Getting Black Belt Fit

I remember reading about one of the workouts that chuck Liddell used to do when he was still competing in the UFC. It involved him rowing 1000 metres and then immediately wrestling for 5 minutes before taking a 60 second rest and repeating another 5 times.

Unfortunately I’m not able to Wrestle or do randori in the gym at my work and rowing 1000m 5 times would probably give me a heart attack at the moment so I devised the following high intensity workout which I hope will help with my cardio and recovery especially when/if I get a line up at a dan grading event.

500 Metre Row
20 Squats
20 Press Ups

1 minute rest then repeat for 5 sets.

The rowing is done at a moderate pace and takes me around 1 min 45 to row the 500m. The squats and press-ups are purely bodyweight but after doing that rowing my legs were burning up and lungs were breathing fire. I’ll aim to reduce the rest period to 30 seconds over the coming months and maybe add another exercise as well.

Of course this isn’t the only exercise I do it’s just one specific workout but I might start doing this a couple of times a week along with my normal weight training, running and of course Judo.

I’ll report back and let you know if it’s made any difference.