I’ve always been into meditation. I guess it’s something I picked up from martial arts at an early age. But just recently I’ve been using it as a post workout tool for recovery. I have to say, it seems to do the job quite well.

Not to mention there are some legit studies showing it’s effectiveness post exercise. Check this study out from the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Here is my current routine.

1. I find a quite place to sit down and relax. I try to keep it distraction free, but by no means do you need to be in complete darkness and silence. Hell, sometimes I don’t even close my eyes. There’s no set rules in meditation. That’s why I like it.

2. Start by watching your breath. Just notice the sensation of the air entering your lungs. Try to keep the breaths deep into your abdomen. Almost like you’re breathing into your gut.

3. Focus on relaxing every muscle in your body. Start from the top of your head on down to your toes.

4. Once relaxed you’ll probably notice your mind will tend to wonder off occasionally. That’s alright, it always happens. Just bring yourself back to watching your breath.

It doesn’t take much to get results. Start with 2 or 3 minutes. Sometimes recovery is neglected, but it really is one of the most important aspects of a workout. In recovery is where you build lean muscle, burn fat, and clear harmful stress hormones from the body.

Give it a shot. Let me know if you’ve tried this or have found a better way.

The past three or four months I decided to make a bit of a change in my workout routine.  I was getting just plain bored with the usual.  I love grinding out dead lifts and squats but  I really needed a change.  So I took up kettlebells.  Not that there is anything magical about a kettlebell, but the old school lifts truly are some of the best.  Especially if you’re looking for some bad ass functional strength.  Which I am, it comes in handy for Jiu Jitsu and submission wrestling.

Here’s a quick example of what my routine has looked like these past few months.  I did this routine 3 days a week, and another 2 days a week I did some HIIT as I’ve described in past blog posts.

Sets x Reps

Turkish Get Ups

3 x 1-3

Double Arm Swings

2 x 10

Single Arm Swings

2 x 10

Alternating Single Arm Swings

2 x 10

Single Arm clean or Snatch

2 x 3-5

Single Leg Dead Lifts

3 x 5

Pull Ups

1 x 10

Body Weight Row

1 x 10

Farmers Walks

60 yards

This routine got me pretty strong and I didn’t feel as though I lost anything from staying away from real heavy dead lifts and squats.  I’ll provide a video below of my performance at the submission INK tournament I attended this past weekend.

Kettlebells are a nice alternative to the regular lifts.  I’ll start adding some of these lifts to the video library I’m creating.

Although working out strengthens your immune system in the long run.  If you get sick it may be best to take a much needed rest.

Goal: To keep my metabolism up through the fat season and avoid putting on any excess lbs.

Since my last update I’ve only gained 2 pounds of body mass.  Not bad considering all the chocolate I got into during the last couple weeks.  The kicker; although my bodyweight has gone up, my waist size has dropped by two measures.

This is a great indication that I have gained or maintained a good amount of lean mass while dropping some fat mass.  I’m happy with that.  Let’s see if I can keep it up.

Here’s what I did this past month.

Lifted weights three times a week alternating between these 2 routines.  Each routine takes about 35 minutes with warming up.

Workout A

Superset
Deadlift 150lbs x 20reps x 2sets
Bodyweight Rows x 20reps x 2sets

Superset
Alternating Lunges 10lbs x 20reps x 2sets
Push Ups x 20reps x 2sets

Plank :50 seconds

Workout B

Superset
Stability Ball Leg Curls 20reps x 2sets
Assisted Pull Ups 7pl x 20reps x 2sets

Superset
Step Ups 20reps x 2sets
DB Military Press 20lbs x 20reps x 2sets

Side Plank :45 seconds

I also did cardio three times per week on my non weight training days.  I use an elyptical/cross trainer.  Here is what that looked like.

4min warm-up at level 5

4min HIIT :15 sprint :15 moderate on level 10

And those 8 minutes is really all I do for cardio.  I find if I try to throw in another set of intervals I lose weight much too fast.  You can hate me if you want but when I do those sprints I am in lots of pain, trust me.

