I have a Thursday night workout that is the highpoint of my week. We start every week with an intense warmup, follow it with crazy mitt work, some technical work, and then some sort of full range sparring. It’s fun, it’s motivating, and it really gets the stress out. The warmup has changed lately – first it was the jumping jack/ pushup / squat / situp ‘pyramid of pain’; then it was ‘the fifteens’ (which turned into bigger numbers) where we would do 15 or more sets of a jumping jack / a squat / a pushup / a situp/ a burpee; but now we’ve got a new toy.
We picked up a heavy equipment tire. It’s big. Really big. We’ve incorporated it in a variety of ways – plyometrics on and off of it, flipping it to each other, and of course, beating it with a sledgehammer. It’s a great workout, and anyone not wielding a sledgehammer can do the other warmup while they wait their turn. The ring timer app for the iPod helps keep things moving and keeps the rest periods on track. I recommend it as a worthy whole body addition to your repertoire, just be careful and do a little research first before just grabbing a sledge and slamming away. To start your research, take a look at this page where you can get some good basic information on sledgehammer workouts.
