7 weeks till COPA NOVA...NEED CARDIO HELP!!!

First let me say that i love being a part of 10pjj because i truly believe everyone is here to help eachother and i can't wait to kick some ass in the name of 10pjj. Everytime i ask for help here, you guys are always in my corner helping me out. who needs a gym? i can win without one!

well, i need help from my team again. COPA NOVA, in Northern Virginia, is in 7 weeks and i need to win. i believe my biggest problem is my cardio...or lack of cardio. so what do i do to get in shape? the more specific, the better. Thanks peeps!!!

10th Planet Ronin out!!!!!

Tabata training man. Get used to exploding and recovering.

Ditto on the Tabata, Circuits and mix them up, Power/Explosive/Caveman also Steps & or Hill Sprints also what equipment do you have at your disposal let everyone know so we can give you some good ideas :)

i have no equipment...i have a 10x10 mat in my garage, running shoes and an ipod. what is tabata? and can you be more specific. i've never worked on my cardio before so i was hoping to develop a weekly plan or something.

You need an interval timer tabatas are 20second work 10seconds rest for 4mins, its a great way to boost your cardio depending on your routine. Start with a Tabata of jump rope then move on to burpees and mount climbers alternating rounds then another set of jump ropes you can also alternating shooting for takedowns and squats to build up your endurance. Hopefully this helps hit me up if you need any more help.

http://tabatatraining.org/

thanks for the tips. how long should i do it? if i do the 4 minute tabatas and i do jump rope, burpees, mountain climbers, shooting, and squats that's only half an hour, is that enough? should i repeat this until i get to an hour?

I use tabta training also. For my last tournament i had 8-9 matches and I wasnt even tired after the last one. It really works.

I also train with wrestlers and play their game. My fav thing is to be in guard so its really out my comfort zone. Plus, the standup game in wrestling is great practice and tired me out more than anything else.

btw it's easier to run for 45 minutes than to to the tabta training so do not say you weren't warned.

"The full Tabata program is four minutes long, it will probably feel like the longest four minutes of your life.

If you are going to try it I would recommend going light with the weights until you find your range, theres a good chance you will underestimate this workout and be begging people around you to help you off the floor.
Tabata intervals follow this structure:

* Push hard for 20 seconds
* Rest for 10 seconds.
* Repeat this eight times.

The secret to making this effective is in your sprint interval. You have to go all out, so do as many reps as you can in the 20 seconds, put it down for 10, then pick it up again and go hell for leather for another 20 seconds.

I would suggest getting some sort of tabata timer like a watch where you can see exactly where you are in the workout, you don't want to have to think too much, all of your concentration will be on the exercise.

You can also try using an mp3 interval workout like these to add structure to your workout.

This workout music is built in the form of tabatas, so you don't need a watch or anything to keep time. Just listen to the prompts and your workout will follow automatically."

http://www.intervaltraining.net/tabata.html

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Originally Posted by Luis Candelas, BCG

thanks for the tips. how long should i do it? if i do the 4 minute tabatas and i do jump rope, burpees, mountain climbers, shooting, and squats that's only half an hour, is that enough? should i repeat this until i get to an hour?

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No, it would be like this:

rd 1 - 20 sec - jump rope
- 10 sec - rest
rd 2 - 20 sec - burpees
- 10 sec - rest
rd 3 - 20 sec - mountain climbers
- 10 sec - rest
rd 4 - 20 sec - shoot
- 10 sec - rest
rd 5 - 20 sec - squats
- 10 sec - rest
rd 6 - 20 sec - heavy bag
- 10 sec - rest
rd 7 - 20 sec - sprints
- 10 sec - rest
rd 8 - 20 sec - sprints

This is just an example, but you could put any HIIT in place of the others. The total time after 8 rounds would be 4 minutes.

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Originally Posted by LeeCunningham

No, it would be like this:

rd 1 - 20 sec - jump rope
- 10 sec - rest
rd 2 - 20 sec - burpees
- 10 sec - rest
rd 3 - 20 sec - mountain climbers
- 10 sec - rest
rd 4 - 20 sec - shoot
- 10 sec - rest
rd 5 - 20 sec - squats
- 10 sec - rest
rd 6 - 20 sec - heavy bag
- 10 sec - rest
rd 7 - 20 sec - sprints
- 10 sec - rest
rd 8 - 20 sec - sprints

This is just an example, but you could put any HIIT in place of the others. The total time after 8 rounds would be 4 minutes.

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that's what i'm talking about, thanks! so should i warm up, then do this? then do grappling? or do i do this at different times throughout the day? i have 7 weeks starting today and i'm serious when i say i'm totally new to the cardio thing.

Brilliant! I've been looking for something to add to my interval training. My cardio suck rocks; I've been working for the last couple of weeks doing one session of VO2max work a week. It's three weeks until the comp now so adding the tabatas should be exactly what I need. Thank you guys so much!

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Originally Posted by Luis Candelas, BCG

that's what i'm talking about, thanks! so should i warm up, then do this? then do grappling? or do i do this at different times throughout the day? i have 7 weeks starting today and i'm serious when i say i'm totally new to the cardio thing.

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You can do this in addition to whatever other strength/jiu jitsu training that you are currently doing, but I would advise that you get a little warm-up & stretch in before you do so. (Remember, the example I gave was just that, an example. You can/should substitute other exercises, just make sure that the intensity is high!)

Intensity must be above a 110% or else you are a pussy, and should give up on training all together.

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Originally Posted by The kza

Intensity must be above a 110% or else you are a pussy, and should give up on training all together.

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roger that...thanks for the encouragement, i think.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LeeCunningham

You can do this in addition to whatever other strength/jiu jitsu training that you are currently doing, but I would advise that you get a little warm-up & stretch in before you do so. (Remember, the example I gave was just that, an example. You can/should substitute other exercises, just make sure that the intensity is high!)

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awesome, thanks again for the advice!

Check out Martin Rooney's hurricanes they are active rest sprints

stop eating completely, run a lot, and don't drink any water. Your stamina will increase 10x what it is now!

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Originally Posted by Jason Hyatt

Brilliant! I've been looking for something to add to my interval training. My cardio suck rocks; I've been working for the last couple of weeks doing one session of VO2max work a week. It's three weeks until the comp now so adding the tabatas should be exactly what I need. Thank you guys so much!

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so you work out once a week? how's your cardio? what's vo2max?

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Originally Posted by Luis Candelas, BCG

so you work out once a week? how's your cardio? what's vo2max?

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No I workout a few times a week depending on my work schedule and how long I can stay healthy for (which is not usually that long it seems...). Intense intervals I only do once a week. I planned to do tabatas in this week's rotation but I ended up super sick and haven't trained at all this week. Sucks, but par for the course for me. My cardio isn't great. I work at it but I have some health problems that have limited my training in the past and I have some damage from medications I've been on in the past that make cardio especially hard to train.

VO2max is basically the physiological term for what we mean when we say "cardio". Cardiovascular endurance is a function of how efficiently your muscles can utilize oxygen and how efficiently your heart can deliver it. The "V" should actually have a dot over it; it's mathematical shorthand for flow rate. O2 is of course oxygen and the subtext "max" means maximum so VO2max is just that -- the maximal rate of oxygen delivery. To improve it requires improving both muscular efficiency and improving cardiac output. Cardiac output is the volume of blood ejected from the left ventricle per beat times the number of beats per minute. VO2min is basically your resting metabolic rate while VO2max is the maximum.

Grappling doesn't require long, slow expenditures of energy like distance running. Grappling maintains a steady state of low-moderate activity with bursts of very high intensity activity. So we need both aspects of endurance to be at peak form. We need to train more like short track sprinters than marathon runners. What we're trying to do get the muscles to a point where they are out-pacing the heart's ability to supply them with oxygen in short order. After doing some reading, Tabata's make total sense to me. Instead of working at moderate pace for an hour we work at >150-170% of maximal exertion for a short burst (4min total). The bursts of intense activity quickly put the muscles into anaerobic metabolism. Doing this regularly improves muscular efficiency by stimulating the growth of mitochondria, improving vascular tone, and improving waste removal (and a whole host of other processes). The intense work also raises cardiac output to near maximum which improves the contractility of the heart (how forcefully the heart can contract on any given beat). That's exactly what we need during competition.

We still shouldn't neglect the distance running. The long, slow stoking-the-coal-fire kind of runs where you just settle into a pace and run forever are just as important. That type of training greatly improves your recovery time between intense activity; i.e. getting your heart rate back down quickly between rounds/matches.

I spent last night in the ER and I haven't trained in a week so I'll let you know how the Tabatas work at getting me back up to speed. Again. For the millionth time... :P

U just blew my mind...whoa!!!

