How I got Inspired
Regularly I have discussions about sports or better said, Martial Arts. Sometimes I claim certain things, and a lot of times I ask certain things to become a better all-round martial artist and of course human being. I tend to look for the best place to train and to look for the people who made a lot of progress in a very short amount of time.
In this quest, that is not only limited to Martial Arts, but to life in general, I keep my eyes wide open. On one of my ‘lucky moments’ I happened to bump in to a book, in the local bookstore The book I found was: ‘The Four Hour Workweek’, form Tim Ferriss. This book is a book that talks about certain aspects of Time management, but also about achieving, and specially achieving quick and effectively.
Among a lot of subjects, Tim Ferris wrote about his fitness tricks, and particularly about weight gaining and weight dropping. I was, at least to say, pretty interested in his method. But it took until my return from South-America and before my brother introduced me to the method Ferriss his used for his weight gaining.The technique is called High Intensity Training and was developed by Arthur Jones.
Another inspiration for weightlifting I found in the book ‘Integral Psychology’ form Ken Wilber. Wilber (also) writes about about the positive affects of weightlifting for your body, including the brain, and with that your mind.
Back from South America
As I was just back from Peru and Brazil, to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Cholitzu (a style of Mixed Martial Arts). I lost a few pounds/kilo’s. I weighted 90 kilo’s. I missed my strength, but also was excited about the promise of Tim Ferris and Arthur Jones their methods.
When I was back in Holland I decided to set my goals with weightlifting, before I would train BJJ again. Since I was 90 kilo’s and wanted not only to be back at my 92 kilo’s, but gain even more. I figured that 100 kilo’s would be a perfect weight for my length at 1.96. I decided to work out for 3 times a week, with my brother, cousin and at times by myself, and occasionally with my roommate. My goal was sett for a gain of 10 kilo’s.
In 6 weeks of time I achieved my goal. I must say it has cost me some pain, since I did not train any kickboxing or taekwondo, but also no MMA or BJJ. But the physical pain that I had was even worse, SINCE THIS IS A RADICAL METHOD!
How did I do it?
My main focus was to put out my intention and to work on intensity. My intention was to grow 10 kilo’s lean muscle as quick as possible. I must say, I failed to achieve. The result was that in six weeks I grew to a weight of 102,5 kilo’s. This included some fat as well. Well I did not wanted to have a big stomach, so my next focus was to loose this ‘extra’ weight. This I did with a lot of cardiotraining and regular BJJ training for a few weeks.
For more information please look at Tim Ferris blog and in the book of High Intensity Training. But for here are the key elements I used for my training. The funny thing is that these points are not even perfected by myself. There is a lot of room for improvement. But as I always say, ‘The proof of the pudding is the eating’, meaning “I” can say H.I.T. really works!
Here goes:
– State an intention for your training goals! (for example, loose weight, gain weight/muscle, improving your cardio, get stronger, get more muscle definition) AND CHECK IF THIS IS A METHOD FOR YOU!
– Train three times a week, with two days of recovering, since YOU NEED RECOVERING TIME
– Change you eating pattern, and eat huge amounts of protein!
– Never do weightlifting longer then 45 minutes, since afterwards you will begin to burn your muscles!
– Begin training the big muscles. The Squat and/or Dead lift are the best since the give you enough testosterone to do the rest of the workout, without warming up!
– Train as much as you can with free weights.
– Begin with the Squat, and go from the big muscles to the smaller ones.. The Squat will give you enough testosterone for the whole workout, you need no warming up, if you do it right!!
– Push the weights out for 5 seconds out and get the weights back in 5 seconds
– If you can, use more weight the next time, DO IT!
– Do every exercise only one time!! 6 reps to 10 reps is the goal, but don’t stop until you really really really can not do one rep more!!
– Begin with the biggest muscles and then slowly go to the smaller groups
– Find a training partner, who can assist you!!!
– If completely new to weightlifting do this with an experienced person!!! YOUR BODY IS YOUR TEMPLE, DON’T RUIN IT, KEEP IT HEALTHY!!
– Keep short brakes of 1 to 2 minutes of brakes between the exercises
– Remember what Arthur Jones said: ‘I afterwards you say to yourself you had a nice workout… it was not H.I.T.’. In this method you do not want to ‘slack’. A lot of times you can get close to throwing up.
– Muscles don’t grow at the gym, they need good food and they need rest, so after 10 weeks of hard training you need at least one week of recovering (and eating!!)
My weightlifting activities afterwards
Now that I am back at training more Martial Arts again, I only train once of once a two weeks high intensity training. So basically I am getting stronger now, but much slower then in the intense period of 6 weeks and 3 times a week in no more than 2 hours!!
Also it is important to know that in essence there are two kinds of training. One is with explosion and power (as we see with H.I.T.) this one is called anaerobic (which is referring to ‘without oxygen). The other one, which is also very important is aerobics. This means WITH oxygen. This is the kind of sports you do WITHOUT explosion and is mainly focused on endurance. A good example is running without sprints and interval.