Predictable Progress in Endurance

I have a black belt test coming up in December, and there are a few things I'm trying to concentrate on while I prepare for it. One of them being conditioning, since I expect to have to fight 3-4 black belts in a row without rest.

I recently got Infinite Intensity, Never Gymless, and Full Throttle Conditioning by Ross Enamait (my hero!!), and these have been a great resource.

I have one question though, how many times a week should I train endurance? I did a very intense heavy bag session yesterday* which left me feeling quite dizzy at times, slightly sick to my stomach, and very inclined to just lie down and sleep right then (which was weird). The only thing is, I don't know how often or how hard I can train this attribute to develop it. I don't want to over do it, but I'm afraid if I don't push myself as hard as I can, I won't be ready by test date. Endurance has always been a huge problem for me, and it seems that no matter how hard I work at it, it just won't come.

* 3 rounds of 3 minutes (1 min. rest)
4 x 1 minutes (1 min. rest)
5 x 30 seconds (30 sec. rest)

I plan on re-reading FTC and see if Ross discusses it there. I wouldn't be surprised if he did and I just missed it.

Thanks

Patrick

 

I just thought of something. Maybe I'm not pacing myself properly... I try to go all out the entire round, every round, but maybe that's too much.

Anyone?

 

You don't want to spend too much time in a state of complete exhaustion if your goal is to fight fresh and focused. It's the same mistake a lot of lifters make when they bench press to failure 5x a week and can't figure out why their numbers aren't skyrocketing.

First of all, are you using proper workout nutrition? Feeling a bit dizzy and nauseous is one thing, but if you felt like falling asleep then I suspect you either were working out way too early in the day or you had low blood sugar from a lack of proper workout shake maybe.

Keep in mind that your "all out" energy system, your ATP-CP anaerobic system, lasts about 10 seconds when you're giving 100% exertion. So yeah, you need to pace yourself just a bit and try to fight at about 80-90% for a few minutes at a time. But again, don't go to complete failure or you'll end up never going anywhere, or at best you'll progress very slowly.

 

Look into a lot of knockdown karate training sites on the Web. Because of the nature of the belt tests (continuous kumite), they should have lots of good information for you.

My buddy Mark Sand has a terrific blog on training for full contact karate where he shares a lot of his training ideas, routines, and workouts. He has competed in several knockdown tournaments and recently earned his shodan where I believe he had to do continuous kumite for it and shared some of his training ideas.

http://www.sandmantraining.com/

As for my own training, my dojo likes a pretty intense circuit to prepare you for the test. Do a round of bagwork or padwork (60 sec longer than the round would be for the test) and then in between rounds instead of resting you skip rope. So if you were preparing for a 5-man kumite with 2 minute rounds, you would do 5x3 min rounds of bagwork/padwork with rope skipping in between for a total of 20 minutes.

Congrats on testing for your shodan.

 

Thanks for the replies, Socrastein and Kuma. I thought everyone was ignoring me.

I think my general nutrition is good. I eat almost entirely whole foods, raw goat milk, honey, fish, ham, turkey, eggs, salads, apples, plumbs, bananas, carrots, celery, whole wheat bread, etc. Good stuff. I get a protein shake of about 40-50g afterwords and eat a few pieces of fruit (maybe a few carrots with a banana or an apple or two).

My pre-workout shake my be one of my problems. Since I eat about every three hours (with lunch at about 12), I usually do 1-2 hours of training in the afternoon, starting at about 1:30. I'm done at about 3:15-30, and I either take a shake or have a snack.

I wasn't working out early in the day, so I guess I was just pushing too hard. I'll try lowering the intensity a little.

Thanks!

Thanks, Kuma. I'll do some searching.

 

Diet overall definitely sounds good, so it seems that your blood sugar is crashing as I suspected. You can't train hard for 2 hours (or even 30 minutes) without ingesting sugar, or you'll end up passing out or feeling dizzy and tired every time.

It may not be that you're going too hard, just too hard for the amount of nutrients you're giving yourself during the workout window. I recommend you get some Surge Recovery and have a serving with you while you workout and sip it over the course of your entire workout. Keep everything else the same.

You should notice you are able to push harder and still feel less exhausted, and you'll get that much more out of your sessions.

 

I can't afford anything right now (that's right, anything), but until I can, I'll see what I can find on some natural homemade sports drinks.

 

If nothing else, just drink some juice during your workout. Easily assimilated sugars are what you need. Have some OJ until you can get yourself a real shake.

 

conditioning is like strength work, general to specific is the way to go it doesnt matter how hard you work the anearobic systems if you dont have a good aerobic base you will go lactic too soon and your conditioning will never improve

Do you have access to a heart rate monitor?

what is your resting heart rate and what are the lengths and number of rounds you will be fighting?

 

Is that, stricly speaking true? I've been told that if you train in the anaerobic range, you get aerobic improvements as well, which is not the case in reverse.

 

who told you this and what studies did they quote (it wasnt the tabata study was it), yes anerobic work can effect aerobic fitness, but its not the same effect as pure aerobic work and the effects on the heart can be detrimental if you have a poor conditioning base to start with, baiscally it comes down to eccentric vs. concentric cardiac hypertrophy.

here is a post on the sudject by joel jamsion a noted S&C coach who was the former head conditioning coach for Pride:

 

I don't find this obvious at all. What's obvious to me is that endurance is very specific to the muscles involved, and there is no such thing as "general conditioning" in the way this article seems to imply.

Cardiac supply is rarely the limiting factor for someone who is training intelligently. The entire post you quoted was all about cardiac supply and how to train to affect it.

If having a great cardiac output was the key factor to great performance, then you could train your aerobic capacity with any exercise (let's say jogging) and expect to have similar endurance levels while swimming, fighting, climbing, cycling, etc. This isn't true in the least bit. Lance Armstrong demonstrated this very well when he decided to try to run a marathon in NY. He came in like 800th something place even though he had possibly the highest V02 max ever recorded. He had plenty of blood being delivered, so obviously that is only a small part of the picture.

Cosgrove talks all about this mistaken notion of a "general aerobic base" for conditioning here.

 

Thanks for the article. Bookmarked.