Crossfit North Santa Cruz Winged Skull

I've been working out at Crossfit North Santa Cruz.  They have a great winged skull painted on one wall which they use as a logo on t-shirts, etc.   Made me curious as to where it came from, so I wrote an article on the history of the winged skull symbol.   Click here to see it.

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Core strength exercises with a mountain climbing theme

Here is a fun sequence of three exercises, all with a mountain climbing theme designed to work the thighs, the core muscles, and the arms. A mountain climbing theme is one where you repeat the same body-lifting exercise continuously and endlessly but never get any higher! Kind of like the feeling you get when climbing a mountain and the each peak you were headed for turns out to be only a small rise in a path to a much higher peak.

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Plyometrics

Plyometrics is the name for a type of exercise developed to increase a group of muscles power to generate a large amount of force quickly. It may be used, for example, to improve the throwing power of a football quarterback or the effectiveness of a boxer's punch. Unlike traditional strength training exercises, plyometric exercises are performed quickly and explosively. The most common plyometric exercises include hops, jumps and bounding movements. One popular plyometric exercise is jumping off a box and rebounding off the floor back onto the box. Another is the clap push-up. Plyometric training works by exploiting the muscles' cycle of lengthening and shortening in order to increase muscle power. Plyometric exercises start with a rapid stretch of a muscle (the eccentric phase) followed by a rapid shortening of the same muscle (the concentric phase).

Plyometrics can be traced to Russia approximately 40 years ago when it was developed for the Russian Olympic team. Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky is credited with creating the principle, which at the time was known as "shock training". While observing athletes, he realized that they had more strength and power coming out of a higher altitude landing when their muscles were stretched as opposed to a normal jump. The word plyometric comes from the Latin "plyo" and "metrics" meaning "measurable increases", because his studies with elite athletes showed measurable increases using the technique.

There are thousands of plyometric exercises, ranging from low intensity leg hops to high intensity drills such as box jumps, frog leaps, and burpies. Although these are typically associated with plyometric training for the adult athlete, common games and activities such as hop-scotch, jumping rope and jumping jacks can also be characterized as plyometrics because every time the feet make contact with the ground the quadriceps are subjected to the stretch-shortening cycle. In fact, plyometrics are a natural part of many movements, as evidenced by the leaping, hopping and skipping seen when children play.

Physical fitness trainers have long used apparatus to assist with plyometrics. For example, one plyometric exercise involves catching and tossing a medicine ball to an assistant while the exerciser lies on his back. The triceps and chest muscles work both while they are lengthening during the catch and while contracting during the toss.

Plyometrics (and any impact exercise) can cause injury if you don't warm up first and follow prudent safety precautions. The force generated during these moves requires that athletes use them carefully and with proper training. They should only be attempted if you already have good levels of strength, flexibility, and balance. A safe and effective plyometric program stresses quality, not quantity. Safe landing techniques, such as landing from toe to heel from a vertical jump, and using the entire foot as a rocker to dissipate landing forces over a greater surface area are important to reduce impact forces. In addition, visualization cues, such as picturing oneself landing "light as a feather" and "recoiling like a spring" after impact promotes low-impact landings. When landing it is important to avoid excessive side-to-side motion at the knee. Landing forces can be absorbed through the knee musculature (quadriceps, hamstrings, and calf muscle) more effectively when the knee is bending primarily in only one plane of motion. Due to the potential for injury and numerous different types of plyometrics available, it is advisable to work with a physical fitness trainer if you plan to use them in your training.

For further reading:

http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/plyometrics-for-martial-arts.html

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Tabata Anything - Four Minutes of Pain to Gain

The Tabata workout is a modern high-intensity training regimen that produces remarkable results. A Tabata workout is an interval training cycle consisting of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest. This cycle is repeated 8 times (for a total of four minutes).

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More on Mashups - two new interesting/fun web-based tools

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Kickboxing Combinations for Cardio Kickboxing

This is the second in a series on martial arts striking combinations used as choreography in cardio kickboxing. As said, a key difference between a trained martial artist and a streetfighter is that the martial artist reflexively hits in sequences of three or four moves. The instinctive non-thinking reaction isn't just a one-move event, its a more effective practiced sequence of strikes. One punch or kick is easy to defend against, but three or four thrown in a row can be very difficult to deal with.

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Linkedin, Facebook, Myspace

Linkedin is a social networking site, one of three major ones each aimed at different markets. Linked in for professionals, Facebook for college students, and Myspace for teens. Though all would like to get into each others space. :-) and are moving aggressively to do so. (For example Myspace just added a careers section. http://careers.myspace.com )

Recently someone asked me what Linkedin was good for.

• Linkedin is a good way to find who works where (like do a search for HP product marketing and note how many HP product marketing people you uncover).
• Linkedin is a useful way to find job opportunities and advertise yourself to headhunters and prospective employers. They do keyword searches looking for people, and go through the chain to get to you. Or recently linked-in has made it possible to request contact directly with someone you don't know (but you don't get their email and they don't have to accept).
• You have a way to find old contacts even if their email address has changed
• You can use it in a cumbersome but high-tech way to contact people for other purposes (I introduced myself to my son's girlfriend's mom through a common connection).
• If you want it to work, you have to add keyword text to your 'page' and build your network.

