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

[Luis Candelas, BCG]

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.

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.

[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!

[LeeCunningham]

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.

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!)

[The kza]

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

[Luis Candelas, BCG]

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

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

[Luis Candelas, BCG]

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!)

awesome, thanks again for the advice!

[Jake Grant]

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

[Carlos Camacho, BCG]

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

[Luis Candelas, BCG]

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!

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

[Jason Hyatt]

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

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