Let's talk about Tito

Sometimes when kids tell you want they want to be when they grow up you smile and say, "that's nice", but inside you think, "An astronaut? Yeah right kid." Well, there's a 12-year-old boy who works out at my gym that I don't doubt for a second when he says he wants to become a professional UFC fighter. His real name is Thomas but everyone calls him "Tito."

Tito doin his thang in the gym

So to cut to the chase, Tito kicks ass. He runs faster, jumps higher and just blows the doors off of every workout we have. I hear he takes jujitsu and if so I feel sorry for the other kids in the class. He must twist them into pretzels.

So today was another standout Tito moment. The first part of our workout was upside down handstands. Basically you just throw your legs up against the wall and try to hold your self upside down for as long as you can. I did a minute and five seconds. My other two partners Kats and Derek went for a minute 20 and a minute 46 respectively I think.

Then there was Tito. He went for two minutes and more. I forget how much but he kicked all of our asses. Good for him. I actually got mad at the boy the first time I worked out next to him because he was jumping around like a jackrabbit and I was going into cardiac arrest. But honestly the kid is an inspiration. Hopefully I can get my little boy conditioned like him. (Not that I want him to become a UFC fighter but you know that I mean.)

Anyway, that was the first part of the workout. The second part was five rounds, count 'em FIVE rounds of 30 situps, 20 box jumps and 10 pullups.

And I did the whole thing. No skipping reps. I came in last but damn it felt good to finish the whole workout without having to make any modifications. Today felt good. Time for a beer.

Be careful what you wish for

On Friday I complained about how I had to scale back the workout and do a lesser version of what everyone else was doing. Today I did the full workout but was wishing I could give up at the same time. Of course Bumper the gym owner and head torturer felt the need to take pics of my pain. Thanks Bump.

Actually the Raw Fitness Maui workout wasn't too bad, three rounds of 10 reps of front squat followed by a 400 meter run. I repped out the first 10 reps pretty quickly but then totally lagged during my run. By the last round I was the last guy out of four running back to the gym. My legs were okay and not too fatigued but my lower back was killing me. That sort of made everything stiff and I felt like the Tin Man trying to run.

But at least I didn't rerack my weights like I wanted to in the middle of my set. A small victory I guess but I'll take any kind of a win I can get right now. Yay. Hopefully tomorrow I get to write about how I set a new record but somehow I feel that post won't be written until 2011 at least.

My injury

Since today is a rest day I'll take this time to tell you about my injury earlier this year. Basically I tore my right pectoral by being stupid. What happened was I had been doing Crossfit at our gym in Albuquerque but it wasn't a Crossfit class. A friend of mine had introduced me to the http://www.crossfit.com/ website and we would copy down the workout for the day that was posted then do it at the gym. This was my first serious attempt at getting back to the gym after like 3 years or something like that. Anyway, my body was responding well to Crossfit and after like a month I felt better physically than I had in a long time. The only thing was, we didn't do a lot of benching, it was mostly push ups when it came to a chest workout. Well after a grueling Crossfit workout one day I figured I would get on the bench and put some weight up, just to see how much strength I had gotten back. So I warm up with 135 then slap on 185 next. No problems. So far so good. Then the real test of 225 comes and I rep that bastard like 12 times. Effortlessly. Right about now I'm thinking Crossfit has made my body invincible so I throw on 275, a weight I had not done in years. Mind you before this if I did a weight I couldn't lift I never got injured. It just meant I couldn't lift it and it would sit on my chest or shoulders until someone helped it off of me. So I had no fear while putting the weight on. Either I would lift it or I wouldn't. What I wasn't prepared for was that there was a third possibility. Pain.

While lifting the weight up I felt something explode in my right bicep. The pain was incredible and thank God one of my wife's coworkers also happened to be working out that day and was spotting me. I couldn't breathe and felt like I had to throw up. I was rolling around on the bench then on the floor. I was f---ed up.

Anyway, the next day I had bruises on my right bicep and right side of my ribcage. The doc said I tore my pec and unless I got surgery it would stay torn. He held up four fingers and said "this is what your pec muscles used to look like." Then he held up two fingers and said, "Now they look like this." Basically I ripped half of them. Great.

