Tyres and the First Tabata (diary entry)

26.03.14

First Private Lesson

This is my third reconditioning session with a professional wrestler. So far my main concern with him has been to shift fat and water retention, to increase cardiovascular recovery rate, improve stability and to enhance his overall performance. His training plans consist of compound weight exercises, high intensity interval training and sport specific routines.

The warm-up consisted of a mirror footwork exercise, where one fighter follows the other trying to keep up. We then got onto the focus mitts for some hand speed drills. Next we moved onto kickboxing working the Thai pads. I then addressed his mid-intensity training. This is the area that includes explosive training and strength-orientated technical work. The exercises usually have a greater number of repetitions and higher repetition cadence than regular strength training, have a lower repetition cadence than high intensity interval training, don’t usually involve a lot of progressive use of weights in the same series of sets and are the ideal place for more complex movements.

I used a car tyre as an example of improvised training:

Side chops

Overhead throws

Tornado chops

Overhead slams

Sled pushes

Sled backward drags

Tyre snatches

Tyre clean and jerks

I then assessed his pull-ups, wrestler bridge/deck squats and introduced weighted chest dips.

Before we tackled his first tabata, did some stand-up clinch work and I was impressed that his confidence and movement had improved a lot.  It was important that his repetition cadence was suitably high in order for him to tackle the tabata. We stuck to hill-climbers and kettlebell swings for 10 second rounds. Rest spots were around 3 seconds.

Related articles

• Tabata Training Is Here to Stay (wonderfultips.wordpress.com)

• Tabata Interval Kettlebell Workout (pumpsandiron.com)

• Why tabata training will change your workout (news.optuszoo.com.au)