• All that being said, the value is not real strong. But it is a piece of the puzzle and connections are a good thing.

Of the three (Linkedin, Myspace, Facebook) I think Myspace will continue to be the most popular. I have all three types of accounts - but my Facebook one restricts me to my company colleagues with accounts of which there are few - so I have spent more energy on Linkedin and Myspace.

The biggest plus on the Facebook side is college kids who don't want their Parents to read their pages. And they let you store more photos. Don't think that these are as strong as the above.

If you use Google to search on a topic, a Myspace account will show up but a Facebook one won't (due to their tighter privacy). And although they have recently added the ability to make your page public, with Linkedin there arent a lot of opportunities to post stuff, add flavor, or interact with others. Not much there there.

Instead of just filling in forms, Myspace gives you the capability to customize what information is shown, including backgrounds, pictures and active links. Ive been able to weave it into outside sites (through interlinking).

Witness that there is a much more vigorous add-on market for Myspace than Facebook, and none for Linkedin.

It's interesting how highly the search engines, particularly Google, rank Myspace. A part of what drew me to it. Curiously within myspace the pagerank is very sensitive to what path into a page you took. I think that at first the ranking algorithms didn't handle social networking sites well, but they are learning fast...

The negative that Myspace has to overcome is its teen demographic and questionable reputation. But looking at the numbers, its doing that. Based on total pages viewed and the time spent by each visitor, MySpace now ranks No. 2 on the entire Internet, right behind Yahoo. Its reported to have over 65 million registered users. It had over 51.4 unique visitors in May (source: comScore Media Matrix, reported in WSJ).  And its still exploding with growth of over 160,000 new users a month ...

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What do you do in your cardio kickboxing classes?

The class starts with a standing warm-up to the music, then progresses to classic shadowboxing sequences. I like music that starts in the 135 bpm range and rapidly climbs to 140-160 - moving  to a fast beat creates energy and makes you sweat. After a half-hour or so we break and go to bagwork. Sometimes before the bagwork we do a follow-the-leader walk mixing up a variety of dog-walk, lunge-kick, frogger, etc.

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Boxing combinations applied to cardio kickboxing

One of the differences between a trained martial artist and a streetfighter is the time spent practicing sequences or combinations of moves. The idea being to not just hit, but to reflexively hit in sequences of three or four moves. It is far more effective to barrage an opponent with a rapid sequence of blows than to just punch them once. That way if they block the first, or the first two, there is still something coming in to get them. Makes a big difference.

This reflexive reaction of hitting in sequences is only learned through lots of repetition and drills, performing the sequence over and over until it becomes automatic. Cardio kickboxing is an ideal way to do this. In fact many of the patterns in cardio kickboxing come from such drills.

Offered as food for thought, here are a variety of real-world combinations from boxing.  All are oriented around smooth rotation around the spine, swinging the shoulders so that each punch winds up for the next.  If you are a student, look for them in your class. If you are an instructor, perhaps they will provide food for thought in developing new choreography.

• One of the most basic, and effective, combinations is the Jab-Cross-Jab. To make it a four count, add a knee so it becomes Jab-Cross-Jab-Knee, progressing to Jab-Cross-Jab-FrontKick. This is a usually a staple in cardio kickboxing classes.

• An interesting variation is to change it up to a Jab-Cross-Hook-Knee.

• On of my favorites (I rarely teach a class without it) is a four punch sequence Jab-Cross-Hook-Uppercut. A good variation is Jab-Uppercut-Hook-Cross. Try intermixing the two combo's (it's hard).

• Another very effective combo is Hook-Cross-Hook. Add a duck or a front kick to make it a four-count.

• Hook-Uppercut-Hook: Very much like the Hook-Cross-Hook.

A cycle I use is to start at a slow pace on one side, then double-up the count, then switch sides and go back to a slow pace, then double-up. Looks like:

Jab-and-cross-and-hook-and-up, Jab-and-cross-and-hook-and-up, ..., then double-up to:  Jab-cross-hook-up, jab-cross-hook-up, and so on

After you get some basic combinations down, start doubling up the jabs, or stringing the different combinations together. You will start to find what works and will be able to modify them to work for you.

9:35 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Adventure? in Sailing

Writing this after returning from the race. Nursing a fat lip and feeling beat up. I have a Catalina 27 which by Santa Cruz standards is a slow comfortable sailboat which we sail for fun in the informal Wednesday night sailing race. It was pretty windy and well into the race after a long downwind run we rounded a mark to head back to the harbor. A friend, Jay, was forward taking down the whisker pole. Suddenly the forestay, with the roller furling and the jib started flailing wildly. The clevis pin attaching it to the bow had failed and the forestay was no longer attached at the bottom.  The bottom part of the roller furling on the forestay is a 25lb hunk of metal and plastic, the sail under load generates a LOT of force, the wind was tossing it around vigorously, and sum of this was dangerous to be around and seriously shaking the boat. I went forward and tied a line to it, in the process of which I was whacked into the deck splitting my lower lip. The foil by this point had kinked and we couldn't get the sail down. Nor could we lower the roller furling. So we tied it in a column. Then we fastened the spinnaker halyard to the bow to replace the missing forestay (so the mast didn't fall down) and motored home, with the wind in the parts of the sail still exposed making the boat shudder as we went.

10:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment