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Getting Strong First for Jiu Jitsu

Friday: Leg Day Dynamic: 5/27/2022
Snatch pulls: up to 155lbs. Did a full snatch with 115lbs without hip-bumping the bar. I think that's what I want my technique to be like.
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115lbs snatch—No hip contact

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155lbs snatch pulls, 5/27/22

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Squat: 3x135lbs, 2x3x155lbs (Crunched for time because I did so many snatch-pulls, getting a quick easy strength session in)
Zercher carry: A little ways and back with 135lbs, walking a few steps and back twice with 155lbs. Bar directly on my solar plexus, which is fun (not). Need a bigger chest so it's on my ribs.

Accessories:
70lbs Single-leg-squat (bell hoisted onto my shoulders): 8,10,10 per side
3x5 16lbs weighted ab wheel rollout.
 
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Saturday: Dynamic arm day: 5/28/22
Split jerks (1+1 each weight): 95lbs, 115lbs, 135lbs, 155lbs. (wanted to PR, but technique and power not feeling quite there.
Bench Press: Worked up to a comfortable triple with 135lbs, then a double with 145lbs (rep PR, 3rd rep failed).
Pullups: 5 solid doubles. Mostly gonna focus on 5x5 on Wednesdays.
3x8 incline curls with 15lbs, 3x10 incline skull crushers.
3x10 face pulls to overhead press (17.5lbs cable machine)
 
Tuesday: Leg Day:
Power snatches: Tons of pulls and a few reps of the full lift. I've often been unable (and somewhat scared) of getting under the bar with 115lbs (without hip bumping of course.) Got some good reps though.
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115lbs snatch 5/31/22

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115lbs power snatch 5/31/22

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115lbs snatch 5/32/22

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Cleans: Power cleans up to 135lbs, and a full clean with 155lbs that I'm happy with.
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155lbs clean pulls 5/31/2022

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155lbs clean 5/31/2022

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Squats: Warmup was goblet squat, then singles up to 175lbs.
I attempted 5x5 with 165lbs, but I ended up doing 4,4,5,3,3. I could have done 4+ on the last 2, but I was focusing on my muscular corset because I felt my back ache during some of the previous sets. (Need to video my squats)

5 sets of 3 3-second holds per side in the torture twist. Need a good ab drill.

Superset 3x8 70lbs Single-leg-squats with 3x8 RDLs (with bad form). Experimented with RDLs again as a way to strengthen my low back... and now the stupid-alert is sounding, because the answer was heavy swings.
 
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Wednesday 6/2/2022: Arm Day

A bunch of push presses and a few military presses in sets of 5-6 with around 65-85lbs while my brother trained.
Bench press: around 2x8 with 95lbs, doing a lot of partials focusing on the bottom. Then, 5x5x110lbs. (Last set best set- the last set was smooth because I focused on tricep and pec co-contraction.)
Pullups: 5x5
Military press partials: 5,8,8 with 35lbs dumbells. (Need to work in the KB press as an assist for the bench/incline bench)

superset KB Curls with KB overhead triceps (standing): 3x12 (Nice pump)
 
Thursday: Athlete Day

Began with 2x5 50lbs swings, 2x5x50lbs OA swings, 2x5x50lbs high pulls (sloppy), 2x5x50lbs snatches (sloppy).
Did the "Sanders-step" and "Sanders-Jumps" like the previous two weeks, but from there I did the hurdle hop-->side-step-->hurdle hop sequence using the sawhorses for hurdles. Got better progressively.

I invented a drill based on the Sanders-step. Start by jumping, landing in Sanders-step position, then bound sideways from that position. Immediately jump again and repeat on other leg, one of twice each leg per sequence. Took a while to get pretty decent at it.
 
Friday: 6/3/2022: Leg Day
Snatches: Up to 95lbs power, up to 115lbs squat for doubles, mostly. Good mechanics, no hip-bump.
Cleans: Went from 95lbs all the way up to 155lbs for a power clean, which is basically a fast grind. I'm good at level changing after the second pull, but I'm having to catch lower because I'm slow at getting my rack set to catch it in time.

Overhead squats: from 65lbs to ~115lbs, maybe less (I forgot). It seemed much harder to stabilize when separate from the snatch.
[Meant to also front Squat, but forgot]

20x65lbs BB walking lunges, 20x2x40lbs dumbell walking lunges (80lbs total), 18x2x50lbs dumbell walking lunges (I had to skip the last two because my grip was giving out.)
Superset with 3x10 115lbs RDLs (with a curl bar, feet together)

Superset:
3x20 calve raises from floor
3x20 tib raises from step
3x20 supermans (back accessory)
3x5 ab wheel x 16lbs. (Need some other way. Getups? I'm dumb.)
 
Saturday: Arm Day:
Jerks: up to 135lbs, not feeling explosive today.
Incline bench: 115lbs: 5,4,4,3,3 (Delts need work). Superset with 7x3 pullups
3x8 35lbs Military Press (Left arm feels weak as hell), superset with 3x10 100lbs lat pulldown.
Farmer's carry: 185, 225, 245 (pr-- deadlift was a struggle, carry wasn't bad)

Superset:
Miracle-Grow: 8x30, 10x45, 10x45, 8x50
Zottman curls: 8x15, 8x20, 8x20 (had to cheat a few)
 
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Played around with rope climbling/pullups
Tested pushups: 20 good reps.

Wednesday, June 8, 2022
In hawaii now, so I'm doing bodyweight/banded work for the next 3+ weeks.
Combining the A+A pushup article with the newsletter A+A pistol program.
10x7 pushups OTM (1/3 rm), 30 minutes of pistols every 15 seconds, 2R and 2L every minute. Then, 5x7 pushups.

Pushups and pistols got grindy towards the end. The pistols shot my heartrate through the roof. Then, I did about 10 double-rope pullup singles. Unfortunately, I won't have acces to the ropes much more.

Then, probably ~30 total reps in the new "paradox crunch" drill, 10 or so lying, 20 or so standing.
A brief superman hold.
 
June 9:

I didn’t want to train today, I would rather have a day of rest between all my workouts, and my quads are ridiculously sore from yesterday, but I only have 3 days to do 3 workouts. I started out by crawling downhill, but it got my hands really dirty and a horse tried to bite my nipple off, so I jogged instead. I ran in a small circle, alternating directions every few minutes. I ran in roughly a 1:4 work/rest ratio, as trying to run continuously disagreed with my achilles tendon. I didn’t keep things precise most of the time, eventually I ended up alternating ~2:00 fast walk with a run that ended when my heart rate reached 160BPM. Towards the end of the session, I noticed that I was starting to feel more out of breath even though my heart rate was only around ~130, in contrast to when I was running at ~160 and feeling good. I’ll have to google why that is.



I felt okay. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t enjoy it much either. I would rather have recovered, and running in a circle caused some problems in my ankles (1 roll), and a little bit of an ache in my right hip. Unfortunately, the only other option was running up and down a 30 degree hill. It wasn’t too bad though. I disliked that I wasn’t supposed to be running. It’s interrupting my recovery and interfering with the stimulus from the pistols, and I’m not even getting any benefits because I won’t run again until the school year, at least.

June 10:

I started with 10, 10, 7, 7, 7, hardstyle burpees (dropping into the pushup, trying to pushup explosively enough to land in a jumping position and jump as explosively as possible. Each set got my heart rate up to 180, which was fun. Supersetted these with 5 sets of a gwiz jump into OL hopping across the room per side. I stretched that out for 17 minutes because my cardio sucks.

Then, I did 7 pushups on-the-minute for 7 minutes (you can imagine how that went after those explosive pushups), supersetted with sets of 5-7 banded curls (I skipped these the last two times, because I'm a baby.)

