A Middle Aged Adolescent (who cannot possibly be the only one)

[Nunedog]

(The weekly rant is above or on the preceding page.)

4-Day Split (DL&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 3/2/20 De-load &3 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (5,1,1,5,5 @80, 90, 90, 80, 80%) Tom 370, 372.5, 417.5 JC : 147.5, 175
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 5 reps Tom 370 chains JC 175
3. Power Cleans (3x3) 75 - 95 JC
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 167.5 JC 82.5
2. Bench press: 1 set of 3* (intensity) Tom 265 JC 115
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 237.5 JC 85
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5

Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 3* reps Tom 477.5 JC 240
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 430 JC 215
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 4 sets of 5 Tom 335 JC 132.5 BANDS
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 197.5 JC 90
2. Bench Press: (5,1,1,5,5 @80, 90, 90, 80, 80%) Tom 240, 270 JC 112.5, 125
3. Pull ups (5 sets of 10 reps)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or narrow grip bench pin presses
5 Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5 JC
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Jeff Brophy]

Are you using weight with your reverse hypers, or just bodyweight?

[Nunedog]

Hey! I'm using about 60 pounds. My aim, after all the squats and deads, is to work the lowest spinal erectors in the lumbar area, for the sake of a little blood flow and so the muscles don't think they have to stay locked up permanently. I don't intend the reverse hypers to be an additional strength training exercise.

[Nunedog]

These are rare but awesome moments, when a kid lets you know they appreciate what you’re doing as a parent. The 15-year-old and I were driving home last Friday night, after she’d had a big night on campus, cheering on the basketball team and then going to a dance. ‘Guess what happened,’ she said.
“[Maggie] and I were crossing from one building to another, which means going up that really big hill. Just as we got outside, Maggie says, ‘Let’s race.’”
My kid only had time for a rapid cascade of thoughts: Really? This was typical; Maggie was a driven kid, tall, thin, a star field hockey player known for her speed ‘on a team that runs sprints all the time, anyway.’
Maggie was already dropping into her first step, so without a word they took off and tore up the hill to the next building. After a good 80 yards across the grass and up a driveway, they arrived exactly in a tie. This astounded Maggie, who could only bring herself to say nothing as they sucked air. My kid was probably even more surprised. She too said nothing, despite the moment’s being fraught with significance.

This past summer, as we moved back from Cleveland, my daughter was getting a little self conscious about being stronger than any of the boys her age, so she told me she’d rather focus on running. She was hoping that’d make her cut a slightly longer and leaner figure.
I gave her the facts of life on size, muscle, food intake, and exercise science. ‘Only run if you want to run - for its own sake.’
She wanted to run, partially because she was intrigued by two family stories. 20 years ago, in Alaska, I was in a race that included a bunch of high school cross country runners, and at the gun, I took off with the pack. One of the Dads was stationed at the one-mile mark to call the times from his stopwatch as we passed. I was part of a group that made 5:45 - but that was it. I faded, the cross country kids kept rolling, and that was my moment of glory, a 5:45.
My older daughter was a Sixth Grade middle school champ with a best of 5:55.
‘I can beat 5:45,’ the younger one said. ‘I have to be faster than you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m cooler than you.’
‘You might need your horse.’
‘How much do you want to bet - or what will you give me if I do?’
‘A million dollars.’
‘No, seriously. 50 bucks. If I beat 5:45, you give me 50 bucks.’
‘A high school track, stopwatch, witnesses,’ I mandated. We shook on it. ‘Let me know when you’re ready.’
‘I will,’ she said. ’So, what do I do?’

The legend goes that Sir Roger Bannister never ran a full mile in training when he trained to challenge the four minute barrier. Instead, he ran ten 400-meter heats at every workout. When he could get all ten down to less than a minute each, he told friends, it’d be time to go for the mile.
With that in mind, I said to the kid, you can’t just go out and start running long distances. The first thing people do is compromise their stride or their pace to something they can maintain over time - which defeats the entire purpose of being a runner. You have to train the mechanics with which to drive with speed over an extended distance. This calls upon a couple of different capacities.
We set up a schedule:
Monday - would be for 400’s. Eventually she reached a set of 8 with two minute rests between them.
Wednesday - was a set of four 800’s. She needed to develop some of the endurance Bannister already had going for him.
Friday - would be a 25 minute casual recovery run. Speed is absolutely not to be an issue. In fact, early on she came back with a stitch in her side a few times.
Not cool, I told her. Going out hard on Friday is just as great a sin as slacking on a Monday. You’re just getting a little volume. It’s way too soon to put any oomph into Fridays. Do it with a beer in one hand and a cigarette dangling out of your mouth.
She wanted to keep lifting, but at a reduced level, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays she hits 5’s with about two-thirds of her best sets. Every third workout, she bags her lower body exercises for 10 sled pulls up our hilly driveway and 10 jumps onto a two-foot high planter in the yard.

All of this takes place at six every morning, since her afternoons are full of horseback riding and homework. Her friends are at swim team or hockey practices before school as well, so this is pretty normal. Thus far, she’s improved her 400’s from 1:50’s to 1:15’s. Her 800’s have gone from 4 minutes flat to about 3 flat.
‘1:15 is flying,’ I told her. ‘Four of those is a 5-minute mile. You’re losing some time, though, when you tie two 400’s into an 800. What happens when you start tying 800’s together for the mile? A pair of three-minute pieces becomes 6:30 - we hope.’
That’s a totally normal trend, I explained. If Usain Bolt maintained his 100-meter pace for a mile, he’d bust two and a half minutes. That’s physically impossible. Still, we have to increase your intensity a bit and improve your ability to maintain it.
Mondays now have some of those 400’s split into 200’s.
Wednesdays have some of the 800’s split into 400’s. We made this change about a month ago, and apparently the 200’s on Monday have had a greater effect than the 400’s on Wednesday. She’s still improving bit by bit, so I’ll run this part of the program out for another month.

This might be a good place to state for the record that I’m not insane. I was 40 pounds lighter than I am now when I set my record. The older kid was a prepubescent twig when she set hers. We can only pursue this program for as long as the other kid improves at a reasonable rate. We’re not going to draw blood from a stone.
The next phases would seem to be:
Mondays - starting and ending with a 400, but everything else would be 200’s. We’d slowly drop the length of the rest intervals. We would NOT be adding mileage anywhere.
Wednesdays - would become more of a mixed bag of 200’s, 400’s and an 800.
Fridays - which we’ve been ignoring largely, would become 800’s with some degree of expectation attached. This would reduce her mileage from the three mile cruise that Fridays are now but would focus on the capacity for sustained heightened horsepower.
I won’t phase all this in at once, and of course the last step is to bag the lifting. This would be the last month or two that tells the tale. At this point, there’s no real rush; this routine represents more of a semi-casual athletic lifestyle than any kind of urgent quest. Last week was exciting, though, when the lion matched strides with the gazelle.
‘Dad, it’s working.’

4-Day Split (8, 5, & 2 and TM rotation)
Week of: 3/2/20 5&2 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5*) Tom 410 JC 162.5
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Tom 370x3, 372.5 JC 175
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 170 JC 85
2. Bench press: 1 set of 2* (intensity) Tom 277.5 JC 125
3. Dips: 4 sets of 8 (20) or 4 sets of 5 wide grip bench Tom 235 JC 85
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 2* reps Tom 502.5 JC 240
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 452.5 JC 215
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 5 sets, 3 reps Tom 370 bands JC 145
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: (10 sets of 1) Tom 192.5/200 JC 87.5
2. Bench Press: [5x5*: (3x5*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 255 JC 120
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions or narrow grip partial bench press
5. (JC) Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

I was worried about the 410’s.
In a pleasant surprise, they turned out to be sets of 4, with decent speed and form, which I had decided would be most important. My 407.5-pound squats for 5’s three weeks prior were mad dashes, where I really had to bomb through the first three reps each time to make it to 5. The last rep on the last set was as desperate a grind as I’ve ever managed. ‘This one’s on a wing and a prayer,’ I thought as I dropped; when I could barely put the bar back on the hooks, I knew I had gotten away with something, but also that, ‘410 ain’t gonna go next time.’
Heavy reps are a little like running one’s finger through a candle flame, which can be done so long as you keep moving. Lower this the right way, you think, and then . . . Drive Like Hell. Mentally, you skip right over the change of direction, the same way you don’t feel the flame.
On de-load days you can remind yourself what you should be feeling during clutch sets. Sending my hips backwards under the heaviest of squat weights sometimes takes a little faith - but the cell phone camera doesn’t lie, so I remind myself, ‘Speed . . . send your ass back . . . you’ll get the rebound.’ That’s how I got the 410’s: not giving a damn about the rep count but just trying to feel the right things.
I’ve also allowed myself to be more present at the bottom of the bench press - mainly because benches are taking a back seat to presses in the Texas Method program I’m running in my upper body work (from a Nick Delgadillo article). Since my Intensity reps are not at do-or-die levels, I can figure out what will get me through the diciest moments.

Slightly overlapping the above are three issues raised in Andy Baker’s latest blog post. (He’s a co-author with Rip and Dr. Sullivan in landmark STARTING STRENGTH books. This is the post from his website: Factors that Influence Training Volume (Part 1) - Andy Baker)
1. It’s my genetics that make me a better squatter than a presser. Ever since I was a kid, my squats have responded to simple routines with no great need for volume or variation. I missed those 5’s for the first time since Christmas mainly because I’m approaching the 12-week mark, when I need a break anyway.
My benches and presses have not had it so easy. I’ve needed all kinds of supplemental work to get me to where I am, 1.5-times-bodyweight and 1-times-bodyweight respectively - presuming that’s proportional to a squat that’s beyond 2-times-bodyweight.

2. “Second – people often experience big increases in performance / size when switching from one approach to another. In these instances it’s very easy to latch onto the “new” approach as the reason for the sudden increases. The reality is that it’s the combination of one approach on the back end of the other. I’ve experienced this personally in my own training and with clients – and in both directions.”
Baker’s post is on whether high or low volume is ideal for training. It turns out, Baker is saying, “that perhaps alternating periods of higher training volumes with periods of lower training volumes might be the best option rather than trying to firmly entrench yourself in one camp or another.”
I’ve increased my press training and hit new records for my strict standing sets of 5 while dialing down the bench work. Change is the primary stimulus here, as opposed to the genius of the set and rep scheme.
More frequent change will have to take place. Nothing is sacred - for upper body.

3. My bench press training has been too heavy for too long. Baker makes the case that total volume and intensity cannot be kept high for any length of time. He believes that while the ‘power’ lifts have to be trained seriously, the ‘relative intensity’ must be lower on average than constantly heavy work. He favors a Westside Barbell styled dynamic day each week, of 60-80% weights done for 10 sets of 3. With sufficient speed, these sets will recruit and train a good amount of motor units while not accruing a lot of fatigue.
This is completely counterintuitive. Still, I was flying through these with light, light weight, 145 pounds and mini-bands, when I benched 310 nearly a year ago. (I had to look it up to believe it.)
I got heavier and heavier with these because I figured hard work would be rewarded - but I haven’t been near 310 since.
Hmmmm. Don’t do them heavy, and then see rule number 2: don’t do them long.

I used to compare power cleans to a fickle female: don’t train too hard. Don’t pay her any special attention because she’ll only break your heart. Just do your deadlifts, and she’ll come around.
Now, I have to quit getting sentimentally attached to upper body schemes. The second the magic’s gone, baby, I’m hitting the road.

4-Day Split (DL&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 3/9/20 2&1 week & TM
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x2*) Tom 445 JC 175
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 5 reps Tom 367.5x2, 370x2 chains JC 175-180
3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 170 JC 82.5
2. Bench press: 10 sets of 3 (mini-bands) Tom 135 JC 65
3. Narrow grip pin bench press: 4 sets of 8 167.5
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 1* rep Tom 527.5 JC 250
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 475 chains JC 225
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 3x2* reps Tom 400 JC 157.5
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: 1 rep: Tom 187.5; 2-3 reps. press 2.0 JC 90
2. Bench Press: [5x2*: (3x2*); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 272.5 JC 120
3. Pull ups (5x10)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

Walter ‘Corky’ McFarland of Kodiak, Alaska died last week, aged 92, seven months after the loss of his beloved Mary, his wife of 71 years. He served in both the Army and Navy, settling in his final duty station, where he raised a family, roamed the island as an outdoorsman, and became a self taught expert in a form of Judo otherwise lost to history, a turn-of-the 20th-Century adherence to the principles enumerated by founder Jigoro Kano and those who studied directly under him.
This was my Aged and Wise Sensei, who revolutionized my understanding of athletic movement and modeled the self reliance needed to tackle the most challenging of pursuits. The news last week caused me more than a twinge of guilt, as it came soon after my damning indictment of Judo here on the STARTING STRENGTH website. I had only recently discovered Judo’s true potential in hand to hand combat, long after ending a 20 year career of more formal study.
The truth is more complicated than the point I was trying to make last month. I stand by the statement that Judo as it’s commonly taught is a moronic, needlessly difficult sport given to stalemate, frustration, and injury. I elected not to get into the fact that seven years into my career, I made a major course change upon being assigned to Kodiak, Alaska, where Corky ran a class in what he called ‘Pre-War Judo.’ This was pre- World War Two, and was (is) a study of whole bodied, efficient mechanics, where speed and movement can transcend the limits of strength - yours or your opponent’s. The most familiar analogies would be that of a tennis player swinging a racket with his whole body or Mike Tyson jumping and twisting - keeping his arms largely in place - as he generated the ferocious power we saw in his knockouts. When you have grocery bags in both arms, and you didn’t close the car door all the way, that hip check with which you bash it shut is moving from your center of effort.
All movement should originate in your center of gravity, Corky would say, which is true for any sport. It’s something I bear in mind even now in the weight room. I’ve interpreted all of Rippetoe’s technique through the lens of Corky’s instruction.

Walter McFarland’s legacy could conceivably reach far beyond the mats in Kodiak’s National Guard Armory. His ideas - or Kano’s old ones - on human structural engineering would prove eye opening to fighters of all kinds, and could even lead to a significant change in how Judo is practiced. ‘If you want a new idea, read an old book,’ it’s been said. This might be the revolution needed to save a dying sport.

Context is everything.

1. JUDO
Much like Corky, Jigoro Kano can be characterized by self reliance and determination, which in his case made him a prominent official in Japan’s Ministry of Education and the first Asian member of the International Olympic Committee. As an ambassador for the sport he founded, he traveled worldwide lecturing and giving demonstrations. He was the product of private schools as a child, academically inclined, studying English and German, aware of the wider world even at an early age. However, this serious nature and his small size led to his being bullied mercilessly.
Ju Jutsu can take care of that, young Kano was told. He had some inclination that if done correctly, it could help a smaller person overcome someone far larger.
Roughly put, Ju Jutsu at the time was not a very well maintained tradition in Japan. Its techniques date back centuries, but fighting had become associated with the more thuggish elements of a divided, feudal society, and any real theoretical expertise had been either lost or limited to a very few specific schools. Kano was at once hooked yet frustrated by the seemingly random set of techniques he had accumulated - though he remained driven to learn all he could. Once, in a match, he resorted to a technique he had seen in a western book about wrestling, a fireman’s carry. It worked and to this day remains part of his curriculum under the Japanese name for ‘shoulder wheel.’
Long story short: the threads of Kano’s career as educator and founder of the Kodokan Judo Institute wove into a series of broad ideals. As an educator studying in Europe, he was quick to shake off the Japanese tradition in which teachers were subservient to socially superior pupils. He embraced European and American approaches, in which teachers held roles as respected intellectuals and leaders.
In the dojo, he searched for ‘an underlying principle to Ju Jutsu,’ and over time fashioned what he mostly couldn’t find, a governing bio-mechanical principle, which turned out to be whole bodied movement. This is something common among any number of sports, but Kano went on to discover that moving from one’s center of effort - or center of gravity - while preventing an opponent from doing the same was the key to victory. An opponent’s center can be knocked out from under him, rendering him an unstable structure - AND if an opponent places too much strength in one particular area of his body, that’s displacing his own center, which can be exploited. Much is said about Judo’s ‘gentleness’ or ‘yielding,’ but positioning and opportunism might be closer to the truth.
This was the first step in Ju Jutsu’s becoming Ju-DO, where ‘Do’ means ‘way,’ an all-encompassing approach to physical, intellectual, and spiritual well being. As an educator, he saw great value in what was a solid workout, a sophisticated skill to comprehend, and a pursuit that conferred mutual benefit and fellowship among practitioners.
Jigoro Kano died at sea in 1938 during one of his international voyages.

After the Japanese surrender in World War Two and during the American occupation, the story goes, a handful of Kodokan senior members somehow managed to secure a meeting with the supreme commander of the occupying forces, General Douglas MacArthur. They probably tried to put as positive a spin as possible on their request: ‘We represent a cultural institution, one that traces its traditions back hundreds of years and espouses the highest moral ideals. Our hope is to reopen - ‘
‘A fighting academy?’ MacArthur replied incredulously. ‘Negative. That’s how you have insurgencies.’ They were promptly shown the door.
When they had a chance to regroup, a fateful argument took place. ‘We shouldn’t have even brought it up.’
‘That would be great. The Americans find us training, and we all wind up in front of a firing squad.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘We have to take the fighting out of it - convince them it’s a sport.’ This became the crux of the debate: Sport Judo vs. no Judo. The Sport faction eventually won out, and they made plans to approach the American command once again. They couldn’t get near MacArthur’s office, and to the subordinate who would see them they pleaded their case: ‘It’s a sport, just like boxing or wrestling - and if you want, your guys can join in.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ the American official said, much to their surprise - and the die was cast.

That story’s apocryphal, but the occupation changed the nature and purpose of Judo.

