I decided to copy Phenom as I will be starting to train MMA on Monday. I think this is going to help me partially keep going week after week, and be something relaxing to do after a long day. I have very little experience (4 boxing classes 2 months BJJ ).

I'm currently 208lbs, looking to fight at 185, but hoping to drop down to like 175, and then bulk up to 190 with a decent BF%. Because of this I'm going to focus most of my workouts (Mon-Wednesday-Friday) on Cardio running for like 30-45 minutes during my lunch at work. (they have an on site gym and I can eat at my desk even if I work out my whole lunch hour which is nice).

My training schedule is going to look like this:

Monday
Muay Thai
Submission Grappling

Tuesday
MMA
Judo

Wednesday
Muay Thai
Boxing

Thursday
Submission Grappling
Judo

Friday
Muay Thai
Submission Grappling

Starting around April I will also be taking BJJ classes on the weekends.

This is my initial plan and I'll probably adjust it over the course of the first few weeks taking it slow, then possibly add to it after a month or two. My coach for the submission grappling / mma is is one of the top Sambo practitioners in the US and fought(read:lost to) fedor in the finals of three world sambo championship finals. The Muay Thai coach i've heard good things about but don't really know him well. The Boxing coach has apparently trained some golden glove fighters so hopefully I can learn some good stuff from him. I think because I'm taking such a wide variety of classes, I feel like I can find out what works and what doesn't very efficiently in different situations. I also happen to love martial arts, and if there was a kyokushin karate dojo or a Small circle jiujitsu dojo around here I'd try to fit them in as well haha.

Starting Monday I will write up a workout report, a class report for what I learn, and how I feel I did. I will also include as much as I can remember from sparing / rolling events. This is as much for me as it is for any of you reading this, so i apologize if it's sometimes dry, but I'll try to keep it interesting but accurate.

Thanks~

VocalistSSP

P.S. 3 points to anyone who got the reference in the thread title.

Really great to hear how dedicated you are, it will be very interesting to follow your traininglog. I have followed Phenomkids now for some time and its awesome to get an inside look on the real life and how hard it really is, for an MMA fighter. As close to being there in the gym with you guys as we can under these cirumstances.

Also, I am sure that you are right when you say that this can help you in your training. It's actually great to be able to go back and look at what you have done and how much weight you gained, and at the same time get tips and motivation from your friends Interactive training log!

We will follow your progress with great interest, and I cant wait to see you up in the cage some day

Now just make sure you dont spend all your time playing punchout


Very nice to have you with us Vocalist!


Kind regards

Jerome "Doc" Louis

Nice, this will be great. I love to read Phenoms log as well, so Im very excited about a new and ambitious poster. I really look forward to read more here

Thx

[updated] Day 1:

I'm about to head out to my first day of training in 45 minutes. After talking with the head instructor at the gym, it looks like I'll just be taking Muay Thai tonight and slowly getting myself into it. Also it would cost me an extra $100 a month to take Boxing with Muay Thai, so I'm going to be doing Muay Thai / Submission Grappling on Wednesday. Although because of this, I'll be switching out Muay Thai for Boxing every two months which means my schedule would go from Muay Thai / Submission to Boxing / Submission Grappling for a month, then i'd go back for two months. I think this small change will actually benefit me by changing up the mix and keeping it fresh and fun as well as letting me learn the basics of each without a competing set of basics (Kickboxing vs Boxing).

I'll post how my day went when I get back later.

Just for giggles to copy Phenom some more,

Breakfast:
3 Egg Omelet (omega 3 eggs) /w spinach and cheddar cheese

Lunch:
Grilled Chicken w/ some carrots

Pre-Workout Snack:
Home-Made Granola Bar / Low-fat chocolate milk (My closest place to get supplements is like 45 minutes away, so when I run out of protein powder I tend to get lazy about making shakes and substitute this in as a low fat high protein drink)

Dinner: I kind of gorged here when I got back, I had some Brocoli / Spinach Lasanga. I don't so much mind the carbs since I just got back from a workout, but the fat in all the dairy i've eaten today is a bit higher than I usually like.

On this topic, I was thinking about this while I ate and thought I'd share one of my diet tips if any of you are looking to start eating healthier. Basically you have to look at your body like a machine, and feed it only the nutrients it needs to run smoothly. Well, that sucks. What i've found though, is that if you eat something healthy and don't hate it, but you force yourself to keep eating it once a week or something, you eventually start to enjoy it and the flavor it adds to your meal, transitioning from feeding the machine, to enjoying what you eat. The best example of this for me is spinach. If you read my meals for the day you can see I really love spinach. I used to basically hate it. I forced myself to eat it basically because it's a super healthy food, and if popeye can do it, i can do it. The result was that I didn't quite hate it, but I would have prefered almost anything else to it. Slowly I kept forcing myself to eat it, all the time focusing on needing to eat it for its health value. Little by little it started to grow on me, and now I love it. Same thing with mushrooms. Before I started dieting I wouldn't touch them, the texture just freaked me out. Now I use them and onions as a staple in my cooking.

