James Bland
06-20-2007, 07:42 AM
Before I start apologies for such a very long post, especially since it’s my first one , but I wanted to put my goals and plans down some were and here seemed like a good place since a lot of my ideas bouncing about my head have came from the Performance Menu and these forums.
I have been considering my long term goals in terms of sports and fitness and have decided I need to have a more definite plan instead of what ever GPP work I feel like doing at any given time. I am 24 and have been training in BJJ for just over 3 years now and have been a blue belt for around 1 year, I would consider my self to have been a “hobbyist” BJJ player for the most part training two or three times a week and doing the occasional competition. Last year I moved to a different part of the country and started training at a different club where I have became a bit more serious and train 3-4 times a week and compete quite regularly (3 times since November and another one due at the end of the month).
Goals
Compete at European championships next year, no definite date yet but generally at the end of January.
Compete in mma, nothing major just want to fight a few times at local level.
Learn Olympic lifts
Improve body composition.
I compete as a Super Super Heavy weight 100.4kg+ in BJJ, based on previous competitions I would say I have good conditioning compared to other competitors in my division. At my last competition I had 3 matches that lasted in the full 6 minutes and was able to out work my opponents even if I lost, in my last match after being taken down and pinned for most of the match I was able to reverse my opponent towards the end of the match as he was more tired and out of breath than me. At the same time I would say I am weaker than a lot of people I compete against or even people around 90kg I train with at our club. I know strength isn’t the be all and end all of BJJ but I feel over powered especially in the clinch and feel it would be a weakness if I was competing in mma. I would also say that a lot of the met con I do is limited more by my strength that conditioning. I haven’t really train with weights for quite a few years and when I did for most of the time it was pretty poor. My flexibility is in general poor, I fail all three flexibility tests Greg talks about in his article on flexibility, and bizarrely I can still touch my foot to my head though so like playing around with rubber guard.
To make things a bit harder I have recently purchased a house with my girlfriend, this means money is pretty tight and I can’t afford a gym membership or any new equipment. However because I have my own space I can finally house my old barbell and dumbbells from my parents house along with a couple 100 kgs of weights. I’ve also got a sandbag and medicine ball that I made my self.
As my main goal at the Europeans in just over 6 months I think the best way forward for me is to concentrate on strength training initially, so I can work harder on met con in the middle and then concentrate on SPP at the end.
I have been recovering from a chest infection I got from my girl friend so been working on some flexibility training as I don’t want to push to hard before the competition at the end of the month.
I have been considering my long term goals in terms of sports and fitness and have decided I need to have a more definite plan instead of what ever GPP work I feel like doing at any given time. I am 24 and have been training in BJJ for just over 3 years now and have been a blue belt for around 1 year, I would consider my self to have been a “hobbyist” BJJ player for the most part training two or three times a week and doing the occasional competition. Last year I moved to a different part of the country and started training at a different club where I have became a bit more serious and train 3-4 times a week and compete quite regularly (3 times since November and another one due at the end of the month).
Goals
Compete at European championships next year, no definite date yet but generally at the end of January.
Compete in mma, nothing major just want to fight a few times at local level.
Learn Olympic lifts
Improve body composition.
I compete as a Super Super Heavy weight 100.4kg+ in BJJ, based on previous competitions I would say I have good conditioning compared to other competitors in my division. At my last competition I had 3 matches that lasted in the full 6 minutes and was able to out work my opponents even if I lost, in my last match after being taken down and pinned for most of the match I was able to reverse my opponent towards the end of the match as he was more tired and out of breath than me. At the same time I would say I am weaker than a lot of people I compete against or even people around 90kg I train with at our club. I know strength isn’t the be all and end all of BJJ but I feel over powered especially in the clinch and feel it would be a weakness if I was competing in mma. I would also say that a lot of the met con I do is limited more by my strength that conditioning. I haven’t really train with weights for quite a few years and when I did for most of the time it was pretty poor. My flexibility is in general poor, I fail all three flexibility tests Greg talks about in his article on flexibility, and bizarrely I can still touch my foot to my head though so like playing around with rubber guard.
To make things a bit harder I have recently purchased a house with my girlfriend, this means money is pretty tight and I can’t afford a gym membership or any new equipment. However because I have my own space I can finally house my old barbell and dumbbells from my parents house along with a couple 100 kgs of weights. I’ve also got a sandbag and medicine ball that I made my self.
As my main goal at the Europeans in just over 6 months I think the best way forward for me is to concentrate on strength training initially, so I can work harder on met con in the middle and then concentrate on SPP at the end.
I have been recovering from a chest infection I got from my girl friend so been working on some flexibility training as I don’t want to push to hard before the competition at the end of the month.