Taco lunch fueled a good workout

I’m giving credit for my good workout last night to a lunch of three tinga tacos with loads of hot sauce from Don Gabriel’s Mexican Restaurant in West Chester. Muchas gracias for the fuel.

The circuit hits the major muscle
groups of the body. Not designed
to build mass, the circuit increases
muscle strength, muscle endurance and
provides a great cardio workout at the
same time.

Here’s the circuit we did in combat fitness: Inclined pushups (feet raised about two feet), side to sides (lateral jumping movement so you land on one leg – kind of looks like a speed skater in full sprint), bicycles (sit-ups where you touch elbow to opposite knee while moving your legs as if riding a bike), squat rows, chest press on TRX (like a pushup except your hands hold handles at the end of a rope that is looped over a pull-up bar so you’re suspended above the floor), handstand pushups against a wall, jump squats, pushups into a Spider-Man plank (do a regular pushup and then lift one leg off the ground and bring the knee to elbow so you look like Spider-Man scaling a building), hanging leg lifts, dips, squats with medicine ball (hold the ball against your chest, squat and extend your arms straight out from your chest), throwing knees into the heavy bag, burpees into a kettle bell lift and then Bulgarian split squats while holding a weight.

Circuit training works the entire body and provides cardio and strength building. What we did last night is more or less a standard circuit for us. We go around the circuit twice. During the first lap, we spend 30 seconds at each station and get 30 seconds rest between stations. During the second lap, we spend 30 seconds at each station and get 15 seconds rest between stations.

Thirty seconds might not sound like a long time, but I assure you that it can seem an eternity depending on the exercise. For instance, doing mountain climbers or jump squats for 30 seconds really sucks; pushups for 30 seconds, not bad.  And you can get in a good number of reps in 30 seconds. I can do 20 to 23 inclined pushups, about 10 pull-ups, 11 or 12 dips (depending on what stations I’ve already done), and five to six hand stand pushups in 30 seconds.

After combat fitness we had about a five-minute break and then Haganah class started. I had the benefit of partnering up with three guys who really know their stuff. They were able to point out little things and big things I was doing wrong.  A little thing was the angle at which I was pinning my attacker’s arm against his own body during certain drills and a big thing was the height at which I was throwing knees into my attacker’s legs. “You’re throwing aerobicise knees,” one guy told me. “You don’t want them to be high. You want to drive them into your attacker so when you’re done throwing them you have moved him back several feet.”   

Being constantly corrected is something I’ve come to crave. Without it I could spend weeks doing something wrong, and after weeks of doing it the wrong way it can be hard to make yourself do it the right way. Ideally, I would have one of the instructors standing next to me with a switch while I did the drills and every time I did something wrong he would deliver a lash. Immediate corrective criticism with some pain to facilitate learning.