Onto my Training

Today was Muay Thai.

We started for about 5 minutes with "bouncing" stretches. I don't know the technical term, but I'm used to long and slow stretches, these were like quick and fast jerks to get the blood flowing through the muscles.

For the next 10 Minutes we did shadow boxing working on basic combinations. As I have done boxing before this felt pretty comfortable for me, and my punching combos were clean and crisp. Then we started incorporating kicking into our combos and I was completely out of my element. I feel ashamed to say I was terrible. We spent the majority of the time working on a quick step to the outside during a 1-2 then snapping a outside low kick. I would either step to far, not far enough, put to much twist in my hips basically over kicking which would lead me wide open, or just get off balance in some way shape or form. I definitely need a lot of work on my kicking / balance / flexibility.

For the next probably 45 minutes we did partner pad work and drilled numerous combinations. I found holding the pads to be difficult as it really put a lot of pressure on me to help the other person adequately practice, but I wasn't technical enough to really point out any problems in his movement because I'm so inexperienced in Kickboxing. Another problem was that my partner was a wrestler and kept having a mentality of leaning into his punches and basically trying to run me over, which makes it hard for an inexperienced pad holder. I really enjoyed the combinations that we were throwing though, my instructor would go over things like Jab-Cross-Inside Leg Kick-slip-slip-left hook to body-right straight-left hook to head - right straight and discuss how your body should be moving in order to anticipate how the opponent will react. He even began to talk about what you should be doing to set up the combos but didn't go into to much detail. I apologize I don't really remember to many more of the combinations we worked on. The other two I do remember was Jab-Outside Leg kick and the jab-cross-left hook- body kick - left hook - right hook- left knee to body.

After this we did Squats, Push-ups, and V-ups , switching one to the next every minute with no rest.

All in All I would say that It was an enjoyable first day. I have a lot to improve on. My goal is in Three Months to have really solid fundamentals and begin sparring. I really REALLY want a nasty outside low kick. Forrest Griffin vs Rampage Jackson nasty low kick. I also want to have a very solid clinch game. Those are the two areas I hope I can spend the majority of my time perfecting during training.

Thanks for reading,
VocalistSSP

Good reading! I like it, actually I really feel like picking up kickboxing/thaiboxing myself right now.

I enjoy reading about the food aswell lol.
Also, I love spinach, great food, specially spinach with a little milk or cream is awesome with some good fish!!!

Keep it up m8

Nice read mate - good luck!

Quick question - where'd you get the name VocalistSSP?

Ugh I'm fucking sick as hell today so I can't train. I did just take 3 airbornes, 2 tylenol, and some nyquil so i'm hoping to pass out and wake up feeling better tommorrow for Muay Thai.

And When I was in 7th grade (i'm 22 now) I was the Singer in a band called Suicidal Sock Puppets, and all my friends in the band made up names i.e Drums^SSP Bass^SSP and GuitarSSP. For some reason although I've made different accounts here and there, this has been my Id for all the instant messengers so It stuck haha.

Kind of another funny story, in real life all my friends call me Hands because a lot of my friends were on the football team, so we'd play a bunch of pickup games , and I couldn't catch a football for the life of me while running and it was suppose to be ironic. Now it goes from an insult to a huge compliment in combat sports Haha

He he he.

Get well soon bro

Really nice for a n00b like me to see what dedication a person should have to become a good fighter.

Sure I know that good food is important and endurance is also a key element but I only saw some Karate practises myself when I watched a friend of mine. That however has been ages ago. So it will be nice to see how well you will be doing and what you have to sacrifice and learn.

Like Herschel Walker said after his first fight, it was the hardest thing he has ever done. And he is not really a person that has been sitting at home watching the TV while eating crisps (kinda like me at the moment )

One thing I saw is that you were not well on the kicks. That is a great thing because it means that you will see improvements on a very important fighting skill. If you were thinking you were good at everything already it might motivate you less to train. Now when you do a perfect kick you will get the adrenaline rush and the feeling of YESSSSSSSSS I CAN DO IT, LOOK AT ME. That is I think the best feeling you can have from a training, correct me if I am wrong

Keep it up and I hope you will get well soon.

nice story.........Im a mastering engineer so always interested in musical names etc