I’ll be switching my routine up through November and see if I can’t keep this momentum up through New Years.

I’d love to hear what everybody else is doing to keep off the fat during fat season.  Please leave your comments below.

A brief update on what’s going on with me and my geeky fitness routine.

So the last 2 months I’ve really been trying to put on some lean muscle before the fat season begins.  I can’t say that I’ve “bulked up” but I put on a decent amount of weight without any additional fat mass.

I used a lot of heavy weights, large movements, and long rest periods.  Oh yeah, I also stuffed my face with plenty of healthy, organic and damn good tasting food.

On a side note; Whole Foods has this bacon that I swear is about as thick as a leather belt.  No joke.

From now until Thanksgiving I’ll be using a drawn out version of Mike and Alwyns Warp Speed Fat Loss.  It won’t be as intense, but all the principals will be the same.  I’m too much of a wuss to do their program.  Even if it is just 28 days long.  Way too brutal for me.  Plus, Halloween is right around the corner.  I loves me some kit kat bars, reeses, and M&Ms.  That’s really why I’m doing all of this.  So I can enjoy my favorite seasons without the worry of putting on too much body fat.

Well there it is.  My weak attempt at an update.  I’ll leave you with a clip from my last heavy workout I did this past week.  I eventually got my dead lift back to 365 pounds.  Not bad for someone who had a jacked neck and a dislocated rib just 4 months prior.

Based on a premise I learned from Mike Rousell and Alwyn Cosgrove I decided to do a micro 4 minute workout today.

The idea is to do these small workouts in between our much larger workouts in order to take advantage of the compounding fat burning effects that take place for up to 36 hours “after” we train.

Only in my case I’m not so much trying to burn fat as I am trying to put on some lean muscle.

So what’s my rationale?

Well I’m not at risk of over training because the workouts are small and consist mainly of higher rep exercises.  So no muscle damage occurs.

I feel they’ll be beneficial because I will be pumping blood and nutrients to the muscles I trained hard the previous day.

Not to mention it won’t hurt to stimulate my metabolism a little.  Especially because when I train to put on muscle I consume more calories and I’d like them to be going to the proper place if you know what I mean.

If it works out well I’ll definitely report on the subject again in the near future.

Until then, you can check out some of Mike and Alwyns stuff at Warp Speed Fat Loss

Or if you’re interested in creating your own micro workouts check out the Body Bot

In the past few weeks I’ve received several requests from readers wondering what my actual daily fitness routine looks like.  I’m not big on talking about myself but I figured I’d give it a shot.  So here’s a little bit about what I do and why I do it.  In honor of one of my favorite comics I shall name the category War Journal.

Long Term Goals:  Functionally; I like being athletic and mobile so I’d love to maintain that.  Aesthetically; my main goal is to look like a marvel comics super hero.  Not so much the Hulk or Beast I’m trying to be realistic here.  More along the lines of somewhere between Spiderman and Captain America.  I’m actually beginning to think maybe the reason I love submission wrestling so much is because I get to wear spandex and no one thinks anything of it.  Hmmm.  I should probably seek help.

Short Term Goal:  Fat season is approaching.  For me it really starts around Halloween and goes straight through New Years.  So currently I’m trying to put on as much muscle as possible before October.  Muscle being the big driver of your metabolism, it comes in handy when you start to consume lots of calories.  I’m gonna need all the help I can get to burn them off.  I figure around the beginning of October I’ll start to focus more on fat burning workouts.  That way I’ve got some momentum when the actual fat season hits.

Here’s just an example of one of my workout days during this muscle building period.

Workout B (Tuesdays)

Sumo Dead Lift 285lb x 5reps x 5sets

Pull Ups BW+10lb x 5reps x 5sets

DB Bench Press 90lb x 5reps x 5 sets

Pretty simple really.  Only three exercises.  I rest about 120 seconds between sets and I finish the whole thing in less than 45 minutes.  That’s including warming up.  Later in my war journal I will try to include the rest of my workout days.

Thanks for reading.  Any questions please feel free to email me at thebuffgeek@gmail.com