(coninued below)

[Nunedog]

(from above)

2. CORKY
In 1955, a wiry 5’6”, 150 pound Corky McFarland joined the Judo club at the Kodiak Naval Base. It was a pretty rough affair; a number of the members were substantially larger and stronger Marines who were quite happy to dump Corky ‘on his head,’ as he recalled it. Before long, he had had enough. He quit.
In a week or two’s time, his front doorbell rang. It was the instructor, who asked, ‘If you’re done, can I buy that gi back from you? Someone else is going to need it.’
Corky was disappointed in himself. This was the first time he had ever quit anything. He said as much to the instructor, and added, ‘There must be something I’m missing.’
‘If you want, I have some books you can look at,’ the instructor offered - and that made all the difference. Soon, Corky was poring through books he borrowed and then bought for himself, works by Aida, Kawaishi, Oda, as translated by EJ Harrison, along with Harrison’s original works. In later years he collected books by Koizumi, Feldenkrais, and Eric Dominy, among others.
Corky quickly grew wise to the fact that what was being taught on the mat was a very different thing from the content of these books. Like Jigoro Kano resorting to that fireman’s carry that day, Corky began experimenting with some of the ideas he was reading about. The Marines starting hitting the mat with increasing frequency.
In 1958, a Navy Seabee newly assigned to Kodiak came to watch a practice. He was not impressed by the jacket rasslin’ that had become typical of Judo; a great many skills had been lost in translation in the years since the war, though that one smaller dude seemed to know what he’s doing, he noticed. The Seabee was Stanford Chai, hailing from Honolulu, where he had studied Judo and Danzan Ryu Ju Jutsu, an influential offshoot, in backyard and alley dojos from the time he was a boy.
Chai would become the club’s new instructor, since the first one was soon transferring away. It was back to basics, Chai decreed. Everyone’s fundamental mechanics needed work, except those of the smaller dude, Corky. ‘Where did you learn this?’ Chai asked.
Corky told him his story. ‘I got it from books.’
The two of them were equally amazed by the other, Chai that Corky could transfer principles from the printed page to the mat, and Corky that Chai trained in an honest-to-God old school dojo with people who stuck to Kano’s original approach. A beautiful friendship was born. For the three year duration of Chai’s Kodiak tour, they were inseparable. Their kids were the same age, the families were always at each other’s houses, and they hunted and fished, often with their kids, when they weren’t smashing around on the mat. Chai’s specialty was self defense, specifically separating attackers from their knives, clubs, or guns. Together, he and Corky ran the club and conducted training for the local police, the military police, and various commands around the base.
Chai knew whereof he spoke, and he was no angel, having had run-ins with the law in previous duty stations. In one, he was in a bar raided and cleared out by the military police. Everybody was leaving peacefully, Chai pointed out, so there was no need to be swinging those billy clubs around. However, one cop elected to give him a tap for good measure, whereupon he flattened four of them in short order. He waited to surrender to the arriving reinforcements, figuring like guys in this situation often do, ‘Well, if I’m going to jail, I might as well finish my beer.’
In 1961, the Navy transferred Chai and his family to California. Corky never saw him again.

Kodiak Island is accessible from the mainland only by air or ferry. Therefore, in the ensuing decades as Corky kept at it, he effectively preserved this ancient form of Judo in isolation, free from the influences of any organizations or tournaments. This would be the template by which Corky lived his life: constant analysis, patient, steady improvement, roughneck fun, and a sense of discovery. He taught for generations, in his own house, various gyms around town, and ultimately at the National Guard Armory. To pay his rent there, he held seminars for the Guardsmen in handling batons and knives, or how to throw a man using his own rifle. Students grew up and eventually brought their own kids to class.

In 1999, 38 years after Stanford Chai left, I walked into the Armory.
END OF PART ONE

4-Day Split (DL&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 3/16/20 Quarterly break week

TUESDAY
Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Squat: work up to set of 3 with 372.5 and 1 single with 420 JC 145, 160
2. Deadlift: work up to 1 rep with 480 JC 215
3. Romanian deadlifts 1 set of 5 with 372.5 JC 165
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: work up to 3 reps with 170 JC 80
2. Narrow grip pin bench press 4 sets of 8, 170 JC 65
3. Pull ups 3 sets of 6

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

Don’t worry; I’m among those who find that last line in the entry above worthy of some eye rolling. Yes, I arrived in 1999, 38 years after Corky McFarland’s close friend and formative influence, Stanford Chai, left their Kodiak, Alaska Judo club. This was hardly the moment of dramatic significance I might have implied, especially as far as Corky was concerned. He had become a local institution, training generations of fathers and sons, as well as a handful of mothers and daughters, along with any number of State Troopers, National Guardsmen, Coast Guardsmen, local cops, and Marines that had blown through town over the years.
It was dramatically significant for me, however, starting with a sobering initiation on my first night in class. Little did I realize that this would begin a long journey, not unlike Kano’s or Corky’s - I dare say - to grasp the broadest lessons Judo could offer. Now, there’s a presumptuous statement - but before you roll your eyes again, you do have to grant that I blundered into an interesting position. I was indoctrinated into this very, very specific, old fashioned methodology during my three years in Kodiak, after which I was transferred away and could only continue based on my own self reliance. I get what those guys went through.
By describing Corky’s influence on my life, I’m trying to share his legacy, which I think would have far reaching effects on the training and popularity of Judo.

