INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH LONDON

This is the first blog on the new site (now powered by squarespace!).

I thought I'd kick off with Industrial Strength London group practice session. I apologise for not emailing anyone to remind them but I decided to simply see who pitched up. With this site I have much more access to it and can change things instantaneously so now its down to me to update it asap to reflect how things how IS London has developed and evolved.

Anyhow it was a great bunch who pitched up early on a Sunday morning. Thanks to Ato, Cj, Darren, Glenn, Roxy, Sabina and Steve who all had something useful to contribute.

After the last session we had I asked Glenn Cumiskey to again lead us through a great warm up and joint mobility piece. Ground based we thoroughly dealt with the key areas - hips, trunk and shoulders.

We then each took up a kettlebell and went for a continuous 12 minute set of snatch and long cycle clean & jerk. We either switched every minute or every 3. On each arm we completed 3 minutes of clean & jerk and 3 minutes of snatch.

It was good for patience, good for getting technique down, good identifying our weak points.

Great for strength endurance and energy management.

Next came bodyweight drills with flow (fluid movement) being the focus of our intention.

We partnered up and did 2 minute turn arounds for 4 sets (8 minutes each). We went through each of the 4 movements below for 5 reps and then started again until 2 minutes had elapsed.

• Spinning dish (not sure what else to call it). - from prone (belly down) with chest and thighs off the mat the legs are swung to the front and all the way back into lying face down whilst keeping the "dish" shape with thighs and chest/back off the floor. then return anti-clockwise.
  

• jump onto board - from lying flat face down jump straight up into a surfers stance, with one foot forward looking cool...or not!

• jujitsu bridge - from lying on the back bridge, roll on shoulder to one side and reach for floor above head

• bjj get up -

Total body strength, stability, control and agility

Initially we practiced the basic exercises of Turkish get up and windmill using kettlebells (to really test yourself try a barbell - mind the ceiling).

Turkish Get Up with a twist - subtle changes make a massive difference to your experience of a movement. Doing a get up with a 180 degree about face to complete places a much greater emphasis on agility and control than the regular version. I saw this variation first on YouTube demonstrated by Scott Sonnon - this video is on the old IS London blog which you can link to from the head of this page.

Windmill TGU combination - another variation combining these two big moves. We tried this with a twist as well! That was a serious challenge to my brains agility! 

We did 8-10 sets of  2-5 reps.

We finished up with some dynamic trunk strength and control. Ok I'll use the "C" word - core stability! Floor based.

1. First set of dynamic core flowed from press-up ---> plank --> shoulder roll --> bridge --> roll back to plank --> then repeat to the left.                                                                                                                                    Whole time is spent keeping the hips off the ground and maintaing that strong connection between pelvis and ribcage.
2. swinging plank - another Scott Sonnon innovation involving sweeping from a sat back on the heels position (knees off floor) into a plank whilst keeping a very low profile - will post some video of this when i get organised.
3. spin through side reach high --> side planks --> reach back and through --> foot grab from press up

Everyone contributed to make some great variations, progressions and regressions.

The next session we have will be on Saturday 12th April between 4-6pm. We will be at Balance again unless we hit a heat wave and are forced out into the fresh air.

 Any questions please give me a call. 07960 861267