So now I take it slow when I bench of course. I've put up 225 again but I'm afraid to go any heavier. I posted a pic below of the bruising from back in March. The moral of  this story, take it slow and do it right. Some of these gym injuries are no joke.

Annoyed at gnats and angry at myself

If you've been outside on Maui in the last couple of days you might have noticed swarms of gnats flying around. Not like Biblical plague proportions where clouds of them block the sun or anything, but enough where if you're running and breathing hard you will inahle nine or ten of those buggahs.

Anyway, the gnats were annoying but not my biggest concern today. Today I had several other things on my mind when it came to my Friday fitness routine. These concerns were:

1) It was a bastard of a workout at Raw Fitness Maui
2) I had no recovery day because I chose to do the MMA conditioning class at Elite Fitness on Thursday
3) I am the weakest sister in the freaking class

Yeah, no joke. Here's why. Today at RFM we had one of those workouts where you look at what's listed on the board and wonder how fast your gym mates will dial 911 after you collapse. First thing I saw was a sequence of numbers, "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1," followed by some even more frightening words, namely "hang power snatch", "overhead squats" and "ring dips."

Now what does this mean? It means you do 10 hang power snatches, 10, overhead squats and 10 ring dips. Then you do 9 hang power snatches, 9 overhead squats and 9 ring dips. You getting the picture?

Oh yeah, then you run 400 meters, which is fine. But when you come back you do everything in reverse sequence: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

BUT what really really really sucked is I didn't do the listed workout. Nope. I had to scale it back to where I (1)  was just lifting the bar w/ no weights, (2) only did a 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, then a 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 sequence and (3) did regular dips instead of ring dips.

Of course gym owners Bumper and Kristi were totally on target when they suggested I scale it back because I almost died doing the lesser workout anyway. Even so, part of me WANTED to die while going for the complete workout. I was watching one of our members named Derek who went all out and I totally wished I could have been there with him. Instead I scaled it back. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .

Ah well, I guess I really can't wait to write that blog about how I had the fastest time, lifted the most weight or did the most reps one day. It'll happen one day I guess. It's just that making slow but steady gains is hard for a guy with no patience.

The MMA Cane Spider

There's a mixed martial arts cardio class that I've been meaning to check out at Elite Fitness and today was the only day I could do go. It kinda sucks because Thursday is usually our rest day for Crossfit and if I know Bumper, he'll have an evil workout planned for tomorrow.

But I got this website now so every day I don't write something I feel like I'm cheating the 3 people who read it. And I can't write something if I don't workout. So no recovery time for me today.

Anyway, I head over to Elite and Ernest is there setting up the stations for the class. Ernest is about six feet tall and maybe 235 pounds. He's got a tattoos all over his back and shoulders and his arms look like he could rip out a Banyan tree if he wanted to.

I ask him about the cardio class and he shows me how it works. There's seven stations and at each station you workout for 30 seconds then go to the next one. This goes on for 3 rounds. The workout goes like this: elevated pushups, box jumps, flipping a very large tire across the floor, jumping sideways over three stretched out ropes, deadlifts, hitting another tire with a sledgehammer, then MMA burpees.

What are MMA burpees you ask? Well, as you know a regular burpee is basically dropping into a push up then jumping back up. The MMA burpees have you dropping into a push up then springing back up and giving the heavy bag a 1, 2 punch (jab, cross combo).

You get the picture. Long story short, it was a f---ing tough workout. Also I have to point out that the Crossfit training I did saved my life. I would have been dead on the floor after the first round instead of just winded and sweating after three rounds. Also what helped was a cane spider that jumped out of the tire while I was flipping it. I was so intent on smashing the damn thing with the tire that I didn't realize I had flipped all the way across the gym. And for some reason the spider didn't run away, it was there every time I went back to the station. For all I know it was in training too. It does live in an MMA gym after all.

Anyway, after those three rounds we had three rounds of "light" weight training. Bench, shoulder press, shoulder laterals, bicep curls and pulldowns for 12 to 15 reps. The whole workout was about half an hour but I was drenched with sweat afterwards. And I can't believe I'm going to say this but I hope to God we run at Raw Fitness tomorrow. My body has no more strength to lift any more weights this week.

A pregnant lady kicked my ass tonight

Yup, you read that right. She out lifted and out jumped me by like a mile. It wasn't even close. I hate to guess as to how pregnant she was but it seemed like about 4 months? But I guess I should tell you what workout we were doing tonight first.

Down at the Raw Fitness Maui gym it was deadlifts for our strength workout, and then this crazy combination of clean and jerk followed up by box jumps. Basically you clean and jerk weights for as many reps as you can for 30 seconds, rest 30 seconds, then box jump for 30 seconds. Sounds a little tough right? Did I mention we have to do five rounds in 10 minutes? It's a beautiful thing.

Anyway there were some new people at the gym, a haole couple. The guy was in great shape and the girl was pregnant but still in great shape. They were in the first heat and went ballistic. You count how many total reps you did for the clean and jerk and box jumps at the end of each round and then add it all up. Like for me I did 2 clean and jerks each round followed up by about 10 box jumps so my total for all five rounds was like 60 reps. I know, it's like a little kid's total right? Anyway, the pregnant girl does like 5 clean and jerks each round followed up by at least 20 box jumps so she's got like 100 reps or something. Her husband was clean and jerking weights through the roof and box jumped like Q*bert on crack. I didn't even want to see what his total was. I kept expecting the girl to give birth right there and have her kid jump out and start power cleaning his umbilical cord. Sigh.

No blog tomorrow. It's a rest day for Crossfit and I was planning to go hit the MMA gym but I have to take my son to the Maui County Fair Parade.  I'll be back on Friday though. Stay tuned.

In the beginning

Guess I should tell you how this all started.

I was at my 20th high school reunion this summer (Maui High Sabers c/o 90) and ran into a classmate of mine by the name of Robert "Bumper" Kikuchi. In high school he was like the fastest guy on Maui so of course I expected him to be out of shape. Except he's not. In fact he has his own Crossfit gym and invites me to workout. No problem I think. I had a friend of mine introduce me to it earlier this year although I kinda got injured and had to stop. You just go to http://www.crossfit.com/ and follow whatever the workout is for that day, which is a pretty tough workout usually. Anyway I figure Bumper doesn't have anything new for me so I go check it out.

The place is nothing more than a garage with weights all around and ropes hanging from the ceiling. But he's got me sweating after a 3 minute warm up and then has me lying down on the ground and gasping for air over the next seven minutes. I couldn't believe it. We did something called thrusters and burpees back to back and I almost saw the bright light and went over to the other side. It was nuts.

Meanwhile I look around the gym and there are high school girls ripping through a more advanced workout than I just did. It was embarrassing. And painful. I was hooked.

Then a week later my cousin, an MMA ring girl here on Maui (yeah yeah I'll post her picture later) invite me out with one of her fighter friends, a Filipino guy by the name of Wally. Anyway after a couple of beers Wally invites my cousin and I both down to the gym where he trains for a workout. We go and check it out later that week. Basically my cousin and I were the only ones there without scary tattoos and large, calloused knuckles. But everybody was really friendly (yeah, I know, could have been because of my ring girl cousin) and the workout was fast and furious. Wally had me hitting the heavy bag with jabs and crosses, hooks and uppercuts. Then we worked on speed drills in the ring where I tried to hit the pads while moving around. Then we did something else that involved more punching and push-ups when we weren't punching. Then I asked if I could practice kicking just so I wouldn't have to punch anymore. If it were a real fight I would have gotten beaten down like Tina Turner. I was tired, blind from the sweat in my eyes and couldn't break a bubble with my jab. I liked it.

So now I had two gyms, two types of workouts to consider. I still hated cardio, but at least I was having fun now. Then this blog idea started to form in my head and here we are. I figured if I was going to try and kill myself while doing these workouts I might as well let everybody else in on the joke. Excuse me while I laugh and ice my knuckles.