip this particular muscle sling, which is important in sidecutting movements in soccer, handball etc. The movement skills you learn in HardFreestyle works the body through other muscle slings that are important i.e. in sports, but also for individuals who want to have a better balance, health and fun while they train.



My idea is that to make physical workouts an integral of your daily life, it has to be motivating and fun to do, but at the same time it needs to be easy to apply everywhere. One of the most famous coaches in the world Anthony Robbins talks about how time is emotion. Think about the things that you love i.e. hanging out with friends, girlfriend, reading books etc…… when you perform that kind of activity time just seem to explode. Think about what will happen to your training, if you can get the same kind of emotion linked to workouts, imagine what kind of shape you would end up with… Thats my philosophy.
Next time you go to your gym, take a look around. How many of the hardworking members seems to enjoy what they do? My observations says NOT MANY. Let’s change that!!!

Yesterdays workout consisted in total of 45 minutes of HardFreestyle including some handstand attempts. I also taught one hour of HardCore. -Outstanding. Today I got a nice feeeling in the entire upper body. Not sore any particular place just used Unfortunately I feel a little rusty in the throat. Hmmmmm, hope it will be over soon. Todays workout will consist of dynamic flexibility and soft tissue treatment.

-Just do it - Go do your workout Comrade.

07.05.2007
Today I have been teaching 1 class in HardCore (kettlebells, sandbags, bodyweight exercises) and 1 class in fitnessboxing.

My own training consisted of 30 minutes of HardFreestyle. A new trainingconcept I am creating. It involves groundbased movements that involves every muscles in your body. No external weights are necessary. By shifting the weight from arms to legs in different combinations you create tension through several anatomical musclechains. The idea is to create a simple trainingsystem suitable for everybody who wants to increase their bodyawareness, strength, coordination and flexibility at the same time. It can be done everywhere, all you need is some place on the ground and gravity. These exercises will be a great supplement to the number one Naked Warrior exercises -One Arm Pushups and Pistols (One leg squat)
—————-

Through the last 4 days I have been assisting as an instructor at the Russian Kettlebell Certification in Denmark hosted by arranged by my good friend Kenneth Jay, The Danish Grizzly.
About 50 men and women from all over the world participated at the course led by the charismatic russian Pavel Tsatsouline.
Last year I took part at the same course as a student, but this year I had the pleasure assist to give the new hopefull achievers some tough love
The course consist of 23 hours of training with kettlebells, how to perform, teach and troubleshoot clients with this excellent tool. Kettlebells is like a canonball with a handle which is impeccable for total body strength and conditioning.
Me and my tough friend Dennis assisted Senior RKC Brett Jones. This guy possesses a strength out of this world. Among few of his feats: 3 x bodyweight Deadlift, Certified Ironmind Red Nail bender, Certified Captain of Crush # 3. Cool to walk around with such great capacity in strengthtraining. Awesome. Pavel has a remarkable amount of knowledge concerning how to increase your physical potential and how to implement the right exercises for your athletes to make them reach peak performance. During the days I had little time for workouts, but that didn’t hold me back:

Friday
One Arm Pushups: 10/10 x 5 sets = 100 in total (50 on each hand), time = 20 minutes.

Saturday
Turkish Getup with The Beast (48 kg) No problems. Personal Best
Double Turkish Getup (no hands) with 2 x 32 kg. Personal Best

Sunday
Double Bottom Up Turkish Getup with 2 x 16 kg Personal Best

03.05.2007 Soft tissue treatment and why stabilization important for peak performance
When I woke up this morning I had a lot of delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) after the 140 One Arm Pushups yesterday. The pain is not specific to any particular muscles just every muscle in the upper body Just the way we like it.

The weather in Denmark is outstanding for the moment, so I have been out in the sun reading about manual techniques for muscle impairment syndromes, and how to solve them (Lærebog i manuelle teknikker, Munksgaard, Danmark). Quite fascinating how complex the human body is. One particular chapter confirmed how important it is that a large part of your exercises contains complex impeccable movements such as ropeclimbing, dips in rings, one-arm-pushups, pistols and unilateral exercise in general such as i.e kettlebell-lifts. Between each spinal segments lots of little muscles are located i.e. mm. multifidi, rotatores et intertransversarii and around the pelvic joint you have the mm. gemelli and mm. obturatorii, that each serve different purposes. An obvious role for these muscles because of their poor leverage is to serve as stabilizers, but beyond that more importantly, the paraverterbral muscles
will act as proprioceptors due to their extremely high amount of musclespindles. By increasing the strength of these muscles, you will create a stronger core which will alter the movement patern of the superficial prime movers and thereby increase the force-potential. This will probably be the same issue for other joints such as the pelvis and the feet.



Today I have been doing 1,5 hours of soft tissue treatment with a tennisball, primarily working the tensor fascia latea. It hurts while you do it, but afterwards the effect is amazing. Soft tissue treatment is a good way to get rid of muscle pain and tension. I will write later about that.

Train hard, fight easy.

/Jacob Søndergaard.