3. TOM - KODIAK
The story of Corky’s schooling me on that first night of class is a little beside the point if you don’t grasp the fundamental concepts in play. As I wrote to a friend at the time, ‘young Skywalker has met Obi Wan Kenobi and gotten his ass kicked.’ Corky alternately evaded my best throws like a bullfighter, blocked them entirely as he felt like a stump I couldn’t tear from the ground, or flew as light as air, seemingly vanishing in my grasp, and throwing me with my own force. He was 72 at the time. I was 34.
‘Everything you’re doing is wrong,’ he informed me. ‘We can fix this, but you’re going to have to do as I say.’
Despite my having trained with Olympians and world level players in preceding years, these core concepts were news to me:
I. All movement in a throw, evading one, or even simply moving around the mat must emanate from a person’s center of gravity - or effort, which for most people is halfway from belly button to crotch, halfway from front to back. Regardless of the direction of a throw, whether it’s across the shoulders, over the hip, or even detached in a hand throw or a sacrifice, the center must be in the axis of movement.
The easiest way to imagine this is with a hip throw. If you were to squat a bit, cock your torso to one side and your hips to another, put your ams out as if you’re bringing someone over that hip, you’d see that the best way to throw is that your spine - with your center - forms an axis of rotation. One hip goes forward, one goes back, and above them your shoulders move similarly.
That’s another point: as your body moves around that axis, it stays in one piece.
Simple as that sounds, you’d be surprised by the number of people who violate that rule, grabbing and pulling in the manner of a lifter trying to curl a power clean when their whole body movement should have boosted the bar. A generation of baseball pitchers is shredding their elbows and getting Tommy John surgery because their arms are late in the motion. They kick their legs and step down the mound, but their shoulders lag behind their hips, which places a massive stress on their arms - which they’ve been emphasizing far too much in terms of strength, anyway.
When my older kid was playing T-Ball, I was pressed into coaching. I used to tell the little kids, ‘Let the bat fall off your shoulder and swing as you turn your whole body. Your belly button and the bat get to the ball at the same time, and then just keep going until you stop.’ The kids were roping it.
Well, hang on, you say. The kids’ hands and the bat are moving faster than the rest of them. Baseball pitchers cannot just hold their hands still and move their hips and shoulders.
True, but the motion of a throwing arm must be rooted and proportional to the rest of the body’s motion. It’s not just their arm.
In Japan, Judo and Aikido teachers make money on the side coaching golf.

II. In the course of a standing grapple, Judo or otherwise, your center of gravity must merge with the center of gravity formed by your combined masses in order to effect a throw.
If two Judo players lock up by grabbing one another’s jackets, then as they push, pull, and twist, their combined center of gravity exists in the space somewhere between them. However, if Player A manages to turn in for a hip throw, that would mean he’s spun down in front of Player B, with his hips lower than B’s as though he’s about to give B a piggyback ride. This closes the gap and brings the centers together.
This is also the most efficient manner of throwing, putting your center in contact with your opponent’s as a point of purchase as well as a means of displacement. This puts your center in the position of perfect leverage while denying him the chance do do the same.
It works both ways. If Player A spins down, gets his hips under Player B’s, and breaks B’s position in terms of leverage, A gets the throw.
Suppose, however, B realizes what’s about to happen. B quickly drops his hips low and jams them forward. Now, B has matched his center to their combined center of mass, and A is in for a rude surprise. He’s going to get dumped over backwards.

III. Ignore these principles at your peril.
Suppose you wrap an arm around your partner’s back or neck, and realizing that you’re just so much stronger than they are, owing to your powerful biceps, shoulder, pec, and abs, that you can just sling this guy across your back and hurl him some distance. That might actually be true based on the force you can generate - but the instant you light up those muscles, engaging them more than any of the others in your body, you have moved your center of effort out of your center of gravity. It’s gone from your gut up to your shoulder and pec area. You’re leaning that part of your body out ahead of your feet, way over unsupported space, and your center of gravity is no longer in the axis of rotation. You can be rolled.
Your opponent, realizing you’re so strong, knows he’s going to be thrown. As you start reeling him in, all he has to do is clamp onto that arm of yours that’s going around his back. His other hand will hang on to whatever he has, a lapel or sleeve, and then like a surfer slightly ahead of the wave, he’ll ride your throw. For a moment, his bodyweight is going to be hanging off your arm, shoulder, and pec out over that unsupported space. His center of gravity, not yours, is now occupying the center of your combined masses, and if he just rolls his body outward a little bit, he’ll throw you from midair.
This is the basis of sacrifice throws, answering overwhelming force from an opponent. Just go where the guy wants to take you, but zipline it; give him more speed and weight than he bargained for, and he’ll go right over.

This is what Corky did to me on that first night, deny me his center for leverage, either by juking me or hitting our combined center before I did. That countering motion, the re-rolling a guy was a constant test he’d spring on us if he ever felt undue strength in one body part versus another. You had to throw from your center and maintain your balance no matter how hard a guy held on. Getting rolled was a great way to catch flak from everyone on the mat.
For three years, we explored these concepts as they applied to Judo’s dozens of throws and and the various attacks and forces they were designed to defeat. When it came time for me to leave in 2002, Corky took me aside and handed me an old typewritten piece of paper, a catalogue page with the heading, ‘Southern California School of Judo and JuJitsu,’ possibly passed along from his first sensei nearly 50 years before. These were all rare and antique books I had to track down. ‘I can’t teach you what they can,’ he said. ‘This is going to be your Judo.’

4. WASHINGTON, DC
The story now shifts to what I’ve been able to make of this knowledge. What is its worth out in the real world, away from Kodiak, either on the competition mat or in real world combatives? The answer is complicated: initially disappointing, but don’t worry. This ends well.
First, I had to nail down my understanding of everything I had learned. I found a few dependable guys willing to smash around during lunch a couple times a week, and we were off to the races. I was collecting a lot of those old books from Corky’s list, and I put to use one of his most important lessons ever: put the book on the mat, read the instructions aloud, take turns, have arguments, and figure it out. As one of the guys put it in a recent e-mail, ‘I remember us stumbling on to cool ideas on the mat and rediscovering old concepts.’
We did not go head to head in match style fighting. ‘We can do it if you want,’ I would say, and if two guys went at it, a lot of nothing got accomplished, and the fighting only got more desperate, with dives toward one another’s legs and rumbling that resembled nothing we had been working on.
‘Believe me. I’ve been through this,’ I would say. ‘We could be working a lot harder and getting a lot less done.’
We did practice some situational dynamics, honest to God forceful, albeit specific, attacks along with the techniques made to handle them, like in Kodiak. The sheer depth and breadth of what we were learning, the rolling in ground fighting, and these situational drills generally satisfied everyone’s appetite for destruction.

(continued below)

[Nunedog]

(from above)

Having left in ’02, I flew back to Kodiak to brush up with Corky in 2004, ’06, and ’08. It was in 2006 that the guys in DC were asking what in the world kind of Judo we were doing, since it was so different from what they were seeing on YouTube. They knew it was Pre-War, but was it Danzan Ryu, and where did Corky get all this?
It was during the 2006 visit that I gathered the history I’ve described so far. Who was this other sensei, I asked, the one who really set you on your course?
Stanford Chai was his name. He was from Hawaii. Corky knew his wife’s name and Chai’s birthdate, but after they sailed off on the ferry in 1961, Corky had never heard from him again.
I got this, I promised. I’ll track him down by way of the net. It took about three months, but by Christmas I had made contact with the family in California. Stanford Chai stayed with the Seabees and served two tours in Vietnam. He was no angel to the very end, according to family stories, and died young, in 1986, of cancer, and was buried in Oahu.
In 2010, soon after arriving for our assignment to Honolulu, I visited Chai’s crypt and gave it a loud slap with my palm in the quiet of the mausoleum. I was only inches away from him. I took pictures and sent them to Alaska.

5. PUERTO RICO
I gave it probably three weeks before I bailed. It was a failure on two levels:
Physically, I was weak. I was a strapping 165, a runner and swimmer, ripped to shreds but unable to generate any real force against my surroundings. I was flung around the mat against my will.
Mentally, I was not prepared for fighting. With the exception of hitting a few sacrifice throws, which meant that I was being crushed by superior strength anyway, I could not apply any of the situational ‘skills’ I had practiced in Corky’s style of Judo. The randori was too fast, rough, and random for any subtleties.
This was Puerto Rico’s large scale program at the Pabellon de Judo, part of an enormous complex that included tennis, baseball, volleyball, and boxing venues, along with the island’s Museo del Deportes. The reason I quit was that, impressive as it was, they didn’t have any solutions to offer. The leaders lined us up, warmed us up, and told us to fight. I couldn’t get past all the stiff arms, and I refused to go through all that pointlessness once more.
Friggin’ stupid sport, I rationalized, which helped with the disappointment and embarrassment.

