6/20 I got a pretty bad exertion/exercise induced headache last night a little while after posting. I did end up breaking the fast for dinner last night, at around 24 hours of fasting. Advil & a menthol gel strip helped some but didn't really knock the headache out. 6.5 hours sleep, 67 HRV, 79% recovery I still have a bit of a headache carried over from last night. I saw my chiropractor this morning and he did some stuff on the back of my head that helped bring it down to about 20% of what it was before (pressure on the sub-occipital something or other, IIRC). Walked 33 minutes @ 2mph, 114 avg BPM. My right foot's arch started getting a little sore in the last few minutes. Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises (both legs at once) Swam for cardiac output, 58 minutes, 131 avg BPM. I had some trouble keeping my HR from getting below the range I am shooting for, I had to swim a bit more vigorously than usual. Wrist rehab: Gyroscope exercise Ankle rehab: Heel sits/rocking, 90 seconds Wrist rehab: plank (from knees) on wobble board, both hands at once, 30s hold, 5 reps.
6/21 Sleep 8.5 hours (though very disjointed and I was awake for a good bit in the middle of the night). HRV 64, recovery 62%. Turns out I am getting sick after all... I've got a sore throat and am not feeling so great. Took the whole day off of everything, including the rehab exercises. 6/22 Slept 9.5 hours, HRV 59, 64% recovery. This is the lowest HRV I can remember getting. Still feeling not so great today, I will likely not do anything exercise-related today.
6/26 I'm still a bit sick, I've been sleeping poorly. HRV 58 this morning, low recovery. I plan to re-start my 8 week conditioning block as I had only gotten one week in. I'll take the rest of this week as a deload week, maybe go to Muay Thai depending on how I feel, then start back with a higher activity load on this coming Saturday. Walked briefly for ~19 minutes at 2mph, 110 avg bpm. My ankle is a bit sore after this--I haven't been doing any rehab exercises (aside from a couple sporadic ones for the wrist) since the 20th. Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises (both legs at once)
6/27 Finally feeling better today. 8 hours sleep, HRV 62, 83% recovery (green) Wrist rehab: 5 5-second isometric holds (up & down only). Walked 33 minutes @ 2mph, 100 BPM avg. Didn't really sweat today, which was nice, and likely due to the low avg HR. This did make my foot a bit sore... I need to get back on top of both my wrist & ankle rehab, and get back to doing hamstring recruitment & shoulder maintenance too. I plan to do my usual hamstring exercises tomorrow during breaks at work. Ankle rehab: Heel sits/rocking, 90 seconds. Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises (both legs at once). Wrist rehab: Gyroscope exercise
I've been super lazy, did occasional rehab stuff (very occasional) over the past few weeks, otherwise no exercise. My mom is in town today and needed to do PT for a while, so I went and hit the heavy bags while she was doing that. No particular format, but I did try to stop and rest when my HR hit the yellow zones. I went a lot lighter after about 30 minutes, including long stretches where I was resting (talking). It felt good to get some exercise. I'm going to start back in on the conditioning program (from week 1), starting tomorrow. I plan to do 3-4 sessions of conditioning, in addition to getting to Muay Thai for at least one class, probably 2 or more: Cardiac output 60 min Tempo intervals 10-15 reps HRI 8-12 reps, cardiac output 30-45 min Cardiac output 60 min If I only do 3 conditioning sessions I'll drop either the tempo intervals or one of the 60 min cardiac output sessions. I plan to do these later today: - Wrist rehab (isometric holds: 5x5 seconds up/down, gyroscope exercise) - Ankle rehab (3x8 eccentric calf raises, heel sitting/rocking for 90 sec)
7/5 addendum: HRV this day was 56, very low recovery score (~6.5 hours sleep). (HRV has been pretty low during the past 2 weeks of no exercise, down into the mid 50s. I usually only measure it when I'm exercising regularly, it was interesting to see it change over the 2 weeks of no exercise. Previously I'd never seen it drop below 62 or so.) I did all the rehab stuff I planned, except the eccentric calf raises. 7/6 HRV: 68, good recovery score, 8 hours sleep Strength Training 2 rounds of: Black resistance band lateral walk (15 steps each direction). Lying leg raises with ankle circles (pressing and holding 16kg), 8 raises 8 circles each direction. Indian clubs shoulder mobility Trapbar deadlift 8x125 5x175 3x5x225 Working sets above alternated with Single arm cable low row 12x160, 12x180, 12x200 Single leg hamstring curls on machine 10x35, 8x45, 8x60 Rehab Wrist: Gyroscope exercise, 5 30s plank-lights (on my knees) on wobble board, did 2 of them with only the injured hand. (Building up to doing all of them with just the injured hand.) Ankle: 3x8 eccentric calf raises, 90s heel sits/rocking. Tempo Intervals 10 intervals of 12s work (70% effort), 1 minute rest and/or active rest with shadow boxing.