Then, roughly 16 minutes of doing pistols every 15 seconds, like on Monday. These exhausted me, heart rate was relatively low even though I was struggling. Then, 5 minutes of 7 pushups OTM supersetted with 5x7 banded curls (did these explosively instead of slow like I did before, too slow takes too long). I'll do abs/back later.

I felt really hot, sweaty and tired afterwards, but I know I got good work in.

I liked that I got some explosive work in before my higher volume work, but I didn't like how the burpees took so much strength away from the pushups/squats. I liked how I did the curls, I'll do fast sets of 5 next time. This sort of training doesn't need high rep sets so much. Next time, it will be: assisted hand-stand pushups+ jumps of some kind, then pushups+curls, pistols, pushups/curls again, abs/back.
 
June 14:
I did 5x sprinting starts (accelerate for first 4 steps, then stop), 5x5 vertical jumps. This took about 15 minutes, though it would have been half that if I wasn’t forced to move locations.
5x7 pushups OTM (mixed in 4x4 pullups)
Pistol squat every 15 seconds for 20 minutes
5x7 pushups OTM
4x4 pullups

I had to do this at a park, and I hate training in public (except at a gym, obviously). I felt sluggish throughout the training, not so much volume as my original session. Which probably means that I overtrained originally. I need to wave my volume up and down. The pullups were really hard, either because I haven’t done them in a while, because I got heavier, or because the bar is really short so I had to raise my legs up. Maybe all of them. Supersetting with really short rest didn’t help either.
 
Wed. Jan 16:
I did a gymnastics “core workout” because I needed another session and I wanted to do abs and back. The gist of it was something like:
20 V-ups, into 10 second hollow hold, 20 hollow rocks into 10 second hollow hold
20 pulsing supermans into 10 second superman hold, 20 pulsing supermans with arms wide, 10 second hold. Goes on like that for 10 rounds. I couldn’t do hollow rocks at the end without raising my legs up, and even then staying hollow was really hard. I couldn’t do a single V-up when I finished.

I felt good afterwards. Didn’t feel super productive, but I had lots of fun laughing with my family at the weird flopping-fish movements I was doing on the floor.

I liked the concept of doing abs/back and accessories on off-days, didn’t like the super-high volume and the low intensity, I would rather have done moderate volume with higher resistance. But I needed a 45 minute workout that I could do in a hotel room.
 
Friday June 17:
I warmed up with 5 minutes of brisk/power walking, which actually kept my heart rate in a nice place for cardio.
Then, 5x5 box jumps onto a table, 5 sets of sprinter “starts” (1-2 seconds of sprinting)
7 sets of 7 pushups on the minute
1 Pistol squat every 15 seconds for 30 minutes (time to progress to 1,2,1,2 each minute). I worked a lot on tracking the working knee over my toes properly. My knee habitually collapses inwards.
8 more sets of 7 pushups on the minute. Last set was tough. Might switch to my bench press hand width, see how that feels.

I felt quite good afterwards. It was a good workout, didn’t feel sluggish or anything. Hitting my target for pistols made me happy.

I liked that I incorporated explosiveness, strength, hypertrophy and some form of conditioning into my workout, and that I hit the targets I planned for. This workout had gaps, mainly that there’s no real load on the posterior chain and it lacks pulling and accessories. Hopefully the “off day” workout will fill that in the future (because I forgot Wednesday).
 
Monday Jun 20, 2022:

5x sprinter starts. Feel like I’m getting faster, working on using quads and glutes to start.
Superset with 5x handstand holds against a wall, with one arm tapping the other shoulder for reps (so the load is momentarily shifted to one arm). 10 “taps” per side each hold. Got pretty tired doing this, but it feels good.
7x7 pushups on-the-minute (pretty comfortable)
20 minutes of pistols every 15 seconds: 1L,2L,1R,2R for 6 total reps per minute. This got me breathing harder than usual, and I had knee tracking problems as usual. But now my balance is bugging me as well, as balancing between reps costs me time. It was uncomfortable but not brutal at all.
7x7 pushups on the minute (last set was pretty tough). Finished at about 46 or so minutes. Didn’t use heart rate monitor, because it was lost at the time and I somehow didn’t see that there was another log due this week.