6. HAWAII
Back in the days when people used to burn discs for one another as a means of information sharing, Corky had one of the other guys give me a copy of an ancient sepia-toned film of Professor Henry Okazaki and a number of his students demonstrating Danzan Ryu Ju Jitsu techniques. They’re outdoors; part of the film is shot on a lawn where the Honolulu Police building now stands, and parts are from Okazaki’s open-sided dojo. The film’s sun-bleached slow motion has a hazy focus, and the traditional music underlying the assemblage of clips creates an eerie, otherworldly effect. This is what made the hunt for Stanford Chai - and the greater mystery of what in the world I was doing with myself - a bit of a ghost story.

This also happens to be a decent representation of what Corky was teaching in Alaska - though I will point out that his standards on balance and rolling one’s hips instead of bending their abs were far higher.
YouTube

At a CrossFit seminar in Hawaii, I met a guy who was running a mixed-bag martial arts club. (This is what I had done in Puerto Rico after quitting their program. I rounded up a few friends, and since our CrossFit workouts were sufficiently brutal, they were quite content to mess around with Judo with some degree of sanity. By this time I had let my attention wander to military combatives, so we also practiced some Defendu and Krav Maga.)
That was the general idea in Hawaii as well, but this guy had ties to other martial art communities, one of which was Danzan Ryu. Over the years Danzan Ryu has spread to different parts of the country as Okazaki’s students moved on to form their own schools. However, every few years they gather for their ‘Ohana (family) Celebration,’ which happened to be in Honolulu while I was there.
As the Ohana approached, I suggested that if the opportunity arose, we should pull a few of the old timers aside. I could show off a few classic throws they’d recognize from that old film, and I’m sure they’d be very curious as to how some white guy from the wrong end of the United States just stepped out of a time warp.
The Ohana booked a floor of ballrooms in a hotel and was run like a convention, where students could go from session to session, training under instructors from around the country. NO ONE threw or moved like Okazaki and his boys. For a while, I thought I had gone to the wrong convention. A huge karate influence was present in a lot of the seminars. One school taught throws that were based solely on joint locks, making for a brutal, painful hour of desperately tapping out, as if we were the poor patients at the insane asylum while the Marquis de Sade supervised the experiments.
None of the senior instructors seemed terribly approachable, or the content of what they were teaching was so removed from Okazaki’s basics that any history discussions would hold zero interest.

It was 2011 or ’12. My God, I thought as I stood in my gi in a hotel hallway. The whole world has moved on. Counting myself, Corky, and the few diehards he still had, there are about five of us on the planet still doing our style, and it doesn’t friggin’ work, anyway.
END OF PART TWO

4-Day Split (DL&3, 5&2, 2&1 rotation)
Week of: 3/23/20 De-load &3 TM week
MONDAY
1. Squat (5,1,1,5,5 @80, 90, 90, 80, 80%) Tom 372.5, 420 JC : 147.5, 175
2. Romanian deadlifts: 4 sets of 5 reps Tom 370x2, 372.5x2 chains JC 175
3. Power Cleans (3x3) 75 - 95 JC
3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485 - 535
4. reverse hypers (3x10)
5. abs; banded pulldowns

TUESDAY
1. Strict press: [5x5: (3x5); drop 5, 10% for 2 sets] Tom 170 JC 82.5
2. Bench press: 10 sets of 3 (mini-bands) Tom 137.5 JC 65
3. 3. Narrow grip pin bench press: 4 sets of 8 172.5
4. Hanging Rows: 5x5 vest, 25 lb db
5. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5

Conditioning (second session)
sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

THURSDAY
1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 3* reps Tom 480 JC 230
2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 432.5 JC 210
3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 4 sets of 5 Tom 335 JC 132.5 BANDS
4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Press: work up to one set of three reps: 177.5
2. Bench Press: (5,1,1,5,5 @80, 90, 90, 80, 80%) Tom 240, 270 JC 112.5, 125
3. Pull ups (5 sets of 10 reps)
4. 4 sets Lying Tricep Extensions
5 Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5 JC
6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Jeff Brophy]

My new favorite log and I have no interest in judo etc. Good stuff