7/7 HRV: 64, 8 hours sleep, good recovery score. Walked 35 minutes on mostly flat trails. 104 avg BPM. 8 high resistance intervals on an elliptical at max resistance (5-6s work at max intensity, rest til HR 130-140, repeat). 30 minutes cardiac output on an elliptical, 137 avg BPM.
7/7 Addendum Forgot to add: Wrist rehab: 5 5s isometric holds up/down, gyroscope exercise Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises, 90s heel sits/rocking 7/8 HRV: 64 Sleep: 8h Recovery: Good, though I feel fairly tired... Wrist rehab: 5 30s planks (well, more table-top from knees), twice on just the injured hand, 3 times with both hands. Did these at work (no wobble board) as I may not be home til pretty late (if I go to Muay Thai & sparring hour). Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises, 90s heel sits/rocking Started getting a migraine in the afternoon so decided to rest for the rest of the day.
7/8 addendum Forgot to add: wrist gyroscope exercise under wrist rehab 7/9 I'm pretty tired today... 6.5 hours sleep, 64 HRV, good recovery score despite that. I just did rehab stuff today... I do plan to try to get some good sleep and get myself over to Muay Thai tomorrow. Wrist rehab: Isometric holds (five 5s holds up/down), gyroscope exercise Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises, 90s heel sits/rocking
7/9: I forgot to do the gyroscope exercise, oops. (Wrote it with the intention of doing it later.) 7/10 HRV: 70 Sleep: 8h Recovery: 74% (high yellow) Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises, 90s heel sits/rocking. Wrist rehab: 5 30s planks from my knees, one of them with just the injured hand, the other 4 with both hands. Gyroscope exercise (planned for later). Muay Thai, beginners class I felt like class was pretty hard today. Looking at my graph afterwards, no wonder--lots of time in the red zone. I wore my ankle brace for class. We started with 2 rounds of skipping rope. My ankle did ok, though it started getting a bit sore in the 2nd round. It was ok for the rest of class though. I think doing the eccentric calf raises earlier contributed to my calves burning out a bit while skipping. We then did 100 kicks into a kick shield. My partner went first, then I did 50 (25 on each side), took a break while my partner did some extra kicks (he didn't want to break his up when I asked, as I knew I wasn't going to get through all 100 in one go), and then did the other 50 (25 each side). We focused on cutting the kick angle during this warm-up (so leg mostly goes straight up with your hip pushing out, and then cuts in at the last part of the movement). Then we geared up and did a bunch of play sparring with simple striking combos (all ending with a kick or teep), and alternating with your partner so you throw one combo, then they throw one, back and forth. I will probably not go to more Muay Thai this week and let my body adjust a bit. I'm not sure whether I'll do both of the cardiac output sessions I have left in my conditioning plan for the week--I'll see how I feel. I will do at least one of them though.