Tuesday June 21: accessory workout

3x5 ATG split squats per side, superset with sets of 10 banded hammer curls (slow eccentric).
5x10 paradox crunches, superset with 5 sets of 20 superman pulses into 10 second superman hold.
Superset 3 sets of 10 face pulls with 4 sets of monster walks

Stretching (but I forgot to stretch my IT band)


Later that day: 1 to 1.5 hour bike ride. I found my heart rate monitor just before going on this ride.

Me and my brother rode down to a lake, and tried to ride on the beach but the sand didn’t let us. So we rode on one of the trails, which we quickly found out wasn’t meant for bicyclists. We had to walk our bikes up/down a good portion of it, until we turned around because it had almost been an hour since we left home and we knew we weren’t going to see the end of the trail any time soon. The return was exhausting because it was mostly uphill. When I got home, the heart rate timer had canceled and restarted itself so it only read 7 minutes, and it was on the popup for if you click “email”. I probably forgot to put my phone in my pocket face up, which is really annoying.
 
Wednesday June 22, 2022:


Warmup: 5 minutes walking (had little space to walk so I couldn’t raise my heart rate so much)
5x4 2-leg bounds into a sprinter-start
Superset with 5 handstand holds with shoulder taps (20 combined taps in the first 3 sets, 10 taps in the second 2)

Pushups: 5x7 on-the-minute
Pistols: 1L,2L,1R,2R every minute for 10 minutes (spiked my heart rate over 180 before I decided to stop)
5x7 more pushups OTM

5x10 paradox crunches. I found that one set takes 50 seconds, I rested 40 seconds between sets.
 
Thursday June 23: Accessory day 2:
5x5 ATG split squats
5x10 band hammer curls, controlled eccentric (3 sets 70lbs, 2 sets 50lbs)
3x10 40lbs banded face pulls (these got tougher somehow, shaky form)
5 short monster walks with 70lbs
5x5 with 60kg crush grippers
3x20 supermans into 10 second holds
3x20 “Side/oblique pulses/crunches. (Lats worked hard too, going to feel this one tomorrow).

Friday, June 24:

Warmup: 5 minutes walking (in a circle around an inflatable pool)
Me and my brother were having fun doing box jumps at the park earlier, and there’s no room to sprint. So I did line drills from wrestling, since I’ve neglected foot strength lately.
20 jumps front/back
20 jumps front/back One legged
20 jumps side/side
20 jumps side/side one leg
20 scissors
20 “fast feet”
Then, after a few warmup sets, I tested my max pushups again. I got 25 reps at ~180lbs, up from 20 almost 3 weeks ago, though I admittedly used a bit of a wider grip (but it was still all delts/tris). Sweet.
15 minutes of pistols (1,2,1,2 each minute, got my BPM to the 190s). 90 combined reps, leaving 10 minutes left in the workout.
5x20 tapping handstand holds (10 taps per side)
Superset with 2x10 paradox crunches (tension went to my head, not my trunk, so I stopped there.)

Monday June 27:

Warmup: 5 minutes walking (finally back home)
Superset:
-4x sprinter starts- absolutely getting faster.
-4x4 hurdle hops over sawhorses (jumping consecutively is the hardest part for me)
-3x20 shoulder taps from handstand

4 Explosive pushups On-the-minute for 10 minutes (moving towards more explosiveness. Expirimented with clapping, ect.)
1,2,1,2 pistols every minute for 5 minutes, then my right knee started hurting so I stopped there. It would have been a long workout anyways.
4 explosive pushups on-the-minute for 7 minutes (not that explosive yet, getting there.)
7x4 pullups, roughly 2 minutes rest per set. These were really tough, calloused my hands. My lats have gotten weak from lack of use.

June 28: Accessory workout

A ton of hurdle hops and a few agility drills.
A neighbor kid joined me, he’s maybe 5 but I started liking him as soon as he said “Are you training?” rather than the usual “Doing exercise?”.
3 sets of monster walks, 5 sets of face pulls (much stronger now), 3 sets of crawling back and forth across the lawn. 5x5 with the 60kg grippers, which now feel like a toy.
5x5 hanging L-sit raises, which felt weak, and 3x20 superman pulses plus 10 second holds. These seem to have gotten harder and more sucky, maybe because my glutes were pre-fatigued.
Walked for 10 minutes or so to finish the workout.

June 29:

Walking for 5 minutes
3x10 narrow stance squats, mimicking the pistol, 3x10 hip hinges, 3x10 shoulder rolls.
7x4 explosive pushups on-the-minute.
1,2,1,2 pistols every minute for 15 minutes, at which point my knees started giving me problems and my quads started burning a little.
7x4 explosive pushups on the minute. Narrowing my grip a little, my pecs got super sore last time.
7x4 chinups. Last two sets were very tough.
 
Sat. July 2:

A brief warmup similar to skipping rope, pvc pipe walk.
10x4 explosive pushups OTM, with 3 sets of 4 pullups mixed in
1L,2L,1R,2R pistol squats for 30 minutes. Bounced off the bottom most of the time.
10x4 explosive pushups OTM, with 4 sets of 4 pullups mixed in.
 
Tues. July 5

I'm at RYM summer camp rn, stayed up all night on Sunday on the bus and slept 6 hours yesterday.

Sets of 3 vertical jumps, superset with 3x20 handstand shoulder taps.
6x4 explosive pushups OTM
2L,2L,2R,2R pistols every minute for 10 minutes.
6x4 explosive pushups OTM
7x4 pullups spread throughout the workout.

Thursday, July 7

Still on 6 hours sleep. Tapering back to max on Saturday.

3x3 vertical jumps superset with 3x10 handstand shoulder taps
4x4 explosive pushups OTM
2,2,2,2 pushups every minute for 5 minutes.
4x4 explosive pushups OTM
3x10sec L-sit holds supersetted with 3x20 supermans followed by 10 second holds.
 
Saturday, Test Day

Weighed in at 179lbs before first test.

Vertical Jump: 22inches (56cm- "Above Average" score, puts me well above average among wrestlers around my weight)
Long Jump: 8.75 feet (2.67meters- Average for elite athletes, very, very good for my age, and very, very good for elite wrestlers in my weight class. Possible that I fudged the test to do the tape-measurer being not perfectly perpendicular.)
Skipped power clean 1rm, because it will have gone down due to lack of practice.

Max bench press: 160lbs (10lbs PR! I credit the pushups. Still well below where I need to be.)
Max Back Squat (feet shoulder width, pointed only slightly out): 185lbsx4 reps (Rep PR! Still need to get much stronger.)

Pushups: 29 reps (4 rep pr from a few weeks ago. Switched back to narrow grip. This is a pretty terrible score. Need to double this.)
Chinups: 9 reps (don't have a previous max to compare to. 7 pullups was my previous pullup max. This is horrendous, need to triple this.)

16"/40cm box jumps in 1 minute-skipped for now (lack of suitable box)

1.5 mile run: 14:28 minutes:seconds. Calculated to VO2 max of 37. Needs improvement, although this is much better than I expected, likely due to A+A pistols. I ran continuously, feet and lungs my limiter. Never ran a mile without having to stop before.

Edit: This is the beginning of Coach Bott's Physical Wrestler Off-season wrestling program.
 
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