Haha. Sorry. I dork out like that. I'm a respiratory therapist so the physiology thing is my bread and butter. :)

Jason if your sick Tabatas might not not be a good idea since its taxing to the nervous system and might cause your immune system to shutdown even more so just take that into account as you ramp up your training my friend

thanks for the info regarding tabata. Just downloaded a tabata timer app for my iphone. :-)

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Originally Posted by Dennis Martinez

Jason if your sick Tabatas might not not be a good idea since its taxing to the nervous system and might cause your immune system to shutdown even more so just take that into account as you ramp up your training my friend

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Don't I know it. Right now I'm pretty knocked down with Crohn's flare up. I pretty much always have some symptoms but I live my life in spite of them; I just ride the rollercoaster and do what I can to mitigate the worst of them. Every once in a while though I get a genuine FLARE where my immune system goes on a rampage and tries to kill me by eating my gut. The ups and downs of the rollercoaster have been getting worse over the last couple of weeks. Tuesday night at work it finally hit big time. Awful abd pain, projectile vomiting, the whole bit. So I went down to the ER and got tuned up with some IV meds. Now I'm in the completely wiped out phase. Can't eat, nauseated, intermittent abd pain, tired as hell. I'm actually on the rebound and it usually only takes 3-5 days or so to get back to my regular baseline. Hoping to get back in the gym Monday and see how it goes. If I can pick up where I left off, I'll just keep training with my eye towards competition. If I can't, then I might have to skip this tourney and catch the next one.

The worst is knowing that the meds I've been on in the past kinda wrecked my heart. I'll never have world-class cardio because my heart has been weakened. When I train REALLY hard and push it to my maximum I sometimes end up with pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs. In this case, because the right side of the heart can't keep up). I don't get it very often and when I do it's certainly not nearly as bad as having heart failure or anything, but it still sucks. The coughing wears you out. I keep working at it though and I'm really hopeful the Tabatas can make a difference in getting me to *my* peak form -- even if that's not exactly world-class athlete status. :)

Hi guys, quick question to those that do tabatas. Do you do just the 1 4 minute set of 8 exercises, or do you sometimes do a few sets? Thanks in advance. :-)

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Originally Posted by Jason Hyatt

Don't I know it. Right now I'm pretty knocked down with Crohn's flare up. I pretty much always have some symptoms but I live my life in spite of them; I just ride the rollercoaster and do what I can to mitigate the worst of them. Every once in a while though I get a genuine FLARE where my immune system goes on a rampage and tries to kill me by eating my gut. The ups and downs of the rollercoaster have been getting worse over the last couple of weeks. Tuesday night at work it finally hit big time. Awful abd pain, projectile vomiting, the whole bit. So I went down to the ER and got tuned up with some IV meds. Now I'm in the completely wiped out phase. Can't eat, nauseated, intermittent abd pain, tired as hell. I'm actually on the rebound and it usually only takes 3-5 days or so to get back to my regular baseline. Hoping to get back in the gym Monday and see how it goes. If I can pick up where I left off, I'll just keep training with my eye towards competition. If I can't, then I might have to skip this tourney and catch the next one.

The worst is knowing that the meds I've been on in the past kinda wrecked my heart. I'll never have world-class cardio because my heart has been weakened. When I train REALLY hard and push it to my maximum I sometimes end up with pulmonary edema (fluid in the lungs. In this case, because the right side of the heart can't keep up). I don't get it very often and when I do it's certainly not nearly as bad as having heart failure or anything, but it still sucks. The coughing wears you out. I keep working at it though and I'm really hopeful the Tabatas can make a difference in getting me to *my* peak form -- even if that's not exactly world-class athlete status. :)

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You just inspired me sooooo much. :)

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Originally Posted by Sam Sales

Hi guys, quick question to those that do tabatas. Do you do just the 1 4 minute set of 8 exercises, or do you sometimes do a few sets? Thanks in advance. :-)

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Its always 4mins ill do one constant like jump rope or sprint or burpress then mix in four other things like over head push press pummeling etc. Then rest for a 2mins (half the work time so its a 2 to 1 ration) then repeat. Usually do that for 4-5 full rounds (work and rest) total

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Originally Posted by Dennis Martinez

Its always 4mins ill do one constant like jump rope or sprint or burpress then mix in four other things like over head push press pummeling etc. Then rest for a 2mins (half the work time so its a 2 to 1 ration) then repeat. Usually do that for 4-5 full rounds (work and rest) total

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Thanks bro. Got to admit i was absolutely gassed after those 4 minutes. Brutal. :-)