7/11 - 7/12 My ankle got to feeling pretty messed up later that night after Muay Thai. I did some PT exercises on these days but not sure if I did all of them. (I had a draft here but it got lost, didn't write them down elsewhere.) 7/13 I didn't do much strength training--I was running late, and we spent some time fascial scraping my calves & the injured foot/ankle. I did do some hamstring curls and my trainer observed the eccentric calf raises on one leg to see what may have been causing my foot issues when I swapped to single leg. He thinks I was just over-working it. I had a friend over who wanted to learn some basic Muay Thai stuff so I got in a bit of a workout showing him basic strikes and combos on a bag. My ankle got pretty sore during this--I put on the brace halfway through. Before I had gone back to Muay Thai I was able to do bagwork without any soreness--I think it was probably the jump rope that got to me. I'll try to avoid doing that next week. Ankle rehab: 10x eccentric calf raise one foot only Wrist rehab: 5 5s isometric holds up/down
7/14 & 15 -- didn't do anything 7/16 I'm going to rework the conditioning program I came up with, reducing the # of sessions per week. Even if its not ideal, hopefully I can make something that is easier to do. I want to actually make it more than a few weeks in. I feel like sometimes I get into the groove and everything goes well with a high volume, but other times I just really don't feel like keeping up with it. It doesn't help that I don't particularly enjoy most exercise. I enjoy going to Muay Thai though. I am still thinking about maybe doing some amateur fights at some point, but if I do I really need to focus on losing weight and improving my fitness. I am also hoping to get back to BJJ soonish--I have an MRI coming up for that injured left thumb. I think a big thing is making sure I'm sleeping enough. I have been getting a lot of 5.5 & 6 hour nights. So my general plan is to resume walking regularly at work when I'm at the office (not today), and to do a lower volume of conditioning for an 8 week block and make it through that. Conditioning for this week (first week of 8, weeks start on Saturday): - Cardiac output 60 min - Tempo intervals 12-15 In the other 7 weeks I'll have 2 conditioning + a strength session, or 3 conditioning if I'm using the strength session for tempo lifting. In addition, I'll have an optional conditioning session that I can tack on if I am feeling motivated, or skip if I'm not. Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises, 90s heel sits/rocking Wrist rehab: 5 5s isometric holds up/down, gyroscope exercise 14 tempo intervals I warmed up with some shadow boxing & forward rolls, and lightly hitting the heavy bag. Then 14 intervals (12s 70% effort, 60s rest).
Sounds like a good plan what exercises you doing for cardiac output and for the tempo intervals? What's your average resting heart rate?
For cardiac output I generally either swim or walk hills (slow going up, jogging down). I sometimes use cardio machines though (e.g., if I am also doing high resistance intervals, so I'm already on an elliptical or bike). For tempo intervals so far I have always just hit heavy bags. This is not super accurate though (hard to gauge if I'm using 70% effort); from what I recall of the Joel Jamieson DVDs (a friend had them and let me borrow), the best way to accurately gauge 70% effort is to find an exercise I can do at 100% with some sort of output metric (distance traveled, for instance), then repeat that exercise and aim for 70% of the previous measurement. The best exercise would thus be something like running (where I can gauge distance), or cardio equipment that has a 'free run' feature (like some Woodway treadmills). But I don't like running in general... I could probably do it on a cardio bike or something though. But I like to use tempo intervals for recovery, so ~20 minutes total for the workout... I am less likely to do it if I have to drive to the gym for a 20 minute workout. So I just do them on my heavy bag, and try to keep my effort output at around 70%. So not just blasting kicks as fast as I can, but pretty steady striking for the 12s work interval. In the morning while still lying in bed (taking HRV), my HR would get down to about 62-64. More recently (less exercise, poor sleep), my resting HR has been more like 68-74 in the morning taking my HRV. I'm sitting at my desk at work right now and my HR is 72. I don't have the 'continuous' HR feature enabled on my watch though; I just turned that back on. It measures every 5 minutes or so and tells you the lowest & highest HR of the day.