UPDATE 02.05.07 One Arm Pushups
I have been spending the entire day behind the table working on my master assignment in Exercise Physiology. Instead of drinking a lot of coffee, I did some training each half hour, to increase my energy level. My number one exercise of choice is the One Arm Pushup (OAPU) because it involves every muscle in the entire body, creates exceptional corestrength and power in your pressing muscles of the upper body. At the same time, it is easy to apply anytime, everywhere. All you need is 4 m2 and gravity. I always do the OAPU in hotel rooms when I am out doing seminars. No excuses for not being able to train

Stuart McGill talks a lot about superstiffnes, which means that you have to tighten up every muscle in your body to create stability. If there are any weak links between your joints because of lack of muscle strength or neuromuscular control, energy will dissipate. This can result in lack of performance in sports that recuires heavy corestrength, but in the worst case it can lead to injuries.
When you do the OAPU your entire midsection will be screaming for help during the attempt -provided you do it with proper form. I am not talking about the way Sylvester Stallone does it in Rocky, even though it is very motivating to watch him train. No, what I want you to be aware of, is that the shoulders and hips must be parallel to the floor ALL THE TIME. This will put very high emphasis on your abdominal obliques and all the rotator muscles of your trunk. See, now we are training the muscles that are able to create rotational torque to resist the exact same motion. So, paradoxical this exercise will increase the strength of the rotator muscles of your trunk, which functionally will work as antirotators. This adaptation will give you a sense of feeling very solid and strong and make your body move as one unit.

In the end of the day the OAPU total accumulated to 140 reps in total, 10 on the right arm followed by 10 on the left arm(70 on each arm in total). Good way to frye the abs

Now go do some training, maybe inspired by this video

//Jacob Søndergaard

02.05.07 Kettlebells and ropes
Training in the morning feat. Mrrrrrrrrrrrrusashi, Krrrrrrrrrrrrauf og Crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrat
Did not have much energy due to lack of food intake yesterday, so decided to go slow steady and sustainable.

Snatch: 24 kg, 5/5 B2B x 2, 3 sæt
Snatch: 24 kg, 10/10 B2B, 6 sæt

Military Press: 24 kg + 16 kg KB = 40 kg, 2 singles in the right side only. Left was standing by looking for something good to happen

Tarzan-swings in ropes: Very entertaining, but no big training effect

Double Bottom-up press: 24 kg (r) + 16 kg (l) = 40 kg, 2 singles, 1 rep with KB i opposite hand

Think I will do some One-Arm-Pushups (OAPU) later today. In the evening I am going to a personal branding seminar with my friend Dennis. Looking forward.

Stay tuned, more updates will follow.

Jacob



01.05.2007 Wing Tsun Kung Fu
Today I decided to start up my martial arts career after 1,5 years of rest. I have been training the chinese martial art Wing Tsun Kung Fu for 6 years and Escrima Concepts for 2 years (Filipino Stickfighting). The Style is very uncompromising and fluid. Always go with the flow, don’t fight the force and fight intelligent.
I did 1,5 hours of Chi-sao, which looks like the attached video. The idea is, that you train the ability to react to tactile stimuli with your hands which is highly efficient during infights. Actually you will be able to do this blindfolded.

30.04.2007: Ropeclimbing, rings, kettlebells and Wing Tsun
Have just been doing todays workout with my good friends Carsten and Dennis, and it looked like this:

Plyometric Pullups (52 cm): Bodyweight (BW), 5 reps, 3 sets
Plyometric Pullups (52 cm): BW + 25 lbs, 2 reps, 5 sets

The reason why I do the plyometrics is to increase the rate of force development in the pulling motion. It is very beneficial in martial arts during infights, when you need to remove your opponents arms quick, open his positions an launch an attack.

Thereafter we did ropeclimbing in double-ropes to increase the maximal force in the pulling motion and increase gripstrength. This exercise actually increase your corestrength tremendously at the same time, which makes it suitable for all kinds of athletes, especially teamsport-athletes (soccerplayers, handball, basketball) that involves physical contact. Dips in rings create an enormous stability and strength in your pressing muscles and upper body in general.

Ropeclimbing (5-6 meters): (BW) 2 double trips without break in bottom position, 2 sets
Ropeclimbing alternated wiht Dips in rings (5 sets):
Ropeclimbing (BW)
Dips in rings: (BW), 10 reps

At the end we did some tossing around with a big gymnastic mattress like tire flipping.

Then Dennis and I went to the park with two kettlebells (24 kg, 32 kg) and did a lot of Bent-press. Dennis supervised my technique, great :-). Amazing how much you have to activate your lat to keep the kettlebell centered above your coreline. Additionally it creates massive strength to your shoulder muscles and scapula stabilisers which makes it ideal as prehabilitation.

Bent-press: 24 kg, 1/1 (1 right/1 left), 10 sets
One Arm Swings: 24 + 32 kg = 56 kg, 3/3, 5 sets, (auch)

A lot of flip and catch followed på pushing/throwing the kettlebell as far as possible. Excellent to increase striking power. This exercise is much better than the conventional benchpress, because you do it standing and you have to activate your entire core during the whole phase. Just as when you do the punching. Can’t remember how many we did. About 50 I guess.

Then I gave Dennis a 45 minutes of Wing Tsun Chi Sao introduction. Perfect to have a friend with so much in common. I feel the need to start practicing Wing Tsun again. Great.

Thats it for know.

//Guarden.