7/17 HRV: 64 Sleep: 7.5h Recovery: Green Walked 30 minutes @ 2mph, avg HR was 103 bpm. Ankle PT: 3x8 eccentric calf raises, 90s heel sitting/rocking Wrist PT: 5 30 second planks. Alternated full planks (push-up position) with single arm planks from my knees (on the injured hand). Gyroscope exercise. Muay Thai, beginners class I warmed up on the heavy bag for a round instead of jump rope due to my ankle. Then we shadow boxed for another 2 rounds. After that we grabbed a partner & full gear for: - Kick trading (throw a kick, block a kick, repeat). Rear & switch kicks. - Same, but adding teeps & kick catches. - Kick trading with hand strikes and/or feints first Then we play sparred for the remainder of class. I sparred one round, was on the heavy bag for a round (though I mostly rested, and went super light on the bag), sparred another round, then sparred with the instructor (that maxing out of my HR), who told me to sit out after cause of how tired I was. I sat out 2 rounds, and then did a final round of sparring. Ankle felt fine during class, and so far is fine after class.
Honestly if your resting HR is high 60s to even low 70s you should see great increases in conditioning if you are consistent and in the right range Start with 30mins and add 5 mins a week and try to keep your work hr between 130-150bpm if you are under 30 and 120+140bpm if you are over. Honestly an average of HR of 103bpm might be too low to.make a significant impact on your resting HR. Also 20mins of tempos is fine but add 10mins of cardiac output to warm up to make the session a good conditioning one. 3 sessions a week will make a big difference just start conservatively and add time each week I'd invest in a big if you can good low impact cardio exercise remember you can also use shadow boxing, very light technical bag work,ed ball work etc to break up the monotony of cardiac output.
I am 37 but typically target 130-145 bpm anyway. Yeah the walking I am doing is not intended as cardiac output exercise--I am trying to walk more regularly as I feel like, at my level of fitness, even the mild walking (done consistently) is helpful for building my aerobic base a little. The other thing about the walking is that I can do it while I work, as my office has treadmills with a table surface you can work on (bring laptop, they provice monitor, keyboard, mouse). So it is essentially 'free' exercise. I typically use the tempo intervals for recovery more than conditioning; if I was doing it for conditioning I'd do more like 45 minutes. I do tend to warm up with shadow boxing & some other light activity (lightly hitting bag, forward rolls, etc), though only for 5-8 minutes. Sorry if I am misinterpreting--did you mean invest in a bag? If so, I do already have 2 heavy bags (a 150lb banana bag & a 100lb uppercut water bag). I use them frequently for tempo, technical work, and just freeform bag work or sets like three 5-minute rounds with 60s rest between. For cardiac output, the reason I do swimming or walking hills is that I can entertain myself during them--I read a book on the way up hills (I have to go slow to keep my HR in the target range) and put it away when jogging back down (have to jog down or HR falls below target range), and when swimming I have a waterproof ipod & earbuds so I can listen to music or podcasts.
7/18 HRV: 72 Sleep: 6.5h Recovery: Yellow Wrist rehab: 5 5s isometric holds up/down. Gyroscope exercise Ankle rehab: Heel sitting/rocking 90s, 3x8 eccentric calf raises Walked 30 min @ 2mph, 111 avg bpm.
7/19 HRV: 65 Sleep: 7h Recovery: Green Ankle rehab: 3x8 eccentric calf raises Walked 31 min @ 2mph, 108 avg bpm. Ankle rehab: heel sits/rocking 90s. Wrist rehab: 5 30s planks, 3 from knees on just the injured hand, 2 in push-up position. Swimming for cardiac output
Didn't really do anything for the past week... 7/28 Tempo intervals -- 30 intervals with striking drills on heavy bag. (Each interval is 12s work @ 70% effort, 1 min rest.) I warmed up with a few minutes of shadow boxing & forward rolls first.
